Regis Philbin, the affable talk show host and a fixture of the small screen for decades, has died at 88. "We
are deeply saddened to share that our beloved Regis Philbin passed away
last night of natural causes, one month shy of his 89th birthday," his
family told NPR in a statement. "His family and friends are
forever grateful for the time we got to spend with him – for his warmth,
his legendary sense of humor, and his singular ability to make every
day into something worth talking about," they said. "We thank his fans
and admirers for their incredible support over his 60-year career and
ask for privacy as we mourn his loss." With his
larger-than-life persona, Philbin cultivated an air of informality on
his talk shows, well known for the amusing banter he shared with his
co-hosts. Although the Philbin of television seemingly oozed charisma,
he suffered in his youth from a lack of self-confidence. "I missed so
many opportunities along the way to do what I wanted to do because I
didn't have the confidence to tell myself, much less anybody else, 'Yes,
this is the business I wanted to be a part of,' " he told Fresh Air in 2011. Feeling that he lacked the talent to make it in showbiz,
after his graduation from Notre Dame he spent two years serving in the
Navy. On his last day, a major in the Marines asked Philbin what he
wanted to do with his life. "I told him, 'What I'd like to do
is go into television but I don't know if I have any talent or what I
could do,' and he got very angry. ... He said, 'Well, what do you mean?
Don't you know you can have anything you want in this life if you only
want it bad enough? Do you want it?' And I said, 'Major, I'm not sure.'
And he boomed at me, 'Do you want this?!' And I snapped to and gave him a
salute and said, 'Yes, yes I want this.' " The major, Philbin recounted, told Philbin to drive to Hollywood. "And that's what I did." Philbin began his television career as an NBC page for The Tonight Show
in the 1950s. He worked as a newscast broadcaster for several years,
before getting his first big break in 1967, when he became the sidekick
to Joey Bishop on The Joey Bishop Show. From there, he went on to host local morning shows. His biggest stroke of luck might have come when Kathie Lee Gifford joined him in 1985 as co-host of ABC's The Morning Show in New York City. The pair was so successful, that Live with Regis and Kathie Lee
was nationally syndicated three years later. With impressive ratings,
it was a mainstay on American television through the '90s. In 1999, Philbin took on another role — the inaugural host of ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
He continued regularly hosting the show until 2002, making his famous
question — "Is that your final answer?" — a national catchphrase. Meanwhile, Philbin was continuing his daily job as host of Live.
After Gifford left the show in 2000, Philbin went through several guest
co-hosts, before soap opera actress Kelly Ripa was chosen as his
permanent partner in 2001. They worked together for about a decade,
before Philbin stepped down from the show in 2011 at the age of 80. By that point, he held the Guinness World Record for the most hours spent in front of a television camera. -NPR
I love how Japanese novels seem to be so low-key and relaxing to read, that's why it has become my favorite genre other than biographies. Because of this novel I enjoyed independently learning about the Japanese tsunami flotsam debris (about 1.5 million tons) washing ashore the Canadian coast due to the 9.0 earthquake that occurred in 2011 and killed nearly 20,000 people. Many strange items were found in the debris in BC, including a Harley Davidson bike which was offered to be returned to it's owner Yokoyama, but instead he donated it to the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee USA as a memorial to all those who lost their lives. A football was also found and traced back to a student who had lost every single belonging. Other items such as a fishing boat, a row boat were also found. Japan reportedly gave B.C. 1 million dollars to help with the cleanup. The novel tells of how a couple living in Canada find the diary of a young girl who is contemplating suicide, and the journey begins to find who the author of this diary is in hopes of saving her.
Hugh Downs, Longtime ‘20/20,’ ‘Today’ Anchor, Dies at 99
Hugh Downs, anchorman for the ABC news program “20/20” and, before that, NBC’s “The Today Show,” died Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 99. Downs’ career in broadcasting spanned more than half a century. And
despite his assertion “I am not a talent, I am a personality,” Downs
proved a first-rate interviewer and journalist time and again. His
personality was ingratiating and low-key; well into his 70s, his
pleasant demeanor made him a welcome guest in the nation’s living rooms.
With Barbara Walters, his co-host on both “Today” and “20/20,” he
formed one of the most complementary partnerships in television news
programming. Prior to “Today,” Downs made a name for himself as emcee of the
quizshow “Concentration” and as sage in residence on the Jack Paar
“Tonight Show.” After early work in radio and TV, Downs moved to New York in 1954 to
join Arlene Francis on NBC’s “Home” show, clocking in some 900 hours on
the program. In 1956 he became the announcer for “Caesar’s Hour,”
starring Sid Caesar, and the following year joined “The Tonight Show.”
He also supervised science programming for the NBC network. In 1958 he
also became host of the daytime series “Concentration,” a gig he held
for several years concurrent with his “Today Show” activities.
In 1960, when Paar walked off “The Tonight Show” in a dispute with
network censors, Downs stepped in and saved the day, winning NBC’s
admiration in the process. He was rewarded with the anchor spot of the
“Today” show in 1962, replacing John Chancellor. He remained for nine
years, reaching 12 million homes every morning for two hours. During that period he also reported and narrated news documentaries
and specials such as “The American Wilderness,” the Emmy-winning “The
Everglades,” “The Ice People,” “The Great Barrier Reef,” “Survival on
the Prairie” and “The First Americans.” Downs left “Today” in 1971 to pursue other interests, consulting,
teaching and writing work. In 1978 he joined ABC, hosting “20/20,” the
network’s newsmagazine show. He also did a great deal of reporting,
particularly in the early years, on medical breakthroughs and did
adventure news segments. He hosted PBS’ “Live From Lincoln Center” series from 1990-96. He
also narrated a number of highly praised news specials including 1990’s
“Depression: Beyond the Darkness”; 1988’s “The Poisoning of America,”
which won him a second Emmy; “Growing Old in America”; and “The National
Cholesterol Test.” He won additional Emmys for hosting PBS’ “Over
Easy,” “Live From Lincoln Center: Yo Yo Ma in Concert” and a 1989
interview with Patty Duke on her manic depression. The Guinness Book of World Records certified in 1985 that Downs had
clocked the greatest number of hours on network commercial television
(he lost the record for most hours on all forms of TV to Regis Philbin
in 2004). He won numerous awards for his communications and charitable work and
served on a number of boards including as chairman of the board of
governors of the National Space Society. In 1960 Downs published his autobiography “Yours Truly, Hugh Downs”;
later came “On Camera: My 10,000 Hours on Television.” Other published
works include compiled science articles called “Rings Around Tomorrow,”
sailing reminiscence “A Shoal of Stars” and several books on aging. He
also published a collection of essays based on his 10-minute NBC radio
broadcasts, “Perspective.” Downs retired from TV journalism work in 1999. Hugh Malcolm Downs was born in Akron, Ohio. He completed only one
year of college at Bluffton in Ohio before his family’s
Depression-strapped finances forced him to enter the job market. In
1939, after a long search, he landed a spot as an announcer on small
Lima, Ohio, station WLOK — at $7.50 a week. Within a year he was program
director and earning a princely $25 a week. He soon moved on to WWJ in Detroit while studying at Wayne U. He
would later attend Columbia U. and get a post-Master’s degree in
gerontology from Hunter College. During the war he was drafted into the Army and assigned to the 123rd
Infantry. He was part of an experimental basic training program that
condensed 13 weeks into four. Like many of his colleagues, he collapsed
from exhaustion, was hospitalized and given a medical discharge. In 1943 he joined NBC station WMAQ in Chicago as an announcer,
interviewer and DJ. He broke into television as the announcer for Fran
Allison and Burr Tillstrom’s “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” show out of
Chicago. Downs’ wife, Ruth, died in 2017.
Comedian Jerry Stiller, actor Ben Stiller's father, dies at 92
Comedian who formed a popular duo with his wife, Anne Meara, has died of natural causes
The comedian Jerry Stiller has died at the age of 92. His death was announced on Monday on Twitter by the actor Ben Stiller, who called him “a great dad and grandfather, and the most dedicated husband”. Jerry Stiller enjoyed a long career on stage and screen, often
accompanied by his wife, Anne Meara, with whom he formed a popular
comedy act. They met in 1953, married the following year and regularly
teamed up for improv sketches, performing in Las Vegas nightclubs and on
The Ed Sullivan Show and other TV programmes, often in character as the
squabbling spouses Mary Elizabeth Doyle and Hershey Horowitz, playing
upon their Irish Catholic and Jewish cultures. In 2010, they took their
act online, performing from the front room of their New York apartment.
Meara died in 2015. Stiller was born in Brooklyn in 1927 and attended Seward Park high
school, whose alumni included Tony Curtis and Zero Mostel. After decades
of performing, he enjoyed a new streak of popularity when he was cast
as the usually irate Frank Costanza, father to George Costanza, in the
sitcom Seinfeld. He played Frank from 1993 to 1998, and received an Emmy nomination in
1997. One of Frank’s most memorable scenes was in the 1995 episode The
Fusilli Jerry where, after a fight with Kramer, he is pushed on to a
piece of dried pasta art that leads him to let out a thunderous cry.
Next came a part in the TV show The King of Queens, playing another
cantankerous dad, Arthur Spooner, from 1998 to 2007. In 2001, he was
nominated for a Grammy award for best spoken word album for Married to
Laughter: A Love Story Featuring Anne Meara.
Stiller’s many films included Airport 1975 and The Taking of Pelham
One Two Three. He appeared in two versions of Hairspray: as the father
of Ricki Lake’s character in John Waters’ 1988 original and, in the 2007
movie of the musical, as dress-shop owner Mr Pinky. He appeared opposite Ben in several films, including The Heartbreak
Kid, where they played father and son, and Zoolander, where he played
the gold lamé-clad Maury Ballstein. Stiller told the New York Post that
he bought Ben a Super 8 film camera when he was 10. “I just wanted to
get him off my back. He went down and started filming movies on the
street with his friends.” He is also survived by his daughter, the actor Amy Stiller. -The Guardian
Bill Withers, the mellifluous vocalist behind "Lean on Me," "Lovely Day" and "Ain't No Sunshine," has died at age 81.
Bill Withers,
the soul legend who penned timeless songs like “Lean on Me,” “Lovely
Day,” and “Ain’t No Sunshine,” died Monday from heart complications in
Los Angeles. He was 81.
“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved, devoted
husband and father,” his family said in a statement. “A solitary man
with a heart driven to connect to the world at large, with his poetry
and music, he spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other.
As private a life as he lived close to intimate family and friends, his
music forever belongs to the world. In this difficult time, we pray his
music offers comfort and entertainment as fans hold tight to loved
ones.”
The three-time Grammy winner released just eight albums before
walking away from the spotlight in 1985, but he left an incredible mark
on the music community and the world at large. Songs like “Lean On Me,”
“Grandma’s Hands,” “Use Me,” “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Lovely Day” are
embedded in the culture and have been covered countless times. While
many of Withers’ biggest songs were recorded in the Seventies, they have
proven to be timeless hits. “Lean on Me” emerged once again in recent
weeks as an anthem of hope and solidarity in the time of COVID-19.
“He’s the last African-American Everyman,” Questlove told Rolling Stone
in 2015. “Jordan’s vertical jump has to be higher than everyone.
Michael Jackson has to defy gravity. On the other side of the coin,
we’re often viewed as primitive animals. We rarely land in the middle.
Bill Withers is the closest thing black people have to a Bruce
Springsteen.”
Withers was born July 4th, 1938, and grew up in Slab Fork,
West Virginia, in the final years of the Great Depression. He was the
youngest of six kids and struggled to fit in, largely due to his speech
impediment. “When you stutter,” he told Rolling Stone, “people
tend to disregard you.” He also had to endure incredible racism in the
Jim Crow South. “One of the first things I learned, when I was around
four,” he said, “was that if you make a mistake and go into a white
women’s bathroom, they’re going to kill your father.”
He joined the Navy after high school and worked as a milkman in Santa
Clara County, California, after he left the service. He later worked at
an aircraft-parts factory. Music played a small role in his life until
he visited a nightclub in Oakland where Lou Rawls was booked to perform.
“He was late, and the manager was pacing back and forth,” Withers said.
“I remember him saying, ‘I’m paying this guy $2,000 a week, and he
can’t show up on time.’ I was making $3 an hour, looking for friendly
women, but nobody found me interesting. Then Rawls walked in, and all
these women are talking to him.” That was all it took. He soon bought a cheap guitar at a pawn shop,
taught himself to play, and began writing songs between shifts at the
factory. A demo tape got into the hands of Clarence Avant, an executive
at Sussex Records, and Withers was soon called into the studio to record
an album with producer Booker T. Jones, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, and
Stephen Stills on guitar. One of the first songs they cut, “Ain’t No
Sunshine,” was a tale of lost love that Withers wrote after watching the
1962 Jack Lemmon-Lee Remick movie Days of Wine and Roses on television.
The album they recorded at that session, 1971’s Just As I Am, became an enormous hit and turned Withers into a star overnight. He followed it up with 1972’s Still Bill, which became an even bigger hit thanks to the leadoff single, “Lean on Me.” Withers wrote the song shortly after learning to play the piano, but
didn’t think much of it. His label disagreed, and it became a worldwide
smash. “I try not to be too analytical about it because it wouldn’t be
magic anymore,” Withers told Rolling Stone in 2015. “I didn’t
change fingers; I just went one, two, three, four, up and down the
piano. Lot of children come up and say, ‘That’s the first song I learned
to play,’ and I’m thinking, ‘Don’t congratulate yourself; that’s pretty
easy.’ You could make a tool and play that.”
But fame didn’t agree with him. He hated life on the road, his
marriage to TV star Denise Nicholas became fodder for the tabloids, and
his distrust of businessmen made him unwilling to work with a manager.
“Early on, I had a manager for a couple of months, and it felt like
getting a gasoline enema,” he said. “Nobody had my interest at heart. I
felt like a pawn. I like being my own man.” He was able to assert his independence and craft his own music on
Sussex, but things grew complicated once the tiny label started to go
bankrupt. He was working on a new album when he learned Sussex no longer
had the ability to pay him. In a moment of rage, he erased the entire
album. “I was socialized in the military,” he said. “When some guy is
smushing my face down, it doesn’t go down well. Since I was
self-contained and had no manager, my solution was to erase the album. I
don’t even know which one it was, but it’s gone.”
When Sussex Records finally went bankrupt in 1975, he moved over to
Columbia Records. It only added to his misery. “I met my A&R guy,
and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I don’t like your music or any
black music, period,’” Withers said. “I am proud of myself because I did
not hit him. I met another executive who was looking at a photo of the
Four Tops in a magazine. He actually said to me, ‘Look at these ugly
niggers.’” He recorded five records for Columbia and scored radio hits with
“Lovely Day” and “Just the Two of Us,” but his heart was no longer in
the work. During one particular low point, the label asked him to record
a cover of Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” When he refused, relations
with the label grew even more sour. “I was not allowed in the studio,”
he said. “People say my career was 15 years, but it was eight years. I
was not allowed in the studio from 1978 through 1985.” His final album was 1985’s Watching You Watching Me. “They
made me record that album at some guy’s home studio,” he said. “This
stark-naked five-year-old girl was running around the house, and they
said to her, ‘We’re busy. Go play with Bill.’ Now, I’m this big black
guy and they’re sending a little naked white girl over to play with me! I
said, ‘I gotta get out of here. I can’t take this shit!’”
The album was a commercial disappointment, and he retired from
recording and even performing live, though in 2004 he made a rare
exception for the 40th birthday party of Detroit Pistons owner Tom
Gores. “His wife kept calling,” he said. “She said it was only for 150
people, but I kept refusing. Then the [money] got so high that my nose
started to bleed.” The private gig found Withers and his band performing around 10
songs, with the crowd joining in for “Lean on Me.” It would be his last
concert. Smart real-estate investments and royalties from his old
records meant that money was rarely a problem. A comeback tour could
have netted him a fortune, but he simply had no interest. “What else do I
need to buy?” he asked Rolling Stone. “I’m just so fortunate.
I’ve got a nice wife, man, who treats me like gold. I don’t deserve her.
My wife dotes on me. I’m very pleased with my life how it is. This
business came to me in my thirties. I was socialized as a regular guy. I
never felt like I owned it or it owned me.” As the decades ticked by, many fans forgot that Withers was even
alive, which he found hysterical. “One Sunday morning I was at Roscoe’s
Chicken and Waffles,” he told Rolling Stone. “These church
ladies were sitting in the booth next to mine. They were talking about
this Bill Withers song they sang in church that morning. I got up on my
elbow, leaned into their booth and said, ‘Ladies, it’s odd you should
mention that because I’m Bill Withers.’ This lady said, ‘You ain’t no
Bill Withers. You’re too light-skinned to be Bill Withers!’” In 2015, he made a rare public appearance when he was inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I still have to process this,” he said
shortly after learning the news. “You know that Billy Joel line, ‘Hot
funk, cool punk, even if it’s old junk, it’s still rock & roll to
me?’ I’m happy to represent the old-junk category.” Looking back decades later, Withers was still amazed at his success
at a relatively late age in his life. “Imagine 40,000 people at a
stadium watching a football game,” he told Rolling Stone. “About 10,000 of them think they can play quarterback. Three of them probably could. I guess I was one of those three.”
Kirk Douglas, ‘Spartacus’ Actor and Hollywood Icon, Dead at 103
“Kirk’s life was well lived, and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come,” son Michael says
Kirk Douglas, the beloved actor whose roles in 'Spartacus,' 'Lust for
Life' and 'Champion' made him a Hollywood icon, has died at age 103.
Kirk Douglas, the epitome of old-school Hollywood star power whose
intense performances conveyed his characters’ fiery and sometimes
conflicted core, died Wednesday at the age of 103. “It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that
Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” his son Michael said in a
statement (via People).
“To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies
who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to
justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to
aspire to. But to me and my brothers, Joel and Peter, he was simply Dad,
to Catherine, a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and
great-grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife, Anne, a
wonderful husband. “Kirk’s life was well lived, and he leaves a legacy in film that will
endure for generations to come, and a history as a renowned
philanthropist who worked to aid the public and bring peace to the
planet,” Michael added. “Let me end with the words I told him on his
last birthday and which will always remain true. Dad, I love you so
much, and I am so proud to be your son.”
Three times nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, Douglas was one of
American cinema’s finest tough guys; his muscular jaw and mischievous
eyes able to suggest formidable men who might have dark secrets beneath
their handsome surface. In movies as varied The Bad and the Beautiful, Spartacus, and Lust for Life,
Douglas reveled in film acting’s sheer combustibility, delivering
portrayals that were models of physicality and brute force. He was also
among the first actors to segue into producing as a means to exert more
creative control, helping to launch his son Michael’s career when he
gave him the rights to the book-turned-play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
which earned a Best Picture Academy Award in 1975. “I never had any
intentions of being a movie star,” Douglas said in 1957. “I never
thought I was the type. My only aim was to become a stage
actor…[S]omeone had asked me to come to Hollywood, so I thought I’d take
a chance.” Born Issur Danielovitch in December 1916 to Jewish immigrants,
Douglas grew up in upstate New York, dreaming of acting as an escape
from a small-town community rife with anti-Semitism. “I wanted to be an
actor ever since I was a kid in the second grade,” he recalled in his
Nineties. “I did a play, and my mother made a black apron, and I played a
shoemaker. And my father, who never interested himself in what I was
doing, was in the back, and I didn’t know it. After the performance, he
gave me my first Oscar: an ice cream cone. I’ve never forgotten that.” Attending St. Lawrence University, Douglas would befriend fellow
aspiring actor Karl Malden and then move on to the American Academy of
Dramatic Arts, where he met Lauren Bacall. His career was temporarily
stalled by World War II — Douglas joined the Navy in 1941 after failing
the Air Force’s psychological test — but was given a medical discharge
in 1944. Upon returning to civilian life, Douglas snagged theater work,
including the role of a soldier in 1945’s The Wind Is Ninety,
which attracted the attention of film producer Hal B. Willis, who gave
him a screen test and brought him to Hollywood. Indeed, Douglas’ first
film role came in a Willis production, 1946’s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Three years later, Douglas starred in Champion, about an
amoral, ambitious boxer. The role landed him his first Academy Award
nomination and cemented his persona as a bruising onscreen presence not
to be taken lightly. The actor’s uncompromising demeanor was reflected
offscreen as well: In 1955, he formed his own production company, Bryna
Productions, named after his beloved mother. Douglas’ aim was to find
material that spoke to his passions, rather than being at the mercy of
others to determine his career destiny. “The impact of television
brought enormous changes in the Hollywood studios, with fewer and fewer
films being produced,” Douglas once recalled. “Many stars found
themselves unemployed and I wasn’t about to let it happen to me.…It was a
matter of survival. It still is.” Douglas’ survival instincts translated into his performances during
the 1950s. Whether playing an unscrupulous journalist in Billy Wilder’s
acidic character portrait Ace in the Hole or a soulless producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (the
latter netting him his second Oscar nomination), the actor brought
unsettling amounts of intensity to characters whose moral rot shone all
over their face. But he was just as eloquent playing the hero: His
portrayal in Paths of Glory (1957) of a principled World War I
French colonel defending the honor of three of his soldiers during a
rigged court proceeding is a stunning display of righteous decency. (It
also began a friendship with then-rising director Stanley Kubrick, whom
Douglas would bring on board to helm 1960’s Spartacus.)
Kirk Douglas as Spartacus Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life,
became arguably his finest performance and certainly his most
blistering. The film remains one of the most vivid portraits of artistry
ever committed to screen, with Douglas pouring his soul out to play the
troubled, brilliant painter, a role that would earn him his third Oscar
nomination. “I don’t think I’d be much of an actor without vanity,” he
confessed to biographer Tony Thomas. “I was terribly disappointed not to
win [an Oscar], especially for Lust for Life. I really thought
I had a chance with that one.…However, I don’t want to appear
ungrateful. I’ve been very lucky. Few people manage to do what they want
in life. I have.” Douglas continued to work steadily through the Sixties and Seventies,
but his next great achievement might have been pursuing the rights to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
Ken Kesey’s anti-authoritarian 1962 novel about a rebel instigating an
uprising at a mental institution. Douglas turned the book into a
Broadway play in which he was the star, but after years of frustration
in which no Hollywood studio would consider adapting the work for the
screen, he gave the rights to his son Michael. The eventual movie
version, which starred Jack Nicholson, won five Oscars, including Best
Picture and Best Actor. In an ironic twist, Douglas’ son had an Academy
Award before he did. (Kirk would eventually receive an Honorary Oscar in
1996.) In his later years, Douglas easily transitioned to the role of
revered elder statesman, playing lovable rascals in lightweight comedies
like Tough Guys (1986) and Oscar (1991), the former
being the sixth and final film in which he’d co-star with his good
friend Burt Lancaster, whose drive to become a producer in the 1950s
inspired Douglas’ own pursuit of the same aspiration. In 1996, shortly
before accepting his Honorary Oscar, Douglas suffered a stroke that
severely impaired his speaking ability. He wrote about the experience in
his memoir My Stroke of Luck with candor and dark humor: “The doctor’s words echoed in my mind: It’s just a minor stroke. Yeah, minor to you, major to me.” As Douglas got older, his reputation was further burnished
retroactively for his willingness to stand up to the 1950s Hollywood
blacklist, fighting to get disgraced screenwriters credits on his
pictures — particularly Dalton Trumbo, who had written Spartacus. “I’m very proud that Spartacus
broke the blacklist, because that was very important,” Douglas once
said with pride. In 1991, he received the Writers Guild of America’s
Robert Meltzer Award for his commitment to ending the blacklist, and in
2012, he wrote a book, I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist,
that highlighted his role in hiring Trumbo, an outspoken communist, for
the swords-and-sandals epic. (That same year, journalists John Meroney
and Sean Coons offered evidence arguing that Douglas overstated his
importance in ending the Hollywood blacklist. Their contention was that
the actor-producer wasn’t nearly as courageous as he claimed to be and
that he actually threatened those who wouldn’t go along with his version
of events.) Nonetheless, Douglas leaves behind a legacy of indomitable
performances and, more importantly, a bare-knuckle ruggedness rarely
seen in today’s far tamer Hollywood. In a 1969 interview with Roger
Ebert, Douglas proclaimed, “Being a star doesn’t really change you,” he
said. “If you become a star, you don’t change — everybody else does.
Personally, I keep forgetting I’m a star. And then people look at me and
I’m reminded. But you just have to remember one thing: The best
eventually go to the top. I think I’m in the best category, and I’ll
stay at the top or I’ll do something else. I’m not for the bush
leagues.”
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 1LA 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’ LansingMichelle 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’.
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.
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.
¿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.
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.
"I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living."
— Zora Neale Hurston
