A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Geraldine Page.
Geraldine Page was an American actress. With a career which spanned four decades across film, stage, and television, Page was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four nominations for the Tony Award.
A native of Kirksville, Missouri, Page studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and with Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg in New York City before being cast in her first credited part in the Western film Hondo (1953), which earned her her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. During the McCarthyism era, she was blacklisted in Hollywood based on her association with Hagen and did not work in film for eight years. Page continued to appear on television and on stage and earned her first Tony Award nomination for her performance in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959–60), a role she reprised in the 1962 film adaptation, the latter of which earned her a Golden Globe Award.
She earned additional Academy Award nominations for her roles in Summer and Smoke (1961) (another Golden Globe award for Best Actress – Drama), You’re a Big Boy Now (1966) and Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), followed by a Tony nomination for her performance in the stage production of Absurd Person Singular (1974–75). Other film appearances during this time included in the thrillers What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) opposite Ruth Gordon, and The Beguiled (1971) opposite Clint Eastwood. In 1977, she provided the voice of Madam Medusa in Walt Disney’s The Rescuers, followed by a role in Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978), which earned her a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
Page earned a total of seven Oscar nominations before winning her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1985 for The Trip to Bountiful. She was nominated in 1953 for her role in Hondo but lost to Donna Reed in From Here to Eternity; in 1961 she was nominated for her role in Summer and Smoke but lost to Sophia Loren in Two Women; She was nominated in 1962 for her role in Sweet Bird of Youth, but lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker; She was nominated in 1966 for her role in You’re a Big Boy Now but lost to Sandy Dennis in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Again in 1972 for her role in Pete ‘n’ Tillie, but lost to Eileen Heckart in Butterflies Are Free; In 1978, she was nominated for a 6th time for her role in Interiors, but lost to Jane Fonda in Coming Home; Her seventh nomination was in 1984 for her role in The Pope of Greenwich Village, but she lost to Peggy Ashcroft in A Passage to India. She was also a winner of two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and one BAFTA award.
After being inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1979 for her stage work, Page returned to Broadway with a lead role in Agnes of God (1982), earning her her third Tony Award nomination. Page was nominated for Academy Awards for her performances in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and The Trip to Bountiful (1985), the latter of which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Page died in New York City in 1987 in the midst of a Broadway run of Blithe Spirit, for which she earned her fourth Tony Award nomination.
Her official film debut and role in Hondo, opposite John Wayne, garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Prior, she appeared in an uncredited role in Taxi. Speaking to a Kirksville newspaper, she said: “Actually Hondo wasn’t my first movie. I had one small, but satisfactory scene in a Dan Dailey picture called Taxi, which was filmed in New York.”
Prior to Hondo, in 1952, she appeared in a revival of Summer and Smoke in 1952 putting herself, the play, and director Jose Quintero at the beginning of the Off-Broadway scene. Page played the same role of Alma Winemiller in a 1953 radio version (opposite Richard Kiley) and a film version in 1961 opposite Laurence Harvey. Both she and Una Merkel earned acting nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively in the 34th Academy Awards in 1961.
In 1959, Page earned an Emmy nomination, of Best Single Performance by an Actress, for her role in the Playhouse 90 episode “The Old Man,” written by William Faulkner. She subsequently earned critical accolades for her performance in the 1959–1960 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Paul Newman, in which she originated the role of a larger-than-life, addicted, sexually voracious Hollywood legend trying to extinguish her fears about her career with a young hustler named Chance Wayne (played by Newman). For her performance, Page received her first nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, as well as the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago. She and Newman subsequently starred in the 1962 film adaptation of the same name and Page earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film.
Geraldine Page actually won consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama in 1961 and 1962 for Summer and Smoke and Sweet Bird of Youth, respectively.
In 1963, Page starred in Toys in the Attic, based on Lillian Hellman’s play of the same name, and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. She received another nomination the following year starring in Delbert Mann’s Dear Heart as a self-sufficient but lonely postmistress visiting New York City for a convention, finding love with a greeting card salesman. In 1964, she starred in a Lee Strasberg-directed Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters playing eldest sister Olga to Kim Stanley’s Masha with Barbara Baxley as the interloper Natasha. Both Shirley Knight and Sandy Dennis played the youngest sister Irina at different stages in this production.
Between 1966 and 1969, Page appeared in two holiday-themed television productions based on stories by Truman Capote: “The Christmas Memory” (for ABC Stage 67) and the television film The Thanksgiving Visitor, both of which earned her two consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Actress. In 1967, Page appeared again onstage in Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy/White Lies, a production which also included Michael Crawford and Lynn Redgrave, who were making their Broadway debuts. The same year, she appeared opposite Fred MacMurray in the Walt Disney-produced musical The Happiest Millionaire. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was critical of the film, noting: “Geraldine Page and Gladys Cooper…square off in one musical scene of socially up-staging each other that is drenched in perfumed vulgarity. But, then, the whole picture is vulgar. It is an over-decorated, over-fluffed, over-sentimentalized endeavor to pretend the lace-curtain millionaires are—or were—every bit as folksy as the old prize-fighters and the Irish brawlers in the saloon.”
Page starred opposite Ruth Gordon in the thriller What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969), the third and final film in the Robert Aldrich-produced trilogy which followed What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). The film is based on the novel The Forbidden Garden by Ursula Curtiss and features Page as Claire Marrable, a recently widowed socialite, who discovers that her husband has left her virtually nothing. The widow hires a number of unsuspecting housekeepers whom she murders one by one and robs them of their life savings in order to keep up her extravagant lifestyle. Writing for The New York Times, Vincent Canby deemed the film “an amusingly baroque horror story told by a master misogynist,” and praised Page’s “affecting” performance.
Page subsequently appeared in the Don Siegel-directed thriller The Beguiled (1971) opposite Clint Eastwood, playing the headmistress of a Southern girls’ boarding school who takes in a wounded Union soldier. Director Siegel called Page “certainly as fine an actor as I’ve ever worked with. I never have gotten along better with anyone than I did with her.” This was followed by a supporting role in the comedy Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), for which she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in three episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery between 1972 and 1973. In January 1973, she returned to Broadway playing Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Maya Angelou in the two-character play Look Away, written by Jerome Kilty. Page received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (her second Tony Award nomination) for the 1975 production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular with Sandy Dennis and Richard Kiley.
She also had a supporting role as a charismatic Hollywood evangelist (modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson) in The Day of the Locust (1975), an adaptation of the Nathanael West novel of the same name. In 1977, she appeared as a nun in the British comedy Nasty Habits, and provided the voice role of Madame Medusa in the Walt Disney animated film The Rescuers. During this time, she also appeared on television, guest-starring in the popular series Kojak (1976) and Hawaii Five-O (1977).
Page appeared as the mother of three siblings and wife of a prominent attorney in Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978). For her performance, Page was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The New York Times’s Vincent Canby lauded her performance in the film, writing: “Miss Page, looking a bit like a youthful Louise Nevelson with mink-lashed eyes, is marvelous — erratically kind, impossibly demanding, pathetic in her loneliness and desperate in her anger.” The following year, in November 1979, Page was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Page starred as Zelda Fitzgerald in the last major Broadway production of a Williams play, Clothes for a Summer Hotel in 1980, followed by a supporting role in Harry’s War (1981). Page starred as the secretive nun Mother Miriam Ruth in the Broadway production of Agnes of God, which opened in 1982 and ran for 599 performances with Page performing in nearly all of them; for her role, she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Also in 1983, Page invited the young actress Sabra Jones Strasberg to her dressing room to talk to Strasberg about how much she had liked her performance in St. Joan by Maxwell Anderson, in which Page had just seen her play the part originated by Ingrid Bergman. During this conversation, Strasberg asked her advice in forming a classic theater based on alternating repertory. Strasberg later founded the Mirror Theater Ltd with its repertory program the Mirror Repertory, and Page accepted the role of Founding Artist in Residence. Page remained continually active in theater, appearing in numerous repertory, Broadway, and Off-Broadway productions throughout the 1980s; this included roles in a revivals of Inheritors by Susan Glaspell and Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets in 1983, Rain by John Colton (based on the short story “Miss Thompson” by W. Somerset Maugham) the following year. Further revivals followed in 1985: Vivat! Vivat Regina! by Robert Bolt (in which she played Elizabeth I), Clarence by Booth Tarkington, and The Madwoman of Chaillot (by Jean Giraudoux) in which she played the Madwoman to great acclaim).
Page earned her seventh Academy Award nomination for her performance in the dark comedy The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). This marked a record at the time for most Academy Award nominations without a win, for which Page was tied with Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton (who themselves had also garnered seven nominations without winning). On television, Page had a supporting role in the miniseries The Dollmaker (1984), opposite Jane Fonda and Amanda Plummer. She appeared in the British horror film The Bride opposite Sting and Jennifer Beals; the drama White Nights, directed by Taylor Hackford; and opposite Rebecca de Mornay in the drama The Trip to Bountiful (all 1985), in which she played an aging Southern Texas woman seeking to return to her hometown. The role earned Page wide critical acclaim, with the Los Angeles Times referring to it as “the performance of a lifetime.”
In 1986, she appeared on Broadway in The Circle by W. Somerset Maugham; during this production, Page won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Trip to Bountiful. During her acceptance speech, she thanked The Mirror Theater Ltd. Page wore her costume from The Circle, which had been designed and made by Gail Cooper-Hecht, the Mirror Theater’s costume designer. She received the award from F. Murray Abraham, who, after winning his Oscar for Amadeus, also joined the Mirror Repertory Company to play the rag-picker in the Madwoman of Chaillot. Prior to winning the Academy Award, Page said to People magazine: “If I lose the Oscar this year, I’ll have the record for the most nominations without ever winning… I’d love to be champion, [but the loser] doesn’t have to get up there and make a fool of herself.”
After winning the Academy Award, Page returned to finish her run performing in The Circle for Mirror Theater and appeared opposite Carroll Baker, Oprah Winfrey, and Elizabeth McGovern in Native Son (1986). Page followed up Native Son with a lead role opposite Mary Stuart Masterson in My Little Girl (1987). In the fall of 1986, Page asked permission to return to Broadway in a revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit in the role of Madame Arcati. She was cast in the role, though the production would be Page’s last. She was again nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, though she did not win. A week after the Tony Awards ceremony, Page failed to appear for two performances of the play and was found dead in her Manhattan home. The show lasted several weeks more, with Page’s understudy Patricia Conolly taking over her role.
Page was trained as a method actor, and at times worked with psychoanalysts when developing her interpretations of roles. She once told the Los Angeles Times: “If I read a part and think I can connect to it, that I can touch people with it, I will do it, no matter what its size. And if I think I can’t do something with a part, I won’t take it.” In a 1964 interview upon completing the Broadway run of The Three Sisters, Page discussed her method acting at length. When asked if she used emotional recall as a technique, she responded: “I would never shut it out. But I don’t try to get one. My whole effort is to relax and keep the doors open so that there’s room if one should pop up.”
During her life, Page was regarded as a respected character actress. Speaking of her stage career in 1986, she said: “I used to think that by opening [night] all the work was done. Now I’m finding out how much you can learn from the audience.” She described acting as a “bottomless cup,” adding: “If I studied for the next ninety years I’d just be scratching the surface.”
Page was married to violinist Alexander Schneider from 1954 to 1957. On September 8, 1963, she married actor Rip Torn, who was six years her junior, in Pinal, Arizona. They had played opposite one another in Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway and in the 1962 film. They had three children: a daughter, actress Angelica Page, and twin sons, Anthony “Tony” and Jonathan “Jon” Torn.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Page and Torn lived separately after he started dating actress Amy Wright; Torn had first met Wright in 1976 and began an affair shortly after. Page was aware of Torn and Wright’s relationship, and appeared onstage opposite Wright in the 1977 Off-Broadway production of The Stronger, under Torn’s direction. In 1983, Torn fathered a child with Wright. Upon the birth of the child, Page was questioned about her marriage by columnist Cindy Adams, to which she responded: “Of course Rip and I are still married. We’ve been married for years. We’re staying married. What’s the big fuss?” In spite of their separation, Page and Torn remained married until her death; her daughter described their relationship as still “close” up until Page died in 1987.
Page considered herself a gourmand, once joking: “Greedy gut is my middle name…Rip is wonderful. He does the cooking and I do the eating. I love everything but eggplant.”
On June 13, 1987, Page failed to arrive at the Neil Simon Theatre for both the afternoon and evening performances of Sir Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, which had begun its run in March. At the end of the show’s evening performance, the play’s producer announced that Page had been found dead in her lower Manhattan townhouse. It was determined that she died of a heart attack.
On June 18, “an overflow crowd of colleagues, friends and fans,” including Sissy Spacek, James Earl Jones, Amanda Plummer, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, and husband Torn attended a memorial service held at the Neil Simon Theatre. In highlighting Page’s achievements, actress Anne Jackson said “[Page] used a stage like no one else I’d ever seen. It was like playing tennis with someone who had 26 arms.” Rip Torn called her “Mi corazon, mi alma, mi esposa” (“My heart, my soul, my wife”) and said they had “never stopped being lovers, and … never will.” Page was cremated.
For her stage work on Broadway, Page earned a total of four Tony Award nominations, and was referred to by the New York Daily News as “one of the finest stage actors of her generation.” She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979.
Sarah Paulson portrayed Page in the 2017 anthology television series Feud, which chronicles the rivalry between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford on the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
She was also portrayed by her daughter, Angelica Page, in the stage production Turning Page. A monologue play chronicling Page’s life, it was also written by her daughter: “I grew up in the center of her sparkling career,” Angelica recalled. “As her only daughter I feel compelled to share her lessons and gifts with others who did and did not have the opportunity to know her magic intimately. She was a true rebel and trail blazer. A masterful woman who was ahead of her time and should not be forgotten anytime soon.” The play premiered in Los Angeles in 2016, followed by performances in New York City in 2017.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Fred Astaire.
Fred Astaire was an American dancer, choreographer, actor, and singer. He is often called the “greatest popular-music dancer of all time”. He has received numerous accolades including an Honorary Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award. He was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute in 1973, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, and AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980. He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1972, and the Television Hall of Fame in 1989.
Astaire’s career in stage, film, and television spanned 76 years. He starred in more than 10 Broadway and West End musicals, made 31 musical films, four television specials, and numerous recordings. As a dancer, he was known for his uncanny sense of rhythm, creativity, and tireless perfectionism. Astaire’s most memorable dancing partnership was with Ginger Rogers, whom he co-starred with in 10 Hollywood musicals during the classic age of Hollywood cinema. Astaire and Rogers starred together in Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). Astaire’s fame grew in films like Holiday Inn (1942), Easter Parade (1948), The Band Wagon (1953), Funny Face (1957), and Silk Stockings (1957). The American Film Institute named Astaire the fifth-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema in 100 Years… 100 Stars.
The Astaire’s broke into Broadway in 1917 with Over the Top, a patriotic revue, and performed for U.S. and Allied troops at this time as well. They followed up with several more shows. Of their work in The Passing Show of 1918, Heywood Broun wrote: “In an evening in which there was an abundance of good dancing, Fred Astaire stood out … He and his partner, Adele Astaire, made the show pause early in the evening with a beautiful loose-limbed dance.”
Adele’s sparkle and humor drew much of the attention, owing in part to Fred’s careful preparation and sharp supporting choreography. She still set the tone of their act. But by this time, Astaire’s dancing skill was beginning to outshine his sister’s.
During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway and the London stage. They won popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic in shows such as Jerome Kern’s The Bunch and Judy (1922), George and Ira Gershwin’s Lady, Be Good (1924), and Funny Face (1927) and later in The Band Wagon (1931). Astaire’s tap dancing was recognized by then as among the best. For example, Robert Benchley wrote in 1930, “I don’t think that I will plunge the nation into war by stating that Fred is the greatest tap-dancer in the world.” While in London, Fred studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music alongside his friend and colleague Noël Coward; and in 1926, was one of the judges at the ‘Charleston (dance) Championship of the World ‘ competition at the Royal Albert Hall, where Lew Grade was declared the winner.
After the close of Funny Face, the Astaire’s went to Hollywood for a screen test at Paramount Pictures, but Paramount deemed them unsuitable for films.
They split in 1932 when Adele married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire. Fred went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce which was later made into the film The Gay Divorcee, while considering offers from Hollywood. The end of the partnership was traumatic for Astaire but stimulated him to expand his range.
Free of the brother-sister constraints of the former pairing and working with new partner Claire Luce, Fred created a romantic partnered dance to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”, which had been written for Gay Divorce. Luce stated that she had to encourage him to take a more romantic approach: “Come on, Fred, I’m not your sister, you know.” The success of the stage play was credited to this number, and when recreated in The Gay Divorcee (1934), the film version of the play, it ushered in a new era in filmed dance. Recently, film footage taken by Fred Stone of Astaire performing in Gay Divorce with Luce’s successor, Dorothy Stone, in New York in 1933 was uncovered by dancer and historian Betsy Baytos and now represents the earliest known performance footage of Astaire.
According to Hollywood folklore, a screen test report on Astaire for RKO Radio Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little.” The producer of the Astaire–Rogers pictures, Pandro S. Berman, claimed he had never heard the story in the 1930s and that it only emerged years afterward. Astaire later clarified, insisting that the report had read: “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Also dances.” In any case, the test was clearly disappointing, and David O. Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, stated in a memo, “I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test.”
However, this did not affect RKO’s plans for Astaire. They lent him for a few days to MGM in 1933 for his significant Hollywood debut in the successful musical film Dancing Lady. In the movie, he appeared as himself dancing with Joan Crawford. On his return to RKO, he got fifth billing after fourth-billed Ginger Rogers in the 1933 Dolores del Río vehicle Flying Down to Rio. In a review, Variety magazine attributed its massive success to Astaire’s presence:
The main point of Flying Down to Rio is the screen promise of Fred Astaire … He’s assuredly a bet after this one, for he’s distinctly likable on the screen, the mike is kind to his voice and as a dancer, he remains in a class by himself. The latter observation will be no news to the profession, which has long admitted that Astaire starts dancing where the others stop hoofing.
Having already been linked to his sister Adele on stage, Astaire was initially very reluctant to become part of another dance team. He wrote his agent, “I don’t mind making another picture with her, but as for this ‘team’ idea, it’s ‘out!’ I’ve just managed to live down one partnership and I don’t want to be bothered with any more.” However, he was persuaded by the apparent public appeal of the Astaire–Rogers pairing. The partnership, and the choreography of Astaire and Hermes Pan, helped make dancing an important element of the Hollywood film musical.
Astaire and Rogers made nine films together at RKO: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935) Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Carefree (1938), and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). Six out of the nine Astaire–Rogers musicals became the biggest moneymakers for RKO; all of the films brought a certain prestige and artistry that all studios coveted at the time. Their partnership elevated them both to stardom; as Katharine Hepburn reportedly said, “He gives her class and she gives him sex appeal.” Astaire received a percentage of the films’ profits, something scarce in actors’ contracts at that time.
Astaire revolutionized dance on film by having complete autonomy over its presentation. He is credited with two important innovations in early film musicals. First, he insisted that a closely tracking dolly camera film a dance routine in as few shots as possible, typically with just four to eight cuts, while holding the dancers in full view at all times. This gave the illusion of an almost stationary camera filming an entire dance in a single shot. Astaire famously quipped: “Either the camera will dance, or I will. Astaire maintained this policy from The Gay Divorcee in 1934 until his last film musical, Finian’s Rainbow in 1968, when director Francis Ford Coppola overruled him.
Astaire’s style of dance sequences allowed the viewer to follow the dancers and choreography in their entirety. This style differed strikingly from those in the Busby Berkeley musicals. Those musicals’ sequences were filled with extravagant aerial shots, dozens of cuts for quick takes, and zooms on areas of the body such as a chorus row of arms or legs.
Astaire’s second innovation involved the context of the dance; he was adamant that all song and dance routines be integral to the plotlines of the film. Instead of using dance as a spectacle as Busby Berkeley did, Astaire used it to move the plot along. Typically, an Astaire picture would include at least three standard dances. One would be a solo performance by Astaire, which he termed his “sock solo”. Another would be a partnered comedy dance routine. Finally, he would include a partnered romantic dance routine.
Dance commentators Arlene Croce, Hannah Hyam and John Mueller consider Rogers to have been Astaire’s greatest dance partner, a view shared by Hermes Pan and Stanley Donen. Film critic Pauline Kael adopts a more neutral stance, while Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel writes “The nostalgia surrounding Rogers–Astaire tends to bleach out other partners.”
Mueller sums up Rogers’s abilities as follows:
“Rogers was outstanding among Astaire’s partners not because she was superior to others as a dancer, but because, as a skilled, intuitive actress, she was cagey enough to realize that acting did not stop when dancing began … The reason so many women have fantasized about dancing with Fred Astaire is that Ginger Rogers conveyed the impression that dancing with him is the most thrilling experience imaginable.”
According to Astaire, “Ginger had never danced with a partner before Flying Down to Rio. She faked it an awful lot. She couldn’t tap and she couldn’t do this and that … but Ginger had style and talent and improved as she went along. She got so that after a while everyone else who danced with me looked wrong.” On p. 162 of his book Ginger: Salute to a Star, author Dick Richards quotes Astaire saying to Raymond Rohauer, curator of the New York Gallery of Modern Art, “Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually, she made things very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success.”
In 1976, British talk-show host Sir Michael Parkinson asked Astaire who his favorite dancing partner was on Parkinson. At first, Astaire refused to answer. But, ultimately, he said “Excuse me, I must say Ginger was certainly, [uh, uh,] the one. You know, the most effective partner I ever had. Everyone knows.”
Rogers described Astaire’s uncompromising standards extending to the whole production: “Sometimes he’ll think of a new line of dialogue or a new angle for the story … they never know what time of night he’ll call up and start ranting enthusiastically about a fresh idea … No loafing on the job on an Astaire picture, and no cutting corners.”
Despite their success, Astaire was unwilling to have his career tied exclusively to any partnership. He negotiated with RKO to strike out on his own with A Damsel in Distress in 1937 with an inexperienced, non-dancing Joan Fontaine, unsuccessfully as it turned out. He returned to make two more films with Rogers, Carefree (1938) and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). While both films earned respectable gross incomes, they both lost money because of increased production costs, and Astaire left RKO, after being labeled “box office poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners of America. Astaire was reunited with Rogers in 1949 at MGM for their final outing, The Barkleys of Broadway, the only one of their films together to be shot in Technicolor.
Astaire left RKO in 1939 to freelance and pursue new film opportunities, with mixed though generally successful outcomes. Throughout this period, Astaire continued to value the input of choreographic collaborators. Unlike the 1930s when he worked almost exclusively with Hermes Pan, he tapped the talents of other choreographers to innovate continually. His first post-Ginger dance partner was the redoubtable Eleanor Powell, considered the most exceptional female tap-dancer of her generation. They starred in Broadway Melody of 1940, in which they performed a celebrated extended dance routine to Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine”. In his autobiography Steps in Time, Astaire remarked, “She ‘put ’em down’ like a man, no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.”
He played alongside Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1942) and later Blue Skies (1946). But, in spite of the enormous financial success of both, he was reportedly dissatisfied with roles where he lost the girl to Crosby. The former film is memorable for his virtuoso solo dance to “Let’s Say it with Firecrackers”. The latter film featured “Puttin’ On the Ritz”, an innovative song-and-dance routine indelibly associated with him. Other partners during this period included Paulette Goddard in Second Chorus (1940), in which he dance-conducted the Artie Shaw orchestra.
He made two pictures with Rita Hayworth. The first film, You’ll Never Get Rich (1941), catapulted Hayworth to stardom. In the movie, Astaire integrated for the third time Latin American dance idioms into his style. His second film with Hayworth, You Were Never Lovelier (1942), was equally successful. It featured a duet to Kern’s “I’m Old Fashioned”, which became the centerpiece of Jerome Robbins’s 1983 New York City Ballet tribute to Astaire.
He next appeared opposite the seventeen-year-old Joan Leslie in the wartime drama The Sky’s the Limit (1943). In it, he introduced Arlen and Mercer’s “One for My Baby” while dancing on a bar counter in a dark and troubled routine. Astaire choreographed this film alone and achieved modest box office success. It represented a notable departure for Astaire from his usual charming, happy-go-lucky screen persona, and confused contemporary critics.
His next partner, Lucille Bremer, was featured in two lavish vehicles, both directed by Vincente Minnelli. The fantasy Yolanda and the Thief (1945) featured an avant-garde surrealistic ballet. In the musical revue Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Astaire danced with Gene Kelly to the Gershwin song “The Babbit and the Bromide”, a song Astaire had introduced with his sister Adele back in 1927. While Follies was a hit, Yolanda bombed at the box office.
Always insecure and believing his career was beginning to falter, Astaire surprised his audiences by announcing his retirement during the production of his next film, Blue Skies (1946). He nominated “Puttin’ on the Ritz” as his farewell dance. After announcing his retirement in 1946, Astaire concentrated on his horse-racing interests and in 1947 founded the Fred Astaire Dance Studios, which he subsequently sold in 1966.
Astaire’s retirement did not last long. He returned to the big screen to replace an injured Gene Kelly in Easter Parade (1948) opposite Judy Garland, Ann Miller, and Peter Lawford. He followed up with a final reunion with Rogers (replacing Judy Garland) in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). Both of these films revived Astaire’s popularity and in 1950 he starred in two musicals. Three Little Words with Vera-Ellen and Red Skelton was for MGM. Let’s Dance with Betty Hutton was on loan-out to Paramount. While Three Little Words did quite well at the box office, Let’s Dance was a financial disappointment. Royal Wedding (1951) with Jane Powell and Peter Lawford proved to be very successful, but The Belle of New York (1952) with Vera-Ellen was a critical and box-office disaster. The Band Wagon (1953) received rave reviews from critics and drew huge crowds. However, because of its high cost, it failed to make a profit on its first release.
Soon after, Astaire, like the other remaining stars at MGM, was let go from his contract because of the advent of television and the downsizing of film production. In 1954, Astaire was about to start work on a new musical, Daddy Long Legs (1955) with Leslie Caron at 20th Century Fox. Then, his wife Phyllis became ill and suddenly died of lung cancer. Astaire was so bereaved that he wanted to shut down the picture and offered to pay the production costs out of his pocket. However, Johnny Mercer, the film’s composer, and Fox studio executives convinced him that work would be the best thing for him. Daddy Long Legs did only moderately well at the box office. His next film for Paramount, Funny Face (1957), teamed him with Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson. Despite the sumptuousness of the production and the good reviews from critics, it failed to make back its cost. Similarly, Astaire’s next project – his final musical at MGM, Silk Stockings (1957), in which he co-starred with Cyd Charisse – also lost money at the box office.
Afterward, Astaire announced that he was retiring from dancing in films. His legacy at this point was 30 musical films in 25 years. Astaire did not retire from dancing altogether. He made a series of four highly rated Emmy Award-winning musical specials for television in 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1968. Each featured Barrie Chase, with whom Astaire enjoyed a renewed period of dance creativity. The first of these programs, 1958’s An Evening with Fred Astaire, won nine Emmy Awards, including “Best Single Performance by an Actor” and “Most Outstanding Single Program of the Year”. It was also noteworthy for being the first major broadcast to be pre recorded on color videotape. Astaire won the Emmy for Best Single Performance by an Actor. The choice had a controversial backlash because many believed his dancing in the special was not the type of “acting” for which the award was designed. At one point, Astaire offered to return the award, but the Television Academy refused to consider it. A restoration of the program won a technical Emmy in 1988 for Ed Reitan, Don Kent, and Dan Einstein. They restored the original videotape, transferring its contents to a modern format and filling in gaps where the tape had deteriorated with kinescope footage.
Astaire played Julian Osborne, a non-dancing character, in the nuclear war drama On the Beach (1959). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor award for his performance, losing to Stephen Boyd in Ben-Hur. Astaire appeared in non-dancing roles in three other films and several television series from 1957 to 1969.
Astaire’s last major musical film was Finian’s Rainbow (1968), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Astaire shed his white tie and tails to play an Irish rogue who believes that if he buries a crock of gold in the shadows of Fort Knox the gold will multiply. Astaire’s dance partner was Petula Clark, who played his character’s skeptical daughter. He described himself as nervous about singing with her, while she said she was worried about dancing with him. The film was a modest success both at the box office and among critics.
Astaire continued to act in the 1970s. He appeared on television as the father of Robert Wagner’s character, Alexander Mundy, in It Takes a Thief. In the movie The Towering Inferno (1974), he danced with Jennifer Jones and received his only Academy Award nomination, in the category of Best Supporting Actor. He voiced the mailman narrator S.D Kluger in the 1970s Rankin/Bass animated television specials Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town and The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ to Town. Astaire also appeared in the first two That’s Entertainment! documentaries, in the mid-1970s. In the second compilation, aged seventy-six, he performed brief dance linking sequences with Kelly, his last dance performances in a musical film. In the summer of 1975, he made three albums in London, Attitude Dancing, They Can’t Take These Away from Me, and A Couple of Song and Dance Men, the last an album of duets with Bing Crosby. In 1976, Astaire played a supporting role, as a dog owner, in the cult movie The Amazing Dobermans, co-starring Barbara Eden and James Franciscus, and played Dr. Seamus Scully in the French film The Purple Taxi (1977).
In 1978, he co-starred with Helen Hayes in a well received television film A Family Upside Down in which they played an elderly couple coping with failing health. Astaire won an Emmy Award for his performance. He made a well publicized guest appearance on the science-fiction television series Battlestar Galactica in 1979, as Chameleon, the possible father of Starbuck, in “The Man with Nine Lives”, a role written for him by Donald P. Bellisario. Astaire asked his agent to obtain a role for him on Galactica because of his grandchildren’s interest in the series and the producers were delighted at the opportunity to create an entire episode to feature him. This episode marked the final time that he danced on screen, in this case with Anne Jeffreys. He acted in nine different roles in The Man in the Santa Claus Suit in 1979. His final film was the 1981 adaptation of Peter Straub’s novel Ghost Story. This horror film was also the last for two of his most prominent castmates, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Astaire was a virtuoso dancer, able when called for to convey light-hearted venturesomeness or deep emotion. His technical control and sense of rhythm were astonishing. Long after the photography for the solo dance number “I Want to Be a Dancin’ Man” was completed for the 1952 feature The Belle of New York, it was decided that Astaire’s humble costume and the threadbare stage set were inadequate and the entire sequence was reshot. The 1994 documentary That’s Entertainment! III shows the two performances side by side in split-screen. Frame for frame, the two performances are identical, down to the subtlest gesture.
Astaire’s execution of a dance routine was prized for its elegance, grace, originality, and precision. He drew from a variety of influences, including tap and other black rhythms, classical dance, and the elevated style of Vernon and Irene Castle. His was a uniquely recognizable dance style that greatly influenced the American Smooth style of ballroom dance and set standards against which subsequent film dance musicals would be judged. He termed his eclectic approach “outlaw style”, an unpredictable and instinctive blending of personal artistry. His dances are economical yet endlessly nuanced. As Jerome Robbins stated, “Astaire’s dancing looks so simple, so disarming, so easy, yet the understructure, the way he sets the steps on, over or against the music, is so surprising and inventive.” Astaire further observed:
“Working out the steps is a very complicated process—something like writing music. You have to think of some step that flows into the next one, and the whole dance must have an integrated pattern. If the dance is right, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous movement. It should build to a climax and stop!”
Although Astaire was the primary choreographer of all his dance routines, he welcomed the input of collaborators and notably his principal collaborator Hermes Pan. But dance historian John Mueller believes that Astaire acted as the lead choreographer in his solos and partnered dances throughout his career. He notes Astaire’s dance style was consistent in subsequent films made with or without the assistance of Pan. Furthermore, Astaire choreographed all the routines during his Broadway career with his sister Adele. Later in his career, he became a little more amenable to accepting the direction of his collaborators. However, this was almost always confined to the area of extended fantasy sequences, or dream ballets.
Occasionally Astaire took joint screen credit for choreography or dance direction, but he usually left the screen credit to his collaborator. This can lead to the completely misleading impression that Astaire merely performed the choreography of others. Later in life, he admitted, “I had to do most of it myself.”
Frequently, a dance sequence was built around two or three key ideas, sometimes inspired by his steps or by the music itself, suggesting a particular mood or action. Caron said that while Kelly danced close to the ground, she felt like she was floating with Astaire. Many dance routines were built around a “gimmick”, like dancing on the walls in Royal Wedding or dancing with his shadows in Swing Time. He or his collaborator would think of these routines earlier and save them for the right situation. They would spend weeks creating all the dance sequences in a secluded rehearsal space before filming would begin. They would work with a rehearsal pianist, often the composer Hal Borne, who in turn would communicate modifications to the musical orchestrators.
His perfectionism was legendary, but his relentless insistence on rehearsals and retakes was a burden to some. When time approached for the shooting of a number, Astaire would rehearse for another two weeks and record the singing and music. With all the preparation completed, the actual shooting would go quickly, conserving costs. Astaire agonized during the process, frequently asking colleagues for acceptance for his work. As Vincente Minnelli stated, “He lacks confidence to the most enormous degree of all the people in the world. He will not even go to see his rushes … He always thinks he is no good.” As Astaire himself observed, “I’ve never yet got anything 100% right. Still, it’s never as bad as I think it is.”
Michael Kidd, Astaire’s co-choreographer on the 1953 film The Band Wagon, found that his own concern about the emotional motivation behind the dance was not shared by Astaire. Kidd later recounted: “Technique was important to him. He’d say, ‘Let’s do the steps. Let’s add the looks later.'”
Although he viewed himself primarily as an entertainer, his artistry won him the admiration of twentieth-century dancers such as Gene Kelly, George Balanchine, the Nicholas Brothers, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Bob Fosse, Gregory Hines, Rudolf Nureyev, Michael Jackson, and Bill Robinson. Balanchine compared him to Bach, describing him as “the most interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our times”, while for Baryshnikov he was “a genius … a classical dancer like I never saw in my life.” He concluded, “No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.”
Extremely modest about his singing abilities he frequently claimed that he could not sing, but the critics rated him as among the finest, Astaire introduced some of the most celebrated songs from the Great American Songbook, in particular, Cole Porter’s: “Night and Day” in Gay Divorce (1932); “So Near and Yet So Far” in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941); Irving Berlin’s “Isn’t This a Lovely Day?”, “Cheek to Cheek”, and “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” in Top Hat (1935); “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” in Follow the Fleet (1936); and “Change Partners” in Carefree (1938). He first presented Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight” in Swing Time (1936), the Gershwins’ “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” in Shall We Dance (1937), “A Foggy Day” and “Nice Work if You Can Get it” in A Damsel in Distress (1937), Johnny Mercer’s “One for My Baby” from The Sky’s the Limit (1943), “Something’s Gotta Give” from Daddy Long Legs (1955); and Harry Warren and Arthur Freed’s “This Heart of Mine” from Ziegfeld Follies (1946).
Astaire also co-introduced a number of song classics via song duets with his partners. For example, with his sister Adele, he co-introduced the Gershwins’ “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” from Stop Flirting (1923), “Fascinating Rhythm” in Lady, Be Good (1924), “Funny Face” in Funny Face (1927), and, in duets with Ginger Rogers, he presented Irving Berlin’s “I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket” in Follow the Fleet (1936), Jerome Kern’s “Pick Yourself Up” and “A Fine Romance” in Swing Time (1936), along with the Gershwins’ “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” from Shall We Dance (1937). With Judy Garland, he sang Irving Berlin’s “A Couple of Swells” from Easter Parade (1948); and, with Jack Buchanan, Oscar Levant, and Nanette Fabray he delivered Arthur Schwartz’s and Howard Dietz’s “That’s Entertainment!” from The Band Wagon (1953).
Although he possessed a light voice, he was admired for his lyricism, diction, and phrasing, the grace and elegance so prized in his dancing seemed to be reflected in his singing, a capacity for synthesis which led Burton Lane to describe him as “the world’s greatest musical performer”. Irving Berlin considered Astaire the equal of any male interpreter of his songs—”as good as Jolson, Crosby or Sinatra, not necessarily because of his voice, but for his conception of projecting a song.” Jerome Kern considered him the supreme male interpreter of his songs and Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer also admired his unique treatment of their work. And while George Gershwin was somewhat critical of Astaire’s singing abilities, he wrote many of his most memorable songs for him. In his heyday, Astaire was referenced in lyrics of songwriters Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart and Eric Maschwitz and continues to inspire modern songwriters.
Astaire was a songwriter, with “I’m Building Up to an Awful Letdown” (written with lyricist Johnny Mercer) reaching number four in the Hit parade of 1936. He recorded his own “It’s Just Like Taking Candy from a Baby” with Benny Goodman in 1940 and nurtured a lifelong ambition to be a successful popular song composer.
In 1952, Astaire recorded The Astaire Story, a four-volume album with a quintet led by Oscar Peterson. The album, produced by Norman Granz, provided a musical overview of Astaire’s career. The Astaire Story later won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999, a special Grammy award to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and that have “qualitative or historical significance”.
In addition to Phyllis Potter’s son, Eliphalet IV (known as Peter), the Astaires had two children. The Astaires’ son, Fred Jr. (born 1936), appeared with his father in the movie Midas Run and later became a charter pilot and rancher. The Astaires’ daughter Ava Astaire (born 1942) remains involved in promoting her father’s legacy.
Intensely private, Fred Astaire was rarely seen on the Hollywood social scene. Instead, he devoted his spare time to his family and his hobbies, which included horse racing, playing the drums, songwriting, and golfing. He was good friends with David Niven, Randolph Scott, Clark Gable and Gregory Peck. Niven described him as “a pixie…timid, always warm-hearted, with a penchant for schoolboy jokes.” In 1946, his horse Triplicate won the Hollywood Gold Cup and San Juan Capistrano Handicap. He remained physically active well into his eighties. He took up skateboarding in his late seventies and was awarded a life membership in the National Skateboard Society. At seventy-eight, he broke his left wrist while skateboarding in his driveway. He also had an interest in boxing and true crime.
Always immaculately turned out, Astaire and Cary Grant were called “the best-dressed actor[s] in American movies”. Astaire remained a male fashion icon even into his later years, eschewing his trademark top hat, white tie, and tails, which he hated. Instead, he favored a breezy casual style of tailored sport jackets, colored shirts, and slacks—the latter usually held up by the distinctive use of an old tie or silk scarf in place of a belt.
On June 24, 1980, at the age of 81, he married a second time. Robyn Smith was 45 years his junior and a jockey who rode for Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr. and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated on July 31, 1972.
Astaire’s life has never been portrayed on film. He always refused permission for such portrayals, saying, “However much they offer me—and offers come in all the time—I shall not sell.” Astaire’s will included a clause requesting that no such portrayal ever take place; he commented, “It is there because I have no particular desire to have my life misinterpreted, which it would be.” On December 5, 2021, Tom Holland announced that he would be portraying Astaire in an upcoming biopic, which attracted criticism due to the clause.
Astaire died of pneumonia on June 22, 1987, at the age of 88. His body was buried at Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. One of his last requests was to thank his fans for their years of support.
Astaire won numerous awards in various categories as well as accomplishing many other achievements. They are as followed: In 1938 He was invited to place his hand and footprints in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood; In 1950 Ginger Rogers presented an Academy Honorary Award to Astaire “for his unique artistry and his contributions to the technique of musical pictures”; Also in 1950 he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for the Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Three Little Words; In 1958, Astaire won the Emmy Award for “Best Single Performance by an Actor” for An Evening with Fred Astaire; In 1959 he won a Dance Magazine award; In 1960, he was nominated for Emmy Award for “Program Achievement” for Another Evening with Fred Astaire; In 1960, he won the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for “Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures”; Also in 1960, he was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star at 6756 Hollywood Boulevard for his contributions to the film industry; In 1961 he won the Emmy Award for “Program Achievement” for Astaire Time; Also in 1961 he was Voted Champion of Champions – Best Television performer in annual television critics and columnists poll conducted by Television Today and Motion Picture Daily; In 1965 he won the George Eastman Award from the George Eastman House for “outstanding contributions to motion pictures”; In 1968 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the International Best Dressed List; Also in 1968 he was nominated for an Emmy Award for Musical Variety Program for The Fred Astaire Show; In 1972 he was named Musical Comedy Star of the Century by Liberty: The Nostalgia Magazine; In 1972 he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame; In 1973 he was the subject of a Gala by the Film Society of Lincoln Center; In 1975 he was nominated for an Academy Award for The Towering Inferno; In 1975 he won a Golden Globe for “Best Supporting Actor”, BAFTA and David di Donatello awards for The Towering Inferno; In 1975, “You Gave Me the Answer”, a song by Wings written by Paul McCartney in Astaire’s style and was dedicated to him in concert; In 1978 he won an Emmy Award for “Best Actor – Drama or Comedy Special” for A Family Upside Down; Also in 1978 he was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences; Again in 1978, he was the first recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors; Finally in 1978 he won a National Artist Award from the American National Theatre Association for “contributing immeasurably to the American Theatre”; In 1981 he won The Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute; In 1982 The Anglo-American Contemporary Dance Foundation announced creation of the Astaire Awards “to honor Fred Astaire and his sister Adele and to reward the achievement of an outstanding dancer or dancers”; In 1987 he won the Capezio Dance Shoe Award; Also in 1987 he was inducted into the National Museum of Dance’s Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York; In 1989 he was awarded the Posthumous award of Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and Posthumous induction into the Television Hall of Fame; In 1991 he was Posthumous induction into the Ballroom Dancer’s Hall of Fame; Also in 1991 “Fred Astaire”, a song by Donna Summer was released on her Mistaken Identity album; In 1992 The Dancing House in Prague is originally named “Fred and Ginger”; In 1999 he was posthumously awarded of Grammy Hall of Fame Award for 1952 The Astaire Story album and “Just Like Fred Astaire”, a single by the English rock band James is released; In 2000, Ava Astaire McKenzie unveiled a plaque in honor of her father, erected by the citizens of Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland and “Fred Astaire”, a song by Lucky Boys Confusion is released; In 2003 he is referenced in the animated feature The Triplets of Belleville, in which Astaire is eaten by his shoes after a fast-paced dance act; In 2004 The “Adele and Fred Astaire Ballroom” was added on the top floor of Gottlieb Storz Mansion in Astaire’s hometown of Omaha; In 2006, “Fred Astaire” single is released by the California rock band Lamps; In 2008, his life and work is honored at Oriel College, Oxford; In 2011 and 2013 “Fred Astaire”, a song, in a Portuguese and a later English version by Clarice Falcão is released; In 2012: “Fred Astaire”, a single and video by San Cisco is released; In 2018 “Fred Astaire”, a single by Jukebox The Ghost is released; In 2019 “Movement”, a single by Hozier, references Astaire in its lyrics; Finally, An untitled biopic is in development at Sony Pictures, starring Tom Holland. Lee Hall is rewriting a script original written by Noah Pink and Paul King will be the director. The project centers on the relationship between Fred and his sister Adele. The release date has yet to be determined.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Elizabeth Hartman.
Elizabeth Hartman was an American actress of the stage and screen. She debuted in the popular 1965 film A Patch of Blue, playing a blind girl named Selina D’Arcy, opposite Sidney Poitier, a role for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, and won the Golden Globe award for New Star of the Year.
She appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now as Barbara Darling, for which she was nominated for a second Golden Globe Award.
She also starred in Don Siegel’s The Beguiled opposite Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page, and in the 1973 film Walking Tall.
On stage, Hartman is remembered for her interpretations of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, for which she won Ohio’s “Actress of the Year” award, and Emily Webb in the 1969 Broadway production of Our Town. Hartman retired from acting in 1982 after portraying Mrs. Brisby in Don Bluth’s first animated feature, The Secret of NIMH (1982).
In 1964, Hartman was screen-tested by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Brothers. In the early autumn of 1964, she was offered a leading role in A Patch of Blue, opposite Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. The role won widespread critical acclaim for Hartman, a fact proudly noted by the news media in her hometown. During this time, her father, who worked in construction, died. The role also won an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Hartman. At the time of her nomination in 1966, Elizabeth Hartman (who was 23 years old) was the youngest nominee ever in the Best Actress category. That same year, she received an achievement award from the National Association of Theatre Owners. Hartman also won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year for her performance. In 1966, she starred as Laura opposite Mercedes McCambridge as Amanda in a production of The Glass Menagerie in Pittsburgh.
In January 1967, columnist Dorothy Manners reported that Hartman had been cast in the role of Neely O’Hara in the movie version of Valley of the Dolls, beating out some more famous Hollywood actresses. She had allegedly made a successful screen test winning over director Mark Robson and producer David Weisbart, the former already enthralled with her performance in You’re a Big Boy Now. However, the following month, it was announced that Oscar-winner Patty Duke had signed on to play Neely, albeit against her agent’s advice. Duke’s over the top performance almost ruined her career.
Between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Hartman appeared in three well-received films, two of which starred Broadway and Hollywood legend Geraldine Page, The Group (1966), You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), and The Beguiled (1971). Portraying Pauline Mullins, the wife of former Sheriff Buford Pusser, she starred in the cult classic and major box office hit Walking Tall (1973). In 1975, Hartman starred in the premiere of Tom Rickman’s play Balaam, a play about political intrigue in Washington, D.C. The production was mounted in Old Town Pasadena, California, by the Pasadena Repertory Theatre located in The Hotel Carver. It was directed by Hartman’s husband, Gill Dennis. In 1981, she starred in a touring production of Morning’s at Seven, but left the tour due to declining mental health. Her last on-screen performance was in 1981’s horror-spoof, Full Moon High, where she appeared as Miss Montgomery. In 1982, she appeared in Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH, where she portrayed the film’s protagonist, Mrs. Brisby. She was highly praised for the performance; however, this proved to be her last Hollywood film role.
Throughout much of her life, Hartman suffered from depression. In 1978, she was treated at The Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1984, she divorced her husband, screenwriter Gill Dennis, after a five-year separation. In the last few years of her life, she gave up acting altogether and worked at a museum in Pittsburgh while receiving treatment for her condition at an outpatient clinic. In 1981, she returned to theater, portraying Myrtle Brown in a regional stage production of Morning’s at Seven. Her sister and caretaker, Janet, told the Los Angeles Times:
“She was very suicidal… As soon as I arrived, she took an overdose of sleeping pills and was rushed to intensive care. But, the next night, she appeared on stage and she was wonderful. I spent two weeks with her to try to get her to the theater every night. She was frightened of everyone and everything. We’d go to breakfast, and she’d get up and dash out as though somebody was after her”.
On June 10, 1987, Hartman died after jumping from the window of her fifth floor apartment. Earlier that morning, she had reportedly called her psychiatrist saying that she felt despondent. Hartman was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in her hometown.
Initial newspaper reports of Hartman’s suicide were vague, mainly because detectives were unable to identify the body; and because she had become a recluse years earlier, Hartman’s neighbors did not know for sure who she was, either.
Among the few friends who remained close from her Hollywood days were Francis Ford Coppola and Geraldine Page, both of whom continued to communicate with and support Hartman throughout her life and career. Page, who co-starred with Hartman in two film productions, died of a heart attack on June 13, 1987. News of Hartman’s suicide was published on page 28 of The New York Times on June 12, 1987.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Douglas Sirk.
Douglas Sirk was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Sirk started his career in Germany as a stage and screen director, but he left for Hollywood in 1937 after his Jewish wife was persecuted by the Nazis.
In the 1950s, he achieved his greatest commercial success with film melodramas Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, and Imitation of Life. While those films were initially panned by critics as sentimental women’s pictures, they are today widely regarded by film directors, critics, and scholars as masterpieces. His work is seen as “critique of the bourgeoisie in general and of 1950s America in particular”, while painting a “compassionate portrait of characters trapped by social conditions”. Beyond the surface of the film, Sirk worked with complex mises-en-scène and lush Technicolor to underline his statements.
Sirk’s melodramas of the 1950s, while highly commercially successful, were generally very poorly received by reviewers. His films were considered unimportant (because they revolve around female and domestic issues), banal (because of their focus on larger-than-life feelings) and unrealistic (because of their conspicuous and distinctive style). Their often melodramatic manner was viewed by critics as being in bad taste.
Attitudes toward Sirk’s films changed drastically in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as his work was re-examined by French, American, and British critics. As Jean-Luc Godard wrote in his review of A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), “…I am going to write a madly enthusiastic review of Douglas Sirk’s latest film, simply because it set my cheeks afire.”
The major critical reappraisal of Sirk began in France with the April 1967 issue of Cahiers du cinéma, which included an extended interview with Sirk by Serge Daney and Jean-Louis Noames, an appreciation by Jean-Louis Comolli (“The Blind Man and the Mirror or The Impossible Cinema of Douglas Sirk”), and a “biofilmographie” compiled by Patrick Brion and Dominique Rabourdin. Leading American critic Andrew Sarris praised Sirk in his 1968 book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968, although Sirk failed to qualify for Sarris’ controversial “pantheon” of great directors. From around 1970 there was a burgeoning interest among academic film scholars for Sirk’s work – especially his American melodramas. The seminal work in this field was Jon Halliday’s book-length interview, Sirk on Sirk (1971) which presented Sirk as “… a sophisticated intellectual, a filmmaker who arrived in Hollywood with a very clear vision, leaving behind him an established career in German theater and film”.
Several major revival seasons of Sirk’s films followed over the next few years, including a 20-film retrospective at the 1972 Edinburgh Festival (which Sirk attended), which also generated a book of essays. In 1974 the University of Connecticut Film Society programmed a complete retrospective of the director’s American films, and invited Sirk to attend, but on the way to the airport, for the flight to New York, Sirk suffered a hemorrhage that seriously impaired the vision in his left eye.
Analyses of Sirk’s work, with their emphases on aspects of Sirk’s formerly-criticized style, revealed an oblique criticism of American society hidden beneath a banal facade of plotting conventional for the era – Sirk’s films were now seen as masterpieces of irony. The criticism of the 1970s and early 1980s was dominated by an ideological take on Sirk’s work, gradually changing from Marxist-inspired visions in the early 1970s, to a focus on gender and sexuality in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Film critic Roger Ebert has said, “To appreciate a film like Written on the Wind probably takes more sophistication to understand than one of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpieces, because Bergman’s themes are visible and underlined, while with Sirk the style conceals the message.”
Sirk’s reputation was also helped by a widespread nostalgia for old-fashioned Hollywood films in the 1970s. His work is now widely considered to show excellent control of visuals, extending from lighting and framing to costumes and sets that are saturated with symbolism and shot through with subtle barbs of irony.
Sirk’s films have been quoted in films by directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder (whose Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is partly based on All That Heaven Allows) and, later, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar, Wong Kar-wai, David Lynch, John Waters and Lars von Trier. More specifically, Almodóvar’s vibrant use of color in 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown recalls the cinematography of Sirk’s films of the 1950s, while Haynes’ Far From Heaven was a conscious attempt to replicate a typical Sirk melodrama—in particular All That Heaven Allows. Tarantino paid homage to Sirk and his melodramatic style in Pulp Fiction, when character Vincent Vega, at a ’50s-themed restaurant, orders the “Douglas Sirk steak” cooked “bloody as hell”. Aki Kaurismäki alluded to Sirk as well; in his silent film, Juha, the villain’s sports car is named “Sierck”. Sirk was also one of the directors mentioned by Guillermo del Toro in his Oscar acceptance speech for Best Picture for The Shape of Water: “Growing up in Mexico as a kid, I was a big admirer of foreign films. Foreign film, like E.T., William Wyler, or Douglas Sirk, or Frank Capra.” Polyester (1981) directed by Waters was, according to Waters, informed by Sirk’s Universal melodramas.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Dick Shawn
Dick Shawn was an American actor and comedian. He played a wide variety of supporting roles and was a prolific character actor. During the 1960s, he played small roles in madcap comedies, usually portraying caricatures of counter culture personalities, such as the hedonistic but mother-obsessed Sylvester Marcus in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and the hippie actor Lorenzo Saint DuBois (“L.S.D.”) in The Producers (1967). Besides his film work, he appeared in numerous television shows from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Born in Buffalo, New York and raised in nearby Lackawanna, Shawn performed his stand-up comedy act for over 35 years in nightclubs around the world. His award-winning one-man stage show, The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World, was sometimes performed with a unique opening. When the audience entered the theater, they saw a bare stage with a pile of bricks in the stage center. When the play began, Shawn emerged from the pile of bricks. The startling effect of this required complete concentration and breath control because the slightest movement of the bricks could ruin the surprise appearance.
In addition to roles in more than 30 movies and seven Broadway productions, Shawn made television appearances, toured often, and periodically performed a one-man show that mixed songs, sketches, and pantomime. He was a speaker at the Friars Club Roasts in Los Angeles and New York. At one of the X-rated roasts (a 1986 Playboy roast of Tommy Chong) that had overdosed on tasteless routines by previous speakers, Shawn walked up to the microphone, took a long pause, and “vomited” pea soup onto himself and other speakers at the dais.
In the Mel Brooks 1967 movie The Producers, Shawn won accolades for his portrayal of Lorenzo St. DuBois, whose “friends call” him LSD, an actor auditioning for and winning the part of Hitler in a theatrical production that was intentionally meant to fail.
Shawn’s television appearances included The Ed Sullivan Show, TV movies, sitcoms (including Three’s Company on which he played Jack Tripper’s father), dramas including St. Elsewhere and Magnum, P.I., and a music video for “Dance” by the hair metal band Ratt (1986). In the UK he appeared in Sunday Night at the London Palladium in 1958.
Amongst his roles in anthology TV series, he starred in an Amazing Stories episode “Miss Stardust”, directed by Tobe Hooper, about a bizarre intergalactic beauty pageant, and played the Emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes for Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre. He filled in for vacationing Johnny Carson as guest host on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on January 1, 1971, which saw the airing of the last cigarette commercial on American television (for Virginia Slims), one minute before the cigarette ads were banned.
On April 17, 1987, during a performance at University of California, San Diego’s Mandeville Hall, Shawn suffered a heart attack and collapsed face-down on the stage. The audience initially assumed that it was part of his act; but after he had remained motionless on the stage for several minutes, a stagehand examined him and asked if a physician was present.
After CPR had been initiated, the audience was asked to leave the auditorium. Most in attendance remained, still assuming that it was all part of Shawn’s act and only began leaving after paramedics arrived. A notice in the following day’s San Diego Union newspaper announced that Shawn had died during the performance at the age of 63. Shawn was interred at Hillside Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California. Jim Knipfel claims that Andy Kaufman was inspired by Shawn and actor Matthew Glave portrayed Shawn in Leave ‘Em Laughing, a short film surrounding his final moments.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Danny Kaye.
Danny Kaye was an American actor, comedian, singer and dancer. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs. Kaye starred in 17 films, notably Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1955). His films were popular, especially for his performances of patter songs and favorites such as “Inchworm” and “The Ugly Duckling”. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honour in 1986 for his years of work with the organization.
In 1937, Kaye’s film debut came from a contract with New York-based Educational Pictures for a series of two-reel comedies. He usually played a manic, dark-haired, fast-talking Russian in these low-budget shorts, opposite young hopefuls June Allyson and Imogene Coca. The Kaye series ended abruptly when the studio shut down in 1938. He was working in the Catskills in 1937 under the name Danny Kolbin.
His next venture was a short-lived Broadway show with Sylvia Fine as the pianist, lyricist, and composer. The Straw Hat Revue opened on September 29, 1939, and closed after ten weeks, but critics noticed Kaye’s work. The reviews brought an offer for both Kaye and his bride Sylvia to work at La Martinique, a New York City nightclub. Kaye performed with Sylvia as his accompanist. At La Martinique, playwright Moss Hart saw Danny perform, and that led to Hart’s casting him in his hit Broadway comedy Lady in the Dark.
In 1941, aged 30, Kaye scored a triumph playing Russell Paxton in Lady in the Dark, starring Gertrude Lawrence. His show-stopping number was “Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)” by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin in which he sang the names of a string of Russian composers at breakneck speed, seemingly without taking a breath. In the next Broadway season, he was the star of a show about a young man who is drafted called Let’s Face It!.
His feature film debut was in producer Samuel Goldwyn’s Technicolor 1944 comedy Up in Arms, a remake of Goldwyn’s Eddie Cantor comedy Whoopee! (1930). Rival producer Robert M. Savini cashed in by compiling three of Kaye’s Educational Pictures shorts into a patchwork feature entitled The Birth of a Star (1945). Studio mogul Goldwyn wanted Kaye’s prominent nose fixed to look less Jewish; Kaye refused, but he did allow his red hair to be dyed blond, apparently because it looked better in Technicolor.
Kaye starred in a radio program, The Danny Kaye Show, on CBS from 1945–46. The program’s popularity rose quickly. Within a year, he tied with Jimmy Durante for fifth place in the Radio Daily popularity poll. Kaye was asked to participate in a USO tour following the end of World War II. It meant that he would be absent from his radio show for nearly two months at the beginning of the season. Kaye’s friends filled in with a different guest host each week. Kaye was the first American actor to visit postwar Tokyo. He had toured there some ten years before with the vaudeville troupe. When Kaye asked to be released from his radio contract in mid-1946, he agreed not to accept a regular radio show for one year and only limited guest appearances on other radio programs. Many of the show’s episodes survive today, notable for Kaye’s opening signature patter (“Git gat gittle, giddle-di-ap, giddle-de-tommy, riddle de biddle de roop, da-reep, fa-san, skeedle de woo-da, fiddle de wada, reep!”).
Kaye starred in several movies with actress Virginia Mayo in the 1940s and is known for films such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), On the Riviera (1951) co-starring Gene Tierney, Knock on Wood (1954), White Christmas (1954), The Court Jester (1956), and Merry Andrew (1958). Kaye starred in two pictures based on biographies, Hans Christian Andersen (1952) the Danish storyteller and The Five Pennies (1959) about jazz pioneer Red Nichols. His wife, writer/lyricist Sylvia Fine, wrote many tongue-twisting songs for which Kaye became famous. She was also an associate film producer. Some of Kaye’s films included the theme of doubles, two people who look identical (both Danny Kaye) being mistaken for each other to comic effect.
While his wife wrote most of Kaye’s material, he created much of it himself, often while performing. Kaye had one character he never shared with the public; Kaplan, the owner of a rubber company, came to life only for family and friends. His wife, Sylvia, described the Kaplan character:
He doesn’t have any first name. Even his wife calls him just Kaplan. He’s an illiterate, pompous character who advertises his philanthropies. Jack Benny or Dore Schary might say, “Kaplan, why do you hate unions so?” If Danny feels like doing Kaplan that night, he might be off on Kaplan for two hours.
When he appeared at the London Palladium in 1948, he “roused the Royal family to laughter and was the first of many performers who have turned British variety into an American preserve.” Life magazine described his reception as “worshipful hysteria” and noted that the royal family, for the first time, left the royal box to watch from the front row of the orchestra. He related that he had no idea of the familial connections when the Marquess of Milford Haven introduced himself after a show and said he would like his cousins to see Kaye perform. Kaye stated he never returned to the venue because there was no way to recreate the magic of that time. Kaye had an invitation to return to London for a Royal Variety Performance in November of the same year. When the invitation arrived, Kaye was busy with The Inspector General (which had a working title of Happy Times). Warner Bros. stopped the film to allow their star to attend. When his Decca labelmates The Andrews Sisters began their engagement at the London Palladium on the heels of Kaye’s successful 1948 appearance there, the trio was well received and David Lewin of the Daily Express declared: “The audience gave the Andrews Sisters the Danny Kaye roar!”
He hosted the 24th Academy Awards in 1952. The program was broadcast on radio; telecasts of the Oscar ceremony came later. During the 1950s, Kaye visited Australia, where he played Buttons in a production of Cinderella in Sydney. In 1953, Kaye started a production company, Dena Pictures, named for his daughter. Knock on Wood was the first film produced by his firm. The firm expanded into television in 1960 under the name Belmont Television.
Kaye entered television in 1956, on the CBS show See It Now with Edward R. Murrow. The Secret Life of Danny Kaye combined his 50,000-mile, ten-country tour as UNICEF ambassador with music and humor. His first solo effort was in 1960 with a one-hour special produced by Sylvia and sponsored by General Motors, with similar specials in 1961 and 1962.
He hosted The Danny Kaye Show from 1963 to 1967; it won four Emmy awards and a Peabody award. His last cinematic starring role came in 1963’s The Man from the Diners’ Club.
Beginning in 1964, he acted as television host to the CBS telecasts of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Kaye did a stint as a What’s My Line? mystery guest on the Sunday-night CBS-TV quiz program. Kaye was later a guest panelist on that show. He also appeared on the interview program Here’s Hollywood. In the 1970s, Kaye tore a ligament in his leg during the run of the Richard Rodgers musical Two by Two, but went on with the show, appearing with his leg in a cast and cavorting on stage in a wheelchair. He had done much the same on his television show in 1964, when his right leg and foot were burned from a cooking accident. Camera shots were planned so television viewers did not see Kaye in his wheelchair.
In 1976, he played Geppetto in a television musical adaptation of Pinocchio with Sandy Duncan in the title role. Kaye portrayed Captain Hook opposite Mia Farrow in a musical version of Peter Pan featuring songs by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse. He later guest-starred in episodes of The Muppet Show and The Cosby Show, and in the 1980s revival The Twilight Zone.
In many films, as well as on stage, Kaye proved to be an able actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. He showed his serious side as ambassador for UNICEF and in his dramatic role in the memorable TV film Skokie, when he played a Holocaust survivor. Before his death in 1987, Kaye conducted an orchestra during a comical series of concerts organized for UNICEF fundraising. Kaye received two Academy Awards: an Academy Honorary Award in 1955 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1982. That year he received the Screen Actors Guild Annual Award.
In 1980, Kaye hosted and sang in the 25th anniversary of Disneyland celebration and hosted the opening celebration for Epcot in 1982 (EPCOT Center at the time). Both were aired on primetime television in the U.S.
While Kaye claimed he could not read music, he was said to have perfect pitch. A flamboyant performer with his own distinctive style, “easily adapting from outrageous novelty songs to tender ballads” (according to critic Jason Ankeny), in 1945 Kaye began hosting his own CBS radio program, in which he performed a number of hit songs, including “Dinah” and “Minnie the Moocher”.
In 1947, Kaye teamed up with The Andrews Sisters (Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne) on Decca Records, producing the No. 3 Billboard hit “Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)”. The success of the pairing prompted both acts to record through 1950, producing such rhythmically comical fare as “The Woody Woodpecker Song” (based on the bird from the Walter Lantz cartoons and a Billboard hit for the quartet), “Put ’em in a Box, Tie ’em with a Ribbon (And Throw ’em in the Deep Blue Sea)”, “The Big Brass Band from Brazil”, “It’s a Quiet Town (In Crossbone County)”, “Amelia Cordelia McHugh (Mc Who?)”, “Ching-a-ra-sa-sa”, and a duet by Danny and Patty Andrews of “Orange Colored Sky”. The acts teamed for two yuletide favorites: a frantic, harmonic rendition of “A Merry Christmas at Grandmother’s House (Over the River and Through the Woods)” and a duet by Danny and Patty, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”.
Kaye’s debut album, Columbia Presents Danny Kaye, had been released in 1942 by Columbia Records with songs performed to the accompaniment of Maurice Abravanel and Johnny Green. The album was reissued as a Columbia LP in 1949 and is described by the critic Bruce Eder as “a bit tamer than some of the stuff that Kaye hit with later in the ’40s and in the ’50s and, for reasons best understood by the public, doesn’t attract nearly the interest of his kids’ records and overt comedy routines”.
In 1950, a Decca single, “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts”, was released, and became another chart hit for him. His second Columbia LP album Danny Kaye Entertains (1953, Columbia) included five songs recorded in 1941 from his Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, most notably “Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)”.
Following the success of the film Hans Christian Andersen (1952), two of its songs written by Frank Loesser and sung by Kaye, “Thumbelina” and “Wonderful Copenhagen”, reached the charts: the former title became a minor US hit, and the latter reached No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart. In 1953, Decca released Danny at the Palace, a live recording made at the New York Palace Theater, followed by Knock On Wood (Decca, 1954) a set of songs from the movie of the same name sung by Kaye, accompanied by Victor Young and His Singing Strings.
In 1956, Kaye signed a three-year recording contract with Capitol Records, which released his single “Love Me Do” in December of that year. The B-side, “Ciu Ciu Bella”, with lyrics written by Sylvia Fine, was inspired by an episode in Rome when Kaye, on a mission for UNICEF, befriended a 7-year-old polio victim in a children’s hospital, who sang this song for him in Italian.
In 1958, Saul Chaplin and Johnny Mercer wrote songs for Merry Andrew, a film starring Kaye as a British teacher attracted to the circus. The score added up to six numbers, all sung by Kaye; conductor Billy May’s 1950 composition “Bozo’s Circus Band” (renamed “Music of the Big Top Circus Band”) was deposited on the second side of the Merry Andrew soundtrack, released in 1958. A year later, another soundtrack came out, for The Five Pennies (in which Kaye starred as 1920s cornet player Red Nichols), featuring Louis Armstrong.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Kaye regularly conducted world-famous orchestras, although he had to learn the scores by ear. Kaye’s style, even if accompanied by unpredictable antics (he once traded the baton for a fly swatter to conduct “The Flight of the Bumblebee”) was praised by the likes of Zubin Mehta, who once stated that Kaye “has a very efficient conducting style”. His ability with an orchestra was mentioned by Dimitri Mitropoulos, then conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After Kaye’s appearance Mitropoulos remarked, “Here is a man who is not musically trained, who cannot even read music and he gets more out of my orchestra than I have.” Kaye was invited to conduct symphonies as charity fundraisers and was the conductor of the all-city marching band at the season opener of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984. Over his career, he raised over US$5 million in support of musician pension funds.
In 1958, Kaye and partner Lester Smith formed Kaye–Smith Enterprises. The company owned a chain of radio stations, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Other Kaye–Smith divisions included a concert promotion company, a video production company, and a recording studio. Kaye sold his share of the company to the Smith family in 1985.
A lifelong Dodgers fan, Kaye recorded a song called “The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song (Oh really? No, O’Malley!)”, describing a fictitious encounter with the San Francisco Giants, a hit during the real-life pennant chase of 1962. That song is included on Baseball’s Greatest Hits compact discs. A good friend of Leo Durocher, he often traveled with the team. He also possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and was an accomplished second baseman.
Kaye and his business partner Lester Smith also led an investment group which was awarded the American League’s thirteenth franchise, which became the Seattle Mariners for US$6.2 million on February 7, 1976. The ownership percentages of Kaye, Smith and two other remaining original investors were reduced to 5 percent each when George Argyros purchased 80 percent of the Mariners for $10.4 million on January 30, 1981. Kaye sold all of his business interests to Smith’s family in 1985.
Kaye was also an honorary member of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Working alongside UNICEF’s Halloween fundraiser founder, Ward Simon Kimball Jr., the actor educated the public on impoverished children in deplorable living conditions overseas and assisted in the distribution of donated goods and funds. His involvement with UNICEF came about in an unusual way. Kaye was flying home from London in 1949 when one of the plane’s four engines lost its propeller and caught fire. The problem was initially thought serious enough that it might make an ocean landing; life jackets and life rafts were made ready. The plane was able to head back over 500 miles (804.67 km) to land at Shannon Airport, Ireland. On the way back to Shannon, the head of the Children’s Fund, Maurice Pate, had the seat next to Danny Kaye and spoke at length about the need for recognition for the fund. Their discussion continued on the flight from Shannon to New York; it was the beginning of the actor’s long association with UNICEF.
“For all of his success as a performer (…) his greatest legacy remains his tireless humanitarian work—so close were his ties to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) that when the organization received the Nobel Peace Prize, Kaye was tapped to accept it”, according to music critic Jason Ankeny.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Clarence Brown.
Clarence Brown was an American film director. After serving as a fighter pilot and flight instructor in the United States Army Air Service during World War I, Brown was given his first co-directing credit (with Maurice Tourneur) for The Great Redeemer (1920). Later that year, he directed a major portion of The Last of the Mohicans after Tourneur was injured in a fall.
Brown moved to Universal in 1924, and then to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he remained until the mid-1950s. At MGM he was one of the main directors of their major female stars; he directed Joan Crawford six times and Greta Garbo seven.
Brown was nominated six times for an Academy Award as a director, but he never received an Oscar. However, he won Best Foreign Film for Anna Karenina, starring Garbo at the 1935 Venice International Film Festival.
Brown’s films gained a total of 38 Academy Award nominations and earned nine Oscars. Brown himself received six Academy Award nominations and in 1949, he won the British Academy Award for the film version of William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust.
In 1957, Brown was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. Brown retired a wealthy man due to his real estate investments, but refused to watch new movies, as he feared they might cause him to restart his career.
The Clarence Brown Theater, on the campus of the University of Tennessee, is named in his honor. He holds the record for most nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director without a win, with six.
During the Academy Awards for 1929-1930, Brown was nominated for Best Director for Anna Christie and Romance, but ultimately lost to Lewis Milestone for All Quiet on the Western Front. He was nominated for the same award during the 1930-1931 Academy Awards for A Free Soul, but lost to Norman Taurog for Skippy. Again, Brown was nominated in 1943 for The Human Comedy but lost to Michael Curtiz for Casablanca. He lost again in 1945, when he nominated for National Velvet; The winner for Best Director being Billy Wilder for The Lost Weekend. Finally, Brown was nominated for Best Director one last time in 1946 for The Yearling but lost to William Wyler for The Best Years of Our Lives.
Brown died at the Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California from kidney failure on August 17, 1987, at the age of 97. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. On February 8, 1960, Brown received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1752 Vine Street, for his contributions to the motion pictures industry.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Clare Boothe Luce.
Clare Boothe Luce was an American writer, politician, U.S. ambassador, and public conservative figure. A versatile author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play The Women, which had an all-female cast. Her writings extended from drama and screen scenarios to fiction, journalism, and war reportage. She was married to Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.
Politically, Luce was a leading conservative in later life and was well known for her anti-communism. In her youth, she briefly aligned herself with the liberalism of President Franklin Roosevelt as a protégé of Bernard Baruch but later became an outspoken critic of Roosevelt. Although she was a strong supporter of the Anglo-American alliance in World War II, she remained outspokenly critical of British colonialism in India.
Known as a charismatic and forceful public speaker, especially after her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1946, she campaigned for every Republican presidential candidate from Wendell Willkie to Ronald Reagan.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon named her to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). She remained on the board until President Jimmy Carter succeeded President Gerald Ford in 1977. By then, she had put down roots in Washington, D.C., that would become permanent in her last years. In 1979, she was the first woman to be awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point.
President Reagan reappointed Luce to PFIAB. She served on the board until 1983.
In 1986, Luce was the recipient of the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
President Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983. She was the first female member of Congress to receive this award. Upon presenting her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Reagan said this of Luce:
“A novelist, playwright, politician, diplomat, and advisor to Presidents, Clare Boothe Luce has served and enriched her country in many fields. Her brilliance of mind, gracious warmth and great fortitude have propelled her to exceptional heights of accomplishment. As a Congresswoman, Ambassador, and Member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Clare Boothe Luce has been a persistent and effective advocate of freedom, both at home and abroad. She has earned the respect of people from all over the world, and the love of her fellow Americans.”
Luce died of brain cancer on October 9, 1987, at age 84, at her Watergate apartment in Washington, D.C. She is buried at Mepkin Abbey, South Carolina, a plantation that she and Henry Luce had once owned and given to a community of Trappist monks. She lies in a grave adjoining her mother, daughter, and husband.
Revered in her later years as a heroine of the feminist movement, Luce had mixed feelings about the role of women in society. As a congresswoman in 1943, she was invited to co-sponsor a submission of the Equal Rights Amendment, offered by Representative Louis Ludlow of Indiana, but claimed that the invitation got lost in her mail. Luce never ceased to advise women to marry and provide supportive homes for their husbands. (During her ambassadorial years, at a dinner in Luxembourg attended by many European dignitaries, Luce was heard declaring that all women wanted from men was “babies and security”.) Yet, her own professional career as a successful editor, writer, playwright, reporter, legislator, and diplomat remarkably showed how a woman of humble origins and no college education could raise herself to an escalating series of public heights. Luce bequeathed a large part of her personal fortune of some $50 million to an academic program, the Clare Boothe Luce Program, designed to encourage the entry of women into technological fields traditionally dominated by men. Because of her determination and unwillingness to let her gender stand in the way of her personal and professional achievements, Luce is considered to be an influential role model by many women. Starting from humble beginnings, Luce never allowed her initial poverty or her male counterparts’ lack of respect to keep her from achieving as much as if not more than many of the men surrounding her. In 2017, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Since 1989, the Clare Boothe Luce Program (CBLP) has become a significant source of private funding support for women in science, mathematics, and engineering. All awards must be used exclusively in the United States (not applicable for travel or study abroad). Student recipients must be U.S. citizens and faculty recipients must be citizens or permanent residents. Thus far, the program has supported more than 1,500 women. The terms of the bequest require the following criteria: at least fifty percent of the awards go to Roman Catholic colleges, universities, and one high school (Villanova Preparatory School); grants are made only to four-year degree-granting institutions, not directly to individuals.
The program is divided into three distinct categories: undergraduate scholarships and research awards; graduate and postdoctoral fellowships; tenure-track appointment support at the assistant or associate professorship level.
The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute (CBLPI) was founded in 1993 by Michelle Easton. The non-profit think tank seeks to advance American women through conservative ideas and espouses much the same philosophy as that of Clare Boothe Luce, in terms of both foreign and domestic policy. The CBLPI sponsors a program that brings conservative speakers to college campuses such as conservative commentator Ann Coulter. The Clare Boothe Luce Award, established in 1991, is The Heritage Foundation’s highest award for distinguished contributions to the conservative movement. Prominent recipients include Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and William F. Buckley Jr.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Cathryn Damon.
Cathryn Damon was an American actress known for her roles in sitcoms in the 1970s and 1980s. She was best known as Mary Campbell in Soap, for which she was nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, winning in 1980.
Damon was the elder daughter of Lee Frank Damon and Mary Cathryn Atwood. Her parents divorced and her mother married Walter A. Springer.
Damon was born in Seattle and raised in Tacoma and graduated from Stadium High School. As a child, she felt insecure, saying: “I never thought I was attractive enough. I never thought I was good enough.” She also felt as a child she was responsible for her parents’ divorce. She moved to New York City at age 16 to pursue ballet.
Damon began her career as a ballerina, dancing in the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Lee, Massachusetts, and performing with the Metropolitan Opera’s dance company.
Off-Broadway plays in which Damon appeared included The Boys From Syracuse and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. She appeared in several Broadway productions, including Shinbone Alley; Foxy; Flora, The Red Menace; The Boys from Syracuse; The Last of the Red Hot Lovers; Sweet Bird of Youth; and The Cherry Orchard. During the 1967-68 season, she understudied the roles of both Mame Dennis and Vera Charles in Angela Lansbury’s national tour of Mame.
Damon became familiar to television viewers as middle-class Mary Campbell on the primetime spoof of daytime soap operas aptly entitled Soap from 1977-81. However, many fans may not know that she was the third and final actress cast in the role. Producer Tony Thomas said, “Cathryn Damon was brilliant. A lot of people don’t know this, but we recast that to put her in it.” She later appeared with Soap co-star Eugene Roche on Webster from 1984-86. The pair played Cassie and Bill Parker, Webster’s landlords, on the hit series. Other television credits included guest roles on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Murder, She Wrote, Matlock, and Mike Hammer.
Damon, along with co-star and TV husband Richard Mulligan, won an Emmy Award for Soap in 1980 but could not appear in person to receive the award in person or give her speech, owing to an actors’ strike. Mulligan referred to his late co-star (whom he affectionately called “Toots”) and her strike-related absence when he received his second Best Actor Emmy more than a decade later for his role as Dr. Weston on the television series Empty Nest.
In 1986, Damon was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but continued acting in small roles up until shortly before her death a year later at age 56, on May 4, 1987. She died in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her final role, as Elizabeth McGovern’s mother in the movie She’s Having a Baby with Kevin Bacon, was released posthumously. She is interred in Acacia Memorial Park near Seattle.
A lot happened in the year 1987, including the debut of a family-friendly TV sitcom set in San Francisco. The name of the show was Full House, and we’ll be doing a deep dive into this popular comedy over the coming weeks.
But first, to get a sense of the times and trends that helped shape this series, here’s a notable obituary from 1987 — Buddy Rich.
Buddy Rich was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.
Rich was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He discovered his affinity for jazz music at a young age and began drumming at the age of two. He began playing jazz in 1937, working with acts such as Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James. From 1942 to 1944, Rich served in the U.S. Marines. From 1945 to 1948, he led the Buddy Rich Orchestra. In 1966, he recorded a big-band style arrangement of songs from West Side Story. He found lasting success in 1966 with the formation of the Buddy Rich Big Band, also billed as the Buddy Rich Band and The Big Band Machine.
Rich was known for his virtuoso technique, power, and speed. He was an advocate of the traditional grip, though he occasionally used matched grip when playing the toms. Despite his commercial success and musical talent, Rich never learned how to read sheet music, preferring to listen to drum parts and play them from memory.
His jazz career began in 1937 with clarinetist Joe Marsala. He became a member of big bands led by Bunny Berigan and Artie Shaw. When he was home from touring with Shaw, he gave drum lessons to a 14-year-old Mel Brooks for six months. At 21, he participated in his first major recording with the Vic Schoen Orchestra who backed the Andrews Sisters.
In 1942, Rich left the Dorsey band to join the United States Marine Corps, in which he served as a judo instructor and never saw combat. He was discharged in 1944 for medical reasons. After leaving the Marines, he returned to the Dorsey band. In 1946, with financial support from Frank Sinatra, he formed a band and continued to lead bands intermittently until the early 1950s.
Following the war, Rich formed his own big band, which often played at the Apollo Theater and featured backing vocals from Frank Sinatra.
In addition to playing with Tommy Dorsey (1939–42, 1945, 1954–55), Rich played with Benny Carter (1942), Harry James (1953–56–62, 1964, 1965), Les Brown, Charlie Ventura, Jazz at the Philharmonic, and Charlie Parker (Bird and Diz, 1950).
In 1955, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich recorded the collaboration album titled Krupa and Rich, which featured the song “Bernie’s Tune”, in which they traded drum solos for a total of six minutes.
From 1966 until his death, he led successful big bands in an era when their popularity had waned. He continued to play clubs but stated in interviews that the majority of his band’s performances were at high schools, colleges, and universities rather than clubs. He was a session drummer for many recordings, where his playing was often less prominent than in his big-band performances. Especially notable were sessions for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and the Oscar Peterson trio with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis. In 1968, Rich collaborated with the Indian tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha on the album Rich à la Rakha.
He performed a big-band arrangement of a medley from West Side Story that was released on the 1966 album Swingin’ New Big Band. The “West Side Story Medley”, arranged by Bill Reddie, highlighted Rich’s ability to blend his drumming into the band. Rich received the West Side Story arrangement of Leonard Bernstein’s melodies from the musical in the mid-1960s; he found the music quite challenging and it took him almost a month of constant rehearsal to perfect. It later became a staple of his live performances. A six-minute performance of “Prologue/Jet Song” from the suite, performed during Frank Sinatra’s portion of the Concert for the Americas on August 20, 1982, is on the DVD “Frank Sinatra: Concert for the Americas”. In 2002, a DVD was released called The Lost West Side Story Tapes that captured a 1985 performance of this along with other numbers.
In the 1950s, Rich was a frequent guest on The Steve Allen Show and other television variety shows, most notably on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Rich and Johnny were lifelong friends, and Johnny Carson was himself a drum enthusiast.
In 1973 PBS broadcast and syndicated Rich’s February 6, 1973, performance at the Top of the Plaza in Rochester, New York. It was the first-time thousands of drummers were exposed to Buddy in a full-length concert setting, and many drummers continue to name this program as a prime influence on their own playing. One of his most widely seen television performances was in a 1981 episode of The Muppet Show in which he engaged Muppet drummer Animal (performed by Frank Oz, drums played by Ronnie Verrell) in a drum battle. Rich’s famous televised drum battles also included Gene Krupa, Ed Shaughnessy and Louie Bellson. Perhaps the most viewed television appearance was on “Here’s Lucy” in the 1970 episode “Lucy And The Drum Contest”.
He usually held his sticks with the traditional grip. He used the matched grip when playing floor toms around the drum set while performing cross-stickings (crossing arm over arm), which was one of his party tricks, often leading to loud cheers from the audience. Another technique he used to impress was the stick-trick, a fast roll performed by slapping two drumsticks together in a circular motion using “taps’ ‘ or single-stroke stickings. He often used contrasting techniques to keep long drum solos from getting mundane. Aside from his energetic, explosive displays, he would go into quieter passages.
One passage he would use in most solos started with a simple single-stroke roll on the snare drum picking up speed and power, then slowly moving his sticks closer to the rim as he got quieter, and eventually playing on the rim itself while still maintaining speed. Then he would reverse the effect and slowly move towards the center of the snare while increasing power. Though well known as a powerful drummer, he did use brushes. On the album The Lionel Hampton Art Tatum Buddy Rich Trio (1955) he played with brushes almost exclusively.
In 1942, Rich and Henry Adler wrote Buddy Rich’s Modern Interpretation of Snare Drum Rudiments, which is regarded as one of the more popular snare drum rudiment books. Adler met Rich through a former student. Adler said, “The kid told me he played better than Krupa. Buddy was only in his teens at the time and his friend was my first pupil. Buddy played and I watched his hands. Well, he knocked me right out. He did everything I wanted to do, and he did it with such ease. When I met his folks, I asked them who his teacher was. ‘He never studied’, they told me. That made me feel very good. I realized that it was something physical, not only mental, that you had to have.”
Adler denied the rumor that he taught Rich how to play. “Sure, he studied with me, but he didn’t come to me to learn how to hold the drumsticks. I set out to teach Buddy to read. He’d take six lessons, go on the road for six weeks and come back. He didn’t practice. He couldn’t, because wherever the guy went, he was followed around by admiring drummers. He didn’t have time to practice. …Tommy Dorsey wanted Buddy to write a book and he told him to get in touch with me. I did the book and Tommy wrote the foreword. Technically, I was Buddy’s teacher, but I came along after he had already acquired his technique.”
When asked if Rich could read music, Bobby Shew, lead trumpeter in Rich’s mid-1960s big band replied, “No. He’d always have a drummer there during rehearsals to read and play the parts initially on new arrangements. Buddy would just sit in the empty audience seats in the afternoon and listen to the band. … He’d only have to listen to a chart once and he’d have it memorized. We’d run through it and he’d know exactly how it went, how many measures it ran and what he’d have to do to drive it.”
In a Modern Drummer interview, Buddy had this to say about practicing: “I don’t put much emphasis on practice anyhow. I think it’s a fallacy to believe that the more you practice, the better you become. You can only get better by playing. You can sit in a basement with a set of drums and practice rudiments all day long, but if you don’t play with a band, you won’t learn style, technique, and taste, and you won’t learn how to play for a band and with a band. It’s like getting a job, any kind of job, it’s an opportunity to develop. And practice, besides that, is boring. I know teachers who tell their students to practice three, four, six hours a day. If you can’t get what you want after an hour of practice, you’re not going to get it in four days.”
In the same article, Rich also discourages playing drums with one’s bare hands. When asked if he could do such a thing, he replied, ‘Yes, but why destroy your hands? I could think of a hundred ways to use my hands rather than to break them on the rim of a drum.
Rich’s technique, including speed, smooth execution and precision, is one of the most coveted in drumming and has become a common standard. Gene Krupa described him as “the greatest drummer ever to have drawn breath”. Roger Taylor, drummer of Queen, acknowledged Rich as the best drummer he ever saw for sheer technique. Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker has credited Rich as the greatest drummer of all time.
Rich’s influence extends from jazz to rock music, including drummers such as Dave Weckl, Vinnie Colaiuta, Adam Nussbaum, Simon Phillips, Hal Blaine, John Bonham, Carl Palmer, Ian Paice, Gregg Bissonette, Jojo Mayer, Tré Cool, and Bill Ward. Phil Collins stopped using two bass drums and started playing the hi-hat after reading Rich’s opinion on the importance of the hi-hat.
In 1980, Rich was awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music. In 1986, a year before his death, Rich was elected into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in the category of bandleader, and drum set player.
On September 30, 2017, Rich was honored with a Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. And in 2016, readers of Rolling Stone magazine ranked Rich No. 15 in their list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of all time. In a readers’ poll in 2011, he ranked No. 6.
Rich was notoriously short-tempered. Singer Dusty Springfield slapped him after several days of “putting up with Rich’s insults and show-biz sabotage”. He held a rivalry with Frank Sinatra which sometimes ended in brawls when both were members of Tommy Dorsey’s band. Nevertheless, they remained lifelong friends, and Sinatra delivered a eulogy at Rich’s funeral in 1987. In 1983, Rich underwent quadruple bypass surgery, and was often visited by Sinatra in the hospital. Billy Cobham said that he met Rich in a club as a youth asking him to sign his snare drum, but Rich “dropped it down the stairs”.
Rich held a black belt in karate, which proved beneficial to him, his temper, and his health. At the time, Rich was prone to heart attacks and poor back structure following a surgery removing two of his spinal disks.
Rich had a strong dislike of bandleaders. He claimed that the musicians “hardly look at the bandleader”, and that the drummer is the real “quarterback” of the band.
According to bassist Bill Crow, Rich reacted strongly to Max Roach’s increasing popularity when he was the drummer for Charlie Parker, especially when a jazz critic stated Roach had topped Rich as the world’s greatest drummer. Drummer John JR Robinson told Crow he was with Roach when Rich drove by with a beautiful woman seated next to him and yelled, “Hey, Max! Top this!” Nonetheless, the two worked together on the 1959 album Rich Versus Roach, and Roach appeared on the 1994 Rich tribute album Burning for Buddy.
Rich’s temper was documented in a series of secret recordings made on tour buses and in dressing rooms by pianist Lee Musiker, who concealed a compact tape recorder in his clothing while on tour with Rich in the early 1980s. On one recording, Rich threatens to fire trombonist Dave Panichi for having a beard. Although he threatened many times to fire members of his band, he seldom did so and, for the most part, praised his musicians in television and print interviews. The day before his death, April 1, 1987, Rich was visited by Mel Tormé, who claimed that one of Rich’s last requests was to hear the tapes of his angry outbursts. Tormé was working on an authorized biography of Rich and included excerpts of the tapes in the book, but he never played the tapes for Rich.
In Mel Tormé’s biography of Buddy, he notes that while Buddy was tough on his band, there were a few instances when some members stood up to him. One departing musician told Rich, “I came to this band to play music, not join the Marines!” Another instance was when an Australian musician loudly debated with Buddy on the bus.
Tormé also was familiar with Buddy’s dislike of rock, but he states that “when some of these rock drummers came to greet Buddy after a show, he was always charming and polite. And he never, at least in my presence, disparaged them in any way.” Rich held a low opinion of country music, considered “a giant step backwards” and “the young people … need to realize that there’s a lot more to music than just playing one chord or two chords”. During medical therapy before his death, a nurse asked Rich whether he was allergic to anything, to which he replied, “Yes, country and western music.”
Rich toured and performed until the end of his life. In early March 1987, he was touring in New York when he was hospitalized after suffering a paralysis on his left side that physicians believed had been caused by a stroke. He was transferred to California to UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles for tests, where doctors discovered and removed a brain tumor on March 16. He was discharged a week later, but continued to receive daily chemotherapy treatments at the hospital. On April 2, 1987, he died of unexpected respiratory and cardiac failure after a treatment related to the malignant brain tumor. His wife Marie and daughter Cathy buried him in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. He was 69. Since Rich’s death, a number of memorial concerts have been held. In 1994, the Rich tribute album Burning for Buddy: A Tribute to the Music of Buddy Rich was released. Produced by Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart, the album features performances of Rich staples by a number of jazz and rock drummers such as Joe Morello, Steve Gadd, Max Roach, Billy Cobham, Dave Weckl, Simon Phillips, Steve Smith and Peart, accompanied by the Buddy Rich Big Band. A second volume was issued in 1997. Phil Collins was featured in a DVD tribute organized by Rich’s daughter, A Salute to Buddy Rich, which included Steve Smith and Dennis Chambers.
SCREEN TIME WITH SAM 