On this day in 1869, composer Hector Berlioz died at his Paris home, No.4 rue de Calais, at 30 minutes past midday, surrounded by friends at the age of 65. Born Louis-Hector Berlioz on 11 December 1803 at No. 83 rue nationale, the family home in the French commune of La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. Perhaps best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique, Grande messe des morts (Requiem), Les Troyens, and La damnation de Faust. Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He also composed around 50 compositions for voice, accompanied by piano or orchestra. His influence was important for the further development of Romanticism.
Drawing of Harriet Smithson as Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Despite his parents’ disapproval, in 1824 he formally abandoned his medical studies to pursue a career in music. He composed the Messe solennelle. This work was rehearsed and revised after the rehearsal but not performed until the following year. Later that year or in 1825, he began to compose the opera Les francs-juges, which was completed the following year but went unperformed. The work survives only in fragments, but the overture has been much recorded and is sometimes played in concert.
On 11 September 1827, he attended a production by a traveling English theatre company at the Odéon theatre with the Irish-born actress Harriet Smithson playing Ophelia and Juliet in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. He immediately became infatuated with both actress and playwright. Prone to his impulses, Berlioz began flooding Smithson’s hotel room with love letters which both confused and terrified her. His advances led nowhere.
He began and finished composition of the Symphonie fantastique in 1830, a work which would bring Berlioz much fame and notoriety. He entered into a relationship with – and subsequently became engaged to – Marie Moke, despite the symphony being inspired by Berlioz’s obsession with Harriet Smithson.
Lithograph by August Prinzhofer, Vienna, 1845. Berlioz considered this to be a good likeness.
During his stay in Italy, he received a letter from the mother of his fiancée, Camille Moke, informing him that she had called off their engagement. Instead her daughter was to marry Camille Pleyel (son of Ignaz Pleyel), a rich piano manufacturer. Enraged, Berlioz decided to return to Paris and take revenge on Pleyel, his fiancée, and her mother by killing all three of them. He created an elaborate plan, going so far as to purchase a dress, wig and hat with a veil (with which he was to disguise himself as a woman in order to gain entry to their home). He even stole a pair of double-barrelled pistols from the Academy to kill them with, saving a single shot for himself. Planning out his action with great care, Berlioz purchased phials of strychnine and laudanum to use as poisons in the event of a pistol jamming.
Despite this careful planning, Berlioz failed to carry the plot through. By the time he had reached Genoa, he “left his disguise in the side pocket of the carriage”. After arriving in Nice (at that time, part of Italy), he reconsidered the entire plan, deciding it to be inappropriate and foolish.
Painting by Émile Signol, 1832.
On Berlioz’s return to Paris, he and Harriet were finally introduced and entered into a relationship. Despite Berlioz not understanding spoken English and Harriet not knowing any French, on 3 October 1833, they got married in a civil ceremony at the British Embassy with Liszt as one of the witnesses. The following year their only child, Louis Berlioz, was born – a source of initial disappointment, anxiety and eventual pride to his father. Unfortunately for Berlioz, he was soon to discover that living under the same roof as his beloved wife was far less appealing than worship from afar. Their marriage turned out a disaster as both were prone to violent personality clashes and outbursts of temper.
Painting by Gustave Courbet, 1850.
Harriet died in 1854. In October, Berlioz married Marie Recio. In a letter written to his son, he said that having lived with her for so long, it was his duty to do so.
Photograph by Nadar, January 1857
Marie died unexpectedly of a stroke at the age of 48, on 13 June 1862. Berlioz soon met a young woman named Amélie at Montmartre Cemetery, and though she was only 24, they developed a close relationship despite a 35-year age difference. Amélie requested that they end their relationship, which Berlioz did, to his despair.
Last photograph of Berlioz, 1868
Berlioz met Estelle Fornier – the object of his childhood affections – in Lyon for the first time in 40 years, and began a regular correspondence with her. Berlioz soon realized that he still longed for her, and eventually she had to inform him that as a married woman there was no possibility that they could become closer than friends.
Berlioz had a keen affection for literature, and many of his best compositions are inspired by literary works. For Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz was inspired in part by Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. For La damnation de Faust, Berlioz drew on Goethe’s Faust; for Harold en Italie, he drew on Byron’s Childe Harold; for Benvenuto Cellini, he drew on Cellini’s own autobiography. For Roméo et Juliette, Berlioz turned, of course, to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. For his magnum opus, the monumental opera Les Troyens, Berlioz turned to Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid. In his last opera, the comic opera Béatrice et Bénédict, Berlioz prepared a libretto based loosely on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. His composition “Tristia” (for orchestra and chorus) drew its inspiration from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The Final Footprint
His funeral was held at the recently completed Église de la Trinité on 11 March, and he was buried in Montmartre Cemetery with his two wives, who were exhumed and re-buried next to him. Other notable final footprints at Montmartre include; Dalida, Edgar Degas, Léo Delibes, Alexandre Dumas, fils, Marie Duplessis, Theophile Gautier, Gustave Moreau, Henri Murger, Jacques Offenbach, Francis Picabia, Stendhal, François Truffaut, and Horace Vernet.
There is some debate about Berlioz’s last words. His last words were reputed to be “Enfin, on va jouer ma musique” (“At last, they are going to play my music”), but three other possible alternatives and accounts include:
- Bidding farewell to a nationalist Russian composer: “One thousand greetings to Balakirev.”
- Speaking to his dead wife, “Oh, Mère Recio, it is finished.”
- After quoting from Macbeth’s final soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play of the same name: “‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ That is my signal.”
Drawing by Gustave Doré, published in Journal pour rire, 27 June 1850
Pencil drawing by Alphonse Legros, c.1860
Commemorations of Berlioz include the 2000-seat Opera Berlioz at the Corum arts centre in Montpellier, Berlioz Point in Antarctica and asteroid 69288 Berlioz.
For the opening of Stanley Kubrick‘s film adaptation of The Shining (1980) by Stephen King, composer Wendy Carlos re-interpreted the “Dies Irae” section of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique using a Moog Synthesizer.
Berlioz
#RIP #OTD in 1975, film director (A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant, The Diary of Anne Frank), producer, screenwriter and cinematographer George Stevens died from a heart attack on his ranch in Lancaster, California. Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles
On this day in 1999, baseball Hall of Fame
player, 3-time MVP, 13-time All Star, 9-time World Series champion, “Joltin’ Joe”, “The Yankee Clipper”, Joe DiMaggio, died at his home in Hollywood, Florida at the age of 84 from lung cancer. Born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio on 25 November 1914 in Martinez, California. Perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (15 May – 16 July 1941), a record that still stands. I believe he is the only player to be named an all-star in every season he played. The Yankees retired his number 5 in 1952.
DiMaggio was married twice; Dorothy Arnold (1939 – 1944) and Marilyn Monroe (1954 – 1954). They eloped at San Francisco City Hall on January 14, 1954. The relationship was reportedly tumultuous and Monroe filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty nine months after the wedding. After the failure of their marriage, DiMaggio underwent therapy, stopped drinking alcohol, and expanded his interests beyond baseball; he and Monroe read poetry together in their later years.
Monroe went on to marry Arthur Miller. Reportedly, as that marriage was ending, Monroe and DiMaggio became friends and re-marriage rumours swirled. Apparently devastated at the news of her death, DiMaggio claimed her body and arranged her funeral, barring Hollywood’s elite. He had a half-dozen red roses delivered 3 times a week to her crypt for 20 years. A true gentleman, he refused to talk about her publicly or otherwise exploit their relationship. DiMaggio never remarried.
On 17 September 1992, the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, opened. DiMaggio’s popularity was such that he has been referenced in film, television, literature, art, and music both during his career and decades after he retired.
The Final Footprint – DiMaggio is entombed in a private single crypt mausoleum in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California. A raised granite cenotaph in front of the mausoleum was engraved with his name and birth and death dates and the term of endearment; GRACE, DIGNITY AND ELEGANCE PERSONIFIED. His final words may or may not have been, “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.” Another notable final footprint at Holy Cross; Vince Guaraldi.
Yankee Stadium’s fifth monument was dedicated to DiMaggio on 25 April 1999. Monument Park is an open-air museum containing a collection of monuments, plaques, and retired numbers honoring distinguished members of the Yankees. Other notable Yankees whose final footprints include memorialization in Monument Park; Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, George Steinbrenner, Roger Maris, Thurman Munson, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Mel Allen, Bob Sheppard, and Casey Stengel.
#RIP #OTD 2020 actor (The Seventh Seal, Through a Glass Darkly, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor, Dune, Minority Report, Shutter Island, Robin Hood, Star Wars) Max von Sydow died at his home in Provence, France at age 90. Cremation
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On this day in 1967, member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, Alice B. Toklas died in Paris at the age of 89. Born Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco on 30 April 1877. Toklas was the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein. Toklas met Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907, the day she arrived there from San Francisco after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Together they hosted a salon in the home they shared that attracted expatriate American writers and avant-garde painters. Acting as Stein’s confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until the publication by Stein of Toklas’ “memoirs” in 1933 under the title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein’s bestselling book. Toklas and Stein remained a couple until Stein’s death in 1946. Although Stein willed much of her estate to Toklas, including their shared art collection (some of them by Picasso) housed in their apartment at 5, rue Christine, the couple’s relationship had no legal recognition. As many of the paintings appreciated greatly in value, Stein’s relatives took action to claim them, eventually removing them from Toklas’s residence while she was away on vacation and placing them in a bank vault. Toklas then relied on contributions from friends as well as her writing to make a living.
On this day in 1999, film director, writer, producer, and photographer, Stanley Kubrick, died in his sleep at his home in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England at the age of 70. Born on 26 July 1928, at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, New York. Best known for his films, Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Oddysey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
The Final Footprint – Kubrick is interred next to his favorite tree at his home in Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire, England, U.K. His grave is marked with an engraved stone with the term of endearment; “Here lies our love Stanley”.
On this day in 1836, following a 13-day seige, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched a final assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas) killing all but two of the Texian defenders. The Battle of the Alamo was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. The Texians under General Sam Houston later defeated Santa Anna and the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto on 21 April 1836. The Texians’ battle cry that day was “Remember the Alamo” and “Remember Goliad.” The story has been made into two major motion pictures; The Alamo (1960) directed by John Wayne and The Alamo (2004) directed by John Lee Hancock. Among those killed at the Alamo;
James “Jim” Bowie – pioneer, Texas Ranger and soldier. Born on 10 April 1796 in Logan County, Kentucky. He popularized the Bowie knife. Bowie was 39 at the time of his death. Bowie, Texas and Bowie County are named in his honor. Bowie was portrayed in the Alamo movies by Richard Widmark and Jason Patric.
William Barret Travis – lawyer and soldier. Born 9 August 1809 in Saluda County, South Carolina. Travis married once, Rosanno Cato (1828 – 1836 divorce). Travis was 26 years old when he died. Travis was portayed in the Alamo movies by Laurence Harvey and Patrick Wilson. On 24 February 1836, during the siege, Travis wrote the now famous letter addressed “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World”:
The Final Footprint – the bodies of the Texians including Crockett, Bowie and Travis were stacked and burned. Juan Seguín returned to Béxar in February 1837 to examine the remains and found ashes from the funeral pyres. He had the ashes placed in a simple coffin inscribed with the names Crockett, Bowie and Travis. According to a 28 March 1837 article in the Telegraph and Texas Register, Seguín buried the coffin under a peach tree grove. The spot was not marked and cannot now be identified. However, Seguín later claimed that he had placed the coffin in front of the altar at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. Remember the Alamo!
On this day in 1963, country music singer, songwriter, one of the most influential, successful, and acclaimed female vocalists of the 20th century, Patsy Cline, died in a private plane crash near Camden, Tennessee at the age of 30. Born Virginia Patterson Hensley on 8 September 1932 in Winchester, Virginia. In my opinion, the best ever female country music singer and one of my all-time favorite singers. Her contralto voice had such a rich tone and was so emotionally expressive. Her life and career have been the subject of numerous books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays. Her hits included “Walkin’ After Midnight”, “I Fall to Pieces”, “She’s Got You”, “Crazy”, and “Sweet Dreams”. A biographical film Sweet Dreams was released in 1985 starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris. Lange would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. For all the musical scenes Lange lip-synched to Cline recordings. Cline was married twice; Gerald Cline (1953 – 1957 divorce) and Charlie Dick (1957 – 1963 her death).
The Final Footprint – Cline is interred in Shenandoah Memorial Park, Winchester, Virginia. Her grave is marked by a companion flat bronze on granite marker with the inscription; “Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love.” A bell tower in her memory at the cemetery, erected with the help of Loretta Lynn and Dottie West, plays hymns daily at 6:00 p.m., the hour of her death. A memorial marks the place where the plane crashed in the still-remote forest outside of Camden, Tennessee.
On this day in 1982, comedian, actor, and singer John Belushi died from combined drug intoxication caused by an injection of a heroin and cocaine mixture, known as a speedball at the age of 33 in 
The Final Footprint
On this day in 1868, Native American Indian trader, guide, and interpreter, Jesse Chisholm, died at Left Hand Spring, near the site of present Geary, Oklahoma from food poisoning. Born in the Hiwassee region of Tennessee, probably in 1805 or 1806. His father, Ignatius, was Scottish and his mother was Cherokee. Primarily known for being the namesake of the Chisholm Trail, which ranchers used to drive their cattle to eastern markets. Chisholm had built a number of trading posts in what is now western Oklahoma. The trail had several variations but
seemed to start at the Rio Grande in Texas and ran though San Antonio and ended in Abilene, Kansas.
On this day in 1994, comedian and actor John Candy died of a heart attack in Durango, Mexico, aged 43. Born John Franklin Candy on October 31, 1950 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. Candy rose to fame as a member of the Toronto branch of the Second City and its related Second City Television series, and through his appearances in such comedy films as Stripes, Splash, Cool Runnings, Summer Rental, Home Alone, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle Buck, as well as more dramatic roles in Only the Lonely and JFK. One of his most renowned onscreen performances was as Del Griffith, the talkative shower-curtain ring salesman in the John Hughes comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
The Final Footprint
On this day in 2009 playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote died in Hartford, Connecticut at the age of 92. Born Albert Horton Foote Jr. on March 14, 1916 in Wharton, Texas. Perhaps best known for his screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta and two Academy Awards, one for an original screenplay, Tender Mercies, and one for adapted screenplay, To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1995, Foote was the inaugural recipient of the Austin Film Festival’s Distinguished Screenwriter Award. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
The Final Footprint
On this day in 2016, author Pat Conroy died in Beaufort, South Carolina from pancreatic cancer at the age of 70. Born Donald Patrick Conroy in Atlanta, Georgia on October 26, 1945. He wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides (one of my personal favorites) and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. In my opinion, he is a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.
Also on this day in 2003 actor Horst Buchholz died unexpectedly at the age of sixty-nine in the Berlin Charité from pneumonia that developed after an operation for a hip fracture. Born Horst Werner Buchholz on 4 December 1933 . He appeared in more than sixty feature films from 1951 to 2002. During his youth he was sometimes called “the German James Dean.” He is perhaps best known in English-speaking countries for his role as Chico in The Magnificent Seven (1960), as a communist in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three (1961) and as Dr. Lessing in Life Is Beautiful (1997).
The Final Footprint
On this day in 1895, painter Berthe Morisot died in Paris, of pneumonia at the age of 54. Born 
The Final Footprint – Morisot is interred in the Cimetière de Passy. Other notable final footprints as Passy include; Claude Debussy, Gabriel Faure, Hubert de Givenchy, Édouard Manet, and Octave Mirbeau.
On this day in 1930, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter D. H. Lawrence died at the Villa Robermond in Vence, France, from complications of tuberculosis at the age of 44. Born David Herbert Richards Lawrence 11 September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. Perhaps best known for his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy; an unexpurgated edition could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Mandrake Press in 1929.) The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working class man and an upper class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words.
The Final Footprint – Frieda commissioned an elaborate headstone for his grave bearing a mosaic of his adopted emblem of the phoenix. After Lawrence’s death, Frieda lived with Angelo Ravagli on a ranch in Taos, New Mexico and eventually married him in 1950. In 1935 Ravagli arranged, on Frieda’s behalf, to have Lawrence’s body exhumed and cremated. However, upon boarding the ship he learned he would have to pay taxes on the cremated remains, so he instead spread them in the Mediterranean, a more preferable resting place, in his opinion, than a concrete block in a chapel. Some dust and dirt was interred on the Taos ranch in a small chapelhis ashes brought back to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch, east of Taos, New Mexico, to be interred there in a small chapel.
On this day in 1999, British pop singer, “The White Queen of Soul”, Dusty Springfield, died in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England from cancer at the age of 59. Born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien on 16 April 1939 in West Hampstead, North London to an Irish Catholic family. Her voice was distinctively sensual and soulful. My favorite Springfield album is Dusty in Memphis and of course my favorite song from that album is “Son of a Preacher Man.”
On this day in 1932, the 20 month old son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in Hopewell, New Jersey. Born on 22 June 1930 in Englewood Bergen, New Jersey. In what came to be referred to as “The Crime of the Century”, the boy was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of 1 March 1932. His body was discovered a short distance from the Lindberghs’ home on 12 May 1932. A medical examination determined that the cause of death was a massive skull fracture. After an investigation that lasted more than two years and was ostensibly run by New Jersey State Police superintendent Colonel Herbert Norman Swarzkopf, the father of the future General H. Norman Swarzkopf, Jr., Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested and charged with the crime. Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison on 3 April 1936, at 8:44 in the evening. Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end. Newspaper writer H. L. Mencken called the kidnapping and subsequent trial “the biggest story since the Resurrection”. The crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the “Lindbergh Law”, which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.
On this day in 2009, radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, died in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of 90. Born Paul Harvey Aurandt on 4 September 1918 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at its peak, at 24 million people a week. Paul Harvey News was carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations and 300 newspapers. Harvey was noted for his folksy delivery and his dramatic pauses and quirky intonations. He explained his relationship with his sponsors, saying “I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is.” Harvey was married to Lynne “Angel” Cooper (1940 – 2008 her death). 
On this day in 2011 actress Jane Russell died at her home in Santa Maria of a respiratory-related illness at the age of 89. Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921 in Bemidji, Minnesota. She was one of Hollywood’s leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s.
On this day in 2016, United States Army veteran, actor George Kennedy died of a heart ailment at an assisted living facility in Middleton, Idaho, ten days after his 91st birthday. Born George Harris Kennedy Jr. on February 18, 1925 in New York City. Kennedy appeared in more than 200 film and television productions. He played “Dragline” opposite Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967), winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role and being nominated for the corresponding Golden Globe. He received a second Golden Globe nomination for portraying Joe Patroni in Airport (1970).
On this day in 2015, actor, film director, photographer, author, singer, and songwriter, Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy died of complications from COPD at the age of 83, in his Bel Air home. Born Leonard Simon Nimoy on March 26, 1931 in the West End
