Our Daily Dead

from the MercuryNews.com
LA MESA, Calif. - Bernard ”Buddy” Seigal, a founder of the country-rock band the Beat Farmers and a fiery music journalist, has died. He was 48.

Seigal died Sunday of a heart attack at his home in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa, said Will Swaim, a colleague at the OC Weekly, for which Seigal had written features and music reviews since the mid-1990s.

Beneath his cantankerous journalistic style, Swaim said, Seigal was a gentleman.

“You were able to politely disagree with him on any topic - until it came to music,” he said. “His music knowledge was phenomenal, and he believed his point of view was the one truth with a capital T.”

The singer and guitarist, who performed under the stage name Buddy Blue, was a founding member of the Beat Farmers, who formed in August 1983 when they were playing at the Spring Valley Inn in eastern San Diego County. He left the band in 1986 and later enjoyed a successful solo career, playing under the marquees of acts including the Buddy Blue Band, the Rockin’ Roulettes, the Jacks and Raney Blue.

Starting in the 1990s, he worked as a music writer, contributing to the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, The Orange County Register, The San Diego Union Tribune and, most notably, the OC Weekly, for which he produced ribald descriptions of singer Tom Jones, politician Bob Dornan and rocker Billy Zoom of the Los Angeles punk band X.

Technorati Tags: ”Buddy” Seigal, Beat Farmers, OC Weekly, Buddy Blue, Rockin’ Roulettes, Jacks and Raney Blue

from the NY Times
Henry Farrell, whose gift for writing pulpy melodrama was most famously realized in the 1962 movie “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,” died on March 29 at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 85.

Mary Bishop, his executor, confirmed his death.

The “Baby Jane” movie was based on a novel Mr. Farrell wrote in 1960. He was also a co-writer of the screenplay for the 1964 campy cult classic “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” which was based on one of his short stories.

In both movies, Mr. Farrell made a bad joke of the command to grow old gracefully by creating once-glamorous female characters and turning them into crazy hags acting out evil fantasies.

In “Baby Jane,” the stars were Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, who had never appeared together and who were both trying to revive flagging careers. Davis played a woman who had been a world-famous child actress but who had lost her popularity as she grew up, until all she had left were photographs and glorious memories. Crawford played her sister, a former movie star who had suffered an accident that put her in a wheelchair at the peak of her career.

Miss Davis’s character becomes her sister’s vengeance-seeking custodian. She feeds her sister a dead pet canary and a scalded rat for “din-din.”

Mr. Farrell’s press agent, Mitch Douglas, said Davis and Crawford had been enticed into the movie by the book and the chance to co-star. He said each actress used exactly the same words about the other: “I’ll wipe the floor with her.”

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

How awful about Allan

Technorati Tags: Henry Farrell, pulpy melodrama, Baby Jane, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford

from the Independent Online
Many character actors are known by name only to enthusiasts, but Myron Healey (whose death in December has just been made public) was so prolific that it is particularly surprising that he falls into that category - he is estimated to have appeared in over 160 feature films and twice that many television shows. With his deep voice and wily smile, he was often cast as the villain, particularly in westerns.

Given a contract by MGM in 1942, he made his screen début with an unbilled bit part in the MGM musical Thousands Cheer (1943). In this all-star patriotic movie, he was featured in a station sequence near the start kissing his sweetheart goodbye in a way that prompts a solitary soldier (Gene Kelly) to kiss a girl he has never met before (Kathryn Grayson), launching the film’s romantic plot.

Healey himself served in the Second World War from 1943 as an Air Corps navigator and bombardier. (After the war he continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve, retiring in the early 1960s as a captain.) Returning to Hollywood in 1945, he had difficulty finding work until signed by Monogram to appear in the string of westerns they were producing, starring Johnny Mack Brown, Jimmy Wakely and Whip Wilson.

His first film for Monogram was also his first as a villain, opposite Brown in Hidden Danger (1948). Healey’s cads were notable for being clean-cut and shaven, sleeker and slicker than the average western bad guy.

He also worked as a writer and dialogue director, and wrote the script (including a juicy role for himself) for the Johnny Mack Brown film Colorado Ambush (1951), in which the star played a federal agent tracking down a gang who rob payroll stages. As the leader of the gang, Healey was described by one critic as “wonderfully nasty”. Healey also provided the story for another Brown vehicle, Texas Lawmen (1951).

The demise of the “B” western in the Fifties led to more diverse acting roles in crime, war and science-fiction films. He was a post office clerk in Nicholas Ray’s masterly thriller In a Lonely Place (1950), and a thug in Allan Dwan’s film noir (in colour), Slightly Scarlet (1956). He had a notable “good guy” role (and co-star billing) in one of Republic Studio’s last cliff-hanging serials, Panther Girl of the Kongo (1955), helping the heroine Phyllis Coates combat giant claw monsters (actually crayfish in miniature sets with a giant claw for an occasional close-up).

By this time Healey had become established as a regular performer on television, having made his small screen début in the series The Lone Ranger (1949-57). His numerous credits included such westerns as The Gene Autry Show, Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke and Bonanza, plus other shows such as Perry Mason, Sea Hunt and The Incredible Hulk.

He is particularly remembered for two roles in western shows - his taking over from Douglas Fowley as “Doc” Holliday in the popular series starring Hugh O’Brian, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1958-59), and his portrayal of a sadistic sergeant who gives Robert Horton 20 lashes with a bullwhip in an episode of Wagon Train titled “The Traitors” (1961).

Technorati Tags: Myron Healey, films, television, westerns, Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Johnny Mack Brown, film noir

from the NY Times
Jackie McLean, an acclaimed saxophonist who took a midcareer detour to become a prominent jazz educator, died on Friday at his home in Hartford. He was 74. His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the University of Hartford, where Mr. McLean had taught since 1970. No cause was given.

Mr. McLean was one of many gifted young musicians who burst onto the New York scene after World War II in the wake of the musical revolution known as bebop. He worked with Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he was out of his teens, and later he gained valuable seasoning in the bands of Art Blakey and [/tag]Charles Mingus[/tag] before he began leading his own groups.

Also a prolific composer, Mr. McLean was one of the first alto saxophonists to absorb the pervasive influence of Charlie Parker and shape it into a distinctive personal style. While the influence was clear, especially in his approach to harmony, Mr. McLean’s astringent tone and impassioned phrasing marked him as more than just another Parker disciple.

His career had a second act as well. In the late 1960’s he put performing aside to concentrate on teaching.

Technorati Tags: Jackie McLean, saxophonist, jazz educator, bebop, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker

from the NY Times
Red Hickey, who introduced the spread offense known as the shotgun to the National Football League while coaching the San Francisco 49ers in the early 1960’s, died Thursday at a hospice in Aptos, Calif. He was 89. His death was announced by his son Jeffrey.

Coaching the 49ers from 1959 to early in the 1963 season, Hickey never made the playoffs, but he left a lasting imprint on strategy.

The 49ers, with a 4-4 record, were practicing at Georgetown University for their game against the two-time defending champion Baltimore Colts on Nov. 27, 1960, when Hickey called a meeting.

“I asked my players if any of them thought we could beat Baltimore with our regular offense, and not one hand went up,” Hickey told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2001.

Hoping to cope with a Colts rush led by linemen Art Donovan, Gino Marchetti and Big Daddy Lipscomb, Hickey scrapped the T formation.

He had his quarterback stand about 5 yards behind the line instead of taking the snap while under center, and he spread his backs to the sides. That alignment, drawing on the double wing and short punt formations previously used in college football, gave the offense an extra second or two to develop a play. The quarterback could run, hand off to a crisscrossing back or throw.

Their No. 3 quarterback, the rookie Bob Waters, engineered the winning touchdown on a late pass followed by a lateral after he replaced the injured John Brodie and Y. A. Tittle. The 49ers upset the Colts, 30-22.

In the locker room, Hickey told reporters that his offense was simply “spread right and spread left.”

But moments later, as he related it to The Chronicle in 2001, he came up with something more sprightly. “Well, I’m an old country boy, and I used to go hunting with a shotgun,” he said. “How about we call it the shotgun?”

Technorati Tags: Red Hickey, shotgun, National Football League, 49ers

from the LA Times
DUBLIN, Ireland — John McGahern, the writer known for semi-autobiographical portraits of rural life and widely praised as one of Ireland’s great modern novelists, died of cancer Thursday at a Dublin hospital, his family and friends said. He was 71.

It was not announced what kind of cancer McGahern had or how long he had been ill.

After six novels, four collections of short stories and a play, McGahern published his memoir, “All Will Be Well,” last year.

His body of work reflected his upbringing in County Roscommon: a world dominated by grief for his mother, who died of cancer when he was a boy, and the twin tyrannies of the Roman Catholic Church and his father, a police sergeant who savagely beat McGahern and his five sisters.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Thomas McGonigle called “All Will Be Well” an “icy, meticulous delineation of the torment that a father inflicted upon his children.”

“At the same time,” McGonigle added, “McGahern creates a touching portrait of enduring Irish womanhood in the figure of his schoolteacher mother.”

from the LA Times
STOCKHOLM — Stig Wennerstrom, a Swedish air force officer who supplied Moscow with military secrets for 15 years in his country’s biggest Cold War espionage scandal, has died. He was 99.

Wennerstrom died March 21 at a home for the elderly outside Stockholm, Swedish media reported. The cause of death was not reported.

Code-named “The Eagle” by his Soviet spy masters, Wennerstrom was convicted of four counts of treason in 1964 for revealing classified information from Sweden, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

He was pardoned and released in 1974 after authorities said the information he had obtained during his time as a spy was obsolete.

The Wennerstrom case shocked Sweden, a nonaligned country wedged between NATO and the Soviet bloc whose defense forces during the Cold War were geared toward resisting a Red Army invasion.

Wennerstrom confessed to having worked for the Soviets for 15 years, including his time as an air attache for the Swedish Embassy in Washington from 1952 to 1957.

Technorati Tags: Stig Wennerstrom, military secrets, Cold War espionage