Gone With or Without fanfare

[Nick]

Strangely, no obituary for Mickey Knox has yet emerged online. Is it a privacy thing?

[moira finnie]

Strangely, no obituary for Mickey Knox has yet emerged online. Is it a privacy thing?

This may be at his family's request. I learned of his death from author Alan K. Rode, who knew Mr. Knox and his family personally.

[Lzcutter]

The Hollywood Reporter posted an obit for Mickey Knox today:

Mickey Knox, an actor who after he was blacklisted in Hollywood served as the English dialogue writer on two classic Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns, died Nov. 15 in Los Angeles, his daughter Valentina said on Facebook. He was 91.

Knox played Marty Parisi, one of the crime bosses who is riddled with bullets in a helicopter attack, in The Godfather: Part III (1990) and appeared in Beyond the Law and Wild 90, a pair of 1968 films directed by his onetime brother-in-law, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Norman Mailer.

The Brooklyn native and World War II veteran appeared as hoodlum types in a slew of movies from the late 1940s through the mid-'50s, including Killer McCoy (1947), I Walk Alone (1948), Angels in Disguise (1949), The Accused (1949), Knock on Any Door (1949), City Across the River (1949), White Heat (1949), Destination Big House (1950) and Western Pacific Agent (1950).

For Oliver Stone's 1994 film Natural Born Killers, screenwriter Quentin Tarantino is said to have named the mass murderer character played by Woody Harrelson after Knox.

Blacklisted during the McCarthy era of the late 1950s, Knox moved to France and then Italy to work as a dialogue coach and screenplay translator of European movies. Actor Eli Wallach, who starred in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, convinced Leone to use Knox to direct the English dubbing on the 1966 action film. (Outside of Wallach, Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, most of the actors spoke Italian.)

For more, go here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/m ... ies-658437

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Lovely article, Lynn.

[Lzcutter]

French director Georges Lautner has passed away.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Director Georges Lautner, whose films from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are part of the French canon and still adored, has died.

He was 87. The cause of death was not announced.

Of the dozens of films he made,Les Tontons Flingeurs, which appeared as Monsieur Gangster for Anglophone audiences, was perhaps the most beloved.
His films were often hilarious and wildly popular; lines from several have entered the popular imagination and quoted almost as if proverbs. His movies are still frequently screened on French television.
Lautner is credited with guiding a generation of actors, including Jean-Paul Belmondo.
On Saturday, President Francois Hollande lamented Lautner's passing a day earlier, noting that his movies were "great popular comedies that became cult films of our cinematic heritage."

[Lzcutter]

Choreographer Marc Breaux, who with his wife Dee Dee Wood, helped a dancing group of chimney sweeps dance their way into the hearts of movie-lovers of all ages, has died.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Marc Breaux, the choreographer who with his wife Dee Dee Wood created Dick Van Dyke's famous chimney sweep number in Mary Poppins and other spectacular dances for film and television, has died. He was 89.

Breaux died Tuesday in Mesa, Ariz., in an assisted-living facility, his son, Michael, told the Los Angeles Times.

After director Robert Wise saw Van Dyke's lithe performance in 1964's Mary Poppins, he immediately hired Breaux and Wood for another Julie Andrews classic, The Sound of Music, released a year later. Van Dyke also took the pair to work with him on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

Breaux and Wood, proteges of famed choreographer Michael Wood, also designed dances for Norman Jewison's 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette, and The Happiest Millionaire (1967), with Fred MacMurray and Greer Garson.

The duo served as the choreographers on the 1960s ABC variety show The Hollywood Palace and created dances for many other variety shows in the '70s.

Asked in a 1999 interview to describe his style of choreography, Breaux said: "I was more athletic than most choreographers. I actually stole from Michael Kidd. He's very athletic as well. I hired people who could do flip-flops, which you don't really learn in ballet school or in modern dance, and so if they could do a somersault or a cartwheel, I'd say, 'I think I can use you.' "

When Van Dyke landed the role of Bert in Mary Poppins and was asked by studio head Walt Disney if he could recommend a choreographer, the actor came up with Breaux and Wood, who had worked with him on a couple of TV specials.

"I'm not really a dancer," Van Dyke told the Times. "I could move a little, and I was what you call an eccentric dancer — loose-limbed and light on my feet. But they took what I could do and made the most of it. I was just thrilled."

Born Nov. 3, 1924, in Carencro, La., Breaux studied dance at what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette before serving as a Navy pilot during World War II.

In 1948, he was cast as a dancer in Broadway's Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948), then met Wood when both performed on a TV show in New York hosted by jazzman Stan Kenton. They married in 1955 and appeared the next year in the Broadway musical Li'l Abner, choreographed by Kidd.

Breaux and Wood eventually divorced and choreographed on their own.

Breaux also worked on Huckleberry Finn (1974), The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976) and Mae West's final film, Sextette (1978), before becoming a film editor.

In addition to his son, Breaux is survived by four granddaughters.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/m ... ies-659255

[Nick]

Now here's a death that definitly went without fanfare: Virginia Hunter. According to as secondary source, I found out that she passed away already on March 23, 2012(!) Her SSDI entry confirms this: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KMD4-584

So who was she?

Virginia Hunter was born February 20, 1920. She was a former model and actress of film and television. She appeared in over 20 films during the 1940s.

Hunter grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma before her family moved to Los Angeles in 1940. She immediately secured a contract with MGM, but let her contract expire in 1945 to sign with Columbia Pictures. She quickly became known to matinee audiences at the time for co-starring in four of the Durango Kid films. She also has a supporting role in The Mating of Millie starring Glenn Ford and Evelyn Keyes.

To modern viewers, Hunter is known for her roles in several Three Stooges films from the Shemp Howard era, specifically Sing a Song of Six Pants, I'm a Monkey's Uncle (and its remake Stone Age Romeos) and Fiddlers Three (and its remake Musty Musketeers).

After her time with Columbia, Hunter worked as a model and a store manager.

A belated RIP to Mrs. Hunter.

[Lzcutter]

Actor Tony Musante,who played the New Jersey cop, Toma, on the tv series of the same name has died.

Tony Musante, who took down drug dealers in his portrayal of a real-life New Jersey detective in the 1970s ABC series Toma, died Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York following surgery. He was 77.

Often playing a tough guy on either side of the law, Musante also sparkled as one of two menacing hoodlums (Martin Sheen was the other) who terrorize innocent people on a New York subway car in the 1967 thriller The Incident. Musante had originated the role in a made-for-NBC drama four years earlier.

A dark-haired Italian-American born in Bridgeport, Conn., Musante starred in several films made in Italy. He played a Mexican revolutionary in the spaghetti Western A Professional Gun (1968), an American writer in Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) and a man with a terminal illness who reunites with the love of his life in The Anonymous Venetian (1971).

Musante played a vicious hit man opposite George C. Scott in The Last Run (1971), a heel in Robert Aldrich's The Grissom Gang (1971), Eric Roberts' mob-connected uncle in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and another mobster on HBO's prison-set Oz for a season in 1997.
He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his 1975 guest-starring role on an episode of NBC's Medical Story and starred as the Army officer who engineered the My Lai massacre in the 1975 ABC telefilm Judgment: The Court Martial of Lieutenant William Calley, co-directed by Stanley Kramer.

Musante starred opposite Susan Strasberg as Det. David Toma in Toma, which ran for a season in 1973-74. The real Toma worked out of crime-ridden Newark and was a master of disguise. Some criticized the series -- created by Roy Huggins (TV's Maverick, The Fugitive, The Rockford Files) -- for being too violent.
Musante did not want to commit to another full season and quit after Toma was renewed. The violence of the show was toned down, and the series was retooled as the much-friendlier Baretta, starring Robert Blake in the title role.

For more of the obit: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a ... oma-660669

[Nick]

Jane Kean (1923-2013) has passed away at the age of 90 (although I always thought she was born in 1924).

LA Times, November 28, 2013:

Jane Kean, who played Trixie on 'The Honeymooners,' dies at 90

Jane Kean, best known for her role as Trixie, the long-suffering wife of Ed Norton on the 1960s TV revival of "The Honeymooners" with Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, has died. She was 90.

Kean, a resident of Toluca Lake, died Tuesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank of complications from a fall. Her niece, Deidre Wolpert, confirmed her death.

Although she played diverse roles during a career spanning more than four decades, including performing at London's Palladium before moving to Broadway, Kean said her role in "The Honeymooners" was the character that most people remembered.

"There's something about the show -- people relate to it," Kean said in a 1991 interview with The Times. "People believed the show was real, and that we really were the characters we played."

"The Honeymooners," which started as a sketch on "The Jackie Gleason Show" in the early 1950s, starred Gleason as Ralph Kramden, a struggling New York bus driver who lived in a cramped apartment with his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows). Carney played Norton, Kramden's dim-witted neighbor and best friend who was married to Trixie (originally played by Joyce Randolph), who was Alice's best friend.

Kean first started working with Gleason in the 1940s, when they were both on the vaudeville circuit. They also appeared in several stage productions in the 1950s.

She joined the cast of "The Honeymooners" in 1966 as Trixie when Gleason moved to Miami Beach for another version of "The Jackie Gleason Show," where he revived "The Honeymooners" for new sketches that reunited him with Carney. Sheila MacRae took on the role of Alice.

Those "Honeymooners" segments expanded to an hour and were crafted as musical comedies, with several original songs within each installment. The cast also appeared in 1976 for an ABC special, "The Honeymooners -- The Second Honeymoon."

Born April 10, 1923, in Hartford, Conn., Kean first started working professionally in the 1940s on stage. She appeared in starring roles on Broadway in the 1950s in shows such as "The Pajama Game" and "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" in which she replaced Jayne Mansfield.

During the 1950s, she also teamed up with her sister Betty for a popular nightclub act that blended singing, dance and comedy. The sisters performed on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and had a successful run at the London Palladium.

In the 1980s, Kean performed at colleges, on cruise ships, at dinner theaters and what she called Florida's "condo circuit." She wrote and performed in a two-woman musical, "We," at the Forum Theater in Yorba Linda in 1991. The project, which also starred Barbara Perry, featured comedy and musical numbers from numerous Broadway shows the two women had appeared in.

Kean performed a tribute to Gleason during the show titled, "How Sweet It Was."

Kean’s first marriage, to Richard Linkroum, ended in divorce. She later married her manager, Joe Hecht. He died in 2006. Her sister Betty died in 1986.

Besides Wolpert, Betty Kean's daughter, Jane Kean is survived by Wolpert's husband and two children, along with a stepson, Joseph Hecht Jr., and his son.

[RedRiver]

Oh, my goodness! How many years have I enjoyed her work, without knowing her name? I guess that's the main thing an actor wants. "Don't worry about who I am. Just appreciate what I do." The women on that show contributed enormously to its success. They weren't foils or butts of jokes. Quite the contrary. It was they who held court in their kitchens. Who fired off the zingers that made clear just who ran the household. It could almost be said that their characters were ahead of their time. It would be years before most TV wives had the courage and confidence of these gals.

I've long admired what Audrey Meadows did as Alice. Now we pay tribute to her talented counterpart. People wonder why we prefer the classic era? This timeless comedy should answer any questions!

[RedRiver]

I've just actually read the above obit. To be clear, I was thinking of Joyce Randolph, the original Trixie, when I made my comments. But that's no slight to the late Ms. Kean. I'm sure she was fine as well!

[Rita Hayworth]

Jane Kean of the Honeymooners Show was one of my earliest Television Favorites and the Honeymooners Show in Syndication and it's reruns were a joy when I was in my teens when I watch it on Channel 9 - Our only Public Station that we had available and its made me smile like no other shows at that time. Jane Kean made it a legendary television show and she never ever failed to entertain me.

An incredible lady with a joy to entertain the "masses" ...

[Nick]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news once again, but British actress Jean Kent has passed away (1921-2013).

Herald Scotland, 30 November 2013:

Film star Jean Kent dies at 92

Kent was one of Britain's top box-office stars in the 1940s and 1950s.

Her death was announced by a close family friend, author and former film critic Michael Thornton.

He said the actress was injured in a fall at her home in the Suffolk village of Westhorpe on Thursday. She was taken by ambulance to West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds where she died at 3.40am today.

Kent made her last public appearance in June 2011 when she was honoured by the British Film Institute (BFI) on her 90th birthday. It screened one of her films, Caravan, at BFI Southbank in London.

Her career included regular appearances in Gainsborough melodramas, which were popular with large numbers of newly-independent women following the outbreak of the Second World War.

Her co-stars during her film career included Marilyn Monroe, Michael Redgrave and Laurence Olivier.

Kent was born in Brixton, south London on June 29, 1921, the only child of variety performers Norman Field and Nina Norre.

She met her husband Jusuf Ramart on the set of Caravan and they married in April 1946. He died from cancer in 1989.

Mr Thornton said: "I knew Jean for more than 50 years. She was a feisty, funny, outspoken character who never took herself too seriously. She knew what it meant to be a star, and regarded it as her job to live up to that position and never to disappoint the public."

He added: "Because she became one of the most famous stars of the Gainsborough era, with its bodice-ripping melodramas, she was underrated as an actress. But she was a great actress."

While the obit doesn't mention this, Jean Kent was also one of the last living people who auditioned for GWTW (Melanie Hamilton).

[CineMaven]

Oh wow, sad news...actor TONY MUSANTE has recently passed away. Click foto for complete info from the New York Times:

"Tony Musante, a rugged-looking American actor who was seen on television, in films and on stage in the United States and Europe for over 50 years but who was probably best known for a TV series he left after one season, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 77..."



Got a chance to meet Tony Musante up close and personal when he was interviewed during the Anthology Film Archives tribute to GIALLO films.