It has been another 3 days since I’ve heard of any brilliant plan from the Gods on High regarding any new treatment and I am alternately wide awake or very sleepy when any rumor arrives. So far, it’s all turned out to be rumor, cause here I sit..jpg)
Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall, star of films such as "To Have and Have Not" and "Key Largo," died Tuesday at her home in New York City after suffering a stroke, according to reports.
She was 89.
The estate of her first husband, Humphrey Bogart, confirmed the news on Twitter.
Bacall's sultry appearance, smoky voice and provocative roles propelled her to fame, and would inspire generations of actresses. Her mastery of "The Look," a suggestive expression where she lowered her head and glanced up, has taken a place in Hollywood lore.
Bacall and Bogart met while filming 1944's "To Have And Have Not", the first of their four movies together. The couple married in 1945, had two children, and remained together until Bogart's death in 1957. Bacall would go without acting for almost 20 years after his death. (it was actually closer to 15 years.)
Born Betty Joan Perske on Sept. 16, 1924 in the Bronx, the actress had 72 film credits to her name. She began taking modeling and acting classes as a teen, and landed several walk-on roles in theater. A Harper's Bazaar editor hired her to model for the magazine, and she landed on the cover in 1943.
Bacall received her only Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in the 1996 film "The Mirror Has Two Faces," where she played Barbara Streisand's mother, but her list of accolades is indeed substantial. She won two Tony Awards for her stage performances and received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Career Achievement from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1992. In 1997, she received the Kennedy Center Honor, which the Los Angeles Times reports surprised her.
"Listen, I never went into this business thinking of winning anything," Bacall was quoted as saying. "I went into it because I loved it and I wanted to be good at it. It was a form of expression for me. I love to hide behind characters. So [any recognition] I get is a perk. It's just an extra. Just the fact that all that happened to me last year, it is -- well -- fabulous."
Bacall wrote two memoirs, including "Lauren Bacall: By Myself", which won a National Book Award in 1980.
Ronnie back in 1981. He and wife Sarah had a place here at the beach where they would come to rest and recoup after one or another medical procedure Brady endured just to function.
Nomenclature can get tricky when you think outside the box. What are we to call A Man From the Future, the Pet Shop Boys' tribute to mathematician Alan Turing, elegantly premiered last Wednesday at the Proms? A pop oratorio? A classical audiobiography?
It is narrated by Juliet Stevenson, unkindly housed in a shonky-looking plywood box behind the orchestra. Her steely, authoritative tones remain purposely impassive, a judge passing harsh sentence on an era, even when they describe the death of the Bletchley Park code-breaker's first love from tuberculosis. A lonely bell clangs for this boy called Chris. Later, it clangs for Turing himself, as the piece in eight movements draws to an intense close. We pop heathens do know not to clap in between them.
Turing died young of cyanide poisoning, an assumed suicide, after the innovative mathematician suffered chemical castration and lost his security clearance in the wake of a conviction for gross indecency. (Some do wonder whether his death was in fact suicide .)
His tale works as an operatic tragedy and this piece is extensively sung: by the BBC Singers, augmented by Neil Tennant, who frequently refers to a score housed in a large red folder. They function like a Greek chorus, repeating Stevenson's words theatrically, picking out phrases to drum home. "Can you feel what I think? Do you feel what I feel?" they demand, teasing out the elements of Turing's outer and inner lives. The Enigma code-breaker imagined a "universal machine" that could compute, as far back as the war; boxes, now called computers, that could think outside the box. Turing's innermost feelings, of course, ran painfully counter to the law of the day, and the discussion of his gay leanings gets a breezy, almost swinging treatment, full of longing.
Mainly, though, this tribute is lavishly orchestrated. The BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Dominic Wheeler, is doing the heavy lifting tonight. As the piece is often stirring or sad, the strings out-rank the brass and woodwind; I would have liked to hear more from the less strident corners of the ensemble. PSB synth jockey Chris Lowe is hidden at the very back beside some sound guys, identifiable only by a pair of fat red headphones and a baseball cap. Magnificently diffident, clad in shades and jeans, he comes down at the end and doesn't bow.
Turing's story is deeply affecting, and the telling of it by an establishment organisation (the BBC, which runs the Proms) in an establishment venue (the Royal Albert Hall) in an establishment idiom (classical) is cause for celebration. We have come far since sodomy and treachery were felt to be synonymous by the state. (Or have we? Gay men who weren't Enigma code-breakers remain unpardoned.)
But we really could have done with more from Lowe, and modernity more widely. Turing was, after all, a man from The Future. Even given the operatic nature of his tale and the rarefied Proms setting, wrapping this man up in strings seems a contradictory impulse. The very best passages here recall Giorgio by Moroder, a terrific electronic narrative from last year's Daft Punk album, such as when Lowe's vintage analogue sounds, laptop emissions and some unexpected beats (from a man hitting his cello, an excellent touch) penetrate the swell of the classical players.
Actress Elaine Stritch, star of Broadway hits including “Elaine Stritch at Liberty” and “Show Boat,” who was nominated for multiple Tonys and Emmys, winning three of the latter, has died. She was 89.
Stritch made her stage debut at New York’s New School in 1944. The actress understudied Ethel Merman for “Call Me Madam” while simultaneously appearing in the 1952 revival of “Pal Joey”; later she starred in the national tour of “Call Me Madam.”
Her professional relationship with Sondheim lasted decades. She made famous Sondheim’s sneeringly witty tune “The Ladies Who Lunch” in 1970’s “Company,” sang his enduring “I’m Still Here” in her 2002 solo show and performed in a 2010 revue of his tunes called “At Home at the Carlyle: Elaine Stritch Singin’ Sondheim…One Song at a Time.” The actress appeared in Garth Drabinsky’s smash hit “Show Boat” in 1994 and in Edward Albee’s play “A Delicate Balance” in 1996.
In 2010 Stritch replaced Angela Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music” on Broadway.
The actress was profiled in the 2013 feature documentary “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me” (photo above), directed by Chiemi Karasawa.
New York Times:
Paul Mazursky, an innovative director and screenwriter who both satirized and sympathized with America’s panorama of social upheavals in the late 1960s and ’70s in films that included “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” “Blume in Love” and “An Unmarried Woman,” died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 84.
A family spokeswoman, Nancy Willen, said he died of pulmonary cardiac arrest at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Mr. Mazursky lived in Beverly Hills.
As the nation’s counterculture revolution shattered traditional norms of sex, marriage and conformity, Mr. Mazursky made his most popular and commercially successful films: lighthearted sendups of wife-swapping, yoga classes, group therapy, pot-smoking, midlife crises and other self-absorbed, middle-class indulgences that reviewers said he crafted with even-handedness and generosity.
Some critics complained that his satire wasn’t cutting enough. Others called his comedies crisp at a time when behavior was at its fuzziest. Vincent Canby, in a 1976 analysis in The New York Times, acknowledged: “Mazursky is a tough man to handle critically. He is alternately witty and brilliantly sarcastic, then suddenly, soddenly sincere and self-centered, only to explode unexpectedly as a first-rate social satirist.”
In his most vivid illustration of the technique, he explored the pain and dislocation of divorce, and its liberating effects, in “An Unmarried Woman,” released in 1978 and quickly embraced by the women’s movement. His screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, while the film itself was nominated for a best picture Oscar and Jill Clayburgh for best actress.
Jimmy Scott, the US jazz singer whose haunting contralto voice won him acclaim over the course of more than seven decades, has died at the age of 88.
Scott's wife, Jeanie, said her husband died in his sleep at his Las Vegas home on Thursday. He had battled health problems stemming from a genetic hormone deficiency and had been under the care of a home nurse. Jeanie Scott said her husband stopped touring two years ago but continued recording. He's expected to be buried in Cleveland.
The vocalist, whose first major hit was Everybody's Somebody's Fool in 1949 alongside the Lionel Hampton Band, gathered new generations of fans during the 1960s and in the 1990s when he toured with Lou Reedand sang on the track, Sycamore Trees, for the series finale of Twin Peaks.
Born into a family of 10 in Cleveland, Ohio, on 17 July 1925, Scott sang in a church choir as a child. His signature high voice came from Kallmann's syndrome, which kept him from experiencing puberty and stunted his growth. He stood just under five feet as an adultand his voice did not change.
Although that trait ultimately helped Scott stand out as a singer, he also suffered from congestive heart failure and had a lifestyle that included heavy drinking and smoking.
Despite his youthful sound, Scott brought heavy emotion to his delivery, often dramatically drawing out lyrics and singing far behind the beat. The technique won praise from Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson and Madonna, who after seeing him perform in 1994 told the New York Times that Scott was the only singer who ever made her cry.
"Jimmy had soul way back when people weren't using the word," Ray Charles once said in a PBS documentary on the history of jazz.
The album Falling in Love Is Wonderful came out in the 1960s and is widely considered to be his masterpiece, although he largely disappeared from view until his 1990s career revival. His 1992 album All the Way sold only 49,000 copies in the United States but earned him cult-like popularity in Europe and Asia, particularly Japan, where he often sold out performances.
A record label dispute prevented Scott from making an album in the 1950s produced by Ray Charles. Scott's previous record company, Savoy Records, said it had an exclusive, lifetime contract with him, and the company blocked Scott's efforts to release new records for nearly 20 years.
Savoy Records dropped the matter in the 1970s. By that time, Scott had returned to Cleveland, where he worked as a hotel clerk and nursing home aide.
Scott performed at Dwight Eisenhower's and Bill Clinton's presidential inaugurations and was inducted into the R&B Music Hall of Fame in 2013.
His wife Jeanie said on Friday: "He was an Earth angel. He was different from any person I ever met. He was kind, humble. Everyone he met he made them feel special. He had a hard life, but he didn't hold any resentment."
Describing Scott to the Observer in 2010, the Amercian singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens said : "He sang in this lilting, odd, almost grandmotherly voice, but it was also so youthful. It was like he was extremely old and extremely young simultaneously.
