I’m a couple weeks late in commenting on this, but I wanted to acknowledge the recent death of John DeLorean. DeLorean made a number of important contributions to automotive design, including helping to create the high-powered “muscle car” craze of the 1960s. (The Pontiac GTO was DeLorean’s idea, a groundbreaking combination of a huge engine with a fairly lightweight body. The success of the “Goat” subsequently inspired an entire class of speedy gas-guzzlers that still enjoy near-legendary reputations among car enthusiasts.) However, he will forever be remembered for the unique sports car that bears his name, the Delorean DMC-12.

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I am not Catholic, nor even what you’d call religious, but I have to admit that I was moved by the news of Pope John Paul II’s death over the weekend. As a political progressive, I disagreed with many of his teachings, particularly on the subject of contraception. However, the Pope himself — a.k.a. Karol Wojtlya — always struck me as genuinely decent and kind-hearted man, and the world always suffers when we lose one of those.

Rest in peace, Karol. You deserve it.

I should’ve known better than to publicly announce the topic of my next post on Friday. Events have a disconcerting habit of continuing to occur, regardless of my writing plans. Case in point: the death last week of Arthur Miller must sadly take precedence over my oft-promised musings on the remake of Battlestar Galactica.

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Mr. Jordan has been busy lately — the latest person to wander into his presence is Ossie Davis, a wonderful stage-and-screen actor and all-round impressive human being who died last week at the age of 87.

I can’t remember for sure when I first became aware of Mr. Davis — he worked so steadily throughout his long life that it seems like he’s just always been there, somewhere — but I think I connected his name to his face when he co-starred in a short-lived TV series called B.L. Stryker. Stryker was a would-be comeback vehicle for Burt Reynolds, a rather unremarkable detective series in the Magnum/Rockford Files mode. It didn’t go anywhere, obviously, but it did lead to a longer-term job for both Ossie and Burt, the amiable sitcom Evening Shade, which I remember watching pretty regularly in the early ’90s (although I’ll be damned if I can remember much of what it was about).

The thing I liked about Ossie Davis was that he always seemed to radiate warmth and dignity, no matter how minor or ridiculous the project. Case in point is one of his final films, Bubba-Ho-Tep, a bizarre cross-breeding of horror, comedy and social commentary in which Davis played a character who claimed he was John F. Kennedy, despite the fact that he was obviously still alive. And black. When questioned on these points by his fellow retirement-home inhabitant, Elvis Presley (who also is still alive, by the way, at least in this filmic universe), “Jack” explains that the assasination was faked and the CIA dyed him black before dumping him in the worst, most anonymous old-folks’ home in Texas. Pretty silly stuff — and this is even before the ancient Egyptian mummy shows up and begins to feed on the souls of the old folks! — but Davis plays Jack as, well, presidential. It’s a wonderful performance in a movie that many actors wouldn’t have taken at all seriously. I think that says all you need to know about the sort of man Davis was… however, if you would like to know more about the remarkable life of a remarkable man, check out Roger Ebert’s fine eulogy.

The actor John Vernon has has died at the age of 72. You may not recognize the name, but you’ll know the face as soon as you click that link. As all the obituaries are noting, he had a long film career and appeared in some very well-known flicks, including Dirty Harry and The Outlaw Josey Wales, so you’ve no doubt caught him in something. According to Mark Evanier, he even did some voice work in cartoons, playing the superheroes Iron-Man and The Sub-Mariner in the ’60s, and more recently performing multiple characters in the Pinky and the Brain shorts. But the role for which he’s going to be remembered, the one mentioned in most of the headlines I’ve seen, is Dean Wormer in Animal House.

One of my favorite comedies, Animal House was a true Hollywood success story, a low-budget mess of a movie with modest ambitions and a largely unknown cast. It became a monster hit largely because of its own audacity, and the willingness of everyone involved to wallow in crassness. (It didn’t hurt that it was genuinely funny.) The film made John Belushi a big-screen star, launched Kevin Bacon‘s career, and established a template that would be used by many successful comedies over the next ten years. There are elements of Animal House in Caddyshack, the Revenge of the Nerds movies, the Police Academy series, and even in Ghostbusters, and none is more recognizable than the killjoy authority figure prototyped by Vernon’s Dean Wormer. The thing that sets Wormer apart from the characters that followed, however, was a streak of genuine sadism — Wormer wasn’t simply a snobby, by-the-book servant of The Establishment. He genuinely enjoyed repressing, bullying, and crushing those who didn’t live up to his image of “the right kind of people.” Vernon played the role to the hilt, using a smug expression and gleefully sarcastic delivery to create a truly hateful human being. Wormer’s come-uppance is one of the most satisfying resolutions ever put on film.

I have no idea what Vernon was like in Real Life — I don’t recall ever seeing him interviewed — but nine times out of ten it seems like the nastiest characters are portrayed by the nicest people. I’d like to imagine that John Vernon prototyped that role as well…

Two more notable figures have left us: comic-book writer and artist Will Eisner and illustrator Kelly Freas, both of whom died earlier this week.

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I just heard that actor Jerry Orbach died yesterday of prostate cancer. Damn shame, on so many levels. He was only 69, just a few years older than my mom, and his cancer was apparently discovered too late for treatment.

He was one of our finest character actors, a familiar face that has been appearing in stage, television, and film work for years. He appeared in 42nd Street and Chicago on Broadway, was the voice of Lumiere in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (the film, not the stage musical), and starred in TV’s Law and Order for twelve years. Despite all these roles, however, my first thought on hearing the news was that Baby’s dad from Dirty Dancing was gone.

Don’t laugh — I really like Dirty Dancing. It’s a highly underrated film, a solidly entertaining crowd-pleaser of a sort we don’t see much anymore. Orbach treated the material with dignity, taking a character that could have been one-dimensional and unlikable, and making him sympathetic. Like John Lithgow did in a similar role in Footloose, Orbach found the humanity in the role and made damn sure the audience understood that when the character behaves unreasonably, it’s only because his heart is breaking for his daughter. The film belongs to Patrick Swayze, of course, but Orbach is in many ways more impressive. While Swayze remains the same character at the end that he was to start with, Orbach’s character follows a definite arc: he’s a good man who eventually finds the strength to let his daughter become the woman she’s going to be. It was a great performance in a career filled with them.

I’m going to miss seeing Orbach’s hound-dog features, which could be cruel and imperious or gentle and kind, and everything in-between. The best, most detailed obituary I’ve found is from the New York Times. Be warned, you’ll have to register to see it…

They say that celebrity deaths always come in clusters of three. I have no idea why this would be so, but it certainly does seem that way if you follow the Hollywood obituaries. A former girlfriend once called me morbid because I follow them. All I could tell her by way of explanation was that the deaths of people who’ve done work I care about matter to me. True, I may not know these people on any kind of genuine personal level, but I feel like I do know at least an aspect of them through their work, and I mourn the fact that there will be no new work from them once they are gone.

Few celebrity deaths, however, matter more to me than the one I learned about late this evening: Christopher Reeve, the man who was Superman for the children of my generation, died Sunday of heart failure, following a cardiac arrest and resulting coma the previous day. This one really hurts, kids…

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