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Archive through February 20, 2005

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: 2005 Mar. ~ 2005 May: Free Expression... (ARCHIVES): Passings (ARCHIVES): Archive through February 20, 2005 users admin

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Herckleperckle
Member

11-20-2003

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 2:53 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
OMG--I watched him every single night for years; just loved him. A couple of years ago for Christmas, I gave Ed a collection of those Johnny Carson videos (sold on TV late at night). They are wonderful. I can't believe this. Emphysema--I haven't read the article yet, but I do think he was smoker. What a loss.

I was always hoping he'd appear one more time, even momentarily, so I could hear him talk live one more time.

Have to watch Letterman for sure Monday night to see what he says. I am sure it will be wonderful.

Cablejockey
Member

12-27-2001

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 4:12 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I am so shocked and saddened. For some reason, I thought he had years left, and that one day he would come out of his self imposed exile. I remember when he quit smoking after trying for many years-- although I guess damage was done.
How I loved watching him every night I could. He was expecially wonderful interviewing old people and having animals on. At Christmas he would subltly give people the chance to help poor children by getting their letters to Santa from the post office. I loved Karhak, his Tea For Two dance when the jokes weren't doing well, and Stump the Band.
It was too soon for him to retire back in 1992, and its too soon for him to leave us now.

Twinkie
Member

09-24-2002

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 4:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I broke down and cried when I heard this. I grew up watching Johnny Carson. I'm so very sad.

Seamonkey
Member

09-07-2000

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 4:59 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
One of a kind, for sure. Now I understand why he wasn't out and about. Late stages of emphysema are very unkind to say the least.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 6:37 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
so sad ... what a loss to us ...

Escapee
Member

06-15-2004

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 9:09 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Didn't leno replace Carson? I'll bet they all do a great tribute.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 10:38 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
yes, Leno replaced Carson, but he was very vocal about thinking that Letterman would be the better choice.

Hippyt
Member

06-15-2001

Sunday, January 23, 2005 - 10:47 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I don't usually watch Letterman anymore,but I will tomorrow night.

Brenda1966
Member

07-03-2002

Monday, January 24, 2005 - 12:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
So sad to hear this news. I remember laying in bed as a kid and hearing my dad laugh SO loud sometimes I would come out of my room to find out what was so funny. It was always Johnny.

As I grew older and "got" the jokes I came to love the "Johnny Carson" show, as it was called in our house. It was never the same after he retired.



Mamie316
Member

07-08-2003

Monday, January 24, 2005 - 1:00 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Brenda, we never called it the Tonight Show either. It was always the Johnny Carson Show.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:23 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Actor Ossie Davis dead at 87

Friday, February 4, 2005 Posted: 11:11 AM EST (1611 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/04/obit.davis.ap/index.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- Ossie Davis, the actor distinguished for roles dealing with racial injustice on stage, screen and in real life, has died, an aide said Friday. He was 87.

Davis was found dead Friday in his hotel room in Miami, where he was making a film called "Retirement," according to Arminda Thomas, who works in his office in suburban New Rochelle.

Davis was known for roles dealing with racial injustice -- on stage and screen, and in real life.

He was the husband and partner of actress Ruby Dee.

Texannie
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:24 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh, this just breaks my heart!! What a wonderful actor AND couple! Their love and respect for each other was wonderful to see.

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:32 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh that makes me so sad! I think I first remember Mr. Davis from Do the Right Thing--in 1889, a number /another summer /sound of the funky drummer--but I have since then seen much of his earlier work. I will pray for Ms. Dee. They had a unique, special relationship. He and Rudy were both great friends with Malcolm X and served as models for us on how to fight against oppression with grace, dignity, and eloquence.

ETA: Air America Radio is going to air an interview with him in just a moment. Listen live here of you like.

Ophiliasgrandma
Member

09-04-2001

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:33 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I just read about Mr. Davis as I was trying to find info on John Vernon, character actor. I cannot find a pix of him to post, but you all would recognized him in an instant. He was Dean Wormer in Animal House.

Jan
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:45 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
How sad. :-(:-( I felt an immediate pang when I saw Ladytex's post in my "new message" thread! He was so very good :-(:-(

Beachcomber
Member

08-26-2003

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 11:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
How sad about Mr. Davis, I always enjoyed his performances and am shocked that he was that old (he looked great to be 87!). He had such a wonderful presence about himself.

Texannie
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 1:21 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
What a wonderful life, resume and legacy!!!!

Ossie Davis found dead in Miami Beach hotel room
By HlLLEL ITALIE
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Ossie Davis, the imposing, unshakable actor who championed racial justice on stage, on screen and in real life, often in tandem with his wife, Ruby Dee, has died. He was 87.

Davis was found dead Friday in his hotel room in Miami Beach, Fla., according to officials there. He was making a film called Retirement, said Arminda Thomas, who works in his office in suburban New Rochelle and confirmed the death.

Miami Beach police spokesman Bobby Hernandez said Davis' grandson called shortly before 7 a.m. when Davis would not open the door to his room at the Shore Club Hotel. Davis was found dead and there does not appear to be any foul play, Hernandez said.

Davis, who wrote, acted, directed and produced for the theater and Hollywood, was a central figure among black performers for decades. He and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998 with the publication of a dual autobiography, In This Life Together.

Their partnership called to mind other performing couples, such as the Lunts, or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Davis and Dee first appeared together in the plays Jeb, in 1946, and Anna Lucasta, in 1946-47. Davis' first film, No Way Out in 1950, was Dee's fifth.

Both had key roles in the television series Roots: The Next Generation (1978), Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum (1986) and The Stand (1994). Davis appeared in three Spike Lee films, including School Daze, Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. Dee also appeared in the latter two; among her best-known films was A Raisin in the Sun, in 1961.

In 2004, Davis and Dee were among the artists selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.

When not on stage or on camera, Davis and Dee were deeply involved in civil rights issues and efforts to promote the cause of blacks in the entertainment industry. They nearly ran afoul of the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the early 1950s, but were never openly accused of any wrongdoing.

Davis directed several films, most notably Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Countdown at Kusini (1976), in which he also appeared with Dee. Both wrote plays and screenplays, and

Other films in which Davis appeared include The Cardinal (1963), The Hill (1965), Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994) and I'm Not Rappaport (1996), a reprise of his stage role 10 years earlier.

On television, he appeared in The Emperor Jones (1955), Freedom Road (1979), Miss Evers' Boys (1997) and Twelve Angry Men (1997). He was a cast member on The Defenders from 1963-65, and Evening Shade from 1990-94, among other shows.

Davis had just started his new movie on Monday, said Michael Livingston, his Hollywood agent.

"I'm shocked," Livingston said. "I'm absolutely shocked. He was the most wonderful man I've ever known. Such a classy, kindly man." His wife had gone to New Zealand to make a movie there, Livingston said.

The oldest of five children, Davis was born in tiny Cogdell, Ga., in 1917 and grew up in nearby Waycross and Valdosta. He left home in 1935, hitchhiking to Washington to enter Howard University, where he studied drama, intending to be a playwright.

His career as an actor began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem, then the center of black culture in America. There, the young Davis met or mingled with some of the most influential figures of the time, including the preacher Father Divine, W.E.B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.

He also had what he described in the book as a "flirtation with the Young Communist League," which he said essentially ended with the onset of World War II. Davis spent nearly four years in service, mainly as a surgical technician in an Army hospital in Liberia, serving both wounded troops and local inhabitants.

Back in New York in 1946, Davis debuted on Broadway in Jeb, a play about a returning soldier. His co-star was Dee, whose budding stage career had paralleled his own. They had even appeared in different productions of the same play, On Strivers Row, in 1940.

In December 1948, on a day off from rehearsals from another play, Davis and Dee took a bus to New Jersey to get married. They already were so close that "it felt almost like an appointment we finally got around to keeping," Dee wrote in In This Life Together.

As black performers, they found themselves caught up in the social unrest fomented by the then-new Cold War and the growing debate over social and racial justice.

"We young ones in the theater, trying to fathom even as we followed, were pulled this way and that by the swirling currents of these new dimensions of the Struggle," Davis wrote in the joint autobiography.

He lined up with socialist reformer DuBois and singer Paul Robeson, remaining fiercely loyal to the singer even after Robeson was denounced by other black political, sports and show business figures for his openly communist and pro-Soviet sympathies.

While Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the New York theater world became engulfed in McCarthyism controversies, Davis and Dee emerged from the anti-communist fervor unscathed.

"We've never been, to our knowledge, guilty of anything — other than being black — that might upset anybody," he wrote.

They were friends with baseball star Jackie Robinson — Dee played his wife, opposite Robinson himself, in the 1950 movie The Jackie Robinson Story — and with Malcolm X.

In the book, Davis told how a prior commitment caused them to miss the Harlem rally where Malcolm was assassinated in 1965. Davis delivered the eulogy at Malcolm's funeral, calling him "our own black shining prince — who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so." He reprised it in a voice-over for the 1992 Spike Lee film, Malcolm X.

Along with film, stage and television, the couple's careers extended to a radio show, The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour, that ran on 65 stations for four years in the mid-1970s, featuring a mix of black themes.

Both made numerous guest appearances on television shows.



Associated Press writer Richard Pyle contributed to this report

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3024392

Texannie
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, February 11, 2005 - 10:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Playwright Arthur Miller dies at 89


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3035149

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 11, 2005 - 12:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
RIP Mr. Miller.

Herckleperckle
Member

11-20-2003

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 1:14 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Sandra Dee, star of Gidget, Tammy, A Summer Place and Beach Blanket movies, once married to Bobbie Darin, age 63, of kidney failure. (A victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather at age 8, she battled depression, alcohol and anorexia for years. In 1996, she became health-oriented when her granddaughter, Alexa, was born.)

s dees dee 56


Max
Member

08-12-2000

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 1:49 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
:-(

Ophiliasgrandma
Member

09-04-2001

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 2:03 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
How sad! I just watched her in a 'Tammy' movie a couple of weeks ago. She was the cutest little thing you ever saw.

Native_texan
Member

08-24-2004

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 3:06 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
OG, I watched a couple of those movies a few weeks ago also. They were having a Tammy marathon on some station.

Texannie
Member

07-16-2001

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 4:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
How sad.

Rslover
Member

11-19-2002

Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 6:06 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Supposedly she was only 60. Her mother lied about her age when she was a teenager.