Day in History 29 January – Bear River Massacre – Edward Lear – Sara Teasdale – H. L. Mencken – Robert Frost – Alan Ladd – Freddie Prinze – Willie Dixon – Lili St. Cyr – Rod McKuen

Posted on 29 JanamMon, 29 Jan 2024 00:39:00 -06002024-01-29T00:39:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1863, a detachment of California Volunteers engage the Shoshone at Bear River, Washington Territory, killing hundreds of men women and children.  The site is located near the present-day city of Preston in Franklin County, Idaho.  The death toll was large, but some Shoshone survived.  Chief Sagwitch gathered survivors to keep his community alive.  Sagwitch was shot twice in the hand and tried to escape on horseback, only to have the horse shot out from under him.  He went to the ravine and escaped into the Bear River near a hot spring, where he floated under some brush until nightfall.

Sagwitch’s son, Beshup Timbimboo, was shot seven times but survived and was rescued by family members.  Other members of the band hid in the willow brush of the Bear River, or tried to act as if they were dead.  After the officers concluded the battle was over, they returned with the soldiers to their temporary encampment near Franklin.  Sagwitch and other survivors retrieved the wounded and built a fire to warm the survivors.

Franklin residents opened their homes to wounded soldiers that night.  They brought blankets and hay to the church meetinghouse to protect the other soldiers from the cold.

The California Volunteers suffered 14 soldiers killed and 49 wounded, 7 mortally.

In 1918, Sagwitch’s son Be-shup, Frank Timbimboo Warner, said, “[H]alf of those present got away,” and 156 were killed.  He went on to say that two of his brothers and a sister-in-law “lived”, as well as many who later lived at the Washakie, Utah, settlement, the Fort Hall reservation, in the Wind River country, and elsewhere.

This conflict marked the final significant influence of the Shoshone nation upon Cache Valley and its immediate surroundings.  In addition to opening the northern part of Cache Valley to Mormon settlement, Cache Valley also offered a staging area for additional settlements in southeastern Idaho.

Chief Sagwitch and many members of his band allied with the Mormons.  Many were baptized and joined LDS Church.

#RIP #OTD in 1888 artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet (The Book of Nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat) Edward Lear died of heart failure at his Villa Tennyson, Sanremo, Italy aged 75. Cemetery Foce in Sanremo

#RIP #OTD in 1933 lyric poet (Love Songs, ‘I Shall Not Care’) Sara Teasdale died from overdosing on sleeping pills in New York City, aged 48. Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

H. L. Mencken. (Henry L. Mencken.) Baltimore Sun Staff File Photo by Robert F. Kniesche. 9/20/50 MANDATORY CREDIT: Baltimore Examiner and Washington Examiner OUT ORG XMIT: BAL0909101149453148

On this day in 1956, journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a student of American English, the “Sage of Baltimore”, H. L. Mencken, died in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 75.  Born Henry Louis Mencken on 12 September 1880 in Baltimore.  In my opinion, he is one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the 20th century.  Mencken notably attacked ignorance, intolerance, frauds, fundamentalist Christianity, marriage, osteopathy and chiropractic.  He once called marriage “the end of hope” although he ultimatley married Sara Powell Haardt (1930 – 1935 her death). 

The Final Footprint – Mencken is interred with his wife in the Mencken Family Estate in Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore.  He wrote a joking epitaph for himself: If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.  This epitaph was not used.

Robert_Frost_NYWTSOn this day in 1963 poet Robert Frost died in Boston from prostrate cancer surgery complications at the age of 88.  Born Robert Lee Frost on 26 March 1874 in San Francisco.  His work was initially published in England before it was published in America.  He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.  His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.  In my opinion, he is one of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century.  Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetical works.  My favorite Frost poems include; “The Witch of Coös,” “Home Burial,” “A Servant to Servants,” “Directive,” “Neither Out Too Far Nor In Too Deep,” “Provide, Provide,” “Acquainted with the Night,” “After Apple Picking,” “Mending Wall,” “The Most of It,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “To Earthward,” “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Spring Pools,” “The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,” “Design,” and “Desert Places.”  Robert_Frost's_Grave

The Final Footprint – He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph quotes the last line from his poem, “The Lesson for Today (1942): “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

#RIP #OTD in 1964 actor (This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia, Whispering Smith, Shane) Alan Ladd died at his home in Palm Springs from an accidental overdose of alcohol, a barbiturate, tranquilizers, aged 50. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glenwood California

On this day in 1977, stand-up comedian and actor Freddie Prinze died from a gunshot wound to his head at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 22. Born Frederick Karl Pruetzel on June 22, 1954 in New York City. Prinze was the star of NBC-TV sitcom Chico and the Man from 1974 until his death in 1977.

On October 13, 1975, Prinze married Katherine (Kathy) Elaine (Barber) Cochran, with whom he had one child, son Freddie Prinze Jr.

The Final Footprint

Prinze is entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, near his father, Edward Karl Pruetzel. 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, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Lee Van Cleef, and Paul Walker.

Willie Dixon at Monterey Jazz Festival, 1981.
© Brian McMillen

On this day in 1992, blues musician, singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer Willie Dixon died of heart failure in Burbank, California at the age of 76. Born William James Dixon on July 1, 1915 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he is perhaps best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his time.

Dixon’s songs have been recorded by countless musicians in many genres as well as by various ensembles in which he participated. A short list of his most famous compositions includes “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, “Little Red Rooster”, “My Babe”, “Spoonful”, and “You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover”. These songs were written during the peak years of Chess Records, from 1950 to 1965, and were performed by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Bo Diddley. Dixon was an important link between the blues and rock and roll. Jeff Beck, Cream, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Steppenwolf all featured at least one of his songs on their debut albums. He received a Grammy Award and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The Final Footprint

Dixon was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois. The actor and comedian Cedric the Entertainer portrayed Dixon in Cadillac Records, a 2008 film based on the early history of Chess Records. Other notable final footprints at Burr Oak Cemetery include Emmett Till and Dinah Washington.

#RIP #OTD in 1999 burlesque dancer, stripper, pin-up model, actress (The Naked and the Dead) Lili St. Cyr (Marie Frances Van Schaack), died in Los Angeles, aged 80. Cremation

#RIP #OTD in 2015 poet, singer-songwriter (English lyrics; “If You Go Away”, “Seasons In the Sun”), composer, Rod McKuen died of respiratory arrest, a result of pneumonia, at a hospital in Beverly Hills aged 81. Westwood Memorial Park, Westwood, California

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Day in History 28 January – W. B. Yeats – Zora Neale Hurston – Space Shuttle Challenger – Cicely Tyson

Posted on 29 JanamSun, 28 Jan 2024 00:39:00 -06002024-01-28T00:39:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

wbYeats_BoughtonOn this day in 1939, poet W. B. Yeats died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France at the age of 73.  Born William Butlet Yeats in Sandymountt, County Dublin, Ireland 13 June 1865.  In my opinion, one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.  A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms.  Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years.  In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honoured for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”

In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a 23-year-old English heiress and ardent Irish Nationalist.  Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a “paint-stained art student.”.  Gonne had admired Yeat’s poem “The Isle of Statues” and sought out his acquaintance.  Yeats apparently developed an obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she had a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter.

In later years he admitted, “it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes.”  Yeats’s love initially remained unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism.  In 1891, he visited Gonne in Ireland and proposed marriage, but she rejected him.  He later admitted that from that point “the troubling of my life began”.  Yeats proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901.  She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his horror, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride.  There were two main reasons why Yeats was so horrified.  To lose his muse to another made him look silly before the public.  Yeats naturally hated MacBride and continually sought to deride and demean him both in his letters and his poetry.  The second reason Yeats was horrified was linked to the fact of Maud’s conversion to Catholicism, which Yeats despised.  He thought his muse would come under the influence of the priests and do their bidding.  His only other love affair during this period was with Olivia Shakespear, whom he first met in 1894, and parted from in 1897.  Yeats’ friendship with Gonne persisted, and, in Paris, in 1908, they finally consummated their relationship.  “The long years of fidelity rewarded at last” was how another of his lovers described the event.  Yeats was less sentimental and later remarked that “the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.”.  The relationship did not develop into a new phase after their night together, and soon afterwards Gonne wrote to the poet indicating that despite the physical consummation, they could not continue as they had been: “I have prayed so hard to have all earthly desire taken from my love for you and dearest, loving you as I do, I have prayed and I am praying still that the bodily desire for me may be taken from you too.”  By January 1909, Gonne was sending Yeats letters praising the advantage given to artists who abstain from sex.  Nearly twenty years later, Yeats recalled the night with Gonne in his poem “A Man Young and Old”:

My arms are like the twisted thorn 
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there 
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down 
And put all Troy to wreck.

By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir.  John MacBride had been executed by British forces for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, and Yeats thought that his widow might remarry.  His final proposal to Gonne took place in mid-1916.  Gonne’s history of revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life, including chloroform addiction and her troubled marriage to MacBride made her a potentially unsuitable wife so it is possible that Yeats’s last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry her.  Yeats reportedly proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down.  His thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter.  Iseult Gonne was Maud’s second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old.  She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived in the mausoleum of her dead brother as an attempt to reincarnate his short-lived life, for the first few years of her life she was presented as her mother’s adopted niece.  At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats.  A few months after the poet’s final approach to Maud, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected.

That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear.  Despite warnings from her friends—”George … you can’t. He must be dead”—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October.  Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of Yeats’s feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon.  The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael.  Although in later years he had romantic relationships with other women and possibly affairs, George herself wrote to her husband “When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were.”

At the age of 69 Yeats was ‘rejuvenated’ after he underwent a vasectomy which at the time was thought to increase hormone production.  For the last five years of his life Yeats found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women.  During this time, Yeats was involved in a number of romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radical Ethel Mannin.  As in his earlier life, Yeats found erotic adventure conducive to his creative energy, and, despite age and ill-health, he remained a prolific writer.  In a letter of 1935, Yeats noted: “I find my present weakness made worse by the strange second puberty the operation has given me, the ferment that has come upon my imagination.  If I write poetry it will be unlike anything I have done”.

TWBYeatshe Final Footprint – Yeats was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.  He and George had often discussed his death, and his express wish was that he be buried quickly in France with a minimum of fuss.  According to George, “His actual words were ‘If I die bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and then in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo’.”  In September 1948, Yeats’ body was moved to Drumcliff, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha.  The person in charge of this operation for the Irish Government was Sean MacBride, Maud’s son, and then Minister of External Affairs.  His epitaph is taken from the last lines of “Under Ben Bulben”, one of his final poems:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!
 

zoranealeHurston-Zora-Neale-LOCOn this day in 1960,  folklorist, anthropologist, and author Zora Neale Hurston died at St. Lucie County Welfare Home in St. Lucie, Florida of hypertensive heart disease at the age of 69.  Born in Notasulga, Alabama, on 7 January 1891.  Of Hurston’s four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is perhaps best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Hurston’s work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of cultural and political reasons.  During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the pre-eminent African-American author was Richard Wright.  Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms using the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work.  Other popular African-American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt with the same concerns as Wright.  Hurston’s work, which did not engage these political issues, therefore did not fit in with this struggle.  In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government, and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians.  In addition, some critics objected to the representation of African-American dialect in Hurston’s novels, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature.  Her stylistic choices in terms of dialogue were influenced by her academic experiences.  Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research.  For example, a character in Jonah’s Gourd Vine expresses herself in this manner:

“Dat’s a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin’ dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah’ll wash yo’ tub uh ‘gator guts and dat quick.”

Those who were critical of Hurston classified her use of dialect as a caricature of African-American culture rooted in a racist tradition.  One particular criticism came from Wright in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God:

… The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is “quaint,” the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the “superior” race.

Perhaps Hurston Hurston should be praised for her skillful use of idiomatic speech.  An article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”, by Alice Walker, published in the March 1975 issue of Ms. magazine, revived interest in Hurston’s work.  Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and former classmate at Howard who would later become a physician, but the marriage ended in 1931.  In 1939 she married Albert Price who was 25 years her junior; this marriage ended after only seven months. 

The Final Footprint – Hurston was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida.  Her remains were in an unmarked grave until 1973, when Walker and literary scholar Charlotte Hunt found an unmarked grave in the general area where Hurston had been buried and decided to mark it as hers.

On this day in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight leading to the deaths of all seven crew members; Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnick.  That night, President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give his annual State of the Union address.  He initially announced that the address would go on as scheduled, but then postponed the State of the Union address and instead gave a national address on the Challenger disaster from the Oval Office of the White House.  It was written by Peggy Noonan, and finished with the following statement, which quoted from the poem “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.:

“ We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ ”

Three days later, President Reagan with his wife Nancy traveled to the Johnson Space Center to speak at a memorial service honoring the astronauts where he stated

“ Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain. ”

It was attended by 6,000 NASA employees and 4,000 guests, as well as by the families of the crew.  During the ceremony, an Air Force band led the singing of “God Bless America” as NASA T-38 Talon jets flew directly over the scene, in the traditional missing-man formation.  On the day of the accident, I met the woman who would be the mother of one of my daughters, who would be born exactly four years later.

Challenger Memorial on the left, Columbia Memorial on the right, the middle memorial is for service men killed trying to rescue the hostages in Iran

The Final Footprint – The remains of the crew that were identifiable were returned to their families on April 29, 1986. Three of the crew members, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee, and Capt. Michael J. Smith, were buried by their families at Arlington National Cemetery at individual grave sites. Mission Specialist Lt Col Ellison Onizuka was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ronald McNair was buried in Rest Lawn Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina. Christa McAuliffe was buried at Calvary Cemetery in her hometown of Concord, New Hampshire. Gregory Jarvis was cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Unidentified crew remains were buried communally at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in Arlington on May 20, 1986.  The plaque on the memorial reads; IN GRATEFUL AND LOVING TRIBUTE TO THE BRAVE CREW OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER 28 JANUARY 1986.  The memorial is near the memorial for the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia.  Other notable Final Footprints at Arlington include; the Space Shuttle Columbia, Medgar Evers, JFK, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, RFK, Edward Kennedy, Lee Marvin, Audie Murphy and Malcolm Kilduff, Jr.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 actress (Sounder, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Help, The Trip to Bountiful) Cicely Tyson died in New York City, aged 96. Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx near the grave of her former husband Miles Davis

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On this day 27 January – Giuseppe Verdi – Nellie Bly – Mahalia Jackson – John Updike – J. D. Salinger – Pete Seeger – Emmanuelle Riva – Cloris Leachman

Posted on 29 JanamSat, 27 Jan 2024 00:39:00 -06002024-01-27T00:39:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Portrait by Giovanni Boldini

On this day in 1901, Italian Romantic composer, Giuseppe Verdi, died in the Grand Hotel et de Milan in Milan, Italy at the age of 87.  Born Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi on 10 October 1813 in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro which was a part of the First French Empire after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza.  Primarily known for his operas; Nabucco, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff.  In my opinion, Verdi is one of the most influential composers of the 19th century.  His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world.  Some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture – such as “La donna è mobile” from Rigoletto, “Va, pensiero” (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the “Grand March” from Aida.  Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard repertoire a century and a half after their composition. Verdi was married to Giuseppina Strepponi (1859 – 1897 her death). 

The Final Footprint – Verdi and his wife were initially entombed in Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.  Their bodies were dis-entombed and re-entombed in The Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, a rest home for retired opera singers and musicians which was founded by Verdi.  It is located at 29 Piazza Buonarotti in Milan.  The building was designed in the neo-Gothic style by Italian architect, Camillo Boito.  A plaque outside the building reads: GVARDANO GL’ITALIANI GVARDA REVERENTE IL MONDO TVTTO A QVESTE SPOGLIE ONORANDE DI GIVSEPPE VERDI QVI RICOMPOSTE IN GLORIA PERPETVA NELLA DOLCE DIMORA OSPITALE DAL SOMMO MAESTRO VOLVTA.  A bronze statue of Verdi was erected in Piazza G. Verdi in Busseto.  A bronze bust was placed outside of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.

#RIP #OTD in 1922 pioneer investigative journalist (Ten Days in a Madhouse), industrialist, inventor, charity worker, record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days, Nellie Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark’s Hospital, New York City, aged 57. Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx

On this day in 1972 gospel singer, Civil Rights activist, The Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson died at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park, Illinois, of heart failure and diabetes complications, at the age of 60. Born on October 26, 1911 in New Orleans. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as “the single most powerful black woman in the United States”. She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career.

“I sing God’s music because it makes me feel free”, Jackson once said about her choice of gospel, adding, “It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.”

Jackson, photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1962

 

Jackson in the Concertgebouw (April 1961)

The Final Footprint

Two cities paid tribute: Chicago and New Orleans. Beginning in Chicago, outside the Greater Salem Baptist Church, 50,000 people filed silently past her mahogany, glass-topped coffin in final tribute to the queen of gospel song. The next day, as many people who could—6,000 or more—filled every seat and stood along the walls of a city public concert hall, the Arie Crown Theater of McCormick Place, for a two-hour funeral service. Her pastor, Rev. Leon Jenkins, Mayor Richard J. Daley and Mrs. Coretta Scott King eulogized her during the Chicago funeral as “a friend – proud, black and beautiful”. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ella Fitzgerald paid their respects. Joseph H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., delivered the eulogy at the Chicago funeral. Aretha Franklin closed the rites with a moving rendition of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”.

Three days later, a thousand miles away, the scene repeated itself: the long lines, the silent tribute, and thousands filling the great hall of the Rivergate Convention Center in downtown New Orleans. Mayor Moon Landrieu and Louisiana Governor John J. McKeithen joined gospel singer Bessie Griffin. Dick Gregory praised Jackson’s “moral force” as the main reason for her success. Lou Rawls sang “Just a Closer Walk With Thee”. The funeral cortège of 24 limousines drove slowly past her childhood place of worship, Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, where her recordings played through loudspeakers. The procession made its way to Providence Memorial Park in Metairie, Louisiana, where she was entombed. Despite the inscription of her birth year on her gravestone as 1912, she was actually born in 1911.

John Updike
John Updike with Bushes new.jpg

in 1989
   
 

On this day in 2009, novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic, John Updike died of lung cancer at a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts, at the age of 76. Born John Hoyer Updike on March 18, 1932 in Reading, Pennsylvania. One of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others were Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children’s books during his career.

Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. Perhaps best known for his “Rabbit” series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest; and the novella Rabbit Remembered), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1982) and Rabbit at Rest (1990) were recognized with the Pulitzer Prize.

Describing his subject as “the American small town, Protestant middle class”, Updike was recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his unique prose style, and his prolific output, writing on average a book a year. 

His fiction is distinguished by its attention to the concerns, passions, and suffering of average Americans, its emphasis on Christian theology, and its preoccupation with sexuality and sensual detail. In my opinion, he is one of the great American writers. Updike’s distinctive prose style features a rich, unusual, sometimes arcane vocabulary. He described his style as an attempt “to give the mundane its beautiful due”.

Updike married Mary E. Pennington, an art student at Radcliffe College, in 1953, while he was still a student at Harvard. She accompanied him to Oxford, England, where he attended art school. They divorced in 1974. In 1977 Updike married Martha Ruggles Bernhard, with whom he lived for more than thirty years in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. He died of lung cancer at a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts, on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.

The Final Footprint

A cenotaph was placed for Updike at Robeson Lutheran Church Cemetery in Plowville, Berks County, Pennsylvania, USA

Updike demonstrated his own fear of death in some of his more personal writings, including the poem “Perfection Wasted” (1990):

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic… 

On this day in 2010, writer J. D. Salinger died in Cornish, New Hampshire at the age of 91. Born Jerome David Salinger in Manhattan on January 1, 1919. Perhaps best known for his widely-read novel The Catcher in the Rye. Following his early success publishing short stories and The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980.

Salinger was raised in Manhattan and began writing short stories while in secondary school. Several were published in Story magazine in the early 1940s before he began serving in World War II. In 1948, his critically acclaimed story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his later work. The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny. Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953); a volume containing a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961); and a volume containing two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled “Hapworth 16, 1924”, appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965. 

In February 1955, at the age of 36, Salinger married Claire Douglas a student at Radcliffe.

In 1972, at the age of 53, Salinger had a relationship with 18-year-old Joyce Maynard. Maynard, at this time, was already an experienced writer for Seventeen magazine. The New York Times had asked Maynard to write an article for them which, when published as “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back On Life” on April 23, 1972, made her a celebrity. Salinger wrote a letter to her warning about living with fame. After exchanging 25 letters, Maynard moved in with Salinger the summer after her freshman year at Yale University. 

Salinger was romantically involved with television actress Elaine Joyce for several years in the 1980s. The relationship ended when he met Colleen O’Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker, whom he married around 1988.

The Final Footprint

Salinger was cremated.

Created for the cover of Time magazine, Robert Vickrey’s 1961 portrait of Salinger was placed on view in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., after Salinger’s death

 

On this day in 2014 singer, songwriter and social activist Pete Seeger died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, at the age of 94. Born Peter Seeger on May 3, 1919 at the French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan. 

A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene”, which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers rights, and environmental causes.

As a songwriter perhaps best-known for his songs; “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (with additional lyrics by Joe Hickerson), “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)” (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” (also with Hays), and “Turn! Turn! Turn!”. “Flowers” was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). “If I Had a Hammer” was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963) while the Byrds had a number one hit with “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in 1965.

Seeger was one of the folk singers responsible for popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS American Masters episode “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song”, Seeger said it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional “We will overcome” to the more singable “We shall overcome”.

Seeger married Toshi Aline Ota in 1943, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi’s death in on 9 July 2013 in Beacon, at the age of 91.

The Final Footprint

Seeger was cremated.

RIP #OTD in 2017 actress (Hiroshima mon amour, Amour, Thérèse Desqueyroux) Emmanuelle Riva died from cancer in Paris, aged 89. Cimetière de Charonne, Paris.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 actress (The Last Picture Show; Young Frankenstein; High Anxiety; History of the World, Part I; Spanglish; The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and comedienne Cloris Leachman died at her home in Encinitas, California, aged 94. Cremation

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Day in History 26 January – Gérard de Nerval – Jeanne Hébuterne – Lucky Luciano – José Ferrer – Abe Vigoda – Kobe Bryant

Posted on 29 JanamFri, 26 Jan 2024 00:15:00 -06002024-01-26T00:15:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

gerarddenervalOn this day in 1855, French writer, poet, essayist and translator Gérard de Nerval died by hanging himself from a sewer grating in the Rue de la vieille-lanterne, a narrow lane in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, at the age of 46.  Born Gérard Labrunie in Paris on 22 May 1808.  He was a major figure of French romanticism who worked in many genres.  He is best known for his poems and novellas, especially the collection Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which includes the novella Sylvie and the poem El Desdichado.

The Final Footprint – Nerval left a brief note to his aunt: “N’attendez pas pour moi ce soir, pour la nuit sera noire et blanc”. (Do not wait up for me this evening, for the night will be

La Rue de la Vieille Lanterne: The Suicide of Gérard de Nerval", by Gustave Doré, 1855

La Rue de la Vieille Lanterne: The Suicide of Gérard de Nerval”, by Gustave Doré, 1855

black and white.)  Baudelaire said; he “délier son âme dans la rue la plus noire qu’il pût trouver” (delivered his soul in the darkest street that he could find).  After a religious ceremony at the Notre-Dame cathedral (which was granted despite his suicide because of his troubled mental state), he was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, at the expense of his friends Théophile Gautier and Arsène Houssaye, who published Nerval’s  Aurélia as a book later that year.  Other notable final footprints at Père Lachaise include: Honoré de Balzac, Georges Bizet, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Maria Callas, Chopin, Colette, Auguste Comte, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Max Ernst, Molière, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Marcel Proust, Sully Prudhomme, Gioachino Rossini, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Simone Signoret, Gertrude Stein, Dorothea Tanning, Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Wright.

gerarddenervalPère-Lachaise_-_Division_49_-_Nerval_01

#RIP #OTD in 1920 painter and art model, common-law wife of Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne died with her unborn baby, from a fall out of her fifth-floor apartment in Paris, the day after Modigliani died, aged 21. Next to Modigliani in Père Lachaise Cemetery

On this day in 1962, Sicilian mobster, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, died from a heart attack in the Naples International Airport in Naples, Italy at the age of 64.  Born Salvatore Lucania on 24 November 1897 in Lercara Friddi, Palermo, Sicily.  Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in America.  He was instrumental in creating the five Mafia crime families in New York City and in establishing the first commission.  Luciano was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family.  He and his associate Meyer Lansky, were instrumental in the development of the “National Crime Syndicate” in the United States.  On 17 January 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.  The Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages.  Prohibition remained in force until its repeal in 1933 and reduced the consumption of alcohol but had the unintended effect of stimulating the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity.  Organized crime gained a new source of revenue through illegal alcohol sales.  In the 1920’s, New York’s two leading mobsters were Joe “The Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano.  They were engaged in what would be known as the infamous Castellammarese War.  Luciano worked his way up to be Masseria’s top aide, but Luciano made a deal with Maranzano whereby Luciano would set up the death of Masseria in return for Maranzano’s support of Luciano becoming the head of the Masseria family and thus ending the destructive war.  Masseria was assassinated in a Coney Island restaurant by Bugsy Siegel, Vito Genovese, and Joe Adonis.  Maranzano then declared Luciano his number two man, and set up the Five Families of New York (Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Colombo, and Bonanno) under him, promising that they would all be equal and all be free to make money.  However, Maranzano declared himself capo di tutti capi (Boss of all Bosses), which meant every Don in the country had to pay up to him.  Luciano began planning to eliminate Maranzano.  Luciano became the most powerful mobster in the country when Maranzano was killed in his office.  Luciano set up The Commission comprised of the heads of the Five Familes plus;  the Philadelphia crime family, the Buffalo crime family, Los Angeles crime family and the Chicago Outfit of Al Capone; later, the Detroit crime family, and Kansas City crime family.  Genovese became Luciano’s Underboss, while Frank Costello was his consigliere.  Michael “Trigger Mike” Coppola, Anthony Strollo, Adonis, and Anthony Carfano all served as caporegimes.  Lansky and Siegel were both unofficial advisors.  I suppose he was lucky in that he died from a heart attack as opposed to being murdered. 

The Final Footprint – Luciano is entombed in the Lucania Family Private Mausoleum in Saint John Cemetery, Middle Village, New York.  The inscription on his crypt plate reads: IL NOSTRO CARO FRATELLO (our dear brother)  SALVATORE LUCANIA and shows his birth and death dates.

#RIP #OTD in 1992 actor (Cyrano de Bergerac, Moulin Rouge, The Caine Mutiny, Lawrence of Arabia, Ship of Fools, Dune) and director José Ferrer died of colorectal cancer in Coral Gables, Florida, aged 80. Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Abe Vigoda
Abe Vigoda Fish Barney Miller 1977.JPG

as Phil Fish in Barney Miller in 1977
   

On this day in 2016 United States Army Veteran, actor Abe Vigoda died from natural causes at his daughter’s home in Woodland Park, New Jersey, at the age of 94. Born Abraham Charles Vigoda on February 24, 1921 in Brooklyn. Perhaps best known for his portrayals of Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather (1972) and Phil Fish in Barney Miller (1975–1977, 1982).

 

My favorite role he played is that of Tessio in The Godfather (1972). He also appeared briefly in The Godfather Part II in a flashback sequence at the end of the film.

According to Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary on the DVD’s widescreen edition, Vigoda landed the role of Tessio in an “open call”, in which actors who did not have agents could come in for an audition.

Vigoda first wife was Sonja Gohlke. The marriage ended in divorce. His second marriage to Beatrice Schy lasted from 1968 until her death in 1992.

The Final Footprint

On January 31, 2016, Vigoda’s funeral was held. He is interred in Beth David Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery located at 300 Elmont Road in Elmont, New York.

On this day in 2020, 5x NBA Champion, Black Mamba, Kobe Bryant died along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others, in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, at the age of 41. Born Kobe Bean Bryant on August 23, 1978 in Philadelphia.  A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers. In my opinion, one of the greatest players of all time.  Bryant helped the Lakers win five NBA championships, and was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth on the league’s all-time regular season scoring and all-time postseason scoring lists.

Bryant was recognized as the top high-school basketball player in the U.S. while at Lower Merion High School in Pennsylvania. The son of former NBA player Joe Bryant, he declared for the 1996 NBA draft after graduation, and was selected by the Charlotte Hornets with the 13th overall pick; the Hornets then traded him to the Lakers. As a rookie, Bryant earned a reputation as a high-flyer and a fan favorite by winning the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest, and he was named an All-Star by his second season. He and teammate Shaquille O’Neal led the Lakers to three consecutive NBA championships from 2000 to 2002. In 2003, Bryant was charged with sexual assault following an accusation by a young female hotel clerk. The criminal charges were dropped after the accuser refused to testify, and a lawsuit was settled out of court. Bryant issued a public apology and admitted to a sexual encounter but denied the assault allegation and said it was consensual.

After the Lakers lost the 2004 NBA Finals, O’Neal was traded and Bryant became the cornerstone of the Lakers. He led the NBA in scoring during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons. In 2006, he scored a career-high 81 points; the second most points scored in a single game in league history, behind Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962. Bryant led the team to two consecutive championships in 2009 and 2010, and was named NBA Finals MVP on both occasions. He continued to be among the top players in the league through 2013, when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon at age 34. He subsequently suffered season-ending injuries to his knee and shoulder, respectively, in the following two seasons. Citing physical decline, Bryant retired after the 2015–16 season.

Bryant is the all-time leading scorer in Lakers franchise history. He was also the first guard in NBA history to play at least 20 seasons. At the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics, he won two gold medals as a member of the U.S. national team. In 2018, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for his 2017 film Dear Basketball.

The Final Footprint

On February 7, Bryant and Gianna were buried in a private funeral in Pacific View Memorial Park in the Corona del Mar neighborhood of Newport Beach, California. A public memorial service was held on February 24 (2/24, marking both Kobe’s and Gianna’s jersey numbers) at Staples Center with Jimmy Kimmel hosting. Speakers at the service included Vanessa, Jordan, O’Neal, Diana Taurasi, and Geno Auriemma.

The NBA had postponed the Lakers’ game against the Clippers just two days after the accident on January 28 – the first time an NBA game had been postponed for any reason since the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing led to the postponement of a Celtics game. On January 30, the first game after the crash was played at Staples Center between the Clippers and the Kings, the Clippers honored Bryant before the game, with Southern California native Paul George narrating a video tribute to Bryant. The next day, the Lakers played their first game after the crash against the Trail Blazers. Ahead of the match, the Lakers paid tribute to Bryant and all who lost their lives in the crash with a ceremony held just before tip off, with Usher singing “Amazing Grace” and Boyz II Men singing the National Anthem, while Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth reunited to perform “See You Again” – originally their tribute to Paul Walker after his death while filming Furious 7 – at halftime. James also delivered a speech to the crowd before the game, and every player in the Lakers starting lineup was announced with Bryant’s name. The game was the second-most-watched in ESPN history, averaging 4.41 million viewers. 

Also, beginning with the Spurs and the Raptors in their game in San Antonio on the day of the crash, teams paid tribute to Bryant at the start of their games with intentional on-court violations referring to his uniform numbers on their first possession – either a 24-second shot clock or an 8-second backcourt violation. On February 15, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that the All-Star Game MVP Award would be renamed to the NBA All-Star Game Kobe Bryant Most Valuable Player in Bryant’s honor. 

The 62nd Annual Grammy Awards went ahead as scheduled at the Staples Center on the day of the crash, but included tributes by multiple artists and groups, including host Alicia Keys opening the show with a tribute speech and joining Boyz II Men to sing “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”. Bryant also appeared at the start of the In Memoriam segment of the 92nd Academy Awards, having won an Oscar in 2018, and Spike Lee wore a suit in tribute to him at the ceremony. 

Another notable final footprint at Pacific View is that of John Wayne.

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Day in History 25 January – Theo Van Gogh – Ouida – Ava Gardner – John Hurt – Mary Tyler Moore

Posted on 29 JanamThu, 25 Jan 2024 00:18:00 -06002024-01-25T00:18:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1891 art dealer, younger brother of Vincent, Theo Van Gogh died from dementia paralytica caused by “heredity, chronic disease, overwork, sadness”, in Utrecht, Netherlands, six months after Vincent, aged 33. Cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise, France, next to Vincent

#RIP #OTD in 1908 novelist (Under Two Flags, Signa) Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée) died in Via Zanardelli, Viareggio, Italy of pneumonia, aged 70. English Cemetery in Bagni di Lucca, Italy

On this day in 1990, Oscar nominated actess, Ava Gardner, died from pneumonia, in her London home at the age of 67.  Born Ava Lavinia Gardner on 24 December 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina.  Her Academy Award for Best Actress nomination was for her work in Mogambo (1953).  Gardner appeared in several high-profile films from the 1950s to 1970s, including; Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), The Sun Also Rises (1957), On the Beach (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976).  She was married three times; Mickey Rooney (1942 – 1943 divorce), Artie Shaw (1945 – 1946 divorce) and Frank Sinatra (1951 – 1957 divorce).  Gardner would later say in her autobiography that of all the men she had had, Sinatra was the love of her life.  Sinatra left his wife, Nancy, for Ava and their subsequent marriage made headlines and Sinatra was savaged by gossip columnists, the Hollywood establishment, the Roman Catholic Church, and by his fans.  Sinatra’s career was suffering while hers was prospering.  Reportedly, Gardner used her considerable clout to get Sinatra cast in his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity (1953).  That role and the award revitalized both Sinatra’s acting and singing careers.  They reportedly remained friends after the divorce.  Gardner had other famous friendships; Howard Hughes and Ernest Hemingway. 

The Final Footprint – Gardner is interred in Sunset Memorial Park in Smithfield, North Carolina.  Her grave is marked by an upright granite marker and a granite footmarker.  In Tina Sinatra‘s book “My Father’s Daughter: A Memoir”, she writes that after Gardner’s death she found her father in his room crying.  Supposedly, a floral arrangement was left at Gardner’s graveside with a card that read: “With My Love, Francis”.

#RIP #OTD in 2017 actor (Midnight Express, Alien, The Elephant Man, Harry Potter, V for Vendetta, Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Outlander, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) John Hurt died from pancreatic cancer at home in Cromer, Norfolk, England, aged 77. Cremation

Mary Tyler Moore

Mary Tyler Moore rework.jpg

at Broadway Barks, 2011

On this day in 2017, actress Mary Tyler Moore died from cardiopulmonary arrest due to pneumonia at the age of 80 in Greenwich, Connecticut. Born January 25, 2017 in Brooklyn. Perhaps best known for her roles in the television sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), in which she starred as Mary Richards, a single woman working as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), in which she played Laura Petrie, a former dancer turned Westchester homemaker, wife and mother. Her film work includes 1967’s Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980’s Ordinary People, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Due to her roles on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which her characters often broke from stereotypical images of women and pushed gender norms, Moore became a cultural icon and served as an inspiration for many younger actresses, and professional women. She was later active in charity work and various political causes, particularly the issues of animal rights, vegetarianism and diabetes. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She also suffered from alcoholism, which she wrote about in her first of two memoirs. She died from cardiopulmonary arrest due to pneumonia at the age of 80 on January 25, 2017.

in Johnny Staccato, 1960

With Dick Van Dyke, 1964

The original cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 1970. Top: Valerie Harper (Rhoda), Ed Asner (Lou Grant), Cloris Leachman (Phyllis). Bottom: Gavin MacLeod (Murray), Moore, Ted Knight (Ted). The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977

in 1978

at the 40th Primetime Emmy Awards (1988)

 

At age 18 in 1955, Moore married Richard Carleton Meeker. They divorced in 1961. Moore married Grant Tinker (1926–2016), a CBS executive (later chairman of NBC), in 1962, and in 1970 they formed the television production company MTM Enterprises, which created and produced the company’s first television series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Moore and Tinker divorced in 1981.

Moore married Robert Levine on November 23, 1983, at the Pierre Hotel in New York City.

The Final Footprint 

She was laid to rest in Oak Lawn Cemetery, in Fairfield, Connecticut, during a private ceremony. Her granite marker is inscribed;

After all…
Her spirit a beacon
Her smile eternal
She made us better
 
The angel statue above her grave is inscribed;
 
Love is all
around

A statue, designed by Gwen Gillen, at Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis replicates the hat-tossing image that opened The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

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Day in History 24 January – Caligula – Amedeo Modigliani – Sir Winston Churchill – Larry Fine – George Cukor

Posted on 29 JanamWed, 24 Jan 2024 00:03:00 -06002024-01-24T00:03:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

caligulaGaius_Caesar_CaligulaOn this day in 41 AD, Roman Emperor Caligula was assassinated, the result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers, in the cryptoporticus (underground corridor) beneath the imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill, at the age of 28.  Born Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus in Antium (modern Anzio and Nettuno) on 31 August 12 AD.  Caligula was a member of the house of rulers conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty.  Caligula’s father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome’s most beloved public figures.  The young Gaius earned the nickname Caligula (meaning “little soldier’s boot”, the diminutive form of caliga, hob-nailed military boot) from his father’s soldiers while accompanying him during his campaigns in Germania.  When Germanicus died at Antioch in AD 19, his wife Agrippina the Elder returned to Rome with her six children where she became entangled in a bitter feud with Tiberius.  The conflict eventually led to the destruction of her family, with Caligula as the sole male survivor.  Untouched by the deadly intrigues, Caligula accepted the invitation to join the emperor on the island of Capri in AD 31, to where Tiberius, himself, had withdrawn five years earlier.  With the death of Tiberius in AD 37, Caligula succeeded his great uncle and adoptive grandfather as Emperor.  There are few surviving sources about the reign of Emperor Caligula, although he is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first six months of his reign.  After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant.  While the reliability of these sources is questionable, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor, as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate.  He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself; he initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus.  During his reign, the Empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania as a province.  caligulaRoma-mausoleo_di_augusto

The Final Footprint – Caligula’s Germanic guard, stricken with grief and rage, responded with a rampaging attack on the assassins, conspirators, innocent senators and bystanders alike.  The Senate attempted to use Caligula’s death as an opportunity to restore the Republic.  The military remained loyal to the office of the emperor.  The grieving Roman people assembled and demanded that Caligula’s murderers be brought to justice.  Uncomfortable with lingering imperial support, the assassins sought out and stabbed Caligula’s wife, Caesonia, and killed their young daughter, Julia Drusilla, by smashing her head against a wall.  They were unable to reach Caligula’s uncle, Claudius, who was spirited out of the city, after being found by a soldier hiding behind a palace curtain, to the nearby Praetorian camp.  Claudius became emperor after procuring the support of the Praetorian guard and ordered the execution of known conspirators involved in the death of Caligula.  Caligula’s body was placed under turf until it was burned and entombed by his sisters.  He was entombed within the Mausoleum of Augustus; in 410 during the Sack of Rome the tomb’s ashes were scattered.  The biographical film Caligula was released in 1979.  It stars Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud.  It is the only feature film produced by the men’s magazine Penthouse.  Producer Bob Guccione, the magazine’s founder, intended to produce an explicit adult film within a feature film narrative, which had high production values.  He intended to cast Penthouse Pets as extras in unsimulated sexual scenes filmed during post-production by Guccione and Giancarlo Lui.  Guccione hired Gore Vidal to draft the film’s script and Tinto Brass to direct the film.  Brass extensively altered Vidal’s original screenplay, leading Vidal to disavow the film.  The final screenplay focuses on the idea that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  Brass and Guccione disagreed over Guccione’s use of unsimulated sexual content, which Brass refused to film.  Because the producers did not allow Brass to edit the film, changed its tone and style significantly without consulting the director and added hardcore sex scenes not filmed by Brass, he also disavowed the film.  The film’s release was controversial; it was met with legal issues and controversies over its violent and sexual content.  Although reviews were overwhelmingly negative, Caligula is considered to be a cult classic and its political content was considered to have significant merit.  In 1984, a new version of the film titled I, Caligula was distributed, adding new scenes and removing the more violent and sexually explicit ones. Other notable final footprints at the Mausoleum of Augustus include;

  • Marcus Claudius Marcellus (who was the first to be buried there, in 23 BC),
  • Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in 12 BC,
  • Nero Claudius Drusus in 9 BC,
  • Octavia Minor (the sister of Augustus) in 9 or 11 BC,
  • Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, grandsons and heirs of Augustus.

After the death of Augustus, the mausoleum hosted the ashes of:

  • Germanicus,
  • Drusus Julius Caesar (son of Tiberius),
  • Livia (wife of Augustus),
  • Agrippina the Elder,
  • Julia Livilla (daughter of Germanicus),
  • Nero Julius Caesar,
  • Drusus Caesar (son of Germanicus),
  • Tiberius,
  • Antonia Minor (mother of Claudius),
  • Julia Drusilla (daughter of Caligula),
  • Claudius,
  • Britannicus (son of Claudius),
  • Nerva

Amedeo_Modigliani_PhotoOn this day in 1920, painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis at the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris at the age of 35.  Born Amadeo Clemente Modigliani on 12 July 1884 in Livorno, Italy.  Modigliani worked mainly in France and is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures, that were not received well during his lifetime, but later found acceptance.  Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance, until he moved to Paris in 1906.  Modigliani’s oeuvre includes mainly paintings and drawings.  From 1909 to 1914 he devoted himself mainly to sculpture.  His main subject was portraits and full figures of humans, both in the images and in the sculptures.  In the spring of 1917, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Tsuguharu Foujita.  Modigliani ended his relationship with the English poet and art critic Beatrice Hastings and a short time later Hebuterne and Modigliani moved together into a studio on the Rue de la Grande Chaumière.  Jeanne began to pose for him and appears in several of his paintings. She became a principal subject for Modigliani’s art.  AmedeoModigliani

The Final Footprint – There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse.  When Modigliani died, twenty-one-year-old Hébuterne was eight months pregnant with their second child.  A day later, Hébuterne was taken to her parents’ home.  There, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window, a day after Modigliani’s death, killing herself and her unborn child.  Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery.  Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani.  A single tombstone honors them both.  His epitaph reads: “Struck down by Death at the moment of glory”.  Hers reads: “Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice”.  Two films have been made about Modigliani: Les Amants de Montparnasse (1958), directed by Jacques Becker and starring Gérard Philipe as Modigliani; and Modigliani (2004), directed by Mick Davis and starring Andy García as Modigliani.  Other notable Final Footprints at Père Lachaise include; Guillaume Apollinaire, Honoré de Balzac, Georges Bizet, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Maria Callas, Chopin, Colette, Auguste Comte, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Max Ernst, Molière, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Marcel Proust, Sully Prudhomme, Gioachino Rossini, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Simone Signoret, Gertrude Stein, Dorothea Tanning, Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Wright.

For more on Modigliani, visit  Artsy’s Amedeo Modigliani page.

Gallery of works

    • Portrait of Maude Abrantes, 1907

      Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota, 1915

      Bride and Groom, 1915

      Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, 1916

      Portrait of Beatrice Hastings, 1916

      Female nude; Iris Tree, c. 1916

      Portrait of Moise Kisling, 1915

      Madame Kisling, 1917

      Nude Sitting on a Divan (“La Belle Romaine”), 1917

      Jeanne Hébuterne, 1918

      Dedie Hayden, 1918, Centre Georges Pompidou

      Self-portrait, 1919, oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art, São Paulo, Brazil

      Gypsy Woman with Baby, 1919, National Gallery of Art

      The little peasant, 1918, Tate Modern, London

      Portrait of a Young Woman, 1918, New Orleans Museum of Art

      Buste de femme, unknown, before 1919, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)

Winston_S_ChurchillOn this day in 1965, British Army veteran, politician, statesman, author, historian, The Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, Knight of the Garter, Order of Merit, Companion of Honour, Territorial Decoration, Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Deputy Lieutenant, Fellow of the Royal Society, died at his home in Hyde Park, London, England at the age of 90.  Born Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill on 30 November 1874 in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England into the Spencer family a British noble family descended in the male line from Henry Spencer (died c. 1478), male-line ancestor of the Earls of Sunderland, the later Dukes of Marlborough, and the Earls Spencer.  Churchill was a grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough.  Diana, Princess of Wales was a member of the Spencer family as a daughter of the 8th Earl Spencer.  As of this date, he is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and he was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.  Beginning in 1932, Churchill took the lead in warning about the danger of German rearmament.  On the outbreak of WWII, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.  Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  His steadfast refusal to consider defeat, surrender or a compromise peace, helped inspire British resistance, especially during the difficult early days of the War when Britain stood alone in its active opposition to Hitler.  Churchill was particularly noted for his speeches and radio broadcasts, which helped inspire the British people and the embattled Allied forces.  His first speech as prime minister was the famous “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”.  Two other equally famous quotes were given just before the Battle of Britain. One included the words:

… we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The other:

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.

At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the situation included the memorable line “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, which engendered the enduring nickname The Few for the RAF fighter pilots who won it.  One of his most memorable war speeches came on 10 November 1942 at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon at Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Churchill stated:

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

He led Britain as Prime Minister until victory had been secured over Nazi Germany.  In my opinion, one of the great wartime leaders.  Churchill was married to Clementine Ogilvy Spencer-Churchill, Baroness Spencer-Churchill.  I have spoken to some British citizens who said if not for Churchill they would be speaking German.  

The Final Footprint – Churchill is entombed in a double depth marble crypt with his wife in the Spencer-Churchill family estate in St. Martin Churchyard, Bladon, Oxfordshire, England.  The crypt is inscribed with their names and birth and death dates.  By decree of the Queen, his body lay in state for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral.  As his lead-lined coffin passed down the River Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier on the Havengore, dockers lowered their crane jibs in a salute.  The Royal Artillery fired a 19-gun salute (as head of government), and the RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen English Electric Lightning fighters.  The coffin was then taken to Waterloo Station where it was loaded onto a specially prepared and painted carriage as part of the funeral train for its rail journey to Bladon.  The funeral train of Pullman coaches carrying his family was hauled by Bulleid Pacific steam locomotive No. 34051 “Winston Churchill”.  Along the route, thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects.  Later in 1965 a memorial to Churchill, cut by the engraver Reynolds Stone, was placed in Westminster Abbey.  A bronze statue of Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt was installed on New Bond Street in London and a bronze statue of Churchill was installed in Parliament Square in London.  Churchill died on the same day, 70 years after his father Lord Randolph Churchill died.  The popular cigar size, Churchill is named after Churchill.  I have enjoyed many a good Churchill and look forward to many more.

#RIP #OTD in 1975 actor, boxer, comedian and musician, one of the Three Stooges, Larry Fine died at the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, California, aged 75. Entombed nest to his wife and son in Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Freedom Mausoleum

#RIP #OTD in 1983 film director (Camille, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady) George Cukor died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, aged 83. Garden of Memory, Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale), California

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Day in History 23 January – Arthur Guinness – Gustave Doré – Anna Pavlova – Edvard Munch – Salvador Dalí – Johnny Carson – Jack Lalanne – Hal Holbrook

Posted on 29 JanamTue, 23 Jan 2024 00:54:00 -06002024-01-23T00:54:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Arthur_GuinnessOn this day in 1803, Irish brewer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder of the Guinness brewery business, Arthur Guinness died in Dublin at the approximate age of 78.  Born into the Irish Protestant Guinness family in 1724 or 1725 in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.  In 1752, Guinness’s godfather Arthur Price, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Cashel, bequeathed him £100 in his will.  Guinness invested the money and in 1755 had a brewery at Leixlip, just 17 km from Dublin.  In 1759, Guinness went to the city and set up his own business.  He took a 9,000 year lease on the 4-acre (16,000 m2) brewery at St. James’s Gate from the descendants of Sir Mark Rainsford for an annual rent of £45.  In 1761 he married Olivia Whitmore in St. Mary’s Church, Dublin, and they had 21 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood.  Guinness’s florid signature is still copied on every label of bottled Guinness.

The Final Footprint – Guinness is buried in his mother’s family plot at Oughterard, County Kildare.

#RIP #OTD in 1883 artist, as a printmaker, illustrator (Paradise Lost, The Tempest, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Raven), painter, comics artist, caricaturist, and sculptor Gustave Doré died in Paris, aged 51. Père Lachaise Cemetery

#RIP #OTD in 1931 prima ballerina with the Imperial Russian Ballet & the Ballets Russes, (The Dying Swann) Anna Pavlova died of pleurisy, in the bedroom next to the Japanese Salon of the Hotel Des Indes in The Hague, aged 49. Cremated remains at Golders Green Crematorium, London

Edvard_Munch_1921On this day in 1944, painter Edvard Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo, about a month after his 80th birthday.  Born in a farmhouse in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten on 12 December 1863.  Munch’s intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.  Perhaps best known for The Scream (1893). 

The Final Footprint – Munch is interred in Vår Frelsers Gravlund (Cemetery of Our Saviour), Oslo.  When Munch died, his remaining works were bequeathed to the city of Oslo, which built the Munch Museum at Tøyen (it opened in 1963).  The museum hosts a collection of approximately 1,100 paintings, 4,500 drawings, and 18,000 prints, the broadest collection of his works in the world. 

    • Gallery
    • The Scream. 1893. Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
    • The Dance of Life. 1899–1900. Oil on canvas, 49½ × 75 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
    • Ashes. 1894. Oil on canvas. 120.5 × 141 cm. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
    • Madonna. 1894. Oil on canvas. 90 × 68 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • The Seine at Saint-Cloud. 1890. 46 × 38 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo. 1892. 74,5 × 116 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • August Strindberg. 1892. Oil on canvas, 120 × 90 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden
    • Death in the Sickroom. 1893. 134 × 160 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Starry Night. 1893. 135.6 × 140 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum.
    • Vampire. 1895. 91 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Anxiety. 1894. 94 × 74 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Death in the Sickroom. c. 1895. Oil on canvas. 59 × 66 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
    • Lady From the Sea (detail). 1896. Oil on canvas. 39½ × 126 in.
    • Separation. 1896. 96 × 127 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • The Voice / Summer Night. 1896. 90 × 119 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • The Kiss. 1897. 99 × 81 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Inheritance. 1897–99. 141 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Metabolism. 1898–99. 172 × 142 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Red and White. 1899–1900. 93 × 129 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Train Smoke. 1900. 84 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Consul Christen Sandberg. 1901. 215 × 147 cm. Munch Museum, Osl0
    • Four Girls in Åsgårdstrand. 1903. 87 × 111 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Shore with Red House. 1904. 69 × 109 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche (1906)
    • Death of Marat I (1907)
    • Jealousy. 1907. 75 × 98 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • The Sun. 1910–11. 450 × 772 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Galloping Horse. 1910–12. 148 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • The Yellow Log. 1912. 129.5 × 159.5 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • On the Sofa. 1913. 80 × 150 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
  • Weeping Nude. 1913–14. 110 × 135 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Self-portraits

    • Self-Portrait. 1882. 26 × 19 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Self-Portrait in Hell. 1903. 82 × 66 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
    • Self-Portrait with Brushes. 1904. 197 × 91 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo
  • Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine. 1906. 110 × 120 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo

Photographs

    • Portrait at 26 years
    • Portrait of Edvard Munch 1902.
    • Portrait of Edvard Munch
  • Portrait of Edvard Munch 1929

Salvador_Dalí_1939On this day in 1989 prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter, Salvador Dali died while his favorite record of Tristan and Isolde played, of heart failure at Figueres, Spain at the age of 84.  Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on 11 May 1904, in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region, close to the French border in Catalonia.  Dalí was a skilled draftsman, perhaps best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work.  His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters.  Perhaps his best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931.  Dalí’s expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.  Dalí attributed his “love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes” to an “Arab lineage”, claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.  Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior.  Dalí married Elena Ivanovna Diakonova “Gala”.  salvadorDali_museum

The Final Footprint – Dalí  is entombed in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre and Museum in Figueres.  The location is across the street from the church of Sant Pere, where he had his baptism, first communion, and funeral, and is only three blocks from the house where he was born.  The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation currently serves as his official estate.  Dalí has been cited as major inspiration from many modern artists.  His manic expression and famous moustache have made him something of a cultural icon for the bizarre and surreal.  He has been portrayed on film by Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes, and Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris.

Gallery

    • Gala in the Window (1933) Marbella

    • The Rainbow (1972), M.T. Abraham Foundation

    • Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (1956) Puerto José Banús

    • Plaza de Dalí (Dalí Square), Madrid

    • Perseo (Perseus) Marbella

  • Children at Dalí exhibition in Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul

Johnny_Carson_1965-231x300On this day in 2005, U.S. Navy veteran, television host, comedian, Emmy winner, American icon, Johnny Carson, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of respiratory failure arising from emphysema, in Los Angeles, California at the age of 79.  Born John William Carson on 23 October 1925 in Corning, Iowa.  NBC invited him to replace Jack Paar as host of The Tonight Show, who would leave in March 1962.  Carson declined the offer, but NBC asked him again after Bob Newhart, Jackie Gleason, and Joey Bishop also refused.  Carson accepted in March and on 1 October 1962, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson premiered.  His announcer and sidekick was Ed McMahon throughout the program. McMahon’s opening line, “Heeeere’s Johnny” became a hallmark.  Carson’s trademark was a phantom golf swing at the end of his monologues, aimed stage left where Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band were located.  Paul Anka wrote the theme song (“Johnny’s Theme”), a reworking of his “Toot Sweet”.  In May 1972, the show moved from New York to Burbank, California.  Carson often joked about “beautiful downtown Burbank”.  Carson played several continuing characters on sketches during the show, including; Art Fern the “Tea Time Movie” announcer, Carnac the Magnificent and Floyd R. Turbo American.  Carson retired from show business on 22 May 1992, when he stepped down as host of The Tonight Show.  His farewell was a major media event, and stretched over several nights.  It was often emotional for Carson, his colleagues, and the audiences, particularly the farewell statement he delivered on his 4,531st and final Tonight Show:

“ And so it has come to this: I, uh — am one of the lucky people in the world; I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it. I want to thank the gentlemen who’ve shared this stage with me for thirty years, Mr. Ed McMahon — Mr. Doc Severinsen — and — you people watching, I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes all these years and entertain you — and I hope when I find something that I want to do, and I think you would like, and come back, that you’ll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt good night. ”

Carson was married four times; Joan Morril Wolcott (1949 – 1963 divorce), Joanne Copeland (1963 – 1972 divorce), Joanna Holland (1972 – 1985 divorce) and Alexandra Mass (1987 – 2005 his death).

The Final Footprint – Carson was cremated and his cremains were given to his family.  In accordance with his family’s wishes, no public memorial service was held.  Numerous tributes were paid to Carson upon his death including a statement by then-President George W. Bush, all recognizing the deep and enduring affection held for him.  The day after his death, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno paid tribute to Carson with guests McMahon, Newhart, Don Rickles, Drew Carey and k.d. lang.  David Letterman followed suit on January 31 with former Tonight Show executive producer Peter Lassally and Severinsen.  At the beginning of this show, Letterman said that for thirty years no matter what was going on in the world, whether people had a good or bad day, they wanted to end it being “tucked in by Johnny.”  He also told his viewers that the monologue he had just spoken, which was very well received by the studio audience, consisted entirely of jokes sent to him by Carson in the last few months of his life.  Severinsen ended the Letterman show that night by playing, along with Tommy Newsom, one of Carson’s two favorite songs, “Here’s That Rainy Day” (the other was “I’ll Be Seeing You”).  The 2005 film The Aristocrats was dedicated to Carson.  At the 1st Annual Comedy Awards on Comedy Central, the Johnny Carson Award was given to Letterman.  A two-hour documentary about his life, Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, aired on PBS on 14 May 2012, as part of their American Masters series.  It is narrated by Kevin Spacey and features interviews with many of Carson’s family, fellow comedians and protégés.

#RIP #OTD in 2011 fitness and nutrition guru and motivational speaker Jack LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia at his home in Morro Bay, California, aged 96. Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 actor (Mark Twain Tonight!, All the President’s Men, Wall Street, The Firm, Men of Honor, Into the Wild), Hal Holbrook died at his home in Beverly Hills, aged 95. McLemoresville Cemetery in McLemoresville, Tennessee, alongside his wife, Dixie Carter

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Day in History 22 January – LBJ – Telly Savalas – Rose Kennedy – Heath Ledger – Jean Simmons – Hank Aaron

Posted on 29 JanamMon, 22 Jan 2024 00:09:00 -06002024-01-22T00:09:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

How ironic: Johnson and the Kennedys, inextricably linked in life.  And linked in death.

On this day in 1973, U.S. congressman from Texas, U.S. Senator from Texas, 11th U.S. Senate Majority leader, 37th Vice President of the United States, 36th President of the United States, LBJ, Lyndon Johnson, died from a heart attack at his ranch near Stonewall, Texas, in bed with a phone in his hand at the age of 64.  Born Lyndon Baines Johnson near Stonewall, Texas, on 27 August 1908, in a small farmhouse near the Pedernales River (pronounced perd-uh-nall-us).  His father was a farmer, cattle speculator and Texas congressman who always struggled financially and LBJ apparently desperately wanted to escape the poverty he grew up with.  He graduated from Southwest Texas Texas State Teacher’s College, now known as Texas State University – San Marcos.   LBJ is one of four people who served in all four elected Federal offices of the United States.  In my opinion, LBJ was the most powerful and influential senate leader in the history of the senate.  After campaigning unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1960, LBJ was asked by John F. Kennedy to be his running mate for the 1960 presidential election.  LBJ succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of JFK, completed Kennedy’s term and was elected President in his own right, winning by a large margin in the 1964 Presidential election over Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.  LBJ was responsible for designing the “Great Society” legislation that included laws that upheld civil rights, Public Broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, aid to education, and his “War on Poverty.”  He was renowned for his domineering personality and the “Johnson treatment,” his coercion of powerful politicians in order to advance legislation.  LBJ greatly escalated direct American involvement in the Vietnam War.  As the war dragged on, LBJ’s popularity as president steadily declined.  He decided not to run in the 1968 United States presidential election amid growing opposition to his policy on the Vietnam War.  He was married to Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Taylor.  Together, they purchased and created a media empire in Austin, Texas that came to inlcude KLBJ-FM, KLBJ-AM and the KLBJ CBS affiliate.  After leaving the presidency, LBJ went home to his ranch in Stonewall, Texas.  The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs (or LBJ School of Public Affairs), a graduate school at The University of Texas at Austin, was founded in 1970 to offer professional training in public policy analysis and administration for students interested in pursuing careers in government and public affairs-related areas of the private and nonprofit sectors.  Degree programs include a Masters of Public Affairs (MPAff), a mid-career MPAff sequence, thirteen MPAff dual degree programs, a Masters of Global Policy Studies (MGPS), six MGPS dual degree programs and a Ph.D. in Public Policy.  In 1971, he published his memoirs, The Vantage Point.  That year, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum opened near the campus of The University of Texas at Austin.  LBJ donated his Texas ranch in his will to the public to form the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, with the provision that the ranch “remain a working ranch and not become a sterile relic of the past”.  LBJ is ranked favorably by some historians based on his domestic policies.  He understood power; how to find it, how to get it and how to use it.  I believe LBJ was driven by three things; he wanted to be wealthy, he wanted to be president and he wanted to help people.  He wanted his initials, LBJ, to be as widely recognized, if not more so than FDR and JFK.  A fascinating, complex and controversial man.  For those who want to know more about LBJ, I highly recommend Robert Caro‘s four volume biography; The Years of Lyndon Johnson.  The first book, The Path to Power (1982) covers LBJ’s life up to his failed 1941 campaign for the United States Senate.  The second volume, Means of Ascent (1990), commences in the aftermath of that defeat and continues through his election to that office in 1948.  The third volume, Master of the Senate (2002) chronicles LBJ’s rapid ascent and rule as Senate Majority Leader.  The fourth volume, The Passage of Power (2012), covers LBJ’s life from 1958 to 1964.  Caro announced in November 2011 that the full project had expanded to five volumes with the fifth volume requiring another two to three years to write.  Also recommended are Taking Charge (1998) and Reaching for Glory (2002), the two volume set of LBJ’s secret White House tapes transcribed, edited and explained by Michael Beschloss.  The grounds of the LBJ library include a fountain, large live oak trees, benches and tables.  I have spent much time there; walking the grounds at night and during the day, picnics with one of my daughters.  I even kissed a pretty girl there one night. 

The Final Footprint –  Walter Cronkite was live on the air with the CBS Evening News when word was received that LBJ had died.  A report on Vietnam was cut short abruptly so he could break the news.  Cronkite also announced JFK’s death live on air.  Johnson was honored with a state funeral in which Texas Congressman J. J. Pickle and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk eulogized him at the Capitol.  The final services took place on January 25.  The funeral was held at the National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C., where he had often worshiped as president.  The service was presided over by President Richard Nixon and attended by foreign dignitaries, led by former Japanese prime minister Eisaku Satō, who served as Japanese prime minister during Johnson’s presidency.  Eulogies were given by the Rev. Dr. George Davis, the church’s pastor, and W. Marvin Watson, former postmaster general.  Nixon mentioned Johnson’s death in a speech he gave the day after Johnson died, announcing the peace agreement to end the Vietnam War.  Johnson was buried in his family cemetery (which, although it is part of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park in Stonewall, Texas, is still privately owned by the Johnson family, who have requested that the public not enter the cemetery), a few yards from the house in which he was born.  Eulogies were given by John Connally and the Rev. Billy Graham, the minister who officiated the burial rites.  The state funeral, the last for a president until Ronald Reagan’s in 2004, was part of an unexpectedly busy week in Washington, as the Military District of Washington (MDW) dealt with their second major task in less than a week, beginning with Nixon’s second inauguration.  The inauguration had an impact on the state funeral in various ways, because Johnson died only two days after the inauguration.  The MDW and the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee canceled the remainder of the ceremonies surrounding the inauguration to allow for a full state funeral, and many of the military men who participated in the inauguration took part in the funeral.  It also meant Johnson’s casket traveled the entire length of the Capitol, entering through the Senate wing when taken into the rotunda to lie in state and exited through the House wing steps due to construction on the East Front steps.

#RIP #OTD in 1994 actor, singer (Kojak, Ernst Stavro Blofeld in James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) Telly Savalas died of complications of bladder & prostate cancer at the Sheraton-Universal Hotel in Universal City, California. Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery

Rose_Kennedy_1967On this day in 1995, American philanthropist, the wife of Joseph P. Kennedy, and the mother of nine children, among them United States President John F. Kennedy, United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and United States Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy, Countess (title granted by Pope Pius XII), Rose Kennedy died from complications from pneumonia at the age of 104 in Hyannis, Massachusetts.  Born Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald on 22 July 1890 in the North End neighborhood of Boston. 

The Final Footprint – Kennedy is interred in the Kennedy family estate in Holyhood Cemetery, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger.jpg

at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2006

On this day in 2008, actor and director Heath Ledger died from cardiac arrest brought on by prescription drug intoxication in his fourth-floor loft apartment at 421 Broome Street in the SoHo neighbourhood of Manhattan, at the age of 28. Born Heathcliff Andrew Ledger on 4 April 1979 in Perth, Australia. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight’s Tale (2001), Monster’s Ball (2001), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus(2009), the latter two being posthumous releases. He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.

For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor. For his portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight, Ledger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Ledger’s portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain led him to receive his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 2005.

at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2006

The Final Footprint

After attending private memorial ceremonies in Los Angeles, Ledger’s family members returned with his body to Perth.

On 9 February, a memorial service attended by several hundred invited guests was held at Penrhos College. Ledger was cremated at Fremantle Cemetery, followed by a private service.  His cremains are interred in a family plot at Karrakatta Cemetery, next to two of his grandparents. Later that night, his family and friends gathered for a wake on Cottesloe Beach.

on the March 2006 cover of Rolling Stone

“You know when you see the preachers down South? And they grab a believer and they go, ‘Bwoom! I touch you with the hand of God!’ And they believe so strongly, they’re on the ground shaking and spitting. And fuck’s sake, that’s the power of belief… Now, I don’t believe in Jesus, but I believe in my performance. And if you can understand that the power of belief is one of the great tools of our time and that a lot of acting comes from it, you can do anything.”

—Ledger, during the interview with Rolling Stone in 2006, on belief, power and acting.

as The Joker

On this day in 2010, actress and singer Jean Simmons died from lung cancer at her home in Santa Monica at the age of 80. Born Jean Merilyn Simmons on 31 January 1929 in . She appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Great Britain during and after World War II, followed mainly by Hollywood films from 1950 onwards. Simmons was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hamlet (1948), and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Guys and Dolls (1955). Other notable film appearances included Young Bess (1953), The Robe (1953), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Spartacus (1960), and the 1969 film The Happy Ending, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won an Emmy Award for the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds.

Simmons was married and divorced twice. She married Stewart Granger in Tucson, Arizona on 20 December 1950. In 1956, Granger and she became U.S. citizens. The couple divorced in 1960. On 1 November 1960, Simmons married director Richard Brooks. Simmons and Brooks divorced in 1980. Simmons moved to the East Coast of the US in the late 1970s, briefly owning a home in New Milford, Connecticut. Later, she returned to California, settling in Santa Monica, California, where she lived until her death.

The Final Footprint

She was buried in Highgate Cemetery in north London. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West Cemetery and the East Cemetery at Highgate Cemetery. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as well as for its de facto status as a nature reserve. The Cemetery is designated Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London. Her epitaph from the Thomas Hardy poem, Regret Not Me…

Swift as the light
I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved,
and feared no night.

Other notable final footprints at Highgate include; George Eliot, Karl Marx, George Michael, Christina Rossetti, and Elizabeth Siddal.

And on this day in 2021 nicknamed “Hammer” or “Hammerin’ Hank“, professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1954 through 1976, Hank Aaron died in his sleep in his Atlanta residence at the age of 86.  Born Henry Louis Aaron in Mobile, Alabama on 5 February 1934.

In my opinion, one of the greatest baseball players in history, he spent 21 seasons with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL). At the time of his retirement, Aaron held most of the game’s key career power-hitting records. He broke the long-standing MLB record for home runs held by Babe Ruth. He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973 and hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times.

The Final Footprint – His funeral was held on January 27, 2021, followed by his burial at South View Cemetery, Atlanta.

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Day in History 21 January – Louis XVI – Lytton Strachey – George Orwell – Cecil B. Demille – Carl Switzer – Ann Sheridan – Jackie Wilson – Jack Lord – Peggy Lee

Posted on 29 JanamSun, 21 Jan 2024 00:03:00 -06002024-01-21T00:03:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1793, King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, then King of the French from 1791 to 1792, Louis XVI, was executed by guillotine at the age of 37 at the Place de la Révolution, now known as the Place de la Concorde in Paris.  Born Louis Auguste de France, Duc de Berry on 23 August 1754 in the Palace of Versailles.  Louis-Auguste was the third son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and thus the grandson of Louis XV of France.  His brothers and father predeceased Louis XV, thus Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin.  On 16 May 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Auguste married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia (better known by the French form of her name, Marie Antoinette), his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife, the formidable Empress Maria Theresa.  Louis XV died on 10 May 1774 and Louis-Auguste Dauphin was crowned king on 11 June 1775 at the age of 20.  Suspended and arrested as part of the insurrection of the 10th of August in 1792 during the French Revolution, he was tried by the National Convention and found guilty of high treason, the only king of France ever to be executed.  Although Louis XVI was beloved at first, his indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to eventually view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime and gave him the nickname Oncle Louis (“Uncle Louis”).  Louis was also nicknamed Louis le Dernier (Louis the Last), a derisive use of the traditional nicknaming of French kings.

Funerary statue of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

The Final Footprint – Upon arrival at the Place de la Révolution, Louis stepped out of the carriage and removed his outer garments, refusing any offers of help, and folded them neatly.  The gendarmes made a move to bind his hands, but Louis recoiled, and a struggle seemed imminent, until Father Edgeworth reminded him that Jesus had suffered his hands to be bound on Good Friday.  Louis said, “So be it, then, that too, my God,” and offered his hands to be bound.  He ascended the steps to the scaffold alone, with strength and determination.  Upon reaching the top, he addressed the people:

“I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.”

He would have said more, but a man on horseback called for the drums, and the crowd called for the execution, which was hastily carried out.  A young guard picked up the severed head and promenaded it around the scaffold.  The silence was broken with a cry of “Vive la République!” and thousands began cheering the death of the king.  Louis XVI’s body was interred in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of L’église de la Madeleine.  When Marie was guillotined on 16 October 1793, she was interred there as well.  The Chapelle expiatoire was partly constructed on the grounds of the former Madeleine Cemetery.  There is an inscription above the entrance, which reads (translated): “King Louis XVIII raised this monumnet to consecrate the place where the mortal remains of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, transferred on 21 January 1815 in the royal tomb of Saint-Denis, reposed for 21 years.  It was finished during the second year of the reign of Charles X , year of grace 1826.”  During Napoleon’s exile in Elba, the restored Bourbons ordered a search for the corpses of Louis XVI and Marie.  The few remains, a few bones that were presumably the king’s and a clump of greyish matter containing a lady’s garter, were found on 21 January 1815, brought to the Cathedral Basilica of Saint-Denis and entombed in the crypt.

#RIP #OTD in 1932 writer (Eminent Victorians), critic, a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, Lytton Strachey died of stomach cancer in Ham, Wiltshire, England, aged 51. St. Andrew’s Churchyard, Chew Magna, Somerset, England.  His reported final words were: “If this is dying, then I don’t think much of it.”

On this day in 1950, novelist, essayist, journalist and critic George Orwell died from a pulmonary aneurysm in University College Hospital in London, at the age of 46. Born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in Motihari, Bihar, British India (present-day East Champaran, Bihar, India). His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, are widely acclaimed, as are his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.

Orwell’s work continues to influence popular and political culture and the term “Orwellian”—descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices—has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, including “Big Brother”, “Thought Police”, “Room 101”, “memory hole”, “newspeak”, “doublethink”, “proles”, “unperson” and “thoughtcrime”.

Orwell married Eileen O’Shaugnessy on 9 June 1936, at St Mary’s Church, Wallington, Hertfordshire. Eileen died on 29 March 1945 in Newcastle upon Tyne.

In mid-1949, he courted Sonia Brownell, and they announced their engagement in September, shortly before he was removed to University College Hospital in London. Orwell’s wedding took place in the hospital room on 13 October 1949.

The Final Footprint 

Orwell had requested to be buried in accordance with the Anglican rite in the graveyard of the closest church to wherever he happened to die. The graveyards in central London had no space, and fearing that he might have to be cremated against his wishes, his widow appealed to his friends to see whether any of them knew of a church with space in its graveyard. His friend David Astor lived in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, and arranged for Orwell to be interred in the churchyard of All Saints’ there. Orwell’s gravestone bears the simple epitaph: “Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born June 25th 1903, died January 21st 1950”; no mention is made on the gravestone of his more famous pen name.

#RIP #OTD in 1959 film director (The Ten Commandments, Cleopatra, Samson and Delilah, The Greatest Show on Earth), producer and actor Cecil B. DeMille died from a heart attack in Hollywood, aged 77. Hollywood Forever Cemetery

#RIP #OTD in 1959 singer, child actor (Alfalfa in Our Gang), dog breeder, and guide, Carl Switzer was fatally shot by an acquaintance in a dispute over money; Mission Hills, California aged 31. Hollywood Forever

#RIP #OTD in 1967 actress (San Quentin, Angels with Dirty Faces, They Drive by Night, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Kings Row, Nora Prentiss, I Was a Male War Bride) Ann Sheridan died from esophageal cancer in Los Angeles, aged 51. Chapel Columbarium, Hollywood Forever Cemetery

#RIP #OTD in 1984 singer (“That’s Why (I Love You So)”, “I’ll Be Satisfied”, “Lonely Teardrops”) Mr. Excitement, Jackie Wilson died from pneumonia complications in Mount Holly, New Jersey, aged 49. Westlawn Cemetery, Wayne, Michigan

On this day in 1998, actor, director and producer Jack Lord died of congestive heart failure at his home in Honolulu, at age 77. Born John Joseph Patrick Ryan on December 30, 1920 in Brooklyn. Perhaps best known for his starring role as Steve McGarrett in the CBS television program Hawaii Five-O, which ran from 1968 to 1980. Lord was the first actor to play the character Felix Leiter in the James Bond film series, introduced in the first Bond film, Dr. No.

Lord’s first marriage to Anne Willard ended in divorce in 1947. He met his second wife while house hunting in upstate New York. On January 17, 1949, Lord married Marie de Narde, who gave up her career in fashion design to devote her life to him. Marie designed Lord’s off-camera wardrobe, as well as her own.

Lord was known for being a cultured man who loved reading poetry out loud on the set of his television show and for being reclusive at his Honolulu home.

The Final Footprint

Cremains scattered in the Pacific near his home.

On this day in 2002, jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress Peggy Lee died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack in Bel Air, Los Angeles, at the age of 81. Born Norma Deloris Egstrom on May 26, 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota. Her career spanned six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman‘s big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. During her career, she wrote music for films, acted, and recorded conceptual record albums that combined poetry and music. Lee was nominated for twelve Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit “Is That All There Is?” In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lee was married four times: to guitarist and composer Dave Barbour (1943–1951), actor Brad Dexter (1953), actor Dewey Martin (1956–1958), and percussionist Jack Del Rio (1964–1965). All the marriages ended in divorce.

The Final Footprint

She was cremated and her ashes were inurned in a bench-style monument in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Other notable final footprints at Westwood include; Ray Bradbury, Sammy Cahn, James Coburn, Rodney Dangerfield, Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh, Farrah Fawcett, Hugh Hefner, Brian Keith, Don Knotts, Burt Lancaster, Peter Lawford, 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.

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Day in History 20 January – Robinson Jeffers – Johnny Weissmuller – Audrey Hepburn – Barbara Stanwyck – Etta James – Meat Loaf

Posted on 29 JanamSat, 20 Jan 2024 00:33:00 -06002024-01-20T00:33:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

#RIP #OTD in 1962 poet, known for his work about the central California coast, much of it written in narrative and epic form, icon of the environmental movement, Robinson Jeffers died in Carmel, California, aged 75. Cremated remains scattered at his home, Tor House in Carmel

On this day in 1984, competition swimmer and actor Johnny Weissmuller died from pulmonary edema in Acapulco at the age of 79. Born 2 June 1904 in Szabadfalva (Freidorf), Austro-Hungarian Empire (today part of Timișoara (Temeschwar), Romania). Perhaps best known for playing Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s Tarzan in films of the 1930s and 1940s and for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century.

Weissmuller was one of the world’s fastest swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals for swimming and one bronze medal for water polo. He was the first to break the one minute barrier for 100-meter freestyle, and the first to swim 440-yard freestyle under five minutes. He won fifty-two U.S. national championships, set more than 50 world records (spread over both freestyle and backstroke), and was purportedly undefeated in official competition for the entirety of his competitive career. After retiring from competitions, he became the sixth actor to portray Tarzan, a role he played in twelve feature films. Weissmuller’s distinctive Tarzan yell is still often used in films in his legacy.

With his second wife, the Mexican actress Lupe Vélez in a newspaper press photo (1934)

Weissmuller had five wives: band and club singer Bobbe Arnst (married 1931 – divorced 1933); actress Lupe Vélez (married 1933 – divorced 1939); Beryl Scott (married 1939 – divorced 1948); Allene Gates (married 1948 – divorced 1962); and Maria Baumann (from 1963 until his death in 1984).

The Final Footprint

He was buried just outside Acapulco, Valle de La Luz at the Valley of the Light Cemetery. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, a recording of the Tarzan yell he invented was played three times, at his request. He was honored with a 21-gun salute, befitting a head-of-state, which was arranged by Senator Ted Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan.

On this day in 1993, Oscar, Tony, Grammy and Emmy-winner, actress, humanitarian, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Audrey Hepburn died at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63 from appendiceal cancer.  Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston on 4 May 1929 in Ixelles, Belgium.  Hepburn’s father was an English banker of Irish descent and her mother was a Dutch aristocrat.  Her father later prefixed the surname of his maternal grandmother, Kathleen Hepburn, to the their and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston.  Oh my, where do we begin.  She is one of my very favorite actresses.  My favorite Hepburn movies: Roman Holiday (1953), Sabrina (1954), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), My Fair Lady (1964).  Hepburn was chosen to play the lead character in the Broadway play Gigi, that opened on 24 November 1951.  The writer Colette, when she first saw Hepburn, reportedly said “Voilà! There’s our Gigi”.  She and her co-star from Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck, became lifelong friends.  During the shooting of Sabrina, Hepburn was sent to a then young and upcoming fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy to decide on her wardrobe.  Givenchy and Hepburn developed a lasting friendship, and she was often a muse for many of his designs.  They formed a lifelong friendship and partnership.  Also, during the filming of Sabrina, Hepburn became romantically involved with co-star William Holden.  Hepburn was married twice; Mel Ferrer (1954 -1968 divorce) and Andrea Dotti (1969 – 1982 divorce). 

The Final Footprint – Funeral services were held at the village church of Tolochenaz, Switzerland, on 24 January 1993.  Maurice Eindiguer, the same pastor who wed Hepburn and Ferrer and baptised her son Sean in 1960, presided over her funeral while Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, of UNICEF, delivered a eulogy.  Family members and friends attended the funeral, including her sons, partner Robert Wolders, brother Ian Quarles van Ufford, ex-husbands Dotti and Ferrer, Givenchy, executives of UNICEF, and fellow actors Alain Delon and Roger Moore.  Flower arrangements were sent to the funeral by Peck, Elizabeth Taylor and the Dutch royal family.  Hepburn is interred in Tolochenaz Cemetery.  Her grave is marked by a full ledger granite marker with a granite cross.  After her death, Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favourite poem, “Unending Love” by Rabindranath Tagore.  This is one of my favorite poems.  Do yourself a favor and read it, soon and often.

Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck 1943.jpg

in 1943

On this day in 1990, model, dancer and actress Barbara Stanwyck died aged 82, of congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907 in Brooklyn. Stanwyck was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career for her strong, realistic screen presence. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood, before turning to television.

Orphaned at the age of four and partially raised in foster homes, by 1944 Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times, for Stella Dallas (1937), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). For her television work, she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), The Big Valley (1966) and The Thorn Birds (1983).

She received an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony. Stanwyck received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

as a Ziegfeld girl (c. 1924)

In The Gay Sisters (1942)

With Ralph Meeker in Jeopardy (1953)

With Robert Taylor in 1941

While playing in The Noose, Stanwyck reportedly fell in love with her married co-star, Rex Cherryman. Cherryman had become ill early in 1928 and his doctor advised him to take a sea voyage to Paris where he and Stanwyck had arranged to meet. While still at sea, he died of septic poisoning at the age of 31.

On August 26, 1928, Stanwyck married her Burlesque co-star, Frank Fay. She and Fay later claimed they disliked each other at first, but became close after Cherryman’s death. A botched abortion at the age of 15 had resulted in complications which left Stanwyck unable to have children. The marriage was a troubled one. Fay’s successful career on Broadway did not translate to the big screen, whereas Stanwyck achieved Hollywood stardom. Fay was reportedly physically abusive to his young wife, especially when he was inebriated. Some claim that this union was the basis for A Star Is Born. The couple divorced on December 30, 1935.

In 1936, while making the film His Brother’s Wife (1936), Stanwyck became involved with her co-star, Robert Taylor. Stanwyck served as support and adviser to the younger Taylor, who had come from a small Nebraska town. She guided his career, and acclimated him to the sophisticated Hollywood culture. The couple began living together, sparking newspaper reports about the two. Stanwyck was hesitant to remarry after the failure of her first marriage. However, their 1939 marriage was arranged with the help of Taylor’s studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a common practice in Hollywood’s golden age. Louis B. Mayer went as far as presiding over arrangements at the wedding. She and Taylor enjoyed time together outdoors during the early years of their marriage, and owned acres of prime West Los Angeles property. Their large ranch and home in the Mandeville Canyon section of Brentwood, Los Angeles, is still referred to by the locals as the old “Robert Taylor ranch.”

Stanwyck and Taylor mutually decided in 1950 to divorce. Taylor had romantic affairs, and there were unsubstantiated rumors about Stanwyck having had affairs as well. After the divorce, they acted together in Stanwyck’s last feature film, The Night Walker (1964). She never remarried and cited Taylor as the love of her life, according to her friend and Big Valley co-star Linda Evans. She took his death in 1969 very hard, and took a long break from film and television work.

Stanwyck had a romantic affair with actor Robert Wagner, whom she met on the set of Titanic (1953). Wagner, who was 22, and Stanwyck, who was 45 at the beginning of the relationship, had a four-year romance, which is described in Wagner’s memoir Pieces of My Heart (2008). Stanwyck ended the relationship. In the 1950s, Stanwyck reportedly also had a one-night stand with the much younger Farley Granger, which he wrote about in his autobiography Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway (2007)

The Final Footprint

She had indicated that she wanted no funeral service. In accordance with her wishes, her remains were cremated and the ashes scattered from a helicopter over Lone Pine, California, where she had made some of her western films.

On this day in 2012, singer, songwriter Etta James died from leukemia five days before her 74th birthday, at Riverside Community Hospital in Riverside, California.  Born Jamesetta Hawkins on 25 January 1938, in Los Angeles.  Her style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, R&B, soul, rock and roll, jazz and gospel.  Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as “The Wallflower”, “At Last”, “Tell Mama”, “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”, and “I’d Rather Go Blind” for which she wrote the lyrics.  James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and was the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards.  She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008.  James was married to Artis Mills. 

The Final Footprint – Her funeral, presided over by Reverend Al Sharpton, took place in Gardena, California eight days after her death.  Stevie Wonder and Christina Aguilera each gave a musical tribute.  She was entombed at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles County, California.  Other notable Final Footprints at Inglewood Park include; Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Grable, Robert Kardashian, Billy Preston, Big Mama Thornton, and T-Bone Walker.

#RIP #OTD in 2022 singer (“Bat Out of Hell”, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”, “I’d Do Anything for Love”), actor (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fight Club) Meat Loaf died from COVID-19 in Nashville aged 74. Cremation

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