NEW YORK TIMES: Few country artists have been as popular and widely admired as Mr. Haggard. Thirty-eight of his singles, including “Workin’ Man Blues” and the 1973 recession-era lament “If We Make It Through December,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart from 1966 to 1987. He released 71 Top 10 country hits in all, 34 in a row from 1967 to 1977. Seven of his singles crossed over to the pop charts. Mr. Haggard had an immense influence on other performers — not just other country singers but also ’60s rock bands like the Byrds and the […]
RIP: The Garry Shandling Show Has Been Canceled
NEW YORK TIMES: Garry Shandling, a comedian who deftly walked a tightrope between comic fiction and show-business reality on two critically praised cable shows, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 66. A spokesman for the Los Angeles police confirmed the death but did not give a cause. TMZ, the celebrity news site, reported that Mr. Shandling had had a heart attack. Mr. Shandling, who began his comedy career as a writer and went on to become one of the most successful stand-up comics of the 1980s, was best known for “The Larry Sanders Show,” a dark look […]
RIP: Holly Woodlawn, Transgendered Actress & Star Of Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side,” Dead @ 69
BBC: Holly Woodlawn, the transgender actress who inspired Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side and appeared in Andy Warhol’s 70s films Trash and Women in Revolt, has died of cancer aged 69. Reed’s opening lyrics read: “Holly came from Miami, F-L-A / Hitchhiked her way across the USA / Plucked her eyebrows on the way / Shaved her legs, and then he was a she” in his hit.Puerto-Rico born Woodlawn, born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl, took on her new name after leaving home aged 15 and hitchhiking to New York City. She told the Guardian in 2007 of […]
RIP: Yvonne Craig, AKA Batgirl, Dead At 78
CNN: Before Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, before Joanna Cameron’s Isis, before Scarlett Johannsson’s Black Widow, Yvonne Craig was a pioneer of female superheroes on screen. As an actress, she originated the role of Batgirl in the 1960s “Batman” television series. As a trained dancer, she did her own stunts. Craig died this week after a long two-year battle with breast cancer. She was 78. Craig originated the role of Batgirl in the show’s third and final season in 1967, kapowing and zzonking the bad guys alongside Adam West and Burt Ward’s dynamic duo of Batman and Robin. “I hear […]
RIP: Chris Lee, Last Of The Aristrocratic Monsters
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Lee was 35 when his breakthrough film, Terence Fisher’s British horror movie “The Curse of Frankenstein,” was released in 1957. He played the creature. But it was a year later, when he played the title role in Mr. Fisher’s “Dracula,” that his cinematic identity became forever associated with Bram Stoker’s noble, ravenous vampire, who in Mr. Lee’s characterization exuded a certain lascivious sex appeal. When the film was reissued in 2007, Jeremy Dyson of The Guardian wrote, “Lee’s count is piercingly rapt, a fierce carnal evil burning behind his flashing eyes.” Even in his 70s […]
RIP: Philadelphia Native Mary Ellen Mark, Unflinching-Eyed Photojournalist, Dead At 75
Photo by MARY MARK ELLEN NEW YORK TIMES: She brings to all her photographs an unflinching yet compassionate eye. In the midst of exotica or on the fringes of society, where she often chooses to be, she does not exaggerate the unavoidably alien, freakish qualities a less complex photographer would emphasize, but tries to find clues to what is familiar and human. Thus a picture of three Indian prostitutes solemnly, uncomfortably awaiting a man’s decision becomes a poignant, harsher version of young girls at a dance. Mark says that ”Falkland Road,” her 1981 book on the Bombay brothels ”was meant […]
RIP: Leonard Nimoy, Socratic Logician, Dead @ 83
Artwork by JADAMFOX NEW YORK TIMES: Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83. His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters […]
RIP: Lesley Gore, Proto-Feminist Queen Of Teen ’63
NEW YORK TIMES: Lesley Gore, who was a teenager in the 1960s when she recorded hit songs about heartbreak and resilience that went on to become feminist touchstones, died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 68. Lois Sasson, her partner of 33 years, said Ms. Gore died of lung cancer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. With songs like “It’s My Party,” “Judy’s Turn to Cry” and the indelibly defiant 1964 single “You Don’t Own Me” — all recorded before she was 18 — Ms. Gore made herself the voice of teenage girls aggrieved by fickle boyfriends, moving quickly from tearful self-pity to […]
RIP: Goodnight Mr. Carr Wherever You Are
DAVID CARR: “I now inhabit a life I don’t deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end any time soon.” NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Carr collapsed in the Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. MORE DAVID CARR ON BRIAN WILLIAMS: We want our anchors to be both good at reading the news and also pretending to be in the middle of it,” he wrote on Monday in the wake […]
IN MEMORIAM: Novelist Kent Haruf 1943-2014
BY MIKE WALSH I spent a few years living in a small town in the northeastern plains of Colorado. That is also the same area where Kent Haruf set all of his novels, so I’ve felt an affinity with the man and his work. His novels remind me of that time in my life, those places, and the people who live in that area of the country. I’m also a fan of Haruf because his novels are just plain great. Haruf died on November 30 of liver disease. He was 71. All of Haruf’s novels are set in the fictional […]
RIP: Legendary Badboy Saxophonist Bobby Keys
ROLLING STONE: He first crossed paths with the Rolling Stones in 1964 at the San Antonio Teen Fair. He was skeptical of the English rockers, but said, “I went out and listened to them and there was some actual rock & roll going on there, in my humble opinion.” “You got to realize that the vision, the image, according to 1964 US Rock and roll standards, was mohair suit and tie, and nicey-nicey ol’ boy next door,” Keys said in Keith Richards’ autobiography Life. “And all of a sudden hear comes this truckload of English jackflies singing a Buddy Holly […]
RIP: Mike Nichols, Creator Of Much Of The Greatest Cinema, Theater & Comedy Of The 20th Century
NEW YORK TIMES: Mike Nichols, one of America’s most celebrated directors, whose long, protean résumé of critic- and crowd-pleasing work earned him adulation both on Broadway and in Hollywood, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 83. Dryly urbane, Mr. Nichols had a gift for communicating with actors and a keen comic timing, which he honed early in his career as half of the popular sketch-comedy team Nichols and May. An immigrant whose work was marked by trenchant perceptions of American culture, he achieved — in films like “The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Carnal Knowledge” and […]