#RIP #OTD 1938 socialite, aspiring actress Dorothy Hale died by jumping off the Hampshire House building in Manhattan. Island Cemetery, Newport, Rhode Island (The Suicide of Dorothy Hale by Frida Kahlo)
On this day in 1969, novelist and poet Jack Kerouac died at St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida at the age of 47, from an internal hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. Born Jean-Louis Kérouac on 12 March 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. He became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. Since his death Kerouac’s literary prestige has grown and several previously unseen works have been published. His books include: On the Road, Doctor Sax, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody, The Sea is My Brother, and Big Sur.
The Final Footprint – Kerouac is buried at Edson Cemetery in Lowell. His epitaph;
“The Road is Life.”
On this day in 1984, film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic, François Truffaut died from a brain tumor at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, at the age of 52. Born François Roland Truffaut on 6 February 1932 in Paris. In my opinion, he is one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry, having worked on over 25 films. Truffaut’s film The 400 Blows came to be a defining film of the French New Wave movement, and was followed by four sequels, Antoine et Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run, between 1958 and 1979.
Truffaut’s 1973 film Day for Night earned him a BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His other notable films include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules et Jim (1961), The Wild Child (1970), Two English Girls (1971), and The Woman Next Door (1981). He passed away at the age of 52.
The Final Footprint
At the time of his death, he still had numerous films in preparation. His goal was to make 30 films and then retire to write books for his remaining days. He was five films short of his personal goal. He is buried in Paris’ Montmartre Cemetery. Other notable final footprints at Montmartre include; Hector Berlioz, Dalida, Edgar Degas, Alexandre Dumas, fils, Marie Duplessis, France Gall, Théophile Gautier, Gustave Moreau, Jeanne Moreau, Henri Murger, Jacques Offenbach, Stendhal, and Alfred de Vigny.
On this day in 1992, District Attorney of Orleans Parrish, Louisiana from 1961 to 1973, Jim Garrison died of cancer at the age of 70 in New Orleans. Born Earling Carothers Garrison in Denison, Iowa on 20 November 1921. Known for his investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A controversial figure, opinions vary as to whether he uncovered a conspiracy but was blocked from discovering what actually happened, or whether he bungled a chance to uncover a conspiracy, or whether the whole thing was a complete waste of time and resources. His book, On the Trail of the Assassins (1988), served as the basis for Oliver Stone‘s movie JFK, starring Kevin Costner as Garrison. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter that day, and I believe the conspiracy lies behind his motive.
The Final Footprint – Garrison is buried in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. His grave is marked by an upright companion granite marker inscribed with the following; “LET JUSTICE BE DONE, THOUGH THE HEAVENS FALL”. Other notable final footprints at Metairie include; Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Louis Prima, and Stan Rice.
Sidebar – In 1973, Garrison was defeated for reelection as district attorney by Harry Connick, father of Harry Connick, Jr. Connick was also a singer and has long performed at Tipitina’s and other New Orleans clubs as a hobby. During the filming of the movie Hope Floats, starring the younger Connick and Sandra Bullock, near Austin, Texas, the elder Connick was scheduled to sing at a club on 6th Street in Austin. I was fortunate to be able to attend the show. Connick and Bullock attended as well and Connick sang a few songs with his father.
On this day in 2003 singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest in Los Angeles, age 34. Born Steven Paul Smith on August 6th, 1969 at the Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.
Smith’s primary instrument was the guitar, though he also played piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style, characterized by his “whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery”, and often used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies.
After playing in the rock band Heatmiser for several years, Smith began his solo career in 1994, with releases on the independent record labels Cavity Search and Kill Rock Stars (KRS). In 1997, he signed a contract with DreamWorks Records, for which he recorded two albums. Smith rose to mainstream prominence when his song “Miss Misery”—included in the soundtrack for the film Good Will Hunting (1997)—was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category in 1998.
Smith was a heavy drinker and drug user at times throughout his life, and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression. His struggles with drugs and mental illness affected his life and work, and often appeared in his lyrics.
The Final Footprint – The autopsy evidence was inconclusive as to whether the wounds were self-inflicted or the result of homicide. At the time of his death, Smith was working on his sixth studio album, From a Basement on the Hill, which was posthumously produced and released in 2004. Smith was cremated.
And on this day in 2006 musician, singer, songwriter, drummer, one of the founding members of the Runaways, Sandy West died at the age of 47 from lung cancer in San Dimas, California. Born Sandy Pesavento in Long Beach, California on 10 July 1959. she was the drummer in the Prisk Elementary School orchestra.
West proved to have a natural talent and quickly became a proficient drummer. By the age of 13, she was the only girl in local bands who played at teenage parties. Attended Edison High school in Huntington Beach California with actor Willie Aames, playing drums in school bands as Sandy Pesavento, one of those bands was Witchcraft that featured Jimmy “Trash” Decker that later went on to form the punk band The Crowd in 1977.
Driven by her ambition to play professionally, she sought out fellow musicians and other industry contacts in southern California with the idea of forming an all-woman rock band. In 1975, she met producer Kim Fowley, who gave her the phone number of another young musician in the area, guitarist Joan Jett. Joan and Sandy met shortly thereafter. The women subsequently played for Fowley, who agreed to help them find other female musicians to round out the band, most notably Lita Ford and Cherie Currie.
The band released four studio albums and one live album during its run. Among their best-known songs are “Cherry Bomb”, “Hollywood”, “Queens of Noise” and a cover version of The Velvet Underground’s “Rock & Roll”. Never a major success in the United States, the Runaways became a sensation overseas, especially in Japan, thanks to the single “Cherry Bomb”.
The Final Footprint – Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, Orange County, California.
Have you planned yours yet?
Follow TFF on twitter @RIPTFF
The Final Footprint– Van Zant was originally entombed in a private mausoleum in Jacksonville Memorial Gardens in Orange Park, Florida.
On this day in 1983 singer, songwriter, innovative guitarist, Merle Travis died of a heart attack at his Tahlequah, Oklahoma home, aged 65.
The Final Footprint – Cremated remains scattered Ebenezer Cemetery, Ebenezer, Kentucky.
On this day in 1994, actor Burt Lancaster died in his Century City apartment in Los Angeles from a third heart attack at the age of 80. Born Burton Stephen Lancaster on November 2, 1913 in Manhattan at his parents’ home at 209 East 106th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, today the site of Benjamin Franklin Plaza.
And on this day in 2006 actress Jane Wyatt died at her home in Bel-Air, California, aged 96. She starred in a number of Hollywood films, such as Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon, but is perhaps best known for her role as the housewife and mother Margaret Anderson on the CBS and NBC television comedy series Father Knows Best, and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the science-fiction television series Star Trek. Wyatt was a three-time Emmy Award–winner.
The Final Footprint – San Fernando Mission Cemetery, Mission Hills, California.
On this day in 1943, French sculptor and graphic artist, elder sister of the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel, Camille Claudel died at the age of 78, after having lived 30 years in the asylum at Montfavet (known then as the Asile de Montdevergues, now the modern psychiatric hospital Centre hospitalier de Montfavet). Born in Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, in northern France on 8 December 1864. Around 1884, Claudel started working in Auguste Rodin’s workshop and became his muse, his model, his confidante and lover. After 1905 Claudel apparently began exhibiting signs of paranoia and was diagnosed as having schizophrenia. She destroyed many of her statues and disappeared for long periods of time. She accused Rodin of stealing her ideas and of leading a conspiracy to kill her. On 10 March 1913 at the initiative of her brother, she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne. In 1914, to be safe from advancing German troops, the patients at Ville-Évrard were at first relocated to Enghien. On 7 September 1914 Camille was transferred with a number of other women, to the Montdevergues Asylum, at Montfavet, six kilometres from Avignon.
The Final Footprint – Her body was interred in the cemetery of Monfavet, in a communal grave. The film, Camille Claudel (1988), directed by Bruno Nuytten, co-produced by Isabelle Adjani, starring herself as Claudel and Gérard Depardieu as Rodin, was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1989. Another film, Camille Claudel 1915, directed by Bruno Dumont, premiered at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in 2013. The actress Juliette Binoche played Claudel.
On this day in 1950, lyrical poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay died at her home, Steepletop near Austerlitz, New York, at the age of 58. She had fallen down stairs and was found approximately eight hours after her death. Her physician reported that she had suffered a heart attack following a coronary occlusion. Born on 22 February 1892 in Rockland, Maine. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. Millay married Eugen Jan Boissevain (1923 – 1949 his death). A self-proclaimed feminist, Boissevain supported her career and took primary care of domestic responsibilities. Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their twenty-six-year marriage. For Millay, a significant such relationship was with the poet George Dillon, who was the inspiration for Millay’s epic 52-sonnet sequence Fatal Interview. They later collaborated on translations from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal in 1936.
The Final Footprint – Millay is interred next to Boissevain in the Steepletop Cemetery. Millay’s sister Norma and her husband, the painter and actor Charles Frederick Ellis, moved to Steepletop after Millay’s death. In 1973, they established Millay Colony for the Arts on the seven acres around the house and barn. After the death of her husband in 1976, Norma continued to run the program until her death in 1986. At 17, the poet Mary Oliver visited Steepletop and became a close friend of Norma. Oliver eventually lived there for seven years and helped to organize Millay’s papers. Oliver herself went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, greatly inspired by Millay’s work. In 2006, the state of New York paid $1.69 million to acquire 230 acres of Steepletop, with the intention to add the land to a nearby state forest preserve. The proceeds of the sale were to be used by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society to restore the farmhouse and grounds and turn it into a museum. The museum has been open to the public since summer 2010, and guided tours of Steepletop and Millay’s gardens are available from the end of May through the middle of October. Parts of the grounds of Steepletop, including the Millay Poetry Trail that leads to her grave, are now open to the public year-round.
The Final Footprint – His funeral took place ten days later at the Church of the Madeleine, with Camille Saint-Saëns playing the organ and Gabriel Fauré conducting. Gounod is entombed in a private mausoleum in Cimetiere d’Auteuil in Paris.
On this day in 2000 actress, dancer, wife-dancer-collaborator-muse of Bob Fosse, 4x Tony winner, Gwen Verdon died from a heart attack at her daughter Nicole Fosse’s home in Woodstock, Vermont, age 75.
The Final Footprint – Kristel is buried in Utrecht Sint-Barbara Roman Catholic Cemetery, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her epitaph…
On this day in 2007, U. S. Army veteran, actor, comedian, entertainer, member of the Rat Pack, Joey Bishop died at his home in Newport Beach, California, from heart failure at the age of 89.
He later became a member of the “Rat Pack” with Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin. Bishop married Sylvia Ruzga, who died in 1999 from lung cancer.
