Rudy Robbins, American singer and actor died he was , 77

Rudy Warner Robbins is a Western entertainer known for his singing, songwriting, acting, writing, and his past performance of film and television stunts died he was , 77. He is also affiliated with a real estate firm in his adopted city of Bandera, Texas.^[1]

(November 17, 1933 – February 21, 2011)

Early years, education, military

He is the youngest of four children born in Evergreen in Avoyelles Parish in south central Louisiana to Charles Robbins, a native of Mississippi, and the former Mary Alice Grimble. His middle and last names coincidentally are the same as a city in Georgia but with one additional "b": Warner Robins. When Rudy was two years old, the family moved to Port Arthur on the Texas Gulf Coast, where he was reared. He graduated in 1952 from Thomas Jefferson High School, now known as Memorial High School, and then, for one academic year, attended Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, known at the time as Lamar Technical Institute. Himself a Baptist, Robbins graduated in 1956 from East Texas Baptist University in Marshall in east Texas with credentials in business administration and sociology.^[2]
From 1957-1959, Robbins served in the United States Army and was on the Fourth Army track team. He set a record for the javelin throw, the same event in which he had lettered at ETBU. In the Army, he met the son of a film producer who told him about job opportunities in Hollywood as a stuntman.^[3]

Moving to Bandera, Texas

After military service, Robbins moved to Bandera, a small community west of San Antonio which calls itself "The Cowboy Capital of the World". He worked there for a time as a wrangler at the Dixie Dude Ranch until he was offered a speaking but unnamed role as one of the Tennessee Volunteers in John Wayne's epic The Alamo, which was filmed not in San Antonio but near Brackettville in Kinney County in south central Texas. In The Alamo, Robbins was involved in a short dialogue repeated several times during the film: a fellow-Tennessean would review a developing situation and ask Robbins, "Do this mean what I think it do?" Robbins would reply, "It do." Thereafter, John Wayne called Robbins by the nickname "It Do"; one of Robbins' treasured possessions is a souvenir Alamo mug addressed to "It Do" from "Duke", Wayne's nickname.^[4]
After The Alamo, Robbins went to Hollywood but returned semi-permanently to Bandera in 1971 though he was on tour for many of the following years.

Acting and stunts

Wayne introduced Robbins to legendary director John Ford, who hired him as an actor in Two Rode Together with James Stewart and Richard Widmark (also filmed near Brackettville) and later for stunts in Cheyenne Autumn, also with Widmark, and in three other Wayne films, McLintock! with Maureen O'Hara), The Green Berets and Rio Lobo (1970).^[2] Robbins' other parts were for uncredited stunts in The Rounders (1965) and Sugarland Express (1974). He also appeared as a mechanic in Sugarland Express. He did stunts for CBS's Gunsmoke in 1964, acting as a double for series star James Arness.^[4]
In 1966, Robbins played Josh Cutler in NBC's Daniel Boone with Fess Parker.^[5] Robbins holds Parker, later a large Los Angeles developer, in high esteem because Parker paid him in advance: "He knew I was hard up. When I showed up on Monday morning, he handed me an envelope with my first episode’s pay in advance," recalls Robbins.^[4]
Along with Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Charlton Heston, Robbins was awarded honorary membership in the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures. Robbins also trained horses for other stuntmen and became a production manager for various shows.^[2]

Later activities

In 1967, he was selected by the United States Department of Commerce to go to Europe as a "Cowboy Goodwill Ambassador" to introduce and promote the sale of denim jeans.^[2]
Later, he joined Montie Montana, Jr., to re-create Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. With a cast of 125 cowboys, cowgirls, and Indians and 135 bison, longhorns, and horses, the show toured worldwide from London to Brazil to Singapore. The group was particularly well received in Japan, where it performed four to five shows daily for four months. The last wild west show performance was near Glacier National Park in northern Montana. Back in Texas, Robbins produced the Rudy Robbins Western Show and the All American Cowboy Get-Together, a two-day event of music, poetry, cooking, arts, crafts and demonstrations.^[2] He is also active in the "Keep Bandera Western" campaign.^[4][6]
Robbins formed The Spirit of Texas, a western harmony group, which in 1991 was named by the Texas State Senate as the "Official Cowboy Band for Texas". Modeled on the old Sons of the Pioneers, the band performed for such celebrities as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, and Tom Selleck, as well as General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Texas Governors Ann W. Richards and George W. Bush.^[4] Robbins and the Canadian yodeler Shirley Field^[7] co-authored How to Yodel the Cowboy Way, which can still be obtained through Amazon.com.^[8] After the death of two members, the Spirit of Texas disbanded.
Robbins has also written short stories for Cowboy Magazine. Robbins is featured in the Museum of the Gulf Coast, which is administered by the Port Arthur Historical Society.^[2] He resides in Bandera, which is nestled in the Texas Hill Country. In 2008, he was seeking to sell a television series tentatively entitled Intriguing Mysteries of the Old West. One episode would focus on the unsolved ambush killing in 1908 of Sheriff Pat Garrett of New Mexico.^[9]
Among his awards, Robbins has been made honorary town marshal of Tombstone, Arizona, honorary deputy sheriff of Pima County (Tucson), Arizona, and "Outstanding Cowboy of the 20th Century" for Bandera County, Texas. He was commissioned an admiral in the Texas Navy by former Governor Bill Clements. He was awarded a plaque for excellence by the Texas Stuntmen's Association.^[3]
Robbins is the divorced father of one son, Jody Eldred (born 1956) of Marina del Rey, California, who is a producer, director, and cameraman in the television industry.^[9]

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Haila Stoddard, American actress and Broadway producer died she was , 97.

Haila Stoddard  was an American actress, producer, writer and director died she was , 97..^[1] During her career as an actress, Stoddard appeared in a number of plays, movies, and television series, including sixteen years as Pauline Rysdale in The Secret Storm from 1954 to 1970. Stoddard also worked as a producer, both independently and with her production company, Bonard Productions Incorporated, which Stoddard created with Helen Bonfils in 1960.^[2] In addition to adapting plays such as Come Play with Me and Men, Women, and Less Alarming Creatures, Stoddard also wrote plays such as A Round With Ring (1969) and Zellerman, Arthur (1979).


(November 14, 1913 – February 21, 2011)

Personal life

Born in Great Falls, Montana, Stoddard moved from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, California with her family at age 8. She graduated from L.A. High in 1930, married, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Southern California in 1934 with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech, while appearing in leading roles with the National Collegiate Players.^[3]
In 1938 Stoddard married Jack Kirkland with whom she had two children. The couple divorced in 1947 and in the following year Stoddard married director-producer Harold Bromley with whom she had one child. After divorcing Bromley in 1954, Stoddard married actor-producer Whitfield Connor in 1956 with whom she remained married for thirty-two years until his death in 1988.

Career

Early career

Stoddard's first professional stage appearance was in San Francisco as a walk-on/under-study in the 1934 California production of Merrily We Roll Along, succeeding to the ingenue's leading role for opening night in Los Angeles. She appeared for 65 weeks in 1935-36 as the mute Pearl in the national touring company of Jack Kirkland's Tobacco Road.
Stoddard arrived on Broadway in 1937, succeeding Peggy Conklin in the title role of Yes, My Darling Daughter. She subsequently starred in A Woman's a Fool – To Be Clever, I Know What I Like and Kindred (1939), Susannah and the Elders (1940), Mr. and Mrs. North (1941), The Rivals (1942), The Moon Vine and Blithe Spirit (1943), Dream Girl (1945), and The Voice of the Turtle (1947). Her co-stars included Clifton Webb, Louis Calhern, Walter Slezak, Peggy Wood, Bobby Clark, Monty Woolly, and Edgar Everett Horton.
During World War II she toured the South Pacific as Lorraine Sheldon in a 1945 USO production of The Man Who Came to Dinner with a cast including director Moss Hart, as Sheridan Whiteside, and Tyrone Power, Dina Merrill, Dora Sayers, Paula Trueman, Nedda Harrigan, and Janet Fox.
She drafted a cookbook entitled Applause and produced a short-lived play called Dead Pigeon. In the late 1960s she opened Carriage House Comestibles, a popular gourmet restaurant off the Boston Post Road in Westport, Connecticut.
She starred in Joan of Lorraine, The Trial of Mary Dugan, and The Voice of the Turtle (1947), Rip Van Winkle (1947-’48), Doctor Social, Goodbye My Fancy, and Her Cardboard Lover (1949), Affairs of State (1950), Springtime for Henry (1951), Twentieth Century, Glad Tidings, and Biography (1952), ten summer stock productions at Denver's Elitch Gardens Theatre and The Frogs of Spring, a revival which she co-produced with husband Harald Bromley on Broadway (1953). She took over the leading role on opening night when illness struck Constance Ford in her own Broadway production of One Eye Closed, took over for Mary Anderson in Lunatics and Lovers in 1954, and directed the national touring production. She played in Ever Since Paradise (1957), Patate (1958), and Dark Corners" (1964).
Stoddard and Jack Kirkland were original share-holders in the creation of the Bucks County Playhouse in 1938; she appeared there in a total of sixteen productions from 1939 to 1958, including The Philadelphia Story, Petticoat Fever, Our Betters, Skylark, The Play's the Thing, Golden Boy, Mr. and Mrs. North, and Biography.^[4] During five seasons, she was the Playhouse's leading lady to leading men Walter Slezak and Louis Calhern. She produced her husband's plays The Clover Ring and Georgia Boy in Boston, and The Secret Room on Broadway, all in 1945.

The Secret Storm and other television roles

On television Stoddard played the malevolent Aunt Pauline from 1953 to 1971 on CBS-TV's The Secret Storm. In the early days of live dramatic television during the 1950s Stoddard appeared in over 100 teleplays in principal roles on CBS's Playhouse 90, Studio One, The Web, The United States Steel Hour, Hallmark Hall of Fame and The Prudential Family Playhouse; and on NBC's Goodyear Playhouse, Kraft Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse, The Armstrong Circle Theatre and Robert Montgomery Presents. On radio she played the Little Sister with Orson Welles on Big Sister on CBS. In 1937-39 she simultaneously played Stella Dallas and three other day-time radio serials, then called washboard weepers, while appearing on stage in three different plays. Her radio co-stars included Agnes Moorehead, Garson Kanin, and Clark Andrews.

Bonard Productions

Stoddard was the first to bring the work of James Thurber and Harold Pinter to Broadway. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson called her 1960 adaptation of A Thurber Carnival "the freshest and funniest show of the year."^[5] Stoddard produced the Tony Award winning musical, her first production on Broadway, with Colorado heiress Helen Bonfils and Michael Davis. She had befriended Bonfils while appearing during the summer of 1953 as leading lady at Denver's Elitch Theater where Bonfils, the owner and publisher of the Denver Post, played character parts in the summer stock company. Her original cast included Tom Ewell, Alice Ghostly, Paul Ford, Peggy Cass, John McGiver, and the Don Elliott Jazz Quartet, and was directed by Burgess Meredith. A later production, at the Central City Opera House, featured Thurber himself, then blind, as narrator.
Combining her name with Bonfils as Bonard Productions, and associating with her New York theatrical attorney Donald Seawell, she brought to Broadway productions of Noel Coward's Sail Away (1962), The Affair by C.P. Snow (1962), her own adaptation of Thurber's The Beast In Me (1963), and the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Hollow Crown (1963), which went on to tour American colleges for four months in the spring of 1964. For Sail Away she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Producer of a Musical. In association with Kathleen and Justin Sturm she presented That Hat!, her adaptation of An Italian Straw Hat, in 1964.
Stoddard often had to handle tensions between her conservative producing partner Bonfils and flamboyant figures in entertainment, including Noel Coward. In 1962, Stoddard asked Andy Warhol to design costumes for Thurber's The Beast in Me, after learning of Warhol through choreographer John Butler.
With Bonfils and Davis, Stoddard produced her co-adaptation, with dancer-actress Tamara Geva, of Marcel Achard's Voulez vous jouer avec moi? as Come Play with Me starring Tom Poston and Liliane Montevecchi in 1960, and with Mark Wright and Leonard S. Field premiered Harold Pinter on Broadway in 1967 with The Birthday Party. She later offered Off-Broadway productions of Coward's Private Lives (1968), co-producing with Mark Wright and Duane Wilder; Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky (1970) and The Gingham Dog (1971), and The Last Sweet Days of Isaac a musical by Nancy Cryer and Gretchen Ford (1970) which won three Obie awards. With Neal Du Brock she produced The Survival of St. Joan (1971); and, with Arnold H. Levy, Lady Audley's Secret (1972) and Love, based on the play by Murray Schisgal, starring Nathan Lane (1984 Outer Critics Circle Award).
Pursuing her interest in young playwrights, she produced off-Broadway productions of Glass House (1981), Casey Kurtii's Catholic School Girls (1982 Drama Desk Award), Sweet Prince (1982), Marvelous Gray (1982), and John Olive's Clara's Play (1983).
Bonard also presented the RSC productions of King Lear and Comedy of Errors to open the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in May, 1964, and her London productions of A Thurber Carnival (1962) and Sail Away (1963) played the Savoy Theatre in London's West End.
Her dramatic adaptations of Thurber material include Life on a Limb, and Men, Women, and Less Alarming Creatures, produced with The Last Flower on Boston WGBH-TV public television in 1965. In A Round with Ring she adapted Ring Lardner works which she directed in New York for the ANTA matinee series. She also directed the national touring production of Lunatics and Lovers, and she wrote original scripts entitled Abandoned Child and Bird on the Wing, and co-wrote Dahling – A Tallulah Bankhead Musical with composer-lyricist Jack Lawrence.
Stoddard also served as understudy to Bea Lillie, Greer Garson, Betty Field, Rosalind Russell, Uta Hagen, Mercedes McCambridge, and Jessica Tandy. As Rosalind Russell's stand-by, she never played the part of Auntie Mame on Broadway in 1956. Russell, when feeling infirm, would request that Stoddard sit in the wings where she could see her: "So long as I can see you", she said, "I will never let you get on that stage." Russell never relinquished, and once played with a 105 fever. Stoddard got her chance when Russell's replacement, Greer Garson, was indisposed after her first performance in the demanding part.
She replaced Elaine Stritch as the matinee Martha for in the original 1962 Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, playing the part each Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, and standing by in her dressing room each evening until the curtain rose for the second act with Uta Hagen safely in command on stage.
When Hagen left the Broadway production to open the show in London, Stoddard performed the role of Martha an unprecedented eight times a week until Mercedes McCambridge was ready to replace Hagen for the evening performances. She played with separate casts, opposite different actors. "After that stint, there was nothing more I could do on stage as an actress, so I turned to my greater fondness for writing, adapting, and producing." Meanwhile, she continued to stand by for Jessica Tandy in Edward Albee plays produced on Broadway by Duane Wilder and Clinton Barr.

[edit] Later life

Following the death of Helen Bonfils in 1972, she incorporated with The Elitch Theatre Company, which produced 25 summer seasons in America's Oldest Summer Theatre in Denver, Colorado between 1962 and 1987. She simultaneously associated with Lucille Lortel to produce summer seasons at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut, was on the Board of Directors of New Dramatists in New York City, and a Founding Member of the Westport (CT) Theatre Artists Workshop.
Stoddard died at her home in Weston, Connecticut from cardiopulmonary arrest at age 97.

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Drew Baur, American banker, co-owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, died from a heart attack he was, 66 .

Andrew 'Drew' Baur  was a co-owner of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. Baur was a key member of the ownership group which purchased the team from Anheuser-Busch in March 1996. Baur served as the team's treasurer, and was a member of the Cardinals Board of Directors.

(April 25, 1944 – February 20, 2011)

Early Life

Baur was born in St. Louis, Missouri where he attended St. Louis Country Day School. He graduated from Washington and Lee University, and then earned his M.B.A. from Georgia State University. A huge Cardinals fan, he attended high school with Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. The two remained lifetime friends, with DeWitt investing in Baur's bank and later joining Baur's group which acquired the Cardinals.^[1]

Banking career

Baur was a major player in the banking industry in the St. Louis area during his lifetime, serving as chairman of Southwest Bank and Country Bank of St. Louis. Baur and another Cardinals board member, Fred Hanser, put together the deal which formed Mississippi Valley Bancshares, a bank holding company, in 1984. Southwest Bank became one of its subsidiaries. Baur was also the former president and chairman of Commerce Bank of St. Louis, and Mercantile Trust Company N.A.^[2]

Personal life

Baur died of a heart attack at his home in Gulf Stream, Florida on February 20, 2011. Baur was survived by three children and seven grandchildren.

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Barbara Harmer, British aviator, first female Concorde pilot, died from cancer he was , 57.

Barbara Harmer was the first qualified female Concorde pilot died from cancer he was , 57..

(14 September 1953 – 20 February 2011^[1]) 

Raised in Bognor Regis, a seaside resort town and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England, Harmer left school aged 15 to pursue a career in hairdressing. Harmer's first experience in the aviation industry was six years later when she left hairdressing to go and be an air traffic controller at London Gatwick Airport. When she took on the job of air traffic controller Harmer decided to study for A Levels, which she had missed out on because she had left school at such a young age. Harmer obtained A levels in Geography, English Law, Constitutional Law and Politics. She then began flying lessons. Once she had gained her Private Pilot Licence (PPL) and then her Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) she became a flying instructor and pilot with a small commuter airline.
In 1984 Harmer joined British Caledonian and flew BAC One-Elevens for three years. She then started flying long haul McDonnell Douglas DC-10. British Airways bought British Caledonian in 1988, four years after Harmer had joined. British Airways employs over 3000 pilots, but only sixty of them are women, and on top of that when Barbara joined British Airways no woman had ever piloted the Concorde. It was at this time that Harmer realised that her ultimate ambition was to fly the Concorde. Only a handful of pilots are hand picked by British Airways to undergo the rigorous 6 months of training that British Airways insists all pilots selected to fly Concorde must undergo. Harmer was finally chosen to undergo this intensive and expensive training in 1992.
On the 25 March 1993 Harmer became the first qualified female Concorde pilot, and later that year she made her first Concorde flight as Captain to New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).
Harmer died at St. Wilfrid's Hospice, Chichester, aged 57.^[1]

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Betty Hicks, American golfer (LPGA Tour), died from Alzheimer's disease she was , 90.

Elizabeth M. "Betty" Hicks  was an American professional golfer, golf coach and teacher, aviator, and author. She also competed under her married name, Betty Hicks Newell died from Alzheimer's disease she was , 90..

(November 16, 1920 – February 20, 2011)
 

Hicks was born in Long Beach, California.^[1] As an amateur golfer, she won the 1941 U.S. Women's Amateur^[3] and was Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. She turned professional later that year.
Hicks competed on the LPGA Tour, finishing second several times in the 1950s but never winning.^[4] She finished second in the U.S. Women's Open in 1948^[5] and 1954^[6] and third in 1957. She won the All American Open, which would later become a LPGA Tour event, in 1944.
Hicks coached the women's golf team at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, where she also coordinated the aviation department.^[2]
As an author, Hicks co-authored the book "Golf Manual for Teachers" with Ellen Griffin in 1949. In 1996, she co-authored "Patty Sheehan on Golf" with Patty Sheehan. In 2006, she wrote "My Life: From Fairway to Airway" which chronicles her life in golf and her second career as a pilot.^[7]
Hicks is a member of the LPGA Teaching and Club Professional Hall of Fame,^[8] the Long Beach Golf Hall of Fame,^[9] San Jose Sports Hall of Fame,^[10] the Women's Sports Foundation International Hall of Fame,^[11] the California Golf Writers Hall of Fame, and the International Forest of Friendship Aviation Hall of Fame.^[12] In 1999, she won the Ellen Griffin Rolex award for her efforts in helping the LPGA grow and in teaching the game of golf to women.
Hicks is sometimes confused with contemporary Helen Hicks, who won the U.S. Women's Amateur in 1931.
Hicks died on February 20, 2011 at the age of 90. The cause of death was Alzheimer's disease.^[2][13]

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Troy Jackson, American basketball player (AND1 Mixtape Tour) died he was , 35.

Troy Jackson  was an American basketball player. The younger brother of former NBA player Mark Jackson, he was a member of the AND1 Mixtape Tour, known by his streetball nickname "Escalade". Jackson was listed by AND1 at 6'10" and 375 pounds.^[1]

(January 11, 1976 – February 20, 2011)

Troy Jackson weighed close to 500 pounds (227 kg) as a senior at Hills East High School in Long Island, New York, but his performances at Rucker Park caught the attention of Bill Hughley, coach of Wallace Community College in Selma, Alabama.^[2] Jackson enrolled at Wallace, and even though he continued to play at 500 pounds (or more), he received all-region honors as a sophomore. "People wonder how I played at 500-plus pounds. But to me it felt natural," he later said. Jackson's accomplishments in community college led to a scholarship offer from the University of Louisville, though the school demanded that he lose weight. Jackson complied, and by his senior year at Louisville, he had slimmed down to about 363 pounds (165 kg) after adhering to a strict diet.^[3]

Jackson only played twenty games for Louisville over two years, averaging 3.0 points per game and 1.6 rebounds per game in a reserve role.^[4] However, he became well-known to basketball fans through the AND1 Mixtape Tour, a travelling streetball exhibition which he joined in 2002. With the AND1 Tour, Jackson used the nickname Escalade, a reference to the Cadillac SUV. His teammate Antwan "8th Wonder" Scott told the Herald Sun, "He's a big guy, but he can entertain and he can seriously play."^[5] Jackson appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated ^[6] and was described as a "streetball legend" by the magazine Jet.^[7]
Off the basketball court, Jackson worked as an advocate for STD prevention.^[7] He died in his sleep on February 20, 2011.[8
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Jay Landesman, American publisher, writer and nightclub proprietor, husband of Fran Landesman died he was , 91

Irving Ned Landesman was an American publisher, nightclub proprietor and writer long resident in London died he was , 91.

(15 July 1919 – 20 February 2011) 

With the Beats

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of four children^[2] born to Benjamin Landesman, an immigrant Jewish artist from Berlin, and his wife Beatrice,^[3] who dealt in antiques.^[4] Their son changed his name to Jay after reading The Great Gatsby during his teens.
While running an art gallery and salon in the Little Bohemia district of St Louis,^[5] Landesman founded the quarterly magazine Neurotica in 1948, based in New York City from 1949, which became an outlet for the Beat Generation of writers including John Clellon Holmes, Carl Solomon (as Carl Goy), Larry Rivers, Judith Malina and Allen Ginsberg.^[6] Dedicated to rather risqué material for its era, "contributors moved among the bases of art, sex, and neuroticism",^[7] the magazine closed in 1952 after the censors objected to an article on castration by Gershon Legman^[6] who by then had taken over the magazine.
Back in St Louis, Landesman with his brother^[8] opened the Crystal Palace nightclub in 1952;^[5] the venue was previously used as a gay bar called Dante's Inferno.^[9] At Crystal Palce, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand made early appearances. A musical The Nervous Set, based on a unpublished novel by Landesman, with a book co-written with Theodore J. Flicker,^[1] premiered 10 March 1959 at Crystal Palace, St Louis,^[10] by now based in Gaslight Square and enjoyed a long run there, but lasted only 23 performances on Broadway.^[11] Featuring Larry Hagman in a leading role, the show in New York suffered from mixed reviews.^[1]
Despite its overall failure in a more prominent location several of the songs written for the work by his second wife Fran Landesman and the composer Thomas Wolf - "Ballad of the Sad Young Men" and "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" - have endured.^[8] Dedicated to the emergence of the Beat Generation, and sometimes described as the movement's only musical, it has an unusual form with a jazz quartet performing onstage and a downbeat ending.^[11] Landesman followed The Nervous Set by collaborating with writer Nelson Algren on a musical version, again featuring lyrics by his wife, of Algren's novel A Walk on the Wild Side which opened at Crystal Palace in 1960.^[1] A cabaret review Food for Thought, with the Landesmans working with librettist Arnold Weinstein, opened in St. Louis in 1962 and transferred to Yale.^[12]

In London

Landesman had married his second wife Fran in 1950, and the couple moved to London with their two sons in 1964. He hung out with the homosexual Labour MP Tom Driberg and his Filipino companion, a diary entry from 20 July 1964 reads:

A December article by Hunter Davies in The Sunday Times claimed: “There’s a very way-out Salinger family just arrived in London called the Landesmans.”^[13] Initially, the only person they knew in London was the comedian Peter Cook, but their social circle expanded in the 'Swinging London' milieu and their Islington home became the venue for hundreds of parties typical of the era.^[14] For Dearest Dracula, a musical staged at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1965, he persuaded actor Vincent Price and choreographer Busby Berkeley to participate.^[15]
In 1967 he became artistic director of the short-lived Electric Garden, a psychedelic nightclub, but a Yoko Ono happening led to conflict with the management.^[8] Later enthusiasms included macrobiotic food and a talent agency Creative Arts Liberated which had the slogan: "We take the sting out of success and put the fun back in failure!"^[1] It only had a brief existence, but the Polytantric Press founded in 1977 was more durable.^[9]
Jay Landesman wrote several volumes of autobiography Rebel Without Applause (1987), Jaywalking (1993) and Tales of a Cultural Conduit (2006). The latter book included his novel version of The Nervous Set. Cosmo Landesman's own memoir of his family Star Struck: Fame, My Family and Me (2008) details his ambivalence about them, their self-promotion ("Hell has no hustler like Jay with a new project"), acid-trips and unconventional lifestyle.^[15]
The Landesmans were long frank about their preference for an open marriage,^[6] and went public in a interview in The Observer in 1979, while Fran Landesman appeared in a television documentary The Infernal Triangle in 1984.^[16] Their son would find himself sharing breakfast with his mother's new boyfriend or father's new girlfriend.^[17]
Jay Landesman is survived by his wife and their two sons, The Sunday Times film critic Cosmo, formerly married to the journalist Julie Burchill,^[18] and musician Miles Davis Landesman, named after the jazz trumpeter whom the couple had known. Landesman's papers before 1999 are housed in the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, University of Missouri-St Louis.^[2]

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