Day in History 23 December – John Chisum – Peggy Guggenheim – Jack Webb – Victor Borge – Joan Didion

Posted on 29 DecamSat, 23 Dec 2023 00:03:00 -06002023-12-23T00:03:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

JohnSimpsonChisumOn this day in 1884, cattle baron in the American West, John Chisum died in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he had repeatedly sought treatments, due to complications from surgery to remove a growth from his jaw, at the age of 60.  Born John Simpson Chisum on 15 August 1824 in Hardeman County, Tennessee.  Chisum moved with his family to Texas in 1837, finding work as a building contractor.  He also served as county clerk in Lamar County.  Chisum was of Scottish, English, and Welsh descent.  In 1854, Chisum became engaged in the cattle business and became one of the first to send his herds to New Mexico Territory.  He obtained land along the Pecos River by right of occupancy and eventually became the owner of a large ranch in the Bosque Grande, about forty miles south of Fort Sumner, with over 100,000 head of cattle.  In 1866-67, Chisum formed a partnership with cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving to assemble and drive herds of cattle for sale to the United States Army in Fort Sumner and Santa Fe, New Mexico, to provide cattle to miners in Colorado as well as provide cattle to the Bell Ranch.  A gambler, Chisum frequently played poker with Texas John Slaughter, a lawman in Texas and later the Arizona Territory.  Chisum with money, advice, and influence behind the scenes, played a role in the Lincoln County War between the opposing factions of cattle farmers and business owners, and involving Billy the Kid.  Chisum never married.

The Final Footprint – Chisum is interred in the Chisum Family Cemetery in Paris, Texas.  He left his estate worth $500,000 to his brothers Pitzer and James.  While living in Bolivar, Texas, he lived with a young slave girl named Jensie and had two daughters with her.  The relationship is described in a book titled Three Ranches West.  Chisum had an extended family living with him at the South Springs ranch in Roswell.  Chisum’s niece Sallie, daughter of his brother James, became a beloved figure in the area, where she lived until 1934.  Sallie kept a diary or journal that has historical importance because of its references to Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, both of whom she knew.  She and John Chisum are honored by statues to their memory in Roswell and Artesia, New Mexico.  Chisum has been portrayed on film by John Wayne in Chisum (1970) and James Coburn in Young Guns II (1990).

On this day in 1979, art collector, bohemian and socialite Peggy Guggenheim died from a stroke in Camposampiero near Padua, Italy at the age of 81. Born Marguerite Guggenheim on August 26, 1898 in Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912, and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Peggy Guggenheim created a noted art collection in Europe and America primarily between 1938 and 1946. She exhibited this collection as she built it and in 1949, settled in Venice, where she lived and exhibited her collection for the rest of her life. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a modern art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, and is one of the most visited attractions in Venice.

She claimed to have had affairs with numerous artists and writers, and in return many artists and others have claimed affairs with her. 

Her first marriage was to Laurence Vail, a Dada sculptor and writer with whom she had two children, Michael Cedric Sindbad Vail (1923–1986) and Pegeen Vail Guggenheim (1925-1967). They divorced about 1928 following his affair with writer Kay Boyle, whom he later married. Soon after her first marriage dissolved, she had an affair with John Ferrar Holms, a writer with writer’s block who had been a war hero. Starting in December 1939, she and Samuel Beckett had a brief but intense affair, and he encouraged her to turn exclusively to modern art. She married her second husband, painter Max Ernst, in 1941 and divorced him in 1946. 

The Final Footprint

Her cremated remains are interred in the garden (later: Nasher Sculpture Garden) of her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (inside the Peggy Guggenheim Collection), next to her beloved Lhasa Apso dogs.

#RIP #OTD in 1982 actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter (Dragnet) Jack Webb died of a heart attack in West Hollywood, aged 62. Sheltering Hills Plot 1999, Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles

victorBorgeOn this day in 2000, comedian, conductor and pianist, The Clown Prince of Denmark, The Unmelancholy Dane, The Great Dane, Victor Borge, died in Greenwich, Connecticut at the age of 91.  Born Børge Rosenbaum on 3 January 1909 in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Borge was married twice; Elsie Chilton (1933 – divorce) and Sarabel Sanna Scraper (1953 – 2000 her death).

The Final Footprint – Borge was cremated.  Part of his cremated remains were interred with his second wife at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich, with a replica of Danish icon The Little Mermaid sitting on a large rock at the gravesite, the other part with his parents in Western Jewish Cemetery (Mosaisk Vestre Begravelsesplads), Copenhagen, Denmark.

#RIP #OTD in 2021 writer (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It as It Lays, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking), journalist, Joan Didion died from complications of Parkinson’s disease at her home in Manhattan aged 87. Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, Manhattan.

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Day in History 22 December – Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer – George Eliot – Ma Rainey – Beatrix Potter – Samuel Beckett – Butterfly McQueen – Joe Cocker

Posted on 29 DecamFri, 22 Dec 2023 00:51:00 -06002023-12-22T00:51:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1870, post-romanticist poet and writer, also a playwright, literary columnist, and artist, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer died from tuberculosis in Madrid at the age of 34. Born Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida on February 17, 1836 in  Seville. In my opinion, one of the most important figures in Spanish literature. He adopted the alias of Bécquer as his brother Valeriano Bécquer, a painter, had done earlier. It was after his death that most of his works were published. Perhaps his best known works are the Rhymes and the Legends, usually published together as Rimas y leyendas. These poems and tales are essential to the study of Spanish literature and common reading for high-school students in Spanish-speaking countries.

Glorieta de Bécquer in Seville, Spain

In 1861, Bécquer met Casta Esteban Navarro, and married her in May 1861. Bécquer was believed to have had a romance with another girl named Elisa Guillén shortly before the marriage, which is thought to have been arranged, by the parents of Casta. The poet was not happy in the marriage, and took any chance he got to follow his brother Valeriano on his constant trips. Casta began to take up with a man with whom she had had a relationship shortly before marrying Bécquer, something that was later blamed on Bécquer’s trips and lack of attention by Casta’s acquaintances. The poet wrote very little about Casta, as most of his inspiration at this time, (as it is the case with the famous rima LIII), came from his feelings towards Elisa.

Rhymes (Rimas)

Volverán las oscuras golondrinas
En tu balcón sus nidos a colgar
Y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales,
Jugando llamarán.

Pero aquellas que el vuelo refrenaban
Tu hermosura y mi dicha a contemplar,
Aquellas que aprendieron nuestros nombres,
¡Esas… no volverán!

The dark swallows will return
their nests upon your balcony, to hang.
And again with their wings upon its windows,
Playing, they will call.

But those who used to slow their flight
your beauty and my happiness to watch,
Those, that learned our names,
Those… will not come back!

The refrain “¡Esas… no volverán!” appears in the 20th novel Yo-Yo Boing! by Latina poet Giannina Braschi, who references Bécquer’s swallows to describe the sorrow and angst of a failed romance.

In Rhymes (Rhyme 21) Becquer wrote one of the most famous poems in the Spanish language. The poem can be read as a response to a lover who asked what was poetry:

¿Qué es poesía?, dices mientras clavas
en mi pupila tu pupila azul.
¡Qué es poesía! ¿Y tú me lo preguntas?
Poesía… eres tú.

What is poetry? you ask, while fixing
your blue pupil on mine.
What is poetry! And you are asking me?
Poetry… is you.

The Final Footprint

His body was buried in Madrid, and afterwards was moved to Seville along with his brother’s at Capilla de la Universidad de Sevilla.

On this day in 1880, novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, George Eliot died at the age of 61 in Chelsea, Middlesex, England.  Born Mary Ann Evans on 22 November 1819 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England.  She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.  Eliot used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously.  Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot’s life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances.  She also wished to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic.  An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.  In my opinion, Middlemarch is one of the greatest novels in the English language.  Eliot married John Cross (1880 – 1880 her death).

georgeEliot_George_graveThe Final Footprint – Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey because of her denial of the Christian faith and her “irregular” though monogamous life with Lewes.  She was interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London in the area reserved for religious dissenters or agnostics, next to Lewes.  In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets’ Corner.  Several buildings in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named after her or titles of her novels, such as The George Eliot School (previously George Eliot Community School) and Middlemarch Junior School.  In 1948, Nuneaton Emergency Hospital was named George Eliot Hospital in Eliot’s honour.  George Eliot Road, in Foleshill, Coventry was named in her honour.  Nuneaton motor cycle manufacturer John Birch named his motor cycles after her.  A statue of Eliot is in Newdegate Street, Nuneaton, and Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery has a display of material related to her.  Other notable final footprints at Highgate include; Karl Marx, Christina Rossetti and Jean Simmons.

#RIP #OTD in 1939 singer (“Bo-Weevil Blues”, “Moonshine Blues”, “See See Rider Blues”, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, “Soon This Morning”), the “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey died of a heart attack in Columbus, Georgia, aged 53. Porterdale Cemetery, Columbus.

#RIP #OTD in 1943 writer (The Tale of Peter Rabbit), illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist (Lake District National Park) Beatrix Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease at her home in Near Sawrey, Cumbria, England at the age of 77. Cremation

Samuel_Beckett,_Pic,_1On this day in 1989, avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, member of the French Resistance, Samuel Beckett died in a nursing home in Paris at the age of 83.  Born Samuel Barclay Beckett on Good Friday, 13 April 1906 in Foxrock, Dublin.  Beckett lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French.  His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature.  In my opinion, Beckett is among the most influential writers of the 20th century.  He is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists.  Beckett is one of the key writers in what has been called the “Theatre of the Absurd”. His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.  Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”.  He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.  Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900 – 17 July 1989) was the tennis partner, lover, and later wife (1961 – 1989 her death) of Beckett.  Barbara Bray had a long term relationship with Beckett, from 1961 to his death.

samuelBeckett-grave-parisThe Final Footprint – Suzanne died on 17 July 1989.  The two were interred together in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris and share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett’s directive that it should be “any colour, so long as it’s grey.”  Other notable Final Footprints at Montparnasse include; Charles Baudelaire, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Chabrier, César Franck, Guy de Maupassant, Adah Isaacs Menken, Man Ray, Camille Saint-Saëns, Jean-Paul Sartre,  Jean Seberg, and Susan Sontag.

On this day in 1995, actress, Butterfly McQueen, died at the Augusta Regional Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia at the age of 84.  Born Thelma McQueen on 7 January 1911 in Tampa, Florida.  Apparently, her nickname was a tribute to her constantly moving hands.  She appeared as Prissy, Scarlett O’Hara’s maid in the film version of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.  The cast of GWTW included; Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Thomas Mitchell, and Hattie McDaniel.  She never married.

The Final Footprint – McQueen’s body was donated to medical science, per her wishes.

On this day in 2014, singer and musician Joe Cocker died from lung cancer in Crawford, Colorado, at the age of 70. Born John Robert “Joe” Cocker on 20 May 1944 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Perhaps best known for his gritty voice, spasmodic body movement in performance and definitive versions of popular songs of varying genre.

Cocker’s cover of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends” reached number one in the UK in 1968. He performed the song live at Woodstock in 1969 and performed the same year at the Isle of Wight Festival, and at the Party at the Palace concert in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. His version also became the theme song for the TV series The Wonder Years. His 1974 cover of “You Are So Beautiful” reached number five in the US. Cocker was the recipient of several awards, including a 1983 Grammy Award for his US number one “Up Where We Belong”, a duet with Jennifer Warnes.

In 2007, Cocker was awarded a bronze Sheffield Legends plaque in his hometown and in 2008 he received an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. 

In 1963, Cocker began dating Eileen Webster, also a resident of Sheffield. The couple dated intermittently for the next 13 years, and separated permanently in 1976.

In 1978, Cocker moved onto a ranch owned by Jane Fonda in Santa Barbara, California. Pam Baker, a local summer camp director and fan of Cocker’s music, persuaded the actress to lend the house to Cocker. Baker began dating Cocker, and they married on 11 October 1987. The couple resided on the Mad Dog Ranch in Crawford, Colorado.

Cocker in concert at Palasport, Rome, July 1972

Cocker performing on 16 October 1980 in the National Stadium, Dublin

Cocker in Hallandale Beach, Florida, in 2003

The Final Footprint

On 11 September 2015 a “Mad Dogs & Englishmen” tribute concert to Joe Cocker was performed at the Lockn’ Festival featuring Tedeschi Trucks Band, Chris Stainton, Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, Pamela Polland, Doyle Bramhall II, Dave Mason, John Bell, Warren Haynes and Chris Robinson, amongst others. In commemoration, a Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishmen Memory Book was created by Linda Wolf to celebrate the event. Cocker was cremated and his cremated remains are interred at Garden of Memories Cemetery in Crawford.

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Day in History 21 December – Giovanni Boccaccio – F. Scott Fitzgerald – Carl Van Vechten – Albert King – Billie Whitelaw

Posted on 29 DecamThu, 21 Dec 2023 00:12:00 -06002023-12-21T00:12:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

giovanniBoccaccio_by_Morghen-150x150On this day in 1375 Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular, Giovanni Boccaccio died at the age of sixty-two in Certaldo, Tuscany, Italy, where he is buried.  Other notable works include Filostrato and Teseida (the sources for Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight’s Tale, respectively), Filocolo, a prose version of an existing French romance and the source for Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and La caccia di Diana, a poem in terza rima listing Neapolitan women.

On this day in 1940, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and short-story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died from a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 44.  Born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on 24 September 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota into an Irish Catholic family.  Named after his famous second cousin Francis Scott Key, three times removed.  Fitzgerald attended Princeton University.  He and his wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald helped define the Jazz Age, a term he coined.  In my opinion, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.  He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night and his most famous, the celebrated classic, The Great Gatsby.  A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously.  He and Zelda married in 1920.  At the time of his death he was living with his lover Sheilah Graham.

The Final Footprint – Fitzgerald was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery, Rockville, Maryland.  Zelda died in 1948, in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.  Their daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan worked to overturn the Archdiocese of Baltimore ruling that Fitzgerald died a non practicing Catholic, so that he could be at rest at the Roman Catholic cemetery where his father’s family was laid.  Both Scott’s and Zelda’s remains were moved to the family plot in Saint Mary’s Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland in 1975.  Their graves are marked by a large companion marble monument and a marble full ledger.  The inscription on the ledger is the last line from his novel, The Great Gatsby;  SO WE BEAT ON, BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT, BORNE BACK CEASELESSLY INTO THE PAST. – The Great Gatsby.  A cenotaph, in memoriam, is placed at Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama, Zelda’s hometown.

On this day in 1964, writer and artistic photographer Carl Van Vechten died in New York City at the age of 84. Born June 17, 1880 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.  In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people.

Van Vechten met Stein in Paris in 1913.  He became a devoted friend and champion of Stein and was considered to be one of Stein’s most enthusiastic fans.  They continued corresponding for the remainder of Stein’s life, and, at her death, she appointed Van Vechten her literary executor; he helped to bring into print her unpublished writings.  Acollection of the letters between Van Vechten and Stein has been published

By the start of the 1930s and at the age of 50, Van Vechten took up photography, using his apartment at 150 West 55th Street as a studio, where he photographed many notable people.

The Final Footprint

Van Vechten was cremated and his cremains were scattered over Shakespeare Gardens, Central Park, Manhattan.  He was the subject of a 1968 biography by Bruce Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, as well as Edward White’s 2014 biography, The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America.

Gallery

    •   Marian Anderson, 1940

    •   Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, 1939

    •   Pierre Balmainand Ruth Ford, 1947

    •   Tallulah Bankhead, 1934

    •   James Baldwin, 1955

    •   Harry Belafonte, 1954

    •   Karen von Blixen-Finecke, 1959

    •   Clare Booth Luce, 1932

    • Marlon Brando, 1948

    • Truman Capote, 1948

    • Katharine Cornell, 1933

       
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    • Gloria Davy, 1958

    • Mabel Dodge Luhan, 1934

    • John Gielgud as Richard II, 1936

    • William Faulkner, 1954

    • Lynn Fontanne, 1932

    • Ben Gazzara, 1955

    • Dizzy Gillespie, 1955

    • Martha Graham and Bertram Ross, 1961

    • W. C. Handy, 1941

    • Billie Holiday, 1949

    • Marilyn Horne and Henry Lewis, 1961

    • Mahalia Jackson, 1962

    • Philip Johnson, 1933

    • Philip Johnson, 1963

    • Eartha Kitt, 1952

    • Fernand Léger, 1936

    • Hugh Laing(left), 1940

    • Lotte Lenya, 1962

    • Joe Louis, 1941

    • Alfred Lunt, 1932

       
       
  •  

    • Henri Matisse, 1933

    • Elsa Maxwell, 1935

    • Gian Carlo Menotti, 1944

    • Francisco Moncion, 1947

    • Robert Morse, 1958

    • Laurence Olivier, 1939

    • Christopher Plummer, 1959

    • José Quintero, 1958

    • Cesar Romero, 1934

    • Arthur Schwartz, 1933

    • Bessie Smith, 1936

    • W. Somerset Maugham, 1934

    • Gertrude Stein, 1935

    • James Stewart, 1934

    • Paul Taylor, 1960

    • Pavel Tchelitchew, 1934

    • Virgil Thomson, 1947

    • Antony Tudor, 1941

    • Gore Vidal, 1948

    • Hugh Walpole, 1934

    • Ethel Waters, 1938

    • Evelyn Waugh, 1940

    • Orson Welles, 1937

    • Anna May Wong, 1939

  • George Zoritch, 1942

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On this day in 1992, blues guitarist and singer Albert King died from a heart attack at his Memphis home at the age of 69. Born Albert Nelson on April 25, 1923 in Indianola, Mississippi. His playing influenced many other blues guitarists. Perhaps best known for the popular and influential album Born Under a Bad Sign (1967) and its title track.

He was known as “The Velvet Bulldozer” because of his smooth singing and large size—he stood taller than average, with sources reporting 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) or 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m), and weighed 250 lb (110 kg)—and also because he drove a bulldozer in one of his day jobs early in his career.

King was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in May 2013. 

The Final Footprint

King was given a funeral procession with the Memphis Horns playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” and was buried in Paradise Gardens Cemetery in Edmondson, Arkansas, near his childhood home. B.B. King delivered a eulogy, stating, “Albert wasn’t my brother in blood, but he was my brother in blues.”

And on this day in 2014 actress, muse who worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and was regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works, also known for her portrayal of Mrs. Baylock, the demonic nanny in the 1976 horror film The Omen, Billie Whitelaw died as a resident of Denville Hall, the actors’ retirement and nursing home in Northwood, Hillingdon, England from pneumonia at the age of 82.  Born Billie Honor Whitelaw on 6 June 1932 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England. 

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Day in History 20 December – Sacagawea – John Steinbeck – Bobby Darin – Carl Sagan – Hank Snow – Brittany Murphy

Posted on 29 DecamWed, 20 Dec 2023 00:06:00 -06002023-12-20T00:06:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

 

#RIP #OTD in 1812 Lemhi Shoshone woman who helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in exploring the Louisiana Territory, Sacagawea died; unknown illness in Fort Lisa Trading Post, Mobridge, South Dakota aged 24-25. Obelisk, Mobridge.  A memorial marker of Sacajawea was placed at Fort Washakie, Wyoming

On this day in 1968, Pulitzer Prize and Noble Prize-winning writer, John Steinbeck, died of heart disease in New York City at the age of 66.  Born John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. on 27 February 1902 in Salinas, California of German and Irish descent.  Perhaps best remembered for his novels; The Grapes of Wrath (1939) which won the Pulitzer, East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937).  Most of Steinbeck’s work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region.  His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.  The movie version of East of Eden, directed by Elia Kazan, marked the debut of James Dean.  He attended Stanford University but did not graduate.  Steinbeck married three times; Carol Henning (1930 – 1943 divorce), Gwyndolyn Conger (1943 – 1948 divorce), Elaine Scott (1950 – 1968 his death).

The Final Footprint – Steinbeck was cremated and his cremated remains were interred in the Hamilton Family Estate in Garden of Memories Memorial Park in Salinas with his parents and his maternal grand-parents.  His mother’s maiden name was Hamilton.  His third wife, Elaine, was later buried there as well.  The estate is marked by an upright granite marker engraved with the Hamilton name.

#RIP #OTD in 1973 singer (“Mack the Knife”, “Beyond the Sea”), songwriter (“Splish Splash”, “Dream Lover”) musician, actor (Come September) Bobby Darin died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles following heart valve surgery, aged 37. Body donated to medical research

On this day in 1996, astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences, Carl Sagan died from complications of myelodysplasia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, at the age of 62. Born Carl Edward Sagan on November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn. Perhaps best known for his work as a science popularizer and communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect.

Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many popular science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Broca’s Brain and Pale Blue Dot, and narrated and co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name. His papers, containing 595,000 items, are archived at The Library of Congress.

Sagan advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. Sagan and his works received numerous awards and honors, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Dragons of Eden, and, regarding Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, two Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award, and the Hugo Award.

Sagan was married three times. In 1957, he married biologist Lynn Margulis. After Sagan and Margulis divorced, he married artist Linda Salzman in 1968. In 1981, Sagan married author Ann Druyan.

The Final Footprint

Stone dedicated to Carl Sagan in the Celebrity Path of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Interment took place at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.

#RIP #OTD in 1999 songwriter (“I’m Moving On”, “The Rhumba Boogie”), singer (“I Don’t Hurt Anymore”, “Let Me Go, Lover!”, “I’ve Been Everywhere”, “Hello Love”) Hank Snow died from heart failure at his Rainbow Ranch in Madison, Tennessee, aged 85. Nashville’s Spring Hill Cemetery

On this day in 2009, actress and singer Brittany Murphy-Monjack died from pneumonia at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, at the age of 32. Born Brittany Anne Bertolotti on November 10, 1977 in Atlanta. Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and pursued a career in acting. Her breakthrough role was as Tai Frasier in Clueless (1995), followed by supporting roles in independent films such as Freeway (1996) and Bongwater (1998). She made her stage debut in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge in 1997, before appearing as Daisy Randone in Girl, Interrupted (1999) and as Lisa Swenson in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999).

In the 2000s Murphy appeared in Don’t Say a Word (2001) alongside Michael Douglas, and alongside Eminem in 8 Mile (2002), for which she gained critical recognition. Her later roles included Riding in Cars with Boys(2001), Spun (2002), Uptown Girls (2003), Sin City (2005), and Happy Feet (2006). Her final film, Something Wicked, was released in April 2014.

In May 2007, Murphy married British screenwriter Simon Monjack (who would die in their Hollywood Hills home from pneumonia on 23 May 2010) in a private Jewish ceremony in Los Angeles.

The Final Footprint

On December 24, 2009, Murphy was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. 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, Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Freddie Prinze, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Lee Van Cleef, and Paul Walker.

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Day in History 19 December – Emily Brontë – Marcello Mastroianni – Desmond Llewelyn – Renata Tebaldi

Posted on 29 DecamTue, 19 Dec 2023 00:36:00 -06002023-12-19T00:36:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1848, novelist Emily Brontë died from tuberculosis at the Brontë family home in Haworth Parsonage, Haworth, England at the age of 30.  Born Emily Jane Brontë  on 30 July 1818 in the village of Thornton, Yorkshire, in the North of England, to Maria Branwell and Patrick Bronte.  She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë.  Perhaps best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.  She never married.

The Final Footprint – She was interred in the Church of St Michael and All Angels family capsule, Haworth.  Brontë would never know the extent of fame she achieved with her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights, as she died a year after its publication.  Wuthering Heights is the name of the farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors where the story unfolds.  The book’s core theme is the destructive effect that jealousy and vengefulness have, both on the jealous or vengeful individuals and on their communities.  Wuthering Heights received mixed reviews when first published, and was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality.  Poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti referred to it as a “fiend of a book — an incredible monster.”  Wuthering Heights has inspired adaptations, including film, radio and television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor, a ballet, operas (by Bernard Herrmann, Carlisle Floyd, and Frédéric Chaslin), a role-playing game, and a 1978 song by Kate Bush.

On this day in 1996, Academy Award-nominated actor, Marcello Mastroianni, died from pancreatic cancer in Paris at the age of 72.  Born Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni on 28 September 1924 in Fontana Liri, Italy.  A man who worked with and loved some of the most beautiful women in the world.  His prominent films include La dolce vita (1960), La Notte (1961), Ieri, oggi, domani (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) (1963), Matrimonio all’italiana (Marriage Italian-Style (1964), Una giornata particolare (A Special Day) (1977), and Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter) (1994).  Mastroianni and Sophia Loren were one of the most successful and enduring screen couples of cinema history, paired up in 14 movies over twenty years.

Mastroianni married Flora Carabella (1926–1999) on 12 August 1950. They separated in 1970 because of his affairs with younger women. Mastroianni’s first serious relationship after the separation was with Faye Dunaway, his co-star in A Place for Lovers (1968). Dunaway wanted to marry and have children, but Mastroianni, a Catholic, refused to divorce Carabella. In 1971, after three years of waiting for Mastroianni to change his mind, Dunaway left him. Decades later, Dunaway said: “I wish to this day it had worked out.”

Mastroianni and actress Catherine Deneuve, who was nearly 20 years his junior, lived with with each other for four years in the 1970s. During that time, the couple made four movies together: It Only Happens to Others (1971), La cagna (1972), A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973) and Don’t Touch the White Woman! (1974).

Reportedly Mastroianni’s other lovers included actresses Anouk Aimee, Ursula Andress, Claudia Cardinale and Lauren Hutton. Around 1976, he became involved with Anna Maria Tatò, an author and filmmaker. They remained together until his death.

The Final Footprint – Both his daughters and Deneuve were at his bedside when he died, as was Tatò.  The Trevi Fountain in Rome, associated with his role in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, was symbolically turned off and draped in black as a tribute.Mastroianni is interrred in the Mastroianni Family Estate in Cimitero Monumentale del Verano, Rome, Italy.  His grave is marked by a granite full ledger marker.

#RIP #OTD in 1999 actor (Q in 17 of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1999) Desmond Llewelyn died from injuries sustained in a car crash at Eastbourne District General Hospital, Eastbourne, England, aged 85. Cremation.  Llewelyn’s death occurred three weeks after the premiere of The World Is Not Enough. Roger Moore, who starred with Llewelyn in six of his seven Bond films, spoke at his funeral on 6 January 2000 at St Mary the Virgin Church in Battle, Sussex.  The service was followed by a private cremation at Hastings Crematorium.

#RIP #OTD in 2004 lirico-spinto soprano, star of La Scala, San Carlo and the Metropolitan Opera, La Voce d’Angelo, Renata Tebaldi died at her home in San Marino, aged 82. Tebaldi family chapel at Mattaleto cemetery in Langhirano, Itlay

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Day in History 18 December – Bobby Jones – Chris Farley – Kirsty MacColl – Majel Barrett – Zsa Zsa Gabor

Posted on 29 DecamMon, 18 Dec 2023 00:21:00 -06002023-12-18T00:21:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1971, amateur golfer, designer of Augusta National Golf Club and co-founder of the Masters Tournament, Bobby Jones, died from complications of syringomyelia in Atlanta, Georgia at the age of 69.  Born Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. on 17 March 1901 in Altanta.  He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1922.  He then earned a B.A. in English Literature from Harvard College in 1924.  After only one year in law school at Emory University, he passed the Georgia bar exam.  Jones was the most successful amateur golfer ever to compete on a national and international level.  Jones won the the U.S Open four times, The Open Championship three times, the U.S. Amateur five times and the British Amateur once.  In 1930, he won the Grand Slam, all four tournaments.  In total, he won 13 major championships.  In my opinion, he is the greatest golfer of all-time.  Jones was married in 1924 to the former Mary Rice Malone.

The Final Footprint – Jones and his wife are buried in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.  Their graves are marked by a companion granite marker.  Fans and friends continue to leave golf balls at the gravesite in tribute.  Another notable final footprint at Oakland is that of Margaret Mitchell.  I have paid my respects in person at Bobby’s grave.

On this day in 1997, actor and comedian Chris Farley died from a drug overdose in his apartment in the John Hancock Center in Chicago at the age of 33. Born Christopher Crosby Farley on February 15, 1964 in Madison, Wisconsin. Farley was known for his loud, energetic comedic style, and was a member of Chicago’s Second City Theatre and later a cast member of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live between 1990 and 1995. He then went on to pursue a film career, starring in films such as Tommy Boy, Black Sheep and Beverly Hills Ninja.

The Final Footprint

Farley’s death has been compared to that of his SNL idol John Belushi, who died at the same age of a similar combination of drugs.

A private funeral was held for Farley on December 23, 1997, at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church in his hometown of Madison. Over 500 people attended this funeral, including many comedians who had worked with him on Saturday Night Live and on film, such as Dan Aykroyd and Adam Sandler. Farley’s best friend David Spade, chose not to attend the funeral, stating years later that he had found it emotionally hard to handle Farley’s sudden death. Farley’s remains were entombed at Resurrection Cemetery, a Roman Catholic cemetery located on the near west side in Madison.

#RIP #OTD in 2000 singer (“A New England”, “Days”, “Fairytale of New York”), songwriter (“They Don’t Know”) Kirsty MacColl died from injuries after being struck by a power boat while diving off the coast of Cozumel, aged 41. Cremation. Memorial bench Soho Square

On this day in 2008, actress and producer Majel Barrett died at her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, as a result of leukemia. She was 76 years old.  Born Majel Leigh Hudec on February 23, 1932 in Cleveland.

Perhaps best known for her roles as various characters in the Star Trek franchise: Nurse Christine Chapel (in the original Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and two films of the franchise), Number One (also in the original series), Lwaxana Troi (on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and the voice of most onboard computer interfaces throughout the series from 1966 to 2009. She married Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1969. As his wife and given her relationship with Star Trek—participating in some way in every series during her lifetime—she was sometimes referred to as “the First Lady of Star Trek“.

The Final Footprint – A public funeral was held on January 4, 2009, in Los Angeles. Those attending included; Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Wil Wheaton.  A sample of her cremated remains will be sealed into a specially made capsule designed to withstand space travel. A spacecraft will carry the capsule, along with digitized tributes from fans, on Celestis’ “Enterprise Flight”.  The flight will also contain the cremated remains of Gene, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan.

On this day in 2016 actress Zsa Zsa Gabor died of cardiac arrest at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, aged 99.  Born Sári Gábor on February 6, 1917, in Budapest.

Her sisters were actresses Eva and Magda Gabor.  Gabor competed in the 1933 Miss Hungary pageant, where she placed as second runner-up, and began her stage career in Vienna the following year.  She emigrated from Hungary to the United States in 1941. Becoming a sought-after actress with “European flair and style”, she was considered to have a personality that “exuded charm and grace”.  Her first film role was a supporting role in Lovely to Look At (1952). She later acted in We’re Not Married! (1952) and played one of her few leading roles in the John Huston-directed film, Moulin Rouge (1952). Huston would later describe her as a “creditable” actress.

Outside her acting career, Gabor was known for her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle, her glamorous personality, and her many marriages. In total, Gabor had nine husbands, including hotel magnate Conrad Hilton and actor George Sanders. She once stated, “Men have always liked me and I have always liked men. But I like a mannish man, a man who knows how to talk to and treat a woman—not just a man with muscles.”

The Final Footprint

While in a coma, Gabor died from cardiac arrest. On her death certificate, coronary artery disease and cerebrovascular disease are listed as contributing causes.  She had been on life support for the previous five years.  Her funeral was held on December 30 in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.  Her cremated remains, placed in a gold rectangular box, were interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery; in July 2021, Prinz von Anhalt had them reinterred in the artists’ section of Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest in order to fulfil her wish to return to Hungary. He said that the remains were transported in their own first-class airline seat.

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Day in History 17 December – Rumi – Thomas Mitchell – Jennifer Jones

Posted on 29 DecamSun, 17 Dec 2023 00:39:00 -06002023-12-17T00:39:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

rumiOn this day in 1273, 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى‎), Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), Mevlana or Mawlānā (مولانا, Our Master), Mevlevi or Mawlawī (مولوی, My Master), Rumi died in Konya, (Ικόνιον Ikónion, Iconium) Sultanate of Rum, now a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey, at the age of 66.  Born to native Persian speaking parents, originally from the Balkh city of Khorasan, in modern-day Afghanistan, probably in the village of Wakhsh, a small town located on the Wakhsh River in the greater Balkh region, in modern-day Tajikistan.  Rumi’s influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Turks, Cappadocian Greeks, Afghans, Tajiks, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries.  His poems have been widely translated into many of the world’s languages and transposed into various formats.  Rumi’s works are written mostly in Persian, though a few written in the lower status vernacular (Cappadocian Greek) of the region in which he settled are preserved.  His Mathnawi has been called one of the purest literary glories of Persia, and one of the crowning glories of the Persian language.  The influence of his poetry reaches beyond Persian literature.

rumiMausoleo_MevlanaThe Final Footprint – Rumi predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:

How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion?
Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs.

His body was entombed beside that of his father, and a shrine, the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb, قبه الخضراء; the Mevlâna Museum), was erected over his place of burial.  His epitaph, translated to English, reads:

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.

The Mevlâna Mausoleum, with its mosque, dance hall, dervish living quarters, school and tombs of some leaders of the Mevlevi Order, continues to this day to draw pilgrims from all parts of the Muslim and non-Muslim world.  The “Mawlana Rumi Review” is published annually by The Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter in collaboration with The Rumi Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus, and Archetype Books, Cambridge.  The first volume was published in 2010 and it has come out annually since then.  According to the principal editor of the journal, Leonard Lewisohn: “Although a number of major Islamic poets easily rival the likes of Dante, Shakespeare and Milton in importance and output, they still enjoy only a marginal literary fame in the West because the works of Arabic and Persian thinkers, writers and poets are considered as negligible, frivolous, tawdry sideshows beside the grand narrative of the Western Canon. It is the aim of the Mawlana Rumi Review to redress this carelessly inattentive approach to world literature, which is something far more serious than a minor faux pas committed by the Western literary imagination.”  Rumi’s doctrine advocates unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love.  His peaceful and tolerant teaching has appealed to people of all sects and creeds.

Thomas_Mitchell_in_High_Barbaree_trailerOn this day in 1962,  actor, playwright and screenwriter, Thomas Mitchell, died from peritoneal mesothelioma in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 70.  Born to Irish immigrants on 11 July 1892 in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  Perhaps best remembered for appearing alongside Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind as Gerald O’Hara, the father of Scarlett O’Hara.  Other memoralbe roles inlcude the drunken doctor Doc Boone in John Ford’s Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It’s a Wonderful Life.  Mitchell was the first person to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award.

The Final Footprint – Mitchell was cremated and his cremains are in a vault in the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.

On this day in 2009, actress and mental health advocate Jennifer Jones died in Malibu, California at the age of 90. Born Phylis Lee Isley on  March 2, 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Over the course of her career that spanned more five decades, she was nominated for the Oscar five times, including one win for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe Award win for Best Actress in a Drama. Jones is among the youngest actresses to receive an Academy Award, having won on her 25th birthday.

Jones worked as a model in her youth before transitioning to acting, appearing in two serial films in 1939. Her third role was a lead part as Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943), which earned her the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress that year. She went on to star in several films that garnered her critical acclaim and a further three Academy Award nominations in the early-1940s, including Since You Went Away (1944), Love Letters (1945), and Duel in the Sun (1946).

In 1949, Jones appeared as the titular Madame Bovary in Vincente Minnelli’s 1949 adaptation. She appeared in several films throughout the 1950s, including Ruby Gentry (1952), John Huston’s adventure comedy Beat the Devil (1953), and Vittorio De Sica’s drama Terminal Station (also 1953). Jones earned her fifth Academy Award nomination for her performance as a Eurasian doctor in Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955).

She made her final film appearance in The Towering Inferno (1974). Jones suffered from mental health problems during her life and survived a 1966 suicide attempt in which she jumped from a cliff in Malibu Beach. After her own daughter committed suicide in 1976, Jones became profoundly interested in mental health education. In 1980, she founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation for Mental Health and Education.

Jones married three times; actor Robert Walker, film producer David O. Selznick and industrialist Norton Simon.

The Final Footprint

Jones was cremated and her cremated remains were inurned with Selznick in the Selznick private room at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Other notable final footprints at Forest Lawn include; L. Frank Baum, Humphrey Bogart, Lon Chaney, Natalie Cole, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Walt Disney, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Michael Jackson, Carole Lombard, Tom Mix, Casey Stengel, Jimmy Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and Spencer Tracy.

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Day in History 16 December – Camille Saint-Saëns – Nina Hamnett – W. Somerset Maugham – Colonel Sanders – Lee Van Cleef – Silvana Mangano – Nicolette Larson – Dan Fogelberg – Ray Price – Keely Smith

Posted on 29 DecamSat, 16 Dec 2023 00:54:00 -06002023-12-16T00:54:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

photographed by Pierre Petit in 1900

On this day in 1921, composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era, Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns died from a heart attack in Algiers at the age of 86. Born 9 October 1835 in Paris. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third (“Organ”) Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).

Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.

Throughout the 1860s and early 1870s, Saint-Saëns had continued to live a bachelor existence, sharing a large fourth-floor flat in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with his mother. In 1875, he surprised many by marrying. The groom was approaching forty and his bride Marie-Laure Truffot, the sister of one of the composer’s pupils, was 19. Saint-Saëns and his wife moved to the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, in the Latin Quarter; his mother moved with them. The couple had two sons, both of whom died in infancy. In 1878, the elder, André, aged two, fell from a window of the flat and was killed; the younger, Jean-François, died of pneumonia six weeks later, aged six months. Saint-Saëns and Marie-Laure continued to live together for three years, but he blamed her for André’s accident; the double blow of their loss effectively destroyed the marriage.

The Final Footprint

After a state funeral at the Madeleine he was buried at the Cimetière de Montparnasse in Paris. Other notable Final Footprints at Montparnasse include; Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Chabrier, César Franck, Guy de Maupassant, Adah Isaacs Menken, Man Ray, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Seberg, and Susan Sontag.

#RIP #OTD in 1956 Welsh artist, writer (Laughing Torso, Is She a Lady?), expert on sailors’ chanteys, the Queen of Bohemia, Nina Hamnett died from complications after falling out of her apartment window in London and being impaled on the fence forty feet below, aged 66.

On this day in 1965 playwright, novelist, short story writer W. Somerset Maugham died in Nice, France at the age of 91.  Born William Somerset Maugham on 25 January 1874 in the U. K. Embassy in Paris.  Among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly one of the highest paid authors during the 1930s.  Maugham trained and qualified as a doctor.  The first run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time.  During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  During and after the war, he traveled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.  Maugham married Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo Wellcome (1917 – 1928 divorce).  Maugham’s love life apparently was almost never smooth.  He once confessed: “I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed… In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel.” 

The Final Footprint – Maugham was cremated and his cremains were scattered near the Maughan Library, The King’s School, Canterbury.

On this day in 1980, U. S. Army veteran, entrepreneur, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, philanthropist, Colonel Sanders, died in Louisville, Kentucky at the age of 90.  Born Harland David Sanders on 9 September 1890 in Henryville, Indiana.  He opened his first restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky in 1930 when he was 40.  Sanders began developing his distinctive appearance in 1950, growing his trademark mustache and goatee and donning a white suit and string tie.  He never wore anything else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer.  At age 65, Sanders’ restaurant failed due to the new Interstate 75 reducing his customer traffic.  He took $105 from his first Social Security check and began visiting potential franchisees.  Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s was offered a chance to turn around a failing Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.  He helped save the restaurant, and revolutionized the fast food industry.  Sanders was married twice; Josephine King (divorced) and Claudia Price. 

The Final Footprint – Sanders is interred with his wife Claudia in the Sanders Private Estate, Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky.  The estate is marked by a large granite monument bearing his name and a bronze bust of Sanders on a granite pedestal.  Their graves are marked by a full ledger granite marker. 

On this day in 1989, United States Navy Veteran, actor Lee Van Cleef died from a heart attack at his home in Oxnard, California, at the age of 64. Throat cancer was listed as a secondary cause of death.

Born Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr. on January 9, 1925 in Somerville, New Jersey. His sinister features overshadowed his acting skills and typecast him as a minor villain for a decade before he achieved stardom in Spaghetti Westerns such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He declined to have his hook nose altered to play a sympathetic character in his film debut, High Noon, and was relegated to a non-speaking outlaw as a result. After suffering serious injuries in a car crash, Van Cleef began to lose interest in his apparently waning career by the time Sergio Leone gave him a major role in For a Few Dollars More. The film made him a box-office draw, especially in Europe.

Van Cleef possessed the rare physical characteristic of heterochromatic eyes, having eyes of two different colors; in his case, one green and one blue.

Van Cleef in Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Van Cleef was married three times. He and his first wife, Patsy Ruth Kahle, his high school sweetheart, were married December 10th, 1943, had three children, Alan, Deborah and David, and divorced in 1960. Later that year, he married his second wife, Joan Marjorie Drane, on April 9th, 1960, and adopted their daughter, Denise. He and Joan divorced in 1974. Two years later, he married his third wife, Barbara Havelone, on July 13th, 1976, to whom he remained married until his death in 1989

The Final Footprint

Van Cleef is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, California, with an inscription on his gravestone referring to his many acting performances as sinister, threatening characters: “BEST OF THE BAD”. Other notable final footprints at Hollywood Hills include; Gene Autry, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, David Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Bette Davis, Sandra Dee, Ronnie James Dio, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carrie Fisher, Bobby Fuller, Andy Gibb, Michael Hutchence, Jill Ireland, Al Jarreau, Buster Keaton, Lemmy Kilmister, Jack LaLanne, Nicolette Larson (see below), Liberace, Strother Martin, Jayne Meadows, Brittany Murphy, Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Freddie Prinze, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, and Paul Walker.
 

On this day in 1997, singer Nicolette Larson died of cerebral edema and liver failure, at the age of 45. Born on July 17, 1952 in Helena, Montana. Perhaps best known for her work in the late 1970s with Neil Young and her 1978 hit single of Young’s “Lotta Love”, which hit No. 1 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart and No. 8 on the pop singles chart. It was followed by four more adult contemporary hits, two of which were also minor pop hits.

By 1985, she shifted her focus to country music, charting six times on the US country singles chart. She had a top-40 country hit with “That’s How You Know When Love’s Right”, a duet with Steve Wariner. She died in 1997 of cerebral edema and liver failure.

Through her early work in the 1970s with Emmylou Harris, Larson met guitarist and songwriter Hank DeVito. Larson and DeVito later married and divorced. In the early 1980s, Larson was engaged to Andrew Gold, which ended shortly after the completion of Larson’s 1982 album All Dressed Up and No Place to Go, which Gold had produced. In the late 1980s, she briefly dated “Weird Al” Yankovic.

In 1990, Larson married drummer Russ Kunkel, and the two were married until her death in 1997.

The Final Footprint

Larson’s remains are buried in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. A benefit concert was held in Larson’s honor in February 1998 with tribute concerts held on the 10th anniversary of her death in December 2007 and also the following year. Other notable final footprints at Hollywood Hills include; Gene Autry, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, David Carradine, Scatman Crothers, Bette Davis, Sandra Dee, Ronnie James Dio, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carrie Fisher, Bobby Fuller, Andy Gibb, Michael Hutchence, Jill Ireland, Al Jarreau, Buster Keaton, Lemmy Kilmister, Jack LaLanne, Nicolette Larson, Liberace, Strother Martin, Jayne Meadows, Brittany Murphy, Ricky Nelson, Bill Paxton, Brock Peters, Freddie Prinze, Lou Rawls, Debbie Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Lee Van Cleef (see above), and Paul Walker.

#RIP #OTD in 2007 singer, songwriter (“Longer”, “Same Old Lang Syne”, “Leader of the Band”), composer, musician, Dan Fogelberg died from prostate cancer at his home in Deer Isle, Maine, aged 56. Cremated remains scattered, Atlantic Ocean off the Maine coast. Memorial, Peoria IL

Ray_PriceOn this day in 2013, Grammy award winning singer, songwriter, guitarist, The Cherokee Cowboy, Ray Price died from complications of pancreatic cancer at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Texas at the age of 87.  Born Noble Ray Price on 12 January 1926 Perryville, Texas.  In my opinion, his wide ranging baritone was among the best male voices of country music.  Some of his well-known recordings include “Release Me”, “Crazy Arms”, “Heartaches by the Number”, “For the Good Times”, “Night Life”, and “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”.  Price was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.  He continued to record and tour well into his mid-eighties. 

The Final Footprint – Price is entombed at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas.

#RIP #OTD in 2017 jazz and popular music singer (“I Wish You Love”, “You’re Breaking My Heart”, with then-husband Louis Prima “That Old Black Magic”) Keely Smith died of heart failure in Palm Springs, aged 89. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills

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On This Day 15 December – Johannes Vermeer – Sitting Bull – Fats Waller – Glenn Miller – Walt Disney – Chill Wills – Blake Edwards – Christopher Hitchens – Joan Fontaine

Posted on 29 DecamFri, 15 Dec 2023 00:15:00 -06002023-12-15T00:15:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

Jan_Vermeer_van_Delft_002On this day in 1675, artist Johannes Vermeer died after a short illness in Delft, Dutch Republic, at the age of 43.  Baptized On 31 October 1632 in the Reformed Church in Delft.  Perhaps best known for his painting, Meisje met de parel (Girl with a Peal Earring) (1665), Vermeer specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life.  He was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime.  Vermeer apparently worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow.  He is particularly renowned for his use of light.  Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death and was omitted from surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.  In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today.  Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.  Vermeer married Catharina Bolenes (Bolnes).

The Final Footprint – Vermeer is entombed in the Oude Kerk (Old Church), nicknamed Oude Jan (“Old John”), a Gothic Protestant church in the old city center of Delft.  Its most recognizable feature is a 75-meter-high brick tower that leans about two meters from the vertical.  Tracy Chevalier‘s novel Girl with a Pearl Earring and the film of the same name (2003) are named after the painting; they present a fictional account of its creation by Vermeer and his relationship with the (equally fictional) model.  The film was nominated for Oscars in cinematography, art direction, and costume design

Gallery

Lady Seated at a Virginal (c. 1672)

 

The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

 

The Astronomer (c. 1668)

 

The Girl with the Wine Glass (c. 1659)

 

Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665)

 

The Music Lesson or A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman, c. 1662–65

 

Art of Painting or The Allegory of Painting (c. 1666-68)

 

sitting-bullOn this day in 1890, a Hunkpapa Lakota holy man, tribal chief, Sitting Bull was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota, during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement, at the age of 58 or 59.   Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake in Standard Lakota Orthography Jumping Badger, also nicknamed Slon-he or “Slow”, in the Dakota Territory c. 1831.  In 2007, Sitting Bull’s great-grandson asserted from family oral tradition that Sitting Bull was born along the Yellowstone River, south of present-day Miles City, Montana.  Sitting Bull led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies.  Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw the defeat of the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on 25 June 25 1876.  Sitting Bull’s leadership inspired his people to a major victory.  Months after their victory at the battle, Sitting Bull and his group left the United States for Wood Mountain, North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan), where he remained until 1881, at which time he and most of his band returned to US territory and surrendered to U.S. forces.  After working as a performer with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota.

SittingBullPhilKonstantin

The Final Footprint – His body was taken to nearby Fort Yates for burial.  In 1953, his Lakota family exhumed what were believed to be his remains, reburying them near Mobridge, South Dakota near his birthplace.

Fats_Waller_editOn this day in 1943, influential jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, Fats Waller died from pneumonia on a cross-country train trip near Kansas City, Missouri at the age of 39.  Born Thomas Wright Waller in New York City on 21 May 1904.  Waller’s innovations to the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano, and his best-known compositions, “Ain’t Misbehavin'” and “Honeysuckle Rose”, were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame posthumously, in 1984 and 1999.

The Final Footprint – At the time of his death, Waller was returning to New York City from Los Angeles, after the smash success of Stormy Weather, and after a successful engagement at the Zanzibar Room, during which he had fallen ill.  Reportedly, as the train with the body of Waller stopped in Kansas City, so stopped a train with his friend Louis Armstrong on board.  More than 4,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem, which prompted Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to say that Fats Waller “always played to a packed house.”  Afterwards he was cremated and his ashes were scattered, from an airplane piloted by an unidentified World War I black aviator, over Harlem.

On this day in 1944, big-band trombonist, arranger, composer, and bandleader, US Army Air Forces Major, Glenn Miller died in a plane crash over the English Channel at the age of 40. Born Alton Glenn Miller on March 1, 1904 Clarinda, Iowa. He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1942, leading one of the best-known big bands. Miller’s recordings include “In the Mood”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Pennsylvania 6-5000”, “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, “A String of Pearls”, “At Last”, “(I’ve Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo”, “American Patrol”, “Tuxedo Junction”, “Elmer’s Tune”, and “Little Brown Jug”. In just four years Glenn Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top ten hits.

In 1942, Miller volunteered to join the U.S. military to entertain troops during World War II, ending up with the U.S. Army Air Forces.

The Final Footprint

U.S. Army Air Force UC-64

Monument in Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut

Miller was due to fly from the town of Bedford in the United Kingdom to Paris on December 15, 1944, to make arrangements to move his entire band there in the near future. His plane, a single-engine UC-64 Norseman, departed from RAF Twinwood Farm in Clapham, on the outskirts of Bedford, and disappeared while flying over the English Channel. Two other U.S. military officers were on board the plane, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Baessell and the pilot, John Morgan. Miller spent the last night before his disappearance at Milton Ernest Hall, near Bedford. Miller’s disappearance was not made public until December 24, 1944, when the Associated Press announced Miller would not be conducting the scheduled BBC-broadcast “AEF Christmas Show” the following day. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star.

Walt_disney_portraitOn this day in 1966, film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, philanthropist, co-founder (with his brother Roy) of Walt Disney Productions, Walt Disney, died in Burbank, California at the age of 65.  Born Walter Elias Disney on 5 December 1901 in Hermosa, Chicago, Illinois.  His father, Elias, was of Irish-Canadian descent.  His mother, Flora Call, was of German-American descent.  Disney married once, Lillian Bounds (1925 – 1966 his death).  Disney holds the record for most Academy Award nominations (with 59) and most Oscars awarded (with 22).  The first movie I remember watching was Disney’s animated production of The Jungle Book (1967) based on the book by Rudyard Kipling.

The Final Footprint – Disney was cremated and his cremated remains reside in the Disney Family Private Garden, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.  Shortly before his death, he apparently wrote down the name of actor Kurt Russell.  No one seems to know why.  Before Disney died he made a short film for the Disney Company executive board in which he addressed each board member and ended the film by saying, “I’ll be seeing you.”  In 2009, the Walt Disney Family Museum opened in the Presidio of San Francisco.  Disney has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies and one for television.  Other notable Final Footprints at Forest Lawn Glendale include; L. Frank Baum, Humphrey Bogart, Lon Chaney, Natalie Cole, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Michael Jackson, Jennifer Jones, Carole Lombard, Tom Mix, Casey Stengel, Jimmy Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and Spencer Tracy.

On this day in 1978 actor Chill Wills died from cancer in Encino, California, aged 76.  Born Theodore Childress Wills in Seagoville, Texas, on July 18, 1902. 

Wills was cast in numerous serious film roles, including as “the city of Chicago” as personified by a phantom police sergeant in the film noir City That Never Sleeps (1953), and that of Uncle Bawley in Giant (1956), which also features Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean. Wills was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Davy Crockett’s companion Beekeeper in the film The Alamo (1960). 

Wills was a poker player and a close friend of Benny Binion, the founder of the World Series of Poker and former owner of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wills participated in the first World Series, held in 1970, and is seated in the center of the famous picture with a number of legendary players.

The Final Footprint

Cremated remains interred in Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California


On this day in 2010 actor, film director, producer and screenwriter, Blake Edwards died of complications of pneumonia at the Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, aged 88.  Born William Blake Crump July 22, 1922, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Edwards began his career in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon began writing screenplays and radio scripts before turning to producing and directing in television and films. His best-known films include Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The Great Race (1965), 10 (1979), Victor/Victoria (1982), and the hugely successful Pink Panther film series with British actor Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he also directed several drama, musical, and detective films. Late in his career, he took up writing, producing and directing for theater.

In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.

The Final Footprint 

Cremation

On this day in 2011 author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature, Christopher Hitchens died of complications from esophageal cancer at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, aged 62.  Born Christopher Eric Hitchens in Portsmouth, Hampshire on 13 April 1949.

Hitchens political views evolved greatly throughout his life.  Originally describing himself as a democratic socialist, he was a member of various socialist organisations in his early life, including the International Socialists.  Hitchens eventually no longer regarded himself as socialist, but continued to admire aspects of Marxism.  He was critical of aspects of American foreign policy, including its involvement in Vietnam, Chile, and East Timor. However, he also supported the United States in the Kosovo War. After Hitchens disenchantment with Marxism, he emphasized the centrality of the American Revolution and Constitution to his political philosophy.  Hitchens held complex views on abortion; being ethically opposed to it in most instances, and believing that a fetus was entitled to personhood, while holding ambigious, changing views on its legality.  He supported gun rights and LGBT rights while opposing the War on Drugs.  Beginning in the 1990s, and particularly after 9/11, his politics were widely viewed as drifting to the right.  During the 2000s, he argued for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, endorsed the re-election campaign of George W. Bush in 2004, and viewed Islamism as the principal threat to the Western World.

Hitchens described himself as an anti-theist and saw all religions as false, harmful and authoritarian.  He argued for free expression, scientific discovery, and the separation of church and state, arguing that they were superior to religion as an ethical code of conduct for human civilisation. The dictum “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” has become known as Hitchens’s razor.  Hitchens notably wrote critical biographies of Catholic nun Mother Teresa in The Missionary Position, President Bill Clinton in No One Left To Lie To, and American diplomat Henry Kissinger in The Trial of Henry Kissinger.

The Final Footprint

Body donated to medical research

#RIP #OTD in 2013 actress (Rebecca, Suspicion, The Constant Nymph, Letter from an Unknown Woman) Joan Fontaine died in her sleep of natural causes in her Carmel Highlands, California home, aged 96. Cremation

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Day in History 14 December – Lupe Velez – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings – Dinah Washington – Roger Maris – Myrna Loy – Peter O’Toole

Posted on 29 DecamThu, 14 Dec 2023 00:21:00 -06002023-12-14T00:21:00-06:0012 2011 by MacGregor

On this day in 1944, actress, dancer and singer, The Mexican Spitfire,  Lupe Vélez died from an overdose of Seconal in her home in Glendale, California at the age of 36. Born María Guadalupe Villalobos Velez on July 18, 1908 in San Luis Potosí in Mexico.

Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short in 1927. By the end of the decade, she was acting in full-length silent films and had progressed to leading roles in The Gaucho (1927), Lady of the Pavements (1928) and Wolf Song (1929), among others. Vélez then made the transition to sound films without difficulty. She was one of the first successful Latin-American actresses in Hollywood. During the 1930s, her well-known screen persona was exploited in several successful comedic films like Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934) and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Vélez’s popularity peaked after appearing as Carmelita Fuentes in eight Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Vélez’s well-documented fiery personality.

Vélez’s personal life was as colorful as her screen persona. She had several highly publicized romances with Hollywood actors and a stormy marriage with Johnny Weissmuller. Her death and the circumstances surrounding it have been the subject of speculation and controversy.

Vélez was involved in several highly publicized relationships. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she was linked to actors Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable. Her first long-term, high-profile relationship was with Gary Cooper. Vélez and Cooper met while filming 1929s Wolf Song and began a two-year relationship. When angered, Vélez was reported to have physically assaulted Cooper. Cooper eventually ended the relationship in mid-1931, at the behest of his mother Alice who after meeting her, strongly disapproved of Vélez. With plans to marry him gone, she spoke to the press in 1931: “I turned Cooper down because his parents didn’t want me to marry him and because the studio thought it would injure his career. Now its over, I’m glad I feel so free … I must be free. I know men to well they are all the same, no? If you love them they want to be boss. I will never have a boss.” The rocky relationship had taken its toll on Cooper, who had lost 45 pounds and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Paramount Pictures ordered him to take a vacation to recuperate and while he was boarding the train, Vélez showed up at the station and fired a pistol at him.

After her breakup with Cooper, Vélez began a short-lived relationship with actor John Gilbert. They began dating in late 1931, while Gilbert was separated from his third wife Ina Claire. Rumors of an engagement were fueled by the couple, but Gilbert ended the relationship in early 1932, and attempted to reconcile with Claire.

Vélez and Johnny Weissmuller photographed shortly after being married in October 1933

Shortly thereafter, Vélez met Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller while the two were in New York. They dated off and on when they returned to Los Angeles, while Vélez also dated actor Errol Flynn. On October 8, 1933, Vélez and Weissmuller were married in Las Vegas. In July 1934, after ten months of marriage, Vélez filed for divorce citing “cruelty”. She withdrew the petition a week later after reconciling with Weissmuller. On January 3, 1935, she filed for divorce a second time and was granted an interlocutory decree. That decree was dismissed when the couple reconciled a month later. In August 1938, Vélez filed for divorce for a third time, again charging Weissmuller with cruelty. Their divorce was finalized in August 1939.

After the divorce became final, Vélez began dating polo player Guinn “Big Boy” Williams in late 1940. The couple were engaged, but never married. In late 1941, she became involved with author Erich Maria Remarque. Actress Luise Rainer recalled that Remarque told her “with the greatest of glee” that he found Vélez’s volatility wonderful when he recounted to her an occasion where Vélez became so angry with him that she took her shoe off and hit him with it. After dating Remarque, Vélez was linked to boxers Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey.

In 1943, Vélez began an affair with her La Zandunga co-star Arturo de Córdova. De Córdova had recently moved to Los Angeles after signing with Paramount. Despite the fact that de Córdova was married to Mexican actress Enna Arana with whom he had four children, Vélez granted an interview to gossip columnist Louella Parsons in September 1943 and announced that the two were engaged. She told Parsons that she planned to retire after marrying de Córdova to “cook … and keep house”. Vélez ended the engagement in early 1944, after de Córdova’s wife refused to give him a divorce.

Vélez then met and began dating a struggling young Austrian actor named Harald Maresch, whose stage name was Harald Ramond. In September 1944, she discovered she was pregnant with Ramond’s child. She announced their engagement in late November 1944. On December 10, four days before her death, Vélez announced she had ended the engagement and kicked Ramond out of her home.

The Final Footprint

On the evening of December 13, 1944, Vélez dined with her two friends, the silent film star Estelle Taylor and Venita Oakie.  In the early morning hours of December 14, Vélez retired to her bedroom, where she consumed 75 Seconal pills and a glass of brandy.  Her secretary, Beulah Kinder, found the actress’s body on her bed later that morning.  A suicide note addressed to Harald Ramond was found nearby. It read:

To Harald, May God forgive you and forgive me too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby’s before I bring him with shame or killing him. – Lupe.

On the back of the note, Vélez wrote:

How could you, Harald, fake such a great love for me and our baby when all the time, you didn’t want us? I see no other way out for me, so goodbye, and good luck to you, Love Lupe.

The day after Vélez’s death, Harald Ramond told the press that he was “so confused” by Vélez’s suicide, and claimed that even though the two had broken up, he had agreed to marry Vélez. He admitted that he once asked Vélez to sign an agreement stating that he was only marrying her to “give the baby a name”, but claimed he only did so because he and Vélez had had a fight, and he was in a “terrible temper”. Actress Estelle Taylor, who was with Vélez from 9:00 the previous night until 3:30 the morning Vélez died, told the press that Vélez had told her of her pregnancy, but said she would rather kill herself than have an abortion (Vélez was a devout Roman Catholic). Beulah Kinder, Vélez’s secretary, later told investigators that after Vélez broke off the relationship with Ramond, she planned to go to Mexico to have her baby. Kinder said Vélez soon changed her mind after concluding that Ramond “faked” the relationship and considered having an abortion.

The day after Vélez’s death, the Los Angeles County coroner requested that an inquest be opened to investigate the circumstances surrounding her death. On December 16, the coroner dropped the request, after determining that Vélez had written the notes, and that she had intended to kill herself.

On December 22, a funeral for Vélez was held at the mortuary at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Among the pallbearers were Vélez’s ex-husband, Johnny Weissmuller, and actor Gilbert Roland. After the service, Vélez’s body was sent by train to Mexico City, where a second service was held on December 27. Her body was then interred at Panteón Civil de Dolores Cemetery. Other notable final footprints at Dolores include; Rosario Castellanos, Dolores Del Rio, and Diego Rivera.

#RIP #OTD in 1953 author (The Yearling) Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings died in St. Augustine, Florida of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 57. Antioch Cemetery near Island Grove, Florida

On this day in 1963, singer, pianist, Grammy winner, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer inductee, Queen of the Blues, Dinah Washington died in Detroit, Michigan from a combination of secobarbital and amobarbital, at the age of 39.  Born Ruth Lee Jones was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on 29 August 1924.  She and her family moved to Chicago as a child.  In my opinion, on of the best recording artists of the ’50s.  Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music.  Washington married seven times, including NFL Hall of Famer Dick “Night Train” Lane.

The Final Footprint – Washington is interred in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.  In 1964, Aretha Franklin recorded a tribute album, Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington.  In 1993, the U.S. Post Office issued a Dinah Washington 29 cent commemorative postage stamp.  In 2005, the Board of Commissioners renamed a park, near where Washington had lived in Chicago in the 1950s, Dinah Washington Park in her honor.  In 2008, the city of Tuscaloosa renamed the section of 30th Avenue between 15th Street and Kaulton Park “Dinah Washington Avenue.”  On 29 August 2013, the city of Tuscaloosa dedicated the old Allen Jemison Hardware building, on the northwest corner of Greensboro Avenue and 7th Street (620 Greensboro Avenue) as the newly renovated Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center.  Other notable final footprints at Burr Oak Cemetery include Willie Dixon and Emmett Till.

RogermarisOn this day in 1985, 7 time All-Star, 3 time World Series Champion, 2 time AL MVP, Gold Glove winner, New York Yankee and single season home run king, Roger Maris, died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma in Houston, Texas at the age of 51.  Born Roger Eugene Maris on 10 September 1934 in Hibbing, Minnesota.  Maris hit 61 home runs for the New York Yankees during the 1961 season breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs (set in 1927).  The Yankees retired Maris’ number 9 on Old-Timers’ Day, 21 July 1984, and dedicated a plaque in Maris’ honor to hang in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.  The plaque calls him “A great player and author of one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of major league baseball.”  Maris was on hand for the ceremony and wore a full Yankee uniform.

The Final Footprint – Maris is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Fargo, North Dakota.  His grave is marked by a large upright granite marker in the shape of a baseball diamond.  The Yankees placed a plaque in Monument Park in Yankee Stadium in honor of Maris.  Monument Park is an open-air museum containing a collection of monuments, plaques, and retired numbers honoring distinguished members of the Yankees.  Other notable Yankees whose final footprints include memorialization in Monument Park; Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, George Steinbrenner, Thurman Munson, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Mel Allen, Bob Sheppard, and Casey Stengel. 

On this day in 1993 dancer, film, television and stage actress Myrna Loy died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, aged 88.  Born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, Montana on 2 August 1905.

Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent, but her career prospects improved greatly following her portrayal of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934).  Her role in The Thin Man helped elevate her reputation as a versatile actress, and she reprised the role of Nora Charles five more times.

Loy’s performances peaked in the 1940s, with films like The Thin Man Goes Home, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. She appeared in only a few films in the 1950s, including a lead role in the comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), as well as supporting parts in The Ambassador’s Daughter (1956) and the drama Lonelyhearts (1958). She appeared in only eight films between 1960 and 1981, after which she retired from acting.

Although Loy was never nominated for an Academy Award, in March 1991 she received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her life’s work both onscreen and off, including serving as assistant to the director of military and naval welfare for the Red Cross during World War II, and a member-at-large of the U.S. Commission to UNESCO. In 2009, The Guardian named her one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

The Final Footprint

Loy died during surgery following a long, unspecified illness.  She had been frail and in failing health, which had resulted in her being unable to attend the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony, where she was to receive a lifetime achievement Oscar.  She was cremated in New York and her ashes interred at Forestvale Cemetery in her native Helena, Montana.

On this day in 2013, stage and film actor Peter O’Toole died from stomach cancer at Wellington Hospital in St John’s Wood, London, aged 81. Born Peter Seamus O’Toole on 2 August 1932 either in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland or Leeds, Yorkshire, England.  He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company before making his film debut in 1959.

He achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated another seven times – for Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class(1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and Venus (2006).  O’Toole holds the distinction for the most Academy Award nominations for acting without a win. In 2002, O’Toole was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements. He was additionally the recipient of four Golden Globe Awards, one British Academy Film Award and one Primetime Emmy Award.

Publicity photo for Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

O’Toole had a romantic relationship with model Karen Brown.

The Final Footprint – 

O’Toole’s memorial plaque in St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden

His funeral was held at Golders Green Crematorium in London on 21 December 2013, where he was cremated in a wicker coffin.

O’Toole’s remains are planned to be taken to Connemara, Ireland. They are currently being kept at the residence of the President of Ireland, Áras an Uachtaráin, by the President Michael D. Higgins who is an old friend of the actor.

On 21 April 2017, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, announced that O’Toole’s daughter, Kate O’Toole had placed her father’s archive at the humanities research centre. The collection includes O’Toole’s scripts, extensive published and unpublished writings, props, photographs, letters, medical records, and more. 

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