Thanks for that.
But that Rolling Stone obit was pretty shoddy.
Doesn't mention that Ragavoy co-wrote most of the listed hits with the great Bert Berns (totally unmentioned in the article). And they can't be bothered to name talents such as Howard Tate or Irma Thomas or Erma Franklin who did early and important versions of the songs mentioned. A better tribute. [urlhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/phil ... 6101559101]And another from Oz[/url].
Last edited by Lemmy Caution on Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
Thanks for that.
But that Rolling Stone obit was pretty shoddy.
Doesn't mention that most of the hist listed Ragavoy co-wrote with Bert Berns (unmentioned in the article). And they can't be bothered to name the great Howard Tate or Irma Thomas or Erma Franklin who did early and important versions of the songs mentioned.
That was terrible. Only in Rolling Stone-land is Janis Joplin an important R & B singer. She even gets to upstage Ragavoy in his own obituary!
Perkins Cobb wrote:G. D. Spradlin, oil baron turned character actor.
This bums me out, terribly.
He's best known for Godfather II but he's also great in Apocalypse Now and (especially) in North Dallas Forty as B.A. Strothers, a very thinly disguised take on Tom Landry.
That rather bums me out, too. I'm a little surprised he was 57. I knew him mostly for his role on Santa Barbara (I was one of the dozens of fans of that show.)
A really handsome guy (looking a lot like Ted Danson, who played his brother in a TV movie called Our Family Business in '81.) I always thought it might have hampered his career by typecasting him.
Perkins Cobb wrote:G. D. Spradlin, oil baron turned character actor.
This bums me out, terribly.
He's best known for Godfather II but he's also great in Apocalypse Now and (especially) in North Dallas Forty as B.A. Strothers, a very thinly disguised take on Tom Landry.
He was good in all those movies (especially Apocalypse) but he played a wicked villain in a movie with James Garner, Tank.
It is not really high brow but I'll always remember John Wood for his role as Professor Falkan in WarGames!
As that 'trailer' suggests he was also in the Whoopi Goldberg film Jumpin' Jack Flash and was the butler in the Sabrina remake. He also had a supporting role in Young Americans (probably best known now for the Björk song but I like to think of it as Harvey Keitel channelling John Wayne in a 90s remake of Brannigan!).
He's got a lot of comedy credits - he is apparently somewhere in The Purple Rose of Cairo and in the Peter Seller's 'heist from a prison cell' film Two-way Stretch.
I was fortunate enough to see John Wood in the 2001 production of Pinter's No Man's Land at the National Theatre, in which he was Spooner to Corin Redgrave's Hirst. Ever since, this production, and his performance, have been touchstones for me when it comes to what makes good theatre - and apart from anything else, he was very, very funny. I later caught him in the National's Henry IV Part II, as Justice Shallow. He was the best thing in it. I never saw it, but his King Lear from about 20 years ago is still cited as a classic. I hope he gets lavish obits in the papers tomorrow, because he deserves them.
colinr0380 wrote:He's got a lot of comedy credits - he is apparently somewhere in The Purple Rose of Cairo and in the Peter Seller's 'heist from a prison cell' film Two-way Stretch.
I actually just watched The Purple Rose of Cairo a couple of weeks ago, and he is one of the snippy characters in the 1930s movie that Jeff Daniels steps out of. It's a fairly small role, but he perfectly captures the characteristics of a 1930s dandy, the sort of gay-best-friend role in which Edward Everett Horton and the like specialized.
I remember him most from Orlando, in which he becomes smitten with Tilda Swinton.
