Aloha Airlines Flight 243

On February 11, 1990 a movie was released in the USA called ‘Miracle Landing’. The film tells the story of Paradise Airlines Flight 243 flying from Honolulu to Hilo, which was involved in a terrifying explosive decompression when a large section of the forward roof blows off. After the pilots battle to keep the stricken jet in the air, the airliner eventually lands and the terrified passengers are safely evacuated. It is then discovered that one of the flight attendants was missing, after being sucked out of the aircraft during the explosion.

But ‘Miracle Landing’ was more than just a dramatic made-for-television movie. The on-screen portrayal of Paradise Airlines Flight 243 was taken from the real life events aboard Aloha Airlines Flight 243 on April 28, 1988.
It was the usual sunny Hawaiian day at Hilo International Airport (ITO), where Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-297 (N73711) ‘Queen Liliuokalani’, the 152nd Boeing 737 airframe to be built, was being readied for another island hop to Honolulu International Airport (HNL).

Aloha Airlines was formed in 1946 and plied the inter-island routes of the Hawaiian archipelago until its demise in 2008. The Hilo to Honolulu island hop was a popular flight and many of the passengers were regular travellers who knew the crew well. Looking after the 89 passengers that day was veteran Purser Clarabelle (CB) Lansing. Lansing had been flying for 37 years, becoming one of Aloha’s first flight attendants when she joined the airline after leaving high-school. CB was very popular, both with passengers and colleagues alike and had even appeared in adverts for the airline. “She was very personable. She reminds you of the top-of-the-line flight attendants you see on the major carriers” said Dale Randles a Honolulu resident who flew Aloha to Maui once a week. “She was very attractive, a beautiful woman. You could ask her anything and she’d answer your questions”. 

 Aloha Airlines staff pose with a retro-liveried 737 on the airlines 60th anniversary in 2006.


Helping Lansing in the cabin was Jane Sato-Tomita and Michelle Honda, who had been working for Aloha for 14 years. In the flight deck Captain Robert Schornsteiner was assisted by First Officer Madeline “Mimi” Tompkins and the pair were joined on the jump-seat by an FAA Air Traffic Controller. 

 

Passengers slowly began boarding and settled themselves in for the short flight. As one lady entered the jet through the forward door she noticed, what looked like, a large crack in the fuselage. Not wanting to cause a fuss she said nothing and took her seat.  

At 13:25 Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time (HST), flight 243 took off from Hilo and soon reached its cruising altitude of 24,000 feet. In the cabin the flight attendants quickly got to work carrying out the inflight service. Michelle Honda had finished her duties and decided to grab some lunch. Lansing was known by her crew to be a pretty ‘by-the-book-person’ so rather than sitting with her colleagues in the galley, Honda returned to her crew station. “Because she (Lansing) adhered to the rules and regulations, I think it saved my life. We weren’t congregating. I was in my position. Jane was in hers.” Honda later explained.
From her seat, Honda spotted Lansing in a galley mirror, still out in the cabin collecting glasses. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh God’, and took out my little purple plastic bag. I didn’t look up. The guilt was there because I had been sitting down and I went down the aisle and turned around to face the aft so I wouldn’t have to meet her eyes”. 
And then, at around 13:48 HST it happened. The blast hit Honda on the left shoulder and pushed her to the ground. There were screams and then silence. 

The explosive decompression had torn off a large section of the roof, consisting of the entire top half of the aircraft skin extending from just behind the cockpit to the fore-wing area, a length of about 18.5 feet (5.6 m).
First Officer Tompkins was flying the aircraft when she suddenly heard a loud ‘whooshing’ sound and noticed pieces of grey insulation floating above the cabin. Captain Schornstheimer felt the aircraft roll to the left and right and the controls went loose. As he turned round to see what had happened he could see “blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been”.
As Honda lay on the floor her training told her that the aircraft was experiencing a rapid decompression. “There was a smoke-like vapour in all the debris flying around” Honda later explained. “Paper, fiberglass, asbestos. It was kind of white. That’s why I say blizzard, although it wasn’t cold.” 

Pictures taken of the inside of the cabin of N73711 after the accident show the extensive damage.

Terrified she grabbed hold of the metal bars under the passenger seats and held on for dear life. “My first concern was keeping my breathing shallow because I couldn’t get to an oxygen mask” she said. “You can pass out. I didn’t want to get to that point.” 

She realised that the aircraft was still flying and she had a job to do. “I remember being on the floor” she later told The Washington Post. “Crawling up the aisle rung by rung, telling people to put on life-vests. I remember looking up at people on my back and calling up and helping them take out the vests. One mother asked me to help her son. He was across the aisle in a B seat. He was scared, but he didn’t say anything. You could see it in his face. His eyes were searching. I think everybody had that look.”
Honda could barely move against the wind. “The passengers were reaching out and holding me as I went by and grabbed their arms. The closer you came to the hole, the more intense the wind was. I didn’t know if I would have stayed in the aircraft if I let go, and I wasn’t about to find out”. 

A bloodied seat highlighting the terrible injures some of the passengers sustained.

Her colleague Jane Sato-Tomita was knocked unconscious and lay bleeding in the aisle at the most exposed part of the jet. “The first time I saw her I thought she was dead. She was just on the borderline of the hole. Her head was split open in the back and she was under debris” Honda said. “My central thought was to get Jane to the back of the aircraft. I tried to move her and drag her back, but I couldn’t get her. I didn’t realise she was unconscious”. Instead she asked passengers seated around her to try and hold her down. 
The cabin itself had suffered extensive damage. Some of the oxygen masks had dropped but were not working. Two large ceiling panels had also come loose, landing on the heads of passengers which Honda managed to heave into the empty rows at the back off the plane.

Under the intense strain the floor had buckled, obscuring the view of the cockpit. Indeed one passenger even asked if it was still there. Until that moment, Honda had been meticulously working through her emergency checklist, she hadn’t even thought about the pilots and now the terrifying prospect that they had been ejected in the explosion dawned on her. 
“I guess that it is so ingrained that we takeoff and we land and our cockpit is there that I didn’t even think ‘Are they flying this?’ I assumed they were there as we were making turns” she said. Crawling to the rear, Honda tried to call the pilots but the inter phone cables has been severed in the explosion. She went back in to the aisle and for reasons she does not understand asked a man if he knew how to fly. 
“When they (passengers) had time to start asking questions, I felt there was a potential for hysteria” Honda said. “The man in the F seat, he was starting to look apprehensive after my not being able to talk to the cockpit.”
Then, in the distance the island of Maui loomed dead ahead. Honda explained “I first thought we were going to go straight into the head of Maui. This is when I saw the plane veering towards the right and I knew we were going to make a landing on Maui.”
In the flight deck Schornstheimer and Tompkins battled with the controls of the badly damaged jet and as they precariously descended towards Kahalui Airport (OGG), the number one engine failed due to the debris ingested following the decompression. 

Debris can clearly be seen around the #2 engine.

The blast had been so powerful that it had blown Honda’s shoes off. She later found them in the aisle, but her stockings were in shreds and her skirt and blouse were covered in blood. She would only open her eyes to tiny slits for fear of flying debris, which also pushed in to her throat every time she yelled a command. When she began to yell ‘Heads down!’ No sound came out. “I thought to myself ‘Voice commands? Yeah, right”. 
As the 737 descended lower, Honda crawled back up the aisle and lay next to the unconscious Sato-Tomita, “I grabbed her belt and her waist and held on to the metal retainer bars”.
The jet kissed the runway at 13:58 HST, just over ten minutes after the emergency had began. When they eventually came to a stop, Honda began yelling “We made it! We made it!”. An off-duty crew member called Amy Jones-Brown struggled free from her seat and began to help Honda with the evacuation. 

The scene on the ground was horrifying. Passengers seated near the hole were covered in blood after being battered and cut by flying debris. Honda recalled her anguish about an 84-year-old woman who sat so quietly in the front of the coach section when the flight had began and who was now fighting for her life with serious head injuries. 
Jane Sato-Tomita was seriously injured. Bleeding and disoriented she was evacuated off the 737 with the other passengers. Only now, once everyone had escaped did the horrifying realisation dawn on them that Lansing was gone. “Nobody saw her leave” Honda later emotionally told the press. 

A terrifying image showing the damaged caused by the decompression, as the emergency evacuation commenced. First Office Tompkins can be seen at door 1L

A couple seated in the first class section later studied a photo of Lansing and said she was the one serving them a drink when the roof of the plane blew off. Passenger William Flanigan explained “She (Lansing) was just handing my wife a drink. She had stopped and told us this was the last call. We were going to be descending. And then whoosh! She was gone. Their hands just touched when it happened.”
The subsequent investigation revealed that the 19 year old Boeing 737 had accumulated 35,496 flight hours prior to the accident, those hours included over 89,680 flight cycles (takeoffs and landings), owing to its use on short flights. This amounted to more than twice the number of cycles it was designed for. Fatigue cracking around the rivets was also discovered. The aircraft was basically an accident waiting to happen.

But another, more harrowing hypothesis as to the planes catastrophic decompression, was put forward by pressure vessel engineer Matt Austin. He claimed that the aircrafts fuselage may have failed initially as intended, opening a ten-inch square vent. As the pressurised air in the cabin escaped at over 700 mph, CB Lansing became wedged in this hole instead of being thrown clear. This then created a seal which temporarily blocked the air from escaping; which in turn caused a surge of extreme air pressure back in to the plane – known as a fluid hammer or water hammer effect – causing further damage to the already fragile fuselage, before ripping it open like a tin can.

A bloodied imprint was found on the side of the fuselage, adding more weight to Matt Austin’s ‘fluid-hammer’ effect. 

Authorities searched for Lansing’s body for three days but it was never found. “She was a wonderful employee, a great lady. Our passengers loved her” Stephanie Ackerman, a spokeswoman for Aloha later said.  

Clarabelle ‘CB’ Lansing

 

Michelle Honda later described how, like many of us, one of her greatest fears was that she would panic in an emergency and forget her drills and procedures. However she remained so calm that she was even able to play down the severity of the incident to her 11-year old daughter. “I told her ‘Mommy’s got a mechanical and I’m not going to be home for a while.”
Michelle Honda, Jane Sato-Tomita and Amy Jones-Brown also went on to praise their passengers “A lot of attention has been focused on our efforts and the valiant efforts of the pilots, but we would also like to thank the passengers who helped keep us on the aircraft.”
The recollections after the accident became more painful for Honda. Speaking to The Washington Post she described the mental image of the man with the strip of fuselage stapled to his face, causing tears to well in her eyes. “He said could you take this off? I was trying to pull it away. But I realised the staples had stapled in to the side of his face and his face was being pulled by the staples. I told him I couldn’t help him. At that point, I figured from my first aid training to leave that kind of stuff in”.

Rep. Patricia Saiki, R-Hawaii, is flanked by Aloha Airlines flight attendants Amy Jones- Brown, left, and Michelle Honda during a ceremony on Capitol Hill Wednesday, June 22, 1988. The ceremony was held to pay tribute to C.B. Lasing.

 

Michelle Honda is a true heroine. Despite her own injuries and fears she crawled along the aircraft floor checking on passengers, making sure they were strapped in, wearing life-jackets and comforting the injured. Then on the ground she led a successful evacuation and even visited her passengers at the hospital twice to check on their progress. Her heroic efforts helped ensure that no passenger lost their lives that day. 
She later reacted to her praise with deep humility, declining the label of ‘hero’ and saying she was just ‘doing her job’ and this is why Michelle Honda, Clarabelle ‘CB’ Lansing, Jane Sato-Tomita, Amy Jones Brown, Captain Robert Schornsteiner and First Officer Madeline “Mimi” Tompkins join our ‘Angels Of The Sky’.

Gov. John Waihee poses with the crew of Aloha Airlines’ ill-fated flight 243 when they were presented with letters of commendation. From left to right – Captain Robert Schornsteiner, First Officer Madeline “Mimi” Tompkins, Jane Sato-Tomita, Gov. Waihee, Michelle Honda and Amy Jones-Brown.

Events like this make us remember why we do our job and serve as a reminder to the world that we are Aviation’s ‘First Responders’. We are onboard every flight to ensure safe passage of their journey. When tragedy strikes we are there to save lives. 
© confessionsofatrolleydolly.com by Dan Air
NB The quotes from Michelle Honda used for this article are taken from an interview in The Washington Post May 18, 1988 ‘A Flight Attendant’s Moments In The Maelstrom’

-Confessions Of a Trolley Dolly

Greensboro sit-in

Greensboro sit-in, act of nonviolent protest against a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, that began on February 1, 1960. Its success led to a wider sit-in movement, organized primarily by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), that spread throughout the South.

African American students (left to right: Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, William Smith, and Clarence Henderson) holding a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, February 2, 1960.© UPI/Bettmann/Corbis

The sit-in was organized by Ezell Blair, Jr. (later Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond—all African Americans and all students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. Influenced by the nonviolent protest techniques of Mohandas Gandhi and the Journey of Reconciliation (an antecedent of the Freedom Rides) organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, the four men executed a plan to draw attention to racial segregation in the private sector. Enlisting the aid of Ralph Johns, a local white businessman who was sympathetic to their cause, the students, who came to be dubbed the Greensboro Four, planned their social action in great detail.
On the afternoon of February 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four entered a Woolworth’s general merchandise store that had a dining area. The men bought small items and retained the receipt as proof of purchase, before sitting down at the store’s lunch counter. While blacks were allowed to patronize the dining area, they were relegated to a standing snack bar, as the lunch counter was designated for “whites only.” The Greensboro Four politely requested service at the counter, remaining seated while their orders were refused by the waitstaff. The lunch counter manager contacted the police, but Johns had already alerted the local media. The police arrived, only to declare that they could do nothing because the four men were paying customers of the store and had not taken any provocative actions. The media response, however, was immediate. A photo of the Greensboro Four appeared in local newspapers, and the protest quickly expanded.
The following day the Greensboro Four returned to the Woolworth’s lunch counter, accompanied by some 20 other black university students. The scene played out again February 3–4, with protestors filling virtually all the available seats and spilling out of the store and onto the sidewalk outside. Within weeks, national media coverage of the protest led to sit-ins being staged in cities across the country. Soon dining facilities across the South were being integrated, and by July 1960 the lunch counter at the Greensboro Woolworth’s was serving black patrons. The Greensboro sit-in provided a template for nonviolent resistance and marked an early success for the civil rights movement.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Album Art

Mister Magic (1975)
Grover Washington Jr. 

Photograph of the Evening

Transportation didn't fare much better than waterways. In the 1970s, the New York subway became jokingly referred to as "the muggers express." By 1979, over 250 felonies were committed every week on the transportation system, making it the most dangerous in the world.

-ati

Sesame Street Pinball Number Count

Sesame Street Pinball Number Count 

An Eye for an Eye

Leon Gary Plauché (November 10, 1945 – October 20, 2014)[1] was an American man known for the 1984 vigilante killing of Jeff Doucet, who had kidnapped and sexually assaulted his son, Jody Plauché. The killing occurred on Friday, March 16, 1984, and was captured on camera by a news television crew. Although Plauche shot and killed Doucet, he was given a seven-year suspended sentence with five years' probation and 300 hours of community service for the shooting and received no prison sentence. The case received wide publicity because some people questioned whether Plauche should have been charged with murder or let off. Plauche stated that he was in the right, and that those in a similar position would have done the same thing. 

-Wiki

Qué Pasa, U.S.A?

¿Qué Pasa, USA? (Spanish: What's Happening, USA?) is America's first bilingual situation comedy, and the first sitcom to be produced for PBS. It was produced and taped in front of a live studio audience at PBS member station WPBT in Miami, Florida and aired on PBS member stations nationwide. The program explored the trials and tribulations faced by the Peñas, a Cuban-American family living in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, as they struggled to cope with a new country and a new language. The series is praised as being very true-to-life and accurately, if humorously, portraying the life and culture of Miami's Cuban-American population. Today, the show is cherished by many Miamians as a true, albeit humorous, representation of life and culture in Miami.

The series focused on the identity crisis of the members of the family as they were pulled in one direction by their elders—who wanted to maintain Cuban values and traditions—and pulled in other directions by the pressures of living in a predominantly Anglo-American society. This caused many misadventures for the entire Peña family as they get pulled in all directions in their attempt to preserve their heritage.

wiki-

Greatest Duets

Anne Murray and Glen Campbell - I Say A Little Prayer, By The Time I Get To Phoenix Duet

Anne Murray / Glen Campbell is an album by American singer Glen Campbell and Canadian singer Anne Murray, released in 1971 (see 1971 in music). The album contained both new material, and duet versions of songs each artist had recorded individually (Campbell's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and Murray's "Bring Back the Love"), as well as an early version of "You're Easy to Love", which later became a hit for Hank Snow, the standard "Canadian Sunset", and Brotherhood of Man's 1970 hit "United We Stand".
The first single released from the album was a medley of "By The Time I get to Phoenix" (sung by Campbell) and "I Say a Little Prayer" (sung by Murray). The album peaked at No.12 on the Canadian RPM album chart on 18 March 1972. 

Wiki

Shut Up Little Man

Shut Up Little Man!: How Vitriol Went Viral In 1987 Peter was gay; Raymond was a homophobe. They were also, for some mysterious reason, roommates. Creative putdowns proliferated. Their story is now a documentary in theaters today.

By Jason Feifer 5 minute Read 

Peter and Raymond were middle-aged men with severe drinking problems and a bitter hatred for each other. Peter was gay; Raymond was a homophobe. They were also, for some mysterious reason, roommates. They fought loudly, frequently, and creatively. “I can kill you from a sitting position!” Raymond would yell. “You’re a rotten little liar man. Lady. Pardon me–lady!” Peter would retort.
In 1987, two college grads moved into the apartment next door–a dump of a place with thin walls, the rooms soon filled with Peter and Raymond’s rage. The guys were freaked out. Then they started recording the rows on tape cassettes, figuring they might need them to share with the police. Eventually, though, the fights stopped being scary and started being funny. And so the guys did what anyone today might do with such material: They shared it. 

And so began a viral sensation in the analog age.The tapes (all 14 hours of them) became known as “Shut Up Little Man!” referencing one of Peter’s favorite insults. Friends copied them for friends. A music label put out a CD. Comic books were made. A play was produced. Devo recorded a song.
Today, a documentary by the same name opens in 30 markets nationwide, tracking the phenomenon’s rise and then going a step further: Though both Peter and Raymond are now dead (and only one of them was ever made aware of their strange popularity), director Matthew Bate unearths the story behind these men and their relationship, putting the tapes into a more sorrowful context. 

In the YouTube era, that discovery–that a viral hit is often far more complex and sad than we’re willing to consider–resonates more than ever. We spoke to Bate (who also directs TV commercials) about what this Patient Zero can tell us about the nature of viral, and its role in our culture.

We think of “viral” as a modern sensation, made possible by the Internet. But Shut Up Little Man! was the very model of viral. Do you know of even older examples?

Yeah: Christianity! That went viral. I mean, I’m sure this happened all over the place–they just aren’t well known anymore. I hadn’t heard of Shut Up Little Man! until recently, but there are still fans of it. On Facebook, fans have this ongoing quote game, where someone will lay down one quote and then 50 people will carry on this weird Shut Up Little Man! conversation.

Was there something about the old technology that gave it longevity? I can’t imagine anyone will be talking about today’s viral memes in 20 years.

I think it’s a matter of the sheer volume of material. A Star Wars Kid clip, or a Christian Bale rant, are usually two or three minutes long. And they can be amazing. When you listen to the Christian Bale thing, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. Christian Bale was going apeshit! But that’s all you want now. The attention span of people is generally under two minutes. And a two-minute viral video is perfectly digestible and forgettable.
Meanwhile, the Shut Up Little Man! tapes went on for 14 hours. You can fully enter this universe. For the fans that become really obsessed, it’s like a seemingly unending gold mine of quotes and moments that people seem to study.

Does Shut Up Little Man teach us anything about the nature of going viral?

I saw it as an early warning sign of what was to come–the increasingly more cannibalistic nature of popular culture. The source material itself is incredibly captivating stuff. Their dialog and relationship is so bizarre. But as you learn more about these guys, it all changes. First it’s hilarious, then it’s tragic, then should you ask if you should even be listening to this stuff.
That leads directly to the Star Wars kid, that little fat kid who recorded himself pretending to be Darth Maul, or whatever he was doing, and the video went viral. From what I understand, he’s gone through psychological torment. It’s had a very negative effect on his life. The difference, though, is that the Star Wars Kid filmed himself. It’s an interesting phenomenon of the modern age, that we create these little videos, these little Frankensteins, that can turn back and haunt us.
So to enjoy a viral hit, are we willfully ignoring the obvious humanity behind it? I mean, it was clear something very tragic was going on with Ray and Pete, but nobody seemed to stop and consider it.

Yeah, I think we’re collectively guilty of enjoying this stuff. Entertainment is schadenfreude, and schadenfreude has become big business. It always has been, in a way. There must be something in us. We laugh at Buster Keaton. We laugh at a man slipping on a banana peel and falling on his face. And now we have the real version of this–people on the streets in real-life situations, falling off of BMXs or falling on their faces. 
 So what’s consistent between the tapes of the 1980s and the videos of today? What makes them such hits?

There’s an element of voyeurism–we want to see a sneak peek of something that we shouldn’t. It’s a bit naughty. But this is a very difficult thing to answer. I direct advertisements when I’m not making documentaries, and there was a time when advertising companies would all say, “We want this thing to go viral.” I’d say, “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a magic formula.”
And it’s not like you can just film some stranger and then make that the advertisement. So what did you do?

It’s very difficult. Because when advertising idiots get together in a room to create magic, it just doesn’t work. But in advertising, I think that the viral thing came and went. It was like a buzzword for a while that advertising people were interested in. Then they understood that “going viral” is incredibly difficult. It’s not just something that you can decide upon. It’s something that’s self-generating, it’s something that seems to capture the collective minds. We send it to one another.
So what’s an advertiser to do now?

Adverts now are more project-based. It’s less about coming up with some amazing 30-second advert, and it’s more coming up with a 360-degree campaign, which might include a 10-minute documentary that appears on Facebook, and has characters out of which the 30-second commercial can come from. It’s a different approach now.

Is it better that they stopped chasing the viral hit? Was that bogging down creativity?

Hmm. I don’t know. I really hate making adverts. I never spent much time thinking about it. It just annoyed me. They’d never come up with Pete and Ray. How do you come up with a viral sensation? It’s a weird, morally nebulous accidents that occur in broom closets and schools and apartments. If we had a formula for that, God, I’d be talking to you from my Learjet somewhere in the Bahamas. 

-The Fast Company

Greatest Movie Scenes

Rocky III

"Yo Adrian, I did it!".

Robert Forster 1941-2019

Robert Forster, Oscar-Nommed Star of ‘Jackie Brown,’ Dies at 78

 

 

Robert Forster, a prolific character actor who was nominated for an Oscar for Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” and appeared in more than 100 films, died Friday in Los Angeles of brain cancer. He was 78.
Tarantino created the bail bondsman character Max Cherry with Forster in mind, and the role netted him his first Academy Award nomination.
Most recently Forster reprised his “Breaking Bad” role as Ed in “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie,” which was released Friday, and appeared in Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” and in “Werewolf.”
David Lynch cast the actor with a distinctive weathered look in “Mulholland Dr.” and in the rebooted “Twin Peaks” as Sheriff Frank Truman.
“I’ve done a lot of genre pictures in my career…I’ve always liked them,” Forster told the Bleecker Street blog upon the release of 2018’s indie drama “What They Had.”

Forster played Tim Allen’s father in “Last Man Standing,” a rare comedy appearance, and played the father of a comatose mom in Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” which was nominated for ensemble acting prizes by SAG and the Gotham awards.
Born in Rochester, N.Y., Forster started his career on Broadway in “Mrs. Dally Has a Lover” before John Huston cast him in “Reflections in a Golden Eye” opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.
He appeared in “Medium Cool” for director Haskell Wexler and starred in the TV series “Banyon” — reportedly the role that Tarantino remembered when casting him in “Jackie Brown” — and appeared in movies including “Alligator,” “Olympus Has Fallen” and “American Perfekt.”
Forster is survived by his children: Bobby, Elizabeth, Kate and Maeghen; his grandchildren: Tess, Liam, Jack and Olivia; and long time partner, Denise Grayson.

Variety

Marlboro Man

The original 'Marlboro Man' has died at 90. Bob Norris himself never smoked.

His image graced thousands of billboards and magazine ads, always with a Marlboro cigarette.

Philanthropist and rancher Bob Norris, best known as the original "Marlboro Man," died earlier this week. He was 90.

Famous for a face that graced thousands of billboards and magazine ads, always with a Marlboro cigarette in hand or dangling from his lips, Norris served as the recognizable smoking cowboy for 12 years — though he never smoked a single cigarette himself.

  Norris was first approached by ad executives on his 63,000 acre ranch outside of Colorado Springs after he was spotted in a photo with his friend, actor John Wayne, his son, Bobby Norris, told NBC News affiliate WWBT.

When asked whether he would be interested appearing in Marlboro cigarette commercials, Norris apparently shrugged.

"And he said, 'Well I'm kind of busy right now,'" Bobby Norris said of his father, laughing. "He says, 'Why don't you come back next weekend if you're serious, and they did. They came back next weekend."

For the first ad, apparently about 2,000 pictures were shot of Norris with the notable cigarette.

Never a smoker himself, Norris had told his children that he didn't want to see them hacking a butt either.

Son Bobby Norris told WWBT that his father's opposition to the habit eventually led to his children's asking, "If you don't want us smoking, then why are you doing cigarette commercials?"

Norris quit his career as the Marlboro Man the next day, his son said, bringing an end to the photo shoots after 12 years.

Beyond his career as the face of one of the country's biggest tobacco brands, Norris enjoyed a career as a successful rancher and philanthropist, especially for animal causes.

His wife of 65 years, Jane Norris, died in 2016. The couple, who met in college in Kentucky, are survived by their four children and 13 grandchildren as well as lessons he taught his family, his son said.

"There's no gray area between right and wrong," Bobby Norris said, describing one lesson from his father. "You do the right thing even if it costs you."

Nov. 9, 2019, 2:37 PM EST

By Phil McCausland

NBC Obituaries

Walter Mercado

Puerto Rican Astrologer Walter Mercado Dies

 

Walter Mercado, the popular astrologer who endeared himself to millions of Hispanic television viewers for more than three decades, died Saturday in Puerto Rico. He was 87.
Sofía Luquis, a spokeswoman for the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, confirmed Mercado's death with The Associated Press and said he died from kidney failure.
Mercado was well-known across Latin America and in the United States for his horoscope readings and predictions.
His career as an astrologer began by chance when he was asked to fill in on a whim for a Telemundo program in 1969, according to CNN. Prior to becoming an iconic psychic, Mercado worked as an actor and dancer.
Mercado's reading of the horoscope was a hit and in 1970 he began his regular broadcast segment reading horoscopes and offering predictions for Telemundo Puerto Rico, according to The Miami Herald.
The way in which Mercado delivered his predictions was just as beloved by his fans as the messages themselves. Mercado was a fan of grand colorful robes and outfits accented with gems and brooches that dazzled. With his trilled "r's" and dramatic readings, Mercado made an art form out of his work.

Speaking about his style with The Miami Herald, Mercado once said, "I have always liked to speak to people very directly. I have used astrology to send positive messages: 'You can do it, even if you fall, get back up again.'"
His broadcasts reached an estimated 120 million Latino viewers daily for more than three decades. Mercado's flamboyant character stood out in contrast to much of what was being broadcast across Latin America television at that time.
At the end of his program, Mercado would sign off by saying "Pero sobre todo, mucho, mucho, mucho amor," or "Above all, much, much, much love."

NPR

Places of Yesteryear

The Embassy Theater 1, 2, 3

The Embassy Theatre was opened by Loew’s Inc. on August 26, 1925 with Eric Von Stroheim’s “The Merry Widow”. Designed by famed theatre architect Thomas Lamb in a French Renaissance style, seating was provided for 556, all on a single floor. Decorative details were the work of the Rambusch Studio, and murals on the walls were by Arthur Crisp. The entrance on the east side of Broadway, Times Square, is a long narrow corridor, lined with polish wood panels. The concept of the Embassy Theatre was to provide movie entertainment to a refined audience, and initially when first opened almost all the staff were female. The Embassy Theatre was equipped with a Moller 3 manual, 15 ranks theatre organ, which remained in the theatre until around 1927. In 1929 the Embassy Theatre was taken over by Guild Enterprises, and on November 1, 1929, it became the first movie theatre in the United States to operate as an all newsreel theatre, renamed Embassy Newsreel Theatre. In 1949 it became a first run movie theatre again. Later renamed New Embassy 46th Street Theatre on August 13, 1968 the World Premiere of “Targets” starring Boris Karloff was held at the New Embassy 46th Street Theatre. It was finally renamed Embassy 1 Theatre (the nearby former Mayfair/DeMille Theatre had been renamed Embassy 2, 3, 4 Theatre). In 1987, the interior of the Embassy 1 Theatre was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The Embassy 1 Theatre was closed as a cinema in 1997. Renovations were carried out and it reopened in 1998 as the Times Square Visitors Center. Sadly this closed in June 2014. Contributed by Ken Roe Cinema Treasures

Note: My second job, and the only job I was ever fired from (circa 1990)

The Goddess Bunny

aka Sadie Crisp aka Johnnie Baima
Sandra "Sandie" Crisp (born November 25, 1960), also known by her stage name The Goddess Bunny, is an American entertainer, drag queen, actress, and model.^[1]
Crisp is transgender and was born stricken with polio and was subject to the malpractice of multiple doctors resulting in the further disfigurement of her body. She grew up in various foster homes for disabled children. During her childhood, she routinely endured physical and sexual abuse from members of her foster care families largely due to her gender identity and disability. 
wiki 
The Goddess Bunny Documentary

 

And the award goes to...

Ellen Burstyn for Requiem for a Dream

2001
Who Won: Julia Roberts (“Erin Brockovich”)Who Should’ve Won: Ellen Burstyn (“Requiem for a Dream”)Who Else Was Nominated: Joan Allen (“The Contender”), Juliette Binoche (“Chocolat”), Laura Linney (“You Can Count On Me”)

Julia Roberts dishes up some plucky charm in Steven Soderbergh’s whistleblower docudrama “Erin Brockovich” — the film that got Hollywood to take the seasoned romcom movie star seriously. But no brassy courtroom verbiage compares to Ellen Burstyn’s indomitable performance as starry-eyed spinster housewife Sarah Goldfarb. Yes, there’s that famous “red dress” monologue where she spills her broken guts to her drug addict son (watch it after the jump), but let’s not forget all the manic pill-popping, amphetamine-addled delusion that showcases her fearlessness as an actress — while at the same time dragging us down to hell.

-IndieWire

Valerie Harper

Valerie Harper, Who Played Beloved TV Sidekick Rhoda, Dies At 80

One of TV's most beloved sidekicks has died. Valerie Harper, best known for playing Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died Friday in Los Angeles. She was 80.
As the blunt, self-deprecating Rhoda, Harper created one of the most beloved sitcom characters of the 1970s. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a ratings powerhouse, centered on best friends Rhoda and Mary Richards, two single women making their way through life, love and career.
Rhoda was the perfect foil for the buttoned-up Mary, played by Mary Tyler Moore. "Rhoda had this wonderful quality of saying the unsayable," Harper told NPR in 2010. She would say things "that Mary Richards would not say because she's too much of a lady or, you know, it's not polite. Rhoda, the New Yorker from the Bronx, would just say it straight out."

The show set high standards for every sitcom that followed, and generations of TV writers and actors cite it as a major influence, including Tina Fey, Lena Dunham and Modern Family star Julie Bowen. Robert Thompson, who teaches television and popular culture at Syracuse University, says Harper and Moore were one of the great comedy teams of all time: "We had Lucy and Ethel — they were kind of the Romulus and Remus of TV girlfriends — and we get a lot thereafter: Laverne and Shirley, and Cagney and Lacey. But Rhoda and Mary, when they were on stage together, even though they weren't dancing, it was kind of like watching [Fred] Astaire and [Ginger] Rogers. They just worked perfectly together."
Harper's daughter Cristina Cacciotti tweeted her father Anthony Cacciotti's statement saying, "My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away ... Rest In Peace, mia Valeria."

Moore show co-star Ed Asner extolled Harper's acting talent and called her "a great friend ... Goodnight, beautiful. I'll see you soon."

Valerie Harper was born in Suffern, N.Y. Her father was a lighting salesman, her mother was a nurse and her first love was ballet (she originally wanted to be a dancer). Harper got her first job as a dancer with Radio City Music Hall when she was a teenager. In the late 1950s, she worked as a chorus girl in Broadway musicals; later, to hone her comedy chops, she did improv with Second City. But Rhoda put Harper in the spotlight.

In her memoir, I, Rhoda, Harper writes that she was "determined to define [Rhoda's] style" and help soften her sharp edge. Rhoda may have joked about being frumpy and hating to diet, but she was also fashion forward: She wore hippie-chic outfits with colorful head scarves and hand-crafted jewelry, wide-legged pants and long vests, but also sleek, contemporary dresses and suits in bold colors and prints. Harper writes that "Rhoda's gypsy-woman look became an intrinsic part of her quirky character," even though Harper herself "had never in my life worn a head scarf."
Beyond the punchlines, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a breakthrough for women on television and much has been written about the show's impact on feminism. As career-minded, single women in their 30s, Mary and Rhoda's self-worth wasn't shaped by men. Harper told author Mollie Gregory (Women Who Run the Show) that the characters "were created and written as multifaceted human beings with all kinds of talents, frailties, quirks, and virtues. The women were not written as foils or props for men."

After winning three Emmys in a row, Harper's sidekick stepped into the spotlight. The spinoff Rhoda opened with this introduction: "My name is Rhoda Morgenstern. I was born in the Bronx, N.Y., in December 1941. I've always felt responsible for World War II. The first thing I remember liking that liked me back was food." The show debuted to huge ratings in 1974. (Many consider the wedding episode, in which Rhoda gets married, a TV sitcom classic.) Rhoda gave Harper her fourth Emmy.
After years doing sitcoms, Harper began taking on more serious roles: She co-wrote and starred in All Under Heaven, a one-woman play about writer and Nobel laureate Pearl Buck, and she portrayed the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in Golda's Balcony, another solo show. But Harper will be remembered most for her impeccable comic timing, a skill that earned her praise as the glamorous, hard-living actress Tallulah Bankhead in the play Looped. In 2010, Harper told NPR she had some reservations about repeating some of Bankhead's salty language. "The f-bomb was all over," she said. "And every time I did a show, I'd say, 'Don't bring the kiddies to see Rhoda.' "

Harper earned a Tony nomination for her performance in Looped. New York Times critic Charles Isherwood wrote that Harper "is not really a natural fit for the role — both the sandpaper voice and the flouncing hauteur seem applied from without — but she gives an enjoyably big, blustery performance, nailing every last laugh with a professionalism that the real Bankhead would surely admire."
In 2009, Harper had a cancerous tumor removed from her lung, and in early 2013, doctors told her the cancer had spread to areas surrounding the brain and that she probably wouldn't make it through the spring. In typical Harper fashion, she remained upbeat in interviews. As a guest on the TV talk show The Doctors in March 2013, she said, "More than anything I'm living in the moment. I really want Americans — and all of us — to be less afraid of death and know that it's a passage. Don't go to the funeral before the day of the funeral. While you're living, live."
Long after The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Valerie Harper often talked about how grateful and lucky she was for landing the role of Rhoda. Millions of viewers felt exactly the same way.

 NPR

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João Gilberto

Brazil mourns death of musician João Gilberto 

 Brazil is mourning the death of João Gilberto, one of the country’s greatest musicians and composers, a reclusive genius in a nation of extroverts whose work recalled happier, more optimistic times for a deeply divided nation.
Gilberto’s funeral will be held on Monday at Rio’s Municipal theatre. It is not yet clear whether members of the public will be allowed in.
The death on Saturday of the 88-year-old bossa nova legend – whose Girl from Ipanema, recorded with his then-wife Astrud Gilberto, became perhaps Brazil’s best-known song worldwide – was marked in newspaper headlines, in musical tributes and in homages from many of Brazil’s greatest living artists.

 

 But it also played into politics: the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s brusque description of Gilberto as a “famous person” appeared to brush aside the legacy of a Brazilian genius whose work was celebrated all over the world.

“The final flicker of the old flame,” read a headline in Rio de Janeiro’s O Globo newspaper. “One of the greatest geniuses of Brazilian music, the creator of bossa nova influenced generations of artists with his ‘different beat’.”
Gilberto Gil, the singer and former minister of culture, described Gilberto as an “extraordinary genius” in a video on Facebook dedicated to “João, music, poetry and love”. The composer Caetano Veloso tweeted photographs of himself with Gilberto and called him “the greatest artist with whom my soul made contact”. “With his voice and his guitar, he reworked the function of speech and the history of the instrument … he was a musical illumination,” Veloso wrote on Facebook.
Gilberto’s daughter, Bebel Gilberto a singer, commemorated her father on Facebook. “How much fun we had! Thank you for everything … the attention to every little harmony and melody in any song, to leave the moment in life, to be kind to be honest, to be a family man, to be the GREATEST Dad anyone could ever dreamed of,” she wrote.
At Rio’s Triboz jazz club, Ricardo Silveira, a guitarist, opened Saturday night’s show with two Gilberto songs, one of many tributes that focused on Gilberto’s role creating the sound of bossa nova – the lilting, gently romantic, yet musically adventurous sound that encapsulated a young, optimistic Brazil of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Girl from Ipanema, recorded by Astrud Gilberto with the American jazzman Stan Getz, was a worldwide hit and won a Grammy in 1965.
Others remembered how Gilberto famously turned up in a suit at the hippy apartment in Rio where the 1970s group Os Novos Baianos lived to teach them melodic tricks and elevate their psychedelic samba rock into something much more profound, .
“Me and my brothers in Os Novos Baianos received many precious lessons in the early hours,” said Baby do Brasil (Bernadete de Carvalho Cidade), one of the band’s vocalists, who became an evangelical preacher.. “The maestro João Gilberto, a mark in our music.”
O Globo printed photographs of a recent seafood dinner shared by a gaunt Gilberto, his lawyer Gustavo Miranda and companion Maria do Céu Harris at a restaurant in Rio.
Ruy Castro, whose book Chega de Saudade is regarded as the definite history of bossa nova, addressed complaints about Gilberto’s decision not to perform after 2008, pointing out he had left a legacy of 17 albums. “João Gilberto spent the last decades playing for the walls of his apartment, set on a musical mission, by definition, crazy and impossible – to perfect perfection,” Castro wrote in the Folha de São Paulo newspaper.
Amid all this praise, Bolsonaro’s abrupt comment on Saturday sounded like a dismissal. “He was a famous person, our sentiments to the family, OK,” he said, according to Folha.
Some leftists noted that Bolsonaro had heaped much more praise on MC Reaça (Talees Fernandes), a rightwing rapper who recorded campaign songs supporting Bolsonaro.
The leftist congressman Marcelo Freixo used the remark to refer to Bolsonaro’s nickname of “legend”. “Today we lost a true Brazilian legend. João Gilberto helped to form our culture,” he tweeted.
Fred Martins, a Lisbon-based Brazilian singer, said Brazil had been left orphaned. “In a difficult moment for the country, João represented the best Brazil could dream of,” he said. 

The Guardian

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