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Jan Triska. Fell or jumped off a bridge in Prague.

That's awful. His two biggest roles were probably the buttoned up teacher in the Academy Award nominated Elementary School (diected by Jan Sverák who later won the Foreign Language Film Oscar with Kolya) and the Marquis in Jan Svankmajer's Lunacy.

But he seemed the go to person to play very small Eastern European-y roles in American films during the early to mid 80s! He's the very briefly seen Russian spymaster in Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend, playing a Swedish architect(!) in Nothing Lasts Forever, Polish in the Dudley Moore remake of Unfaithfully Yours, Russian again in 2010 and so on. It goes right up to things like Apt Pupil, Lost Souls and Ronin in the late 90s too. It seems from the imdb page that he had a very prolific film and TV career before leaving for the US.

Along with Ronin, Triska was the villain in Andersonville -- like Michael Gambon, an unlikely late-career favorite of Frankenheimer's.

Gisèle Casadesus has passed away at age 103.

I'm having trouble attaching a link.

Tony Booth. Best known for being Tony Blair's father-in-law and his TV roles (again, most famously Alf Garnett's son-in-law in Till Death Us Do Part), but also a regular in the Confessions... series of films.

Hefner was an incredible man. A rebel and a maverick, he promoted progressive causes during the very conservative 1950's, and pushed for integration/leadership roles for women before many others. Beyond financing films like Polanski's Macbeth and Bogdanovich's Saint Jack, he was a major contributor to film preservation projects at the UCLA Film & Television Archive and USC. People often forget that Playboy was an early champion of authors like Ray Bradbury, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Haruki Murakami.

He was also, by several accounts, a giant creep who was basically running indentured sexual servitude with his multiple "girlfriends". None of this was secret, so the hagiography coming from some circles is more than a little weird.

med wrote:He was also, by several accounts, a giant creep who was basically running indentured sexual servitude with his multiple "girlfriends". None of this was secret, so the hagiography coming from some circles is more than a little weird.

I don't care about his personal life. Only the massive sea change in American popular culture that he helped to shepherd, coupled with his lifelong commitment to liberal platforms, has any interest to me.

It can also be argued that sea change also did as much damage to women, as it did to liberate them too.

Anne Jeffreys

Here's the Huell Howser episode about her and her friendship with Ann Rutherford

beamish13 wrote:

med wrote:He was also, by several accounts, a giant creep who was basically running indentured sexual servitude with his multiple "girlfriends". None of this was secret, so the hagiography coming from some circles is more than a little weird.

I don't care about his personal life. Only the massive sea change in American popular culture that he helped to shepherd, coupled with his lifelong commitment to liberal platforms, has any interest to me.

Cool. In his professional life, he helped foster an unrealistic standard of female beauty and preyed on the women who posed in his magazine.

And I don't get the impression he really ever went the extra mile with his liberal beliefs. From what I can gather, he was just friendly to African-Americans because he loved jazz and had a hard-on for black women.

If the sex-positive people I follow on social media are any indication, he has a complex legacy. Some see him as the icon he is in pop culture, but others exploitative and predatory. I've got to say the fact that his plot will be next to Marilyn Monroe's, considering her photos were used without her agreement in the first issue, is creepy as hell.

Game show host Monty Hall at 96. I had no idea he was the father of actress Joanna Gleason.

Interestingly, my mom's cousin was one of the models on Let's Make A Deal back in the 60s (Barbara Lyon). And my cousin was a Playboy centerfold in the 90s. What a week for them. I don't really know whether Barbara is still around, but Danelle is.

Tom Petty

What a shitty, shitty day for multiple reasons.

His greatest feat to me is that he managed to be super relevant in the 70's, 80's and 90's in ways very, very few before and after managed to.

If you're a fan of the music I highly recommend reading both his biography by Warren Zanes, and the book Conversations With Tom Petty, co-written with Paul Zollo.

By some eerie coincidence I came across this video recently, and was wondering where I can share it here.

gcgiles1dollarbin wrote:Tom Petty

What a shitty, shitty day for multiple reasons.

Seriously, what a shitty month. When I saw that he had a cardiac arrest my heart sank even more cause I knew he wasn't going to be with us much longer. Rest In Peace.


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Peter Bogdanovich's Runnin' Down a Dream is one of the best rock documentaries ever. It's four hours long so I'm warning you to put that much time aside because even if you're just a minor Tom Petty fan once you start watching you will not want to pause.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:By some eerie coincidence I came across this video recently, and was wondering where I can share it here.

I remember Petty was on It's Garry Shandling's Show. There were maybe half a dozen people at Gary's house when a pregnant woman goes into labor. The baby is born and the camera became the POV of the baby and goes from person to person. Goo goo eyes, oh how cute, coochie coo and then it gets to Petty and he just has a look of ewww gross.

I liked hearing Petty talk about the early days and how promoters would promote his band as a punk band even though they weren't. That was their uniqueness in their early days. Didn't quite fit into any genre.

lacritfan wrote:

flyonthewall2983 wrote:By some eerie coincidence I came across this video recently, and was wondering where I can share it here.

I remember Petty was on It's Garry Shandling's Show. There were maybe half a dozen people at Gary's house when a pregnant woman goes into labor. The baby is born and the camera became the POV of the baby and goes from person to person. Goo goo eyes, oh how cute, coochie coo and then it gets to Petty and he just has a look of ewww gross.

He was later on Larry Sanders, where he almost gets into a fight backstage with Clint Black.