OT: Kirk Douglas reaches 100 !

[Bryan Styble]

I presume his clan is staging a major party tonight...

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[Michael OConnor]

I believe he is the first major entertainment celebrity to hit the century mark since Bob Hope, and before that George Burns.

[tr...@iwvisp.com]

On Friday, December 9, 2016 at 2:13:40 PM UTC-8, Bryan Styble wrote:
> I presume his clan is staging a major party tonight...
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

VARIETY:

December 1, 2016 | 11:53PM PT

GOLETA, Calif. — Kirk Douglas, “Rules Don’t Apply” star Lily Collins and Don Cheadle turned out to salute Warren Beatty at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Kirk Douglas Award celebration of the Hollywood legend Thursday night.

Beatty noted that Douglas, who sent pre-recorded sentiments and will celebrate his 100th birthday on Dec. 9, was an inspiring influence when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1958. “I could see clearly about you the possibilities and the reality of producing and acting in a movie at the same time,” he said.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I've been told second hand that Kirk is still 100% mentally but has moved from a cane to a walker.



This is my Facebook post from earlier today...

In 1985 I was managing a wonderful little AM radio station, WKOL, in Amsterdam, NY. Coincidentally, 1985 was Amsterdam’s Centennial year. The City Fathers, Mothers, and Chamber of Commerce planned a huge celebration and they wanted their Favorite Son to attend. He was born in Amsterdam in 1916 and he did NOT have pleasant memories of his hometown. In fact, the few times he had visited he snuck in and out at night, visiting personal friends.

Well, the City caught him on a good day and he agreed to attend. WKOL was able to obtain congratulatory messages from all four of his sons: Michael, Eric, Peter, and Joel.

Prior to the big parade in the afternoon there was a Thank You luncheon for all the Centennial committee members, and the guest of honor, with speeches and presentations – NO CAMERAS ALLOWED!

We played the “Congrats” tape of his four boys and I shook Kirk Douglas’s hand and gave him a copy of the tape.

What I remember is: he was a little shorter than my 5’8”, he smelled great, he had the softest hands of any man with whom I’ve ever shaken hands (Hollywood Mani’s), the dimple is real. And when he made eye contact, he made me feel like we were old friends.

So, on HIS centennial occasion, I’d like to wish a Very Happy 100th Birthday on Friday to my “old friend,” and favorite actor, the wonderful Kirk Douglas.


Ray Arthur

[cathyc...@aol.com]

Wrong. Olivia de Havilland turned 100 this past July 1. The media was filled with stories. Don't you read?

[David Carson]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2016 15:08:36 -0800 (PST), cathyc...@aol.com wrote:

>Wrong. Olivia de Havilland turned 100 this past July 1. The media was filled with stories. Don't you read?

Who?

[That Derek]

Radio-/screenwriter NORMAN CORWIN (1910-2011) turned 100 in May 2010.

[RH Draney]

On 12/9/2016 3:39 PM, Michael OConnor wrote:
> I believe he is the first major entertainment celebrity to hit the century mark since Bob Hope, and before that George Burns.

You missed Leni Riefenstahl...turned 100 almost a year before Hope, but
outlived him by two months....r

[cathyc...@aol.com]

Apparently Mr Carson doesn't read either.

I doubt many people know Corwin or Riefenstahl
You might as well have days Norman Lloyd or Mary Carlisle.

[leno...@yahoo.com]

On Friday, December 9, 2016 at 5:39:34 PM UTC-5, Michael OConnor wrote:
> I believe he is the first major entertainment celebrity to hit the century mark since Bob Hope, and before that George Burns.

Here's what I posted in April of 2015 (slightly edited, with additions - this does not include the living):

Adolph Zukor (producer - often uncredited), 1873-1976
Estelle Winwood (The Glass Slipper) 1883-1984
George Abbott (director, Damn Yankees) 1887-1995
Irving Berlin (composer), 1888-1989
Athene Seyler (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness), 1889-1990
Hal Roach (producer: The Little Rascals), 1892-1992
George Burns (Oh, God!), 1896-1996
Mary Ellis (The 3 Worlds of Gulliver), 1897-2003
Irving Rapper (director: Now, Voyager), 1898-1999
Margaret Booth (editor: Romeo & Juliet, 1936) 1898-2002
Frederica Sagor Maas (writer: Flesh and the Devil, 1926), 1900-2012
Leni Riefenstahl (director: Triumph of the Will), 1902-2003
Bob Hope ("Road to" series), 1903-2003
Johannes Heesters (Die Fledermaus, 1946), 1903-2011
Marie Glory (L'argent, 1928), 1905-2009
Bruce Bennett, aka Herman Brix (Tarzan, 1935), 1906-2007
Barbara Kent (Flesh and the Devil, 1926) 1907-2011
Run Run Shaw (Hong Kong producer), 1907-2014
Dercy Gonçalves (Absolutamente Certo, 1957), 1907-2008
Tullio Pinelli (writer: La Dolce Vita), 1908-2009
Jean Delannoy (director: La passion de Bernadette), 1908-2008
Manoel de Oliveira (director: I'm Going Home), 1908-2015
Carla Laemmle (Dracula), 1909-2014
Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld), 1910-2014
Gloria Stuart (The Invisible Man), 1910-2010
Paulette Dubost (The Rules of the Game), 1910-2011
Kaneto Shindô (director, The Island), 1912-2012
Douglas Slocombe, (cinematographer, Raiders of the Lost Ark), 1913–2016
Elmo Williams, (producer and Oscar-winning editor, High Noon), 1913–2015
Richard L. Bare, (director, TV's Green Acres), 1913–2015
Herb Jeffries (The Bronze Buckaroo), 1913-2014
Ellen Albertini Dow (Wedding Crashers), 1913–2015
Marc Platt, (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), 1913–2014
Olaf Pooley, (TV's Dr. Who), 1914–2015
Amelia Bence, (The Gaucho War), 1914–2016
Leslie H. Martinson, (director, Batman: The Movie), 1915–2016
Vladimir Zeldin, (Ten Little Indians, 1987) 1915–2016
Jack Rollins (producer, Annie Hall), 1915-2015
Van Alexander, (composer/conductor, TV's I Dream of Jeannie), 1915–2015
Harry Rabinowitz, (composer/conductor, The Talented Mr. Ripley) 1916–2016



Of course, I may have missed a few obscure names.



Lenona.

[Bryan Styble]

Well, Leona, thanks much for that list.

But Y'KNOW, there ain't nuttin' "obscure" about The World's Foremost Authority, i.e., the brilliant Irwin Corey, who's still, I gather, occasionally working, probably hilariously, at 102-and-come-July-103 !

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[That Derek]

>> Of course, I may have missed a few obscure names.

Charles Lane ("It's a Wonderful Life"; 1905–2007.

Hardly "obscure."

[RH Draney]

On 12/10/2016 2:03 PM, Bryan Styble wrote:
>
> But Y'KNOW, there ain't nuttin' "obscure" about The World's Foremost Authority, i.e., the brilliant Irwin Corey, who's still, I gather, occasionally working, probably hilariously, at 102-and-come-July-103 !

Last I heard he was panhandling in Manhattan...not for himself, but to
help out the homeless....

(I know where I'll be when I'm his age: under a rock with my name on
it)....r

[leno...@yahoo.com]

Here's another one I should include - I just didn't know her name before now - or that she lived that long!

Etta Moten (1901-2004: she was 102 and lived her last years in Chicago)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0609323/?ref_=tt_cl_t8

Here's where you can see her sing! Guess who starts dancing soon after the 2:00 mark!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8iw69RExbk

(Not that the picture wouldn't have been worth watching even without them, IMO.)

Other movies you can see her in:

Gold Diggers of 1933
The Green Pastures
A Day at the Races

Mini bio from the IMDb:

In addition to her vocal dubbing and on-screen film credits, Etta Moten played the role of Bess in the 1943 revival of "Porgy and Bess" at the personal request of Ira Gershwin (not George, who had died in 1937). Etta and husband Claude Barnett, founder of the Negro Associated Press, served as US representatives to the independence celebrations of Ghana and several other African countries. Also a radio journalist, Etta interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after the ceremonies in Ghana on March 6, 1957, and conducted her own radio show for WMAQ/NBC in Chicago for many years.


Spouse (1)
Claude Barnett (1934 - 1967) (his death)
Trivia (10)
Etta Moten became the first African-American stage and screen star to sing and perform at the White House (at the invitation of President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt) on January 31, 1933.
Has 3 children.
Appeared in a number of Broadway plays including "Lysistrata" and "Sugar Hill."
Graduate of the University of Kansas.
Her father was a Methodist minister.
Inducted into the Black Film-Makers Hall of Fame.
Received a Living Legend Award from the National Black Arts Festival.
Studied voice and drama at the University of Kansas.
Was called "The first Negro woman to play a dignified role in pictures" by The Pittsburgh Courier.



Lenona.

[Bryan Styble]

There appears a factual error there with that January 31, 1933 date, Leona, inasmuch as FDR didn't take office until Saturday, March 4, 1933.

Hadn't heard of Moten, incidentally; quite interesting bio.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

[Jim Macey]

There appears to be a factual error in your posting: FDR, in 1933, was
the first President to be inaugurated in January.

[Bryan Styble]

No, the 20th Amendment's provision which foreshortened the presidential transition term from March 4th to January 20th didn't kick in until January 1937; otherwise, it would have been President, not President-elect Roosevelt who was nearly assassinated in front of the bandshell in downtown Miami's Bayfront Park on the evening of Wednesday, February 15, 1933 by onetime bricklayer Giuseppi Zangara, who nonetheless succeeded in inadvertently fatally wounding adjacent Chicago mayor Anton Cermak and, posthaste*, expiring in Florida's execution chamber.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* 33 days, on Monday, March 20th.

[cathyc...@aol.com]

Many historians believe the intended target was Cermak not FDR.

[Bryan Styble]

You're quite correct, CathyC:

Several scenarios have indeed been offered up to explain Zangara's behavior prior to his near-miss with Roosevelt, and as your employment of the term historians--as opposed to, say, "theorists"--correctly implies, they're not necessarily fringe ideas.

But I've looked at this case in detail, for a bunch of utterly personal reasons:

First, I'm just plum tired of the JFK case, which I've been devoting much too much time to as a gimme-some-alternative-to-Dylan hobby--visiting all the sites in Dallas, New Orleans and D.C., consuming literally DOZENS of books on it, featuring it annually on-air for my entire commercial newstalk radio career, etc.--ever since the mid-'70s.

Second, my late father Lewis Stibal was a contractor but started out as a bricklayer, just like Zangara was.

And third, my late decade-long galpal, Marci Fulton of Seattle [1946-2015]--the one who looked AND sounded just like Betty Boop and was, believe it or not*, even more talkative than me--had something oddly in common with Zangara.

So I've got a lot of personal motivation on this one, and thus have done my homework. But I tell you, Cathy, the mob connection to Cermak's circle back in prohibition Chicago is easy to draw, but difficult to match with Zangara's behavior. I found the account in James Clarke's "American Assassins" is most persuasive, which has him acting alone.

What reminded me of Zangara with Marci was that she for years had endured unexplained digestive problems, which in her unfortunate case turned out to be terminal pancreatic cancer. Back in '33, in Zangara's broken English, all the young Italian immigrant could ever offer up to authorities as a motive for his mayhem was, "My stomach-a always-a hurt."

When I first read this, I remember thinking, "What a stretch." But then years later, I developed some serious nausea up in Toronto one time and after a day or so of unrelenting agony, I started thinking, "Wow, I can see how this might drive someone like Zangara over the edge." (Fortunately, it was a brief illness and I'm utterly allergic to guns. And I was in Canada anyway.)

I admit I'm generally a tough sell on these Occam's razor-violating theories: I've looked at Dallas '63 every which way yet still strongly suspect Oswald didn't merely act alone, but never verbalized his intention to anyone, even Marina. And Guitteau, Czolgosz, Sirhan and Bremer all seem to have also been lone wolves. Nor has anyone been able to credibly connect Fromme's, Moore's or Hinckley's gunplay to any ring.

Of course, Booth was obviously in cahoots with loads of people**, and James Ray, known as Jimmy in the family, was also clearly part of a conspiracy, at the very least with his [today still quite free] brother Jerry, if not others as well***. And back in '65, the many witnesses to Malcolm's mow-down in the Audubon Ballroom knew immediately it was a conspiracy, simply because there were multiple gunmen, whom Louis Farrakhan would years later, breathtakingly, all but admit on-camera were working on his orders. Likewise, someone big was surely directing those two Puerto Ricans who clumsily tried to take out Truman at Blair House.

But Booth, Ray and those Harlem and PR shooters are exceptions when it comes to assassinations in American history; if you want conspiracy, it's vastly easier to examine any one of the many dozens of European assassination plots through the centuries.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
______________________________________________________________________
* NObody I ever said that sentence to believed me...UNTIL they eventually met Marci.
** Including the controversially-rehabilitated Dr. Mudd, it seems utterly clear to me.
*** But NOT including the mysterious and frequently-cited (yet evidently non-existent) telephonic "Raoul", who in fact seems to have been Jerry.