Day in History 5 February – Banjo Paterson – Thelma Ritter – Marianne Moore – Doug McClure – Kirk Douglas – Christopher Plummer

On this day in 1941, Australian bush poet, journalist and author Banjo Paterson died of a heart attack in Sydney, aged 76.  Born Andrew Barton Paterson at the property “Narrambla”, near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire, and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, related to the future first Prime Minister of Australia Edmund Barton.  Paterson wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood.  His more notable poems include “Waltzing Matilda”, “The Man from Snowy River” and “Clancy of the Overflow”.  On 8 April 1903 he married Alice Emily Walker, of Tenterfield Station, in St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, in Tenterfield, New South Wales. 

The Final Footprint – Paterson’s grave, along with that of his wife, is in the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium, Sydney.

#RIP #OTD in 1969 actress (All About Eve (1950), The Mating Season, With a Song in My Heart, Pickup on South Street, Pillow Talk, Birdman of Alcatraz, Miracle on 34th Street, Rear Window, The Misfits) Thelma Ritter died of a heart attack in Manhattan aged 66. Cremation

#RIP #OTD in 1972 modernist poet, critic, translator, editor, American suffrage movement activist, Marianne Moore died in New York City, aged 84. Cremated remains interred with those of her mother at the family’s burial plot at the Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

On this day in 1995, actor Doug McClure died from lung cancer in Sherman Oaks, California at the age of 59.  Born Douglas Osborne McClure on 11 May 1935 in Glendale, California.  Perhaps best remembered for his role as Trampas on the Western television servies The Virginian which ran from 1962 to 1971.  One of my favorite shows as a kid.  McClure was married five times; Faye Brash (1957 – 1961 divorce), BarBara Luna (1961 – 1963 divorce), Helen Crane (1965 – 1968 divorce), Diane Soldani (1970 – 1979 divorce) and Diane Furnberg (1979 – 1995 his death). 

The Final Footprint – McClure is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.  His grave is marked by a flat granite marker with his picture and the inscription; Loving Husband & Father and Forever In Our Hearts We Miss You.  Other notable Final Footprints at Woodlawn include; Barbara Billingsley, Harvey Korman, Glenn Ford, Bess Myerson, Sally Ride, and Irene Ryan.

On this day in 2020, actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer Kirk Douglas died at his home in Beverly Hills surrounded by family, age 103. Born Issur Danielovitch on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).

Douglas became an international star for his leading role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other early films include Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole opposite Jan Sterling (1951), and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama. He received his second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and his third for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), which also landed him a second Golden Globe nomination.

In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960). In those two films, he collaborated with the then-relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick, taking lead roles in both films. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit. He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), considered a classic, and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas, who turned it into an Oscar-winning film.

As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas received three Academy Award nominations, an Academy Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an author, he wrote ten novels and memoirs. After barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lived with his second wife (of 66 years), Anne Buydens, a producer, until his death.

with wife Anne

Douglas and his first wife, Diana Dill, married on November 2, 1943. They had two sons, Michael and producer Joel Douglas, before divorcing in 1951. Afterwards, in Paris, he met Buydens (born Hannelore Marx; April 23, 1919, Hanover, Germany) while acting on location in Act of Love. She originally fled from Germany to escape Nazism and survived by putting her multilingual skills to work at a film studio, creating translations for subtitles. They married on May 29, 1954. In 2014, they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. They had two sons, Peter, a producer, and Eric, an actor who died on July 6, 2004, from an overdose of alcohol and drugs. In 2017, the couple released a book, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter and a Lifetime in Hollywood, that revealed intimate letters they shared through the years. Throughout their marriage Douglas had affairs with other women including several Hollywood starlets, though he never hid his infidelities from his wife, who was accepting of them and explained: “as a European, I understood it was unrealistic to expect total fidelity in a marriage.”

The Final Footprint

Douglas’s funeral was held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on February 7, 2020, two days after his death. He was buried in the same plot as his son Eric. Other notable final footprints at Westwood Village include; Ray Bradbury, Sammy Cahn, James Coburn, Rodney Dangerfield, Janet Leigh, Farrah Fawcett, Hugh Hefner, Brian Keith, Don Knotts, Burt Lancaster, Peter Lawford, Peggy Lee, Jack Lemmon, Karl Malden, Dean Martin, Walter Mathau, Marilyn Monroe, Carroll O’Connor, Roy Orbison, George C. Scott, Dorothy Stratten, Natalie Wood and Frank Zappa.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 actor (The Sound of Music, Star Trek IV, 12 Monkeys, Inside Man, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Danny Collins, All the Money in the World, Knives Out) Christopher Plummer died at his home in Weston, Connecticut, aged 91. Cremation

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