Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988), also known by the nickname the Big O, was an American singer-songwriter, best known for his trademark sunglasses, distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country and western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis. His greatest success came with Monument Records between 1960 and 1964, when 22 of his songs placed on the Billboard Top 40, including "Only the Lonely," "Crying," and "Oh, Pretty Woman." His career stagnated through the 1970s, but several covers of his songs and the use of "In Dreams" in David Lynch's film BLUE VELVET (1986) revived his career.
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In 1988, he joined the supergroup Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne and also released a new solo album. He died of a heart attack in December that year, at the zenith of his resurgence. His life was marred by tragedy, including the death of his first wife and his two eldest sons in separate accidents. Orbison's vocal instrument bridged the gap between baritone and tenor, and music scholars have suggested that he had a three- or four-octave range. The combination of Orbison's powerful, impassioned voice and complex musical arrangements led many critics to refer to his music as operatic, giving him the sobriquet "the Caruso of Rock." Elvis Presley as well as Petty and Dylan, have stated his voice was, respectively, the greatest and most distinctive they had ever heard. While most male performers in rock and roll in the 1950s and '60s projected a defiant masculinity, many of Orbison's songs instead conveyed a quiet, desperate vulnerability. He was known for performing while standing still and solitary and for wearing black clothes and dark sunglasses, which lent an air of mystery to his persona.
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Orbison was initiated into the second class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 by longtime admirer Bruce Springsteen. The same year he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame two years later. Rolling Stone placed Orbison at number 37 on their list of The Greatest Artists of All Time, and number 13 on their list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at number 74 in the Top 600 recording artists. In 2014, Orbison was elected to America's Pop Music Hall of Fame.
Death
While Orbison determinedly pursued his second chance at stardom, he reacted to his success in constant surprise, confessing "It's very nice to be wanted again, but I still can't quite believe it." He lost some weight to fit his new image and the constant demand of touring, as well as the newer demands of making videos. In November 1988, Mystery Girl was completed and Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 was rising up the charts. Around this time Orbison confided in Johnny Cash that he was having chest pains and said he'd have to have something done, but he never did. Orbison went to Europe where he was presented with an award and played a show in Antwerp where footage for the video for "You Got It" was filmed. He gave multiple interviews a day in a hectic schedule. A few days later a manager at a club in Boston was concerned that he looked ill, but Orbison played the show to another standing ovation. Roy played at The Front Row Theater in Highland Heights, Ohio on December 4, which would be his last performance. Finally, exhausted, he returned to his home in Hendersonville to rest for a few days before flying again to London to film two more videos for the Traveling Wilburys. On December 6, 1988, he spent the day flying model airplanes with his sons; then, after having dinner at his mother's home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, he died of a heart attack at the age of 52.
The tabloid The National Enquirer suggested on its cover that Orbison had worked himself to death. A memorial was held in Nashville, and another in Los Angeles; he was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. In January 1989, Orbison became the first musician since Elvis Presley to have two albums in the Top Five at the same time.
Robert Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, writer and producer, notable for such films as Kiss Me Deadly, The Big Knife, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Flight of the Phoenix, Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte and The Dirty Dozen.
Biography
Robert Burgess Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, the son of Lora Lawson and newspaper publisher Edward B. Aldrich. He was a grandson of U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and a cousin to Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. He was educated at the Moses Brown School, Providence, Rhode Island, and studied economics at the University of Virginia. In 1941, he left university for a minor job at the RKO Radio Pictures, thus beginning his career as a cinéaste.
He quickly rose in film production as an assistant director, he worked with Jean Renoir, Abraham Polonsky, Joseph Losey and Charlie Chaplin, working with the latter as an assistant on Limelight. He became a television director in the 1950s, directing his first feature film, The Big Leaguer, in 1953. In that time, Aldrich was the rare American example of the auteur film maker, depicting his liberal humanist thematic vision in many genres, in films such as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), today a film noir classic, The Big Knife (1955), a cinematic adaptation of Clifford Odets's play about Hollywood as a business, and Attack (1956), a World War II infantry combat film exploring how U.S. Army careerism determined who attacked and who ordered the attack. During the 1950s, Aldrich directed mostly action stories, including early films like Apache and Vera Cruz, both starred Burt Lancaster. In 1959 he was head of the jury at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival.
In the 1960s he directed several commercially successful films, such as the gothic horror stories What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), featuring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as spiteful sisters and faded child-actresses, the follow up Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, with Bette Davis as a Southern woman who lives in a mansion and thinks she is going insane (both Joan Crawford and Davis were to appear, but Crawford left the movie); the sexually controversial The Killing of Sister George (1968); and the war movie formula template, The Dirty Dozen (1967). The success of The Dirty Dozen allowed him to establish his own film production studio for some time, but several failures forced his professional return to conventionally commercial Hollywood films. Nevertheless, his humanism is thematically evident in The Longest Yard (1974), about the rigged-game politics, and Ulzana's Raid (1972) about the post–Civil War violence against Native Americans.
From his marriage to Harriet Foster (1941–1965), Robert Aldrich had four children, all of whom work in the movie business: Adell, William, Alida and Kelly. In 1966, after divorcing his first wife, Harriet, he married fashion model Sybille Siegfried.
Director Robert Aldrich died of kidney failure on December 5, 1983. He is buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, composer, recording engineer, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical composers such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, along with 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar.
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Zappa was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often difficult to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz or classical. His lyrics—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.
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He was a highly productive and prolific artist and gained widespread critical acclaim. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and worked as an independent artist for most of his career. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at No. 71 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," and in 2011 at No. 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."
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In 1990, Frank Zappa was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable. After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. Shortly before his death in 1993 he completed Civilization, Phaze III, a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.
Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993, in his home with his wife and children by his side. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. On Monday, December 6 his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday."
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. In 2008, it was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country.
It was originally first published every week and a half as an evening paper, bearing the name Los Angeles Daily Times, on December 4, 1881, but soon went bankrupt. The paper's printer, the Mirror Company, took over the newspaper and installed former Union Army lieutenant colonel Harrison Gray Otis as the editor. Otis made the paper a financial success. In 1884, he bought out the newspaper and printing company to form the Times-Mirror Company.
Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment." Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the watershed of the Owens Valley, an effort fictionalized in the Roman Polanski movie Chinatown which is also covered in California Water Wars.
The efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the October 1, 1910, bombing of its headquarters, killing twenty-one people. Two union leaders, James and Joseph McNamara, were charged. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who eventually pleaded guilty.
Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya (Russian: Мария Алeкceeвнa Успенская; July 29, 1876 – December 3, 1949) was a Russian actress who achieved success as a stage actress as a young woman in Russia, and as an elderly woman in Hollywood films.[1]
Early life
Ouspenskaya was born in Tula, Russia and studied singing in Warsaw and acting in Moscow. She performed extensively in on the Russian stage.
Career
A member of the Moscow Art Theatre,[2] Ouspenskaya was directed by Constantin Stanislavski, and for the remainder of her life advocated and taught his 'system', which in America became "method acting."
The Moscow Art Theatre traveled widely throughout Europe, and when it arrived in New York in 1922, she decided to stay there. She performed regularly on Broadway over the next decade. She taught acting at the American Laboratory Theater [3] and in 1929, together with her colleague from Moscow Art Theatre Ryszard Bolesławski,[citation needed] she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York.[3] One of Ouspenskaya's students at the school during this period was Anne Baxter, then an unknown teenager.
Although she had appeared in a few Russian silent films many years earlier, Ouspenskaya stayed away from Hollywood until her school's financial problems forced her to look for ways to repair her finances. According to ads from "Popular Song" magazine in the 1930s, around this time, Ouspenskaya also opened up the "Maria Ouspenskaya School of Dance" on Vine Street in Los Angeles. There, one of her famous pupils included Marge Champion (who was the model for Disney's Snow White.) [4]
Her first Hollywood role in Dodsworth (1936) brought her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received a second nomination in 1939 for her role in Love Affair.[5] She portrayed Maleva, an old Gypsy fortuneteller in the horror films The Wolf Man (1941) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Her other successes included The Rains Came (1939), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), and Kings Row (1942).
Death
Ouspenskaya died several days after suffering a stroke and receiving severe burns in a house fire, which she allegedly caused by falling asleep while smoking a cigarette.[3][6] She was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.[7]
References
1.^ Obituary Variety, December 7, 1949; page 63.
2.^ Lawrence, D. H.; Isaacs, Edith J. R. (1924-12). Theatre Arts Monthly (Theatre Arts, Inc.) 8 (12): 801.
3.^ Smith, Ronald L. (2010). Horror Stars on Radio: The Broadcast Histories of 29 Chilling Hollywood Voices. McFarland and Company. ISBN 9780786445257.
4.^ King, Susan (September 30, 2009). "Marge Champion still has the dance moves". The Los Angeles Times.
5.^ "Academy list its selections". 1940-02-12. p. 9.
6.^ "Fag Blamed For Actress' Death". Tri City Herald: p. 3. 1949-12-04.
7.^ Mank, Gregory W. (McFarland and Co.). Women in Horror Films, 1940s. 1999. pp. 95.
On December 1, 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that a man believed to be involved with Ronnie Chasen's murder committed suicide after being confronted by police at the Harvey Apartments on Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood. The Times reported the man, a convicted felon known to neighbors at the complex as Harold Smith, was approached by police in the apartment lobby, at which point the man pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head. On December 6, 2010, it was reported that Smith is no longer considered a person of interest in the murder. However, on December 8, 2010, it was reported by the Beverly Hills Police Department that Ronni Chasen's murder was a random act of violence, a robbery gone bad - committed by a man on a bicycle. According to BHPD, the gun that Harold Smith used to kill himself last week was the very same gun used to murder Chasen. Police say they believe Smith acted alone and it was in no way connected with road rage -- an operating theory last week. The big break in the case was a tip through "America's Most Wanted" -- after Smith began bragging to neighbors that he shot Chasen and got $10,000 for it. The "AMW" tipster -- who wants to remain anonymous -- stands to collect a $125,000 reward.
William Sackheim (October 31, 1921 - December 1, 2004) was a writer and producer who was also a two time Emmy Award winer. For TV he developed "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun." His features include "The In-Laws" and "Pacific Heights." His writing credits include "First Blood" and "The Competition." He died of degenerative brain disease and is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park.
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