Tribute: Ken Howard

Posted on March 25, 2016 at 10:00 am

We mourn the loss of actor and activist Ken Howard, who has died at age 72. He played Thomas Jefferson in the historical musical 1776.

He starred in a television series called “The White Shadow” as a former NBA player turned high school coach, with a diverse cast and frankness about racial issues that was unusual for the time.

He appeared in over 100 movies and television shows, most recently with Tina Fey in “30 Rock,” Jennifer Lawrence in “Joy” and Robert Downey, Jr. in “The Judge.”

Howard had an elegance, grace, natural intelligence, and charm that he brought to all of his performances. He was elected president of the union that represents actors, reflecting the respect of his colleagues and his many efforts on their behalf.

May his memory be a blessing.

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Tribute: Garry Shandling

Posted on March 24, 2016 at 7:29 pm

We mourn the loss of actor/writer/comedian Garry Shandling, who died today at age 66. He created two of the most innovative and influential television shows of all time, both smart self-aware, : Showtime’s It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (1986–1990) and HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998). Both had a meta overlay with him mocking himself and us and show business all at the same time. And both used show business as a metaphor to illuminate all of our illusions, fears, and our most superficial dreams of validation and success.

Matt Zoller Seitz wrote insightfully about him for New York Magazine’s Vulture blog:

His comic persona, honed over 30 years onstage and in TV and film, fused Jack Benny’s unctuous neediness, Charles Grodin’s dour certitude, Albert Brooks’s self-lacerating intellectual discomfort, and Warren Beatty’s dashing Hollywood satyr act, and added shadings from Shandling’s own personality, plus a great playwright’s keen understanding of the lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how these self-deceptions become plain whenever we try to manipulate others to attain what we think of as happiness.

And Nell Scovell’s tribute in Vanity Fair is very touching. He was one of the first to support her work.

Looking back, I think I connected to Garry’s stand-up because, in a way, he was a female comic. When Joan Rivers was tossing out insults, Garry was talking about his feelings. He fretted about his hair and getting fat. He talked about his shrink and his feeble love life. So much of Garry’s comedy came from being vulnerable and insecure and uncomfortable.

May his memory be a blessing.

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Tribute: Actress/First Lady Nancy Reagan

Posted on March 6, 2016 at 2:10 pm

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan has died at age 94. She met Ronald Reagan when she was an actress named Nancy Davis and she had been confused with a similarly-named actress by investigators looking for Communist sympathizers in Hollywood. They appeared together in one film, Hellcats of the Navy.

In “The Doctor and the Girl” she co-starred with Janet Leigh and Glenn Ford.

In “The Next Voice You Hear,” she played a pregnant wife who, along with everyone else in the world, heard the Voice of God on the radio.

Here she is in a Colgate commercial.

Even those who were critical of her as First Lady acknowledge her devotion to her husband, especially when he became ill. May her memory be a blessing.

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Tribute: Pat Conroy

Posted on March 5, 2016 at 1:07 pm

“A story untold could be the one that kills you.” The man who said that was the great Southern writer Pat Conroy, who told his own story of pain and abuse and loss through the characters in his books. Today we mourn his loss.

Conroy wrote with great compassion about dysfunctional families and with evocative lyricism about the South. For both, he had an elegiac tone, but he also wrote of the healing power of love and forgiveness. “No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.” He wrote about the terrible sins and crippling pain of the South and of his family.

The Great Santini, inspired by his father, became a movie starring Robert Duvall.

The Lords of Discipline, inspired by his years at the famously brutal military academy, The Citadel, was filmed with Bill Paxton and David Keith.

Conroy spent a year teaching school on a tiny island off the coast of South Carolina, where the children were so isolated that they barely understood that there was a world across the water. His book The Water Is Wide became the film “Conrack,” starring Jon Voight.

Barbra Streisand directed and starred in The Prince of Tides, based on his book about a man who leaves the South to go to New York when his twin sister is hospitalized following a mental breakdown.

“Here is all I ask of a book,” he wrote. “Give me everything. Everything, and don’t leave out a single word.”

Thank you, Mr. Conroy. May your memory be a blessing.

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Tribute: Harper Lee

Posted on February 19, 2016 at 12:13 pm

In 1999, when there were top 100 lists everywhere of the best this and that of the 20th century, only one title was on both the list of best novels and the list of best movies: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Today, we mourn the loss of Miss Lee, whose later-year troubles, with reports that her new book was published without her informed consent, will fade while the original book and movie will never dim.

When I was writing my first book about movies that help families discuss important values like integrity, courtesy, empathy, and helping others, I realized that I could have included To Kill a Mockingbird in every category. It is one of the best movies ever made that shows us how children see the world. It has one of the most beautiful and evocative movie scores, by Elmer Bernstein. It has Gregory Peck’s Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch, a lawyer so principled he inspired generations of idealistic college students to go to law school. (Their chagrin on seeing a different version of Atticus in the later book will fade as well.)

It is about race, family, honor, and standing up for what is right. It has Robert Duvall’s first movie appearance, where he breaks your heart without saying a word. And it has one of the most beautiful final lines in all of literature, again about Atticus, who was sitting by the bed of his injured son, Jeb. “He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”

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