From Judy Woodruff: Longtime PBS NewsHour Anchor and Co-Founder Jim Lehrer Has Passed Away at 85 It is with great sadness that I share the news that co-founder and longtime anchor of the PBS NewsHour Jim Lehrer died today, Thursday, January 23, 2020, peacefully in his sleep at home. Lehrer, born May 19, 1934, served as anchor of the NewsHour for 36 years before retiring in 2011. If you're wondering why he's over here, he wrote the novel the 1969 film comedy Viva Max was based on.
Retired NYPD Det. Sonny Grosso, of ‘French Connection’ fame, dead at 88 Sonny Grosso, the larger-than-life NYPD detective whose fast-and-furious crime-busting with partner Eddie Egan became the basis of the 1971 hit “The French Connection,” died Wednesday, a family member confirmed. He was 88. Grosso, who turned Hollywood producer after the spectacular screen retelling of the takedown of a notorious heroin trafficking ring starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, died at his Manhattan home, friends told the Daily News. “He was some narcotics detective. He made that case. He made the French Connection case," said retired Det. Randy Jurgensen, who also worked on the case and on the award-winning movie as the NYPD adviser. Detective First Grade Sonny Grosso (left) and Detective First Grade Eddie Egan (right) with actors Roy Scheider (2nd left) and Gene Hackman, during filming of The French Connection. getting producer gigs on movie and TV gigs that included “Baretta,” “Kojak” and “Top Cops.” According to Naspretto, Grosso even had a bit part in “The Godfather,” though it was his off-duty gun that played an out-sized role: It was the gun Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) retrieved from a restaurant bathroom to kill two rivals. “That gun belonged to Sonny Grosso, that was his off-duty gun," Naspretto said. "That gun was Sonny’s real gun, they put blanks in it. And he carried that gun until the day he died.” Sonny Grosso with Sterling Hayden in The Godfather
Screenwriter-Playwright Charles Wood, Known for ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade,’ ‘Iris,’ Dies British screenwriter and playwright Charles Wood, known for such productions as “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Tumbledown” and “Iris,” has died at the age of 87. Worked with Richard Lester on Help and How I Won The War
Catherine Burns: The Vanishing of an Oscar-Nominated Actress Catherine Burns got an Oscar nomination for Last Summer (1969). Within a few years she had disappeared from Hollywood. This article looks at what happened.
From left: Bruce Davison, Burns, Richard Thomas and Barbara Hershey Very interesting article. Thanks Jozef. She was actually the oldest at 22 but played and looked the youngest in the movie. Has anyone seen this movie? All that's available on Amazon in an old VHS tape. It shows a bluray and DVD listing but they are for an entirely different movie.
Just thought I'd comment on an interesting, perhaps even ironic fact that caught my eye. This AP obit: Actor-comedian Orson Bean, 91, hit and killed by car in LA was written mostly by Bob Thomas, who died almost six years ago.
I have belatedly learned of the death of someone whose biography at least is fascinating: Igo Kantor, Producer and Post-Production Executive, Dies at 89 Igo Kantor, whose Hollywood career took him from Howard Hughes’ projection room to supervising post-production on “[asy Ride” and producing B-movies like “Kingdom of the Spiders” and “Mutant,” died Oct. 15. He was 89. Kantor, who was born in Vienna and raised in Lisbon, met “Dillinger” director Max Nosseck on the ship to New York. Nosseck gave him an intro to his projectionist brother while Kantor was studying at UCLA, leading to a job screening screened movies for Hughes at a private theater while he was secretly dating actress Jean Peters, whom Hughes later married. In the early 1960s, Kantor opened post-production house Synchrofilm, becoming the post-production supervisor on “The Monkees,” which led to Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson hiring him to head post-production on "Easy Rider” “Five Easy Pieces” and “The King of Marvin Gardens.” He received Emmy nominations three years in a row for his work on the Bob Hope Christmas specials. According to his son Loren, he also worked with Dennis Hopper on the infamous “The Last Movie.” Loren Kantor recounts that Hopper asked Kantor to steal the negative from Universal and drive it to Taos, New Mexico after Hopper was removed from the editing room, though Kantor declined. Kantor closed his post production facility in 1971, then moved on to Warner Bros., where he supervised post-production music on “The Exorcist.” For the rest of his career, he produced low-budget films including “Hardly Working” with Jerry Lewis, “Act of Piracy” with Gary Busey and “Shaker Run.”
UK TV presenter Caroline Flack dead at 40...imagine the survival guilt her friend is feeling right now... Caroline Flack killed herself when friend staying 'went to shops' | Daily Mail Online
Writer A.E. Hotchner, friend to Ernest Hemingway and Paul Newman, dies at 102 A.E. Hotchner, a well-traveled author, playwright and gadabout whose street smarts and famous pals led to a loving, but litigated, memoir of Ernest Hemingway, business adventures with Paul Newman and a book about his Depression-era childhood that became a Steven Soderbergh film, died Saturday at age 102. He died at his home in Westport, Conn., according to his son, Timothy Hotchner, who did not immediately know the cause of death. A. E. Hotchner, known to friends as “Ed” or “Hotch,“ was an impish St. Louis native and ex-marbles champ who read, wrote and hustled himself out of poverty and went on to publish more than a dozen books, befriend countless celebrities and see his play, “The White House,“ performed at the real White House for President Clinton. --- Cosmopolitan wanted Hemingway to write an article about “The Future of Literature” and sent Hotchner to Cuba to track him down. So began a friendship that lasted until Hemingway’s suicide, in 1961. From Spain to Idaho, they hunted, drank and attended bullfights. They lived through Hemingway’s inspiring highs and fatal lows, chronicled by Hotchner in “Papa Hemingway,” which came out in 1966 and has been translated into more than 25 languages. Their relationship was also professional. Hotchner often served as his agent, helped edit his bullfighting book “The Dangerous Summer” and helped come up with the title for the posthumous release of Hemingway’s memoir about Paris, “A Moveable Feast.” In the 1950s and early `’60s, he adapted several Hemingway stories for television, including “The Battler,” which led to his first meeting with Paul Newman. James Dean had agreed to star as the titular faded ex-boxer, but Newman took the role after Dean died in a car crash. Newman and Hotchner became friends, pranksters, fishing buddies, neighbors and business partners. When the actor wanted to sell his homemade salad dressing at some local shops, he called on “Hotch” to help out. “That was just a joke,“ Hotchner told the Associated Press in 2005. “It was something on the fly. ‘Let’s put up $40,000 and we’ll be businessmen.’“ Their caper turned into the multimillion-dollar Newman’s Own nonprofit empire of salad dressing, popcorn, lemonade and assorted recipes; all proceeds went to charity, notably the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for kids with life-threatening illnesses.
