Randy 'Macho Man' Savage, 58, killed in car crash

The professional wrestler known as Randy “Macho Man” Savage has died in a car crash in Florida.

The Florida Highway Patrol says in a crash report that the 58-year-old former wrestler — whose legal name is Randy Mario Poffo — was driving a Jeep Wrangler when he lost control in Pinellas County around 9:25 a.m. local time.

The Jeep veered over the raised concrete median divider, crossed over the eastbound lanes and collided head-on with a tree.

Police say he may have suffered a “medical event” before the accident, but the report did not elaborate, and it said officials would need to perform an autopsy to know for sure.

The report confirms that the driver was the pro wrestler known as Randy Savage. A woman in the vehicle suffered minor injuries.

-- Associated Press

Photo: Randy Savage at the American Music Awards in November 2003 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Credit: Frank Micelotta / Getty Images

Bill Blackbeard: He was 'ahead of his time' in recognizing comic strips as American art

When readers take the time to respond to an obituary, they often have a personal connection to the subject. Sometimes they end up writing an appreciation that is so heartfelt, I wish I could have read it before I wrote the story. So it is with the e-mail sent by Ray Polson of Los Olivos who reflected on the life of Bill Blackbeard, a newspaper scholar who died at 84:

I knew Bill Blackbeard well, as we were both in the newspaper comic field from the late '60s thru the '90s.  At the time, I was the largest dealer in newspaper comics in the U.S, a rather large title for a field that nobody cared about.  I met Bill at Bond St. Books in Hollywood through my then-partner, Steve Edrington.  Bill had just established the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art on Ulloa St. in S.F.  Bill had the MOST knowledge of comic strips ... and most forms of American period art on paper from the '20s thru the '60s of anyone that I had ever met.

Bill and I had many dealings, including my first large newspaper buy through my last, when he was preparing to move to Santa Cruz. He was way ahead of his time, recognizing comic strips as contemporary American art. People laughed at us at the time but in the end, Bill proved the critics wrong and paved the way for the field of newspaper art being collected and revered as what it really was and is -- fine artwork that was included in the price of a newspaper.

Not only did Bill love strips, he really loved his favorite strips: Popeye, Alley Oop, Polly and Her Pals, and the Yellow Kid, not to forget Krazy Kat. Nobody knew more about comics strips than he did. He was the "expert's expert" in the world of newspaper comics.
 
The world of comic collecting, which includes newspaper comic artwork, should take off its hat and say goodbye to the man who prided himself as being the guru of the newspaper strip and a true representative of his last last name. RIP Uncle Bill.

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Bill Blackbeard dies at 84; scholar of newspaper comics

-- Valerie J. Nelson

Photo: Bill Blackbeard, who grew up in Newport Beach, is shown in 1970 in the archives of his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. Credit: Associated Press

 

Elizabeth Taylor: donations and memorial

Publicists for Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday at 79, said a memorial service will be announced later, after a private family funeral this week.

Her family has requested that instead of flowers contributions can be made to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, c/o Derrick Lee, Reback Lee & Co., Inc., 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1275, Los Angeles, CA 90025, or online at http://www.elizabethtayloraidsfoundation.org.

Personal messages can be posted on a Facebook tribute page.

--Elaine Woo

 

Elizabeth Taylor's obituary: outtakes from a 12-year work in progress

Elizabeth Taylor's death Wednesday moved me in an odd way. Although I never met or spoke to her, I had a "relationship" with her that spanned a dozen years: Hers was the first advance obituary I ever wrote for The Times. The assignment, which I received in 1999, probably was precipitated by one of Taylor's nearly annual brushes with death. I read a mountain of articles and books over a three-month period before writing a lengthy piece. And nearly every year since then I updated the article, adding a worthwhile quote or details about her latest illness. I felt I had come to know her and, unlike many of my subjects, I liked her.

More recently, I revisited the obit to shorten it. Some pithy quotes had to go, such as this one from writer Truman Capote, who once said: "Her legs are too short for the torso, the head too bulky for the figure in toto; but the face with those lilac eyes is a prisoner's dream, a secretary's self-fantasy."

And this one from Paul Newman, her co-star in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He called her "a functioning voluptuary."

Elizabeth Taylor: A life in pictures

One of my favorite anecdotes that didn't make the final cut concerned Howard Hughes, the nutty billionaire who tried to run a movie studio after making a fortune building planes. After Taylor separated from her first husband, Conrad Hilton Jr. of the Hilton hotel chain, she was lying by a pool in Palm Springs when Hughes landed a helicopter next to her. "Come on, get your clothes on, we are getting married," he told the raven-haired beauty. She told him he was mad, whereupon he dipped his hand into a coat pocket and scooped out a handful of diamonds, which he then proceeded to sprinkle on her. Taylor roared with laughter and ran into her friends' house, scattering the diamonds behind her.

The diamonds from Richard Burton, the Welsh actor who accounted for two of her eight marriages, were another matter: She kept most of those. I loved his recollection of his desire for a $1.1-million, 69-carat diamond ring from Cartier in New York, which he acquired for Taylor after outbidding Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. "I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely," Burton said. "And it should be on the loveliest woman in the world. I would have had a fit if it went to Jackie Kennedy or Sophia Loren or Mrs. Huntingdon Misfit of Dallas, Texas." 

I noticed that when Taylor spoke about herself, she rarely took herself too seriously, a quality that made her appealing. "People have called me accident-prone," she told Life magazine in 1997. "That really pissed Richard Burton off. He'd say, no, you're incident-prone."

You can read the obituary here.

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 -- Elaine Woo

Photo: Elizabeth Taylor in 2009.

Credit: Los Angeles Times

Frank Neuhauser, first spelling bee champ, dies at 97

Frank Neuhauser, who in 1925 won the first national spelling bee with the word "gladiolus," died March 11 at his home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 97.

He was an 11-year-old from Louisville, Ky., when he won the championship, now called the Scripps National Spelling Bee and televised nationally. His prizes included $500 in gold and a trip to the White House to meet President Calvin Coolidge.

Neuhauser, who became a patent lawyer, had attended some of the national bees over the years. That included 2008, when he said the contest was a lot easier during his youth.

He said he'd never make it in the current format.

-- Associated Press

One year ago: Fess Parker, TV's Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone

If you grew up in the United States in the 1950s or '60s and watched television, you probably remember Fess Parker, the 6-foot-6 actor who first played Davy Crockett and then Daniel Boone for chief Imagineer Walt Disney. And you might have demanded your own own coonskin cap. Many kids did.

When Parker died one year ago at age 85, Times staff writer Dennis McLellan reminded readers in the obituary that Disney's Davy Crockett character became a marketer's dream:

[Ten] million coonskin caps reportedly were sold, along with toy 'Old Betsy' rifles, buckskin shirts, T-shirts, coloring books, guitars, bath towels, bedspreads, wallets -- anything with the Crockett name attached.Viewers also fell in love with the show's catchy theme song. Bill Hayes' version of 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' soared to No. 1 on the hit parade and remained there for 13 weeks.

It was a pop-culture phenomenon. As essayist Neal Gabler put it in The Times: "Before Elvis Presley, Beatlemania, 'The Simpsons,' 'SpongeBob SquarePants,' there was Davy Crockett."

After his acting career, Parker became known for his upscale hotels and winery in Santa Barbara County. Although Parker is gone, you can still visit the winery, where you can not only sample wine but also purchase a coonskin cap.

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Saddle up at Fess Parker Winery

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. Credit: Associated Press / Walt Disney Co.

Owsley 'Bear' Stanley, 1960s counterculture character, dies at 76

Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture icon who worked with the Grateful Dead and was a prolific LSD producer, died in a car crash in Australia, his family said Monday. He was 76.

Lyrics by the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa reference Stanley's name.

Stanley produced an estimated pound of pure LSD, or roughly 5 million "trips" of the hallucinogenic substance, after enrolling at UC Berkeley in 1963 and becoming involved in the drug scene that underpinned the San Francisco Bay Area's hippie movement, according to the BookRags.com website.

He was a sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, a pioneering psychedelic rock band.

Sam Cutler, a friend of Stanley since 1970 when Cutler became the band's tour manager, described him as "a wonderful man and a great teacher."

"His death is a grievous loss to his family and the tens of thousands of people from the '60s on who were influenced by his work with the Grateful Dead," Cutler said.

Stanley was driving a car that swerved off a highway and down an embankment before striking trees near the town of Mareeba in Queensland state Saturday. His wife was treated for minor injuries.

A family statement described Stanley as "our beloved patriarch."

-- Associated Press

Corey Haim left out of this year's Oscar tribute

Putting together the “In Memoriam” tribute for the Academy Awards “is the single most troubling element of the Oscar show every year, because more people die each year than can possibly be included in that segment,” Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told the Associated Press last year in a story on how the segment is produced.

This year's omission that sent the Internet abuzz: Corey Haim, a teen idol from the 1980s who starred in “License to Drive” and  “The Lost Boys.” Haim, who struggled with drug addiction, died last March at 38.

Among the 30 or so who made the cut: Dennis Hopper, Lynn Redgrave, Blake Edwards, Tony Curtis, Jill Clayburgh, Leslie Nielsen and Lena Horne, the latter of whom was given special recognition by actress Halle Berry.

The most glaring omissions from last year’s Oscar tribute: Farrah Fawcett and Bea Arthur.

Trimming the list of names for the segment “gets close to agonizing by the end,” Davis said in the AP story. “You are dropping people who the public knows. It’s just not comfortable.”

-- Valerie J. Nelson

Photo: Corey Haim at a "Lost Boys" reunion in 2008 at the Viper Room in West Hollywood. Credit: Nathan Nowack /Associated Press

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Bob Cook, member of 'Never Missed a Super Bowl' club, dies at 79

Bob Cook, a Wisconsin man featured in a Visa credit card television commercial for having never missed a Super Bowl, has died. He was 79.

Cook had been to 44 straight Super Bowls but couldn't make it to Texas to watch his beloved Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers on Feb. 6. Instead, he viewed the game from his hospital bed with his wife, who decorated his room with green and gold lights.

Cook, a resident of Brown Deer, Wis., died Feb. 10 after being hospitalized in Milwaukee with a blood infection and other chronic issues, including congestive heart failure, said his wife, Sarah Cook.

She said they had their bags packed and were ready to go, but Bob Cook told his wife three days before the game that he was too ill to travel to the game.

"I'm just a die-hard Packer fan," he said before the Packers' victory over the Chicago Bears in the NFC championship game on Jan. 23. "I'd rather watch football than any other sport."

Cook and the three other members of the "Never Missed a Super Bowl" club — Thomas Henschel of Tampa, Fla.; Larry Jacobson of San Francisco and Don Crisman of Kennebunk, Maine — were the stars of a Visa ad leading up to the Super Bowl.

Henschel, 69, said Cook was the last to join the group, during the 36th Super Bowl. Henschel had met Crisman and another man who also had been to every Super Bowl around the 17th Super Bowl.

Henschel, a Steelers fan, said Cook's two daughters went to the game in his place.

"It was kind of strange," he said. "Here's his team playing against my team. I thought we'd have a little fun. Maybe put a little wager on the game."

Cook was the former owner of Bob Cook's Vagabond Travel Service and started going to Super Bowls while working there. When asked in January why he goes to every Super Bowl he said: "I don't like the season to end."

"When football's over I wait for the preseason," he said. "No, I wait for the draft. Then the preseason. Then the season. Then the postseason. I worked hard not to let it end."

Cook said it was relatively easy to get tickets for the first few Super Bowls. He said he even went to a few Super Bowl cities without tickets but always got lucky when he got there. One year someone gave him tickets for free but another year he had to sell off some of his jazz record collection to pay for a ticket.

As for how much money he spent on going to each game — Cook said he doesn't know.

"I probably could have bought a better house or put a couple new cars in the garage," he said in January. "It's all worth it and I'm very happy with my household and the way it is."

Cook has said the 31st Super Bowl was his favorite, when the Packers beat the New England Patriots in New Orleans. And he had hoped he would make it to the 50th Super Bowl.

Sarah Cook said her husband of 28 years enjoyed doing the commercial this summer and all the attention since then.

"He had so much fun with this," she said. "The last couple months of his life were truly enjoyable."

-- Associated Press

Photo: Bob Cook shows some of his Super Bowl ticket stubs in January. Credit: Associated Press

Mouseketeer Lonnie Burr recalls Disney animator Bill Justice

Lonnie Burr, an original Mouseketeer on TV's "The Mickey Mouse Club," says he was saddened to hear about the death of former Walt Disney Studios animator and Imagineer Bill Justice, who died of natural causes Thursday in a nursing home in Santa Monica at age 97.

In an e-mail to The Times on Friday, Burr wrote:

"Most people do not know that the warm, funny raconteur Bill knew Walt liked to discover things himself, so when there was need for a 'Pencil Song' on the upcoming Mickey Mouse Club in 1955, Bill had his talented actor/singer/song-writing, tennis buddy, Jimmie Dodd, write the song and had him sing it for some execs and Walt in the latter's office.

"Walt said, 'He's our new Mickey Mouse Club host!'

"Bill smiled knowing that he had helped his buddy and helped Walt find him."

The Times' obituary on Bill Justice is here.

--Dennis McLellan 

Photos: Jimmie Dodd, Lonnie Burr and the rest of the Mouseketeers (top) and Disney animator Bill Justice (below). Credit: Walt Disney Co.

 
 

David Nelson's death spurs fan response

Throughout his long career, veteran Hollywood publicist Dale Olson has written dozens of obituaries of celebrities that he sent to news outlets. 

But Olson, who informed the media that David Nelson had died of complications from colon cancer Jan. 11 at age 74, says he was stunned by the response he's received to the death of the last surviving member of the family that starred in "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" on television for 14 years. 

"The reaction was incredible," says Olson. "I've gotten calls and e-mails from fans throughout the country and as far as England who were shattered by his death and simply wanted to talk to somebody, even though they were strangers, because they felt the need to express their condolences.

"They grew up with the Nelson family on television, and they felt so close to them."

--Dennis McLellan  

Photo: Fans have left tributes at David Nelson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Credit: Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

Music mogul Don Kirshner dies at 76

Don Kirshner, the veteran music mogul who shepherded the work of monstrously talented young songwriters to the top of the pop charts in the 1960s, launched the career of the Monkees, then made his face familiar to millions of rock fans as impresario of his late-night live-music TV series in the 1970s, died Monday of heart failure in Boca Raton, Fla., where he had lived for several years, his family members said. He was 76.

"Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" brought the biggest names in rock and pop music in the 1970s to television in "Rock Concert" in live performances instead of the usual lip-synced sessions that often characterized rock music on television. Each week Kirshner, in his distinctive Bronx accent, dryly introduced acts, including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sly & the Family Stone, Devo and countless others over its nine-year run. His monotone style led to a famous parody that musician and bandleader Paul Shaffer delivered a number of times on "Saturday Night Live."

He helped dream up the Monkees, a fabricated pop-rock quartet designed to emulate much of the appeal of the Beatles for weekly viewers of the group's TV show, which also yielded a string of hit singles and albums. But the group members' struggles to inject their own musical sensibilities into the show led to a famous battle over creative control with Kirshner.

Guitarist and songwriter Michael Nesmith famously put his fist through the wall of Kirshner's bungalow during one of the more heated sessions.

"Donny was there with his attorney," Monkees drummer and singer Micky Dolenz told the Washington Post in 2004, "basically presenting us with this money and saying, in so many words, 'Why don't you shut up and cash the check?' And that's not the sort of thing you said to Mike Nesmith at the time. To be honest, I couldn't have cared less. I was 20 years old, making money. But Mike led this revolt, and out of camaraderie, we all went along."

The Monkees won, and eventually Kirshner was fired from his role with the group. He went on to form the Archies, one of pop's quintessential bubblegum acts targeting teen and preteen fans. The Archies logged four weeks at No. 1 in 1969 with their effervescent hit "Sugar, Sugar."

Even before the Monkees got started in 1965, Kirshner was already a music business heavyweight, having helped get a career going for his friend Bobby Darin, then starting a music publishing company that hired rising songwriters, including Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka and the teams of Gerry Goffin and Carole King and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann.

Those writers crafted dozens of pop hits in the early to mid-'60s, many of them since lauded as classics of the Brill Building era. After "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" ended its run in the early 1980s, supplanted in some respects by the new kid on the block, MTV, Kirshner went into virtual retirement and moved to Florida, where he lived for decades in seclusion with his wife.

A series of bad business deals led him to file for bankruptcy in 2000. He also periodically expressed his disappointment that he was never inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as its many nonperformer honorees.

"I don't want to sound like sour grapes," he said in 2004, "but I believe I should have been one of the first three or first five inducted. Seriously. I mean, they've got people in there that I trained, and I'm not in? It bothers me, on principle."

Kirshner is survived by his wife of 50 years, Sheila, children Ricky and Daryn and five grandchildren. Services are pending.

-- Randy Lewis

More at Pop & Hiss, The Times' music blog, and later at latimes.com/obituaries.

Photo: Don Kirshner, left, with Carole King and Gerry Goffin in an undated photo. Credit: From Don Kirshner