A great documentary was released a few years ago. Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story (2012) - IMDb
David Horowitz, longtime TV consumer reporter, dies at 81 Longtime KNBC-TV Channel 4 consumer reporter David Horowitz has died at age 81, his wife told the station Monday. Horowitz was best known for his appearances on KNBC’s newscasts and Emmy-winning TV program “Fight Back! With David Horowitz” that investigated defective products, advertised claims and confronted companies with customer complaints. Born June 30, 1937, in the the Bronx borough of New York City, Horowitz received a bachelor’s degree from Bradley University in 1959 and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Horowitz worked at newspapers and television stations in the Midwest, including KRNT-TV (now KCCI), the CBS affiliate in Des Moines. Horowitz became a writer for NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report” and held several other positions with the network before joining KNBC in 1973 as its consumer reporter. Horowitz’s acclaim led to being a regular guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and appearing as himself on episodes of “Silver Spoons,” “ALF,” “The Golden Girls” and “Saved by the Bell.” “I don’t consider myself a consumer advocate,” Horowitz told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “If you’re on television you have to really be broadcasting in the public interest … but you also have to be objective. “Yes, you can do a commentary and advocate certain issues if you feel that way, but I do a lot of stories where the consumer’s wrong — where they’re trying to rip off companies too. I have to really walk that fine line in terms of being fair about something.” Horowitz was on KNBC’s 4 p.m. newscast on Aug. 19, 1987, when a man with what appeared to be a gun took him hostage live on the air. Horowitz remained calm and read the gunman’s statements on camera, but the station had cut the broadcast without the gunman becoming aware of that fact. The gun turned out to be a toy BB gun. Horowitz then joined a drive to outlaw realistic toy guns in California. Horowitz is survived by his wife, Suzanne, two daughters and two grandchildren.
Clark Gable III, grandson of Hollywood royalty and host of 'Cheaters,' found dead in Dallas home | Dallas | Dallas News Clark Gable III, the 30-year-old grandson of Hollywood legend Clark Gable, was found dead in his Dallas home Friday morning, his family said. "I got a call from his girlfriend, and I didn't even know what she was saying, she was so hysterical," his mother, Tracy Scheff, told Radar, an online celebrity site. "He was an amazing kid, a very loving and extremely sensitive soul." Scheff later posted a statement on Instagram: "It is with an extremely heavy heart we say goodbye to my beautiful son Clark. He passed this morning. I will always be next to you my beautiful son. Mom." Clark Gable III was the current host of the reality TV series Cheaters, which is filmed in Dallas and features hidden-camera exposures of people suspected of cheating on their romantic partners. It recently returned after a two-year hiatus, with Gable back as the host.
RIP Jan-Michael Vincent. Age 74. Surprised he made it that long considering his long history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Sidney Sheinberg, MCA/Universal Exec Who Nurtured Steven Spielberg, Dies at 84 Sidney Sheinberg, who served for more than 20 years as president and COO of MCA, Inc and Universal Studios and helped build the former agency into a potent entertainment corporation, died Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 84. Sheinberg’s son, Jonathan, confirmed the news in an email. “He was an amazing man,” he wrote. Jonathan also remembered his father’s impact on the industry and the people whose lives Sheinberg touched through philanthropy. “My heart is broken at this news,” said Steven Spielberg in a statement. “For now let me just say that Sid had a big personality and a tender heart. He was the tallest most stand up guy I ever knew. He gave birth to my career and made Universal my home. He gave me ‘Jaws,’ I gave him ‘ET’ and he gave me ‘Schindler’s List.’ We were a team for 25 years and he was my dear friend for 50. I have no concept about how to accept that Sid is gone. For the rest of my life I will owe him more than I can express.” “We are all saddened by the passing of Sid Sheinberg and our thoughts are with his family and friends,” Ron Meyer, Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal, said in a statement. “He will be forever a part of Universal Studios’ legacy and his contributions to the industry will never be forgotten.” Sporting a well-earned bad-cop reputation that allowed his equally contentious boss, Lew Wasserman, to assume the role of gentleman executive, the plainspoken Sheinberg helped lead MCA Inc. and Universal through a phase of prosperity, expanding the company’s entertainment, theme park and publishing divisions and ultimately helping to mastermind its sale to Japanese conglom Matsushita for more than $6 billion in 1989. “Sid was a giant, in stature, business and heart,” said Casey Wasserman, Lew Wasserman’s grandson. “He was a true partner to my grandfather and the industry, and will be sorely missed by all. Our thoughts and prayers are with Lorraine, Jon and Bill.” In 1995, MCA was sold again to Seagram, which led to the departure of both Wasserman and Sheinberg. Sheinberg then segued into a brief deal at the company for his production banner the Bubble Factory, with only modest results, and after his departure in 1997, he was openly critical of the Seagram regime. Even after the separation with MCA, he continued to produce films on occasion. Among his most notable achievements when he headed MCA’s television division was nurturing the young Steven Spielberg, giving him his first directing job and then later shepherding him into the feature-film arena with “The Sugarland Express” and the megahit “Jaws.” === Sheinberg also lured film star Rock Hudson into his first television series, “McMillan and Wife.” The Wasserman-Sheinberg duo led MCA away from its roots as a talent agency and transformed it into an international entertainment empire that included the development of a prime 420-acre spread in the San Fernando Valley (named Universal City) and more than 400 acres in Orlando, Fla., building the highly successful studio-tour theme parks. Sheinberg also helped supervise the television and film division, turning erstwhile B-movie programmer Universal into a movie powerhouse and profitable producer of TV drama series like “The Rockford Files,” “Kojak” and “Columbo.” Universal won an Oscar for “The Sting” in 1973, for “Out of Africa” in 1985 and for “Schindler’s List” in 1993, though none of those films matched the box office power of the studio’s biggest hit, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” one of the top-grossing movies of all time. Other major hits included the “Back to the Future” series, “American Graffiti” and “Jurassic Park.” Rising through the ranks of Universal Television (as it became known after 1962, when the company was forced to divest itself of its agency operations), Sheinberg became the division’s president in 1971. During the ’60s, with his colleagues Frank Price and Jennings Lang, Sheinberg led Universal in pioneering made-for-TV movies and a series concept of alternating shows, “The NBC Sunday Night Mystery Movie,” featuring “Columbo,” “McMillan and Wife” and “McCloud” at first. Sheinberg briefly served as exec VP of MCA, and upon the retirement of company founder Jules Stein and the ascendancy of Wasserman, he was named president of MCA in 1973. Though he led the losing fight, taken all the way to the Supreme Court, against Sony’s importation of VCRs into the American market, Sheinberg was in many ways forward thinking. And the Wasserman-Sheinberg team vastly increased MCA’s revenues and market value. By 1987 MCA was generating $2.7 billion annually, three times the company’s revenue from a decade before, due to expansion into broadcasting (thanks to such hits as “Miami Vice” and “Murder, She Wrote”), theme parks (studio tours in Los Angeles and Florida), exhibition (the Canadian Cineplex/Odeon chain, in which MCA had a sizable holding), merchandising and book publishing (Putnam, Grosset & Dunlap, Berkley Publishing). During the ’80s Universal was one of the leading suppliers of network TV programming, pumping up its television library to 12,000 titles, added to its 3,000-title film library that included Paramount’s pre-1948 titles. By that time Sheinberg was one of the highest-paid executives in the country. And he had claim on 5.2 million shares of the parent company. Despite his tough-as-nails reputation, Sheinberg was notable for allowing his division chiefs free rein in running their operations. === Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, he became a professional disc jockey and English/Spanish newscaster at a local radio station as a teenager, his first taste of show business. After snagging degrees from Columbia U. and Columbia Law School, Sheinberg moved to Southern California, taught law for a year at UCLA and then accepted a position in business affairs at Revue, MCA’s television production unit, in 1959. Sheinberg is survived by his wife, the former actress Lorraine Gary, whom he married in 1957; two sons, Jonathan and William; and a number of grandchildren.
Pat Laffan. Irish actor best known for playing the randy milkman Pat Mustard in Father Ted & Georgie Burgess in the snapper. Irish actor Pat Laffan has died
Richard Erdman, Actor in 'Stalag 17' and TV's 'Community,' Dies at 93 Richard Erdman, the mirthful character actor who stood out on the big screen in The Men, Cry Danger and Stalag 17 and then on the sitcom Community, has died. He was 93. Erdman, who as a teenager so impressed legendary director Michael Curtiz that he was quickly signed to a contract at Warner Bros., died Saturday, film historian Alan K. Rode reported. No other details were immediately available. The Oklahoma native also is known for starring as the loutish McNulty, who's given a timepiece that can freeze time, in the memorable 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of a Stopwatch." Erdman excelled at playing soldiers, sailors, wisecracking sidekicks and pals. In Fred Zinneman's The Men (1950), he portrayed the cigar-smoking, easygoing Leo, one of the patients in a veterans' paraplegic ward who helps an angry new arrival (Marlon Brando in his feature debut, coming off A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway) adjust to a new life in society. In a 2010 interview, Erdman was proud to recall that New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, in his review of The Men, wrote that “Mr. Brando is impressive, however, he has a few things to learn from a Hollywood actor named Richard Erdman.” Erdman was outstanding again in support of Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming, playing an alcoholic, ex-Marine full of gallows humor in the downtown L.A. film noir classic Cry Danger (1951), the directorial debut of Oscar-winning film editor Robert Parrish. And in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 (1953), Erdman portrayed barracks chief Sgt. "Hoffy" Hoffman. During casting, Erdman told Rode in 2012: "Wilder took one look at me and said, 'No laughs from you. Not one little laugh, because you are the glue that holds this picture together. Everybody else is funny, but not you.' " Erdman's agent at the time was Ingo Preminger, the brother of Otto Preminger, who played the camp's commandant in the POW classic. Younger audiences know Erdman as the rowdy Leonard, one of the elderly Hipster students — so nicknamed because they have had their hips replaced — at Greendale Community College on Dan Harmon's Community, which ran on NBC and Yahoo for six seasons, from 2009-15. For all of Erdman's success, he did lose out on at least one momentous role. Producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler wanted him to play Homer Parrish, the soldier back home from the war, in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) — but Warner Bros. studio head Jack Warner refused to loan him out. Harold Russell, who had lost both hands in a wartime accident, got the part (he had never acted before) and went on to win two Oscars for his performance. Born on June 1, 1925, in Enid, Oklahoma, Erdman was raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He and his single mother moved to Los Angeles in 1941 after his high school drama teacher thought he could make it in the movies. Erdman enrolled in Hollywood High School and was offered a contract at Warner Bros. minutes after meeting Curtiz in his office. The Casablanca director liked him for the role of the bumbling boyfriend Scooper Nolan in Janie (1944), but first he was given the task of delivering a telegram to Claude Rains in his screen debut, Mr. Skeffington (1944). A year later, Erdman portrayed a private opposite Errol Flynn in Raoul Walsh's Objective, Burma! (1945), one of nearly 30 films he made at Warners through 1947. And he was a pinball wizard in The Time of Your Life (1948), when he worked alongside one of his favorites, James Cagney. Erdman played an ensign in You're in the Navy Now (1951) with Gary Cooper, and in 1970, he graduated to colonel in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Erdman's film résumé also included The Admiral Was a Lady (1950), the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy The Stooge (1951) and Saddle the Wind (1958), which was written by Serling and directed by Parrish. Erdman also had regular roles on the TV series Where's Raymond?, where he played the press agent and landlord to song and dance man Ray Bolger, and The Tab Hunter Show, where he was a wealthy playboy and best pal of the cartoonist played by Hunter. On a 1986 episode of Cheers, he appeared as the wealthy widower who becomes engaged to Cliff Clavin's mother (Frances Sternhagen). He also showed up six times on Perry Mason and on other series including December Bride, Mister Ed, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hogan's Heroes, Police Story, Lou Grant, Wings and Felicity. Erdman also directed back-to-back episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show — in the second, Morey Amsterdam's character had his bar mitzvah — and helmed the 1973 feature The Brothers O'Toole, starring John Astin in dual roles.
Larry Cohen, Writer-Director of 'It's Alive' and 'Hell Up in Harlem,' Dies at 77 Larry Cohen, the avant-garde writer and director who made his mark in the horror and blaxploitation genres with such innovative cult classics as It's Alive, God Told Me To, Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem, has died. He was 77. Cohen died Saturday night in Los Angeles surrounded by loved ones, his friend, actor and publicist Shade Rupe, told The Hollywood Reporter. The older brother of late Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen — she got her start promoting his early films — Cohen began his career by writing for television in the late 1950s, and he created the Chuck Connors-starring Branded for NBC and the cult sci-fi drama The Invaders, starring Roy Thinnes, for ABC. More recently, the New York native wrote the screenplay for the Joel Schumacher thriller Phone Booth (2002), starring Colin Farrell. — — — Lawrence Cohen was born on July 15, 1941, in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. The family moved to the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, and he would hustle movie ticket money by offering to carry groceries for tips. Cohen graduated from City College of New York in 1963 with a degree in film studies. After landing a job at NBC as a page, he gave himself a crash course in the art of producing teleplays, and by his early 20s, he was writing television scripts. Cohen broke into TV in 1958 with an adaptation of Ed McBain's crime novel The Eighty Seventh Precinct for Kraft Television Theatre. Over the next decade, he would pen episodes for Zane Grey Theatre, Surfside 6, Checkmate, The Fugitive and The Defenders. He created Branded, which ran for two seasons (1965-66) and starred the 6-foot-6 Connors as a disgraced officer unjustly drummed out of the cavalry for cowardice. "My intellectual concept of the show is that it's like a Shakespearean tragedy," Cohen said in a 1965 interview for TV Guide. "You must have a great man to experience true tragedy. That's why I like Chuck Connors so much in this part. He's so big — he's the tallest underdog in the west." Cohen went on to create ABC's short-lived 1966 drama Blue Light, starring Robert Goulet as a double agent, and CBS' Coronet Blue, an offbeat 1967 drama about an amnesiac (Frank Converse) trying to unravel the mystery of who he is (the only thing he can remember are the two words of the series' cryptic title) before coming up with The Invaders. Cohen took the idea for that one from two of his favorite 1950s sci-fi films — Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders From Mars. It was about an architect (Thinnes) who witnesses aliens landing on Earth and tries to convince everyone that there's danger ahead. "The major thing the show had going for it is the fact that we are all a little bit paranoid and that it's easy to identify with somebody who is a single man fighting the world," Invaders producer Alan A. Armer said in a 2000 story for ClassicTVhistory.com. "I mean, that's what all real heroes are, if you look at the great myths and legends and the great stories that have been told." — — —
Dan Jenkins - Wikipedia Dan Jenkins (December 2, 1928 – March 7, 2019) was an American author and sportswriter who often wrote for Sports Illustrated. He also wrote the classic novel Semi-Tough. But perhaps his greatest claim to immortality came with one of my favorite lines about sports: "The only thing more boring than Track...is Field."
Jed Allan - Wikipedia Jed Allan Brown (March 1, 1935 – March 9, 2019), known professionally as Jed Allan, was an American actor and television host, best known as C.C. Capwell on Santa Barbara, Don Craig on Days of Our Lives, Rush Sanders on Beverly Hills, 90210, Scott Turner on Lassie, Harold Johnson on The Bay, and the host of Celebrity Bowling
Agnès Varda - Wikipedia Agnès Varda (French: [aɲɛs vaʁda]; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born French film director. Her films, photographs, and art installations focused on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary with a distinctive experimental style. Film historians have cited Varda's work as central to the development of the French New Wave and her employment of location shooting and non-professional actors was unconventional in the context of 1950s French cinema.[1] Among other awards and nominations over her career, she received honorary Palme d'Or and Academy Honorary Award, won a Golden Lion and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Georgia Engel, Gentle-Voiced ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ Actress, Is Dead at 70 Georgia Engel, whose distinctive voice and pinpoint comic timing made her a memorable part of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” on which she played Georgette Franklin, girlfriend and eventually wife of the buffoonish TV newsman Ted Baxter, died on Friday in Princeton, N.J. She was 70. John Quilty, her friend and executor, said the cause was undetermined because Ms. Engel, who was a Christian Scientist, did not consult doctors. Ms. Engel was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on “Mary Tyler Moore,” which she joined in 1972, during the show’s third season. “It was only going to be one episode,” she told The Toronto Star in 2007, “and I was just supposed to have a few lines in a party scene, but they kept giving me more and more to do.” She had a high-pitched, innocent voice that, as one writer put it, “sounds like an angel has just sniffed some helium,” and she used it expertly to contrast with the blustery Baxter (played by Ted Knight) and the usually levelheaded Mary Richards, Ms. Moore’s character. She brought the voice — her real voice — and the comedic skills to other sitcoms after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ended in 1977, most notably “Everybody Loves Raymond,” where she had a recurring role from 2003 to 2005. She was nominated for an Emmy for each season. “She could get a laugh on literally every line you gave her,” Philip Rosenthal, the creator of “Raymond,” said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
As things would have it, I was watching one of my recently purchased Keeping Up Appearances dvds tonight when I thought to myself, 'Swift must be getting up there, I wonder how old he is now?' In the Inspector Morse episode, as I recall his role was also that of the weary, but patient husband and father. Now I haven't seen Excalibur for many years, perhaps it is time to revisit that film.
'Caine Mutiny,' 'Winds of War' author Herman Wouk has died Herman Wouk, the versatile, Pulitzer Prize winning author of such million-selling novels as “The Caine Mutiny” and “The Winds of War” whose steady Jewish faith inspired his stories of religious values and secular success, died on Friday at 103. Wouk was just 10 days shy of his 104th birthday and was working on a book until the end, said his literary agent Amy Rennert. Rennert said Wouk died in his sleep at his home in Palm Springs, California, where he settled after spending many years in Washington, D.C. Among the last of the major writers to emerge after World War II and first to bring Jewish stories to a general audience, he had a long, unpredictable career that included gag writing for radio star Fred Allen, historical fiction and a musical co-written with Jimmy Buffett. He won the Pulitzer in 1952 for “The Caine Mutiny,” the classic Navy drama that made the unstable Captain Queeg, with the metal balls he rolls in his hand and his talk of stolen strawberries, a symbol of authority gone mad. A film adaptation, starring Humphrey Bogart, came out in 1954 and Wouk turned the courtroom scene into the play “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”
Herman Wouk, in my opianion, was one of the finest American fiction writers ever. The Caine Mutiny is a classic (and Bogart not withstanding) the book for exceeds the movie. A somewhat forgotten Youngblood Hawke is excellent. And perhaps the finest war novels ever are Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Sadly as critical readers become more obscure, he will be forgotten. Truly one of my favorites.
I just found out today he died last November. I always enjoyed his work. I saw him today on The Rockford Files and it occurred to me I hadn't heard about him for quite awhile.
PAUL DARROW ...Born in 1941 in Surrey, Darrow studied at RADA and while there shared a flat with John Hurt and Ian McShane, only thing meaner than Darrow in Blakes 7 was Ian McShane in Deadwood, that must have been a fun & jolly place to be at back then.
