Hiroshi Koizumi obit

Godzilla Actor Hiroshi Koizumi Dies at 88

He was not on the list.

The actor appeared in a number of Toho's classic monster films before becoming a TV quiz presenter.

Hiroshi Koizumi, who appeared in Toho Studio's early Godzilla films, died on May 31 from pneumonia. He was 88. 

In 1955's Godzilla Raids Again, Koizumi appeared as a pilot who discovers Godzilla battling another monster on a remote island. The film was put into production by Toho to cash in on the box office success of the first Godzilla movie the year before.

Born into an old-money family in 1926, Koizumi graduated from Tokyo's Keio University, Japan's oldest, and joined public broadcaster NHK as an announcer. Shortly after, he signed for Toho: in those days actors were usually contracted to work for a single studio.

Making his film debut in 1951, he went on to appear in a string of monster films, including three in 1964 alone: Mothra vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Dogara, the Space Monster.

Koizumi also acted in numerous non-monster productions, including the 47 Samurai in 1962, alongside the legendary Toshiro Mifune. The film was one of the many versions of the true story that was the basis of the Keanu Reeves flop, 47 Ronin, in 2013. 

During the 1970s, Koizumi became the presenter of Fuji TV's popular Quiz Grand Prix, though that didn't stop him returning to the big screen for 1974's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. He appeared twice more with Toho's iconic monster, in The Return of Godzilla in 1984 and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. in 2003.

Beau Biden obit

Remembering Beau Biden

He was not on the list.


It would be easy, too easy, to remember Beau Biden as a kind of permanent son who existed as a public object of his father’s joy, pride and unfulfilled ambition, the grown boy who first helped shoulder, and ultimately deepened, Joe Biden’s grief.
But while he shared the vice president’s name—Joseph Robinette Biden III is on his birth certificate—Beau charted a path that was distinct from, if vine-woven with, his father’s. There are public lives and private ones, and Beau, despite his political aspirations, thoughtfully straddled the line his famous father, whose innermost thoughts so often match his outermost expression, ignores.

People close to both say that Joe Biden harbored dreams that his 46-year-old son—who looked and talked more like a Kennedy than a Biden—would eventually do what he couldn’t: ascend to the presidency. It’s not clear if the son, who died after a 20-month struggle with brain cancer in May, harbored any such aspiration. Apparently, he never told anyone he did, and he seemed to linger on the life-rungs his father climbed with all deliberate speed in his own youth.

Joe Biden was a United States senator by the time he was 30. He took law school in a careless careen, worked briefly as public defender in Delaware before taking a job with politically connected law firm back home in Wilmington, and avoided military service in the Vietnam era, through educational and health deferments.

Beau Biden walked just outside his father’s footsteps: He attended the same high school Joe did, then went to Syracuse law school, his father’s alma mater. Then, a divergence. He was captivated by the life of a white-hat prosecutor, and spent his first nine years as a lawyer working for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia, followed by a stint as a rule-of-law adviser in postwar Kosovo.

Another difference from his father: Beau joined the Delaware National Guard in 2003, rising to the rank of major in the Judge Advocate General’s office. He was elected state attorney general in 2006, then had to turn over many of his day-to-day duties after his unit was deployed to serve a tour in Iraq from 2008 to 2009. “I’ve come here many times before as a Delawarean, as a United States senator,” vice presidential candidate Joe Biden told a crowd gathered at the Air Force base in Dover for the deployment ceremony. “But today I come, as you prepare to deploy, as a father—a father who had some sage advice from his son this morning: ‘Dad, keep it short. We’re in formation.”

Over the years, Joe would tell everybody (myself included) the story of how his son refused to wear his desert camo—or his Bronze Star—in campaign ads. The point he was groping for—that his son wouldn’t play by the same politicians’ rules that governed his own life. “That was just the kind of guy he is,” the elder Biden told me during an interview for a 2014 profile.

The most important political moment in Beau’s life—if only because it represented the most dramatic divergence from his father’s career—came in January 2010, when he announced he wouldn’t seek the Senate seat vacated by his father. He would run for a second term as attorney general. There was political sangfroid behind his decision: The Tea Party backlash was building, and 2010 was shaping up to be a wipeout year for his party. (Even so, Beau had stood a solid chance of winning; fellow Democrat Chris Coons would ultimately prevail.) There was a more practical reason for staying out of the race, too: Beau was obsessively committed to prosecuting sex crimes, and one in particular—the ghastly case of pediatrician and serial child molester Earl Bradley, who abused dozens of children, including a 3-month-old baby.

Beau began setting his sights on another political prize, the 2016 governor’s race. It wasn’t to be. In late 2010 came word that he had been admitted to a hospital after suffering a small stroke. Three years later, after a fainting spell during vacation, came the cancer surgery. His health steadily deteriorated, and on May 30, Beau died at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, leaving behind his wife, an 11-year-old daughter, Natalie, and a son, Hunter, who was eight at the time of his father’s death.

That was the man, now for the boy. On December 18, 1972, just a month after his father had been elected to the Senate, Beau—three months short of his fourth birthday—went Christmas shopping in the family car with his mother, Neilia, younger brother, Hunter, and infant sister when they were struck by a truck. Neilia and 13-month-old Naomi were killed. Hunter suffered a skull fracture, Beau a badly broken leg. Biden briefly considered chucking the Senate before he ever cast a vote, was talked out of it by party leaders and was sworn into office at the boy’s Wilmington hospital bedside. The news photographs from that day show little blond Beau, leg in a cosseted sling, staring off into the middle distance as his father and reporters crowd around a blanket-less bed.

“One of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our side,” Beau told the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, after his father had been nominated. “We, not the Senate, were all he cared about.”

Over the years, Beau would become a source of stability at the side of his oft-mercurial father, providing wise-beyond-his-years support after Joe’s humiliating withdrawal from the 1988 Democratic primary. And Beau grew especially close to his stepmother, Jill, who took his death as hard as anyone in the family. In his 2007 memoir, the vice president credited his then-7-year-old older son for welcoming his wife to the Bidens. “We think we should marry Jill. What do you think, Dad?” Beau told him, with 6-year-old Hunter in tow.

Beau Biden’s illness and excruciating decline wore heavily on his father, and toward the end, the two men’s fates tangled inevitably in ways that weren’t healthy for either of them. The son always thought the father deserved to be president and, as he was dying, reportedly told him to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, the same year Beau was supposed to win the Delaware governor’s race. Joe Biden, shattered by his son’s predicament but also seeing one last chance at the presidency, spread the story, and it ended up in the papers, feeding an ugly media frenzy that ended with the vice president’s emotional Rose Garden announcement that he wasn’t running, in part because he couldn’t quite move past “the grieving process.”

Biden had always drawn strength from his son, and those final few months preceding the decision not to run were no exception. Shortly before the end, Beau had told him, “I know how much you love me. Promise me you’re going to be all right.” Joe complied.

“I was a hell of a success,” the vice president told Stephen Colbert a few months after the funeral, repeating something his father had told him. “My son was better than me.”

Betsy Palmer obit

Betsy Palmer, 88, Dies

She was not on the list.

Betsy Palmer, an actress bound to be remembered by different generations for different career incarnations — as a performer on live television, as a panelist on game shows and as one of Hollywood’s more bloodthirsty villainesses — died on Friday in hospice care near her home in Danbury, Conn. She was 88.

Her death was announced by her manager, Brad Lemack.

Ms. Palmer began her career in the early 1950s and was cast frequently on anthology drama series, some of them live. Outgoing, friendly, she was known, in the parlance of the era, as a girl-next-door type.

She was also tall and shapely — Newsweek magazine described her in 1958 as a “sugar-cookie blonde” — all of which made her a natural for other types of live programming that flourished in the 1950s and ’60s. For a time she appeared regularly on the “Today” show during its first decade, alongside Dave Garroway, the host.

“Women’s news is provided by Betsy Palmer, one of television’s most photogenic and intelligent performers,” John P. Shanley wrote in 1958 in an assessment of the show in The New York Times.

Baby boomers grew familiar with Ms. Palmer for her nearly 200 appearances on “I’ve Got a Secret,” a long-running game show, hosted by Garry Moore, in which four panelists peppered guests with questions in order to determine a hidden peculiarity about them. (One pair of guests, for instance, claimed to be the world watermelon seed spitting champions.) Ms. Palmer’s colleagues often included Bess Myerson, Henry Morgan and Bill Cullen.

A later generation, however, knows Ms. Palmer better (or perhaps only) as, in her words, “queen of the slashers,” for her appearance as the insanely murderous Mrs. Voorhees, the camp cook bent on bloodily eliminating a roster of teenage counselors, in the 1980 horror film “Friday the 13th,” which has spawned myriad sequels and become one of Hollywood’s most profitable franchises. (As Mrs. Voorhees, Ms. Palmer gets her head cut off with a machete at the end of the film, though she does appear in flashback in at least one of the sequels.)

As she often told the story, Ms. Palmer took the part only because she needed $10,000 to buy a new car, a Volkswagen Scirocco.

“So the script came and I read it, and I said, ‘What a piece of ... ’ ” Ms. Palmer recalled in a 2003 documentary, “Return to Crystal Lake: Making Friday the 13th,” discreetly not finishing her sentence. “And I said, ‘Nobody is ever going to see this. It will come and it will go. And I’ll have my Scirocco.’ ”

Betsy Palmer was cast as Mrs. Voorhees, the homicidal camp cook in “Friday the 13th.” Credit Rex Features, via Associated Press

Patricia Betsy Hrunek was born in East Chicago, Ind., on Nov. 1, 1926. Her father, Rudolph, was a chemist. Her mother, Marie, started and operated the East Chicago School of Business, which Betsy briefly attended before studying drama at DePaul University in Chicago.

She started acting in summer stock and, according to an NBC biography of her in 1957, appeared in a show outside Chicago with the actress and comedian Imogene Coca, who encouraged her to move to New York. There, in addition to her work on television dramas, she did commercials and appeared on game shows, including “Masquerade Party,” in which a panel of celebrities tried to discern the identity of another celebrity who appeared in disguise.

She had a few small parts in movies, including as a nurse in “Mister Roberts” (1955), the hit comedy-drama about life on a Navy ship during World War II with Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon (who won an Oscar). She played the female lead in a western that starred Fonda, “The Tin Star” (1957).

She also appeared on Broadway in two short-lived comedies: “The Grand Prize” (1955), with Tom Poston and June Lockhart, and “Affair of Honor” (1956), which The Times’s critic, Brooks Atkinson, described as (through no fault of the actors, he pointed out) “dull and odious.”

Ms. Palmer’s marriage to Vincent J. Merendino, an obstetrician, ended in divorce. Her survivors include their daughter, Melissa Merendino.

In 1969 Ms. Palmer replaced Virginia Graham as host of the syndicated talk show “Girl Talk.” Her later credits on television include a recurring role on the prime-time soap opera “Knots Landing” and guest appearances on “Murder, She Wrote,” “Charles in Charge,” “The Love Boat” and “Just Shoot Me!” In the 1960s and the 1970s, she also returned to Broadway as part of replacement casts in “Cactus Flower” and “Same Time, Next Year” and as a star of the Tennessee Williams drama “The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.” For many, if not most, however, it is Mrs. Voorhees and “Friday the 13th” that linger.

“I dismissed it for many, many years, and wouldn’t ’fess up to it at all,” she said in the documentary. “And then it just became such a big thing where everybody seemed to enjoy it so much. I thought, ‘Well, all right, I’m comfortable about it now.’ It’s almost like a badge of honor, in a way. It has become that.

“I’m the queen of the slashers, you know. What am I going to do?”

Filmography

Film

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1955      Death Tide          Gloria   

The Long Gray Line          Kitty Carter        

Mister Roberts Lt. Ann Girard   

Queen Bee          Carol Lee Phillips             

1957      The Tin Star        Nona Mayfield  

1958      The True Story of Lynn Stuart      Phyllis Carter / Lynn Stuart          

1959      It Happened to Jane        Herself (panelist)             

The Ballad of Louie the Louse      Tina Adams         TV movie

The Last Angry Man        Anna Thrasher  

1968      A Punt, a Pass, and a Prayer         Nancy    TV movie

1980      Friday the 13th Pamela Voorhees            

1981      Friday the 13th Part 2    

Isabel's Choice   Ellie Fineman     TV Movie

1988      Windmills of the Gods    Mrs. Hart Brisbane           TV movie

Goddess of Love               Hera      TV movie

1992      Still Not Quite Human    Aunt Mildred     TV movie

1994      Unveiled              Eva        

1999      The Fear: Resurrection   Grandmother   

2005      Penny Dreadful Trudie Tredwell                

2006      Waltzing Anna   Anna Rhoades   (final film performance)

2006      Betsy Palmer: Scream Queen Legend      Self         documentary

2007      Bell Witch: The Movie    Bell Witch            (final film release)

Television appearances

From 1953 to 2001, Palmer was a guest star on 73 television programs, including (in no particular order):

    Marty (1953) as Virginia

    The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse (1953–1956) as Janice Gans / Virginia

    Studio One in Hollywood (1953–1957)

    Janet Dean, Registered Nurse (1954) as The Jinx Nurse

    Lux Video Theatre (1954) as Intermission Guest

    The Goodyear Playhouse (1954–1957) as Paula Ferris

    Appointment with Adventure (1955)

    I've Got a Secret (1955-1967) as Herself

    Kraft Television Theatre (1956-1957)

    Playhouse 90 (1958) as Kitty Duval / Emmy Verdon

    Password (1961-1964) as Herself

    The Mike Douglas Show (1966-1971) as Herself

    The Joey Bishop Show (1967) as Herself

    The Today Show (1968) as Herself

    The $10,000 Pyramid (1973) as Herself

    The New Candid Camera (1974) as Herself

    The Love Boat (1982) as Millicent Holton

    Murder, She Wrote (1985-1989) as Valerie / Lila Norris

    Charles in Charge (1987) as Gloria

    Newhart (1987) as Gayle Crowley

    Out of This World (1987-1988) as Donna's Mom

    Knots Landing (1989–1990) as Virginia Bullock

    Columbo: Death Hits the Jackpot (1991) as Martha Lamarr

    Just Shoot Me! (1998) as Rhonda

    Hallmark Hall of Fame

    Toast of the Town