Dropping Like Flies

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Betty Friedan, the cigar-chomping patriarch of "The Munsters" whose work as a basketball scout, restaurateur and political candidate never eclipsed her role as Grandpa from the television sitcom, died died Saturday, after years of failing health. Her manifesto "The Feminine Mystique" became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement. She was 85.
 
 Friedan died at her home of congestive heart failure, according to a cousin, Emily Bazelon. "To say that we will miss her generous, cantankerous, engaging spirit is a profound understatement," Bazelon said.  
 
 Friedan's assertion in her 1963 best seller that having a husband and babies was not everything and that women should aspire to separate identities as individuals, was highly unusual, if not revolutionary, just after the baby and suburban booms of the Eisenhower era. Sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, Friedan became a pop culture icon playing the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne's ever-bumbling Herman Munster on the 1964-66 television show. She was also one of the stars of another classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on "Car 54, Where Are You?" The feminine mystique, she said, was a phony bill of goods society sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name" and seeking a solution in tranquilizers and psychoanalysis.  
 
 But Friedan's life off the small screen ranged far beyond her acting antics. A former ballplayer at Thomas Jefferson High School, she achieved notoriety as a basketball talent scout familiar to coaching greats like Jerry Tarkanian and Red Auerbach. "A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, `Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children," Friedan said.  
 
 Her book, about a family of clueless creatures plunked down in middle America, was a success and ran through 1966.  
 
 "That book changed women's lives," Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, which Friedan co-founded, said Saturday. "It opened women's minds to the idea that there actually might be something more. And for the women who secretly harbored such unpopular thoughts, it told them that there were other women out there like them who thought there might be something more to life."
 
 Unlike some television stars, Friedan never complained about getting typecast and made appearances in character for decades.  
 
 "Why would I mind?" she asked in a 1997 interview. "It pays my mortgage."  
 
 In the racial, political and sexual conflicts of the 1960s and '70s, Friedan's was one of the most commanding voices and recognizable presences in the women's movement. Just two years short of her 80th birthday, a ponytailed Friedan ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki, while going to court in a losing battle to have her name appear on the ballot as "Grandpa Friedan."
 
 As the first president of NOW in 1966, she staked out positions that seemed extreme at the time on such issues as abortion, sex-neutral help-wanted ads, equal pay, promotion opportunities and maternity leave. She also reprised her role of Schnauzer in the movie remake of "Car 54," and appeared as a guest star on television shows such as "Taxi," "Green Acres" and "Lost in Space."  
 
 But at the same time, Friedan insisted that the women's movement had to remain in the American mainstream, that men had to be accepted as allies and that the family should not be rejected. "Don't get into the bra-burning, anti-man, politics-of-orgasm school," Friedan told a college audience in 1970. It forever locked Friedan in as the memorably twisted character; decades later, strangers would greet her on the street with shouts of "Grandpa!"  
 
 She lived in New York City and Washington, D.C., and had a summer house in Sag Harbor, N.Y.  
 
 She is survived by her wife, Karen Ingenthron-Lewis, three sons and four grandchildren.  
 
 She said the funeral will be Monday at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York.

[ggw]

February 6, 2006
 Al Lewis, the Cantankerous Grandpa of 'The Munsters', Is Dead at 95
 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
 Al Lewis, the cigar-chomping patriarch of "The Munsters" whose work as a basketball scout, restaurateur and political candidate never eclipsed his role as Grandpa from the television sitcom, died on Friday after several years of failing health. He was 95 and lived on Roosevelt Island.
 
 Bernard White, program director at WBAI-FM in New York City, where the actor was the longtime host of a weekly radio program, announced the death during the Saturday slot in which Mr. Lewis usually appeared.
 
 Sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, Mr. Lewis played the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne's ever-bumbling Herman Munster on the 1960's series. He was also one of the stars of another classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on "Car 54, Where Are You?"
 
 But Mr. Lewis also led many other lives off the small screen.
 
 A ballplayer in high school, he achieved some fame as a basketball talent scout.
 
 Later in life he operated a successful Greenwich Village restaurant, where he was a regular presence, chatting with customers, posing for pictures and signing autographs.
 
 In 1998, just two years short of his 90th birthday, Mr. Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against Gov. George E. Pataki.
 
 Mr. Lewis campaigned against the death penalty and called for reforming drug laws, while fighting an ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to have his name appear on the ballot as "Grandpa Al Lewis." Though he did not defeat Mr. Pataki, he did collect more than 52,000 votes.
 
  <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/02/05/nyregion/lewis.thumb_450.jpg" alt=" - " />
 
 Mr. Lewis was born Alexander Meister upstate in Wolcott, N.Y., before his family moved to Brooklyn, where as a 6-foot-1 teenager he began a lifelong love affair with basketball.
 
 He later became a vaudeville and circus performer, but his career took off with television.
 
 As Officer Leo Schnauzer, Mr. Lewis played opposite Mr. Gwynne's Officer Francis Muldoon in "Car 54, Where Are You?" â?? a comedy about a Bronx police precinct that was broadcast from 1961 to 1963.
 
 One year later, the two appeared together in "The Munsters," taking up residence together at the fictional 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
 
 The series, about a family of clueless creatures plunked down in Middle America, was a success and ran through 1966.
 
 It forever locked Mr. Lewis in as the memorably twisted character; decades later, strangers would greet him on the street with shouts of "Grandpa!"
 
 Mr. Lewis never complained about getting typecast, and made appearances in character for decades. "Why would I mind?" he asked in a 1997 interview. "It pays my mortgage."
 
 Mr. Lewis rarely slowed down, opening his restaurant and serving as host of his WBAI radio program. In the 90's, he was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern radio show, once sending Mr. Stern diving for the delay button by leading an undeniably obscene chant against the Federal Communications Commission.
 
 He also popped up in a number of movies, including "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and "Married to the Mob."
 
 He enjoyed a reprise of his role of Officer Schnauzer in the movie remake of "Car 54," and was a guest star on shows like "Taxi," "Green Acres" and "Lost in Space."
 
 In 2003, Mr. Lewis was hospitalized for an angioplasty. Complications during surgery led to an emergency bypass and the amputation of his right leg below the knee and all the toes on his left foot. He spent the next month in a coma.
 
 But a year later, he was back offering his recollections of a seminal punk band on a DVD called "Ramones Raw."
 
 Mr. Lewis is survived by his wife, Karen Ingenthron-Lewis, three sons and four grandchildren.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

Other reports listed him as 82 years old, which would mean he was 40 when he started playing Grandpa.
 
 

Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
 [QB] February 6, 2006
 Al Lewis, the Cantankerous Grandpa of 'The Munsters', Is Dead at 95
 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
  February 6, 2006
 Al Lewis Dead at 95  

<img src="http://www.forumspile.com/Old-Newspaper.jpg" alt=" - " />

[RonniStar]

Gene Mcfadden, 1949-2006:
 
 

Gene McFadden was born in Philadelphia in 1949 and formed his first band, the Epsilons, with his schoolfriend John Whitehead. Fellow members included Arthur Conley, for whose solo hit, Sweet Soul Music, McFadden and Whitehead were to provide the backing vocals.
 
 In 1966 the Epsilons were discovered by Otis Redding, who became their manager, signing them to the Stax label in Memphis and using them as his backing singers.
 
 But the following year they lost their patron when Redding was killed in a plane crash. Without his considerable influence, the band began to lose direction and returned to Philadelphia, although they later released a single, The Echo (1969), which was a minor hit. Stax, however, was in financial difficulty and showing little interest in Redding's former protégés, so McFadden and Whitehead formed a new group, Talk of the Town, and joined Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia-based record label, Philadelphia International Records (PIR).
 
 While Talk of the Town had little success in their own right, Huff and Gamble spotted McFadden and Whitehead's song-writing talents and asked them to write for other recording artists. Whitehead came up with the idea for Backstabbers after discovering that a friend was trying to steal his wife: They're smiling in your face/All the time they want to take your place.
 
 McFadden added the Otis Redding-style soul tune, and the song, which was recorded in 1972 by the O'Jays, gave PIR its first major hit.
 
 During the course of the next six years McFadden and Whitehead wrote 22 hits for PIR, most of which exemplified the smoother, upbeat "Philly soul" sound. The best known of these were For the Love of Money, another hit for the O'Jays, Wake Up Everybody and Where Are All My Friends, for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and I'll Always Love My Mama, for the Intruders.
 
 During the mid-1970s, as Talk of the Town, they released Super Groover (All Night Mover), Bumpin' Boogie and I Apologise, none of which made a dent in the charts. Their luck changed in 1978 when, as McFadden and Whitehead, they recorded Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now, which they had originally written for the O'Jays.
 
 Joyful, funky and a celebration of all that was good about disco, the song was a huge international hit and reached No 13 and No 5 in the American and British pop charts respectively.
 
 Its rousing and inspirational message (Don't you let nothing, nothing/ Stand in your way) was perfect for the melting pot that was the disco dancefloor, and it was later covered and sampled by numerous other artists, translated into Spanish and Japanese and recorded in both the reggae and gospel style.
 
 It was even adopted by Philadelphia's baseball and American football teams and used in an advertisement for McDonald's hamburgers.
 
 McFadden and Whitehead followed it up with two singles, I Heard It in a Love Song, and I've Been Pushed Aside, and two albums, but with little success.
 
 Their songwriting and producing proved more lucrative and they went on to work with the Jacksons, James Brown, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Gloria Gaynor and Stevie Wonder.
 
 By the mid-1980s, however, McFadden and Whitehead began to forge separate career paths, although they reunited to perform their old hits on the disco nostalgia circuit.
 
 In 2004 John Whitehead was shot and killed by an unknown assailant while fixing his car outside his home in Philadelphia. McFadden, who was suffering from cancer and died last Friday, was devastated by the murder.
 
 He is survived by Barbara, his wife of 38 years, their two daughters and two sons.

<img src="http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/team_dupek/1cd124e9.jpg" alt=" - " />  Bring Out Yer Dead!
 
  Not dead yet...
 
 &
 
  I'm getting better...

[sonickteam2]

Actor Franklin Cover, neighbor to 'The Jeffersons,' dies at 77
 
 Actor Franklin Cover, neighbor to 'The Jeffersons,' dies at 77
 
 
 LOS ANGELES (AP) â?? Franklin Cover, who became a familiar face as George and Louise Jefferson's white neighbor in the long-running TV sitcom The Jeffersons, has died, his publicist said Thursday. He was 77.
 
 Cover died of pneumonia Sunday at the Lillian Booth Actor's Fund of America home in Englewood, N.J., said publicist Dale Olson. He had been living at the home since December 2005 while recuperating from a heart condition.
 
 In his nearly six decades in show business, Cover made numerous appearances on television shows, including The Jackie Gleason Show,All in the Family,Who's the Boss, Will & Grace,Living Single,Mad About You and ER.
 
 He began his career on the stage, appearing in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry IV, and later in numerous Broadway productions, including Any Wednesday,Wild Honey and Born Yesterday.
 
 But Cover was best known for his role as Tom Willis, who was in an interracial marriage with a black woman, in The Jeffersons.
 
 He and his wife lived in the same "deluxe apartment building" that Sherman Hemsley moved his family to after making money in the dry-cleaning business. There, Cover often played a comic foil to Hemsley's blustering, opinionated black businessman. The show ran from 1975 to 1985.
 
 Cover also appeared in several films, including The Great Gatsby,The Stepford Wives and Wall Street.
 
 He is survived by his widow, Mary, a son and a daughter.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

His tv wife, Helen Willis, was played by Roxie Roker. In real life, she was Lenny Kravitz' mom, and weatherman Al Roker's cousin.
 
 

Originally posted by Thom Foolerie:
  Actor Franklin Cover, neighbor to 'The Jeffersons,' dies at 77
 
 Actor Franklin Cover, neighbor to 'The Jeffersons,' dies at 77
 
 
 LOS ANGELES (AP) â?? Franklin Cover, who became a familiar face as George and Louise Jefferson's white neighbor in the long-running TV sitcom The Jeffersons, has died, his publicist said Thursday. He was 77.
 
 Cover died of pneumonia Sunday at the Lillian Booth Actor's Fund of America home in Englewood, N.J., said publicist Dale Olson. He had been living at the home since December 2005 while recuperating from a heart condition.
 
 In his nearly six decades in show business, Cover made numerous appearances on television shows, including The Jackie Gleason Show,All in the Family,Who's the Boss, Will & Grace,Living Single,Mad About You and ER.
 
 He began his career on the stage, appearing in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry IV, and later in numerous Broadway productions, including Any Wednesday,Wild Honey and Born Yesterday.
 
 But Cover was best known for his role as Tom Willis, who was in an interracial marriage with a black woman, in The Jeffersons.
 
 He and his wife lived in the same "deluxe apartment building" that Sherman Hemsley moved his family to after making money in the dry-cleaning business. There, Cover often played a comic foil to Hemsley's blustering, opinionated black businessman. The show ran from 1975 to 1985.
 
 Cover also appeared in several films, including The Great Gatsby,The Stepford Wives and Wall Street.
 
 He is survived by his widow, Mary, a son and a daughter.

[definitivedoodle]

R.I.P
 
 JDilla.
 
  <img src="http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c53/bboydesigner/dilla.gif" alt=" - " />

[Arlette]

"Jaws" author Peter Benchley.  Only 65.  For some reason, I would have thought him much older.  After I saw Jaws as a kid I couldn't go near the beach or even a lake.  I still have an irrational fear of the water and unknown "things" that swim down there.  
 
 NEW YORK (AP) -- Peter Benchley, whose novel "Jaws" terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, has died at age 65, his widow said Sunday.
 
 Wendy Benchley, married to the author for 41 years, said he died Saturday night at their home in Princeton, New Jersey.
 
 The cause of death, she said, was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive and a fatal scarring of the lungs.
 
 Thanks to Benchley's 1974 novel, and Steven Spielberg's blockbuster movie of the same name a year later, the simple act of ocean swimming became synonymous with fatal horror, of still water followed by ominous, pumping music, then teeth and blood and panic.
 
 "Spielberg certainly made the most superb movie; Peter was very pleased," Wendy Benchley told The Associated Press.
 
 "But Peter kept telling people the book was fiction, it was a novel, and that he no more took responsibility for the fear of sharks than ["Godfather" author] Mario Puzo took responsibility for the Mafia."
 
 Besides his wife, Peter Benchley is survived by three children and five grandchildren.
 
 A small family service will take place next week in Princeton, Wendy Benchley said.

[sacriforce]

Harold Hunter
 RIP
  <img src="http://img.timeinc.net/skate/content/images/05/harold1m.jpg" alt=" - " />

Lead singer of The Cowsills dies at 58

[SPARX]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060225/ap_on_en_tv/obit_knotts                                                                                            LOS ANGELES -     Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The     Andy Griffith Show," has died. He was 81.
 
 
 Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs "The Andy Griffith Show," and another Knotts hit, "Three's Company."
 
 Unspecified health problems had forced him to cancel an appearance in his native Morgantown in August 2005.
 
 The West Virginia-born actor's half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmies.
 
 The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are "I Love Lucy" and "Seinfeld." The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.
 
 As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.
 
 Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way.
 
 His favorite episodes, he said, were "The Pickle Story," where Aunt Bea makes pickles no one can eat, and "Barney and the Choir," where no one can stop him from singing.
 
 "I can't sing. It makes me sad that I can't sing or dance well enough to be in a musical, but I'm just not talented in that way," he lamented. "It's one of my weaknesses."
 
 Knotts appeared on six other television shows. In 1979, Knotts replaced Norman Fell on "Three's Company," playing the would-be swinger landlord to John Ritter,     Suzanne Somers and     Joyce DeWitt.
 
 Early in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of "The Steve Allen Show," the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. He was one of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included     Louis Nye,     Tom Poston and Bill "Jose Jimenez" Dana.
 
 Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl â?? a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold.
 
 In the part-animated 1964 film "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," Knotts played a meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy.
 
 When it was announced in 1998 that     Jim Carrey would star in a "Limpet" remake, Knotts responded: "I'm just flattered that someone of Carrey's caliber is remaking something I did. Now, if someone else did Barney Fife, THAT would be different."
 
 In the 1967 film "The Reluctant Astronaut," co-starring     Leslie Nielsen, Knotts' father enrolls his wimpy son â?? operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride â?? in     NASA's space program. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane.
 
 In the 1969 film "The Love God?," he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped into becoming publisher of a naughty men's magazine and then becomes a national sex symbol. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city and marries the sweet girl next door.
 
 He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to     Jonathan Winters to liven up the 1963 megacomedy "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Other films include "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966); "The Shakiest Gun in the West," (1968); and a few Disney films such as "The Apple Dumpling Gang," (1974); "Gus," (1976); and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo," (1977).
 
 In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie "Pleasantville," playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past.
 
 Knotts began his show biz career even before he graduated from high school, performing as a ventriloquist at local clubs and churches. He majored in speech at West Virginia University, then took off for the big city.
 
 "I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride," he recalled in a visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street for him in 1998.
 
 Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called "Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders," playing a wisecracking, know-it-all handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on "The Steve Allen Show."
 
 He married Kay Metz in 1948, the year he graduated from college. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1969. Knotts later married, then divorced Lara Lee Szuchna.
 
 In recent years, he said he had no plans to retire, traveling with theater productions and appearing in print and TV ads for Kodiak pressure treated wood.
 
 The world laughed at Knotts, but it also laughed with him.
 
 He treasured his comedic roles and could point to only one role that wasn't funny, a brief stint on the daytime drama "Search for Tomorrow."
 
 "That's the only serious thing I've done. I don't miss that," Knotts said.

[Arlette]

I meant to post this earlier this week.  The gold standard in sports broadcasting, Curt Gowdy, passed away this week.  For any of us old folks who were in any way interested in sports, he was the man.  And anyone who grew up in New England/Boston and was a BoSox fan, he was the real deal.
 
 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11478921/
 
 Keith Olbermann's tribute:
 
 Childhood unofficially ended for several generations of sports fans Yesterday.  Curt Gowdy died.  It is impossible to comprehend his ubiquitousness in the sports world from the 1960's to the late 1970's.  A peck of controversial comments by sports casters and sports heroes alike, consider the impossibility of anyone producing a resume that looked like this.
 
 Curt Gowdy announced 13 World Series and nine Super Bowls, eight Olympics, 14 Rose Bowls, 24 college basketball championships and 16 baseball all-star games.  Nearly all of that resume here at NBC.  Plus, there were two years announcing the games of the New York Yankees and 10 of the Boston Red Sox.  Never overselling, rarely yelling, Curt Gowdy sounded, in the words of essayist John Updike, like everybody's brother-in-law.
 
 And there was a sincerity to the man.  NBC sportscaster Al Michaels told me on the radio on Monday that when he was a student at Arizona State he asked Gowdy for career advice and Gowdy responded by listening to tapes of Michaels' college broadcasts.  Curt Gowdy suffering for several years from leukemia, died in Florida on Monday.  He was 86 years old.

[RonniStar]

Darren McGavin, RIP