jdb1 wrote:And a third passing: Former Presidential Chief of Staff, NATO Supreme Commander, and Secretary of State, Gen. Alexander ("Read your constitution, buddy!") Haig has passed away.
Sorry for his family.
Gone With or Without fanfare
Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
Sorry for his family.
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silentscreen
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
General Haig certainly sent young men to their death, but it's different now that we're sending young men to certain death in Afghanistan. That's different how?
"Humor is nothing less than a sense of the fitness of things." Carole Lombard
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klondike
Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
Perhaps further conversations on the politics & career of Alexander Haig would be better suited to a thread in "General Chat" (no pun intended).
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silentscreen
- Posts: 701
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
And that was a good thing, although he was an imperfect patriot. He had an arrogant personality that grated on me. He knew Nixon would be pardoned. That's all I'll say.ken123 wrote:IMHO Haig was a leader in the coup that took Nixon down.
"Humor is nothing less than a sense of the fitness of things." Carole Lombard
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klondike
Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
Allow me to rephrase:klondike wrote:Perhaps further conversations on the politics & career of Alexander Haig would be better suited to a thread in "General Chat" (no pun intended).
Further conversation on the politics & career of Alexander Haig will take place in "General Chat."
Or will not appear at all.
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silentscreen
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
I take your point. Our posts crossed in timing. No problem.klondike wrote:Allow me to rephrase:klondike wrote:Perhaps further conversations on the politics & career of Alexander Haig would be better suited to a thread in "General Chat" (no pun intended).
Further conversation on the politics & career of Alexander Haig will take place in "General Chat."
Or will not appear at all.
"Humor is nothing less than a sense of the fitness of things." Carole Lombard
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moira finnie
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
Hey, guess what? Another person from movies has died, so if we could give Al Haig his well earned rest, perhaps we could give a tip of the hat to Cy Grant, an actor and musician who was from the West Indies, but served in the RAF during WWII, became a barrister and an actor, singer and activist in the UK.
Most of us would probably remember him as the purser on a doomed ship in the Joan Collins-Richard Burton movie Sea Wife (1957) set during the war. He brought some needed zip and credibility to the unlikely but at times very effective tale of a young nun (yes, Joan Collins) who was shipwrecked with the soulful Burton (who falls in love with her, natch, Basil Sydney, as the worst kind of colonial creep, and the quietly compelling Grant, (seen on the far right in the above picture), who proves an intrepid companion, until he is pushed too far. As you can see from The Guardian obit below, Cy Grant was much more than an actor:
Cy Grant obituary: The Singer, actor and writer who was the first black artist to appear regularly on British TV
by Gus John
Cy Grant, who has died aged 90, was among the first set of RAF officers from the West Indies and qualified as a barrister, but such is the allure of television that he will be chiefly remembered as a singer, actor and broadcaster. In 1957, he began to make daily appearances on the BBC's Tonight programme, bringing levity to current affairs by giving a calypso rendition of the news, often using texts written by Bernard Levin. Cy's ability to compose tunes spontaneously and fit the news into verse was highly commended and won him the admiration of viewers nationwide. For the first time, the country was seeing a black face on TV on a regular basis. Nevertheless, Cy gave up the position in 1960, fearing that he would be considered capable of nothing else.
He acted on stage and screen, but was disillusioned with the obstacles that black actors faced in getting parts that matched their abilities. He once told me: "We suffered the indignity of seeing white actors blackening themselves and giving themselves bulbous lips to play black parts, reinforcing the caricature of us as black people, a caricature which casting directors, artistic directors and playwrights themselves refused to allow us to escape."
Cy spent his entire life in Britain combating such marginalisation. He saw this as a redemptive mission, appealing to white Britain to sweep away notions of cultural supremacy. He held a mirror up to British society and painstakingly interpreted it, as he groped towards actively reshaping it and striving to humanise it.
Born in Beterverwagting, a village in British Guiana (now Guyana), after the end of the first world war, Cy had two brothers and four sisters. His mother was a talented pianist and he grew up surrounded by music, playing the guitar and singing folk songs. He excelled at school and was keen to study law, but his parents lacked the funds.
After working as a civil servant, Cy left for Britain and joined the RAF in 1941, one of roughly 400 men recruited from the Caribbean after the huge losses in the Battle of Britain. He trained as a navigator and in 1943 was shot down in the Battle of the Ruhr, landing in Holland. Joost Klootwijk, the young son of a Dutch farmer, looked on as his parents tried to help the airman. The boy was moved by the novelty of a uniformed black RAF officer crash-landing near his home. The Gestapo identified Cy as "a member of the Royal Air Force of indeterminate race" and he was held as a prisoner of war for two years. Cy later used that phrase for the title of his book about his war service. Klootwijk's subsequent research enabled his son, Hans, to write a book about Cy's crew, Lancaster W4827: Failed to Return.
Although he qualified as a barrister in 1950, he struggled to get work. In his own words, "this was Britain in peacetime and I was no longer useful". He became a recognisable voice on radio, singing folk songs, and recorded several albums. He also hosted his own TV series, For Members Only, in the mid-50s, interviewing a variety of guests and playing the guitar. In 1956, he appeared in A Man from the Sun, a television drama written by John Elliot about the experience of Caribbean migrants to Britain after the second world war. He voiced a character for Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and also appeared in an episode of The Persuaders, opposite Roger Moore.
Cy successfully auditioned for Laurence Olivier and had stage appearances for Olivier's Festival of Britain company in London and New York. In 1965, he was acclaimed as Othello at the Phoenix theatre, in Leicester. The next year he starred in Cindy Ella with Cleo Laine at the Garrick theatre, in London. He also appeared in the films Shaft in Africa (1973) and At the Earth's Core (1976).
Frustrated with many of the roles he was offered, he determined to take on the theatre establishment on his own terms. In order to launch black artistic talent, in 1973 he founded Drum Arts Centre, in London, with the Zimbabwean actor, John Mapondera, and others, including me. Drum collaborated with Steve Carter of New York's Negro Ensemble Theatre and staged a number of productions, including Bread by Mustapha Matura and The Gods Are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi.
Two major influences in Cy's life, which helped determine the direction of his artistic expression and his later writing, were the poet, politician, philosopher and architect of negritude, Aimé Césaire, and a Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching. He produced and performed Césaire's epic poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land as a one-man show, touring Britain for more than two years. He was later to say of Césaire: "His revolt against Europe is what worked on me in a subliminal yet positive way. It wasn't just a revolt against racism, colonialism and the excesses of European culture, but a call for a return to our native human values, to recognise that nature is alive and bounteous and that we should not abuse her."
In his book, Blackness and the Dreaming Soul (2007), Cy argued that white society must first discover new ways of seeing itself, in order that it might comprehend and value the "otherness" of its indigenous black citizens. In his essay The Way of the West (2008), he argued that the black man, having reclaimed his authentic history and recovered his lost soul, must not fall into the trap of aspiring to assimilate into the so-called civilised values of his former oppressors.
Criticising the notion of Black History Month, Cy argued: "Before we decide upon a calendar of socially relevant events, we would do well to look again at who and what we are and begin to know, like Césaire, that 'the tree of our hands is for all'."
In his last years, Cy wrote copiously and did everything with a new urgency, especially after he became ill. He particularly wanted to see his war memoirs, essays and poems form part of the curriculums in schools and universities.
He is survived by his wife, Dorith, whom he married in 1956, their two daughters and one son; a son from an earlier marriage; and his sister, Valerie.
Kurt Barling writes: In 2008, I persuaded Cy Grant to return to the village in the Netherlands where he had landed during the war to make a documentary. He recalled the desperate efforts to evacuate his plane when it crashed on Dutch soil, and the absurdity of thinking he could escape to Spain. A black man in occupied Europe had no means of disguise.
When Cy finally met Joost Klootwijk during filming, Joost was overcome with emotion at being in the presence of a man he had pictured in his mind as a real-life hero since he was a boy. Cy was humbled by the esteem in which RAF aircrew are held by the Dutch and regretted that they had not been recognised in this way at home. Cy and Hans, Joost's son, soon began to compile a permanent online archive of Caribbean aircrew in the RAF. It occupied much of the last 18 months of Cy's life.
One of the curious by-products of Cy's RAF experience was the 1960s marionette TV series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. The creator of the series, Gerry Anderson, had lost his own brother over the Netherlands in the second world war, and he drew on Cy's personal qualities to develop one of the first positive black fictional characters in children's television. These were the qualities deemed necessary by Anderson to defeat the Mysterons in 2068. Cy's melliflous tones gave Lieutenant Green, the black defender of Planet Earth alongside Captain Scarlet, a serene and heroic quality. Cy looked back on that series, essentially an allegory of the battle between good and evil, with great fondness. Ever the practical man, he recently told me that Green had kept him well fed into retirement.
• Cy Grant, actor, singer and writer, born 8 November 1919; died 13 February 2010
Most of us would probably remember him as the purser on a doomed ship in the Joan Collins-Richard Burton movie Sea Wife (1957) set during the war. He brought some needed zip and credibility to the unlikely but at times very effective tale of a young nun (yes, Joan Collins) who was shipwrecked with the soulful Burton (who falls in love with her, natch, Basil Sydney, as the worst kind of colonial creep, and the quietly compelling Grant, (seen on the far right in the above picture), who proves an intrepid companion, until he is pushed too far. As you can see from The Guardian obit below, Cy Grant was much more than an actor:
Cy Grant obituary: The Singer, actor and writer who was the first black artist to appear regularly on British TV
by Gus John
Cy Grant, who has died aged 90, was among the first set of RAF officers from the West Indies and qualified as a barrister, but such is the allure of television that he will be chiefly remembered as a singer, actor and broadcaster. In 1957, he began to make daily appearances on the BBC's Tonight programme, bringing levity to current affairs by giving a calypso rendition of the news, often using texts written by Bernard Levin. Cy's ability to compose tunes spontaneously and fit the news into verse was highly commended and won him the admiration of viewers nationwide. For the first time, the country was seeing a black face on TV on a regular basis. Nevertheless, Cy gave up the position in 1960, fearing that he would be considered capable of nothing else.
He acted on stage and screen, but was disillusioned with the obstacles that black actors faced in getting parts that matched their abilities. He once told me: "We suffered the indignity of seeing white actors blackening themselves and giving themselves bulbous lips to play black parts, reinforcing the caricature of us as black people, a caricature which casting directors, artistic directors and playwrights themselves refused to allow us to escape."
Cy spent his entire life in Britain combating such marginalisation. He saw this as a redemptive mission, appealing to white Britain to sweep away notions of cultural supremacy. He held a mirror up to British society and painstakingly interpreted it, as he groped towards actively reshaping it and striving to humanise it.
Born in Beterverwagting, a village in British Guiana (now Guyana), after the end of the first world war, Cy had two brothers and four sisters. His mother was a talented pianist and he grew up surrounded by music, playing the guitar and singing folk songs. He excelled at school and was keen to study law, but his parents lacked the funds.
After working as a civil servant, Cy left for Britain and joined the RAF in 1941, one of roughly 400 men recruited from the Caribbean after the huge losses in the Battle of Britain. He trained as a navigator and in 1943 was shot down in the Battle of the Ruhr, landing in Holland. Joost Klootwijk, the young son of a Dutch farmer, looked on as his parents tried to help the airman. The boy was moved by the novelty of a uniformed black RAF officer crash-landing near his home. The Gestapo identified Cy as "a member of the Royal Air Force of indeterminate race" and he was held as a prisoner of war for two years. Cy later used that phrase for the title of his book about his war service. Klootwijk's subsequent research enabled his son, Hans, to write a book about Cy's crew, Lancaster W4827: Failed to Return.
Although he qualified as a barrister in 1950, he struggled to get work. In his own words, "this was Britain in peacetime and I was no longer useful". He became a recognisable voice on radio, singing folk songs, and recorded several albums. He also hosted his own TV series, For Members Only, in the mid-50s, interviewing a variety of guests and playing the guitar. In 1956, he appeared in A Man from the Sun, a television drama written by John Elliot about the experience of Caribbean migrants to Britain after the second world war. He voiced a character for Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and also appeared in an episode of The Persuaders, opposite Roger Moore.
Cy successfully auditioned for Laurence Olivier and had stage appearances for Olivier's Festival of Britain company in London and New York. In 1965, he was acclaimed as Othello at the Phoenix theatre, in Leicester. The next year he starred in Cindy Ella with Cleo Laine at the Garrick theatre, in London. He also appeared in the films Shaft in Africa (1973) and At the Earth's Core (1976).
Frustrated with many of the roles he was offered, he determined to take on the theatre establishment on his own terms. In order to launch black artistic talent, in 1973 he founded Drum Arts Centre, in London, with the Zimbabwean actor, John Mapondera, and others, including me. Drum collaborated with Steve Carter of New York's Negro Ensemble Theatre and staged a number of productions, including Bread by Mustapha Matura and The Gods Are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi.
Two major influences in Cy's life, which helped determine the direction of his artistic expression and his later writing, were the poet, politician, philosopher and architect of negritude, Aimé Césaire, and a Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching. He produced and performed Césaire's epic poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land as a one-man show, touring Britain for more than two years. He was later to say of Césaire: "His revolt against Europe is what worked on me in a subliminal yet positive way. It wasn't just a revolt against racism, colonialism and the excesses of European culture, but a call for a return to our native human values, to recognise that nature is alive and bounteous and that we should not abuse her."
In his book, Blackness and the Dreaming Soul (2007), Cy argued that white society must first discover new ways of seeing itself, in order that it might comprehend and value the "otherness" of its indigenous black citizens. In his essay The Way of the West (2008), he argued that the black man, having reclaimed his authentic history and recovered his lost soul, must not fall into the trap of aspiring to assimilate into the so-called civilised values of his former oppressors.
Criticising the notion of Black History Month, Cy argued: "Before we decide upon a calendar of socially relevant events, we would do well to look again at who and what we are and begin to know, like Césaire, that 'the tree of our hands is for all'."
In his last years, Cy wrote copiously and did everything with a new urgency, especially after he became ill. He particularly wanted to see his war memoirs, essays and poems form part of the curriculums in schools and universities.
He is survived by his wife, Dorith, whom he married in 1956, their two daughters and one son; a son from an earlier marriage; and his sister, Valerie.
Kurt Barling writes: In 2008, I persuaded Cy Grant to return to the village in the Netherlands where he had landed during the war to make a documentary. He recalled the desperate efforts to evacuate his plane when it crashed on Dutch soil, and the absurdity of thinking he could escape to Spain. A black man in occupied Europe had no means of disguise.
When Cy finally met Joost Klootwijk during filming, Joost was overcome with emotion at being in the presence of a man he had pictured in his mind as a real-life hero since he was a boy. Cy was humbled by the esteem in which RAF aircrew are held by the Dutch and regretted that they had not been recognised in this way at home. Cy and Hans, Joost's son, soon began to compile a permanent online archive of Caribbean aircrew in the RAF. It occupied much of the last 18 months of Cy's life.
One of the curious by-products of Cy's RAF experience was the 1960s marionette TV series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. The creator of the series, Gerry Anderson, had lost his own brother over the Netherlands in the second world war, and he drew on Cy's personal qualities to develop one of the first positive black fictional characters in children's television. These were the qualities deemed necessary by Anderson to defeat the Mysterons in 2068. Cy's melliflous tones gave Lieutenant Green, the black defender of Planet Earth alongside Captain Scarlet, a serene and heroic quality. Cy looked back on that series, essentially an allegory of the battle between good and evil, with great fondness. Ever the practical man, he recently told me that Green had kept him well fed into retirement.
• Cy Grant, actor, singer and writer, born 8 November 1919; died 13 February 2010
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klondike
Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
YOU KNOW THIS ONE WILL END UP A CABLE-TV MOVIE
Tudor kids fight for $2M estate
By JOHN CURRAN {from The Brattleboro [Vt] Reformer}
Tuesday February 23, 2010
MARLBORO -- When author Tasha Tudor’s ashes were finally buried, it wasn’t in one place. Her bickering survivors couldn’t agree on when, where and how, so a judge ordered her cremated remains divided in half.
On Oct. 17, sons Seth Tudor and Thomas Tudor and daughters Bethany Tudor and Efner Tudor Holmes buried some under a rosebush she loved in her garden and the rest on Seth’s neighboring property, where her precious Pembroke Welsh corgi dogs were already buried.
"(Seth) got the ashes, we went outside and he gave us half the ashes and he went down to his property and scattered or buried the ashes there and we scattered ours," said Thomas Tudor, 64. "It was really an unpleasant situation."
Call it the war of the Tudors: Almost two years after the famed children’s book author and illustrator died at 92, a battle over her $2 million estate rages on -- pitting sibling against sibling, blasting through her assets with Probate Court litigation and sullying the eccentric artist’s name.
At issue: family grievances old and new, including whether Tudor was unduly influenced when she rewrote her will to give nearly everything -- including dolls now on loan to Colonial Williamsburg -- to Seth Tudor, 67, her older son.
"If they don’t do anything soon, the lawyers will get all of it, that’s what I think," said Bethany Tudor, 69, the elder daughter.
Corgiville was never like this.
Beginning with "Pumpkin Moonshine" in 1938, Tudor earned fame for the delicately drawn images and watercolors illustrating "Little Women," "The Secret Garden" and dozens of other children’s books and for her own "Corgiville Fair" and "The Great Corgiville Kidnapping."
Her works celebrated holidays, family and her love for children, a back-to-basics lifestyle and the sturdy little dogs she loved so much.
Tudor, who was fond of saying she wished she’d been born in 1830, lived much of her life as if she had been.
A calico-clad throwback, she went barefoot, spun flax into linen for her own clothing, raised Nubian goats for their milk and lived out her days in a replica of a late 18th-century New England farmhouse, replete with antique utensils and tiny windows -- a kind of Victorian-era Martha Stewart.
Born to Boston Brahmins, Tudor quit school after eighth grade, married twice and raised her children, part of the time as a single mother. Royalties from her illustrated edition of "Mother Goose" helped her buy a rambling, 17-room Webster, N.H., farmhouse, where the family lived with no television, no radio and -- for years -- no electricity, only oil lamps.
"I remember strongly disliking the solitude and being different from other people, wanting to play with neighborhood children, but they were miles away," said Thomas Tudor, now a U.S. Air force lawyer living in Fairfax Station, Va.
All four children went to boarding schools; Tudor didn’t trust public schools.
Tudor lived in a fantasy world, said Holmes, 61, who broke off communications with her mother in 1996.
"It’s fine when you’re a child and you have the doll parties and her marionette shows and all the wonderful fantasy things she did. My friends envied me," said Holmes, who lives in Contoocook, N.H. "But when you grow up and you have a parent who absolutely refuses to talk to you about real-life issues, it’s a problem."
Family and simplicity were at the heart of the Tudor name, an image central to her works. Fans all over the world -- especially in Japan and Korea -- bought her books over the years and later visited her Web site; the ardent ones took $165-per-person tours of her Vermont homestead, which her sons built by hand in the 1970s.
But the estate fight has torn at the homespun fabric of her image since her June 18, 2008, death from complications of a stroke.
Tudor’s 2001 will asked that she be buried with her predeceased dogs and the ashes of her pet rooster Chickahominy, should he die before her. It left the bulk of her estate to Seth Tudor, of Marlboro, and his son, Winslow Tudor; it left $1,000 each to the two daughters and nothing but an antique highboy to Thomas Tudor -- because of their "estrangement" from her.
It gave her collection of 19th-century clothing to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Officials there declined comment for this article; Seth Tudor’s lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Thomas Tudor is challenging the validity of the will, saying his brother wielded undue influence over their mother, causing her to cut them out of an earlier version. In Probate Court filings, Seth Tudor denies it.
Now, attorneys for the brothers are wrangling about the extent of Tudor’s assets, fighting over even the smallest details, including who was responsible for a $140 snowplowing bill for the narrow, unpaved road that leads to the Tudor compound, where Seth Tudor and his family still live.
"Not only are there financial considerations which have pitted family members against one another, but they’ve even gotten to such comparatively petty matters such as how, whether and when the cremains of the late Tasha Tudor would be buried, who could attend, what could be said, when it would be done," said Richard Gale, register of Marlboro Probate Court. "They fight about everything."
Meanwhile, Bethany Tudor, who says her mother promised her the royalties to her books once she died, wonders whether she’ll ever see anything. She lives alone in a mobile home in neighboring Brattleboro, relying on food stamps to get by as she awaits word on whether she qualifies for low-income housing.
She’d been estranged from her mother since 2000, when she sold an unpublished Tudor book called "Hitty’s Almanac," which her mother had given her when she was 16. Bethany Tudor, who has one daughter, calls her mother a two-faced eccentric who ignored advice to put her assets into a four-way trust for her heirs.
"Of course I’m angry at her," Bethany Tudor said recently over coffee in a diner near her trailer park. "But what can I do? No sense in making yourself sick over it. I don’t even think about it anymore, it’s so outrageous. A kind, loving mother wouldn’t let that happen."
Thomas Tudor, who has five children, says he was anything but estranged, keeping in close touch with his mother until her death. He accuses his brother of hatching a plan 10 years ago to disinherit him. The legal fight happening now, he says, could bleed the estate dry.
Next, the court will schedule a deposition for Amelia Stauffer, of Ada, Ohio, a close friend of the author’s and someone the lawyers believe might shed some light on her intent in writing the will. As it stands now, the case is headed for trial.
What would Tasha Tudor make of it all?
"Quite frankly, I think she’d smile," said Thomas Tudor. "That’s what she wanted. She wanted controversy. It beats me. I’d never do that to my children."
Tudor kids fight for $2M estate
By JOHN CURRAN {from The Brattleboro [Vt] Reformer}
Tuesday February 23, 2010
MARLBORO -- When author Tasha Tudor’s ashes were finally buried, it wasn’t in one place. Her bickering survivors couldn’t agree on when, where and how, so a judge ordered her cremated remains divided in half.
On Oct. 17, sons Seth Tudor and Thomas Tudor and daughters Bethany Tudor and Efner Tudor Holmes buried some under a rosebush she loved in her garden and the rest on Seth’s neighboring property, where her precious Pembroke Welsh corgi dogs were already buried.
"(Seth) got the ashes, we went outside and he gave us half the ashes and he went down to his property and scattered or buried the ashes there and we scattered ours," said Thomas Tudor, 64. "It was really an unpleasant situation."
Call it the war of the Tudors: Almost two years after the famed children’s book author and illustrator died at 92, a battle over her $2 million estate rages on -- pitting sibling against sibling, blasting through her assets with Probate Court litigation and sullying the eccentric artist’s name.
At issue: family grievances old and new, including whether Tudor was unduly influenced when she rewrote her will to give nearly everything -- including dolls now on loan to Colonial Williamsburg -- to Seth Tudor, 67, her older son.
"If they don’t do anything soon, the lawyers will get all of it, that’s what I think," said Bethany Tudor, 69, the elder daughter.
Corgiville was never like this.
Beginning with "Pumpkin Moonshine" in 1938, Tudor earned fame for the delicately drawn images and watercolors illustrating "Little Women," "The Secret Garden" and dozens of other children’s books and for her own "Corgiville Fair" and "The Great Corgiville Kidnapping."
Her works celebrated holidays, family and her love for children, a back-to-basics lifestyle and the sturdy little dogs she loved so much.
Tudor, who was fond of saying she wished she’d been born in 1830, lived much of her life as if she had been.
A calico-clad throwback, she went barefoot, spun flax into linen for her own clothing, raised Nubian goats for their milk and lived out her days in a replica of a late 18th-century New England farmhouse, replete with antique utensils and tiny windows -- a kind of Victorian-era Martha Stewart.
Born to Boston Brahmins, Tudor quit school after eighth grade, married twice and raised her children, part of the time as a single mother. Royalties from her illustrated edition of "Mother Goose" helped her buy a rambling, 17-room Webster, N.H., farmhouse, where the family lived with no television, no radio and -- for years -- no electricity, only oil lamps.
"I remember strongly disliking the solitude and being different from other people, wanting to play with neighborhood children, but they were miles away," said Thomas Tudor, now a U.S. Air force lawyer living in Fairfax Station, Va.
All four children went to boarding schools; Tudor didn’t trust public schools.
Tudor lived in a fantasy world, said Holmes, 61, who broke off communications with her mother in 1996.
"It’s fine when you’re a child and you have the doll parties and her marionette shows and all the wonderful fantasy things she did. My friends envied me," said Holmes, who lives in Contoocook, N.H. "But when you grow up and you have a parent who absolutely refuses to talk to you about real-life issues, it’s a problem."
Family and simplicity were at the heart of the Tudor name, an image central to her works. Fans all over the world -- especially in Japan and Korea -- bought her books over the years and later visited her Web site; the ardent ones took $165-per-person tours of her Vermont homestead, which her sons built by hand in the 1970s.
But the estate fight has torn at the homespun fabric of her image since her June 18, 2008, death from complications of a stroke.
Tudor’s 2001 will asked that she be buried with her predeceased dogs and the ashes of her pet rooster Chickahominy, should he die before her. It left the bulk of her estate to Seth Tudor, of Marlboro, and his son, Winslow Tudor; it left $1,000 each to the two daughters and nothing but an antique highboy to Thomas Tudor -- because of their "estrangement" from her.
It gave her collection of 19th-century clothing to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Officials there declined comment for this article; Seth Tudor’s lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Thomas Tudor is challenging the validity of the will, saying his brother wielded undue influence over their mother, causing her to cut them out of an earlier version. In Probate Court filings, Seth Tudor denies it.
Now, attorneys for the brothers are wrangling about the extent of Tudor’s assets, fighting over even the smallest details, including who was responsible for a $140 snowplowing bill for the narrow, unpaved road that leads to the Tudor compound, where Seth Tudor and his family still live.
"Not only are there financial considerations which have pitted family members against one another, but they’ve even gotten to such comparatively petty matters such as how, whether and when the cremains of the late Tasha Tudor would be buried, who could attend, what could be said, when it would be done," said Richard Gale, register of Marlboro Probate Court. "They fight about everything."
Meanwhile, Bethany Tudor, who says her mother promised her the royalties to her books once she died, wonders whether she’ll ever see anything. She lives alone in a mobile home in neighboring Brattleboro, relying on food stamps to get by as she awaits word on whether she qualifies for low-income housing.
She’d been estranged from her mother since 2000, when she sold an unpublished Tudor book called "Hitty’s Almanac," which her mother had given her when she was 16. Bethany Tudor, who has one daughter, calls her mother a two-faced eccentric who ignored advice to put her assets into a four-way trust for her heirs.
"Of course I’m angry at her," Bethany Tudor said recently over coffee in a diner near her trailer park. "But what can I do? No sense in making yourself sick over it. I don’t even think about it anymore, it’s so outrageous. A kind, loving mother wouldn’t let that happen."
Thomas Tudor, who has five children, says he was anything but estranged, keeping in close touch with his mother until her death. He accuses his brother of hatching a plan 10 years ago to disinherit him. The legal fight happening now, he says, could bleed the estate dry.
Next, the court will schedule a deposition for Amelia Stauffer, of Ada, Ohio, a close friend of the author’s and someone the lawyers believe might shed some light on her intent in writing the will. As it stands now, the case is headed for trial.
What would Tasha Tudor make of it all?
"Quite frankly, I think she’d smile," said Thomas Tudor. "That’s what she wanted. She wanted controversy. It beats me. I’d never do that to my children."
-
moira finnie
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
Nan Martin, the kind of deft, journeyman actor who was a familiar face from The Twilight Zone to The Drew Carey Show has died at 82.
Funny, and intelligent, I always liked the way one of her withering glares and the mere murmur of her commanding contralto voice could make actors stop in their tracks. No wonder she played Moms so well.
Below are pictures of Ms. Martin when young and older, as well as an obit from The Hollywood Reporter. Her movies included Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), (an engaging, little known movie), For the Love of Ivy (1968), Goodbye, Columbus (1969), and All of Me (1974). :
Nan Martin in the '60s.
From THR:
Zen Gesner and his mother, actress Nan Martin arrive at the premiere screening of Shallow Hal in 2001.
Funny, and intelligent, I always liked the way one of her withering glares and the mere murmur of her commanding contralto voice could make actors stop in their tracks. No wonder she played Moms so well.
Below are pictures of Ms. Martin when young and older, as well as an obit from The Hollywood Reporter. Her movies included Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), (an engaging, little known movie), For the Love of Ivy (1968), Goodbye, Columbus (1969), and All of Me (1974). :
Nan Martin in the '60s.
From THR:
By Mike Barnes
March 4, 2010, 07:40 PM ET
Nan Martin, who played Ali MacGraw's snobbish mother in the 1969 film "Goodbye, Columbus" and the lively Mrs. Louder on "The Drew Carey Show," died Thursday of complications from emphysema at her Malibu home. She was 82.
Martin also was a prolific stage actress during a career that spanned more than a half-century. She earned a Tony nomination in 1960 for her role in Elia Kazan's "J.B." and was a featured player in many groundbreaking Shakespeare productions in New York with Joseph Papp as director.
Martin was appointed by President Kennedy as a member of the Arts Advisory Committee in the '60s, was an enthusiastic supporter of regional theater and worked regularly at the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif.
A first-year member of the Actors' Studio in New York, Martin had a stroke in 1981 but didn't stop working until four years ago.
Other film appearances included roles in 1963's "Toys in the Attic" (with Dean Martin), 1968's "For the Love of Ivy" (with Sidney Poitier), 1975's "The Other Side of the Mountain," 1983's "Doctor Detroit" and 1987's "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors," in which she played Freddy Krueger's mother.
In addition to the 1995-2004 sitcom "Drew Carey," Martin was a TV movie of the week regular during the 1970s and appeared on such shows as "The Twilight Zone," "The Fugitive," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Nip/Tuck," "The Practice," "ER," "Chicago Hope," "Suddenly Susan" and "The Golden Girls."
In "Columbus," Martin played the wife of Jack Klugman who despises her daughter's uninspired boyfriend (Richard Benjamin).
Martin is survived by her husband, California architect Harry Gesner, and two sons: musician and writer Casey Dolan (by her first marriage to film composer Robert Emmett Dolan) and actor-producer Zen Gesner.
Zen Gesner and his mother, actress Nan Martin arrive at the premiere screening of Shallow Hal in 2001.
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Lzcutter
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
She was a major force here in the City of Angels theater world for most of her life. They are mourning her loss as well.
Lynn in Lake Balboa
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
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"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
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klondike
Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
THE "COREYS" ARE DIVIDED BY HALF !
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Corey Haim, a 1980s teen heartthrob for his roles in "Lucas" and "The Lost Boys" whose career was blighted by drug abuse, has died of an apparent drug overdose. He was 38.
Haim died at 2:15 a.m. Wednesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Los Angeles, County coroner's Lt. Cheryl MacWillie said.
An autopsy will determine the cause of death and there were no other details, she said. Police Sgt. Michael Kammert said there's no evidence of foul play.
Haim had flulike symptoms before he died and was getting over-the-counter and prescription medications, Police Sgt. William Mann said. The cause of death is unknown, Mann said.
"He could have succumbed to whatever (illness) he had or it could have been drugs. Who knows?" Mann continued. "He has had a drug problem in the past."
In Memoriam: View photos of Haim throughout his career
Haim was taken by ambulance to the hospital from an apartment in Los Angeles near Burbank. The enormous complex is known as Oakwood and is popular with young actors, Kammert said.
Haim acknowledged his struggle with drug abuse to The Sun in 2004.
"I was working on Lost Boys when I smoked my first joint," he told the British tabloid.
"I did cocaine for about a year and a half, then it led to crack," he said.
Haim said he went into rehabilitation and was put on prescription drugs. He took both stimulants and sedatives such as Valium.
"I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck," he said. "But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day."
Search: Corey Haim dies
View results for: Corey Haim dies Celebrity overdoses In 2007, he told ABC's "Nightline" that drugs hurt his career.
"I feel like with myself I ruined myself to the point where I wasn't functional enough to work for anybody, even myself. I wasn't working," he said.
The Toronto-born actor got his start in television commercials at 10 and earned a good reputation for his work in such films as 1985's "Murphy's Romance" and his portrayal of Liza Minnelli's dying son in the 1985 television film "A Time to Live."
His career peaked and he became a teen heartthrob with his roles in the 1986 movie "Lucas," and "The Lost Boys," in which he battled vampires.
In later years, he made a few TV appearances and had several direct-to-video movies. He also had a handful of recent movies that have not yet been released.
But in 1997 he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing debts for medical expenses and more than $200,000 in state and federal taxes.
His assets included a few thousand dollars in cash, clothing and royalty rights.
In recent years, he appeared in the A&E reality TV show "The Two Coreys" with his friend Corey Feldman. It was canceled in 2008 after two seasons. Feldman later said Haim's drug abuse strained their working and personal relationships.
In a 2007 interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Haim called himself "a chronic relapser for the rest of my life."
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Corey Haim, a 1980s teen heartthrob for his roles in "Lucas" and "The Lost Boys" whose career was blighted by drug abuse, has died of an apparent drug overdose. He was 38.
Haim died at 2:15 a.m. Wednesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Los Angeles, County coroner's Lt. Cheryl MacWillie said.
An autopsy will determine the cause of death and there were no other details, she said. Police Sgt. Michael Kammert said there's no evidence of foul play.
Haim had flulike symptoms before he died and was getting over-the-counter and prescription medications, Police Sgt. William Mann said. The cause of death is unknown, Mann said.
"He could have succumbed to whatever (illness) he had or it could have been drugs. Who knows?" Mann continued. "He has had a drug problem in the past."
In Memoriam: View photos of Haim throughout his career
Haim was taken by ambulance to the hospital from an apartment in Los Angeles near Burbank. The enormous complex is known as Oakwood and is popular with young actors, Kammert said.
Haim acknowledged his struggle with drug abuse to The Sun in 2004.
"I was working on Lost Boys when I smoked my first joint," he told the British tabloid.
"I did cocaine for about a year and a half, then it led to crack," he said.
Haim said he went into rehabilitation and was put on prescription drugs. He took both stimulants and sedatives such as Valium.
"I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck," he said. "But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day."
Search: Corey Haim dies
View results for: Corey Haim dies Celebrity overdoses In 2007, he told ABC's "Nightline" that drugs hurt his career.
"I feel like with myself I ruined myself to the point where I wasn't functional enough to work for anybody, even myself. I wasn't working," he said.
The Toronto-born actor got his start in television commercials at 10 and earned a good reputation for his work in such films as 1985's "Murphy's Romance" and his portrayal of Liza Minnelli's dying son in the 1985 television film "A Time to Live."
His career peaked and he became a teen heartthrob with his roles in the 1986 movie "Lucas," and "The Lost Boys," in which he battled vampires.
In later years, he made a few TV appearances and had several direct-to-video movies. He also had a handful of recent movies that have not yet been released.
But in 1997 he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing debts for medical expenses and more than $200,000 in state and federal taxes.
His assets included a few thousand dollars in cash, clothing and royalty rights.
In recent years, he appeared in the A&E reality TV show "The Two Coreys" with his friend Corey Feldman. It was canceled in 2008 after two seasons. Feldman later said Haim's drug abuse strained their working and personal relationships.
In a 2007 interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Haim called himself "a chronic relapser for the rest of my life."
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
It's very sad whenever anyone so young dies. A figure from my youth.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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Lzcutter
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
I loved him and Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys which is still one of my favorite movies from the 1980s.
Lynn in Lake Balboa
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
-
klondike
Re: Gone With or Without fanfare
Me too, Lynn . . and don't forget the Malamute!Lzcutter wrote:I loved him and Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys which is still one of my favorite movies from the 1980s.
