He will be sadly missed. God Bless Johnny Carson!!!
Love to All,
Barb
Now serving Bitter, party of one. Your table is ready.
by oneyedchicklet » Tue Jan 25, 2005 7:08 am
Now serving Bitter, party of one. Your table is ready.
by jixer » Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:00 am
by WebWarlock » Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:30 am
Quote:
Actor Ossie Davis Found Dead in Hotel
By HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - Ossie Davis, the actor distinguished for roles dealing with racial injustice on stage, screen and in real life, has died, an aide said Friday. He was 87.
Davis, the husband and partner of actress Ruby Dee, was found dead Friday in his hotel room in Miami Beach, Fla., according to officials there. He was making a film called "Retirement," said Arminda Thomas, who works in his office in suburban New Rochelle and confirmed the death.
Davis, who wrote, acted, directed and produced for the theater and Hollywood, was a central figure among black performers of the last five decades. He and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998 with the publication of a dual autobiography, "In This Life Together."
In Miami Beach, police spokesman Bobby Hernandez said Davis' grandson called the police shortly before 7 a.m. when his grandfather would not open the door to his room at the Shore Club Hotel. Davis was found dead and there does not appear to be any foul play, Hernandez said.
Davis had just started his movie on Monday, said Michael Livingston, his Hollywood agent.
"I'm shocked," Livingston said. "I'm absolutely shocked. He was the most wonderful man I've ever known. Such a classy, kindly man." His wife had gone to New Zealand to make a movie there, Livingston said.
Their partnership called to mind other performing couples, such as the Lunts, or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Davis and Dee first appeared together in the plays "Jeb," in 1946, and "Anna Lucasta," in 1946-47. Davis' first film, "No Way Out" in 1950, was Dee's fifth.
Both had key roles in the television series "Roots: The Next Generation" (1978), "Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum" (1986) and "The Stand" (1994). Davis appeared in three Spike Lee films, including "School Daze," "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever." Dee also appeared in the latter two; among her best-known films was "A Raisin in the Sun," in 1961.
In 2004, Davis and Dee were among the artists selected to receive the JFK Center Honors.
When not on stage or on camera, Davis and Dee were deeply involved in civil rights issues and efforts to promote the cause of blacks in the entertainment industry. They nearly ran afoul of the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the early 1950s, but were never openly accused of any wrongdoing.
Davis, the oldest of five children of a self-taught railroad builder and herb doctor, was born in tiny Cogdell, Ga., in 1917 and grew up in nearby Waycross and Valdosta. He left home in 1935, hitchhiking to Washington to enter Howard University, where he studied drama, intending to be a playwright.
His career as an actor began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem, then the center of black culture in America. There, the young Davis met or mingled with some of the most influential figures of the time, including the preacher Father Divine, W.E.B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright (news).
He also had what he described in the book as a "flirtation with the Young Communist League," which he said essentially ended with the onset of World War II. Davis spent nearly four years in service, mainly as a surgical technician in an Army hospital in Liberia (news - web sites), serving both wounded troops and local inhabitants.
Back in New York in 1946, Davis debuted on Broadway in "Jeb," a play about a returning soldier. His co-star was Dee, whose budding stage career had paralleled his own. They had even appeared in different productions of the same play, "On Strivers Row," in 1940.
In December 1948, on a day off from rehearsals from another play, "The Smile of the World," Davis and Dee took a bus to New Jersey to get married. They already were so close that "it felt almost like an appointment we finally got around to keeping," Dee wrote in "In This Life Together."
As black performers, they found themselves caught up in the social unrest fomented by the then-new Cold War and the growing debate over social and racial justice in the United States.
"We young ones in the theater, trying to fathom even as we followed, were pulled this way and that by the swirling currents of these new dimensions of the Struggle," Davis wrote in the joint autobiography.
He lined up with black socialist reformer DuBois and singer Paul Robeson, remaining fiercely loyal to the singer even after Robeson was denounced by other black political, sports and show business figures for his openly communist and pro-Soviet sympathies.
While Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the New York theater world became engulfed in McCarthyism and red-baiting controversies, Davis and Dee emerged from the anti-communist fervor unscathed and, in Davis' view, justifiably so.
"We've never been, to our knowledge, guilty of anything — other than being black — that might upset anybody," he wrote.
They were friends with baseball star Jackie Robinson and his wife, Rachel — Dee played her, opposite Robinson himself, in the 1950 movie, "The Jackie Robinson Story" — and with Malcolm X.
In the book, Davis told how a prior commitment caused them to miss the Harlem rally where Malcolm was assassinated in 1965. Davis delivered the eulogy at Malcolm's funeral, and reprised it in a voice-over for the 1992 Spike Lee film, "Malcolm X."
Along with film, stage and television, the couple's careers extended to a radio show, "The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour," that ran on 65 stations for four years in the mid-1970s, featuring a mix of black themes.
Both wrote plays and screenplays, and Davis directed several films, most notably "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970) and "Countdown at Kusini" (1976), in which he also appeared with Dee.
Other films in which Davis appeared include "The Cardinal" (1963), "The Hill" (1965), "Grumpy Old Men" (1993), "The Client" (1994) and "I'm Not Rappaport" (1996), a reprise of his stage role 10 years earlier.
On television, he appeared in "The Emperor Jones" (1955), "Freedom Road" (1979), "Miss Evers' Boys" (1997) and "Twelve Angry Men" (1997). He was a cast member on "The Defenders" from 1963-65, and "Evening Shade" from 1990-94, among other shows.
Both Davis and Dee made numerous guest appearances on television shows.
EzCode Parsing Error: face=times new roman size=2]Web Warlock, web.warlock@comcast.net, The Other Side.
Liber Mysterium: The D20 Netbook of Witches & The Dragon and the Phoenix: New Adventures of Willow and Tara
"We’re gonna light up the dark of night like the brightest day in a whole new w
by urnofosiris » Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:55 am
by emma peel » Mon Feb 21, 2005 12:12 am
by Gatito Grande » Mon Feb 21, 2005 6:41 pm
Quote:
[Thompson's] most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."
Out by skittles » Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:01 am
Quote:
Sci-fi and fantasy author Norton dies
Grand Master of genre was 93
Thursday, March 17, 2005 Posted: 2:39 PM EST (1939 GMT)
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular "Witch World" series, has died. She was 93.
Her death was announced by friend Jean Rabe, who said Norton died Thursday of congestive heart failure at her home in Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb.
Norton requested before her death that she not have a funeral service, but instead asked to be cremated along with a copy of her first and last novels.
Born Alice Mary Norton on February 17, 1912, in Cleveland, she wrote more than 130 books in many genres during her career of nearly 70 years. She used a pen name -- which she made her legal name in 1934 -- because she expected to be writing mostly for young boys and thought a male name would help sales.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America recently created the Andre Norton Award for young adult novels, and the first award will be presented in 2006.
"She was wonderful with new or younger writers," said Jane Jewell, executive director of SFWA. "On many occasions, she worked with new writers and collaborated with them on novels to help them get started."
Her first novel, "The Prince Commands," is set in a mythical European kingdom and tells of a young nobleman who returns from exile to stop a communist takeover of his homeland. It was published in 1934 when Norton was 22. The "Witch World" series, which details life on an imaginary planet reachable only through hidden gateways, included more than 30 novels.
She was the first woman to receive the Grand Master of Fantasy Award from the SFWA in 1977, and she won the Nebula Grand Master Award in 1984.
Her last complete novel, "Three Hands of Scorpio," is set to be released in April. Norton's publisher, Tor Books, rushed to have one copy printed so that the author, who had been sick for almost a year, could see it.
"She was able to hold it on Friday," Jewell said. "She took it and said, 'What a pretty cobalt blue for the cover.' "
Norton spent most of her life in Cleveland, where she worked as a librarian from 1932 to 1950, except for a brief stint in the 1940s when she ran her own bookstore in Mount Ranier, Maryland, and worked at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Norton and her mother, Bertha Stemm Norton, who also served as her in-house proofreader and editor for decades, moved to Winter Park, Florida, in 1966 for their health. Norton moved to Tennessee in 1996 because she wanted to start a library for genre writers and didn't like the population explosion in Florida. She found a farm in rural Monterey, about 85 miles east of Nashville.
But the hills of east Tennessee were too isolated for her and her assistant, Rose Wolf. A friend helped them find the house in Murfreesboro.
She established The High Hallack Genre Writer's Research and Reference Library in 1999 on a quiet residential street in the town about 30 miles southeast of Nashville. High Hallack is the name of a country in "Witch World."
Norton opened the library in a converted three-car garage as a retreat where authors could research ancient religions, weaponry, mythology or history that they need to bring their stories to life. The library includes biographies, diaries, histories, science books -- almost anything a writer might need to craft a realistic setting on any world in any time.
Norton said detailed research matters in fiction because today's education is so inadequate that many people must get their history from novels. If an author makes historical detail interesting, a reader might be inspired to research the subject more.
"It's an opening to another kind of life," she said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press.
skittles
"The problem with political jokes is how often they get elected."
"Closed minds always seem to be connected to open mouths"
by jixer » Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:14 am
by Triscuit7 » Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:54 am
******************
Do something totally irrational and let the enemy think himself to death. (Pyanfar Chanur)
by Gatito Grande » Mon Mar 21, 2005 5:36 pm
). What I do remember for sure, was seeing him in 1991 at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side (some benefit thang that was apparently cheap enough for the ex and me, po' grad students!) When he sang "Drop Me Off in Harlem" (w/ the ludicrously perfect lyrics, "If Harlem were in China, there'd be no place fina' . . . " 
), you were transported to a state of mind that was just infinitely kewler than any Real World had a right to be. Quote:
AN APPRECIATION
Bobby Short, Keeping the Party Going
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: March 22, 2005 [NB: it's from tomorrow's paper]
There are few entertainers about whom one could say, So-and-so is simply the best. For nearly four decades, Bobby Short reigned at the Cafe Carlyle on New York's Upper East Side as America's quintessential male cabaret singer-pianist. The best at what he did, Mr. Short, who died yesterday, elevated the humble role of the piano-bar entertainer to an art.
To the extent that it flourishes in the music of Michael Feinstein, Steve Ross, Eric Comstock and Billy Stritch, to name four talented younger practitioners, that tradition owes an incalculable debt to Bobby Short.
Twice a year, this eternally boyish bon vivant bounced into the Cafe Carlyle to play the indefatigably merry host of a Manhattan party that lasted for only a little more than an hour, but left you feeling refreshed and aglow. He evoked the joyful hi-de-ho of Cab Calloway, refined for the salon. Giving himself to performance with the enthusiasm of an excitable child, he would often leap from his piano bench and throw out his arms as if to embrace the room, all the while maintaining perfect enunciation. At this elegant bash, guests from downtown, uptown, out of town and out of the country partied side by side under the spell of his unflappable bonhomie.
To dismiss Mr. Short, as some did, as a plaything of the rich and the chic is to overlook his contribution to jazz and to New York cultural life. He was one of the last exponents of an ebullient dusk-till-dawn nightclub culture that flourished in Manhattan until it was done in by television, rock 'n' roll and its own inflationary pressures.
At the keyboard, Mr. Short refined his own personal brand of stride piano. Vigorous and sophisticated but devoid of fuss and frills, it was as distinctive as his voice, to which it was inextricably wedded. Over the years, his sound evolved from that of a caroling choirboy into a huskier baritone whose timbre varied from fogbound to clear, depending on the night and sometimes on the moment. As his voice acquired deeper shades and rougher textures, he made adroit, expressive use of each new facet.
Championing the work of African-American songwriters like Duke Ellington, Calloway, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Andy Razaf, he placed their music on the same pedestal as standards by Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin. Each performance suggested a continuing dialogue between uptown and downtown that demonstrated the depth of communication between Harlem and Broadway. His performances and recordings played a crucial role in leveling the racial playing field of American pop and helping bring a shamefully obscured history to light.
Because he entertained predominantly white audiences in upscale spaces like the Cafe Carlyle, Mr. Short could be mistakenly written off as a snob. Contributing to that impression was the air of la-di-dah insouciance he shared with other performers, like his friend Mabel Mercer, the great cabaret singer. A sense of style, however, is not to be confused with superficiality. Like Ms. Mercer, Mr. Short could plumb the depths of a song when the occasion demanded.
That style was an expression of Mr. Short's personal philosophy. Because his career was a fantastic feat of self-invention, it is little wonder that the predominant spirit he conveyed was a childlike awe and pleasure at living the high life. As the years piled up and he suffered from debilitating ailments that made walking increasingly difficult in his final years, he concealed his discomfort. Each performance became an act of self-transformation in which he threw off his troubles. Every time he sang Razaf and J. C. Johnson's racy announcement, "Guess Who's in Town," he conveyed the exuberance of someone who had just breezed into the room to give the party a lift.
For all his elegance, Mr. Short could never be called effete, and his performances burst with a playful, robust sensuality. Lil Green's bumping and grinding hymn to uninhibited lovemaking, "Romance in the Dark," became a long-running showstopper that Mr. Short milked for every ounce of jolly lubricity.
Taken together, the songs that formed the backbone of his enormous repertory became variations of that upbeat philosophy. At the very heart of it stood "Just One of Those Things," Cole Porter's regret-free, laughing-it-off epitaph to a love affair that passes like a streak of lightning: "It was great fun, but it was just one of those things." If there are regrets, they are minor compared with the sheer thrill of being alive and of having the chance to begin again.
He certainly had the creme de la creme of New York's wealthy matrons competing to "hag" him! 
Outby mollyig » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:24 am
by Gatito Grande » Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:30 pm
) . . . but there ought to be. 
Out by oneyedchicklet » Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:46 pm
Now serving Bitter, party of one. Your table is ready.
by oneyedchicklet » Wed Apr 06, 2005 6:01 am
Now serving Bitter, party of one. Your table is ready.
by SySnootles » Wed Apr 06, 2005 11:04 am
Catie
When I'm 130 years old, I want a pill that makes me so happy and so unself-conscious and so randy I'm willing to make love to my fuzzy bed slippers on my front lawn and yodel at the same time. -- Scott Adams from Dilbert and the way of the Weasel
by WebWarlock » Wed May 18, 2005 10:41 am
by Diebrock » Tue Jun 07, 2005 3:13 pm
June 7, 2005
Anne Bancroft, enshrined in film history as the iconic Mrs. Robinson, the seductress who devours her daughter's nerdy boyfriend-to-be (Dustin Hoffman) in the 1967 film "The Graduate," and also remembered for her sensitive portrayal on both stage and screen of Annie Sullivan, the teacher who leads the blind and deaf Helen Keller out of darkness into light in "The Miracle Worker," died Monday at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 73.
The cause was uterine cancer, said John Barlow, a spokesman for the family.
Those widely dissimilar roles were emblematic of Ms. Bancroft's long career. During more than 50 years of acting in films, theater and television she played everything from Brecht's "Mother Courage" to the mother superior of a convent, and from an aging ballerina to the Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel, and repeatedly won praise for her work. Arthur Penn, who directed her award-winning Broadway performances in "Two for the Seesaw" and "The Miracle Worker," both by William Gibson, put it this way: "More happens in her face in 10 seconds than happens in most women's faces in 10 years."
Ms. Bancroft worked hard to get beneath the surface, to inhabit a role as deeply as possible. While rehearsing for "The Miracle Worker," she put tape over her eyes to better understand what it was like to be blind like Helen Keller, learned sign language and spent time at a home for the visually impaired. Preparing for "Golda," she traveled to Israel and got to know and observe Prime Minister Meir. She was more interested in performance than theory, although she was a member of the Actors Studio early in her career. The actor Rod Steiger once gave her a copy of Stanislavsky's writings on acting. "I still have it," she said some years later, "but I've never read it."
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The landmarks in Ms. Bancroft's acting life were, unquestionably, the two Gibson plays and "The Graduate." She had already accumulated a long list of credits in TV dramas when she moved to Hollywood in the early 1950's to join the crowd of young hopefuls jostling for jobs in second- or third-rate films. She was among the few who found steady work, appearing in more than a dozen grade-C features with titles like "Treasure of the Golden Condor," "Gorilla at Large" - "I played the title role" - and "Demetrius and the Gladiators." Disenchanted after five years or so, and newly divorced, she headed back to New York with the promise of an audition for a new Broadway play called "Two for the Seesaw."
It was a two-character play, with Henry Fonda starring as a depressed Midwestern lawyer with marital troubles who comes to New York and meets Gittel Mosca, an attractive, thoroughly quirky young bohemian girl from the Bronx. They are two lost souls who, though their lifestyles are worlds apart, manage to help one another. Ms. Bancroft, who happened to be not only attractive and quirky but also Bronx-born and raised, auditioned and got the job. After a rocky start - she had virtually no stage experience - she quickly settled into the role. When the play opened in 1958, Ms. Bancroft stole the show and ultimately won a Tony Award as best supporting actress.
When the next Gibson-Penn theater project took shape the following year - the story of Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan - they knew who would play Sullivan from day one. The part of the hostile, 10-year-old Helen went to Patty Duke. Between them, Ms. Bancroft and Ms. Duke tore up the stage as Sullivan struggled to communicate with and calm her raging young charge, eventually breaking through the child's defensive shell. "The Miracle Worker" was a resounding hit, and Ms. Bancroft came away with her second Tony Award, this time as best actress. Tonys also went to Mr. Penn, Mr. Gibson and the play's producer, Fred Coe. Two years, two plays, two Tonys. And when "The Miracle Worker" was made into a film in 1962, both Ms. Bancroft and Ms. Duke won Academy Awards.
Hollywood now had a new star, and Ms. Bancroft was offered scripts rather better than, say, "Gorilla at Large." She appeared with Peter Finch in "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964), Harold Pinter's adaptation of a novel by Penelope Mortimer about a woman driven into a nervous breakdown by her husband's casual philandering. Her work brought her an Oscar nomination. Next came "The Slender Thread" (1965), in which she played a housewife whose crumbling marriage leads her to attempt suicide.
By the time "The Graduate" came along, she was more than ready to play the alpha female and she got her wish with the character of Mrs. Robinson of Beverly Hills, the bored predator whose sexual binges with young Ben Braddock, the son of her husband's law partner, are mechanical but necessary props for her self-indulgent ego. Directed by Mike Nichols, with a melancholic soundtrack of songs by Simon and Garfunkel, "The Graduate" was hailed as a winning social satire. Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, called it "devastating and uproarious" and hailed Ms. Bancroft's "sullenly contemptuous and voracious performance." Mr. Nichols won an Oscar, while nominations went to Ms. Bancroft, Mr. Hoffman and Katharine Ross, who played Mrs. Robinson's daughter. The still photograph that appeared in advertisements for the film, showing Mrs. Robinson slowly peeling off a nylon stocking under the glazed gaze of Mr. Hoffman's Ben Braddock, became a classic of its kind.
More good roles lay ahead, but Ms. Bancroft had definitely hit a high point.
Anna Maria Louisa Italiano was born Sept. 17, 1931, in the Bronx to Italian immigrant parents. Her father, Michael, was a patternmaker, and her mother, Mildred, a telephone operator. By the time she was 2 years old she was learning to sing and dance. "Why play with dolls," she recalled years later, "when you can sing 'I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate' on the street corner?" Even so, by the time she left high school she had decided to become a laboratory technician. Instead, her mother insisted she attend the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. Two years later she found work in television where, as Anne Marno, she appeared in scores of dramatic shows. In 1951 she was asked to participate in another actor's screen test for 20th Century Fox, after which she, not he, was offered the contract that took her to Hollywood. At the studio she was handed a book of names and urged to choose a new one. She became Anne Bancroft. She had no illusions about that chapter of her film career, noting some years later that "20th Century Fox told me what to do and I did it. I learned nothing."
During her first stay in Hollywood she married Martin A. May, a building contractor, in 1954. They were divorced in 1957. In 1964 she married Mel Brooks, who survives her along with their son, Maximilian, and grandson.
The 1970's and 80's saw Ms. Bancroft take on a wide variety of roles, from Winston Churchill's American-born mother in "Young Winston" to the actress-wife of a hammy Polish impresario ("world famous in Poland"), played by Mr. Brooks, in the farcical "To Be or Not to Be." She also earned two more Oscar nominations, one for her portrayal of a ballerina confronting her choice of career over family in "The Turning Point," the other for her work as a mother superior in "Agnes of God." Other major roles included "'Night Mother," as a woman struggling with her daughter's decision to commit suicide, and "84 Charing Cross Road," in which she played an American writer whose correspondence with a London bookseller (Anthony Hopkins) develops into a long-distance romance.
She rarely returned to the theater, although she did win praise as the steel-willed Regina Giddens in Mr. Nichols's 1967 staging of Lillian Hellman's "Little Foxes" at Lincoln Center. In The Times, Clive Barnes characterized her performance as "a series of unforgettable visual and aural images." The following year Ms. Bancroft appeared in the Lincoln Center Repertory production of another William Gibson drama, "A Cry of Players," set in Shakespearean England. Her performance in "Golda" (1977) brought her a Tony nomination. She played a crippled violinist in the 1981 "Duet for One," which closed after a two-week run, and then was absent from the stage until the spring of 2002, when she was set to star in Edward Albee's "Occupant" as the sculptor Louise Nevelson. The play's scheduled run had to be canceled when Ms. Bancroft contracted pneumonia during previews.
In later years she continued to appear in films, although the roles grew smaller. She was briefly on screen as Nicolas Cage's mother in "Honeymoon in Vegas," trained a young woman as an assassin in "Point of No Return," scored a few points as a wily senator in "G.I. Jane" and had some campy fun in an updated version of "Great Expectations" as a loony character based on Dickens's Ms. Havisham.
She fared better in television, earning Emmy nominations playing a killer in the PBS drama "Mrs. Cage" and the title role in "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" on CBS.
She was resigned to the fact that age and changing times worked against her. In a 1992 interview with The Times's Bernard Weinraub she admitted to taking parts "even if they're one page," because "there are very few good scripts, even for Julia Roberts." She preferred a good bit part to a heftier bad one. She often rejected work in favor of family life - for a while. "I retire after every project," she once said. "Then somehow there's always something that pulls me out of retirement."
by xita » Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:17 pm
by Rosenberg » Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:23 pm
by WebWarlock » Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:23 am
John Fiedler, voice of Piglet, dies
Actor also starred in 'Bob Newhart Show'
Monday, June 27, 2005; Posted: 8:02 a.m. EDT (12:02 GMT)
NEW YORK (AP) -- John Fiedler, a stage actor who won fame as the voice of Piglet in Walt Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh films, died Saturday, The New York Times reported in Monday editions. He was 80.
Fiedler served in the Navy during World War II before beginning a stage career in New York. He performed in supporting roles alongside Sidney Poitier on Broadway, John Wayne in Hollywood and Bob Newhart on television.
With Newhart, on "The Bob Newhart Show," he was Mr. Peterson, the meek patient who was often a target for Jack Riley's sarcastic Mr. Carlin.
Fiedler also appeared in the films "12 Angry Men," "The Odd Couple," "True Grit," "The Fortune" and "Sharky's Machine," and was a cast member on the TV show "Buffalo Bill."
But he was best known for the squeaky voice of the ever-worrying Piglet that he landed when someone noticed his naturally high-pitched voice.
"Walt Disney heard it on a program and said, 'That's Piglet,' " his brother James Fiedler told The Times.
In addition to his brother, Fiedler is survived by a sister, Mary Dean, The Times reported. The newspaper did not report the cause or location of his death.
by Gatito Grande » Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:04 pm
by DaddyCatALSO » Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:16 pm
by Gatito Grande » Fri Jul 01, 2005 5:19 pm
by WebWarlock » Sat Jul 02, 2005 6:07 am
by abtotallyrules » Sun Jul 03, 2005 6:28 am
by Diebrock » Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:47 am
James Doohan, 'Star Trek's' Scotty, dead
Wednesday, July 20, 2005; Posted: 12:23 p.m. EDT (16:23 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures who responded to the command "Beam me up, Scotty," died early Wednesday. He was 85.
Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.
The Canadian-born Doohan fought in World War II and was wounded during the D-Day invasion, according to the StarTrek.com Web site. He was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.
"The producers asked me which one I preferred," Doohan recalled 30 years later. "I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, 'If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman.' "
The series, which starred William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as the enigmatic Mr. Spock, attracted an enthusiastic following of science fiction fans, especially among teenagers and children, but not enough ratings power. NBC canceled it after three seasons.
When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."
"I took his advice," said Doohan, "and since then everything's been just lovely."
"Star Trek" continued in syndication both in the United States and abroad, and its following grew larger and more dedicated. In his later years, Doohan attended 40 "Trekkie" gatherings around the country and lectured at colleges.
The huge success of George Lucas' "Star Wars" in 1977 prompted Paramount Pictures, which had produced "Star Trek" for television, to plan a movie based on the series. The studio brought back the TV cast and hired director Robert Wise. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was successful enough to spawn five sequels with the cast of the original TV show; other films, featuring cast members of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," have followed.
The powerfully built Doohan spoke frankly in 1998 about his employer and his TV commander.
"I started out in the series at basic minimum -- plus 10 percent for my agent. That was added a little bit in the second year. When we finally got to our third year, Paramount told us we'd get second-year pay! That's how much they loved us."
He accused Shatner of hogging the camera, adding: "I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself."
James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife Sarah. As he wrote in his autobiography, "Beam Me Up, Scotty," his father was a drunk who made life miserable for his wife and children.
At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."
The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. The chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.
After the war Doohan on a whim enrolled in a drama class in Toronto. He showed promise and won a two-year scholarship to New York's famed Neighborhood Playhouse, where fellow students included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone.
His commanding presence and booming voice brought him work as a character actor in films and television, both in Canada and the United States.
Oddly, his only other TV series besides "Star Trek" was another space adventure, "Space Command," in 1953.
Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80.
In a 1998 interview, Doohan was asked if he ever got tired of hearing the line "Beam me up, Scotty."
"I'm not tired of it at all," he replied. "Good gracious, it's been said to me for just about 31 years. It's been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It's been fun."
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