Our Daily Dead

The daughter of Judy Garland and Oscar-winning actress Liza Minnelli was hospitalized last year after “falling out of bed.” Pardon us, but exactly what sort of circumstances lead to this kind of boudoir-based potential lethality? We’re in the dark, but we bet there’s more to the story, particularly since Liza has been/is involved in a series of legal troubles, including a suit by her former chauffer who claims she forced him to have sex with her. We choose to not make any asides to a semi-famous portion of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint about thoughtful family members.

And now we have that Dear Liza has sold Daddy’s house with her step-mommy still in it. Mayhaps it is best to just stay away from Dear Liza.

Technorati Tags: Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, sex, Portnoy’s Complaint

NY Times
Fayard Nicholas, who with his brother Harold wowed the world of tap dancing with astonishing athleticism, inspiring generations of dancers from Fred Astaire to Savion Glover, died on Tuesday at his home here. He was 91.

The cause was pneumonia and other complications of a stroke he suffered in November, his son Tony said.

Fayard was 18 and Harold was 11 when they became the featured act at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1932.

Despite the racial hurdles facing them as black performers, they went on to Broadway, then Hollywood. Astaire once told the brothers that the acrobatic elegance and synchronicity of the “Jumpin’ Jive” dance sequence in “Stormy Weather” (1943) made it the greatest movie-musical number he had ever seen. In that number, the brothers tap across music stands in an orchestra with the fearless exuberance of children stone-hopping across a pond. In the finale, they leap-frog seamlessly down a sweeping staircase.

Their polished urbanity and classic good looks made the Nicholas Brothers film stars despite the celluloid segregation that relegated them to nonspeaking parts and dance sequences that could be easily cut for racially squeamish audiences in the South. They finally danced with a white star, Gene Kelly, in their last film together, “The Pirate” (1948).

As children, the brothers were vaudeville brats who toured with their musician parents, with Fayard stealing dance steps and teaching them to his brother.

“We were tap-dancers, but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork,” Harold Nicholas recalled in a 1987 interview.

Harold, who died in 2000, once likened his older brother’s dancing to poetry, saying that he was “talking to you with his hands and feet.”

Their trademark no-hands splits — in which they not only went down but sprang back up again without using their hands for balance — left film audiences wide-eyed. The choreographer George Balanchine called it ballet, despite their lack of formal training.

“My brother and I used our whole bodies, our hands, our personalities and everything,” Fayard Nicholas told the Los Angeles television station KCET in 2005. “We tried to make it classic. We called our type of dancing classical tap and we just hoped the audience liked it.”

The dancer and actor Gregory Hines, who died in 2003 at the age of 57, once said that if a film were ever made about the Nicholas Brothers, the dance numbers would have to be computer-generated because nobody could duplicate them.

The Nicholas Brothers learned to dance watching vaudeville shows while their parents played in the orchestra pit.

Technorati Tags: Fayard Nicholas, tap dancing, Fred Astaire, Savion Glover, Cotton Club, Jumpin’ Jive, Stormy Weather, Gene Kelly, Gregory Hines, vaudeville

LA Times
Chris Penn, 40, was found dead Tuesday in his Santa Monica condominium, officials said. Authorities are investigating the cause of his death but said they do not suspect foul play.

Penn, the younger brother of actor Sean Penn, specialized in working-class, regular-guy characters, and had roles in a long list of movies and television shows during a career of more than two decades.

Santa Monica police were called by a housekeeper in Penn’s first-floor unit at 1033 Ocean Ave. just after 4 p.m. Tuesday and arrived to find the actor’s body in his bed, authorities said.

Santa Monica Police Lt. Frank Fabrega said officers were investigating the death but have no evidence of homicide.

Coroner’s officials will seek to determine the cause of death and will conduct toxicology tests, Fabrega said. But asked late Tuesday whether Penn’s death appeared to be the result of anything other than natural causes, coroner’s spokesman Ed Winter said: “Not at this time.”

Although less well-known than Sean Penn, Chris Penn won praise for a series of supporting roles in major films, including “Footloose” and “Reservoir Dogs.”

With a hefty build, protruding chin and slightly pouting lips, Chris Penn looked the part of the ordinary guy or small-time crook, although he had played cops as well.

Penn began his career as a child performer in the 1970s and moved on to films such as “Rumble Fish” and “All the Right Moves.” He played the role of an awkward teenager who says he can’t dance in “Footloose,” and starred in one of that movie’s most memorable scenes, when Kevin Bacon ultimately teaches him some moves.

Perhaps his best-known role, was as Nice Guy Eddie Cabot in the 1992 film “Reservoir Dogs.” The character he brought to life — both disturbing and humorous — caught critics’ attention. After that, Penn, who grew heavier through the years, played a series of sidekick roles, appearing in such recent movies as “Starsky & Hutch” and “Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.”

He was destined to never approach his brother’s fame nor win anything like Sean Penn’s critical acclaim, and in later years, especially, he seemed to have settled into a steady, journeyman actor’s career of modest distinction.

But throughout his work, critics noticed striking moments in his performances and often called him underrated. “Just as talented as Sean — just a lot less cocky,” Slate magazine critic Cintra Wilson wrote of him last year. He could play humiliation and vulnerability especially well, she wrote, and “makes you seamlessly believe in characters so much you barely even notice them.”

A bar on New York’s Lower East Side called “Nice Guy Eddie’s” was named for his performance in “Reservoir Dogs.” Owner David McWater, an acquaintance of the actor, said that Penn attended the opening, easily mingling with bar patrons.

“He was real nice … approachable, just one of the guys. He wasn’t standoffish, not trying to be star,” McWater said. “I always thought he was underrated. When he wanted to be, he was a really good actor. He was great in ‘True Romance’ …. He was so believable as the aggressive detective who just wants a lot of collars.”

Technorati Tags: Chris Penn, death, Sean Penn, movies, television, Footloose, Reservoir Dogs, Rumble Fish, All the Right Moves, Footloose, Kevin Bacon, Eddie Cabot, Slate magazine