Simple Tricks and Nonsense

The actor Robert Culp, who unexpectedly died a couple weeks ago at the age of 79, has long struck me as an example of an increasingly rare type of American male. Like Peter Graves, who also recently passed away, Culp always seemed to project an air of confident masculinity. Or masculine confidence, if you'd prefer. Either way, he was a good old-fashioned "man's man." Not macho, with all the arrogance, cruelty, and phoniness often implied by that term, and not misogynistic, either, but simply a man who had no hang-ups about being a man. It was a trait of his generation, I think, something as instinctive for them as breathing. And they were the last generation for whom carrying the Y chromosome would come so easily.

Now, I've got nothing against feminism per se -- I think the women's movement of the '60s and '70s was both necessary and generally resulted in positive change -- but it did make being a man considerably more complicated for those males who grew up in the aftermath, especially those of us who looked to pop culture for guidance. What the hell were we supposed to be like, anyway? The sensitive Alan Alda/Phil Donohue intellectual types that were lauded in the '70s as "the new man," or the reactionary, bodybuilding action heroes who took over the big screen in the '80s? How can we be kind and noble without being self-loathing and tortured, strong without being hypermasculinized caricatures? I'm 40 years old and I'm still trying to find the proper balance between those extremes, to figure out just what being a man is all about.

But guys like Robert Culp, Peter Graves, Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Clint Eastwood -- God, yes, Clint! -- they just seemed to come into the world already knowing. No, that's not quite right... they wouldn't have even wondered how to be a man. They simply were. And that I think is the secret of their enduring appeal, the reason why we still think they're cool even now, years after the prime of their careers and even, in many cases, their deaths. I admire men like this, and I envy them. And I'm really starting to miss them now that there are so few of them left.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Robert Culp" »

Posted by at 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's sad news about actor Andrew Koenig, the son of Star Trek's Walter Koenig. If you haven't been following the story, Andrew disappeared on February 14, after visiting friends in Vancouver. His family, friends, and fans initially hoped he was just going off the grid for a while to sort some things out, but as more details have trickled out over the past week, the grim conclusion to this story started to seem both obvious and inevitable: his father received a letter from him in which he sounded "despondent"; he'd recently dropped the lease on his LA apartment and sold or given away a lot of his possessions; he'd also turned down a couple of job offers. And Vancouver was reportedly a place where he'd been happy earlier in his life. So the discovery yesterday that he had committed suicide in one of that city's parks was not at all unexpected. But I still found it deeply sorrowful.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Andrew Koenig" »

Posted by at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Further evidence of that unsettling notion that celebrity deaths always come in threes: the completely out-of-the-blue demise of actress Brittany Murphy yesterday at the age of 32. I wasn't exactly a fan -- I've only seen one of her movies that I can recall, and my favorite role of hers was the voice of Hank Hill's dimwitted-but-sweet trailer-trash niece on the animated TV series King of the Hill -- but I always found her likable enough, and pretty in a normal, suburban kind of way. I've heard some accounts that she could be difficult to work with, which perhaps explains why she hasn't had many film roles recently after being touted as the Next Big Thing only a few years ago, but I never got that impression from her in the occasional interviews I saw. Certainly she didn't come across as one of the no-class, arrogant, boozy-floozy types that comprise Young Hollywood these days.

So far, it appears that her death was natural, if freakishly sudden. The LA Times obit is here, for any who may be interested.

Posted by at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a bit chagrined at being a week late with this item, but then I still haven't written anything for Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, or Patrick Swayze, so what's a mere seven days for an actor few of my readers will probably recognize? Even so, I've gotten very tired of feeling like I'm constantly trying to catch up on things. This blog isn't really intended to deal in up-to-the-minute news, but I would like to get back to some sense of being current, for my own sanity if nothing else. Maybe in 2010.

In any event, I learned from Evanier last Friday that the actor Gene Barry had died a couple days earlier. My initial reaction was surprise; I hadn't realized he was even still with us, it'd been so long since I'd seen him in anything. This was followed by a wave of profound sadness, as Barry's was one of those familiar faces it seems I've known my entire life. I don't recall my exact age the first time I saw the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds, in which Barry starred, but I know I was very, very young. It was on the old Big Money Movie show that used to run weekday afternoons on one of my local TV stations, and I think that show was finished by the mid-70s, so I'm going to guess I was around five or six, tops. The movie made a huge, indelible impression on me, and Gene Barry's performance as Dr. Clayton Forrester was one of the many reasons why.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Gene Barry" »

Posted by at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"And that's the way it is."

When the late Walter Cronkite said that at the conclusion of each of his broadcasts, people believed him. There was no automatic assumption of partisan bias in the media, and if anyone ever accused him of spinning a story to the advantage of one political cause or another, I'm not aware of it. Of course, things were different in his heyday, the 1960s and '70s. Newsmen of Cronkite's generation strove, for the most part, to deliver the impartial facts, and that's what viewers and readers expected to receive. Not the phony-baloney "balance" of today, when both sides of any debate are given equal credibility and weight, even when one of them is clearly wrong, ignorant, or batshit-crazy. Not reporting that reinforces the viewer's own ideology and view of the world. But facts, carefully gathered through good old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism, research, and vetting. On the rare occasion when Cronkite did offer his personal opinion -- as in his well-known 1968 editorial statement that the Vietnam War was unwinnable -- he spoke with an authority that was earned from a thorough understanding of the subject. The anchorpeople today are mostly just reading copy written by someone else.

Walter Cronkite was one of a small handful of men I find difficult to describe in any meaningful way beyond saying, "he was a neat guy." Like Johnny Carson or Ricardo Montalban, two other "neat guys" I grew up instinctively admiring, Cronkite emanated a particular sort of very appealing masculinity. It wasn't a macho thing. It was based less on physical prowess or good looks than on intelligence, kindness, a sense of fair play, the confidence of one who knows his job and loves doing it well, and above all else, an air of dignity. Just try to imagine Cronkite reading the superficial pap that passes for news today... can you picture him discussing Jon and Kate What's-Their-Names, or who's likely to win American Idol? Or hosting one of those sexual-predator entrapment hours or talking day after day about Michael Jackson's death? Can you hear his voice running down the more tawdry details of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? No? I'm not surprised. His definition of journalism wouldn't have included that sort of tabloid nonsense.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Walter Cronkite" »

Posted by at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although science fiction was always the chord that resonated most strongly with me during my impressionable youth, I heard plenty of other pop-cultural notes, too. One of those was the TV series Kung Fu, in which David Carradine played a half-Chinese Shaolin monk wandering the American Old West in search of his long-lost brother.

Actually, it's surprising this show left any kind of mark on me, when I think about it. It ran for only three seasons when I was very young, and I'm certain I couldn't have seen it often because it wasn't the sort of thing my dad -- who was of course the unquestioned master of the TV in those days -- would've been interested in. Kung Fu was, quite frankly, a weird show for its time, and Dad has never had much tolerance for weird. An unlikely mash-up of martial-arts films -- then still largely unknown to mainstream American audiences -- and the more familiar tropes of the Western, the series made extensive use of flashbacks to tell its stories, which often hinged on some bit of Zen philosophy (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof). These elements, combined with highly stylized editing and slow-motion action sequences, lent Kung Fu a somewhat surrealistic quality that was very out of step with the usual cop-and-doctor shows of the early '70s.

And yet, probably because the show was so different from everything else, I have a powerful memory of sitting on the hearth with a blazing fire at my back, watching Kung Fu on our massive old console TV with the clunky tuner dial. I recall being simultaneously repelled and fascinated by the milky white eyes of blind Master Po (seen in the photo above with Carradine's character, Kwai Chang Caine). The image of Caine crouched in front of a red-hot brazier, preparing to sear tattoos of a dragon and a tiger into his forearms, stuck in my head for ages before home video finally made it possible for me to see it again. And of course the character of Caine himself -- serene, always trying to avoid a fight unless he had no choice, and then using only the minimum amount of force necessary to end it -- is virtually archetypal, at least for anyone who was around in the '70s.

Archetype or no, however, Carradine was never a hero to me in the same way as, say, William Shatner. I never pretended on the playground to be Caine, like I did James T. Kirk. I didn't follow Carradine's career, and I honestly know very little about his personal life. But his was one of the familiar celebrity faces I grew up with, and on some basic, purely visceral level, I liked him. I smiled when I encountered him in a B-movie or a television commercial, especially in recent years when he's been willing to make fun of his enduring connection to Kung Fu. Like his best-known character, Carradine was simply cool.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: David Carradine" »

Posted by at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Even though I watched it faithfully, I was always somewhat frustrated by the TV series Angel. The show had some very cool ideas at the core of it -- I especially liked the notion that Los Angeles is full of supernatural beings who go about their business right under the noses of we oblivious humans -- but it never really seemed to find its footing, even after five seasons on the air. Sometimes it was like a detective series with monsters instead of criminals, sometimes a variant of Highlander in its focus on immortal angst, sometimes a dark, apocalyptic fantasy about the fast-approaching end of the world, and sometimes it was a satire of all of the above. While Angel's parent series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was also a mish-mash of different elements and story types, Buffy gelled into a coherent whole more often than not. By contrast, I never got a clear sense of what the spin-off was actually supposed to be. I kept tuning in, though, because I liked the characters, the thing that keeps me coming back to a lot of shows that really aren't all that good (and keeps me away from some, arguably, that are; in the final analysis, a big reason why I never warmed to Ron Moore's Galactica was the fact that I disliked his characters).

Anyhow, one of Angel's more memorable characters was a gent named Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan, a.k.a. Lorne, a gentle-souled, green-skinned, telepathic demon who owned a karaoke bar and could psychically "read" others when they sang. My understanding is that he was originally intended as a one-episode plot device, but, like so many other secondary characters who go on to steal a show, Lorne proved popular enough that he was brought back for an encore, then became a semi-regular and finally a full cast member with the actor's name -- Andy Hallett -- in the opening credits. Andy would appear as Lorne in 76 of Angel's 110 episodes.

I was shocked and saddened this morning to learn that Andy Hallett died on Sunday at the far-too-young age of 33. According to a story on NPR, Hallett's been suffering from congestive heart failure for five years, basically ever since Angel wrapped production. Hallett's entry on IMDB indicates he appeared in only three other projects, the last of which was a voiceover job in 2005. What a damn shame... even my grandfather, who died young of heart failure and has always kind of been my personal benchmark for these things, made it to 37.

Posted by at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is one of the great injustices of Hollywood history that Ricardo Montalban -- who passed away last week at the age of 88 -- never became a big star. Oh sure, he worked pretty steadily from the 1940s through the '80s and continued to make appearances or voiceovers in various things right on up to the present (according to IMDB, he did an episode of Family Guy just last year). Just about everyone knew his name and silky voice, and we all loved him. But looking through his filmography, it appears that he was rarely the lead, the hero. Even in Fantasy Island, the late-70s/early-80s television series for which most people probably remember him these days, he got only a few minutes of screentime per episode. He functioned on that show very much like Rod Serling in the old Twilight Zones: all he did was set up the plot for that week's episode, maybe pop back in midway through to provide some encouragement or vital information, and then he summed up the moral of the story at the end. The real stars of that show were the rotating assortment of has-beens and B-listers who were actually doing things in the stories.

And yet... he always seemed like a big star, didn't he? He just had that air about him, a larger-than-life quality that came from his apparently effortless elegance, his good looks, and a masculinity that was unapologetic but never cruel or bullying, as traditionally macho types can so often become. You can seen what I'm talking about in that photo up at the top, which comes from one of the many ads he did for Chrysler in the '70s. (If you're of a certain age, you will, of course, instantly recognize the term "Corinthian leather," even though there's really no such thing; sorry, kids, it was all just an exercise in marketing.) Montalban exuded the old-fashioned, magnetic charisma of the Golden Age of Hollywood: like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, he appealed equally to women and men, and probably for the same reasons. He radiated strength and mystery, but wasn't threatening to we lesser mortals. He was quite simply, employing a word that I can't imagine a man of Montalban's generation comfortably using, cool.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Ricardo Montalban" »

Posted by at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm late in commenting on this, so I'm sure everyone reading already knows that Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the only actor with the distinction of having appeared, in some form or other, in every incarnation of the long-running franchise -- including the Saturday-morning cartoon in the early '70s and, reportedly, the upcoming remake film -- died last week after a short fight with leukemia. She was 76 years old.

You'd never guess from the usual content of this blog, but I'm not always comfortable with my own fanboyism, especially when it comes to revealing the depths of my attachment to the nerdy stuff that consumes so much of my attention. Still, I have to admit that I flinched when I heard this news. Another of the original crew gone...

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Majel Barrett Rodenberry" »

Posted by at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In revisiting many of the television series I loved as a kid, I've realized that TV production in the 1960s, '70s, and '80 must've been a very small world. Watch enough of these old shows, and you'll see the same familiar faces over and over again. For example, part of the fun of watching The Andy Griffith Show, for me anyway, is seeing all the guest stars who also appeared on Star Trek. I don't notice this phenomenon quite as much these days, probably, I would imagine, because the barrier between TV and movies is so much more permeable than it used to be, which means there's a much larger talent pool to draw from, and also perhaps because the last vestiges of the old studio system -- in which actors were signed to exclusive contracts and used in everything the studio made -- are long gone. But back in the day, it seemed like I was constantly snapping my fingers (yes, I would actually snap my fingers!) and saying, "hey, that's the guy from -- !"

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Jeff Mackay" »

Posted by at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Catching up with the news, I see the Hollywood obituary list has been unusually long the last couple weeks. They say these things always come in threes, but there have been seven notable passings recently: a renowned actor-director, a composer, three of the men who made the original Star Trek into the classic it is, one of the funniest comedy straight men who ever lived, and a seminal blues-rock guitarist. Chances are you've all already heard about these, but I'd like to mention them anyhow...

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Super-Jumbo Edition!" »

Posted by at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

John Kenneth Muir and The Bad Astronomer are both noting that the actor Barry Morse has died at the age of 89.

Morse was not one of those actors most people are going to know by name, but at least one of his roles -- Lt. Philip Gerard, the dogged pursuer of Dr. Richard Kimble on the original TV version of The Fugitive (the character played by Tommy Lee Jones in the 1993 feature film) -- is iconic.

Sci-fi fans are more likely to recognize him from the series Space: 1999, in which he played the fatherly Professor Victor Bergman for one season before being unceremoniously dumped in the show's second-season retool. (The character never even got an on-screen explanation for what happened to him; he simply wasn't on the show any more when year two began.)

Continue reading "Barry Morse" »

Posted by at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In other news that you may have missed, two more old friends we grew up watching on classic TV sitcoms have left us.

Continue reading "Allan Melvin and Suzanne Pleshette" »

Posted by at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Believe it or not, the primary focus of my fanboy energies throughout most of the 1990s was not the Star Wars saga. Really. I know it's hard to accept, but it really wasn't. It wasn't even Star Trek, despite all the various TV spin-offs running at that time. No, for the better part of the final decade of the 20th Century, I was seriously preoccupied by a fictional universe called Highlander.

Highlander is tough to explain to the uninitiated. It has a fairly bizarre premise to begin with, and its cause isn't helped by the fact that all the different properties that fall under the Highlander brand tend to contradict each other, or at the very least don't share the same continuity. I'm not going to go into all that in this entry -- I'll explore that topic some other time -- but what you need to know (if you don't already) is that the entire franchise originated with a 1986 movie and was revisited in a television series by the same name that ran from 1992 through 1998.

When Highlander: The Series ceased production in '98, The Girlfriend and I were sufficiently wrapped up in the whole scene that we flew to LA to attend a big farewell convention dedicated to the show. It was an exciting event -- the entire regular cast was in attendance, as well as a lot of the more prominent guest stars, and, of course, fans from all over the country.

Continue reading "Bill Panzer: That Guy in the Elevator" »

Posted by at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ah, man, here's another one: the writer Sidney Sheldon died Tuesday, aged 89. I've never read any of his novels, but I Dream of Jeannie, the ridiculous sitcom he created back in the 1965, has always been a favorite of mine. Growing up, it was part of my afternoon block of "must-see" syndicated re-runs, which also included (on a rotating basis over the years) Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, Hogan's Heroes, Bewitched (that other sitcom about a hot blonde with magical powers), Get Smart, Laugh In, and, of course, Star Trek. As a little kid, I grooved on the slapstick of whatever trouble Majors Nelson and Healey got themselves into. When I got a little older, my interest in Jeannie became a little more, ahem, adult in nature. Let's just say that, If nothing else, Sheldon deserves our respect for bringing us the sight of Barbara Eden in diaphanous pants.

Ah, the glories of a misspent youth...

Posted by at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Huh... while digging for material about Yvonne DeCarlo, I learned that her Munsters co-star Al Lewis died just under a year ago, on February 3, 2006, at the age of 82. Somehow that little tidbit slipped past my notice. Here is an NPR obit for him.

Continue reading "Al Lewis, Way Overdue" »

Posted by at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Another of those familiar faces I grew up with, Yvonne DeCarlo of Munsters fame, died Monday, aged 84. Here is one of the more comprehensive obits for her.

Continue reading "Yvonne DeCarlo" »

Posted by at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just learned that Mike Evans, the first actor to play Archie Bunker's neighbor and occasional antagonist Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family (there were two Lionels, you know), died a couple weeks ago at the age of 57. As with so many others I eulogize around here, it was the damned cancer that got him. What a shame -- 57 isn't very old, and I'm sure he had lots of living left to do.

Continue reading "Long-Delayed Tributes to the Departed" »

Posted by at 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm sure you've all noticed that the InterWeb has been buzzing with news and commentary about the untimely death of Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, the, um, energetic TV personality who was killed yesterday in an underwater encounter with a stingray. I don't know about you, but I wasn't surprised in the least that his life was ended by a wild animal. The only unexpected aspect of this story was that his killer wasn't reptillian in nature.

Continue reading "The Crocodile Hunter" »

Posted by at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've never seen Sayanora, the film for which Red Buttons won his Oscar in 1958, so I can't say anything about that. In fact, as I've tried to think of a signature Buttons role to hang this tribute on, I find I can't think of him in any specific part or film. He's simply one of the many familiar faces that I grew up recognizing on television and in movies, like Barnard Hughes. However, unlike Hughes, who stands out in my mind because of specific characters (or at least a specific character type) that he played, Buttons was always just... Red Buttons.

Continue reading "Red Buttons" »

Posted by at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was saddened to learn this morning that the veteran actor Barnard Hughes has died at the age of 90. He had a long career, stretching back to an uncredited role in a 1954 movie I've never heard of, Playgirl, but most people will recognize him from his more recent work playing various crusty old men with soft hearts.

Continue reading "Barnard Hughes" »

Posted by at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As long as I'm writing eulogies today, I may as well go for the trifecta and say a few words about TV producer Aaron Spelling, who passed away last weekend at the age of 83.

Continue reading "Aaron Spelling, The Cheeseburger King" »

Posted by at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Evanier, I've learned of another notable death: the character and voice-over actor Lennie Weinrib.

What's that, you say? The name "Lennie Weinrib" doesn't ring a bell? Don't feel bad, I didn't recognize it, either. But I certainly recognized his best-known role: the title character from the old Sid and Marty Krofft kid's show H.R. Pufnstuf. I wrote about Pufnstuf in this entry, and I won't repeat myself except to note that ol' Puffy was a pretty special part of my childhood, and I'm sorry to hear that his voice has gone silent.

Continue reading "Time for Timer" »

Posted by at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, this is a bummer: Peter David is reporting that Andreas Katsulas has died of cancer at the age of 59. Katsulas is one of those terrific character actors whose name you probably don't know, but whose face ought to be instantly familiar. He's done dozens of film and TV roles over the years, usually playing a heavy of some kind. Genre fans will remember him as Ambassador G'Kar on the cult-fave series Babylon 5, as well as the recurring character of Romulan Commander Tomalak on Star Trek: The Next Generation, while more mainstream movie-goers know him as the dastardly One-Armed Man in the Harrison Ford version of The Fugitive.

I wasn't a regular viewer of B5, but I caught it frequently enough to be impressed by Katsulas' talent. The character he played was a reptillian alien, requiring him to all but bury his distinctive features under make-up appliances, but his great power as an actor shone through all the latex, making G'Kar, curiously, one of the most sympathetic and emotional characters on the series. The character was tragic, filled with frustration and rage at the fate of his species but essentially noble and haunted by the things circumstance forced him to do. Katsulas was utterly convincing in the part, and that's saying something; not many actors are that good in extensive make-up, and most aren't any good at all.

I haven't found much in the way of official obituaries for him, but his B5 co-star Bill Mumy has a brief, fond note on his website, and Peter David's wife Kathleen tells a heartwarming tale that I think explains what kind of man he must've been as well as anything could.

Posted by at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By now, I'm sure everybody has probably heard about the death of actor Pat Morita over Thanksgiving weekend. The standard obits all highlight his role as the noble sensei Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, which I guess is appropriate since that film was such a huge pop-cultural landmark, especially for anyone who came of age during the '80s. (Come on, admit it: all of us '80s-kids experimented with Daniel-san's flying crane kick, didn't we? Or at least fanatasized about using it against those jerks who mocked us in gym class. Or am I revealing way too much about my own pathetic history?)

Oddly enough, however, the roles that come to my mind when I think of Morita are all smaller and more obscure.

Continue reading "Wax Off" »

Posted by at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

All the standard obituaries for Brock Peters, the imposing actor who died yesterday at the age of 78, are emphasizing his role as Tom Robinson in the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird. But for me, he'll always be the voice of Darth Vader.

Continue reading "Brock Peters" »

Posted by at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Jimmy Doohan died this morning at the age of 85. It's hardly a shock -- he's been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and made his final public appearance slightly under a year ago -- but it still hurts. My beloved Scotty has beamed off to whatever adventure awaits us all beyond this life, and another piece of my childhood is gone. I'm fighting back tears as I type this at an all-too-public computer.

Continue reading "The Word is Given..." »

Posted by at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Well, here we go again... two more fine character actors that none of my readers will recognize by name have passed away. Oddly, both John Fiedler and Paul Winchell, who died within 24 hours of each other, are best known for working on the same projects, specifically Disney's "Winnie the Pooh" films. Winchell, who died Friday at the age of 86, was the voice of Tigger from 1968 until 1999, and it was he who coined Tigger's memorable catch-phrase "ta-ta for now!"

Meanwhile, Fiedler, who was 80 when he left us on Saturday, continued to play Pooh's gentle little buddy Piglet right up to this year's entry in the long-running franchise, Pooh's Heffalump Movie.

Continue reading "A Sad Day at Pooh Corner..." »

Posted by at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, now, this sucks -- I just learned that one of my favorite character actors, Lane Smith, has died.

He's one of those guys whose name you probably don't recognize, but you'd know his face instantly; he did a lot of movies in the '70s and '80s that qualify as minor classics, including Rooster Cogburn, Network, Prince of the City, Frances, Places in the Heart, and one of the most incredibly jingoistic and far-fetched (yet entertaining) movies to emerge from the Reagan Era, Red Dawn. More recently, he's appeared in lighter fare such as My Cousin Vinny, The Mighty Ducks, and Son-in-Law, which has the dubious distinction of being the only Pauly Shore movie that is remotely watchable.

Fans of genre TV will remember Smith as Nathan Bates, the power-hungry industrialist who collaborated with the alien Visitors in V: The Series, as well as the Elvis-obsessed editor Perry White in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Also, all the obituaries I've scanned note that Smith played Nixon in a TV miniseries called The Final Days, which I'm sorry to say I've never seen. (Personally, I tend to picture him in the opening credits of V, parked behind a big desk with an oily smile, an ugly suit, and a cigar the size of a car muffler.)

The best obituary I've found indicates that he died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. I mention this little factoid only because I've had some personal experience with ALS, and my ears tend to prick up when I hear of someone being afflicted with it. Trust me, it's not a pretty way to go, and it breaks my heart that this talented man had to face such a miserable end.

For the record, he was 69 years old, only a few years older than my parents and way too damn young for this...

Posted by at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

Posted by at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

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Posted by at 6:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In addition to the rocket launch I mentioned in the last post, there is also sad news on the 'net today. One of the faces I grew up with, the terrific Tony Randall, has passed away. Randall is best known for playing neat-freak Felix Unger on the TV version of The Odd Couple, and it's mostly from this show that I know him. I fondly remember watching TOC with my folks. Randall inhabited the role so successfully that when I saw the original Odd Couple film in later years, I had a hard time accepting Jack Lemmon in the role. I recently saw a few re-runs of TOC and was disapppointed to find that they don't play as well now as I remember them -- this is always a problem with seeing something that you loved as a kid, and if you don't believe me, just try sitting through an episode of Gilligan's Island these days -- but Randall was still funny.

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Posted by at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)