Tino Insana obit

In Remembrance: Tino Insana

He was not on the list.

The Second City is sad to learn that beloved alum Tino Insana passed away last night in California at the age of 69. Tino was “discovered” by producer Joyce Sloane when he and his friends Steve Beshekas and John Belushi were doing shows under the name of the “West Compass Players.” Apparently, the trio was performing entire scenes that they had seen at Second City as part of their act. Instead of sending a cease and desist, Joyce and Bernie Sahlins hired John and Tino to be part of The Second City ensemble.

Tino would go on to have a lengthy career in Hollywood as an actor, writer and voice artist. He appeared in such films as “Neighbors,” “Three Amigos,” “Who’s Harry Crumb?” and “Beverly Hills Cop III,” as well as television shows such as “Night Court,” “Mad About You” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He wrote for the television series “Police Squad” and “Sledgehammer” and had an extensive list of credits as a voice actor.

“Tino was adored by every generation of Second City,” noted Second City owner and CEO Andrew Alexander. “He was always an ensemble player who had the respect and adoration of his peers. He will be deeply missed.”

Tino is survived by his wife of 42 years, Dana, his brother Craig, and two other siblings.

Filmography

Film

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1977      Cracking Up                       

1981      Neighbors           Perry Greavy     

1983      Going Berserk    Biker Leader      

1986      Three Amigos     Studio Guard     

1987      Amazon Women on the Moon    Mr. Sylvio            (segment "Video Pirates")

1988      The Couch Trip Jail Guard #1     

1988      For Keeps            Capt. O'Connell                

1989      Who's Harry Crumb?      Smokey               

1989      Wedding Band   Hugh Bowmont                

1990      Why Me?             Cop #3 at Home               

1990      Masters of Menace         Horny Hank       

1991      Oscar     Tiny the Iceman                Uncredited

1992      Tom and Jerry: The Movie            Patrolman           Voice

1994      Beverly Hills Cop III          Burly Cop            

2006      Barnyard              Pig          Voice

Television

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1990-1998          Bobby's World   Uncle Ted            Voice, 40 episodes

1991      Darkwing Duck Dr. Reginald Bushroot    Voice, 14 episodes

1992      Goof Troop         Colonel Carter   Voice, 1 episode

1992      The Little Mermaid          Baracuda             Voice, 1 episode

1993      Bonkers                Stew / Scatter Squirrel   Voice, 3 episodes

1994      Aladdin                 Prince Uncouthma           Voice, 3 episodes

1997      Jungle Cubs         Fat Cat Voice, 1 episode

2000      Buzz Lightyear of Star Command               Samsa   Voice, 1 episode

2007-2011          Back at the Barnyard      Pig          Voice, 47 episodes

2008-2009          Spaceballs: The Animated Series                Barf        Voice, 12 episodes

2011-2016          Bubble Guppies                Mr. Grouper       Voice, 79 episodes

Fred J. Koenekamp obit

Fred Koenekamp, Oscar-Winning Cinematographer on ‘The Towering Inferno,’ Dies at 94

His long list of credits also includes 'Patton,' 'Papillon,' 'Islands in the Stream' and 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' 

He was not on the list.

Fred Koenekamp, the Oscar-winning cinematographer known for his work on such films as Patton, Papillon and The Towering Inferno, has died. He was 94.

Koenekamp died May 31, his daughter Kathy told The Hollywood Reporter. He suffered a stroke last year and died at her home in Bonita Springs, Fla.

Koenekamp spent more than a decade at MGM, where he served as director of photography on several films as well as on the stylish NBC series The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

The innovative cinematographer won his Oscar (shared with Joseph F. Biroc) for the disaster-film classic The Towering Inferno (1974) and also was nominated for Patton (1970) and Islands in the Stream (1977), a pair of George C. Scott starrers directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.

He also collaborated with Schaffner on Papillon (1973), Yes, Giorgio (1982) and Welcome Home (1989).

Koenekamp served as a DP on more than 40 features, including Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), The Great Bank Robbery (1969), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), Billy Jack (1971), Kansas City Bomber (1972), Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Fun With Dick and Jane (1977), The Champ (1979), The Amityville Horror (1979), First Family (1980) and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension (1984).

Koenekamp served a 16-year apprenticeship before he became a director of photography, and he retired in the late 1980s. The American Society of Cinematographers honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

His father was H.F. Koenekamp, an Oscar nominee who began his career as a cinematographer at Mack Sennett Studios in 1913 and did special effects work on films including High Sierra, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, White Heat and Strangers on a Train. He died in 1992 at age 100.

“It didn’t mean that much as a young kid that my dad worked in pictures,” Koenekamp recalled in a 2005 interview with American Cinematographer magazine. “But every once in a while, he would take me to the studio on Saturdays. He was in special effects at Warner Bros., and Stage 5 housed the camera and special effects department. There was a balcony that overlooked the stage where they had all the miniatures. I used to just love to go up there and look around.”

A native of Los Angeles, Koenekamp spent 3½ years in the Navy, serving in the South Pacific. He landed a job as a camera loader at RKO in 1947, and “all of a sudden I was totally fascinated by the picture business,” he recalled.

He became an assistant cameraman on Underwater! (1955), starring Jane Russell, where he learned to do underwater work. MGM then hired him to work a camera on an Esther Williams movie.

At the studio, he graduated to camera operator and worked on Raintree County (1957), The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and such TV shows as The Lieutenant, created by Gene Roddenberry, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., for which he did nearly 100 episodes and earned Emmy nominations in 1965 and 1966.

“I was on The Great Bank Robbery [at Warner Bros.] when I got my really big break,” he said in the 2005 interview. “My agent called and said Fox wanted me to interview with a director. It turned out to be Frank Schaffner, and the picture was Patton.”

After he and Irwin Allen collaborated on The Towering Inferno, the producer hired him again for The Swarm (1978), When Time Ran Out … (1980) and the 1985 CBS telefilm Alice in Wonderland.

In addition to Kathy, survivors include his other children Barbara, Dona and Jim — the head of Fire in Motion, which supplies fire trucks and other related apparatus to Hollywood productions — seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

A memorial will take place at 1 p.m. on June 17 at Eternal Valley Memorial Park and Mortuary in Newhall, Calif.

 

 

Films

Year     Title            Dir.            Notes

1965    The Spy with My Face     John Newland            Feature-length adaptations of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodes

1966    One Spy Too Many            Joseph Sargent

One of Our Spies Is Missing E. Darrell Hallenbeck

1967    The Spy in the Green Hat            Joseph Sargent

The Karate Killers  Barry Shear

The Helicopter Spies    Boris Sagal

Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!            Peter Tewksbury      

1968    Sol Madrid Brian G. Hutton

Stay Away, Joe            Peter Tewksbury

Live a Little, Love a Little            Norman Taurog

1969    Heaven with a Gun            Lee H. Katzin

The Great Bank Robbery            Hy Averback

1970    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls            Russ Meyer

Flap     Carol Reed

Patton            Franklin J. Schaffner            Nominated for Academy Award for Best Cinematography

Won Golden Laurel Award

1971    Billy Jack     Tom Laughlin            with John M. Stephens

Skin Game            Paul Bogart

Gordon Douglas

 

Happy Birthday, Wanda June            Mark Robson

1972    Stand Up and Be Counted            Jackie Cooper

The Magnificent Seven Ride!            George McCowan

Kansas City Bomber            Jerrold Freedman

Rage    George C. Scott

1973    Harry in Your Pocket            Bruce Geller

Papillon            Franklin J. Schaffner

1974            Uptown Saturday Night    Sidney Poitier

The Towering Inferno John Guillermin            with Joseph F. Biroc

Won Academy Award for Best Cinematography

Nominated for BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography

 

1975    Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze            Michael Anderson        

Posse   Kirk Douglas

White Line Fever            Jonathan Kaplan

1976    Embryo            Ralph Nelson

1977    Fun with Dick and Jane     Ted Kotcheff

The Domino Principle            Stanley Kramer

The Other Side of Midnight            Charles Jarrott

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training            Michael Pressman

Islands in the Stream            Franklin J. Schaffner            Nominated for Academy Award for Best Cinematography

1978    The Swarm Irwin Allen   

1979    Love and Bullets            Stuart Rosenberg            with Anthony B. Richmond

The Champ            Franco Zeffirelli           

The Amityville Horror  Stuart Rosenberg

1980    When Time Ran Out            James Goldstone

The Hunter            Buzz Kulik

First Family            Buck Henry

1981    Carbon Copy    Michael Schultz

First Monday in October            Ronald Neame

1982    Wrong Is Right Richard Brooks

Yes, Giorgio            Franklin J. Schaffner

It Came from Hollywood            Andrew Solt

1983    Two of a Kind  John Herzfeld

1984    The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension            W. D. Richter with Jordan Cronenweth

1986            Stewardess School            Ken Blancato            Credited as Anton Ken Krawczyk

1989    Listen to Me            Douglas Day Stewart  

Welcome Home            Franklin J. Schaffner

1991    Flight of the Intruder            John Milius   Final film

Television

Year     Title            Notes

1963-1964            The Lieutenant            28 episodes

1964-1967            The Man from U.N.C.L.E.            90 episodes

1965    The Outer Limits            1 episode

1966    Jericho

1968            Mission: Impossible            2 episodes

Shadow on the Land            Television film

1970    Night Chase

1971    In Search of America

The Deadly Hunt

Crosscurrent

1972-1973            Kung Fu        3 episodes

1973            Hawkins

1975    The Runaway Barge            Television film

Conspiracy of Terror

1979    Salvage 1          Pilot episode

Disaster on the Coastliner            Television film

1982    Tales of the Gold Monkey            2 episodes

Money on the Side            Television film

1983    Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.

1984            Summer Fantasy

Obsessive Love

City Killer

Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac

The Vegas Strip War

A Touch of Scandal

1985    Not My Kid

The Other Lover

Amos

Alice in Wonderland            Miniseries

2 episodes

 

1986            Pleasures            Television film

News at Eleven

1986-1987            Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color            5 episodes

1987    Student Exchange            Television film

1988    14 Going on 30

Splash, Too

1989    Hard Time on Planet Earth    1 episode

Elena Verdugo obit

Elena Verdugo, Emmy-Nominated Actress on 'Marcus Welby, M.D.,' Dies at 92

She was not on the list.

She also sang with Xavier Cugat and played a gypsy girl who befriends Lon Chaney Jr. in 'House of Frankenstein.'

Elena Verdugo, who portrayed the devoted office assistant and nurse Consuelo Lopez opposite Robert Young on the 1970s ABC drama Marcus Welby, M.D., has died. She was 92.

Verdugo died Tuesday in Los Angeles, a representative for actress Sharon Gless told The Hollywood Reporter. Early in her career, Gless had a recurring role as hospital worker Kathleen Faverty on Marcus Welby, M.D., and she and Verdugo had been extremely close ever since.

On Facebook, Gless called Verdugo "my dearest, longest-time friend … wonderful actress, funniest woman I ever knew. She was mischief till the end. It is not just the end of an era. It is the end of an epoch. The world is a less interesting place."

Verdugo replaced Audrey Totter as the star of the CBS Radio comedy Meet Millie and continued to play the wisecracking Brooklyn secretary Millie Bronson on the CBS television version — one of the first shows to be broadcast live from Hollywood — that ran for four seasons, from 1952 through 1956.

On the big screen, Verdugo appeared opposite Lon Chaney Jr. in the 1945 Universal horror films House of Frankenstein (as the sympathetic gypsy girl Ilonka) and The Frozen Ghost and in the adventure tale Thief of Damascus (1952).

Verdugo also was a singer and dancer. She performed in the 1940s with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra and handled the vocals on his hit "Tico Tico," which was used in the finale of the 1945 Sonja Henie film It's a Pleasure!.

The 5-foot-2 Verdugo received supporting actress Emmy nominations in 1971 and 1972 for playing the warmhearted Consuelo, whom many consider to be the first working-professional Latina woman to be portrayed on series television. Marcus Welby aired for seven seasons, from 1969-76.

Early in the medical drama's run, Consuelo would pour Dr. Welby a cup of coffee when he arrived at the office, but Verdugo said that changed after working women wrote in to complain.

"[They said,] 'You stop getting him coffee in the morning, we are sick of it, now all doctors want us to get a cup of coffee for them in the morning,'" she once recalled. "And I said, 'I got it, I got it! I will cut it down.'"

A native of Los Angeles, Verdugo was a descendant of Jose Maria Verdugo, a Spanish army officer who in 1784 was granted grazing rights to a 36,000-acre area that included much of what is now Glendale, Burbank, Eagle Rock and La Crescenta.

Verdugo finished high school on the Fox studio lot and appeared as a dancer in the Don Ameche-Betty Grable studio musical Down Argentine Way (1940).

Her film résumé also included Rainbow Island (1944), starring Dorothy Lamour; Song of Scheherazade (1947), with Yvonne De Carlo; Gene Autry's The Big Sombrero (1949); the Charlie Chan mystery The Sky Dragon (1949); and Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), starring Jose Ferrer.

Before running Dr. Welby's office, Verdugo had recurring roles on the short-lived TV series Redigo, The New Phil Silvers Show, Many Happy Returns and the Juliet Prowse starrer Mona McCluskey.

While filming the Abbott & Costello comedy Little Giant (1946), she met screenwriter Charles R. Marion, who also wrote for the comedy team's radio show, and they married. After a divorce, she wed Charles Rosewall, a doctor, in 1972, and they were together until his death in 2012.

Verdugo's son, actor Richard Marion (Pharmacist's Mate Williams on TV's Operation Petticoat), died at age 50 of an apparent heart attack in 1999.

Filmography

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1931      Cavalier of the West        Little Girl              Uncredited

1940      Down Argentine Way     Argentine Dancer             Uncredited

1941      Blood and Sand                 Specialty Dancer               Uncredited

The Hard-Boiled Canary                 Girl         Uncredited

Belle Starr           Young Girl           Uncredited

1942      To the Shores of Tripoli Spanish Dancer Uncredited

The Moon and Sixpence                Ata        

1944      Rainbow Island Moana

House Of Frankenstein Ilonka   

1945      The Frozen Ghost             Nina Coudreau

1946      Little Giant          Martha Hill         

Strange Voyage                 Carmelita Lopez               

1947      Song of Scheherazade    Fioretta               

1948      Shed No Tears   Marilyn                

El Dorado Pass   Dolores                

1949      The Big Sombrero            Estrellita Estrada             

Tuna Clipper       Bianca Pereira  

The Lost Tribe    Li Wanna            

Sky Dragon          Connie Jackson, alias Marie Burke            

1950      The Lost Volcano              Nona    

Snow Dog            Andrée Blanchard           

Cyrano de Bergerac         Orange Girl        

1951      Gene Autry and the Mounties     Marie Duval       

1952      Thief of Damascus            Neela   

Jet Job Marge Stevens

The Pathfinder Lokawa                

1953      The Marksman Jane Warren      

1957      Panama Sal         Sal Regan            

1965      Day of the Nightmare     Miss Devi            

1968      How Sweet It Is!                Vera Wax            

1969      Angel in my Pocket          Lila Sinclair         

1978      The Boss' Son     Betty