The RIP Thread

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Diahann Carroll, Pioneering Actress on 'Julia' and 'Dynasty,' Dies at 84
8:59 AM PDT 10/4/2019 by Mike Barnes





She also landed a historic Tony Award, plus an Oscar nomination for her performance in 'Claudine.'
Diahann Carroll, the captivating singer and actress who came from the Bronx to win a Tony Award, receive an Oscar nomination and make television history with her turns on Julia and Dynasty, died Friday. She was 84.

Carroll died at her home in Los Angeles after a long bout with cancer, her daughter, producer-journalist Suzanne Kay, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Carroll was known as a Las Vegas and nightclub performer and for her performances on Broadway and in the Hollywood musicals Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess when she was approached by an NBC executive to star as Julia Baker, a widowed nurse raising a young son, on the comedy Julia.

She didn't want to do it. "I really didn't believe that this was a show that was going to work," she said in a 1998 chat for the website The Interviews: An Oral History of Television. "I thought it was something that was going to leave someone's consciousness in a very short period of time. I thought, 'Let them go elsewhere.' "

However, when Carroll learned that Hal Kanter, the veteran screenwriter who created the show, thought she was too glamorous for the part, she was determined to change his mind. She altered her hairstyle and mastered the pilot script, quickly convincing him that she was the right woman.

Carroll thus became the first African American female to star in a non-stereotypical role in her own primetime network series. (Several actresses portrayed a maid on ABC's Beulah in the early 1950s.)

Her character Baker, whose husband had died in Vietnam, worked for a doctor (Lloyd Nolan) at an aerospace company; she was educated and outspoken, and she dated men (including characters played by Fred Williamson, Paul Winfield and Don Marshall) who were successful, too.

"We were saying to the country, 'We're going to present a very upper middle-class black woman raising her child, and her major concentration is not going to be about suffering in the ghetto,'" Carroll noted.

"Many people were incensed about that. They felt that [African Americans] didn't have that many opportunities on television or in film to present our plight as the underdog … they felt the [real-world] suffering was much too acute to be so trivial as to present a middle-class woman who is dealing with the business of being a nurse.

"But we were of the opinion that what we were doing was important, and we never left that point of view … even though some of that criticism of course was valid. We were of a mind that this was a different show. We were allowed to have this show."

Julia, which premiered in September 1968, finished No. 7 in the ratings in the first of its three seasons, and Carroll received an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for her work.

While recuperating after starring on Broadway in Agnes of God, Carroll had found herself digging Dynasty — "Isn't this the biggest hoot?" she said — and lobbied producer Aaron Spelling for a role on his series.

"They've done everything [on the show]. They've done incest, homosexuality, murder. I think they're slowly inching their way toward interracial," she recalled in a 1984 piece for People magazine. "I want to be wealthy and ruthless … I want to be the first black bitch on television."

As the sultry fashionista Dominique Deveraux — the first prominently featured African American character on a primetime soap opera — Carroll played a much edgier character for three seasons on ABC's Dynasty and its spinoff The Colbys, delightfully dueling with fellow diva Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins).

Carroll made perhaps her biggest mark on the big screen with her scrappy title-role performance in Claudine (1974), playing a Harlem woman on welfare who raises six children on her own and falls for a garbage collector (James Earl Jones).

The part was originally given to her dear friend, Diana Sands. But when Sands (who had played Julia Baker's cousin on several episodes of Julia) was stricken with cancer, she suggested Carroll take her place.

"The producers said, 'How can she do this role? No one would believe she could do it," Carroll said. "I remember the headline in the paper: 'Would you believe Jackie Onassis as a welfare mother?' … The very coupling of the name Jackie Onassis and Diahann Carroll is very interesting, if you think about it. Their question was, how do we make anyone believe that she has [six] children? And to be nominated for an Academy Award, to do that, it was the best, the best."

Carol Diahann Johnson was born in Fordham Hospital in the Bronx on July 17, 1935. Her father, John, was a subway conductor when she was young, and her mother, Mabel, a nurse. She won a scholarship to the High School of Music & Art, where Billy Dee Williams was a classmate.

At 15, she began to model clothing for black-audience magazines like Ebony, Tan and Jet. Her dad disapproved at first, then began to reconsider when she told him she had earned $600 for a session.*

Her parents drove her to Philadelphia on many weekends so she could be a contestant on the TV talent show Teen Club, hosted by bandleader Paul Whiteman. And then she won several times on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts program, where she first billed herself as Diahann Carroll.

After enrolling at NYU to study psychology, she appeared on the Dennis James-hosted ABC talent show Chance of a Lifetime in 1953 and won for several weeks. One of her rewards was a regular engagement to perform at the famed Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan.

Christine Jorgensen taught her how to "carry" herself onstage, she said, and she moved in with her manager, training and rehearsing every day. She soon was singing in the Persian Room at New York's Plaza Hotel and at other hotspots including Ciro's, The Mocambo and The Cloister in Hollywood, The Black Orchid in Chicago and L'Olympia in Paris.

She soon dropped out of college to pursue performing full time and was brought to Los Angeles to audition for Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954), landing the role of Myrt opposite the likes of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge.

At the end of 1954, she made her Broadway debut as the young star of the Truman Capote-Harold Arlen musical House of Flowers. Walter Kerr in The New York Herald Tribune called her "a plaintive and extraordinarily appealing ingenue."

She was cast to play Clara in Preminger and Rouben Mamoulian's movie adaptation of Porgy and Bess (1959), but her voice was considered too low for her character's Summertime number, so another singer dubbed for her.

She met Sidney Poitier on that film, thus beginning what she described as a "very turbulent" nine-year romance with him. (Carroll then had her first non-singing movie role, playing a schoolteacher opposite Poitier, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in 1961's Paris Blues).

She would become renowned for her phrasing, partially a result of her studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

In 1963, she earned the first of her four career Emmy noms for portraying a teacher yet again on ABC's gritty Naked City.

Richard Rodgers spotted her during one of her frequent singing appearances on Jack Paar's Tonight Show and decided to compose a Broadway musical for her. After scrapping the idea to have her portray an Asian in 1958's Flower Drum Song, he wrote 1962's No Strings, a love story revolving around an African American fashion model (Carroll) and a nebbish white novelist (Richard Kiley).

His first effort following the death of longtime collaborator Oscar Hammerstein II, it brought Carroll rave reviews and a Tony Award, the first given to a black woman for best actress in a lead role of a musical.

Soon after hosting a CBS summer replacement variety show in 1976, she retired from show business and moved to Oakland. Landing the role of Dominique — the half-sister of John Forsythe's Blake Carrington — in 1984 put her back on the map in Hollywood.

She told the show's writers: "The most important thing to remember is write for a white male, and you'll have the character. Don't try to write for what you think I am. Write for a white man who wants to be wealthy and powerful. And that's the way we found Dominique Deveraux."

More recently, Carroll had recurring roles as Jasmine Guy's mother on NBC's A Different World, as Isaiah Washington's mom on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and as a Park Avenue widow on USA's White Collar. She also appeared in such films as Eve's Bayou (1997) and on stage as Norma Desmond in a musical version of Sunset Blvd.

She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2011.

Carroll recorded several albums during her career and wrote the memoirs Diahann, published in 1986, and The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, Mothering and Other Things I Learned Along the Way, in 2008.

She was married four times: to Monte Kay, a manager and a casting consultant on House of Flowers; to Freddie Glusman, a Las Vegas clothier (that union lasted just a few weeks); to magazine editor Robert DeLeon (he died in an auto accident in 1977); and to singer Vic Damone (from 1987 until their 1996 divorce). She also had a three-year romance with talk-show host David Frost.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include her grandchildren, August and Sydney.

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Rip Taylor, Colorful Confetti-Throwing Comedian, Dies at 84
Jeremy Fuster
The Wrap October 6, 2019, 3:22 PM PDT



Rip Taylor, the flamboyant confetti-throwing comedian who was the host of “The $1.98 Beauty Show,” died at his Beverly Hills home on Sunday at the age of 84, according to his publicist.

Taylor was known for his over-the-top comic delivery and his penchant for excitedly throwing confetti to celebrate a game show contestant’s victory, something he regularly did during his appearances on “Match Game,” “Hollywood Squares,” “Super Password” and “The Gong Show.” Prior to his appearances on game shows and late night shows like “The Tonight Show,” Taylor served as an opening act for stars like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Judy Garland.

But it was his appearance “The Gong Show” that earned him his biggest claim to fame. Impressed by his jokes as a judge, the show’s host and creator Chuck Barris offered Taylor a job as host of “The $1.98 Beauty Show.” Running from 1978-1980, the comedy show was a “Gong Show”-esque sendup of beauty contests that would end with Taylor bestowing the winner a bouquet of rotten vegetables and just under two dollars in coins, all while proclaiming, “You win the prize. You take the cake. You get the crown and a $1.98.”

In the ’90s, Taylor took roles in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” and “Indecent Proposal,” as well as a voice role as Uncle Fester in an animated TV adaptation of “The Addams Family.” In the 2000s, he had a cameo appearance at the end of each of the three “Jackass” films, celebrating the film’s conclusion with a confetti shower.

Taylor is survived by his longtime partner, Robert Fortney.

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[amtronic]

Ginger Baker

eter Edward "Ginger" Baker was an English drummer and a co-founder of the rock band Cream. His work in the 1960s and 1970s earned him the reputation of "rock's first superstar drummer", for a style that melded jazz and African rhythms and pioneered both jazz fusion and world music.

Born: August 19, 1939, Lewisham, London, United Kingdom
Died: October 6, 2019, Canterbury, United Kingdom Trending






~!

[drchin]

Ginger was a complicated and talented guy. There was a really good documentary on cable about him a while back. I was taken by a bit where Baker said he considered Eric Clapton to be his best friend. When that was relayed to Clapton in the doc, he acted surprised, commenting that the interviewer probably knew Ginger better than he did.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Robert Forster, Resurgent Oscar Nominee From 'Jackie Brown,' Dies at 78
7:19 PM PDT 10/11/2019 by Chris Koseluk


Miramax/Photofest

Robert Forster as Max Cherry in the 1997 film 'Jackie Brown.'

The 'Medium Cool' actor also starred for David Lynch in 'Mulholland Drive' and 'Twin Peaks' after Tarantino resuscitated his career.

Robert Forster, the stalwart leading man whose Oscar-nominated performance as a nefarious bail bondsman in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown made for one of Hollywood's most heartwarming comeback stories, has died. He was 78.

Forster died on Friday at his Los Angeles home from brain cancer, his publicist told The Hollywood Reporter.

With his chiseled good looks, steely chin and earnest gaze, Forster exuded a raw truthfulness. He made his film debut opposite Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), then sparkled as an ethically challenged cameraman in Haskell Wexler's ultra-realistic Medium Cool (1969).

Forster then took on no-nonsense, heroic title characters on television to build on his stardom, portraying a dogged 1930s detective on NBC's Banyon, which premiered in 1971, and a Native American police deputy in New Mexico on ABC's Nakia, which bowed in 1974. However, the shows lasted just 15 and 14 episodes, respectively, before being canceled.

Forster captained a spaceship in Disney's ambitious sci-fi thriller The Black Hole (1979), but it proved to be a box office disappointment. Other lowlights soon followed, including Alligator (1980), The Kinky Coaches and the Pom-Pom Pussycats (1981), Vigilante (1982), Hollywood Harry (1986) and Satan's Princess (1989).

By the early '90s, the actor was down to supporting roles in such low-budget efforts as Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction and Scanner Cop II and supplementing his income with speaking engagements.

"I went 21 months without a job. I had four kids, I took any job I could get," Forster told the Chicago Tribune in 2018, raising and then lowering his hand to indicate his fortunes. "My career went like this for five years and then like that for 27. Every time it reached a lower level I thought I could tolerate, it dropped some more, and then some more. Near the end I had no agent, no manager, no lawyer, no nothing. I was taking whatever fell through the cracks."

A fan of Forster since he was a kid, Tarantino had brought the actor in to audition for the part of aging gangster Joe Cabot in 1992's Reservoir Dogs, but he had his heart set on casting Lawrence Tierney. Tarantino never forgot Forster, however, and as he was crafting the screenplay for Jackie Brown (1997) — an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 1992 novel Rum Punch — he wrote Max Cherry with him in mind.

"Years had gone by and I ran into him in a coffee shop. By then my career was really, really dead," Forster recalled in a 2018 interview with Fandor. "And we blah-blah'd for a few minutes, and then six months later he showed up at the same coffee shop with a script in his hands and handed it to me.

"When I read it I could hardly believe that he had me in mind for Max Cherry, except that nothing else made any sense. So when I asked him about it, he said, 'Yes, it's Max Cherry that I wrote for you.' That's when I said to him, 'I'm sure they're not going to let you hire me.' He said, 'I hire anybody I want.' And that's when I realized I was going to get another shot at a career."

After Jackie Brown, Forster was inundated with offers and worked in such films as Psycho (1998), Me, Myself and Irene (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001), Human Nature (2001), Like Mike (2002), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Firewall (2006), Lucky Number Slevin (2006) and The Descendants (2011).

In 2013, Forster was cast as the key Breaking Bad character The Disappearer in the AMC series' penultimate episode, with the show's team citing Max Cherry as an inspiration. Forster reprised the role in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which opened in theaters and hit Netflix Friday.

He also portrayed Gen. Edward Clegg in the action film Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and its 2016 sequel and gave a stirring performance in What They Had (2018) as a distraught husband trying to care for his wife (Blythe Danner) as she battles Alzheimer's.

Robert Wallace Forster Jr. was born on July 13, 1941, in Rochester, New York. His father worked as an animal trainer for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. (As a nod to Forster's dad, a circus poster is displayed in Max Cherry's office.)

Forster attended the University of Rochester intent on becoming a lawyer, but those plans went awry. "I was a senior. I followed a girl into the auditorium, trying to think of something to say. They were doing auditions. This girl was already in the play. I said, 'That's how I'm gonna meet the girl!' " Forster said. The production was Bye Bye Birdie, and he got a spot in the chorus. He not only met the girl, June Provenzano, he married her, and they had three daughters.

After graduating in 1964, Forster headed to New York City and made his Broadway debut the following year in Mrs. Dally, a three-person play that also starred Arlene Francis and Ralph Meeker. He received a rave in the "Broadway Ballyhoo" column of The Hollywood Reporter, and that led to a screen test at 20th Century Fox. One of the last performers put under contract by studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck, he auditioned for Huston, who put him in Reflections in a Golden Eye.

In the movie, Forster portrays the free-spirited Pvt. L.G. Williams, who becomes the obsession of Brando's Major Penderton and rides a horse in the moonlight and in the nude.

On the first day of filming, Huston told him to look through the camera lens. "You see those? Those are the frame lines. Now, ask yourself this: 'What needs to be there?' " he told the Tribune. "So with that one piece of Zen advice, Huston gave me the responsibility and the authority to come up with what's supposed to be in that frame."

After guest spots on N.Y.P.D. and Judd for the Defense and supporting roles in the features The Stalking Moon (1968) and Justine (1969), Forster had his star-making turn in Medium Cool. The film, which dealt with government intrusion, race, the Vietnam War and the rising importance of TV news, became a touchstone for the cultural upheaval happening throughout America with its innovative blending of dramatic fictional footage with documentary images that Wexler had captured during the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National convention in Chicago.

"That was all real stuff. That was, they tell me, the best or only real example of cinema verite in American film," Forster told The A.V. Club. in 2000. "I think the phrase 'The Whole World is Watching' was coined at that exact moment, when the military was trying to separate the crowd from the press. They were pushing them, separating them, and the crowd was yelling, 'Don't leave us, don't leave us, the whole world is watching.' "

Following Forster's return in Jackie Brown (he lost the supporting actor Oscar to Robin Williams of Good Will Hunting), David Lynch tapped him to play Det. McKnight in the hypnotic Mulholland Drive. And when the filmmaker decided to revive his cult ABC series Twin Peaks in 2017, he called upon Forster to play Sheriff Frank Truman, brother of Harold Truman (Michael Ontkean in the original series).

Lynch "tried to hire me the first time he did Twin Peaks, but I was busy, I was doing something," Forster told Vulture in 2018. "He is a very, very good guy. And when we did the second Twin Peaks, he was very generous to me and gave me the kind of part that I enjoy doing probably the best — a straight shooter, no nonsense, not a wild, offbeat character."

Forster also kept busy playing recurring characters on Karen Sisco (as Carla Gugino's father in another Leonard adaptation), The Grid, Huff, Alcatraz, Last Man Standing (as Tim Allen's dad) and, as the patriarch of a family of supernatural beings, Heroes.

Survivors include his longtime partner Denise Grayson; his children Elizabeth, Bobby, Kate, and Maeghen; and his grandchildren Tess, Liam, Jack and Olivia.

Forster said that when his career was at its lowest ebb, he had what he called an "epiphany."

"It was the simple one," he said, "when you realize, 'You know what? You're not dead yet, Bob. You can win it in the late innings. You've still got the late innings, but you can't quit. Never quit.' "

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Robert Evans,'Chinatown' Producer and Paramount Chief, Dies at 89
By Richard Natalie and Carmel Dagan
October 28, 2019


CREDIT: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Robert Evans, the Paramount executive who produced “Chinatown” and “Urban Cowboy,” and whose life became as melodramatic and jaw-dropping as any of his films, died on Saturday night. He was 89.

Even though Hollywood history is filled with colorful characters, few can match the tale of Evans, whose life would seem far-fetched if it were fiction. With his matinee-idol looks, but little acting talent, Evans was given starring roles in a few movies and then, with no studio experience, was handed the production reins at Paramount in the 1960s. When he left the exec ranks, his first film as a producer was the classic “Chinatown,” and he followed with other hits, like “Marathon Man” and “Urban Cowboy.” Eventually, his distinctive look and speaking style turned him into a cult figure, and he had the distinction of being the only film executive who starred in his own animated TV series.

His life was a continuous roller-coaster. Amid the successes, Ali MacGraw left him for Steve McQueen, her co-star in the 1972 “The Getaway,” a love triangle that got huge media attention. (MacGraw was the third of Evans’ seven wives.) In 1980, Evans was arrested for cocaine possession and a few years later, was involved in an even bigger scandal: the murder of would-be Hollywood player Roy Radin during the production of “The Cotton Club.” Due to his association with Radin, Evans became a material witness in the execution-style slaying, though no proof of Evans’ knowledge of or connection to the murder was ever established.

Drug dependency and the studios’ changing corporate culture plagued Evans’ later career. When he eventually resurfaced at Paramount in the ’90s, his production track record was mostly undistinguished (“The Saint,” “Sliver”). But by then his larger-than-life persona was already the stuff of Hollywood legend. Evans parodied himself in the film “Burn, Hollywood, Burn” (1998), and Dustin Hoffman, a longtime friend, borrowed liberally from Evans in creating the character of an outrageous producer in the 1997 satire “Wag the Dog,” earning an Oscar nomination in the process.

Evans was born Robert Shapera in New York. Before the age of 18, he had worked on more than 300 radio shows and the occasional TV show and play. A collapsed lung forced him to recuperate for a year, and when he returned, he realized he’d lost his momentum. He worked his charms as a salesman at the sportswear firm Evan-Picone, co-founded by his brother Charles.

Several years later, however, his show business career was revived: In the perhaps apocryphal tale, he was spotted by the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel with actress Norma Shearer, who asked him to play her deceased husband, the legendary MGM exec Irving Thalberg, in the film “Man of a Thousand Faces.” Darryl Zanuck then cast him as a bullfighter in the 1957 version of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” The other actors pleaded with Zanuck to replace Evans, but Zanuck sent a telegram, saying, “The kid stays in the picture,” which provided the title for his eventual autobiography. Evans’ good looks carried him only so far, however. His stiff onscreen presence in those movies and in “The Fiend Who Walked the West” (1958) and “The Best of Everything” (1959) did not warm the hearts of reviewers, however, and he returned to the garment industry.

After Evan-Picone was sold to Revlon (netting Evans $2 million, according to some sources), he decided to return to the industry in a producing capacity. He purchased the rights to a novel, “The Detective.” New York Times reporter Peter Bart chronicled Evans’ tale in an article that caught the attention of Fox executives Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who put him in charge of such projects as “Achilles Force” (which was never made) and “The Detective,” starring Frank Sinatra. But his stay at Fox was brief.

He befriended and charmed Charles Bluhdorn of Gulf & Western, which owned Paramount Pictures. The born salesman recognized another born salesman when he met him. In 1966 Bluhdorn controversially named the neophyte Evans VP in charge of production. By 1969 he was exec VP of worldwide production.

Evans’ early Paramount tenure included such monumental flops as “Paint Your Wagon” and “Darling Lili,” which were Bluhdorn’s pet projects. Evans oversaw disappointments including “Catch-22” and the 1974 “The Great Gatsby.”

But they were more than offset by Evans’ successes, starting with “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Goodbye, Columbus,” “Love Story” and “The Godfather” films. The degree to which he personally deserved credit for any of these has always been debated, and even Evans claims that some of the best decisions made during his tenure, particularly with respect to “The Godfather,” were arrived at over his objections.

Evans hired Bart at Paramount; Bart eventually joined Variety in 1989, and profiled Evans in his 2011 book “Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex).”

As a studio ambassador Evans was a success. His attention to day-to-day production, however, soon deteriorated, exacerbated by his public divorce from MacGraw and growing cocaine dependency. He clashed openly with Francis Ford Coppola on “The Godfather” (and was slighted by Coppola when he accepted his screenplay Oscar). After Barry Diller was brought in over him in 1974, Evans eased into a producing deal. His first crucible was “Chinatown,” a tempestuous but ultimately successful enterprise that was nominated for 11 Oscars.

After that, Evans started to slowly go downhill even as a producer. Thriller “Marathon Man,” starring Dustin Hoffman, was a hit in 1976, and 1977’s “Black Sunday” did OK, but did not live up to expectations. His tennis drama “Players” (starring MacGraw) was a flop, and neither “Urban Cowboy” nor “Popeye” (both 1980) were big enough hits to restore his golden-boy reputation.

In 1980, at age 50, he was convicted of cocaine possession, during a period when widespread drug use was plaguing the industry and tarnishing its reputation nationally. Evans’ Rat Pack-style behavior was by then quickly falling out of fashion in an increasingly buttoned-down corporate town.

A personal dream, “The Cotton Club,” became a never-ending nightmare, taking up several years of Evans’ life and almost $50 million. The hybrid of music and gangsters found Evans begging Coppola to take over the reins. The results were uneven, but artistically interesting; the production was tied to underworld money and, in attempting to raise more funds for the film, Evans became involved with Radin, whose murder seemed to be a case of life imitating art. The scandal cast a large shadow over Evans that he never successfully overcame. “The Cotton Club,” released by Orion Pictures in 1984, went down in flames.

Evans planned to make an acting comeback in 1985 in “The Two Jakes,” a sequel to “Chinatown” to be directed by Robert Towne (who wrote the original). But he had not grown as an actor and, soon after production began, Evans was fired. The film was shut down, only to be revived in 1990 under the direction of Jack Nicholson, who co-starred with Harvey Keitel. Evans was distanced from the sequel, which was a failure.

He returned to Paramount in the early ’90s as a producer, but the salacious “Sliver” (1993) and “Jade” (1995) were both significant failures. The comic-book-like “The Phantom” (1996) also sank without a trace. In 1997 Evans produced “The Saint,” based on the long-running TV espionage-adventure series. He’d been nurturing the project for several years and hoped the film would be the first entry in a franchise. But the movie, starring Val Kilmer, didn’t turn out as well as expected and the sequels never came to pass.

His private life once again made the headlines when Evans’ name was mentioned among the customers for Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss’ service. An entire chapter on his sexual habits was detailed in the salacious and hyperbolic book “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again.” Evans had already published a frank memoir of his life, 1994’s “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” admitting some of his virtues and his vices.

In 1998 Evans suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side and unable to speak, but he eventually made a full recovery after much therapy.

He made a triumphant return in some sense with the 2002 documentary adaptation of “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” directed by Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen, in which Evans idiosyncratically discussed his life.

Taking advantage of the increased exposure, he exec produced “Kid Notorious,” a 2003 animated series based on his unique persona for Comedy Central. The same year he produced the successful romantic comedy “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”

Evans maintained an office on the Paramount Pictures lot, and continued to develop projects, though none came to fruition: He had long planned a movie based on the renegade car builder John DeLorean, written by James Toback to be produced with Brett Ratner; he also had in development a sci-fi movie set in a futuristic Manhattan and based on a graphic novel, “NYC2123”; “Whip Smart,” the story of a young dominatrix to be directed by Catherine Hardwicke; and a superhero film, “Foreverman,” based on an original character created by Stan Lee and to be produced with Lee.

He was married and divorced seven times, first to actress Sharon Hugueny, then to actress Camilla Sparv and, after his divorce from MacGraw, to former Miss America Phyllis George. His brief 1998 marriage to actress Catherine Oxenberg was annulled. Thereafter he was married to Leslie Ann Woodward and Victoria White.

He and MacGraw had a son, Josh, an actor and director. Survivors also include a grandson.

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Beloved 'Friday' Actor John Witherspoon Passes Away At Age 77
October 30, 2019 - 1:08 am by Latifah Muhammad




John Witherspoon, the beloved actor and comedian from Boomerang, Friday, Hollywood Shuffle, The Five Heartbeats, The Wayan Bros. and more, died on Tuesday (Oct. 29). He was 77.

According to Deadline, Witherspoon died suddenly at his Southern California home. “It is with deepest sorrow that we can confirm our beloved husband and father, John Witherspoon, one of the hardest working men in show business, died today at his home in Sherman Oaks at the age of 77,” Witherspoon’s family said in a statement to the outlet. “He is survived by his wife Angela, and his sons JD, Alexander, and a large family. We are all in shock, please give us a minute for a moment in privacy and we will celebrate his life and his work together. John used to say ‘I’m no big deal’, but he was huge deal to us.”

Witherspoon, who was born in Detroit, launched a stand-up comedy career during the ‘60s and ‘70s. His early gigs include an uncredited appearance on The Richard Pryor Show, as well as guest spots on The Incredible Hulk TV series, What’s Happening, Good Times, Hill Street Blues, 227 and Amen. The lovable character actor garnered a reputation for playing characters like “Pops” on The Wayans Bros., Ice Cube’s dog-catching burrito loving father on Friday, and the irritated neighbor in House Party.

His final roles included Black Jesus, Bojack Horseman, and Last Friday, which is reportedly in pre-production.

Read some of the messages paying tribute to Witherspoon below.

So...my Dad died today & honestly I’m not sure how to feel. I’m sad, but I’m also happy 4 all the great times we had together. We’d roast each other like homies more than Father & Son, and I really liked that. He was my best friend & my idol.

Love U Dad...I’ll miss u.

- J.D. pic.twitter.com/zvzep5S11I


— J.D. (@jdwitherspoon) October 30, 2019

Rip John Witherspoon 😔🙏🏽

— DJ POOH (@DJPooh) October 30, 2019

My dad, my grandpa, my comedic inspiration! I love you Spoons! Rest In Paradise, King pic.twitter.com/U6GsNrrKXF

— Regina King (@ReginaKing) October 30, 2019

I’m seeing RIP John Witherspoon tweets pic.twitter.com/5nAWT2xoks

— Sean Baker (@YesLordMegatron) October 30, 2019

John Witherspoon is one of those presences you just expect to always be around man

— Tune (@CartuneNetwerk) October 30, 2019

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Michael J. Pollard, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ Actor, Dies at 80
Variety
LaTesha Harris
VarietyNovember 22, 2019




Academy Award nominee Michael J. Pollard, known for his roles in “Bonnie and Clyde” and “House of 1000 Corpses,” has died. He was 80.

“House of 1000 Corpses” director Rob Zombie broke the news on Facebook early Friday morning.

“We have lost another member of our ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ family. I woke up to the news that Michael J. Pollard had died. I have always loved his work and his truly unique on screen presence,” Zombie said in

his post. “He was one of the first actors I knew I had to work with as soon as I got my first film off the ground. He will be missed.”

Born 1939 in Passaic, N.J., Pollard attended Montclair Academy and Actors Studio in New York City in his early career. He started out in television in the late ’50s, appearing on shows like “Lost in Space” and “Star

Trek,” but landed his breakout role as C.W. Moss, the accomplice-turned-snitch to Bonnie and Clyde in the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Pollard received an Academy Award nomination for

supporting actor and BAFTA nomination for most promising newcomer. He went on to star in films like “Dirty Little Billy,” “Melvin and Howard,” “Roxanne” and “Tango & Cash.”

More recently, Pollard starred in Zombie’s 2003 cult film “House of 1000 Corpses.” His last role was “The Woods” in 2012.

“Michael J. Pollard was one of a kind. Made every film he was in better. You sat up and took notice,” Larry Karaszewski (who wrote “Dolemite Is My Name” with Scott Alexander) tweeted. “I met him once on the

street in Beverly Hills and tried to pay him a compliment. He growled at me. I mean — literally growled at me. It was a perfect moment.”

Michael J. Pollard was one of a kind. Made every film he was in better. You sat up and took notice. I met him once on the street in Beverly Hills and tried to pay him a compliment. He growled at me. I mean – literally

growled at me. It was a perfect moment. pic.twitter.com/0YMjJQiqnt
— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) November 22, 2019
Pollard is survived by his child, Holly Howland.

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Snowboarding visionary Jake Burton Carpenter dies at 65
Eddie Pells, Associated Press and Dan D'Ambrosio, Burlington Free Press
Published 10:53 a.m. ET Nov. 21, 2019 UPdated 3:06 p.m. ET Nov. 21, 2019



(Photo: Toby Talbot, AP)

Whether you had a gold medal hanging from your neck, were just learning how to stand on a snowboard, or were one of those flustered skiers wondering where all the kids in the baggy pants were coming from,

you knew the name “Burton.”

Jake Burton Carpenter, the man who changed the game on the mountain by fulfilling a grand vision of what a snowboard could be, died Wednesday night of complications stemming from a relapse of testicular

cancer. He was 65.

In an email sent to the staff at Burton, CEO John Lacy called Burton “our founder, the soul of snowboarding, the one who gave us the sport we love so much.”

Carpenter was not the inventor of the snowboard, but 12 years after Sherman Poppen tied together a pair of skis with a rope to create what was then called a “Snurfer,” the 23-year-old entrepreneur, then

known only as Jake Burton, quit his job in Manhattan, moved back to Vermont and went about dreaming of how far a snowboard might take him.

“I had a vision there was a sport there, that it was more than just a sledding thing, which is all it was then,” Burton said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press

For years, Burton’s snowboards were largely snubbed at resorts — its dimensions too untested, its riders too unrefined, its danger all too real — and many wouldn’t allow them to share the slopes with the

cultured ski elite in Colorado or California or, heaven forbid, the Swiss Alps.

But those riders were a force of nature. And for all their risk-taking, rule-breaking, sidewinding trips down the mountain, they spent money, too. Throughout the last decade, snowboarders have accounted for

more than 25 percent of visitors to mountain resorts in the United States. They have bankrolled a business worth more than $1 billion annually — a big chunk of which is spent on Burton gear.

“People take it for granted now,” said Pat Bridges, a longtime writer for Snowboarding Magazine, who has followed the industry for decades. “They don’t even realize that the name ‘Burton’ isn’t a company. It’s a

person. Obviously, it’s the biggest brand in snowboarding. The man himself is even bigger.”

In 1998, and with Carpenter’s tacit blessing, the Olympics got in on the act, in hopes of injecting some youth into an older-skewing program filled with ski jumpers, bobsledders, figure skaters and hockey players.

As the years passed, Carpenter straddled the delicate line between the “lifestyle sport” he’d helped create — one that professed to value fun over winning, losing, money or Olympic medals — and the mass-

marketing behemoth snowboarding was fast becoming.

“He saw himself as a steward to snowboarding,” Bridges said. “I’m not saying he was infallible, or that he always made the right choices. But at least that was always part of his calculus: ‘What impact is this

decision going to have on snowboarding?’”


'He fundamentally altered the face of snow sports'

As the news of Carpenter's death spread among the snow sports community in Vermont, the many people whose lives his company touched talked about the tremendous loss his death represents.

Win Smith, president of Sugarbush resort in Warren, called Carpenter a "pioneer" who made a huge difference to the ski industry.

"Snowboarding has been an important part of our business here," Smith said.

Smith also praised Carpenter and his wife, Donna, for speaking out about the environment and the climate crisis.

"That speaks to their character as well," Smith said.


J.J. Toland, director of communications at Jay Peak ski resort, said he met Carpenter briefly about 12 years ago at a gym in Stowe, when Carpenter asked him to spot him while he lifted weights.

"He fundamentally altered the face of snow sports," Toland said. "We wouldn't be using the term snow sports if it wasn't for him. We'd still be using the term skiing."


"He introduced a generation into the sport that might not have been here," Toland said. "They've grown up and introduced their kids to snowboarding. We're probably into the grandkids stage at this point."

In Stowe, Jeff Wise, senior communications manager for Vail Resorts Northeast Region, said Carpenter was an important member of the Stowe community, and not just the ski resort but the broader community as

well.

"He really gave back so much to the community, and always no matter where he went he always told people about his affinity for Stowe," Wise said.

Jake Burton Carpenter in 2002: How he kept Burton Snowboards forever young

Wise said that in his capacity as senior communications manager he monitors press about Stowe and the resort and that he was amazed at how often Carpenter would be quoted in those stories.

"Every time Stowe Mountain Resort was mentioned over the years he would give accolades to us for being one of the places he loved most in the world, and just how much he enjoyed living here and

snowboarding here," Wise said.

Wise said Carpenter was a familiar face on the mountain.

"He'll be missed so much because of what he meant to the whole community, not just the snowboarding community," he said.


Burton's worldwide impact

Though Burton is a private company that does not release financials, its annual sales were north of $500 million as of 2015. In addition to the hundreds of retail stores that sell the company’s merchandise, Burton

has 30 flagship shops in America and 11 more spread across Europe and Asia — a burgeoning market that Carpenter started developing a decade ago, during a time when the IOC was beginning the process of

awarding three straight Winter Games to the continent.

At a bar in Pyeongchang, South Korea, not far from where snowboarding celebrated its 20th anniversary at the Olympics last year, there was a wall filled with Burton pictures and memorabilia — as sure a sign

as any of the global reach of a company that remains headquartered not far from where it was founded in Carpenter’s garage, in Londonderry, Vermont.

For all his financial success, folks were always more likely to run into Carpenter wearing a snowsuit than a sportscoat. He was a fan of early morning backcountry rides, and he had to stay in good shape to keep

up with some of the company he rode with.

Burton sponsored pretty much every big name in the business at one time or another— from Seth Wescott to Shaun White, from Kelly Clark to Chloe Kim.

Indeed, it is virtually impossible to avoid the name “Burton” once the snow starts falling at any given mountain around the world these days. The name is plastered on the bottoms of snowboards, embroidered on

jackets, stenciled into bindings and omnipresent in the shops around the villages.

The Burton U.S. Open, held each winter in Vail on a rider-friendly halfpipe traditionally recognized as the best on the circuit, remains a signature event on the snowboarding calendar.

“I had no clue whatsoever that you’d be building parks and halfpipes and that kind of thing,” Burton said in his 2010 interview, when asked about the reach his modest little snowboard had had over the decades.

“We’re doing something that’s going to last here. It’s not like just hitting the lottery one day.”

His final years were not the easiest.

Not long after being given a clean bill of health following his 2011 cancer diagnosis, Carpenter was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, Miller Fisher Syndrome, that left him completely paralyzed for a short

time.

After a long rehab, he was back on the mountain, and in 2018, he was standing near the finish line to watch White win his third Olympic gold medal.

This month, Carpenter sent an email to his staff: “You will not believe this, but my cancer has come back,” he said, while outlining his intention to fight the good fight.

Not two weeks later, Lacy sent out another email, notifying employees that Jake had died peacefully. The email included one, simple directive.

“I’d encourage everyone to do what Jake would be doing tomorrow, and that’s riding,” Lacy wrote. “It’s opening day at Stowe, so consider taking some turns together, in celebration of Jake.”

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Caroll Spinney, Who Played Big Bird And Oscar On 'Sesame Street,' Dies At 85
December 8, 20193:52 PM ET


Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

Caroll Spinney, the actor and puppeteer who portrayed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street over five decades, died Sunday at age 85.

The Sesame Workshop said Spinney had died at home in Connecticut, and that he had long lived with dystonia, a disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions.

"Caroll and Big Bird are very similar in their genuine niceness and sweetness and lovingness," said Joan Ganz Conney, co-founder of the Sesame Workshop said in a video tribute to Spinney last year. "He's just so respectful and so nice to all the kids, and all that comes across in Big Bird."

At a celebration for the show's 15th anniversary in 1984, Muppet-master Jim Henson recounted how he and Spinney had met in August 1969 at a puppetry festival in Salt Lake City.

"He's a very talented performer and he had a great sense of ad-libbing," Henson remembered. "And he was doing this strange-looking cat on local television in Boston. And so we started talking at that point about doing this show, and I asked Caroll if he'd enjoy coming and being part of this very strange bird."

But Spinney also played the character with the opposite of Big Bird's sunny persona: Oscar the Grouch.

"I loved playing Oscar. He has a power I never had. ... I can't believe that Jim gave me two such characters that have become iconic, and are a part of so many people in America growing up."

Spinney retired last year. As balance issues made the physically demanding role of Big Bird more difficult, the big yellow suit was taken on by another performer, Matt Vogel, while Spinney continued to voice Big Bird and Oscar.

In a 2015 interview with NPR, Spinney said it didn't bother him that people know Big Bird and Oscar, not Spinney himself. "I don't mind a bit because I know I can play them — and also good pay — and I get to take the pay home. Meanwhile, they're back at Sesame Street."

Spinney was originally directed to play Big Bird as "a funny, dumb country yokel," he said last year. But he convinced Henson that it'd be better to play Big Bird instead as a very big, feathered 6-year-old.

"I said, I think I should play him like he's a child, a surrogate," he remembered. "He can be all the things that children are. He can learn with the kids."

Content, Pictures  and Download links visible to registered users only. 

REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members.