Pat Harrington - # 123

Pat Harrington Jr., the Super on 'One Day at a Time,' Dies at 86

He was number 123 on the list.

Pat Harrington Jr., who played the cocky superintendent Dwayne Schneider on the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time, has died. He was 86.


Harrington, who won a Golden Globe in 1981 and an Emmy Award in 1984 for his work on the show, died Wednesday night in Los Angeles surrounded by his family, his children Tresa and Terry reported on Facebook. Their father had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and recently had been hospitalized after a fall.


One Day at a Time, which aired from December 1975 to May 1984, starred Bonnie Franklin as a divorced mom raising two teenage girls (Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli) in an apartment in Indianapolis.


With his thin mustache, tool belt, blue vest and a pack of cigarettes in the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt, Harrington’s Schneider often entered unannounced into the ladies’ home and constantly stole scenes on the sitcom, which, befitting a Norman Lear production, explored “serious” issues.


“He turned out to be the comic strength of the show,” Lear once said.


Schneider also was convinced women could not resist his charms. “You really think you’re hot stuff,” Franklin’s Ann Romano said to him. “Let me put it this way,” he replied. “The ladies in this building don’t call me ‘super’ for nothing.”


In 2012, Harrington made his final onscreen appearance, appearing as the manager of an apartment building on Bertinelli’s Hot in Cleveland.

Harrington also played a nightclub friend of Danny Williams (Danny Thomas) who marries the entertainer’s daughter, Terry (Penney Parker, who had replaced Sherry Jackson), during the 1959-60 season of The Danny Thomas Show, and he was District Attorney Charlie Gianetta on the 1970s ABC drama Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law.

Daniel Patrick Harrington Jr. was born in New York City on Aug. 13, 1929, and attended La Salle Military Academy. His Montreal-born father was an actor who appeared in several Broadway plays, including the 1940s Cole Porter production Panama Hattie. His parents insisted he not enter show business.

The younger Harrington graduated with a B.A. from Fordham University, where he majored in philosophy and government, then received a masters in political philosophy from the Bronx school in 1952.

After a stint in the Air Force during the Korean War, Harrington sold ads for NBC. While regaling network staffers at a nearby watering hole with his impersonation of an Italian golfer, Harrington was spotted by Jonathan Winters, who at the time was a frequent guest host on Jack Paar’s The Tonight Show.

At Winters’ invitation, Harrington appeared on the program as that comic character, Guido Panzini, telling outrageous stories in broken English about his service on an Italian submarine during World War II. He went on to appear dozens of times as Panzini on Paar’s program as well as on The Steve Allen Show during the comic’s funny “Man on the Street” segments (which also featured Bill Dana, Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Louis Nye and others).

Harrington worked opposite James Garner in the 1963 films The Wheeler Dealers and Move Over, Darling and also showed up on the big screen in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967) with Elvis Presley, The President’s Analyst (1967) with James Coburn, 2000 Years Later (1969) with Terry-Thomas and The Candidate (1972) with Robert Redford.

On television, Harrington appeared on many game shows and on such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Flying Nun, Get Smart, F Troop, The Munsters, The Rookies, McMillan and Wife, The Wayans Bros., Murder, She Wrote and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
In 1974, he appeared with Peter Falk and Robert Conrad in the Columbo episode An Exercise in Fatality.
Harrington worked as a voice actor, including Ray Palmer/the Atom and Roy Harper/Speedy on The Superman Aquaman Hour of Adventure in 1967. From 1965 to 1969, Harrington portrayed the voices of both The Inspector (a character inspired by Inspector Jacques Clouseau) and his sidekick Deux Deux in all of the original 34 animated episodes of the character's eponymous series, created by Mirisch Films and DePatie-Freleng and released via United Artists. They later were shown as part of the Pink Panther cartoon TV show. Another cartoon voice he did was Jon's father on A Garfield Christmas Special.



Filmography

Year Title Role Notes

1963 The Wheeler Dealers Buddy Zack

1963 Move Over, Darling District Attorney

1967 Easy Come, Easy Go Judd Whitman

1967 The President's Analyst Arlington Hewes

1969 2000 Years Later Franchot

1969 The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes Moderator

1972 Every Little Crook and Nanny Willie Shakespeare

1972 The Candidate Dinner MC Uncredited

1974 The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat Voice

1992 Round Trip to Heaven George

2001 Ablaze Stuart Ridgley

        

 

Bill Foster obit

Former Duke basketball coach Bill Foster dies at age 86

 He was not on the list.

Bill Foster, the basketball coach who guided Duke to the 1978 NCAA championship game and also coached at South Carolina, died Thursday. He was 86. Foster passed away peacefully in Chicago and was surrounded by his family and friends, said his daughter, Debbie Foster. In this area, Foster is most well-known for coaching one of Duke's most beloved teams. He directed a Blue Devils squad that featured Mike Gminski, Jim Spanarkel and Gene Banks to the 1978 championship game before losing to Kentucky. But Foster had success at numerous places. He coached four different Division I basketball teams to 20-win seasons -- Duke, South Carolina, Utah and Rutgers -- and also was the head coach toward the end of his career at Northwestern. He was also sometimes mistaken for the other Bill Foster, who during his career was the head basketball coach at Clemson, Charlotte and Virginia Tech. That Bill Foster died in May 2015 at age 79. I never covered either Bill Foster -- they were both a bit before my time. But I was fortunate enough in September to get asked by the Foster family to get a bit involved in his life. Foster and his wife were living in Texas in the summer of 2015 and drove to the Carolinas for a family reunion and beach trip. On the way home, though, Foster was forced to make a detour to Charlotte because he was feeling poorly. He ended up in the hospital for several days. One of Foster's daughters, Debbie, lives in the Charlotte area. She and I talked and she said her father always perked up whenever someone sent him an email or card and said they remembered him. So I was the go-between for that -- publicizing Foster’s condition, collecting emails and sending them along to the family. Well over 100 people sent emails and cards, including ACC commissioner John Swofford and many former Duke and South Carolina fans, They all reminisced about Foster's on-court classiness and the many personal kindnesses he bestowed upon people when the cameras were off. "All those emails and cards meant so much to him," Debbie Foster said Thursday. "He read them all several times." The family plans a private funeral in Chicago. A memorial service will also be held at a later date.

Playing career

?–1954            Elizabethtown

Coaching career (HC unless noted)

1960–1963            Bloomsburg State

1963–1971            Rutgers

1971–1974            Utah

1974–1980            Duke

1980–1986            South Carolina

1986–1993            Northwestern

Administrative career (AD unless noted)

1993            Northwestern (interim AD)

Head coaching record

Overall 467–409

Accomplishments and honors

Championships

2 ACC tournament (1978, 1980)

ACC regular season (1979)

Awards

NABC Co-Coach of the Year (1978)

ACC Coach of the Year (1978)

Pierre Boulez - # 122

Pierre Boulez, Composer and Conductor Who Pushed Modernism’s Boundaries, Dies at 90

He was number 122 on the list.

Pierre Boulez, the French composer and conductor who helped blaze a radical new path for classical music in the 20th century, becoming one of its dominant figures in the decades after World War II, died on Tuesday at his home in Baden-Baden, Germany. He was 90.

His family confirmed his death in a statement to the Philharmonie de Paris. Prime Minister Manuel Valls, also in a statement, said, “Audacity, innovation, creativity — that is what Pierre Boulez was for French music, which he helped shine everywhere in the world.”

Mr. Boulez belonged to an extraordinary generation of European composers who emerged in the postwar years while still in their 20s. They started a revolution in music, and Mr. Boulez was in the front ranks.

As a young composer — and throughout his life as an insistently private man — he matched restless intelligence with great force of mind: He knew what had to be done, by his reading of history, and he did it, in defiance of all the norms of French musical culture at the time. His “Marteau Sans Maître” (“Hammer Without a Master”) was one of this pioneering group’s first major achievements, and it remains a landmark of modern music.

But his influence was equally large on the podium. In time he began giving ever more attention to conducting, where his keen ear and rhythmic incisiveness could produce a startling clarity. (There are countless stories of him detecting faulty intonation, say, from the third oboe in a complex piece.)

He reached his peak as a conductor in the 1960s, when he began to appear with some of the world’s great orchestras, like the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. By the early ’70s, he had succeeded Leonard Bernstein as music director of the New York Philharmonic, an appointment that startled the music world and led to a fitful tenure.

His conducting style was unique. He never used the baton, preferring to manipulate the orchestra by means of his two hands simultaneously, the left indicating phrasing or, in much contemporary music, counterrhythm.

His characteristic sound — unemotional on the surface but with undercurrents of intemperateness, at once brilliant in color and rhythmically disciplined — depended on his famously acute ear and suited his core repertoire: Stravinsky (several of whose works he introduced to Europe), Debussy, Webern, Bartok and Messiaen. It was refreshing as well in his many excursions into earlier music.

To be a conductor, though, meant working with the existing machinery, and that was not something a revolutionary like Mr. Boulez was willing to do. So he tried to remake the machinery. After becoming music director of both the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London in 1971, he explored unconventional repertoire, unconventional concert formats and unconventional locations.

But he also accepted that he had to rethink some of his own preconceptions, and as his musical outlook broadened, his output as a composer dwindled.

It was his reputation as an avant-garde composer and as a champion of new music that prompted his unexpected appointment in New York. After the initial shock at his arrival, there was hope that he might bring the orchestra into the 20th century and appeal to younger audiences. But his programming often met with hostility in New York, and he left quietly six years later.

His destination was Paris. Dismissive of the French musical establishment, he had spent most of the previous two decades abroad, but President Georges Pompidou, keen to reclaim a native son, had agreed to found a contemporary-music center for him in the capital: the Institute for the Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music, known as Ircam. It had its own 31-piece orchestra, the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

Mr. Boulez gained further government support in the ’80s, when he achieved his grandest project, the City of Music complex in Paris, housing the Paris Conservatoire, a concert hall and an instrument museum.

Pierre Boulez (the Z is not silent) was born on March 26, 1925, in Montbrison, a town near Lyon, the son of an industrialist, Léon Boulez, and the former Marcelle Calabre. He studied the piano and began to compose in his teens.

A defining moment came when he heard a broadcast of Stravinsky’s “Song of the Nightingale” conducted by Ernest Ansermet; it was a work to which he often returned throughout his conducting career. Rejecting the wishes of his father, who wanted him to study engineering, he went to Paris in 1942 and enrolled at the Conservatoire.

In 1944-45, he took a harmony class taught by Olivier Messiaen, whose impact on him was decisive. Messiaen’s teaching went far beyond traditional harmony to embrace new music that was outlawed both by the stagnant Conservatoire and by the German occupying forces: the music of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok and Webern.

Messiaen also introduced his students to medieval music and the music of Asia and Africa. Mr. Boulez felt his course was set; but he also knew he needed to go further into the 12-tone method that Schoenberg had introduced a generation before.

“I had to learn about that music, to find out how it was made,” he once told Opera News. “It was a revelation — a music for our time, a language with unlimited possibilities. No other language was possible. It was the most radical revolution since Monteverdi. Suddenly, all our familiar notions were abolished. Music moved out of the world of Newton and into the world of Einstein.”

To start on this route, he took lessons in 1945-46 with René Leibowitz, a Schoenbergian who had settled in Paris. Soon, in works like his mighty Second Piano Sonata (1947-48), he was integrating what had been separate paths of development in the music of the previous 40 years: Schoenberg’s serialism, Stravinsky’s rhythmic innovations and Messiaen’s enlarged notion of mode.

As Mr. Boulez saw it, all these composers had failed to pursue their most radical impulses, and it fell to a new generation — specifically, to him — to pick up the torch.

Though he was outspoken about his historical role, he was much warier of talking about what his music expressed. There was the odd reference in his early writings to the poet and playwright Antonin Artaud; there was also an admitted kinship with the poetry of René Char, which he set to music in “Le Marteau Sans Maître” and other works. But he was also capable of ferocious abstraction, as in the first section of his “Structures” (1951) for two pianos, a test case in applying serial principles to rhythm, volume and color.

About his private life, he remained tightly guarded. Jeanne, his older sister, was important to him; few others were able to break through his reserve.

At the beginning of his career, he was hired as music director of a theater company in Paris run by Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud. His 10-year appointment with them was crowned in 1955 by a production of “The Oresteia” of Aeschylus, for which he wrote an ambitious score; they also helped him set up the Domaine Musical concerts in 1953.

The Domaine Musical, intended as a platform for new music, 20th-century classics and early music that was little performed, proved Mr. Boulez’s abilities as an administrator and, later, as a conductor. It also provided a model of the contemporary ensemble that was widely imitated and has remained central to the propagation of new music.

Mr. Boulez made his debut as a concert conductor on March 21, 1956, at a Domaine Musical concert. (The organization was still known then as the Concerts du Petit Marigny, after the theater in Paris in which the concerts took place.) The program included “Le Marteau Sans Maître,” which had received its first performance the previous summer in Baden-Baden.

At once delectable and stringent, this work united traditions of Austrian-German discipline and French finesse with the sounds of Africa, East Asia and South America, made available by its variegated ensemble; besides contralto voice, it included alto flute, viola, guitar and percussion.

“Le Marteau Sans Maître” was widely admired, not least by Stravinsky, who heard it when Mr. Boulez made his North American debut in Los Angeles in March 1957.

Mr. Boulez gave his first concert with a symphony orchestra in June 1956, when he conducted the Orquesta Sinfonica Venezuela on one of his last tours with the Renaud-Barrault company. During the 1957-58 season, he appeared with the West German Radio Symphony in Cologne in his own “Visage Nuptial” and Stockhausen’s “Gruppen.”

He then forged a lasting connection with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden, where he made his home. In 1960, he conducted the orchestra in the first performance of his “Pli Selon Pli,” an hourlong setting of poems by Stéphane Mallarmé for soprano, with an orchestra rich in percussion.

That lustrous score allowed the conductor certain flexibilities in assembling its fragments. A musical work should be a labyrinth, with no fixed route, Mr. Boulez often said. It might also never have a fixed ending. From then on, he began starting more works than he ever brought to completion, while at the same time submitting older pieces to rounds of revision.

As a conductor, he showed much less hesitation. Where his first concerts had been devoted entirely to 20th-century works, he began, in the early 1960s, to explore earlier repertoires — Haydn, Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven — with the Concertgebouw and the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra. He made his debut with an American orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, in March 1965. The program, a typical one for him, comprised Rameau, his own music (“Figures-Doubles-Prismes”), Debussy and Stravinsky (“The Song of the Nightingale”).

The next year, he conducted his first operas, “Wozzeck” in Frankfurt and Paris, and “Parsifal” at Bayreuth in Germany, and he started recording for Columbia Masterworks. His first releases for the label included “Wozzeck” and albums of Debussy and Messiaen.

His appointment to the New York Philharmonic in 1971 presented great challenges. As music director, he had to enlarge his repertoire rapidly. Until then, he had conducted very little Romantic music other than Berlioz’s; now Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak and Borodin joined his programs, not always convincingly. Though he refused to compromise on Tchaikovsky, he was becoming much more like a regular conductor.

Part of his individuality was lost in the colossal task of maintaining important positions on both sides of the Atlantic, his post with the BBC Symphony demanding much of his time as well. Added to the load was his commitment to prepare the Bayreuth centenary “Ring” in 1976.

Both his programming and his handling of an older repertoire met with some resistance from audiences, critics and, it was said, even some of his musicians. Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times called Mr. Boulez “a brainy orchestral technician” whose “scientific approach” lacked heart. Reviewing a 1972 concert that included Edgard Varèse’s 1927 composition “Arcana,” Donal Henahan of The Times reported that “perhaps a quarter of the downstairs audience” at Philharmonic Hall “fled as if from the Black Death” before the piece was performed.

Mr. Boulez wanted to make the orchestra a more flexible institution, and a more modern one. Performances might begin with short programs of chamber music, played by members of the orchestra. More of the repertoire would be explored. During his first season as the music director, there was an emphasis on Liszt. Then concerts consisting entirely of new and recent works were given at downtown sites. There were also “informal evenings” of talk, rehearsal and performance featuring 20th-century composers. And there were summer seasons of “rug concerts,” with a different program every night for a week, played to audiences seated on the floor of Philharmonic Hall.

The rug concerts lasted only two years, and none of his other innovations survived his departure. He had given up his post with the BBC Symphony in 1975, leaving as a parting gift his somber “Rituel.” His last concerts with the Philharmonic were in May 1977; on the program was Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust.” He went back regularly to conduct in London, but he did not return to the Philharmonic podium until 1986.

His priority after the Philharmonic was Ircam, the Paris research institute, and he cut back on his conducting commitments; among the few he kept was the first full performance of Berg’s “Lulu” in 1979, at the Paris Opera.

Believing that music’s development since 1945 had been frustrated by a lack of research into electronic possibilities, Mr. Boulez set to work at Ircam on “Répons,” for a small orchestra with six percussion soloists whose sounds are digitally transformed and regenerated. It was first performed in October 1981.

The paradox was that the man who had such an extraordinary orchestral imagination — and such extraordinary powers to realize the fruits of that imagination in performance — should have been so convinced of his need for electronic resources. “Répons” is in most respects inferior to “Éclat/Multiples,” a work for a similar percussion-based orchestra that he had begun and abandoned a decade before. Nor does it begin to rival the orchestral virtuosity displayed in the arrangements of his early piano cycle “Notations.”

He continued to add to “Répons” during the early 1980s, though much of his creative energy was going into new versions of old scores. In the early 1990s, he emerged from his tumult of rewriting to produce at Ircam the greatest of his late works, a new version of “explosante-fixe” initially conceived as a memorial to Stravinsky — for electronic flute and small orchestra.

He also began to appear more widely again as a conductor, with orchestras in the United States (Los Angeles, Cleveland, Chicago) and Europe. (The concerts were often associated with recording sessions for Deutsche Grammophon.) He returned to what had always been his main repertoire, while also developing enthusiasm for Mahler and making occasional visits to territory he had not touched before: Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Scriabin, Janacek.

At his death, he was conductor emeritus of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Among the honors Mr. Boulez received in his later years were the Kyoto Prize in 2009 and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2013. He was named a professor at the Collège de France. He won dozens of Grammy Awards.

“He never ceased to think about subjects in relation to one another; he made painting, poetry, architecture, cinema and music communicate with each other, always in the service of a more humane society,” the office of President François Hollande said in a statement.

In 1995, his 70th-birthday year, Mr. Boulez conducted his own and other 20th-century music in London, Paris, Vienna, New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Brussels and Chicago. In 2005, he spent his 80th birthday in Berlin at a retrospective of his music. A few pieces were completed in this period, notably “Dérive 2,” a 45-minute score for 11 instruments that took almost two decades to reach its end point, in 2006.

Many more projects remained unfinished, while others were never begun, like the opera on which he was to have collaborated first with Jean Genet and later with Heiner Müller.

Even so, the achievements embodied in his published works and recordings are formidable, and his influence was incalculable. The tasks he took on were heroic: to continue the great adventure of musical modernism, and to carry with him the great musical institutions and the widest possible audience.

J. Jay Saunders obit

J. Jay Saunders

 

He was not on the list.

J. Jay Saunders (born February 7, 1941-died January 5, 2016) was an American character actor, best known for his many guest appearances on American television shows in the 1970's and 1980's, which included The Jeffersons, Dallas, NBC-TV's The A-Team, and Knight Rider and the CBS-TV series The Incredible Hulk which starred Bill Bixby. He also appeared in the films Beetejuice (1988) and House Party in 1990.

J. Jay appeared on Married... with Children in the episode "But I Didn't Shoot the Deputy" as Bronson.

 

Career

Saunders' first TV performance was a minor role in the 1970s ABC-TV series Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law. Following that he went on to have several guest appearances in TV movies and shows such as The Jeffersons, The Bionic Woman, The Love Boat, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Dallas.

 

Throughout the 1980s, he scored some minor movie roles as well, including Doctor in Thief (1981), a moving man in Beetlejuice (1988), and Sidney's Dad in House Party (1990).

 

Alternative names

Jay J. Sanders

 

Born

February 7, 1941Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Died

January 5, 2016Inglewood, California, USA

Actor

Denise Richards and Terry Kiser in Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

Tammy and the T-Rex

5.4

Sheriff Black

1994

 

Ashley Hamilton and Jennifer McComb in Lost in Africa (1994)

Lost in Africa

5.3

Daryl

1994

 

Boris and Natasha (1991)

Boris and Natasha

4.8

TV Movie

Agent Dan (as Jay J. Sanders)

1991

 

Christopher Martin and Christopher Reid in House Party (1990)

House Party

6.5

Sidney's Dad

1990

 

Victoria Principal, Barbara Bel Geddes, Patrick Duffy, Larry Hagman, Charlene Tilton, Jim Davis, Linda Gray, and Steve Kanaly in Dallas (1978)

Dallas

7.1

TV Series

George Middleton

1989–1990

4 episodes

 

Kellie Martin, Chris Burke, Patti LuPone, and Bill Smitrovich in Life Goes On (1989)

Life Goes On

7.2

TV Series

Fireman Bert

1989

1 episode

 

Christian Slater in Gleaming the Cube (1989)

Gleaming the Cube

6.3

Medical Examiner

1989

 

Jade Calegory in Mac and Me (1988)

Mac and Me

3.4

Judge

1988

 

Nightingales (1988)

Nightingales

6.9

TV Movie

Judge

1988

 

Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Jones, Michael Keaton, and Catherine O'Hara in Beetlejuice (1988)

Beetlejuice

7.4

Moving Man #1

1988

 

The Return of Desperado (1988)

The Return of Desperado

6.9

TV Movie

Ben

1988

 

What's Happening Now! (1985)

What's Happening Now!

6.2

TV Series

Mr. Walker

1987

1 episode

 

Hooperman (1987)

Hooperman

7.0

TV Series

Mr. Turner

1987

1 episode

 

William Conrad and Joe Penny in Jake and the Fatman (1987)

Jake and the Fatman

6.4

TV Series

Lieutenant

1987

1 episode

 

Christina Applegate, David Faustino, Katey Sagal, and Ed O'Neill in Married... with Children (1987)

Married... with Children

8.1

TV Series

Bronson

1987

1 episode

 

Rags to Riches (1987)

Rags to Riches

7.6

TV Series

1987

1 episode

 

Deborah Shelton, James Coco, and John Allen Nelson in Hunk (1987)

Hunk

4.7

Director

1987

 

John Candy in Armed and Dangerous (1986)

Armed and Dangerous

5.8

Mayor

1986

 

Pierce Brosnan in Nomads (1986)

Nomads

5.2

Cort (as J.J. Saunders)

1986

 

Robert Clohessy, Michael Warren, and Bruce Weitz in Hill Street Blues (1981)

Hill Street Blues

8.2

TV Series

Watkins

1985

1 episode

 

The Hoboken Chicken Emergency (1984)

The Hoboken Chicken Emergency

5.0

TV Movie

1984

 

Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer in Hunter (1984)

Hunter

6.9

TV Series

Larry Krell

1984

1 episode

 

David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider (1982)

Knight Rider

6.9

TV Series

Officer Bowman

1983

1 episode

 

Todd Bridges, Gary Coleman, and Dana Plato in Diff'rent Strokes (1978)

Diff'rent Strokes

6.7

TV Series

Mr. Langford

1982–1983

2 episodes

 

George Peppard, Mr. T, Dirk Benedict, and Dwight Schultz in The A-Team (1983)

The A-Team

7.5

TV Series

Grocery Store Owner

1983

1 episode

 

Lou Grant (1977)

Lou Grant

7.3

TV Series

Frederick GibbsNeil Turner

1979–1981

2 episodes

 

James Caan in Thief (1981)

Thief

7.4

Doctor (as J.J. Saunders)

1981

 

The Night the City Screamed (1980)

The Night the City Screamed

5.7

TV Movie

Chet Springfield

1980

 

Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk (1977)

The Incredible Hulk

7.0

TV Series

ControllerGarnett

1978–1980

2 episodes

 

Salvage 1 (1979)

Salvage 1

7.4

TV Series

Mack

1979

14 episodes

 

David Cassidy - Man Undercover (1978)

David Cassidy - Man Undercover

6.8

TV Series

Holman

1979

1 episode

 

Lauren Hutton in Someone's Watching Me! (1978)

Someone's Watching Me!

6.5

TV Movie

Police Inspector

1978

 

Melissa Sue Anderson and Marion Ross in ABC Afterschool Specials (1972)

ABC Afterschool Specials

7.2

TV Series

Elliott Barnes

1978

1 episode

 

With This Ring (1978)

With This Ring

6.5

TV Movie

George

1978

 

John Amos, Ralph Carter, Ja'net DuBois, Esther Rolle, BernNadette Stanis, and Jimmie 'JJ' Walker in Good Times (1974)

Good Times

7.5

TV Series

Mr. Harris

1978

1 episode

 

Starsky and Hutch (1975)

Starsky and Hutch

7.0

TV Series

Jackson WaltersSgt. Mike

1976–1977

2 episodes

 

Joey Green in Little Vic (1977)

Little Vic

7.0

TV Mini Series

Dr. Freeman (1977)

1977

 

The Bob Newhart Show (1972)

The Bob Newhart Show

8.1

TV Series

Williams

1977

1 episode

 

Fred Grandy, Bernie Kopell, Ted Lange, Gavin MacLeod, and Lauren Tewes in The Love Boat (1977)

The Love Boat

6.3

TV Series

Mr. Dennison

1977

1 episode

 

Jason Robards, Robert Vaughn, Stefanie Powers, and Cliff Robertson in Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977)

Washington: Behind Closed Doors

8.0

TV Mini Series

Gus (uncredited)

1977

1 episode

 

The Bionic Woman (1976)

The Bionic Woman

6.7

TV Series

Capt. Anders

1977

1 episode

 

Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford in The Jeffersons (1975)

The Jeffersons

7.5

TV Series

Frank Howard

1977

1 episode

 

Robert Forster, David Birney, and Richard E. Kalk in Police Story (1973)

Police Story

7.5

TV Series

Severance

1976

1 episode

 

Harrison Ford and Stacy Keach in Dynasty (1976)

Dynasty

4.9

TV Movie

Pelley

1976

 

Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence (1976)

Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence

7.6

TV Movie

Interviewing Officer

1976

 

Louis Armstrong - Chicago Style (1976)

Louis Armstrong - Chicago Style

6.4

TV Movie

Prisoner #1

1976

 

Noah Beery Jr. and James Garner in The Rockford Files (1974)

The Rockford Files

8.2

TV Series

Agent PrizerComputer Programmer

1974–1976

2 episodes

 

Alex Rocco in Three for the Road (1975)

Three for the Road

7.4

TV Series

1975

1 episode

 

Dennis Weaver in McCloud (1970)

McCloud

7.0

TV Series

Frank Colton

1975

1 episode

 

Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975)

Cornbread, Earl and Me

7.0

Mr. Johnson

1975

 

Bill Bixby in The Magician (1973)

The Magician

7.5

TV Series

Lt. Jack Kendricks

1974

1 episode

 

Elizabeth Montgomery in A Case of Rape (1974)

A Case of Rape

7.7

TV Movie

2nd Orderly

1974

 

Arthur Hill in Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law (1971)

Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law

6.9

TV Series

1st Patrolman

1973

1 episode

 

Peter Falk in Columbo (1971)

Columbo

8.3

TV Series

Policeman (uncredited)

1973

1 episode

 

Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973)

Slaughter's Big Rip-Off

5.8

Fry Cook

1973

Nicholas Caldwell obit

Whispers Co-Founder Nicholas Caldwell Dies At 71

Nicholas Caldwell, founding member of R&B '80s group the Whispers, dies at 71. 

He was not on the list.

Nicholas Caldwell, a founding member of ‘80s R&B group The Whispers, has died. According to The Associated Press, the 71-year-old died of congestive heart failure on Tuesday at his home in San Francisco.

A popular concert draw for more than 50 years thanks to such hits as “And the Beat Goes On” and “Rock Steady,” the Whispers most recently played in Los Angeles — its hometown — at the Microsoft Theater on Dec. 19, 2015, with Stephanie Mills and The Temptations Review, featuring Dennis Edwards. Caldwell, along with twin brothers Wallace and Walter Scott, Gordy Harmon and Marcus Hutson, established the group in the early ‘60s. Harmon was later replaced by Leavil Degree; Hutson died in 2000.

In addition to contributing vocals, Caldwell—described by friends and fans as a “gentle giant”— doubled as the group’s choreographer and penned songs as well. Known for its trademark silky smooth harmonies, the Whispers scored its first R&B hit in 1970 with the No. 6-charting “Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong.”

Several more R&B top 10s followed, including “One for the Money” and “(Let’s Go) All the Way.” Then The Whispers hit their stride in 1980 with their first R&B No. 1 (and No. 19 pop) single “And the Beat Goes On.” Featured on the group’s self-titled first platinum album, the song — later sampled on the Will Smith single “Miami” — ushered in a subsequent string of R&B classics on then-manager Dick Griffey’s label SOLAR (Sound of Los Angeles Records). That list includes the Caldwell-written “Lady,” “It’s a Love Thing,” “Keep on Lovin’ Me” and the group’s second R&B No. 1 in 1987 “Rock Steady.” Co-written and co-produced by Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, the song peaked at No. 7 on the pop chart. During a stint with Capitol Records in the ‘90s, the Whispers charted three more R&B hits: “Innocent,” “My Heart Your Heart” and “Is It Good to You.”

Frank Armitage

Frank Armitage, Disney Artist and Illustrator for Fox’s ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ Dies at 91

He was not on the list.

Frank Armitage, an artist and production illustrator who made contributions to Disney classics including “Sleeping Beauty” and “Mary Poppins” — as well as to Fox feature “Fantastic Voyage,” whose visual effects wowed audiences in 1966 — died Monday of age-related causes in Paso Robles, Calif., according to Disney Animation Studios VP of communications Howard Green. He was 91.

He also provided artwork and designs to theme parks around the world.

The native of Melbourne, Australia, moved in 1952 to Los Angeles and found a job at Walt Disney Studios, where he contributed to “Peter Pan” (1953), “Sleeping Beauty” (1959), 1964’s live action-animation hybrid “Mary Poppins” and “The Jungle Book” (1967).

After leaving the company, Armitage worked to apply cinematic techniques to human anatomy. He was thus the perfect person to do the production illustration for “Fantastic Voyage,” the innovative sci-fi film which follows a submarine and its crew that are shrunk to microscopic size so the ship may enter the body of a scientist in order to repair his brain. The film picked up Oscars for visual effects and art direction-set decoration, color.

Armitage returned to Disney in 1977, and his anatomical artwork led to the Wonders of Life Pavilion at Epcot in Orlando, Fla. He also painted concept art for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland Paris, as well as an enormous mural for a restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida and murals for Tokyo DisneySea.

Armitage retired from Disney in 1989.

Born Roblan Frank Armitage in Melbourne, the artist studied at a Melbourne art institute. After winning an international mural contest sponsored by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1949, Armitage became his assistant on several projects in Mexico.

In the 1950s, Armitage was involved in the creation of Disneyland, including Storybook Land.

Survivors include his wife of 33 years, retired Imagineer Karen Connolly Armitage; his daughters Nicole Armitage Doolittle, who works at Disney Imagineering, and Michelle Armitage, a scenic artist; son Wes; stepchildren Tracy and Cecil; and sister Margaret.

Robert Balser obit

‘Yellow Submarine’ Animation Director Robert Balser Passes at 88

Best-known for his work as animation director alongside Jack Stokes on the groundbreaking animated feature, ‘Yellow Submarine,’ Balser also directed the “Den” sequence in ‘Heavy Metal.’

 He was not on the list.

Very sad news for fans of classic animation. AWN has learned that Robert Balser, the animation director for The Beatles’ 1968 feature, Yellow Submarine, has died at the age of 88. According to his widow, Cima Balser, Bob -- as he was known to friends and colleagues -- was hospitalized at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles with respiratory failure in mid-December, and passed away due to complications on January 4th.

With a career spanning more than 50 years, Balser was perhaps best-known for his work as animation director alongside Jack Stokes on the groundbreaking animated feature, Yellow Submarine. One of the few American artists on the Yellow Submarine team, Balser directed and storyboarded all the scenes that were pre- and post- Pepperland, including Liverpool, the travel sequences through the various seas, and the return.

Though Yellow Submarine was Balser’s first feature-length film, he had previously worked on a number of award-winning commercials. Most notable among his early achievements is his work with revolutionary graphic designer Saul Bass on the innovative (and nearly seven-minute long) animated title sequence for the 1956 film Around the World in 80 Days. Balser also directed El Sombrero, or The Hat as it was known in English, in 1964 for Spanish production company Estudios Moro. Written and designed by Alan Shean, the short film follows the story of a social outcast and his troubles with a talking hat, symbolizing his inability to master a status symbol:

After Yellow Submarine, Balser opened his own production company in Barcelona, Spain where he produced TV series such as The Jackson 5, and The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, as well as Peanuts for CBS, Barney for BBC, The Triplets for HBO, and many others. He also directed the “Den” segment on the classic 1981 animated feature, Heavy Metal. In addition to running a production studio and school in Barcelona for decades, Balser also served as a board member for ASIFA International from 1978 through 1994, and helped launch ASIFA-Spain in 1980.

Balser and his wife, Cima, have both been longtime friends of AWN, contributing numerous articles and on-the-ground festival reports over the years, and he will be sincerely missed. Plans for a memorial celebration are currently underway, and friends and well-wishers should save January 15th as an anticipated date. AWN is also busy gathering tributes from Balser’s colleagues from over the years, which will be posted as a separate feature later in the year. Please contact editor@awn.com (link sends e-mail)if you worked with Bob and would like to contribute.

 

In 1993, Balser closed Pegbar Productions, his production company in Barcelona. He then directed The Triplets, a Catalan animated series for Cromosoma Productions. Balser left Spain in 1996. Next, Balser lived in Cairo, Egypt, for several months, where he worked as an animation consultant for the International Executive Service Corporation. He then moved to Ankara, Turkey, for two years, where he directed television series that aired in Germany and the United States.

 

Animation Department

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (1983)

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show

7.4

TV Series

animation supervisor: Barcelona (as Bob Balzer)

1985

5 episodes

 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears/Rumpelstiltskin/Little Red Riding Hood/Sleeping Beauty (1984)

Goldilocks and the Three Bears/Rumpelstiltskin/Little Red Riding Hood/Sleeping Beauty

7.2

Video

sequence director

1984

 

Heavy Metal (1981)

Heavy Metal

6.6

animator (segment Den, as Bob Balser)

1981

 

Simon Adams, Leslie Phillips, Beth Porter, Victor Spinetti, Rachel Warren, Reg Williams, Susan Sokol, and Lisa Moss in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (1979)

The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe

7.0

TV Movie

sequence director

1979

 

Les trois mousquetaires (1974)

Les trois mousquetaires

7.0

animator (as Bob Balser)

1974

 

Michael Jackson, Donald Fullilove, Jackie Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Tito Jackson, Mike Martinez, Joel Cooper, Craig Grandy, Edmund Sylvers, and Jackson 5 in Jackson 5ive (1971)

Jackson 5ive

6.5

TV Series

animation director

1971–1972

17 episodes

 

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Paul Angelis, Peter Batten, John Clive, Dick Emery, George Harrison, Geoffrey Hughes, Ringo Starr, and The Beatles in Yellow Submarine (1968)

Yellow Submarine

7.4

animation director

1968

 

Alan Arkin in Inspector Clouseau (1968)

Inspector Clouseau

4.7

animator: main titles (uncredited)

1968

 

Radioaktivt nedfald (1962)

Radioaktivt nedfald

Short

animator

1962

 

Alcohol in the Human Body (1961)

Alcohol in the Human Body

5.9

Short

animation director

1961

 

We'll Take the High Road

5.6

Short

animator

1957

 

Director

Baydog (1996)

Baydog

TV Series

Director

1996

3 episodes

 

The Triplets (1995)

The Triplets

6.1

TV Series

Director (1995-1997)

1995

 

Barney (1988)

Barney

6.6

TV Series

Director (1989)

1988

 

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show (1983)

The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show

7.4

TV Series

Director

1983

3 episodes

 

By Hoot or by Crook

5.5

Short

Director (as Bob Balsar)

1974

 

Big Beef at the O.K. Corral

6.5

Short

Director (as Bob Balsar)

1974

 

The Badge and the Beautiful

5.6

Short

Director (as Bob Balsar)

1974

 

Little Boa Peep

4.9

Short

Director (as Bob Balsar)

1974

 

The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie (1972)

The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie

7.5

TV Series

Director

1973

1 episode

 

El sombrero (1964)

El sombrero

6.4

Short

Director

1964

 

Art Department

Baydog (1996)

Baydog

TV Series

storyboard artist

1996

1 episode

 

Barney (1988)

Barney

6.6

TV Series

storyboard artist (1989)

1988

Robert Stigwood obit

 Robert Stigwood, Powerful International Impresario and Theatre Producer of 1970s, Dies at 81

Robert Stigwood, an Australia-born entertainment impresario who seemed omnipresent in the 1960s and 1970s, with stakes in some of the biggest going concerns in music, theatre and film, has died. The exact date could not be immediately learned. He was 81.

He was not on the list.

Stigwood had his finger in a wild number of highly visible, highly lucrative pies during his career. He managed the rock supergroup Cream in the '60s and the disco phenomenon The Bee Gees in the '70s. He produced the smash film "Saturday Night Fever." The soundtrack of that film, which sold millions, featured several of the Bee Gees’ songs and gave the former '60s trio, once known for its weepy songs of woe, a new lease on life as a dance-music powerhouse.

Beginning with the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, by the young British composing team of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, he ventured into theatre, and enjoyed enormous success throughout the decade. He produced the London and Broadway stagings of Evita and co-produced the Broadway mounting of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He was also behind the stage version of Saturday Night Fever, which was a huge success in London but a failure on Broadway.

As a film producer, his credits included successes like "Grease" and "Tommy," and debacles like "Moment by Moment" and "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band." The latter, an $18 million, star-studded filmic embodiment of The Beatles iconic album, was widely considered a disaster and proved one of the few missteps Mr. Stigwood made during his heyday as a producer.

He also produced sequels to his previous triumphs, like "Staying Alive" (a sequel to "Saturday Night Fever") and "Grease 2," neither of which matched the performance of the originals.

He was born Robert Colin Stigwood on April 16, 1934 in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Gwendolyn (Burrows) and Robert Stigwood. He emigrated to England in 1955. After floundering around a while, he went into business with Stephen Komlosy, forming Robert Stigwood Associates Ltd. One of their early successful clients was the actor turned singer John Leyton. By 1966, Stigwood was managing Cream, which is credited as the first rock supergroup, that is, a group made of members from other already-famous rock outfits.

As an entertainment mogul, Mr. Stigwood was a trail-blazer. He was among the first to breach the typical boundaries that separated managers, booking agents, record producers, concert producer, theatre producers and music publishers. He coalesced all these professions into a single entity, headed by himself. At his peak, his client list included the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, David Bowie and Eric Clapton.

Mr. Stigwood’s style was lavish. For the opening of Jesus Christ Superstar, he flew in two hundred guests from England and ten family members from Australia.

He was also creative in combatting business crises that affected his bottom line. Superstar was as much a musical enterprise as it was a theatre production, and the producer was faced with multiple pirated concert versions of the musical. He countered these recordings by not only dispatching an army of lawyers and numerous restraining orders, but also mounting three official touring concert versions of the show. The productions grossed millions.

Major productions

Stage musicals

Hair

Oh! Calcutta!

The Dirtiest Show in Town

Sing a Rude Song

Jesus Christ Superstar

Pippin

John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert

Evita (winner of the 1980 Tony Award for Best Musical in the US)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Saturday Night Fever

Films

Jesus Christ Superstar (as co-producer)

Tommy

Bugsy Malone (as executive producer)

Saturday Night Fever

Grease

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Moment by Moment

Times Square

Fame (as soundtrack producer)

The Empire Strikes Back (as soundtrack producer)

The Fan

Gallipoli

Grease 2

Staying Alive

Evita

Other

Music for UNICEF Concert (as organiser and executive producer)

Paul Bley obit

Paul Bley, Influential Jazz Pianist, Dies at 83

 

He was not on the list.

Paul Bley, a modern master of the jazz piano whose career spanned seven decades and who rose through the ranks by performing with such legends as Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Charles Mingus in the ’50s, died at home in Stuart, Fla., according to his longtime label ECM. He was 83.

An early champion of controversial “free jazz” pioneer Ornette Coleman, whose quartet he hired and accompanied in 1958 to play at the Hillcrest Club in Los Angeles, Bley has always trafficked in avant grade circles, and his solo improvisational gifts could be said to have influenced such later innovators of the form as Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea (Bley, like Jarrett and Corea, used all aspects of his instrument, including plucking the piano strings.) Perhaps the one constant in Bley’s career — characterized by a rigorous, at times severe aesthetic in his recordings that rarely matched the warmth and dynamism of his live performances — was his unpredictability.

In its review of Bley’s duet performance with the late bassist Charlie Haden at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, the L.A. Times wrote: “The only constants were the ongoing depth of sometimes strange, frequently beautiful harmonies the pianist employed and his intent to take listeners deep into improvisational adventures.”

Bley, born Nov. 10 in Montreal, Quebec, proved a virtuoso from an early age, when he began music studies at the age of five. He formed the Buzzy Bley Band at age 13, and by the time he was 17, he filled piano giant Oscar Peterson’s seat at the Alberta Lounge. He was already wielding sufficient influence as a musician and tastemaker that he invited Parker to play at the Montreal Jazz Workshop, which he co-founded, made a film with big band leader Stan Kenton and ended up in New York City to attend Julliard.

In the early 1960s he became one third of the Jimmy Giuffre 3, with Giuffre on clarinet and Steve Swallow on bass. The trio was characterized by its thoughtful understatement and high degree of innovation, with a repertoire that included compositions by Bley’s first wife, Carla Bley. (Bley’s second wife, Annette Peacock, wrote much of Bley’s material from the mid-’60s on.

In 1964, Bley was a key figure in the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild, which rallied some of the more noted free jazz musicians in New York at the time, including Carla Bley, Cecile Taylor, Archie Shepp and Sun Ra.

He was also one of the first jazz pianists to embrace electric keyboards in the late ’60s, pioneering the use of Moog synthesizers before an audience at NYC’s Philharmonic Hall in 1969 and in a series of recordings with Peacock, including the use of the melodic electric piano and modulated synthesizer.

But Bley was first and foremost an acoustic pianist, and a master of the trio format, and his storied career, which comprised more than 80 recordings as leader or co-leader, included celebrated collaborations with Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius, among many others.

He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Carol Gross, their daughters Vanessa Bley and Angelica Palmer, grandchildren Felix and Zoletta Palmer, as well as daughter Solo Peacock. Private memorial services will be held in Stuart, Fla. and Cherry Vallet, NY.