Our Daily Dead

LA Times
James Haskins, who wrote more than 100 books about key moments in African American history and the black politicians, social reformers, artists and athletes who rose to prominence along the way, has died. He was 63.

Haskins, who aimed most of his books at young readers, died June 6 at his home in New York City of complications from emphysema, according to Irma McClaurin, a friend and colleague.

He began his career as a teacher in the New York City public school system and wrote some of his first books to help fill a gap he had discovered years earlier.

“I remember being a child and not having many books about black people to read,” Haskins recalled in an autobiographical essay.

He made it his mission to reconstruct African American history book by book, covering subjects that ranged from slavery to the black power movement and beyond.

“Jim Haskins created a canon of literature, particularly for children, that is a resource for anyone studying black history,” said McClaurin, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, where Haskins was on the faculty nearly 30 years. “He wanted to document the triumphs and tribulations of African Americans in books that are readable and accessible for the young, but not only for them.”

An amateur trumpeter, Haskins wrote a number of books about black music and musicians. His “Black Music in America” (1987) begins with slave songs and spirituals and moves through the years to blues and jazz. The subjects of his many biographies of popular singers and songwriters include Mabel Mercer, Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross. He also wrote a book on rap music and another on break dancing.

Haskins covered the events that led African Americans from slavery to desegregation by presenting each phase on its own. “Get on Board, The Story of the Underground Railroad” (1993) explains how slaves escaped from the Southern states to freedom in the North.

“The March on Washington” (1993) details the massive public demonstration 30 years earlier that enunciated the goals of the civil rights movement. The protest was famous in part for the “I Have a Dream” speech that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Blog assignments sometimes get lost in the ether. This one was mailed in from Divide, Colorado by some Scooter Trash riding a BMW motorcycle.

From our People Send Us Things pile comes this story about a soldier who was shot by a sniper, but ended up giving medical aid to that very same sniper. Quite the story.

Zoom. Zoom.

NY Times
Alberto Lattuada, a highly regarded Italian filmmaker of the postwar years who was also known for giving a young screenwriter named Federico Fellini his first directing job, died on July 3 at his home outside Rome. He was 90.

Rome city officials announced the death to The Associated Press.

Originally trained as an architect and writer, Mr. Lattuada defied easy categorization as a director. His films included literary adaptations like “Il Cappotto” (”The Overcoat,” 1952), based on the Gogol story; neorealist dramas like “Il Bandito” (”The Bandit,” 1946), about a released prisoner of war who turns to crime; and melodramas like “Senza Pietà” (”Without Pity,” 1948), about an interracial relationship.

But despite their thematic variety, most of Mr. Lattuada’s films were ultimately social commentaries on contemporary Italian mores, with particular attention paid to sexual peccadilloes. (Besides Mr. Fellini, he was credited with discovering several very young actresses, among them Nastassja Kinski.)

Alberto Lattuada was born in Milan in 1914. His father, Felice, was a well-known composer who would later write the scores of several of his son’s films. As a young man, Alberto helped found what became the Cineteca Italiana, Italy’s national film archive. An ardent anti-Fascist, he screened banned movies, among them “La Grande Illusion” (1937), an antiwar film by Jean Renoir, on the eve of Italy’s entrance into World War II.

Mr. Lattuada began his cinematic career as a screenwriter and assistant director. He made his directorial debut in 1943, with “Giacomo l’Idealista” (”Giacomo the Idealist), the story of a woman raped by a nobleman. But because of his political activity, he was compelled to go into hiding for the rest of the war and did not make another film until 1945.

In 1950, Mr. Lattuada hired Mr. Fellini, who had scripted several of his films, to share the direction of “Luci del Varietà” (”Variety Lights”), about itinerant vaudevillians. Mr. Lattuada’s other films include “Anna” (1951), starring Anna Magnani as a sultry nightclub singer who becomes a nun; “La Spiaggia” (”The Beach,” 1954), about a good-natured prostitute on vacation; and “Così Come Sei (”Stay As You Are,” 1978), about a middle-aged bounder (Marcello Mastroianni) who begins a heated affair with a young woman (Ms. Kinski) despite the fact that she may be his daughter.

In later years, Mr. Lattuada turned to more commercial projects, among them “Christopher Columbus,” a television miniseries broadcast in the United States in 1985.

We’re facing a crisis in our Blog City writers pool. Seems the editors who hang with our infinite number of monkeys missed a crucial fact. The ODDfellows genuflect in the general direction of ODDfan Sue who so rightly pointed out that the On Deck page had Richard Pryor teaming with Hal Brookes to write Blazing Saddles. Egad! (singluar this time). Who is Hal Brookes? Apparently we need to pipe more movies into the monkey mayhem of the back room. Speaking of monkeys Monkey Day is said to be December 14th. Why? We know not.

Short and to the point, we remain…

NY Times
Mickey Owen, the Brooklyn Dodger catcher remembered for a misadventure in the 1941 World Series that propelled the Yankees to the championship and overshadowed his All-Star career, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Mount Vernon, Mo. He was 89.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his son, Charles, said.

Owen played for 13 seasons in the major leagues and was an outstanding catcher with a strong, accurate arm. But he has been linked in baseball history with figures like Fred Merkle, Ralph Branca and Bill Buckner, all outstanding players defined by a single moment of misfortune.

On the afternoon of Oct. 5, 1941, the Yankees were trailing the Dodgers, 4-3, at Ebbets Field in Game 4 of the World Series and were down to their final out with Brooklyn about to tie the Series at two games apiece. Tommy Henrich, the Yankees’ star outfielder, was at the plate facing the ace reliever Hugh Casey, with nobody on base and a full count.

Casey threw a pitch that broke sharply, and Henrich swung and missed. The home-plate umpire, Larry Goetz, signaled a strikeout and the game was seemingly over.

But the pitch hit the heel of Owen’s glove and skipped away for a passed ball. As Owen chased the ball near the Dodgers’ dugout, Henrich raced to first base. Joe DiMaggio followed with a single to left, then Charlie Keller hit a ball high off the right-field screen, scoring Henrich and DiMaggio and giving the Yankees a 5-4 lead.

After Bill Dickey walked, Joe Gordon doubled to make the score 7-4. The Dodgers went down quickly in the ninth, and the Yankees had a lead of three games to one. They captured the World Series the next day, inspiring the enduring headline in The Brooklyn Eagle, “Wait Till Next Year.”

Vindication was a long time coming for the Dodgers, who lost to the Yankees four more times in the World Series before defeating them in 1955 for their only championship in Brooklyn.

I think we can relate to the lousy moment, when an otherwise technically superb person, skilled person seemingly does the right thing, and the cosmic flyswatter comes in an gives us a big biff, and that’s how the eons remember us. T’ain’t fair. So when you pull up the covers tonight, remember today’s obit of Mickey Owen, and think, “Life isn’t fair, and then you die.”

Tag you’re it.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

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