photographed by Pierre Petit in 1900
On this day in 1921, composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era, Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns died from a heart attack in Algiers at the age of 86. Born 9 October 1835 in Paris. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third (“Organ”) Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).
Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.
Throughout the 1860s and early 1870s, Saint-Saëns had continued to live a bachelor existence, sharing a large fourth-floor flat in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with his mother. In 1875, he surprised many by marrying. The groom was approaching forty and his bride Marie-Laure Truffot, the sister of one of the composer’s pupils, was 19. Saint-Saëns and his wife moved to the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, in the Latin Quarter; his mother moved with them. The couple had two sons, both of whom died in infancy. In 1878, the elder, André, aged two, fell from a window of the flat and was killed; the younger, Jean-François, died of pneumonia six weeks later, aged six months. Saint-Saëns and Marie-Laure continued to live together for three years, but he blamed her for André’s accident; the double blow of their loss effectively destroyed the marriage.
The Final Footprint
After a state funeral at the Madeleine he was buried at the Cimetière de Montparnasse in Paris. Other notable Final Footprints at Montparnasse include; Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Chabrier, César Franck, Guy de Maupassant, Adah Isaacs Menken, Man Ray, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Seberg, and Susan Sontag.
#RIP #OTD in 1956 Welsh artist, writer (Laughing Torso, Is She a Lady?), expert on sailors’ chanteys, the Queen of Bohemia, Nina Hamnett died from complications after falling out of her apartment window in London and being impaled on the fence forty feet below, aged 66.
On this day in 1965 playwright, novelist, short story writer W. Somerset Maugham died in Nice, France at the age of 91. Born William Somerset Maugham on 25 January 1874 in the U. K. Embassy in Paris. Among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly one of the highest paid authors during the 1930s. Maugham trained and qualified as a doctor. The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels. Maugham married Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo Wellcome (1917 – 1928 divorce). Maugham’s love life apparently was almost never smooth. He once confessed: “I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed… In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel.”
The Final Footprint – Maugham was cremated and his cremains were scattered near the Maughan Library, The King’s School, Canterbury.
On this day in 1980, U. S. Army veteran, entrepreneur, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, philanthropist, Colonel Sanders, died in Louisville, Kentucky at the age of 90. Born Harland David Sanders on 9 September 1890 in Henryville, Indiana. He opened his first restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky in 1930 when he was 40. Sanders began developing his distinctive appearance in 1950, growing his trademark mustache and goatee and donning a white suit and string tie. He never wore anything else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer. At age 65, Sanders’ restaurant failed due to the new Interstate 75 reducing his customer traffic. He took $105 from his first Social Security check and began visiting potential franchisees. Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s was offered a chance to turn around a failing Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. He helped save the restaurant, and revolutionized the fast food industry. Sanders was married twice; Josephine King (divorced) and Claudia Price.
The Final Footprint – Sanders is interred with his wife Claudia in the Sanders Private Estate, Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky. The estate is marked by a large granite monument bearing his name and a bronze bust of Sanders on a granite pedestal. Their graves are marked by a full ledger granite marker.
On this day in 1989, United States Navy Veteran, actor Lee Van Cleef died from a heart attack at his home in Oxnard, California, at the age of 64. Throat cancer was listed as a secondary cause of death.
Born Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr. on January 9, 1925 in Somerville, New Jersey. His sinister features overshadowed his acting skills and typecast him as a minor villain for a decade before he achieved stardom in Spaghetti Westerns such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He declined to have his hook nose altered to play a sympathetic character in his film debut, High Noon, and was relegated to a non-speaking outlaw as a result. After suffering serious injuries in a car crash, Van Cleef began to lose interest in his apparently waning career by the time Sergio Leone gave him a major role in For a Few Dollars More. The film made him a box-office draw, especially in Europe.
Van Cleef possessed the rare physical characteristic of heterochromatic eyes, having eyes of two different colors; in his case, one green and one blue.
Van Cleef in Kansas City Confidential (1952)
Van Cleef was married three times. He and his first wife, Patsy Ruth Kahle, his high school sweetheart, were married December 10th, 1943, had three children, Alan, Deborah and David, and divorced in 1960. Later that year, he married his second wife, Joan Marjorie Drane, on April 9th, 1960, and adopted their daughter, Denise. He and Joan divorced in 1974. Two years later, he married his third wife, Barbara Havelone, on July 13th, 1976, to whom he remained married until his death in 1989
The Final Footprint
Van Cleef is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, California, with an inscription on his gravestone referring to his many acting performances as sinister, threatening characters: “BEST OF THE BAD”. Other notable final footprints at Hollywood Hills include; Gene Autry, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, David Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Bette Davis, Sandra Dee, Ronnie James Dio, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carrie Fisher, Bobby Fuller, Andy Gibb, Michael Hutchence, Jill Ireland, Al Jarreau, Buster Keaton, Lemmy Kilmister, Jack LaLanne, Nicolette Larson (see below), Liberace, Strother Martin, Jayne Meadows, Brittany Murphy, Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Freddie Prinze, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, and Paul Walker.
On this day in 1997, singer Nicolette Larson died of cerebral edema and liver failure, at the age of 45. Born on July 17, 1952 in Helena, Montana. Perhaps best known for her work in the late 1970s with Neil Young and her 1978 hit single of Young’s “Lotta Love”, which hit No. 1 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart and No. 8 on the pop singles chart. It was followed by four more adult contemporary hits, two of which were also minor pop hits.
By 1985, she shifted her focus to country music, charting six times on the US country singles chart. She had a top-40 country hit with “That’s How You Know When Love’s Right”, a duet with Steve Wariner. She died in 1997 of cerebral edema and liver failure.
Through her early work in the 1970s with Emmylou Harris, Larson met guitarist and songwriter Hank DeVito. Larson and DeVito later married and divorced. In the early 1980s, Larson was engaged to Andrew Gold, which ended shortly after the completion of Larson’s 1982 album All Dressed Up and No Place to Go, which Gold had produced. In the late 1980s, she briefly dated “Weird Al” Yankovic.
In 1990, Larson married drummer Russ Kunkel, and the two were married until her death in 1997.
The Final Footprint
Larson’s remains are buried in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. A benefit concert was held in Larson’s honor in February 1998 with tribute concerts held on the 10th anniversary of her death in December 2007 and also the following year. Other notable final footprints at Hollywood Hills include; Gene Autry, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, David Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Bette Davis, Sandra Dee, Ronnie James Dio, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carrie Fisher, Bobby Fuller, Andy Gibb, Michael Hutchence, Jill Ireland, Al Jarreau, Buster Keaton, Lemmy Kilmister, Jack LaLanne, Nicolette Larson, Liberace, Strother Martin, Jayne Meadows, Brittany Murphy, Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Freddie Prinze, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Lee Van Cleef (see above), and Paul Walker.
#RIP #OTD in 2007 singer, songwriter (“Longer”, “Same Old Lang Syne”, “Leader of the Band”), composer, musician, Dan Fogelberg died from prostate cancer at his home in Deer Isle, Maine, aged 56. Cremated remains scattered, Atlantic Ocean off the Maine coast. Memorial, Peoria IL
On this day in 2013, Grammy award winning singer, songwriter, guitarist, The Cherokee Cowboy, Ray Price died from complications of pancreatic cancer at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Texas at the age of 87. Born Noble Ray Price on 12 January 1926 Perryville, Texas.
In my opinion, his wide ranging baritone was among the best male voices of country music. Some of his well-known recordings include “Release Me”, “Crazy Arms”, “Heartaches by the Number”, “For the Good Times”, “Night Life”, and “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”. Price was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. He continued to record and tour well into his mid-eighties. 
The Final Footprint – Price is entombed at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas.
#RIP #OTD in 2017 jazz and popular music singer (“I Wish You Love”, “You’re Breaking My Heart”, with then-husband Louis Prima “That Old Black Magic”) Keely Smith died of heart failure in Palm Springs, aged 89. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills
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