Beatrice “Bea” Arthur (May 13, 1922 – April 25, 2009)
Beatrice “Bea” Arthur (May 13, 1922 – April 25, 2009) was an American comedienne, actress, and singer. In a career spanning seven decades, Arthur achieved success as the title character, Maude Findlay, on the 1970s sitcom Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls; she won Emmys for both roles.
Posted in Humor, The Little Screen (Television)
Shirley Jane Temple, later known as Shirley Temple Black, is an American diplomat and former film child actress. She starred in over 40 films during the 1930s.
Shirley Temple (April 23, 1928 – February 10, 2014)
Posted in Humor, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
Alfred Hawthorn Hill, better known as Benny Hill, was a prolific English comic, actor & singer, best known for his television program, The Benny Hill Show. Since its debut in 1955 his television show has been sold to over 140 countries worldwide, with viewership in the billions.
Alfred Hawthorn Hill (January 21, 1924 – April 20, 1992)
Posted in Because I Can, Humor, The Little Screen (Television)
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an acclaimed American folk music singer, author and actor.
Possibly his most remembered role today is as narrator Sam the Snowman in the Rankin-Bass animated television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964).
Ives’s “A Holly Jolly Christmas” is a very popular tune during the Christmas season, as it’s frequently played on the radio and was featured in the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special.
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (14 June 1909 – 14 April 1995)
Posted in Because I Can, Music, The Little Screen (Television)
Annette Funicello (October 22, 1942 – April 8, 2013)
Annette Joanne Funicello was an American actress and singer. Funicello began her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve. She rose to prominence as one of the most popular “Mouseketeers” on the original Mickey Mouse Club. As a teenager, she transitioned to a successful career as a singer with the pop singles “O Dio Mio,” “Tall Paul” and “Pineapple Princess“, as well as establishing herself as a film actress, popularizing the successful “Beach Party” genre in a series of beach movies in the 1960s including “Beach Party,” “Bikini Beach” and the hit “Beach Blanket Bingo,” released in 1965 and co-starring teen idol Frankie Avalon.
In 1992, Funicello announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She died of complications from the disease on April 8, 2013
Posted in The Little Screen (Television)
Mickey Rooney (September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014)
My recollection of “seeing” Mickey Rooney has always been from the first role I remember seeing him in, as “Bill.” But I’ll always remember “hearing” Mickey Rooney as Santa Claus in four Christmas TV animated/stop action specials: Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979), and A Miser Brothers’ Christmas (2008)—always Santa Claus.
He had one of the longest careers of any actor, spanning 92 years actively making films in ten decades, from the 1920s to the 2010s. For a younger generation of fans, he gained international fame for his leading role as Henry Dailey in The Family Channel‘s The Adventures of the Black Stallion.
Until his death in April 2014, Rooney was one of the last surviving stars who worked in the silent film era. He was also the last surviving cast member of several films in which he appeared during the 1930s and 1940s.
Posted in The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
James Best as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
James Best (July 26, 1926 – April 6, 2015) was an American actor, who in six decades of television is best known for his starring role as bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in the CBS television series The Dukes of Hazzard. He also worked as an acting coach, artist, college professor, and musician.
Best was born as Jules Franklin Guy in Powderly, Kentucky, on July 26, 1926. His mother was the sister of Ike Everly, the father of the pop duo The Everly Brothers. After his mother died in 1929, the three-year-old James was sent to live in an orphanage. He was later adopted by Armen Best (1897-1984) and his wife Essa (1896-1988) and went to live with them in Corydon, Indiana. He served honorably in the United States Army Air Forces as a gunner on a B-17 bomber during World War II.
James Best on Frontier
James Best on Twilight Zone
Posted in The Little Screen (Television)
Jerry Lewis (March 16, 1926 – )
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, producer, writer, director and singer. He is best-known for his slapstick humor on stage, screen and television, his singing ability in a string of music album recordings and his charity fund-raising telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
Posted in Humor, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
Douglas Noël Adams (March 11, 1952 – May 11, 2001)
Douglas Adams was an English author, comic radio dramatist, and musician. He is best known as author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Hitchhiker’s began on radio, and developed into a “trilogy” of five books (which sold more than fifteen million copies during his lifetime) as well as a television series, a towel, a live theater show, a drink, a comic book series, a computer game and a feature film that was completed after Adams’ death. He was known to some fans as Bop Ad (after his illegible signature), or by his initials “DNA”.
On this day in 1965, The Sound of Music was released in the United States.
March 2, 1965
Posted in The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
The series premiered on September 17, 1972, and ended on February 28, 1983, with the finale becoming the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history at the time.
“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” was the final episode of M*A*S*H. Special television sets were placed in PX parking lots, auditoriums, and dayrooms of the US Army in Korea so that military personnel could watch that episode; this in spite of 14 hours’ time zone difference with the east coast of the US. The episode aired on February 28, 1983, and was 2½ hours long.
Posted in Because I Can, The Little Screen (Television)
Leonard Simon Nimoy ( March 26, 1931 – February 27, 2015)
Blatently borrowed from Wikipedia:
Leonard Nimoy was an American actor, film director, poet, singer and photographer. Nimoy was best known for his role as Spock in the original Star Trek series (1966–69), and in multiple film, television and video game sequels.
Nimoy was born to Jewish migrant parents in Boston, Massachusetts. He began his career in his early twenties, teaching acting classes in Hollywood and making minor film and television appearances through the 1950s, as well as playing the title role in Kid Monk Baroni. Foreshadowing his fame as a semi-alien, he played Narab, one of three Martian invaders in the 1952 movie serial Zombies of the Stratosphere. In 1953, he served in the United States Army.
In 1965, he made his first appearance in the rejected Star Trek pilot The Cage, and went on to play the character of Mr. Spock until 1969, followed by eight feature films and guest slots in the various spin-off series. The character has had a significant cultural impact and garnered Nimoy three Emmy Award nominations; TV Guide named Spock one of the 50 greatest TV characters. After the original Star Trek series, Nimoy starred in Mission: Impossible for two seasons, hosted the documentary series In Search of…, and narrated Civilization IV, as well as making several well-received stage appearances. More recently, he also had a recurring role in the science fiction series Fringe.
Nimoy’s fame as Spock was such that both of his autobiographies, I Am Not Spock (1975) and I Am Spock (1995), were written from the viewpoint of sharing his existence with the character.
Death
In February 2014, Nimoy revealed that he had been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). On Twitter, he said: “I quit smoking 30 yrs ago. Not soon enough. I have COPD. Grandpa says, quit now!! LLAP (Live Long and Prosper).” On February 19, 2015, Nimoy was rushed to UCLA Medical Center for severe chest pains after a call to 911. According to accounts, he had been in and out of hospitals for the “past several months.”
Nimoy died on February 27, 2015 in his Bel Air home from final complications of COPD, according to his wife Susan. He was 83 years old, and is survived by Susan and his two children and six grandchildren from his first marriage.
A few days before his passing, Nimoy shared some of his poetry on social media website Twitter. The final tweet that he sent out read: “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP”.
Shatner said of his friend “I loved him like a brother […] We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love.”
Zachary Quinto, who portrayed the younger “Spock” character in films Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, commented on Nimoy’s death: “my heart is broken. i love you profoundly my dear friend. and i will miss you everyday. may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
George Takei stated: “The word extraordinary is often overused, but I think it’s really appropriate for Leonard. He was an extraordinarily talented man, but he was also a very decent human being. His talent embraced directing as well as acting and photography. He was a very sensitive man. And we feel his passing very much. He had been ill for a long, long time, and we miss him very much.”
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
Charles Martin “Chuck” Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio.
In 1966, he produced and directed the TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
He directed the Rudyard Kipling book adaptation of “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi“, which was released on January 9, 1975.
Posted in Because I Can, The Little Screen (Television)
Gary Owens (May 10, 1934 – February 12, 2015)
Gary Owens (born Gary Bernard Altman) was an American disc jockey and voice actor. His polished baritone speaking voice generally offered deadpan recitations of total nonsense, which he frequently demonstrated as the announcer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. Owens was equally proficient in straight or silly assignments and was frequently heard on television, radio and in commercials.
He was best known, aside from being the announcer on Laugh-In, for providing the voice of the titular superhero on Space Ghost.
Owens provided the voices for:
Posted in The Little Screen (Television)
Shirley Temple Black (April 23, 1928 – February 10, 2014) in Curly Top (1935)
Shirley Temple was an American film and television actress, singer, dancer and public servant, most famous as a child star in the 1930s. As an adult, she entered politics and became a diplomat, serving as United States Ambassador to Ghana and later to Czechoslovakia, and as Chief of Protocol of the United States.
Temple began her film career in 1932 at the age of three. In 1934, she found international fame in Bright Eyes, a feature film designed specifically for her talents. She received a special Juvenile Academy Award in February 1935 for her outstanding contribution as a juvenile performer to motion pictures during 1934, and film hits such as Curly Top and Heidi followed year after year during the mid-to-late 1930s. Licensed merchandise that capitalized on her wholesome image included dolls, dishes, and clothing. Her box office popularity waned as she reached adolescence, and she left the film industry in her teens. She appeared in a few films of varying quality in her mid-to-late teens, and retired completely from films in 1950 at the age of 22. She was the top box-office draw four years in a row (1935–38) in a Motion Picture Herald poll.
Temple returned to show business in 1958 with a two-season television anthology series of fairy tale adaptations. She made guest appearances on television shows in the early 1960s and filmed a sitcom pilot that was never released. She sat on the boards of corporations and organizations including The Walt Disney Company, Del Monte Foods, and the National Wildlife Federation. She began her diplomatic career in 1969, with an appointment to represent the United States at a session of the United Nations General Assembly. In 1988, she published her autobiography, Child Star.
Temple was the recipient of awards and honors including Kennedy Center Honors and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She ranks 18th on the American Film Institute‘s list of the greatest female American screen legends of all time.
Thank you, Shirley for many evenings with my wife watching your works of art…
https://youtu.be/Yod4lziPgno?list=PL15KbAxfKZE2DnUA9RNWn4IJQGR6VsBkF
Posted in Gadgets, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
Alan Alexander Milne, also known as A. A. Milne, was a British author, best known for his books about the teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and for various children’s poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.
Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 – January 31, 1956)
Posted in Because I Can, Literary, The Little Screen (Television)
Arthur Gardner Rankin, Jr. (July 19, 1924 – January 30, 2014) was an American director, producer and writer, who mostly worked in animation. A part of Rankin/Bass Productions with his partner Jules Bass, he created stop-motion animation features such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the 1977 cartoon animation of The Hobbit. He is credited on over 1,000 television programs.
Posted in Because I Can, The Little Screen (Television)
Alfred Hawthorn Hill, better known as Benny Hill, was a prolific English comic, actor & singer, best known for his television program, The Benny Hill Show. Since its debut in 1955 his television show has been sold to over 140 countries worldwide, with viewership in the billions.
Alfred Hawthorn Hill (January 21, 1924 – April 20, 1992)
Posted in Because I Can, Humor, The Little Screen (Television)
Alan Alexander Milne, also known as A. A. Milne, was a British author, best known for his books about the teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and for various children’s poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.
Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 – January 31, 1956)
Posted in Because I Can, Literary, The Little Screen (Television)
