On this day in 1788, Scottish cabinet-maker, deacon of the trades guild and Edinburgh city councillor by day and burglar by night, Deacon William Brodie was hanged in Edinburgh at the age of 47. Brodie is thought to be the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson‘s novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide (1886).
The Final Footprint – Brodie was interred in an unmarked grave at the Parish Church in Buccleuch.
On this day in 1940 lawman Joe LeFors, best known for the arrest of gunman Tom Horn in 1903 for the alleged murder of 14 year old sheepherder Willie Nickell, died in Buffalo, Wyoming at the age of 75. Born Joe Shelby LeFors on 20 February 1865 in Paris, Texas.
The Final Footprint – LeFors is interred in Willow Grove Cemetery in Buffalo, Wyoming. LeFors appears, or is mentioned, in at least two movies: Mr. Horn (1979) a made-for-TV movie starring David Carradine as Horn and John Durren as LeFors and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), where LeFors is mentioned as a feared lawman giving chase to Butch and Sundance.
On this day in 1984, baseball Hall of Famer, Brooklyn and Los Angles Dodgers manager, Smokey, Walter Alston died in Oxford, Ohio at the age of 72. Born Walter Emmons Alston on 1 December 1911 in Venice, Ohio. Led the Dodgers to their first four World Series Championships, one in Brooklyn and three more after the team moved to Los Angeles.
The Final Footprint – Alston was buried in Darrtown Cemetery in Darrtown, Ohio. His grave his marked with a companion upright granite monument. His wife Lela is buried next to him. His number 24 was retired by the Dodgers.
And on this day in 2004, fashion and portrait photographer Ricard Avedon died in a San Antonio, Texas, hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 81. He worked for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that “his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America’s image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century”. Born in New York City on 15 May 1923.
Hollywood presented a fictional account of Avedon’s early career in the 1957 musical Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire as the fashion photographer “Dick Avery.” Avedon supplied some of the still photographs used in the production, including its most noted single image: an intentionally overexposed close-up of Audrey Hepburn’s face in which only her noted features – her eyes, her eyebrows, and her mouth – are visible.
Hepburn was Avedon’s muse in the 1950s and 1960s, and he went so far as to say: “I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.”
In 1944, Avedon married 19-year-old bank teller Dorcas Marie Nowell, who later became the model and actress Doe Avedon; they did not have children and divorced in 1949. The couple summered at the gay village of Cherry Grove, Fire Island, and Avedon’s bisexuality has been attested to by colleagues and family. He was reportedly devastated when Nowell left him.
In 1951, he married Evelyn Franklin; she died on March 13, 2004.
The Final Footprint – He was in San Antonio shooting an assignment for The New Yorker. Cremation.
The 2005 film Capote contains a recreation of Avedon photographing convicted murderers Perry Edward Smith and Richard Hickock in April 1960. Avedon is portrayed by the film’s cinematographer, Adam Kimmel.
#RIP #OTD in 2018 singer/songwriter (“Que c’est triste Venise”, “She”, “The Old Fashioned Way”, “Comme ils disent”), actor, diplomat Charles Aznavour died from a heart attack at his home at Mouriès, France aged 94. Cimetière de Montfort l’Amaury, France
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