Passages

[fiddlesticks]

Oral Roberts

[Tribe]

Oral Roberts

God finally called him home.

[dx23]

Roy E. Disney

[tavernier]

Gene Barry

From Michael Riedel, theater gossip columnist of the NY Post:

Gene Barry, who died last week, gave a memorable performance as Georges in the original Broadway production of "La Cage aux Folles."

But according to a new book, backstage he was a jerk.

"Party Animals," by Robert Hofler, is a biography of impresario Allan Carr, who produced "La Cage" in 1983.

In an excellent chapter on the making of the show, Hofler reports that Barry was so afraid of contracting AIDS, he refused to ride in elevators with gay cast members.

He also gave interviews designed to make sure the public knew he was straight.

"I have nothing against homosexuals, but I have no part of their polemics," he said.

Asked if he was worried that people would think he was gay because he was playing a gay man, he responded: "People never think you're a murderer if you're playing a murderer."

Shirley Herz, the show's publicist, says in the book that Barry kept asking her if people would think he was gay because he was in the show.

"Not if you aren't," she told him.

John Weiner, who played the juvenile in the show, eventually got fed up with Barry's paranoia.

He confronted him one night in the wings just before the show started: "Gene, you really have nothing to worry about. You're not going to catch AIDS unless you're bending over and -- " (this being a family newspaper, I'll let you finish the quote).

Hofler, a fine reporter, notes that the atmosphere backstage at "La Cage" was pretty raunchy. Carr and his cohorts, he writes, had their pick of the younger male cast members.

Jon Wilner, who handled the advertising, tells Hofler: "It was incestuous. Everyone was sleeping with the Cagelles. Everyone had a Cagelle. It was a great time."

"Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr" will be published early next year.

It's a good, gossipy read.

[Michael]

Oral Roberts

God finally called him home.

I learned a new Christmas story today - "Everytime two gays get rings, an evangelical gets his wings!" Peace out, Oral.

[Cash Flagg]

Val Avery

[Polybius]

Oral Roberts

God finally called him home.

This is what happens when you miss your fund raising quota.

[Antares]

Jennifer Jones

[Murdoch]

Truly sad, I just watched Beat the Devil again and I always found her lovely in it. A great loss.

[Matt]

She was a terribly underrated actress. The Washington Post obit quotes Jeanine Basinger's comment: "One of the tragedies of Jennifer Jones's career is that she will always be viewed through the filter of David O. Selznick," which I think it true in more ways than one.

There aren't many great figures of classical Hollywood cinema around anymore.

[domino harvey]

Her career was admittedly uneven but anyone able to deliver something like the Song of Bernadette will never be forgotten.

[Highway 61]

Her career was admittedly uneven but anyone able to deliver something like the Song of Bernadette will never be forgotten.

I had to watch this movie when I was a kid in Catholic school. All my friends hated it: "so gay," etc. I loved it. It was one of the few tastes of classic Hollywood I'd ever had, but I've never revisited it for fear that I would find it stilted. But if you say it's the real deal, I'll have to watch it again. (Besides, I'm sure Fox will be taking the DVD out of print any day now . . .)

[domino harvey]

Best film about religion (in the affirmative) ever made. And if you're picking up Fox titles, why not go for Jones in the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit too. One of the weirdest avant garde masterpieces ever to come out of the studio system!

[antnield]

Dan O'Bannon

[Oedipax]

Robin Wood

Terrible news. I hope he finished his book on Michael Haneke.

[Michael Kerpan]

Robin Wood

Terrible news. I hope he finished his book on Michael Haneke.

According to Tony Williams, in a post on Dave Kehr's blog, Robin Wood hadn't gotten too far along on his Haneke book, due to failing eyesight.

[domino harvey]

I didn't realize Wood was that old, he always seemed eternally youthful I guess

[Highway 61]

Very sad. My father bought me his Hitchcock book when I was far too young to grasp it, but I read it voraciously anyway.

I wonder if he ever finished (or even attempted) his reevaluation of Kubrick that he discussed in the second edition of From Vietnam to Reagan.

[GringoTex]

I had the pleasure of hosting Robin Wood for a week for a series of speaking engagements. He was the consummate gentleman and probably the most generous film critic I ever met. He had just gone through hip replacement surgery and was in terrible pain and that wouldn't stop him from answering questions for hours, even when there was only one 18-year-old kid left in the audience asking.

[George Kaplan]

Robin Wood

Terrible news. I hope he finished his book on Michael Haneke.

I will miss him as I would a close, dear friend, though I never met the man. I had always hoped that I might and eventually came to think it will happen one day. I'm grief stricken to realize that he is no more. It's hard not to think in terms of feeling this as a personal loss - no other writer on film has been half as important to me, not only shaping how I view films but, so much else that it is really, everything.

I was very sorry to hear the news of Wood's death. If you never read anything else by Wood you have to read his chapter on Scarlet Empress in Personal Views. And then the rest of the book. This essay is possibly the best reading of Sternberg's visual imagination and the use of space, and light I think I've ever read.

A great loss.

Personal Views is a treasure trove of insight and articulate observation. Film criticism at its best.

I would say myself, and this may sound provocative and even arrogant, but if you don't like 'Marnie,' you don't really like Hitchcock. I would go further from that and say, if you don't love 'Marnie,' you don't really love cinema.

I know what you mean. I wish we could have had that conversation. I will miss you always.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Garfield Morgan died on December 5. A familiar British character actor who was notable as Frank Haskins in The Sweeney. Pictured here with John Thaw (not from The Sweeney though). Morgan's ex-wife Dilys Laye died earlier this year.

[colinr0380]

I was very sad to hear of Dan O'Bannon's passing (and Jennifer Jones of course). He wrote some of the most daring sci-fi and horror films of the 80s, even if they were broader and arguably not quite as accomplished in their final onscreen form as Alien was: Dead and Buried, LifeForce, and the screenplays for Heavy Metal and Total Recall.

And I certainly think Return of the Living Dead deserves to be considered one of the finest horror films of the 80s, certainly one of the finest zombie films second only to Romero's works - it manages to be both very funny (as various ambulances and police patrols stop by the cul-de-sac which comprises a very neatly, and ironically composed set of buildings: a medical supplies company and mortician's stuido on either side of the road with the graveyard in between - the zombies, showing some intellectual capacity, leap out from hiding on mass to feast and once finished one picks up the radio to request that the dispatchers "send...more...paramedics") and creepily disturbing (a captured zombie speaks of the agony of the soul after death) at the same time. While the various teen characters remain archetypes there is some very fine acting from the main teens, as well as very funny understandably mounting hysteria in the performances from Clu Gulagher, James Karen and Don Calfa as the older guard who should be able to control things but just end up making things worse. Also the film staying confined inside a couple of very geographically close key locations for the bulk of the action, with a few cutaways to the outside world makes the nihilistic and circular apocalyptic environmentalist climax even more upsettingly shocking whilst at the same time as being completely and inevitably appropriate.

[bigP]

Brittany Murphy

[domino harvey]

Oh my God

[Murdoch]

Wow, so young. RIP