RIP Elizabeth Hardwick

I am awake at an ungodly hour — no coffee, just a crazy work ethic — to beat a deadline, which is roughly around dawn. Actually last night, but I told the editor I wasn’t going to sleep until this was done. Two computers decided to expire on me today (the third computer, on which I’m typing these words, remains robust, which I am thankful for, because this is somebody else’s). This has never happened to me before. In fact, I haven’t seen it happen to anybody. And I once worked at a computer magazine. Do you know anybody who saw all of their computers putz out on them in one day? I don’t. I mean, these are, for the most part, durable little machines.

I’ve told people not to give me their computers, because I am apparently the Grim Reaper of Technology. Touch me and machine will die. (As to the machines’s collective resuscitation, the problems were troubleshooted after pleas and profanity, both directed to the machines. It was bad DDR2 and a bad drive, respectively. Alas, deadlines being what they are, I can do nothing but write. I remain convinced that I’ll still be writing twelve hours from now.)

But seeing as how I’m working on a literary essay right now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t observe the passing of Ms. Elizabeth Hardwick, who I sadly never got the chance to meet.

RIP Kevin Dubrow

Yes, it’s hair band day here at Return of the Reluctant. But that’s only because the dubious winds of news have breezed along a strange tendentious trajectory after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Quiet Riot singer Kevin Dubrow has been found dead in Vegas — a place where his services were, I hope, appreciated. Nevertheless, “Cum On Feel the Noize,” despite its crude mangling of monosyllabic words, did blast many a time on my speakers over the years. (And in Quiet Riot’s defense, it was Slade who first performed the song and first butchered the English language.) As did “Metal Health” — again, hardly the most graceful bon mot. But Quiet Riot was the first heavy metal group to have a #1 album on the Billboard charts, until it was ignobly unseated by the likes of Lionel Richie. This demonstrates that there is indeed no justice in the universe, whatever your positions on either Quiet Riot or Lionel Ritchie.

RIP Verity Lambert

“Just let me get this right. A thing that looks like a police box, stuck in a junkyard, can move anywhere in time and space?”

And Part 2 and Part 3. This version, incidentally, is the original pilot that was refilmed later because the Doctor was perceived as too unlikable. He became slightly less unlikable, but still very much an antihero in the final product. And it was this new version which aired forty-four years ago on this very day.

The person who produced this was Verity Lambert, who passed away this afternoon. One of the few women television producers working in the 1960s, Lambert envisioned an exciting program for children mixing a space adventure with an educational program. She was only 28 at the time. What she didn’t count upon was the Daleks becoming a major success in the second serial. The results go on to this very day. Not counting Spanish or Indian television or American soap operas, Doctor Who is the longest-running television serial that is still active today.

But it took Verity Lambert, who had a very forward-thinking and unusual vision of how to entertain, to make this happen. And this was only one of her many credits.

RIP Lois Maxwell

maxwell.jpgTo my great surprise, there are scant YouTube links to Lois Maxwell’s fourteen Bond film appearances as Miss Moneypenny. I’m sure this will be rectified in the days to come. But really, the true Bond film fan should accept no substitute. Caroline Bliss (who copped to a decidedly non-Moneypenny Barry Manilow collection!), Samantha Bond, Barbara Bouchet, and (if you count Never Say Never Again) Pamela Salem couldn’t hold a candle to the intelligence and warmth of Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny. The other Moneypennies were all bimbos by comparison. The character of Miss Moneypenny was undeniably a sexist archetype, whose flirtations were often stifled by the stern warnings of M. But somehow Maxwell brought a quiet dignity to the role, even when Bond treated her like dirt and Maxwell’s dialogue often involved pining for marriage and other now dated and desperate pronouncements. Had it been any other actress besides Maxwell, I don’t believe I would have developed a teenage crush on Miss Moneypenny, particularly the Moneypenny of the Sean Connery films. I watched all the Bond films multiple times and could never entirely understand why Bond rejected her for the floozies. But you have to understand something. I was a naive kid under the influence of Victorian literature and felt that Bond had abdicated on Moneypenny’s polite overtures to Bond. Oh, youthful naivete!

Leona Helmsley, Trendsetter in Avarice, Dies

The Toronto Star: “In 1987, a series of adverse articles in The New York Post about the Helmsleys, set off by one of their disgruntled employees, led to a broad investigation. The following year, Harry and Leona Helmsley were indicted by federal and state authorities on charges that they had evaded more than $4 million in income taxes by fraudulently claiming as business expenses luxuries they purchased for their 28-room Jacobean mansion on 10.5 hectares in Greenwich, Conn., that they bought in 1983.”

RIP Tony Wilson

BBC: “Anthony Wilson, the music mogul behind some of Manchester’s most successful bands, has died of cancer. The Salford-born entrepreneur, who founded Factory records, the label behind New Order and the Happy Mondays, was diagnosed last year.”

RIP Tom Snyder

I have also learned from a reader that Tom Snyder died on Sunday — a day after I wrote at length about him. This too is a major loss and, even though I know I had nothing to do with it, I’m trying to shake off the horrible conviction that I might have killed the man in writing about him. Horrible.

[UPDATE: It appears that Manhattan Ed suffers the same problem I do. The minute he talks about an older artist, the artist dies. If there are other Eds out there who are unintentionally killing artists, please make yourself known. We need to do something about this regrettable problem.]

RIP Lloyd Alexander

lloydalexander01.jpgI’m interrupting my hiatus to report some terrible news. I’ve received a report (although it’s noted by Wikipedia) that children’s book author Lloyd Alexander has passed on. Alexander wrote some amazing fantasy books that I remember reading as a kid, The Book of Three and The Black Cauldron. His wit and imagination will be truly missed.

More info on Alexander.

The official website.

Daniel Laloggia’s discovery of The Book of Three.

RIP Gordon Scott

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BBC: “Speaking to The Baltimore Sun, Danton Burroughs, grandson of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice, said: ‘He was an absolutely wonderful Tarzan, who played the character as an intelligent and nice man who carried himself well, much as my grandfather had originally written it.'”

RIP Don Ho

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Washington Post: “Legendary crooner Don Ho, who entertained tourists for decades wearing raspberry-tinted sunglasses and singing the catchy signature tune “Tiny Bubbles,” has died. He was 76.”

I never got to see him, but my sister did. She reported to me that Ho had the decency to confess to his audience that he was sick of “Tiny Bubbles,” but he performed it any way. As kitschy professionals go, Don Ho was sui generis.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

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RESOURCES:

INTERVIEWS:

WRITINGS:

RECEPTIONS:

RIP Freddie Francis

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Guardian: “The American film critic Pauline Kael wrote: ‘I don’t know where this cinematographer Freddie Francis sprang from. You may recall that in the last year just about every time a British movie is something to look at, it turns out to be his.'”

Variety: “Although he received his greatest acclaim as a lenser, with numerous nominations and prizes for his work on films such as ‘The Straight Story,’ ‘The Elephant Man,’ ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ and ‘Cape Fear,’ he also had a successful career as a director of horror movies in the 1960s and ’70s for cult British studios Hammer and Amicus.”

Tim Lucas: “Francis was the absolute master of one of cinema’s most beautiful and seldom used palettes: black-and-white CinemaScope. He loved the scope ratio and delighted in experimenting with it, in the form of split-diopter shots (that would bring foregrounds and backgrounds in identical focus to jarring effect) and special filters that enabled him to manipulate the gray scale of black-and-white.”

(via Greencine Daily)

RIP Lester Borchardt

Pioneer Press: “A physicist and lifelong tinkerer, Borchardt revolutionized the breakfast cereal industry. He had a big hand in developing the technologies that allow cereal companies — in his case, General Mills — to turn grain into cereals such as Cheerios and Kix, and he also played a key role in coming up with the process used to fortify milk with vitamin D.”