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Archive through October 10, 2004

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: 2004 Nov. - 2005 Jan.: Free Expression... (ARCHIVES): Passings (ARCHIVES): Archive through October 10, 2004 users admin

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Weinermr
Member

08-18-2001

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 6:29 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Jerry Goldsmith, 75; Created Memorable TV, Film Scores; [HOME EDITION]
Jon Thurber and Susan King. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Jul 23, 2004. pg. B.11
Full Text (1362 words)
(Copyright (c) 2004 Los Angeles Times)

Jerry Goldsmith, the Emmy- and Academy Award-winning composer who created memorable scores for films as varied as "Planet of the Apes," "Patton," "Chinatown" and "The Omen," has died. He was 75.

Goldsmith died in his sleep Wednesday night at his Beverly Hills home after a long battle with cancer, said Lois Carruth, his longtime personal assistant.

During his five-decade career in Hollywood, Goldsmith was prolific and highly sought after. He composed music for nearly 200 feature films and memorable themes for several television shows, including "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," "Dr. Kildare," "The Waltons" and "Barnaby Jones."

Goldsmith was nominated for 18 Academy Awards, winning for 1976's "The Omen." His other nominations included "A Patch of Blue," "Planet of the Apes," "Patton," "Chinatown," "Under Fire," "The Wind and the Lion" and "Basic Instinct."

He was nominated for seven Emmys, winning five for "Star Trek: Voyager", the miniseries "Masada" and "QB VII," and the TV movies "Babe" and "The Red Pony." He was also nominated for numerous Grammys and Golden Globes.

Goldsmith's early TV background taught him to be fast as well as prolific. He was brought in at the last minute to replace the score of 1974's "Chinatown," and he finished the music for the film noir thriller in just 10 days. For the 1997 action thriller "Air Force One," he wrote the score in just over four weeks after the original work was rejected.

Considered an innovator, he added avant-garde instruments to film orchestras and new ideas to film scoring. In 1968's "Planet of the Apes," for example, he used stainless-steel mixing bowls to create an unusual percussion sound.

He also used his orchestras in unusual ways. For "Planet of the Apes," he had the brass players create sound by blowing into the mouthpieces of their instruments without the instruments attached.

"As modern acting came from Brando, modern film scoring came from Jerry Goldsmith," Lukas Kendall, editor and founder of Film Score Monthly, a magazine, website and record label dedicated to vintage film scores, told The Times on Thursday.

"It's very rare for a Hollywood musician to find success in one genre, but Jerry did it in every genre. For a composer to be as relevant in 2004 as he was in 1964 is unprecedented."

Director Joe Dante, who did nine movies with Goldsmith, including the "Gremlins" films and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," told The Times on Thursday that there was a joke on his sets that if a scene wasn't working right, "Well, Jerry will save it." He said the composer's scores improved every film they worked on together.

"He never got stale. He didn't repeat himself," Dante said.

Film music historian and writer Jon Burlingame said Thursday that Goldsmith did not like to intellectualize his scores. "He operated almost viscerally and he would ascertain internally what a film needed," he said.

Goldsmith once chalked up his success to a mix of flexibility and pragmatism.

"I'm a chameleon," he told The Times' Elaine Dutka some years ago. "My longevity comes from my adaptive skills. I let the picture dictate the style. And I accept the fact that there will be gunshots and dialogue over my music. Movies are a director's medium and I'm not center stage."

Charles Bernstein, a composer and friend of Goldsmith's, said he watched Goldsmith accommodate director Rod Lurie while scoring "The Last Castle" a couple of years ago.

"He did it with such grace," Bernstein said.

Rick Berman, executive producer of several of the "Star Trek" series and films that Goldsmith composed for, said Thursday that he never saw him riled.

"If a director or a producer suggested something be altered slightly, he was always enthusiastic to do that," Berman said.

Goldsmith once said he waited until a film was at least in a rough-cut stage before he started scoring.

"I can't get ideas from a script," he once told the Washington Post. "One can look at a piece of music and envision the sound, or look at a painting and get the idea, or even read a play and imagine; but a script is just a blueprint, and what comes to the screen is so totally different that you really can't conceive of it until you see it.

"Plus, I can't really start to write until the film is locked in since we write to the 10th of a second; a foot [of film] changes and it throws off the music."

Goldsmith's scores never overpowered the material, and he knew the power of silence.

"Jerry will stop the music for 10 or 20 bars, so when it starts it will be new again," director Paul Verhoeven, who worked with Goldsmith on "Total Recall" and "Basic Instinct," told Dutka.

"Jerry gives emotional context to the images without making them cheap or hollow. There's nothing 'on the nose.' Instead of accentuating sound effects, he goes for the soul of a film."

The son of a structural engineer father and a schoolteacher mother, Goldsmith grew up in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. He studied classical piano and composition as a boy, deciding early on that writing would be his goal. He said that he had neither the temperament nor "the fingers" to be a great pianist.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled in music classes at Los Angeles City College and took a course at USC with Miklos Rozsa, the composer for Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound," which Goldsmith recalled seeing at the age of 16.

By the age of 21, Goldsmith had found work at CBS -- typing scripts. After writing scores for a weekly employee show at the network, he was given the opportunity to compose for live television and radio dramas. Initially, he composed music for programs such as "Playhouse 90," the Emmy-winning live anthology series, and for "Gunsmoke," "Have Gun Will Travel" and "The Twilight Zone," among others.

Of all his television work, he expressed a special fondness for "The Twilight Zone" and its innovative approach to music.

"The wilder it was, the better," he said of his compositions for the program.

Goldsmith left CBS in 1960 and found work at Revue Studios, where he composed music for the studio's thrillers. Two years later, he was hired to score his first major motion picture, "Lonely Are the Brave."

He received his first Oscar nomination for the 1962 biography "Freud." Through the 1960s, he was one of the busiest composers in Hollywood.

Among his other notable scores over the years were "Papillon," "The Sand Pebbles," "Alien" and "L.A. Confidential."

In addition to his lucrative composition work, Goldsmith was commissioned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to write a fanfare that could be identified with the academy. His "Fanfare for Oscar" was first heard during the announcement of the Oscar nominations in 1998 and has been on every Academy Award telecast since.

Goldsmith also dabbled in classical composition. One concert piece, "Music for Orchestra," was performed first in the early 1970s by the St. Louis Symphony and later, in 1998, by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting.

In 1999, Goldsmith was commissioned by the Philharmonic to write a piece for the Hollywood Bowl summer series. He conducted the piece, "Fireworks," at the bowl that summer. Other classical works include a cantata, "Christus Apollo," with a text by Ray Bradbury.

Goldsmith is survived by his wife of 32 years, Carol, and their son, Aaron; four children from a previous marriage, Ellen Edson, Carrie Goldsmith, Joel Goldsmith and Jennifer Grossman; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Services will be held at 2 p.m. today at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests that donations be made to the Jerry Goldsmith Scholarship Fund for Film Music Composition, c/ o UCLA School of the Arts, Dean's Office, Box 951427, Los Angeles, CA 90095, or to the Jerry Goldsmith Memorial Fund for Cancer Research, c/o Tower Cancer Research Foundation, 9090 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

Weinermr
Member

08-18-2001

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 6:32 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
David Raksin, 92; Longtime Film Composer Had Hit Song 'Laura'
www.latimes.com

By Dennis McLellan, Times Staff Writer

David Raksin, the noted film composer for "Forever Amber" and "The Bad and the Beautiful" whose hauntingly memorable theme song for the 1944 film noir classic "Laura" became one of the most recorded tunes in history, has died. He was 92.

Raksin, the last surviving major composer from Hollywood's Golden Age and a onetime Communist Party member who reluctantly named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee, died of heart failure caused by cardiovascular disease Monday at his home in Van Nuys, said his son, Alex.

In a more than half-century career in Hollywood that began in 1935 when he was hired to assist Charlie Chaplin with the music for "Modern Times," Raksin received Academy Award nominations for his scores for "Forever Amber" (1947) and "Separate Tables" (1958).

He also wrote music for "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947), "Force of Evil" (1948), "Carrie" (1952), "Pat and Mike" (1952), "Too Late Blues" (1961), "Will Penny" (1968) and more than 100 other films. And he composed music for some 300 TV shows, including the theme for "Ben Casey" (1961) and the 1989 TV movie "Lady in a Corner."

Singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, a longtime friend, told The Times recently that his favorite Raksin score was for the 1952 drama "The Bad and the Beautiful," starring Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner.

"The synthesis of blues and jazz, combined with his classical background, created a hybrid that is a distillation of the disparate influences on David," said Feinstein. Raksin's musical style, Feinstein said, "is as recognizably unique as George Gershwin…. He wrote complex music, but he also was a great melodist."

Lyricist Marilyn Bergman, president and chairwoman of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, the performing rights group, told The Times on Monday that Raksin "was a composer whose music was just as meaningful in a concert hall as it was on a soundtrack on a film."

"I think that, along with people like Alex North and Bernard Hermann and Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams, David Raksin was in the forefront of serious American composers," she said.

Raksin may be best known for his score for "Laura," a romantic mystery starring Dana Andrews as a detective who falls for a woman (Gene Tierney) as he investigates her apparent murder.

Cole Porter, once asked what piece of music he most regretted not having composed, replied, "Laura." And Hedy Lamarr, asked why she had turned down the title role in the film, said, "Because they sent me the script instead of the score."

Alfred Newman, who headed 20th Century Fox's music department, assigned Raksin to the film, produced and directed by Otto Preminger.

"I was typed as a composer for detective pictures, and they thought that's what 'Laura' was," Raksin once recalled. But he saw the movie as a love story.

At a meeting with Preminger after Raksin viewed a rough cut of the film, Preminger said he planned to use Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" to evoke the beautiful murder victim. Raksin objected, telling Preminger that while it was a great song, it was all wrong for the movie.

The meeting was on a Friday and Preminger gave Raksin the weekend to come up with something. The next morning Raksin received a letter from his then-wife, Pamela Randell, a model, singer and dancer who was working on Broadway.

"I couldn't make head or tail of it and put the letter aside so I could get back to work," he recalled in a 1976 Times interview.

When he still hadn't come up with anything by Sunday night, he tried a technique he had used before: propping something up before him to divert his mind and get his creative juices going. This time, he used his wife's letter.

"Suddenly the meaning of her letter got through to me; she was kissing me off," he recalled. "And then, like in a corny scene from a bad Warner Bros. movie about a composer, I found myself playing the entire first phrase of 'Laura.' "Audiences loved it so much that Raksin was deluged with fan letters.

He reworked the melody so it could be sung and, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, "Laura" became a hit in 1945. It's among the most recorded songs ever, with more than 400 recordings over the years.

Raksin was born in Philadelphia on Aug. 4, 1912. His father was a music store operator who conducted an orchestra at a silent movie theater and sometimes played with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Raksin began piano lessons at 6, but later switched to the saxophone. By 12, he was leading a small dance band, which he expanded in high school for broadcasting on the local CBS affiliate. He taught himself orchestration in high school and while majoring in music composition at the University of Pennsylvania played in society bands and radio orchestras.

Raksin was 23 and arranging Broadway musicals when he was invited to Hollywood to work on "Modern Times." Credited as an arranger on the film, Raksin wrote down and developed Chaplin's musical ideas, which the comedian hummed, whistled or played with two fingers on the piano.

Raksin was under contract to MGM in 1951 when he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He had been a member of the Communist Party from 1938 to 1940; he later said he was asked to leave after expressing opinions that were contrary to the party line.

Prior to appearing before the committee, Raksin sought the advice of Martin Gang, an influential entertainment lawyer who counseled clients to cooperate with the committee in order to be cleared from blacklists and return to work.

In a 1997 interview with The Times, Raksin recalled: "He said, 'If you don't talk, those will put you in jail.' Gang told me, 'Don't hide anything; they know all about you.' "

During his testimony, Raksin provided the names of 11 party members. But, partially ignoring Gang's advice, he only named people, he later said, who were dead or already had been named. He denied knowing if others were party members.

"It wasn't an abject capitulation," Raksin told The Times. "I told the committee they should leave the Communist Party alone, not try to crush it. But there I was, a guy with a family to support and a fairly decent career that was about to go down the drain.

"What I did was a major sin, but I think I did as well as most human beings would've done under torture,"

For decades, Raksin taught classes on composition for motion pictures and TV at UCLA and USC.

Raksin was the first film composer chosen by the Library of Congress to have a collection of his manuscripts in its music division.

His stage works include three produced musicals and several ballets, as well as incidental music for plays. His concert works, many of them adapted from his film scores, have been performed by several leading orchestras.

In addition to his son, an editorial writer for The Times, the twice-divorced Raksin is survived by his daughter, Valentina Raksin; and three grandchildren.

A celebration of Raksin's life and work is pending.

Mware
Member

09-14-2001

Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 10:12 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I enjoyed a lot of Jerry Goldsmith's music over the years, especially the work he did for Star Trek. Sad to see that he's gone.

Weinermr
Member

08-18-2001

Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 11:20 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
More evidence that people die in groups of "three". First Jerry Goldsmith, then David Raksin, now composer Elmer Bernstein has died. Sigh............

www.latimes.com

Elmer Bernstein, 82; Composer Who Won Oscar 'Could Do It All'

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, he created some of the most recognizable music in American films.

By Claudia Luther, Times Staff Writer

Elmer Bernstein, the Academy Award-winning composer who created some of the most recognizable music in American films, died Wednesday at his home in Ojai after a lengthy illness, his publicist, Kathy Moulton, said. He was 82.

"He was the consummate composer. He was classically trained and could do it all," said Marilyn Bergman, president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Bernstein, whose career spanned more than 50 years and included more than 200 films, was nominated for Oscars 14 times, winning in 1967 for "Thoroughly Modern Millie." Among his other nominated scores were "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Magnificent Seven," "The Man With the Golden Arm," "True Grit," "The Age of Innocence" and, most recently, "Far From Heaven."

He also wrote for television, including "The Big Valley" in the 1960s and "Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law" in the 1970s, as well as many miniseries and TV documentaries. In 1963, he won an Emmy for "The Making of the President: 1960."

Bergman said Wednesday that Bernstein "was among a group of composers who stood in the pantheon of film composing." His scores for "The Man With the Golden Arm" and "The Magnificent Seven" are considered classics, she said, and his credit sequence work for "Mockingbird" "stands as one of the best main titles, visually and musically."

Bergman, a songwriter, said Bernstein composed much of his work in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when motion picture scores were written to complement a specific film, and not with an eye to album sales outside the theater.

"The art of really scoring a film dramatically, where the composer is almost an extension of the screenplay — that's very rare today, and it makes it all the sadder," Bergman said. She said she found Bernstein's death particularly difficult because it comes close on the heels of the deaths of two other leading composers of his age: David Raksin and Jerry Goldsmith.

"It's been a bad year," Bergman said.

Lukas Kendall, publisher of the Film Score Monthly magazine, told the Hartford Courant last year that each time Bernstein got typecast, he transcended it.

"First he was the jazz composer, then he became the western composer, which took him almost into the mid-'70s," Kendall said.

In the 1970s, Bernstein gave his career another dimension when he scored such comedies as "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Airplane!" "Stripes," "Meatballs," "Ghostbusters" and "Trading Places."

He also created lyrical scores for "My Left Foot," "The Birdman of Alcatraz," "Rambling Rose" and other movies.

His 2002 score for "Far From Heaven" garnered praise for its lush, swooning quality, which added a 1950s sensibility to the period movie directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid.

Bernstein was highly respected by others who practiced his art. Composer James Newton Howard, who wrote the score for "The Sixth Sense," "The Fugitive" and other films, told The Times in 2001 that he regarded Bernstein among the most influential of composers.

"With his scores, one never has the feeling that the music is working too hard," Howard said. "Somehow, he has always been able to achieve gigantic effect with the most gentle and graceful gestures."

For "Mockingbird," Bernstein said in a 2001 interview for an article in The Times, he began to see that the basic sound of the score should be childlike, because the film portrayed adult problems seen through the eyes of children.

And for "The Grifters," the 1990 film noir directed by Stephen Frears, Bernstein created what he called a "playfully unsettling" score, "because that's what the film is like."

Bernstein was born April 4, 1922, in New York City, the son of a high school teacher who loved jazz.

He studied piano and composition and auditioned for composer Aaron Copland at the age of 12. Bernstein gave his first piano performance at age 15 in New York's Steinway Hall. He attended the Juilliard School of Music and New York University.

With the encouragement of Copland, Bernstein studied composition with Roger Sessions, Stefan Wolpe and others before World War II, during which he wrote music for the Armed Forces Radio Network. After the war, he continued writing scores for United Nations radio broadcasts, among others.

His first film score was for "Saturday's Hero," a 1951 college football film starring John Derek and Donna Reed. Others soon followed, including "Sudden Fear" with Joan Crawford and "Never Wave at a WAC" with Rosalind Russell.

In the 1950s, Bernstein's career was stymied when he was "gray-listed" during the McCarthy era for his sympathies to left-wing causes. During that time, he worked on low-budget science fiction films with such titles as "Cat-Women of the Moon."

Then, Cecil B. DeMille, who was directing "The Ten Commandments," hired Bernstein to "do for Egyptian music what Puccini did for Japanese music in 'Madame Butterfly,' " Bernstein once related. The composer, then just 32, wrote the "source" music for the film, including the songs and dances featured throughout.

About the same time, Bernstein also wrote an innovative score for "The Man With the Golden Arm," with its memorably jazzy sound, and his career took off.

Bernstein was valued in the industry for his youthful optimism and energy. At age 79, still with no plans to retire, he told The Times:

"I can't think of anything else that I'd have rather done with my life. I think I made a difference. It is an amazing human privilege to look back at your life and simply be able to say that you had some part in making millions and millions of people feel better, two hours at a time."

Bernstein is survived by his wife, Eve; sons Peter and Gregory; daughters Emilie and Elizabeth; and five grandchildren.

Carrie92
Member

09-15-2003

Saturday, August 28, 2004 - 8:04 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
NEW YORK (AP) - Laura Branigan, a Grammy-nominated pop singer best known for her 1982 platinum hit "Gloria," has died. She was 47.

Branigan died of a brain anuerysm Thursday in her sleep at her home in East Quogue, said her brother Mark Branigan. He said she had complained to a friend of a headache for about two weeks before she died, but had not sought medical attention.

"Gloria," a signature song from her debut album "Branigan," stayed atop the pop charts for 36 weeks and earned her a Grammy nomination for best female pop vocalist, the first of four nominations in her career.

She also made television appearances, including guest spots on "CHiPs," and in the films "Mugsy's Girls" and "Backstage."


Branigan released seven albums after her debut "Branigan," including "Solitaire,""Self Control," and "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You," which was co-written with Michael Bolton. Her songs also appeared on soundtracks for the films "Flashdance" and "Ghostbusters."

Branigan was born July 3, 1957, and grew up in Brewster, N.Y. She attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan. During the late 1970s, she toured Europe as a backing vocalist for Canadian singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen. She signed as a solo artist with Atlantic Records in 1982.

After her run of success in the 1980s, her releases in the early 1990s attracted little attention. In 1994, she sang a duet with David Hasselhoff called "I Believe" for the soundtrack of the television show "Baywatch." She released a 13-track "Best of Branigan" LP the next year.

After the death of her husband, Lawrence Kruteck, in 1996, Branigan stopped performing but returned to the stage in 2001. In 2002 she starred as Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical "Love, Janis," which earned her rave reviews.

Branigan recently had been working on material for a new release.

She is survived by her mother, two brothers and a sister. Funeral services were scheduled for Monday.

Jbean
Member

01-05-2002

Sunday, August 29, 2004 - 3:43 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
that's terrible news! so sad. i loved that song gloria.

Cablejockey
Member

12-27-2001

Monday, August 30, 2004 - 6:09 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I am sorry to hear of this. If I hadn't come here, I never would have known about it. There's been nothing about Laura B's death in the news where I am.

Zachsmom
Moderator

07-13-2000

Monday, August 30, 2004 - 6:10 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
:-(

Conejo
Member

08-23-2002

Monday, August 30, 2004 - 6:25 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks for the sad news Carrie. I didn't hear any news of her passing here. I loved the song 'Gloria' and 'Self Control' was also one of my dance floor favorites......what memories that brings back!

Carrie92
Member

09-15-2003

Friday, October 01, 2004 - 7:30 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Johnny Ramone, founder of The Ramones, died of prostate cancer, Sept. 15 at age 55.

Carrie92
Member

09-15-2003

Friday, October 01, 2004 - 7:35 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Celeb photographer Richard Avedon died Friday at age 81. He was on assignment for The New Yorker when he suffered a brain hemorrhage last month.

story

Carrie92
Member

09-15-2003

Monday, October 04, 2004 - 11:15 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Janet Leigh has passed away at age 77. She suffered from vasculitis over the past year. She is said to have died peacefully with daughters Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis, and husband Robert Brandt at her side.
Interesting fact about Janet Leigh: she never showered again after seeing herself in the famous shower scene of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", opting to take baths instead.

Vee
Member

02-23-2004

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 6:00 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh, 77 seems too young to die in this century! I'm glad to read that it was a peaceful passing with family gathered around.

Herckleperckle
Member

11-20-2003

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 6:56 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Colonel Gordon Cooper, astronaut (one of original Mercury 7), today. I can't find details on the net yet, but I did hear it on the Today Show a bit ago that he has died. I believe he was 77. He believed in UFOs, although there is a lot of misunderstanding about the specifics of what he says he actually saw and when. He was the author of the book, Leap of Faith.

shephard
1963

4 surviv astro
Year 2000: Four surviving astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra and John Glenn

Whoami
Member

08-03-2001

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 5:35 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Comic Rodney Dangerfield Dies at Age 82



Nickovtyme
Member

07-29-2004

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 6:43 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
That's sad.

Caddy Shack will never be the same.

Carrie92
Member

09-15-2003

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 7:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks HP and Whoami! I heard about Cooper last night, but couldn't find anything on the net either. Just heard about Rodney Dangerfield.
Sad, I thought he was getting better.

Herckleperckle
Member

11-20-2003

Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 8:57 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
rodney


Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 10:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Miami Herald reports:
`Superman' star Christopher Reeve, an advocate for spinal cord research, has died at age 52

Associated Press

BEDFORD, N.Y. - Christopher Reeve, the star of the "Superman" movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.

Reeve fell into a coma Saturday after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York home, his publicist, Wesley Combs told The Associated Press by phone from Washington, D.C., on Sunday night.
[more]

Abby7
Member

07-17-2002

Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 11:16 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
that's a surprise. sad to hear that.

Draheid, that link takes me to a sign up site. Can you copy it here?

Jmm
Member

08-16-2002

Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 11:24 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Abby, Here is a link to the CNN report.

Link

Abby7
Member

07-17-2002

Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 11:28 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
thank you Jmm.

Nino
Member

09-20-2004

Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 11:30 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
So, so sorry to hear about Christopher Reeve. I was so shocked to read that news. John Kerry just talked about Christopher during the debate Friday! My prayers go out to his family.

Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 11:47 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Posted on Mon, Oct. 11, 2004 LINK

`Superman' Star Christopher Reeve Dies

Associated Press

BEDFORD, N.Y. - Christopher Reeve, the star of the "Superman" movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.

Reeve fell into a coma Saturday after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York home, his publicist, Wesley Combs told The Associated Press by phone from Washington, D.C., on Sunday night.

Reeve was being treated at Northern Westchester Hospital for a pressure wound, a common complication for people living with paralysis. In the past week, the wound had become severely infected, resulting in a serious systemic infection.

"On behalf of my entire family, I want to thank Northern Westchester Hospital for the excellent care they provided to my husband," Dana Reeve, Christopher's wife, said in a statement. "I also want to thank his personal staff of nurses and aides, as well as the millions of fans from around the world who have supported and loved my husband over the years."

Reeve broke his neck in May 1995 when he was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Va.

Enduring months of therapy to allow him to breathe for longer and longer periods without a respirator, Reeve emerged to lobby Congress for better insurance protection against catastrophic injury and to move an Academy Award audience to tears with a call for more films about social issues.

He returned to directing, and even returned to acting in a 1998 production of "Rear Window," a modern update of the Hitchcock thriller about a man in a wheelchair who becomes convinced a neighbor has been murdered. Reeve won a Screen Actors Guild award for best actor in a television movie or miniseries.

"I was worried that only acting with my voice and my face, I might not be able to communicate effectively enough to tell the story," Reeve said. "But I was surprised to find that if I really concentrated, and just let the thoughts happen, that they would read on my face. With so many close-ups, I knew that my every thought would count."

In his public appearances, he was as handsome as ever, his blue eyes bright and his voice clear.

"Hollywood needs to do more," he said in the March 1996 Oscar awards appearance. "Let's continue to take risks. Let's tackle the issues. In many ways our film community can do it better than anyone else. There is no challenge, artistic or otherwise, that we can't meet."

In 2000, Reeve was able to move his index finger, and a specialized workout regimen made his legs and arms stronger. He also regained sensation in other parts of his body.

Reeve's support of stem cell research helped it emerge as a major campaign issue between President Bush and John Kerry. His name was even mentioned by Kerry earlier this month during the second presidential debate.

As for the strain of traveling to Hollywood, Reeve said: "I refuse to allow a disability to determine how I live my life. I don't mean to be reckless, but setting a goal that seems a bit daunting actually is very helpful toward recovery."

His athletic, 6-foot-4-inch frame and love of adventure made him a natural, if largely unknown, choice for the title role in the first "Superman" movie in 1978. He insisted on performing his own stunts.

Although he reprised the role three times, Reeve often worried about being typecast as an action hero.

"Look, I've flown, I've become evil, loved, stopped and turned the world backward, I've faced my peers, I've befriended children and small animals and I've rescued cats from trees," Reeve told the Los Angeles Times in 1983, just before the release of the third "Superman" movie. "What else is there left for Superman to do that hasn't been done?"

Though he owed his fame to it, Reeve made a concerted effort to, as he often put it, "escape the cape." He played an embittered, crippled Vietnam veteran in the 1980 Broadway play "Fifth of July," a lovestruck time-traveler in the 1980 movie "Somewhere in Time," and an aspiring playwright in the 1982 suspense thriller "Deathtrap."

"After the first `Superman,' I had the compulsion to do parts that were really weird," Reeve told The Associated Press in 1987. "That freaked people out. I've passed that."

More recent films included John Carpenter's "Village of the Damned," and the HBO movies "Above Suspicion" and "In the Gloaming," which he directed. Among his other film credits are "The Remains of the Day," "The Aviator," and "Morning Glory."

Yet Reeve always will be known to movie fans as the strapping, boyishly handsome stage veteran whose charm and humor brought a new dimension to the characters of Superman and his alter-ego, Clark Kent. The film co-starred Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.

Reeve said in public appearances promoting the "Superman" films, he tried to get children to better themselves.

"They should be looking for Superman's qualities - courage, determination, modesty, humor - in themselves rather than passively sitting back, gaping slack-jawed at this terrific guy in boots," Reeve said.

Reeve was born Sept. 25, 1952, in New York City, son of a novelist and a newspaper reporter. He in around 10 when he made his first stage appearance - in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Yeoman of the Guard" at McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.

He starred in virtually all of the theatrical productions at the exclusive Princeton Day School. By age 16, he had joined the actors' union.

After graduating from Cornell University in 1974, he landed a part as coldhearted bigamist Ben Harper on the television soap opera "Love of Life." He also performed frequently on stage, winning his first Broadway role as the grandson of a character played by Katharine Hepburn in "A Matter of Gravity."

Reeve's first movie role was a minor one in the submarine disaster movie "Gray Lady Down," released in 1978. "Superman" soon followed. Reeve was selected for the title role from among about 200 aspirants.

Active in many sports, Reeve owned several horses and competed in equestrian events regularly. Witnesses to the May 1995 accident said Reeve's horse had cleared two of 15 fences during the jumping event and stopped abruptly at the third, flinging the actor headlong to the ground.

Doctors said he fractured the top two vertebrae in his neck and damaged his spinal cord. When he finally was released from a rehabilitation institute in December 1995, he thanked staffed members "who have set the stage for my continued journey." He underwent further rehabilitation at his home in upstate New York.

While filming "Superman" in London, Reeve met modeling agency co-founder Gae Exton, and the two began a relationship that lasted several years. The couple had two sons, but were never wed.

Reeve later married Dana Morosini; they had one son, Will, 11. His wife became his frequent spokeswoman after the accident.

Reeve also is survived by his mother, Barbara Johnson; his father, Franklin Reeve; his brother, Benjamin Reeve; and his two children from his relationship with Exton, Matthew, 25, and Alexandra, 21.

No plans for a funeral were immediately announced.

A few months after the accident, he told interviewer Barbara Walters that he considered suicide in the first dark days after he was injured. But he quickly overcame such thoughts when he saw his children.

"I could see how much they needed me and wanted me ... and how lucky we all are and that my brain is on straight."

ON THE NET

Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation: http://www.christopherreeve.org

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08-03-2001

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