/ Stars that died in 2023

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Richard Hamilton,British artist, died he was 89.

Richard William Hamilton was a British painter and collage artist  died he was 89.  His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the early works of pop art.[1]

(24 February 1922 – 13 September 2011) 


Early life

Hamilton was born in Pimlico, London.[2] Despite having left school with no formal qualifications, he managed to gain employment as an apprentice working at an electrical components firm, where he discovered an ability for draughtsmanship and began to do painting at evening classes at St Martin's School of Art. This led to his entry into the Royal Academy Schools.
After spending the war working as a technical draftsman, he re-enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools but was later expelled on grounds of "not profiting from the instruction", loss of his student status forcing Hamilton to carry out National Service. After two years at the Slade School of Art, University College, London, Hamilton began exhibiting his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) where he also produced posters and leaflets and teaching at the Central School of Art and Design.[citation needed]

1950s and 1960s

Hamilton's early work was much influenced by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 1913 text On Growth and Form. In 1952, at the first Independent Group meeting, held at the ICA, Hamilton was introduced to Eduardo Paolozzi's seminal presentation of collages produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s that are now considered to be the first standard bearers of Pop Art.[1][3] Also in 1952, he was introduced to the Green Box notes of Marcel Duchamp through Roland Penrose, whom Hamilton had met at the ICA. At the ICA Hamilton was responsible for the design and installation of a number of exhibitions including one on James Joyce and The Wonder and the Horror of the Human Head that was curated by Penrose. It was also through Penrose that Hamilton met Victor Pasmore who gave him a teaching post based in Newcastle Upon Tyne which lasted until 1966. Among the students Hamilton tutored at Newcastle in this period were Rita Donagh, Mark Lancaster, Tim Head, Roxy Music founder Bryan Ferry and Ferry's visual collaborator Nicholas De Ville. Hamilton's influence can be found in the visual styling and approach of Roxy Music.
Hamilton gave a 1959 lecture titled “Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound", a phrase taken from a Cole Porter lyric in the 1957 musical Silk Stockings. In that lecture, which sported a pop soundtrack and the demonstration of an early Polaroid camera, Hamilton deconstructed the technology of cinema to explain how it helped to create Hollywood’s allure. He further developed that theme in the early 1960s with a series of paintings inspired by film stills and publicity shots.[4]
The post at the ICA also afforded Hamilton the time to further his research on Duchamp, which resulted in the 1960 publication of a typographic version of Duchamp's Green Box, which comprised Duchamp's original notes for the design and construction of his famous work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Hamilton's 1955 exhibition of paintings at the Hanover Gallery were all in some form a homage to Duchamp. In the same year Hamilton organised the exhibition Man Machine Motion at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle. Designed to look more like an advertising display than a conventional art exhibition the show prefigured Hamilton's contribution to the This Is Tomorrow exhibition in London, at the Whitechapel Gallery the following year. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? was created in 1956 for the catalogue of This Is Tomorrow where it was reproduced in black and white and also used in posters for the exhibit.[5] The collage depicts a muscle-man provocatively holding a Tootsie Pop and a woman with large, bare breasts wearing a lampshade hat, surrounded by emblems of 1950s affluence from a vacuum cleaner to a large canned ham.[6] Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? is widely acknowledged as one of the first pieces of Pop Art and his written definition of what ‘pop' is laid the ground for the whole international movement.[7] Hamilton's definition of Pop Art from a letter to Alison and Peter Smithson dated 16 January 1957 was - "Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business" - stressing its everyday, commonplace values.[8] He thus created collages incorporating advertisements from mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.
The success of This Is Tomorrow secured Hamilton further teaching assignments in particular at the Royal College of Art from 1957 to 1961, where he promoted David Hockney and Peter Blake. During this period Hamilton was also very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and produced a work parodying the then leader of the Labour Party Hugh Gaitskell for rejecting a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. In the early 1960s he received a grant from the Arts Council to investigate the condition of the Kurt Schwitters 'Merzbau' in Cumbria. The research eventually resulted in Hamilton organising the preservation of the work by relocating it to the Hatton Gallery in the Newcastle University.[citation needed]
In 1962 his first wife Terry was killed in a car crash and in part to recover from this he travelled for the first time to the United States in 1963 for a retrospective of the works of Marcel Duchamp at the Pasadena Art Museum[9], where, as well as meeting other leading pop artists, he was befriended by Duchamp. Arising from this Hamilton curated the first and to date only British retrospective of Duchamp's work, and his familiarity with The Green Box enabled Hamilton to make copies of The Large Glass and other glass works too fragile to travel. The exhibition was shown at the Tate Gallery in 1966.[citation needed]
In 1968, Hamilton appeared in a Brian De Palma film titled "Greetings" where Hamilton portrays a pop artist showing a "Blow Up" image. The film was the first film in the United States to receive a X rating and it was also Robert De Niro's first motion picture.
From the mid-1960s, Hamilton was represented by Robert Fraser and even produced a series of prints Swingeing London based on Fraser's arrest, along with Mick Jagger, for possession of drugs. This association with the 1960s pop music scene continued as Hamilton became friends with Paul McCartney resulting in him producing the cover design and poster collage for the Beatles' White Album.[10]

1970s–2011

During the 1970s, Richard Hamilton enjoyed international acclaim with a number of major exhibitions being organised of his work. Hamilton had found a new companion in painter Rita Donagh. Together they set about converting North End, a farm in the Oxfordshire countryside, into a home and studios. "By 1970, always fascinated by new technology, Hamilton was redirecting advances in product design into fine art, with the backing of xartcollection, Zurich, a young company that pioneered the production of multiples with the aim of bringing art to a wider audience."[11] Hamilton realised a series of projects that blurred the boundaries between artwork and product design including a painting that incorporated a state-of-the-art radio receiver and the casing of a Diab Computer. During the 1980s Hamilton again voyaged into industrial design and designed two computer exteriors: OHIO computer prototype (for a Swedish firm named Isotron, 1984) and DIAB DS-101 (for Dataindustrier AB, 1986). As part of a television project Hamilton was introduced to the Quantel Paintbox and has since used this or similar devices to produce and modify his work.[citation needed]
From the late 1970s Hamilton’s activity was concentrated largely on investigations of printmaking processes, often in unusual and complex combinations.[12] In 1977-8 Hamilton undertook a series of collaborations with the artist Dieter Roth that also blurred the definitions of the artist as sole author of their work.
In 1981 Hamilton began work on a trilogy of paintings based on the conflicts in Northern Ireland after watching a television documentary about the protest organised by IRA prisoners in Long Kesh Prison, unofficially known as The Maze. The citizen (1981–83) shows IRA prisoner Bobby Sands portrayed as Jesus, with long flowing hair and a beard. Republican prisoners had refused to wear prison uniforms, claiming that they were political prisoners. Prison officers refused to let "the blanket protesters" use the toilets unless they wore prison uniforms. The republican prisoners refused, and instead smeared the excrement on the wall of their cells. Hamilton explained (in the catalogue to his Tate Gallery exhibition, 1992), that he saw the image of "the blanket man as a public relations contrivance of enormous efficacy. It had the moral conviction of a religious icon and the persuasiveness of the advertising man's dream soap commercial - yet it was a present reality".[citation needed] The subject (1988–89) shows an Orangeman, a member of an order dedicated to preserve Unionism in Northern Ireland. The state (1993) shows a British soldier undertaking solitary patrol on a street. The citizen was shown as part of "A Cellular Maze", a 1983 joint exhibition with Donagh.[13]
Since the late 1940s Richard Hamilton has been engaged with a project to produce a suite of illustrations for James Joyce's Ulysses.[citation needed] In 2002, the British Museum staged an exhibition of Hamilton's illustrations of James Joyce's Ulysses, entitled Imaging Ulysses. A book of Hamilton's illustrations was published simultaneously, with text by Stephen Coppel. In the book, Hamilton explained that the idea of illustrating this complex, experimental novel occurred to him when he was doing his National Service in 1947.[citation needed] His first preliminary sketches were made while at the Slade School of Art, and he continued to refine and re-work the images over the next 50 years. Hamilton felt his re-working of the illustrations in many different media had produced a visual effect analogous to Joyce's verbal techniques. The Ulysses illustrations were subsequently exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (in Dublin) and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (in Rotterdam). The British Museum exhibition coincided with both the 80th anniversary of the publication of Joyce's novel, and Richard Hamilton's 80th birthday. Hamilton died on 13 September 2011.[14] Just the week prior to his death the artist, 89, was working to prepare a major museum retrospective of his oeuvre that had already been scheduled to travel to four cities in Europe and the U.S. in 2013-14.[15]

Exhibitions

The first exhibition of Hamilton's paintings was shown at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1955. In 1993 Hamilton represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale and was awarded the Golden Lion.[16] Major retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the Tate Gallery, London, 1970 and 1992, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, MACBA, Barcelona, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2003, and the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1974. Some of the group exhibitions Hamilton participated in include: Documenta 4, Kassel, 1968; São Paulo Art Biennial, 1989; Documenta X, Kassel 1997; and Shanghai Biennale, 2006. In 2010, the Serpentine Gallery presented Hamilton’s ‘Modern Moral Matters’, an exhibition focusing on his political and protest works which were shown previously in 2008 at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is currently showing a joint retrospective exhibition of both Hamilton's and Donagh's work called Civil Rights etc., which will be shown until January 2012. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts showcased Hamilton's work in Richard Hamilton: Pop Art Pioneer, 1922-2011 from November 19, 2011—March 18, 2012.
The Alan Cristea Gallery in London is the distributor of Hamilton's prints.[17]

Collections

The Tate Gallery has a comprehensive collection of Hamilton's work from across his career.[citation needed] In 1996, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur received a substantial gift of Hamilton's prints, making the museum the largest repository of the artist's prints in the world.[18]

Recognition

Hamilton was awarded the William and Noma Copley Foundation Award, 1960; the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize, 1960; the Talens Prize International, 1970; the Leone d’Oro for his exhibition in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 1993; the Arnold Bode Prize at Documenta X, Kassel, 1997; and the Max Beckmann Prize for painting, 2006. He was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 2000.


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Jack Garner,American actor (The Rockford Files, My Fellow Americans), brother of James Garner, died at 84 from injuries to the hip.

Jack Edward Garner was an American film and television actor, known for The Rockford Files and numerous other television roles. He was the brother of James Garner.

(September 19, 1926 – September 13, 2011) 



Early life and career

Garner was born Jack Edward Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma, on September 19, 1926, to Mildred Scott Meek and Weldon Warren “Bill” Bumgarner.[1][3][5] He was the second of three brothers including actor James Garner (youngest) and Charles Bumgarner (oldest).[3][5] The family operated a general store on Denver Corner in eastern Norman.[3] The brothers were sent to live with relatives after their mother died, while Garner's father remarried several times.[1]
Garner was a star athlete at Norman High School, playing on the state championship basketball team in 1945.[3] Jack Garner played as a minor league baseball pitcher for a team affiliate with the Pittsburgh Pirates for eleven years.[1][5] He then worked for several golf courses in Florida after leaving the minor leagues.[5] Years later, brother James Garner wrote about Garner's athletic abilities in his memoir, "At Norman High, he was a point guard on a championship basketball team and quarterbacked an all-state football team...But his best sport was baseball: Jack was a pitcher in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization for 11 years. He was a better athlete than I was and a lot more outgoing. I was always in his footsteps."[3] Later in life, Garner became a golf pro at the Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, California.[2][5] His golf experience allowed him to coach at the country club and elsewhere.[4] Garner taught Dan Aykroyd, his co-star in the 1996 film, My Fellow Americans, to properly swing a golf club for a scene in that movie.[4]

Acting

Jack and James eventually moved to Los Angeles to reconnect with their father, who had relocated to southern California.[1][2][4] Both changed their names to Garner after the move west.[3] The third brother, Charles Bumgarner, who died in 1984 at the age of 60, remained in Norman and became a school administrator.[3] Garner entertained as the lead singer for the Coconut Grove nightclub, located in the now defunct Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles early in his career.[5]
Jack Garner began acting in television during the late 1960s.[1] His roles included guest appearances on Love, American Style, The Bionic Woman, The Doris Day Show, Daniel Boone, The Green Hornet, Medical Center and Murder, She Wrote.[1][4] He appeared in The Rockford Files in more than sixty television episodes of the show.[1] Garner later appeared in Bret Maverick portraying Jack the Bartender from 1981 to 1982.[1] Garner reprised his Rockford Files roles in a series of television movies based on the series from 1996 to 1999.[2]
Garner's film roles included Wild Rovers in 1971, Maverick in 1994, My Fellow Americans in 1996 and Sunset in 1988.[1]
Jack Garner suffered a fall in September 2011, which resulted in a broken hip.[3][4] Doctors determined that his heart was not strong enough to withstand surgery to repair the hip so Garner was transferred to a facility for long-term care.[3] However, his condition suddenly worsened within one week.[3] Garner died at a hospice in Rancho Mirage, California, near his home in Palm Desert, on September 13, 2011, six days shy of his 85th birthday.[2] He was survived by his former wife, Betty Bumgarner; his daughter, Liz Bumgarner, and son-in-law, Don Dykstra; and brother, James Garner.[1][2] His memorial service was held at the Wiefels Mortuary in Palm Springs, California.[4]

Selected filmography

Film
Year Title Role Notes
1971 Wild Rovers

1996 My Fellow Americans President Haney's Caddy
TV
Year Title Role Notes
1995 Streets of Laredo

1974 The Rockford Files



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Paul Gallant,Canadian entrepreneur, inventor of Puzz-3D, died from cancer at 67.

Paul-Émile Gallant ) was a Canadian entrepreneur who invented the Puzz-3D three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles  died from cancer at 67.. He is also credited with inventing both the Wrebbit Puzzle Machine, which is now known as the Puzzle Shots Factory, and the Perfalock flat foam puzzle.[2]

(July 17, 1944 – September 13, 2011)
 
Gallant was born in Edmundston, New Brunswick.[1] He initially began his career in the music industry, which lasted approximately eighteen years.[1] Gallant worked for Trans Canada Musique, CBS Records (a division of Sony Music) and the CBC.[1]
Gallant switched careers and began working in the toy industry in the late 1980s.[1] He began working on a new concept for the traditional puzzle, but involving 3D solutions inspired by commercial design.[1] Gallant reportedly completed his prototype for what would be called Puzz-3D after one year of design.[1] His new Puzz-3D puzzles, which often could be built into models of actual buildings and other landmark structures, could be placed on display indefinitely after completion. He founded his own company for Puzz-3D, which he called Wrebbit Inc., and launched his three dimensional product line at the Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair in 1992.[1] The logo for Wrebbit became an easily identifiable frog.
Gallant spearheaded the expansion of Wrebbit and its keystone toy, Puzz-3D, throughout Canada and elsewhere in the world. The Puzz-3D product line was made in Canada, but sold in more than forty countries worldwide.[1] Approximately thirty million Puzz-3D puzzles were bought by global consumers by 2000.[1] Irwin Toys purchased Wrebbit in 2001. However, Irwin Toys went out of business in 2002 and Gallant once again became the owner of Wrebbit and Puzz-3D.[1] Gallant sold Wrebbit and its product lines to the international toy manufacturer, Hasbro, in 2005.[1]
Gallant was awarded the Canada Export Achievement Award in 1995. The following year, he became the recipient of the Canada-America Business Achievement Award in 1996.[1] In 2008, Gallant was inducted into the Canadian Toy Industry Hall of Fame.[1]
Gallant died on September 13, 2011, in Laval, Quebec, at the age of 67. He was survived by his three children, ten grandchildren and two sisters.[1] His wife, Françoise, died in 2010.[1]
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Sam DeLuca, American football player and broadcaster (New York Jets), died from pancreatic cancer at 75.

Saverio Frank "Sam" DeLuca  was an American Professional Football offensive lineman in the American Football League and later a radio and television football coverage broadcaster. He played six seasons, three for the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers and three for the New York Jets. He was a member of the 1969 New York Jet Championship season on IR. After football, he had a long career in sports broadcasting. He was the color commentator on the Jets’ radio broadcasts on WABC and then WOR before working NFL telecasts for NBC Sports and on the Jets’ pre-season games in the 1970s and 1980s. He went to Lafayette High School (Brooklyn) with Sandy Koufax, Larry King and Fred Wilpon.[1]

(May 2, 1936 – September 13, 2011)

Playing career

DeLuca was a three-year letterman in football at the University of South Carolina from 1954 through 1956. As a starting offensive tackle, he played for head coaches Rex Enright in his first two seasons and Warren Giese as a senior.[2] DeLuca graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Education in 1957.[3] He was inducted into the University of South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005.[2] He was also honored by the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame.[4]
DeLuca was selected in the second round (23rd overall) by the New York Giants in the 1957 National Football League (NFL) Draft.[2] He signed with the Giants for US $7,000 a year with a $500 bonus.[3] He was to have succeeded starting offensive lineman Bill Austin, who was strongly considering retirement at the time. When Austin decided to play one more year,[1] DeLuca was sent to the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts, where he spent three seasons from 1957 through 1959.[5]

Broadcasting career

DeLuca's first regular sportscasting assignment was hosting the pre- and postgame shows for New York Mets games on WABC-FM in 1968 and 1969.[6] Phil Pepe, then a baseball writer for the Daily News who had graduated a year ahead of DeLuca at Lafayette High School, helped him prepare for the assignment.[7]

Death

DeLuca died at age 75 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Pelham, New York on September 13, 2011.[1]
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Wilma Lee Cooper, American country music singer, died from natural causes at 90.


Wilma Lee Leary , known professionally as Wilma Lee Cooper, was an American bluegrass-based country music entertainer.

(February 7, 1921 – September 13, 2011)

Biography

Born in Valley Head, West Virginia, Leary sang in her youth with her family's gospel music group, The Leary Family, which included her parents and sisters. They recorded for the Library Of Congress in 1938.
In 1939, Leary married fiddler and vocalist Dale T. "Stoney" Cooper, who was a musical accompanist for the Leary Family, and the duo formed their own bluegrass group, Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper and the Clinch Mountain Clan. They were regulars for ten years on Wheeling, West Virginia's WWVA-AM's rival to the Grand Ole Opry, WWVA Jamboree, beginning in 1947 before joining the Opry in 1957.
Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper had remarkable record success in the late 1950s and early 1960s on Hickory Records given both their bluegrass sound (which has rarely been as commercially successful) and the damage rock-n-roll was doing to country music's popularity at the time. They scored seven hit records between 1956 and 1961, with four top ten hits on Billboard charts, notably "Big Midnight Special" and "There's a Big Wheel." They remained connected to the Leary Family tradition as well, recording popular gospel songs like "The Tramp on the Street" and "Walking My Lord Up Calvary's Hill."
Cooper died in 1977 but Wilma Lee stayed on the Opry as a solo star and on occasion recorded an album for a bluegrass record label. In 2001 she suffered a stroke while performing on the Opry stage which ended her career, but Cooper defied doctors who said she would never walk again and eventually returned to the Opry to greet and thank the crowds.
The Cooper's daughter, Carol Lee Cooper, is the lead singer for the Grand Ole Opry's backup vocal group, The Carol Lee Singers.
Wilma Lee Cooper died on September 13, 2011 at her home in Sweetwater, Tenn. from natural causes. She had been a member of the Opry since 1957 and was 90 years old. Her last solo performance on the Opry was at the Ryman Auditorium on February 24, 2001. Wilma Lee joined the Opry cast at the grand re-opening of the Opry House on September 28, 2010 for a group sing-along.

Discography

Singles with Stoney Cooper

Year Single US Country
1956 "Cheated Too" 14
1958 "Come Walk with Me" (with Carol Lee) 4
1959 "Big Midnight Special" 4
"There's a Big Wheel" 3
1960 "Johnny, My Love (Grandma's Diary)" 17
"This Ole House" 16
1961 "Wreck on the Highway" 8
LP Gusto Records PO-242 (1975) Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper - Walking my Lord up Calvary's Hill
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John Calley, American movie studio executive, died at 81.


John Calley was an American film studio executive and producer. He was quite influential during his years at Warner Bros. (where he worked from 1968 to 1981)[2] and "produced a film a month, on average, including commercial successes like The Exorcist and Superman."[3] During his seven years at Sony Pictures Entertainment starting in 1996, five of which he was chairman and chief executive, he was credited with "reinvigorat[ing]" that major film studio.[4]

(July 8, 1930 – September 13, 2011)

Awards and nominations

Together with Mike Nichols and Ismail Merchant, Calley produced 1993's The Remains of the Day, for which the trio received an Oscar nomination—Calley's only such Best Picture nomination.
A best picture nomination Calley potentially missed was when, as Sony's new head, he nixed the studio's backing of Terence Malick's 1998 film The Thin Red Line, reportedly because he thought Malick couldn't keep to the budget. (The film stayed on budget and received seven Academy Award nominations.)
He was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the inaugural Governors Awards ceremony on November 11, 2009.[5] For the ceremony, Calley, unable to attend in person due to illness, recorded remarks that were projected on a giant video screen, remarks characterizing the life of a film studio executive and called "one of the night's more startling bits of honesty": "You're very unhappy for a long period of time. And you don’t experience joy. At the end you experience relief, if you’re lucky."[6]
According to Mervyn LeRoy in his autobiography Mervyn LeRoy: Take One, Calley played a big role in LeRoy's exit of Warner Bros. when The Kinney Company acquired it. Calley notified LeRoy that due to a "change in corporate thinking", the studio was not going to support his effort in producing the story Thirteen Clocks. When LeRoy asked Calley about the promises that he had made before, Calley answered "We'll have to wait and see".[7]

Personal

Calley attended Columbia University in the late 1940s, and then briefly served in the Army.[8] His early life also included working for his father—"who had possible criminal ties"—as a used-car dealer.[9] His first significant industry job was at NBC's New York headquarters, at age 21, [10] when he started in the mailroom.[9]
From 1972 until a divorce in 1992, he was married to Czech actress and former Playboy cover girl[11] Olga Schoberová, though neither spoke the other's language in their first few years together. Calley adopted her daughter Sabrina, who became a set costumer.[12]
When he left Warner Brothers in the early 1980s, citing an unhappy marriage and burn-out after involvement in the production of 120 films, Calley settled into life as a virtual hermit in his 35-room house on Fisher's Island in Long Island Sound.[9] Later in the 1990s, after marrying Sandra Cooke Lean, the widow of famed film director Sir David Lean[9], the couple moved to Washington, CT. [See Discussion] In 1995, he married actress Meg Tilly; they divorced in 2002.[13]
John Calley's best friend, director/producer Mike Nichols, with whom he collaborated on The Remains of the Day, as well as on Catch-22, Postcards from the Edge, The Birdcage and Closer, said this after Calley's death from a long-term, undisclosed illness[14]: "John was unique. As a friend he was always there and always funny. He made life a joy for those he loved. As a studio head he was unfailingly supportive and didn't try to do the filmmaker's job. When he believed in someone he trusted and supported him and when very rarely he had a suggestion it was usually a lifesaver. In fact that's what he was: a lifesaver." [8]
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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Walter Bonatti, Italian mountain climber, died he was 81.

Walter Bonatti  was an Italian mountain climber. He is noted for a solo climb of a new route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in August 1955 and the first solo winter ascent of the Matterhorn north face in 1965.


(22 June 1930 – Rome, 13 September 2011)

Life and career


Bonatti on Gasherbrum IV summit, 1958
Bonatti was born in Bergamo. Famed for his climbing panache, he pioneered little known and technically difficult climbs in the Alps, Himalayas and Patagonia. At the age of 21, Bonatti in 1951 made the first ascent of the Grand Capucin, an extraordinary red granite pinnacle in the Mont Blanc massif, from 20 to 23 July. This was the climb that brought him to public notice. Aged 18, he had made the fourth ascent of the formidable North Face of the Grandes Jorasses with very poor equipment over a period of two days. Among his notable climbs were a solo climb of a new route on the south-west pillar of the Aiguille du Dru in August 1955,[1] the first ever ascent of Gasherbrum IV in 1958[2] and the first solo winter ascent of the Matterhorn north face in 1965. Bonatti was awarded the French Legion d'Honneur for saving the lives of two fellow-climbers in a disaster in the Alps. He authored a number of books about climbing and mountaineering. Bonatti died of pancreatic cancer[3] in Rome on 13 September 2011 at the age of 81.[4]

K2 controversy

Bonatti was at the center of a climbing controversy about the first ascent of K2 by Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. Along with Hunza climber Amir Mahdi, he carried oxygen cylinders to Lacedelli and Compagnoni at Camp IX for the summit attempt. Bonatti was later accused by Compagnoni of using some of the oxygen, causing the climbers to run out of oxygen on summit day. Using this supplemental oxygen would have been impossible for Bonatti, as he had neither mask nor regulator. Bonatti would cite two summit photos to support his response that Compagnoni had lied about running out of oxygen in route to the summit. Although Bonatti's account of the bivouac is supported by Lacedelli in K2: The Price of Conquest (2004), Lacedelli contends that the oxygen had in fact run out. However, he attributes this not to Bonatti's alleged use of the oxygen, but to the physical exertion of the climb causing the summit climbers to use more oxygen than expected.[citation needed]
Another aspect of the controversy was the Bonatti-Mahdi forced bivouac of July 30, 1954. Compagnoni's decision to place the final camp (IX) at a higher location than previously agreed caused the problem. When Bonatti and Mahdi climbed up to deliver oxygen to Compagnoni and Lacedelli for their summit attempt, Mahdi's condition had deteriorated. Unable to descend with Mahdi, Bonatti needed the shelter of Camp IX's tent. The tent was placed high up, over a dangerous traverse to the left - not at the agreed location. Unable to traverse safely to the tent, Bonatti and Mahdi endured a forced bivouac in the open at 8100 meters; it cost Mahdi his fingers and toes. Compagnoni gave the reasonable explanation that his decision to move the tent was to avoid an overhanging serac.[citation needed]
However, it is argued that he also had an ulterior motive: to avoid Walter Bonatti. Bonatti was in the best physical condition of all the climbers and the natural choice to make the summit attempt. If he had joined the summit team, he would likely have done so without the use of supplemental oxygen. If he had succeeded, any summit by Compagnoni would have been eclipsed. Although the Bonatti-Mahdi forced bivouac was not anticipated, Compagnoni intended to discourage Bonatti from reaching the tent. At 6:10 pm the next evening, Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli reached the summit of K2, using the supplemental oxygen Bonatti and Mahdi had brought them. Ardito Desio, in his final report, mentioned the forced bivouac only in passing. Mahdi's frostbite was an embarrassment to the expedition. The Italian government provided Mahdi with a small pension for his contribution and sacrifice on the first ascent of K2. Bonatti never reconciled with Compagnoni, owing to Compagnoni's allegedly false accusation that Bonatti used the oxygen intended for the summit attempt. He wanted to climb K2 "solo, alpine style, and without oxygen".[5] He might well have succeeded. Two decades later, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler astonished the mountaineering world by climbing Mount Everest without bottled oxygen.[citation needed]

Mountaineering achievements

Books

The Mountaineering Books of Walter Bonatti
  • Le Mie Montagne (My Mountains), Walter Bonatti, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1961
  • I Giorni Grandi (The Great Days), Walter Bonatti, Verona: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1971
  • Magia del Monte Bianco (Magic of Mont Blanc), Walter Bonatti, Como: Massimo Baldini Editore, 1984
  • Processo al K2 (Trial on K2), Walter Bonatti, Como: Massimo Baldini Editore, 1985
  • La Mia Patagonia (My Patagonia), Walter Bonatti, Como: Massimo Baldini Editore, 1986
  • Un Modo di Essere (A way of Living), Walter Bonatti, Milan: dall'Oglio Editore, 1989
  • K2-Storia di un Caso (K2 - The Story of a Court Case), Walter Bonatti, Bergamo: Ferrari Editrice, 1995
  • Montagne di Una Vita (Mountains of a Life), Walter Bonatti, Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1995
  • K2-Storia di un Caso (K2 - The Story of a Court Case), Walter Bonatti, 2d ed. Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1996
  • In terre lontane, Walter Bonatti, Baldini & Castoldi, Milano, 1998 [1st ed 1997]
  • The Mountains of my Life, Walter Bonatti, Modern Library, 2001. ISBN 0-375-75640-X
  • K2. La verità. 1954-2004, Walter Bonatti, 2005, Baldini Castoldi Dalai editore. ISBN 88-8490-845-0.
  • K2. Lies and Treachery, Robert Marshall, 2009, Carreg Ltd. UK. ISBN 978-0-9538631-7-4.
Other
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Dickey Betts died he was 80

Early Career Forrest Richard Betts was also known as Dickey Betts Betts collaborated with  Duane Allman , introducing melodic twin guitar ha...