Madeleine Sherwood obit

Madeleine Sherwood, Star of Tennessee Williams Classics on Stage and Screen, Dies at 93

She was not on the list.

She appeared in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' and 'Sweet Bird of Youth' and later played the Mother Superior on 'The Flying Nun.'

Madeleine Sherwood, who starred in the stage and film versions of the Tennessee Williams classics Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, has died. She was 93.

Sherwood, perhaps best known as the non-nonsense Reverend Mother Superior Lydia Placido on the 1967-70 ABC sitcom The Flying Nun starring Sally Field, died Saturday at her childhood home in Lac Cornu, Quebec, family spokesperson Melissa Fitch told The Hollywood Reporter.

A native of Montreal, Sherwood studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York. She made her Broadway debut in 1952 replacing Kim Stanley in Horton Foote's The Chase, and a year later, she played Abigail, who accuses many in the town of Salem of witchcraft, in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

Sherwood portrayed Mae Pollitt/Sister Woman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan, then reprised the role for Richard Brooks in the 1958 film adaptation. In Sweet Bird of Youth, she starred as Miss Lucy on Broadway in 1959-60 and in the 1962 movie.

Her other Broadway credits include Camelot (1961), Williams' The Night of the Iguana (1962) — where she stepped in for Bette Davis — Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), Inadmissible Evidence (1965) and Edward Albee's All Over (1971). Her final stage performance was in a play about Williams’ mother, Miss Edwina.

Sherwood also worked for Kazan in the 1956 film Baby Doll, playing a nurse. Her movie résumé includes Otto Preminger's Hurry, Sundown (1967), Pendulum (1969), The Changeling (1980), Resurrection (1980) and Teachers (1984).

She also appeared in the TV soap operas One Life to Live, The Guiding Light and As the World Turns.

In the 1980s, Sherwood, Cicely Tyson and Joanne Woodward were the first actresses to receive a grant from the American Film Institute to direct short films (she wrote, directed and acted in a film called Good Night Sweet Prince).

Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Sherwood was an active participant in the civil rights movement (she was arrested during a Freedom Walk in Alabama) in the 1960s and in the women’s movement in the '70s. She twice was nominated for the Order of Canada.

Survivors include her daughter Chloe, two grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Selected film and television roles

    Baby Doll (1956) as Nurse in Doctor's Office (uncredited)

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) as Mae Flynn Pollitt

    Parrish (1961) as Addie

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1961, Episode: "Make My Death Bed") as Jackie Darby

    Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) as Miss Lucy

    In the Cool of the Day (1963) as Party Hostess (uncredited)

    The Edge of Night (1964, TV Series) as Ann Kelly #1

    The Fugitive (1964, Season 2, Episode 14: "Devil's Carnival") as Mary Beth Thompson

    Hurry Sundown (1967) as Eula Purcell

    The Flying Nun (1967–1970, TV Series) as Reverend Mother Superior Placido

    Pendulum (1969) as Eileen Sanderson

    The Guiding Light (1970–1971, TV Series) as Betty Eiler

    The Manhunter (1972, TV Movie) as Ma Bocock

    The Secret Storm (1972–1973, TV Series) as Carmen

    Wicked, Wicked (1973) as Lenore Karadyne

    Columbo (1974, TV Series) as Miss Brady

    Rich Man, Poor Man Book II (1976, TV Series) as Mrs. Hunt

    The Changeling (1980) as Mrs. Norman

    One Life to Live (1980) as Bridget Leander

    Resurrection (1980) as Ruth

    The Electric Grandmother (1982, TV Movie) as Aunt Clara

    Teachers (1984) as Grace

    Nobody's Child (1986, TV Movie) as Nurse Rhonda

    The Morning Man (1986)

    Silence Like Glass (1989) as Grandmother

    An Unremarkable Life (1989) as Louise

Lonnie Mack obit

Lonnie Mack, Blues-Rock Guitar Great, Dead at 74

Flying V pioneer influenced entire generation of guitar gods, from Duane Allman and Eric Clapton to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bootsy Collins

 

 He was not on the list.

Lonnie Mack, the blues-rock pioneer who influenced an entire generation of guitarists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Duane Allman, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards, died Thursday at a medical facility near his home in Smithville, Tennessee. Mack was 74. Alligator Records confirmed the guitar great’s death, adding that Mack had died of natural causes.

In Mack’s bio, he claims he started learning guitar at the age of five and, after dropping out of school in the 7th grade, pursued a professional music career as a young teenager. He played bars around the Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky stateliness before signing with Cincinnati’s Fraternity Records. Mack also served as a session guitarist for artists like James Brown, Hank Ballard and Freddie King.

Mack’s 1963 LP The Wham of That Memphis Man!, recorded for the Cincinnati-based Fraternity Records, boasted Mack’s instrumental rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis,” which became a surprise Billboard Top Five hit. Mack soon became known for his “blue-eyed soul” style of singing and his virtuosic guitar abilities that straddled genres like country, blues and R&B and, as Rolling Stone noted in a 1968 review, “a pioneer in rock guitar soloing.”

The Wham of That Memphis Man!‘s single “Wham!” also found the guitarist making groundbreaking use of a Bigsby tremolo bar that he appended to his trademark Flying V guitar; because of his work on the album, the Bigsby tremolo bar was unofficially dubbed the “Whammy bar” by a generation of guitarists. “Nobody can play with a whammy-bar like Lonnie. He holds it while he plays and the sound sends chills up your spine,” Stevie Ray Vaughan, an acolyte of Mack’s, would later say.

Mack was also well known for his 1958 Gibson Flying V guitar, an instrument the teenaged Mack specifically ordered from a Cincinnati music shop because it resembled an arrow. Upon receiving the instrument from Gibson’s Kalamazoo, Michigan factory, Mack realized the guitar had the serial number of #007; that guitar remained Mack’s main instrument for the remainder of his career that stretched across six decades.

Following the shuttering of Fraternity Records, which put many of Mack’s early records out of print, the guitarist maintained grueling touring schedule for years until a glowing November 1968 Rolling Stone review of The Wham led to a resurgence in Mack’s work, including high profile gigs at the Fillmore East and West and an Elektra Records deal; the following year, Mack contributed bass guitar to the Doors’ Morrison Hotel songs “Roadhouse Blues” and “Maggie M’Gill.”

During the Seventies, Mack largely receded from the music industry until longtime fan Vaughan convinced Mack to move from Indiana to Austin, Texas in the early Eighties, a collaboration that resulted in Mack’s standout 1985 LP Strike Like Lightning.

While largely unknown to mainstream audiences, Mack’s influence on an entire generation of guitarists is vital: The Allman Brothers’ Duane Allman and Dickie Betts both admired Mack; “Lonnie is one of the greatest players I know of. He’s always been a great influence on me,” Betts once said.

Prince obit

Prince Dead at 57

He was not on the list.

The Midwest medical examiner's office will perform an autopsy on Prince Friday, following his death at his Minnesota compound, Paisley Park, Thursday. He was 57.

No cause of death has been released, but the the Carver County Sheriff's office is investigating the death after he was found unresponsive in the elevator of his home by an unidentified male who called 911 Thursday.

Police and medical personnel pronounced Prince dead at 10:07 a.m. April 21 after over 20 minutes of CPR. He'd been hospitalized recently after a medical emergency forced his private plane to make an emergency landing, but he then appeared at a concert the following day. Sources tell TMZ he had been battling the flu.

His rep told TVGuide.com, "It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer, Prince Rogers Nelson, has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57. There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time."

Born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis, Prince wrote his first song at age 7. He released his debut album, For You, in 1978.

In the early 1980s, Prince began recording with his side project, the Time. In the mid-1980s, he christened his band the Revolution and in 1991, renamed his backing musicians the New Power Generation. In 1992, coinciding with the release of his 12th album, he began identifying himself by an unpronounceable symbol - a combination of the symbols for male and female - rather than his name.

Throughout his decades-long career, Prince released 39 albums, had five number-one singles, was nominated for 30 Grammy awards and won seven. His most popular songs included "When Doves Cry," "Let's Go Crazy," "Little Red Corvette" and "Kiss." He also won an Oscar for the score to the film Purple Rain, and gave an iconic Super Bowl halftime performance in 2007. In addition, Prince was the first artist to release an entire album (1997's Crystal Ball) exclusively on the Internet. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

Prince released his final album, HITnRUN Phase One, in September 2015.

Filmography

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1984      Purple Rain         The Kid Also composer

1986      Under the Cherry Moon                Christopher Tracy             Also director and composer

1987      Sign o' the Times              Himself                 Also director and composer

1990      Graffiti Bridge    The Kid Also director, writer, composer

1994      Prince Interactive             Himself (Voice) Video game

1997      Muppets Tonight              Himself                 Episode 11

2014      New Girl               Himself                 Episode: "Prince"