Passages

[flyonthewall2983]

Honestly wish she had what was to be Tilda Swinton’s part in Grand Budapest Hotel

[beamish14]

Art Laboe, Southern California DJ who was the first major figure in the region to host racially integrated music events. Still active at 97, he recorded his final broadcast just last week

[colinr0380]

Strange to think that Lansbury was in some of the films that disturbed me the most as a child, from merging reality and cartoons together in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, to that unforgettable role in The Company of Wolves! The Manchurian Candidate might be another obvious example but she had a real edge of darkness to many of her innocuous-seeming characters.

[Michael Kerpan]

It is hard to imagine Angela Lansbury being gone. As one who is now 70 myself, I can barely remember a time when she was not a fixed cultural point.

[flyonthewall2983]

I remember the whimsical intro for The Wizard of Oz she did on CBS

[hearthesilence]

Here's a nice story by David Friedman (who was the conductor for the musical score of Disney's animated "homage" to Jean Cocteau's classic):

ANOTHER ANGELA LANSBURY STORY

One day, when we were in the earlier stages of preparing to do the movie Beauty & The Beast, I got a call from Disney asking me to fly up to Boston to convince Angela to take the roll of Mrs. Potts because she was resisting doing it. I said, "OK. I don't know if I can do that, but I'll try my best."

So, on the appointed day, I flew up to Boston (I had gone to college there, New England Conservatory, so I knew the town well), took a cab to the Copley Plaza hotel, went up to the front desk and said, "I'm David Friedman, I'm here to see Angela Lansbury." The clerk said, "Yes, Mr. Friedman, she's expecting you."

He escorted me to the private dining room where she was sitting at a table with her husband. She leapt to her feet, said, "Oh, Hello. You must be David. This is my husband, Peter. You must be hungry after your trip. Sit down and have something to eat."

I was daunted to be meeting the great Angela Lansbury, but she made me feel immediately at ease. After a while, we got up to go across the hall to a club with a piano that the hotel had cordoned off for our use.

The minute we stepped out of the dining room and into the hall, cameras started flashing, with reporters calling out, "Miss Lansbury, look this way," etc. She was very gracious but it was getting to be a bit intrusive, so I stepped in and said, "Miss Lansbury has to go now.” We said goodbye to the reporters, walked into the empty club, and shut the door. The moment we were inside, Angela said, "Whew! It was never like this before TV. It's television that's created this."

The club was closed so all the chairs were on top of the tables. Angela immediately grabbed a couple of the chairs, put one in front of the piano for me and sat in the other. There was absolutely no star stuff in her. The chairs had to be taken down, so she did it before I had a chance to.

I looked at her and said, “So what’s the problem?” She said, “I can’t sing these songs.” I said, “Why don’t you sing them for me, and let’s see what’s going on.”

She sang Beauty and the Beast, and I said, “That’s great! I could give you a few technical pointers, but you’re fine.” She said, “Oh darling, I have no technique. I don’t know what I’m doing as a singer.” I looked at her and said, “OK, what’s bothering you?” She said, “These are pop songs, I can’t sing them.”

I said, “Ah. Alright. Would you do me a favor, forget about the sound, forget about the style, and just be Mrs. Potts singing to Chip.”

What came out was extraordinarily beautiful. Real, touching, and connected. Very close to what she ended up doing in the film.

I said, “That’s it!” She said, “You’ll let me do that?” I said, “That’s what we want you to do!” With that, she said, “OK. I’m in!”

I realized, in that moment, that Angela was such a connected actress that she could not sing a song unless she knew who she was, where she was and to whom she was singing. And once she had that, she was home free and brilliant.

Four months later, we went into the studio and recorded the song, with Angela singing it directly to me in the booth. (I was Chip for a day.)

After her take (I think she may have only done one or possibly two, she was that spot-on) we went into the control room to listen back, and when Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and the producers and engineer all applauded her, she pointed at me and said, “He did it.”

I couldn’t get over what a gracious and personal gesture that was. Needless to say, it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my career.

P.S. Years later, I found out that the reason Angela had been so reticent to sing the songs was because they had accidentally sent her the pop demo (a demo for the version that Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson eventually sang). No wonder she thought she couldn’t sing it.

I’m forever grateful that we were able to work all that out, not only so that I could have one of the most gratifying personal and professional experiences of my life, but so that the world would get to experience the joy of hearing Angela sing Beauty & The Beast for all time.

She may be gone, but her legacy lives in our hearts and on the work she left behind.

[Pavel]

Mike Schank, best known for American Movie, per a Facebook post by a friend of his

[domino harvey]

Really showing my age here but her biography being called Motherfucker X always came to mind when I thought of Lansbury

Spoiler

[JSC]

Robbie Coltrane

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... l-treasure

[therewillbeblus]

Valentin Dmitrovich! Though I think his most memorable scene is the Amsterdam bar in Ocean’s Twelve

[colinr0380]

Robbie Coltrane

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... l-treasure

That's very sad. While Hagrid from Harry Potter and his role in the Cracker TV series are being mentioned (and are probably his highest profile roles along with his small Russian supporting character in two of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough), I'm most fond of his performance with Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run, which has the perfect ending to a comic heist film! And it taught me everything I know about the tenets of Catholicism!

Coltrane's starring role follow up to that, 1991's The Pope Must Die (retitled The Pope Must Diet in the US to avoid controversy!) unfortunately fell rather flat. Although now it kind of feels like a Paolo Sorrentino film two decades ahead of time!

Lot's of other interesting roles too, particularly in the 1980s with supporting parts in Bertrand Tavernier's Glasgow-set Death Watch (which is one of his first feature film parts), Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital, Mona Lisa, Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, Christopher Petit's Chinese Boxes and Defence of the Realm, along with parts in bigger fantasy films such as Krull, Slipstream and turning up in National Lampoon's European Vacation!

Valentin Dmitrovich! Though I think his most memorable scene is the Amsterdam bar in Ocean’s Twelve

I think my favourite of his post-2000s films is his supporting police Sergeant casually overlooking Johnny Depp's washed up absinthe using Inspector because of needing his unique set of empathetic skills in the adaptation of Alan Moore's take on the whole Jack the Ripper conspiracy theory mythos, From Hell.

[knives]

He has a great couple of small roles in Blackadder as well.

[flyonthewall2983]

Loved him as the ticket taker in Let it Ride, a vastly underrated movie

[flyonthewall2983]

This interview with Lansbury for 60 Minutes is a little hard to watch. Les Moonves ruined CBS.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Porn legend Kay Parker, per Twitter (can't link to any articles because I'm on a work computer and no way in hell I'm gonna google her name now).

[Orlac]

Robbie Coltrane

[Orlac]

Ted White - Jason in Friday the 13th The FInal Chapter - https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3736 ... ssed-away/

[colinr0380]

Ted White - Jason in Friday the 13th The FInal Chapter - https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3736 ... ssed-away/

That Crystal Lake Memories documentary does a wonderful job of giving a voice and face to all the various, mostly stuntmen, who played Jason in the series before Kane Hodder arrived and put his stamp on the character's mannerisms from Part VII onwards. As with much else in that endearingly scrappy series, the characterisation of Jason seemed to wildly vary throughout depending on who was playing them and seemed to be rather made up on the fly rather than being particularly consistent in terms of mannerisms and intimidating presence. It seemed that at long as there was a big guy that fit the bulk of the character, that was about it in terms of direction. However since I'm generally in agreement with that Red Letter Media video that The Final Chapter may be the best of all the Friday The 13th films (arguably Part VI too. And I have a great fondness for Part VII and 3 as well!), I can let it go!

He's also in Starman as the main hunter in that deer scene.

[Supporting_Character]

Film critic, audio commentator and co-founder of Shadow And Act and Chicago's Black Harvest Film Festival, Sergio Mims.
https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/goo ... -1955-2022

[flyonthewall2983]

Leslie Jordan

[hearthesilence]

Jerry Lee Lewis

Maybe the last major figure from the first wave of rock n' roll giants who was still alive. (I think Dion and Motown among others would be the next wave even though it's only a difference of a few years.)

[JSC]

Lewis' Live at the Star Club from 1964 is one of the best live rock albums ever in my opinion.

[hearthesilence]

Lewis' Live at the Star Club from 1964 is one of the best live rock albums ever in my opinion.

Agreed. Outside of his Sun recordings (which altogether is a landmark - the Bear Family box set is one of my treasured belongings) it's possibly his greatest LP ever.

His country recordings are also great - his induction into the Country HOF was long overdue, but at least he was around to see it and enjoy the moment. (Too bad he accepted the honor while bed-ridden with the flu. They should've done this like 20 years ago when he could've performed a great set.)

If anyone wants to explore his country recordings, Another Place, Another Time, She Still Comes Around and She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye are great albums. The two CD All Killer No Filler! anthology from Rhino also does a terrific job of exploring his career with fine liner notes by the reissue producer Jimmy Guterman. (Guterman originally tried to do a triple CD set, but he was told to cut it down.) FWIW, if you remove the Sun tracks and the live Star Club cuts from the aforementioned LP, what's left of All Killer No Filler! squeezes into one 79 minute CD and makes an impeccable summation of his country-dominated post-Sun recordings.

[beamish14]

D. H. Peligro, drummer for Dead Kennedys and, briefly, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
His autobiography Dreadnaught is incredible.

[MichaelB]

The Film Polski database has published its usual annual round-up of pretty much everyone involved in Polish film and television who died over the last twelve months.