Passages

[colinr0380]

Nichelle Nichols.

Her appearance riffing on her Star Trek role in that "What If?"-style Futurama episode Anthology of Interest was wonderful, in which she was part of a team (headed by Al Gore and including Stephen Hawking, Gary Gygax and "summer intern" Deep Blue) trying to keep the time-space continuum together by ensuring that Fry was frozen, where she good naturedly sends up her image and gives one of the best lines of the entire show:

Nichols: Something's wrong. Murder isn't working and that's all we're good at.

[Feego]

Pat Carroll, whose vocal performance as Ursula in The Little Mermaid is one of the all-time great Disney villains.

[L.A.]

Paul Coker Jr.

[hearthesilence]

Legendary Warner Bros. music executive Mo Ostin. One of the greats who really cared about the music, he made WB the artist friendly label it was known to be. If there was any doubt about his influence there, bear in mind that after he was essentially pushed out, the label was taken over by a lot of new faces that eventually gutted Rhino Records and gained the company notoriety for refusing to release Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Here's an L.A. Times profile worth reading.

[L.A.]

John Steiner passed away on July 31st at the age of 81, famous in films like Caligula and Tenebrae.

[colinr0380]

John Steiner passed away on July 31st at the age of 81, famous in films like Caligula and Tenebrae.

That is sad to hear. He has a fun role Tenebrae as:

Spoiler

the initial killer before he himself is killed at the mid-way point

He is all over 1970s Italian cinema as an instantly recognisable supporting actor. He's the potentially shifty husband to Daria Nicolodi in Lamberto Bava's final film Shock. As well as Caligula he is in the earlier Tinto Brass film Salon Kitty (and his last film role is in Brass's 1991 film Paprika), along with another Nazisploitation film (that is still banned in the UK) Deported Women of the SS Special Section. Plus some Antonio Magheriti films with The Ark of the Sun God and the exploitation version of The Deer Hunter, The Last Hunter.

And he is in a couple of interesting Poliziotteschi films with Violent Milan and Violent Rome, along with appearing in the final film starring the unfortunately paralysed in an accident soon afterwards Franco Gasparri, The .44 Specialist (I would really love to see Gasparri get some much needed attention from the boutique labels some time).

He is also in an early film by George Pan Costmatos, Massacre In Rome.

[Jack Kubrick]

Vin Scully, per the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership.

[Lemmy Caution]

Scully was the Dodgers announcer for 67 years, dating back to the late Brooklyn days.
They had a list of famous moments Scully called, including Jackie Robinson stealing home in the 1956 World series, and Hank Aaron's historic 715th.

[GaryC]

No online obituary yet, but Shirley Barrett, Australian writer/director, on 4 August, aged 61, of cancer. She wrote of her living with cancer in this article in March, followed by this one in May.

Her debut cinema feature, Love Serenade (1996) won the Camera d'Or at Cannes.

[Aunt Peg]

An obituary appeared this morning in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/a ... -the-party

[MichaelB]

Worth noting that it's written by her brother-in-law, who knew her since she was fifteen. Which makes a refreshing change from obits that are barely reheated Wikipedia extracts.

[GaryC]

Judith Durham, lead singer of The Seekers, aged 79.

[dwk]

Clu Gulager

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

A real loss for the Los Angeles film scene. He was a special part of the New Beverly for years and always a pleasure to see in his 80s looking jacket. Unfortunately, COVID had him sheltered up and refusing to go to the theater the last few years. Incredibly kind too and always excited to meet new people. I had the luck to have a midnight dinner with him at Astro Burger on Santa Monica years ago where he ate a hot dog and I had a Coke. An incredibly talented, sweet man that will be missed.

[colinr0380]

Clu Gulager

A real loss for the Los Angeles film scene. He was a special part of the New Beverly for years and always a pleasure to see in his 80s looking jacket. Unfortunately, COVID had him sheltered up and refusing to go to the theater the last few years. Incredibly kind too and always excited to meet new people. I had the luck to have a midnight dinner with him at Astro Burger on Santa Monica years ago where he ate a hot dog and I had a Coke. An incredibly talented, sweet man that will be missed.

Gulager really managed to hold his own paired up with Lee Marvin in the 1964 version of The Killers. And it was wonderful to see him get a resurgence in the mid-1980s with his roles in horror films. Return of the Living Dead is the big one, where his sensible approach to dealing with the outbreak ironically only causes the horror to spread wider, but he is also in one of the most memorable and (inadvertently?) funny scenes from A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge as the main character's father dealing with a crazed bird in what can only be a homage to Hitchcock! It was also a scene that came to my mind during the heat wave a couple of weeks ago!

I think I would be most curious to see what his starring role in a Swedish gangster film was like!

[GaryC]

No online obituaries as yet, but Australian producer, casting director and screenwriter Hilary Linstead, aged 84.

[Caligula]

Roger E Mosley

[beamish14]

Roger E Mosley

Just incredible in Gordon Parks’ Leadbelly, one of the great unsung American films of the 70’s

Surprised to learn that he attended David Starr Jordan High School in Watts, which is where I taught for 2 years (and which features in Menace II Society)

[colinr0380]

That's the second actor from the John Sturges film McQ in the last week.

[dekadetia]

David McCullough.

[hearthesilence]

David McCullough.

I actually met him, way way back in 1996 (or 1997?), and he signed my copy of his Harry Truman bio for me, which I have somewhere in storage among my old school possessions. Very sweet man.

[L.A.]

Olivia Newton-John.

[brundlefly]

Juliana Hatfield released an album of Newton-John covers a few years ago and it made me realize just how deeply "Have You Never Been Mellow" had seeped into my bones as a child.

[colinr0380]

Long before I ever saw Grease I think I was most familiar with Olivia Newton-John from her Physical song, which was in heavy rotation on the family cassette deck during car trips in my childhood. In retrospect it was good that the lyrics completely went over my head at the time! I thought it was just about exercising! And thank goodness I never saw that video as a kid, which is as eye-popping as the Jamie Lee Curtis and Travolta work out sequence from Perfect! (I presume that Newton-John is doing a nod to Jane Russell's "Is There Anyone Here For Love?" number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with that tennis racket at the end!)

I may be the only person who kind of loves the film maudit re-teaming of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in the A Matter of Life and Death-esque Two of a Kind. At the very least it created a great music video!

I still have not seen the even more film maudited Xanadu, but of course love the song!

[hearthesilence]

I'm not a Grease fan, but the single "You're The One That I Want" is a big exception, pretty irresistible.