Click the links below for a tribute to Twiggy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru1im9AuCuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z5qsI0Tyhc
“We stand today on the edge of a new frontier-the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils-a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.” ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy
54 and still got a crush on Pet Clark
John William Tuohy
54 and still got a crush on Pet Clark
54 and still got a crush on Pet Clark
John William Tuohy
54 and still got a crush on Pet Clark
54 and still has a crush on Petula Clark
Click the link below for Pet Clark sing Don't Sleep in the SUbway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRtjDSuyvMA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRtjDSuyvMA
John William Tuohy
54 and still has a crush on Petula Clark
54 and still has a crush on Petula Clark
John William Tuohy
54 and still has a crush on Petula Clark
Help again
John William Tuohy
Help again
Evergreen Review
Evergreen Review is a literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973.
Evergreen Review debuted pivotal works by Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Gunter Grass, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Vladimir Nabokov, Frank O’Hara, Kenzaburo Oe, Octavio Paz, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Tom Stoppard, Derek Walcott and Malcolm X. United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote a controversial piece for the magazine in 1969. Kerouac and Ginsberg regularly had their writing published in the magazine.
Ken Jordan, writing in the introduction to Evergreen Review Reader, 1957-1996, described the counter-cultural contents and the impact of the publication on readers:The first issue featured an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre and an interview with the great New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds. It also included a story by Samuel Beckett, "Dante and the Lobster," the first of many appearing in Evergreen's pages; these continued through the last issue published.
The second issue was a landmark. A banner across the cover declared "San Francisco Scene," and inside held the first collection of work by the new Beat writers - including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Jack Kerouac (before the publication of On The Road and Allen Ginsberg, whose Howl had already been published as a pamphlet by Ferlinghetti's press, City Lights, and was confiscated by customs officials and faced trial for obscenity in San Francisco. The issue brought the Beats and Evergreen Review to the forefront of the American stage... Evergreen published writing that was literally counter to the culture, and if it was sexy, so much the better. In the context of the time, sex was politics, and the powers-that-be made the suppression of sexuality a political issue. The court battles that Grove Press fought for the legal publication of Lady Chatterly's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch, and for the legal distribution of the film I Am Curious: Yellow, spilled onto the pages of Evergreen Review, and in 1964, an issue of Evergreen itself was confiscated in New York State by the Nassau County District Attorney on obscenity charges... All of this was done on a shoestring budget by a tiny staff. Barney Rosset started the magazine with editor Don Allen and Fred Jordan, who was nominally the business manager in its early days. Richard Seaver joined the editorial team with the ninth issue, and Don Allen stepped back to become a contributing editor. Publication increased from quarterly to bimonthly to, in the late sixties, monthly, and the format changed from trade paperback to a full-sized, glossy magazine attaining a subscription base of some 40,000 copies and a newsstand circulation of 1000,000. The final issue, number 96, came out in 1973
Evergreen Review debuted pivotal works by Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Gunter Grass, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Vladimir Nabokov, Frank O’Hara, Kenzaburo Oe, Octavio Paz, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Tom Stoppard, Derek Walcott and Malcolm X. United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote a controversial piece for the magazine in 1969. Kerouac and Ginsberg regularly had their writing published in the magazine.
Ken Jordan, writing in the introduction to Evergreen Review Reader, 1957-1996, described the counter-cultural contents and the impact of the publication on readers:The first issue featured an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre and an interview with the great New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds. It also included a story by Samuel Beckett, "Dante and the Lobster," the first of many appearing in Evergreen's pages; these continued through the last issue published.
The second issue was a landmark. A banner across the cover declared "San Francisco Scene," and inside held the first collection of work by the new Beat writers - including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Jack Kerouac (before the publication of On The Road and Allen Ginsberg, whose Howl had already been published as a pamphlet by Ferlinghetti's press, City Lights, and was confiscated by customs officials and faced trial for obscenity in San Francisco. The issue brought the Beats and Evergreen Review to the forefront of the American stage... Evergreen published writing that was literally counter to the culture, and if it was sexy, so much the better. In the context of the time, sex was politics, and the powers-that-be made the suppression of sexuality a political issue. The court battles that Grove Press fought for the legal publication of Lady Chatterly's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch, and for the legal distribution of the film I Am Curious: Yellow, spilled onto the pages of Evergreen Review, and in 1964, an issue of Evergreen itself was confiscated in New York State by the Nassau County District Attorney on obscenity charges... All of this was done on a shoestring budget by a tiny staff. Barney Rosset started the magazine with editor Don Allen and Fred Jordan, who was nominally the business manager in its early days. Richard Seaver joined the editorial team with the ninth issue, and Don Allen stepped back to become a contributing editor. Publication increased from quarterly to bimonthly to, in the late sixties, monthly, and the format changed from trade paperback to a full-sized, glossy magazine attaining a subscription base of some 40,000 copies and a newsstand circulation of 1000,000. The final issue, number 96, came out in 1973
John William Tuohy
Evergreen Review
Everybody run, its Rod McKuen
Click here for Rod going on and on about something or other
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnG7o92gYk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnG7o92gYk4
John William Tuohy
Everybody run,
its Rod McKuen
Pete Seeger
John William Tuohy
Pete Seeger
Shelby Sumpter Singleton, Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn4-2qMErgM
Shelby Sumpter Singleton, Jr. was a record producer and executive. In 1960 he achieved first hit single, Brook Benton's recording of "The Boll Weevil Song", which became a #2 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the following year. Singleton spent nine years at Mercury and its sister label Smash Records during which he was involved in producing many hit records, including "Walk On By", Leroy Van Dyke; "Ahab the Arab", Ray Stevens; "Wooden Heart", Joe Dowell; and producing acts such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Roger Miller, Charlie Rich, Dave Dudley and Brook Benton.
In 1962 Singleton bought the master recording of "Hey Paula" by Jill and Ray, originally released on LeCam Records. He changed the duo's names to Paul & Paula and issued the song on Mercury's newly acquired label, Philips. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1966 Singleton resigned from Mercury and formed several music labels, including SSS International and Plantation Records, achieving his first #1 hit in 1968 with "Harper Valley P.T.A." The following year he purchased Sun Records from Sam Phillips, including its rock and roll catalog. Singleton was on the nominating committee of the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
John William Tuohy
Jr.,
Shelby Sumpter Singleton
Soupy Sales Dies
Soupy Sales, a comic with a gift for slapstick who attained cult-like popularity in the 1960s with a pie-throwing routine that became his signature, has died. He was 83.
Sales had numerous ailments and died Thursday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, said Kathy O'Connell, a longtime friend.
As the star of "The Soupy Sales Show," he performed live on television for 13 years in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York before the program went into syndication in the United States and abroad.
Ostensibly for children, the show had broad appeal among adults who found Sales' puns, gags and pratfalls deliciously corny and camp. His cast consisted of goofy puppets with names like White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie, and a host of off-camera characters, including the infamous naked girl.
The high point of every show came when a sidekick launched a pie into Sales' face. Sales once estimated that he was hit by more than 25,000 pies in his lifetime.
The gag became more than hilarious; it evolved into a hip badge of honor. Frank Sinatra was first in a long line of celebrities who clamored for the privilege to be cream-faced, including Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin and Burt Lancaster.
"I've never done a pretentious show; it's always had a live feeling, the kind of thing that comes across when you don't know what's going to happen next," Sales told author Gary Grossman in the 1981 book "Saturday Morning TV." "I've never done anything simply because I thought I could get away with it. I've just wanted to do the funniest show."
The possibility of humor dogged Sales from the start. He was born Milton Supman on Jan. 28, 1926, in the North Carolina backwater of Franklinton. The Supmans were the only Jews in town. Sales' father ran a dry goods store that sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.
The family name was often mispronounced as "Soupman." To make matters worse, his parents, who had nicknamed his brothers "Hambone" and "Chickenbone," dubbed him "Soupbone." Eventually, Milton became just Soupy.
His father died when he was 5, prompting a move to Huntington, W.Va. Sales acted in school plays and in high school was voted most popular boy.
World War II did not dampen his showbiz ambitions. He fought in the Pacific theater in the Navy and participated in the invasion of Okinawa but managed to entertain crew mates with routines broadcast on the ship's PA system.
After his discharge, Sales returned to West Virginia and enrolled in Marshall College as a journalism major, earning a bachelor's degree in 1949. He went to work for a radio station in Huntington as a scriptwriter. At night he did stand-up in nightclubs. Soon he became a disc jockey.
In the early 1950s he moved to Ohio, where a Cleveland station manager gave him the professional name of Soupy Hines. That was nixed in Detroit, where his new station manager thought Hines would be confused with an advertiser, the Heinz soup line. Thus was Soupy Sales born.
In 1953, Sales launched a daily live children's show on Detroit's WXYZ-TV, called "Soupy Sales Comics." The show caught on, causing the station to give him a nighttime slot for "Soupy's On." Sales created characters such as Wyatt Burp, a belch-prone sheriff, and Calypso King Harry Bella, a crazy-eyed South American with a mop top.
In 1955, the show was picked up by ABC as a summer replacement for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and renamed "The Soupy Sales Show." Its star soon became Detroit's top-rated daytime television personality.
Sales was joined by White Fang, "the meanest dog in the United States," and Black Tooth, "the nicest dog in the United States," of whom all that viewers saw were giant paws. Other characters included his irrepressible girlfriend, Peaches, the vivacious Marilyn Monwolf, and a bloodthirsty neighbor, the Count, who touted an album titled "Love in Vein."
Every show featured a segment called Words of Wisdom, an opportunity to offer silly sayings such as "Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you."
The highlight of each show, of course, was the pie-throwing, which Sales elevated to an art.
Sales took his first pie in the face in 1950 when he played an Indian in a spoof of the James Stewart movie "Broken Arrow." That pie was real. Later, he would switch to shaving-cream pies. But he swore that the secret of a good pie was the crust: If it stuck to the face, it was, in Sales' opinion, no good.
"A pie has to hit you and explode into a thousand pieces," the expert explained, "so you see the person's face and see it take away his dignity."
By 1961, the face that launched several thousand pies in Detroit began to dominate local TV in Los Angeles. Critics were unkind, calling the show "a mishmash of mediocrity" that was meant for "kids with low IQs." But viewers lapped it up, making it the No. 1 local show by 1962. A survey at the time revealed that more than a third of Sales' fans consisted of adults. Some of them were hosting pie-lobbing parties in their basements.
One day, Sinatra called. "Hey, Soupy, it's Frank," he said. "I want to come on your show on one condition: I get hit with a pie." Sales was happy to fulfill the legendary crooner's wish.
The appearance by Sinatra stirred a stampede of stars hungry for the same humiliation. One night featured a triple-header: Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Trini Lopez were all pied together.
In his evening show, Sales also featured jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. The Ken Burns jazz documentary included a clip from Sales' show.
Once, the crew played a joke on him by posing a naked woman in a stage door. When Sales opened the door, he gasped and feared his career was over, but the scene was never telecast.
For notoriety, nothing beat the show that aired New Year's Day 1965, when Sales was producing the program in New York. Told he had a minute to fill, the comic told the children watching on WNEW-TV to find their parents' wallets and "get all the green pieces of paper with the pictures of guys in beards" and mail them to him. In return, he said, he would send them "a postcard from Puerto Rico."
Sales had used the same joke in Detroit and Los Angeles. But this time, the prank elicited some $80,000 "in Monopoly money," as well as a complaint from a viewer filed with the FCC. Sales' show was suspended, prompting fans to swamp the station's switchboard with protest calls, mostly from high school and college students who demanded that their favorite television fare resume. Within a week, it did.
On a website devoted to the Sales show, a fan recalled that the first program after the New Year's episode opened with stock footage of dancing girls kicking up their heels and crowds cheering; the musical accompaniment was "Happy Days Are Here Again." "It was obvious to all of us that our beloved Soupy was unrepentant," the fan wrote, "and we repressed youths were behind him. I must dispute the thesis . . . that Froggy from 'Andy's Gang' was the cause of '60s rebelliousness. It was Soupy who inspired my generation to anarchy."
Sales called the episode "the most brilliant minute of ad-lib in television history because it proved how powerful the medium is."
Later that year he invented a dance called "The Mouse," a loony version of the Twist in which Sales bared his upper teeth, raised his hands to his ears and wiggled his fingers while chewing in time to the music. He performed it several times on "The Ed Sullivan Show," where he met dancer Trudy Carson. They were married in 1980.
When animation took over children's programming in the 1960s, personalities such as Shari Lewis and Sales began to lose their appeal. In 1966 his show was not renewed in New York and went into syndication. A new version was produced and syndicated in 1978-79.
During the next few decades, Sales starred in a short-lived Broadway comedy and became a regular panelist on the long-running TV game show "What's My Line?" He also was a featured performer in the musical variety show "Sha Na Na" from 1978 to 1981.
In the mid-1980s, he emceed a radio show on WNBC in New York, sandwiched between Don Imus and Howard Stern. He acted in several movies, notably in the role of Moses in the 1993 cult comedy " . . . And God Spoke."
He once acknowledged that his trademark pie routine hurt his career: "Producers say, 'Hey, all he does is throw pies.' It kept me off a lot of shows."
His authority in pie-tossing even landed him in court -- as an expert witness. In 1974 he was called to testify in the court-martial of a sailor accused of pitching a pie into an officer's face. Noted defense attorney William Smith enlisted Sales to tell how, after launching more than 19,000 creamy missiles, he had never been prosecuted for assault with a pie. Pie-hurling, Sales told the court, was "a harmless joke" designed to "relieve tensions and frustrations." He offered to perform at the Port Hueneme naval base Christmas show if the charges were dropped but was turned down. The sailor was found guilty.
Sales kept up club appearances through the 1990s, performing before audiences of baby boomers.
"A lot of people grew up watching me," he told The Times several years ago. "I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right. That's fine and dandy. I'm flattered."
He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Trudy Carson Sales; sons Tony and Hunt from a previous marriage; a brother; and four grandchildren.
Sales had numerous ailments and died Thursday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, said Kathy O'Connell, a longtime friend.
As the star of "The Soupy Sales Show," he performed live on television for 13 years in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York before the program went into syndication in the United States and abroad.
Ostensibly for children, the show had broad appeal among adults who found Sales' puns, gags and pratfalls deliciously corny and camp. His cast consisted of goofy puppets with names like White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie, and a host of off-camera characters, including the infamous naked girl.
The high point of every show came when a sidekick launched a pie into Sales' face. Sales once estimated that he was hit by more than 25,000 pies in his lifetime.
The gag became more than hilarious; it evolved into a hip badge of honor. Frank Sinatra was first in a long line of celebrities who clamored for the privilege to be cream-faced, including Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin and Burt Lancaster.
"I've never done a pretentious show; it's always had a live feeling, the kind of thing that comes across when you don't know what's going to happen next," Sales told author Gary Grossman in the 1981 book "Saturday Morning TV." "I've never done anything simply because I thought I could get away with it. I've just wanted to do the funniest show."
The possibility of humor dogged Sales from the start. He was born Milton Supman on Jan. 28, 1926, in the North Carolina backwater of Franklinton. The Supmans were the only Jews in town. Sales' father ran a dry goods store that sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.
The family name was often mispronounced as "Soupman." To make matters worse, his parents, who had nicknamed his brothers "Hambone" and "Chickenbone," dubbed him "Soupbone." Eventually, Milton became just Soupy.
His father died when he was 5, prompting a move to Huntington, W.Va. Sales acted in school plays and in high school was voted most popular boy.
World War II did not dampen his showbiz ambitions. He fought in the Pacific theater in the Navy and participated in the invasion of Okinawa but managed to entertain crew mates with routines broadcast on the ship's PA system.
After his discharge, Sales returned to West Virginia and enrolled in Marshall College as a journalism major, earning a bachelor's degree in 1949. He went to work for a radio station in Huntington as a scriptwriter. At night he did stand-up in nightclubs. Soon he became a disc jockey.
In the early 1950s he moved to Ohio, where a Cleveland station manager gave him the professional name of Soupy Hines. That was nixed in Detroit, where his new station manager thought Hines would be confused with an advertiser, the Heinz soup line. Thus was Soupy Sales born.
In 1953, Sales launched a daily live children's show on Detroit's WXYZ-TV, called "Soupy Sales Comics." The show caught on, causing the station to give him a nighttime slot for "Soupy's On." Sales created characters such as Wyatt Burp, a belch-prone sheriff, and Calypso King Harry Bella, a crazy-eyed South American with a mop top.
In 1955, the show was picked up by ABC as a summer replacement for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and renamed "The Soupy Sales Show." Its star soon became Detroit's top-rated daytime television personality.
Sales was joined by White Fang, "the meanest dog in the United States," and Black Tooth, "the nicest dog in the United States," of whom all that viewers saw were giant paws. Other characters included his irrepressible girlfriend, Peaches, the vivacious Marilyn Monwolf, and a bloodthirsty neighbor, the Count, who touted an album titled "Love in Vein."
Every show featured a segment called Words of Wisdom, an opportunity to offer silly sayings such as "Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you."
The highlight of each show, of course, was the pie-throwing, which Sales elevated to an art.
Sales took his first pie in the face in 1950 when he played an Indian in a spoof of the James Stewart movie "Broken Arrow." That pie was real. Later, he would switch to shaving-cream pies. But he swore that the secret of a good pie was the crust: If it stuck to the face, it was, in Sales' opinion, no good.
"A pie has to hit you and explode into a thousand pieces," the expert explained, "so you see the person's face and see it take away his dignity."
By 1961, the face that launched several thousand pies in Detroit began to dominate local TV in Los Angeles. Critics were unkind, calling the show "a mishmash of mediocrity" that was meant for "kids with low IQs." But viewers lapped it up, making it the No. 1 local show by 1962. A survey at the time revealed that more than a third of Sales' fans consisted of adults. Some of them were hosting pie-lobbing parties in their basements.
One day, Sinatra called. "Hey, Soupy, it's Frank," he said. "I want to come on your show on one condition: I get hit with a pie." Sales was happy to fulfill the legendary crooner's wish.
The appearance by Sinatra stirred a stampede of stars hungry for the same humiliation. One night featured a triple-header: Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Trini Lopez were all pied together.
In his evening show, Sales also featured jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. The Ken Burns jazz documentary included a clip from Sales' show.
Once, the crew played a joke on him by posing a naked woman in a stage door. When Sales opened the door, he gasped and feared his career was over, but the scene was never telecast.
For notoriety, nothing beat the show that aired New Year's Day 1965, when Sales was producing the program in New York. Told he had a minute to fill, the comic told the children watching on WNEW-TV to find their parents' wallets and "get all the green pieces of paper with the pictures of guys in beards" and mail them to him. In return, he said, he would send them "a postcard from Puerto Rico."
Sales had used the same joke in Detroit and Los Angeles. But this time, the prank elicited some $80,000 "in Monopoly money," as well as a complaint from a viewer filed with the FCC. Sales' show was suspended, prompting fans to swamp the station's switchboard with protest calls, mostly from high school and college students who demanded that their favorite television fare resume. Within a week, it did.
On a website devoted to the Sales show, a fan recalled that the first program after the New Year's episode opened with stock footage of dancing girls kicking up their heels and crowds cheering; the musical accompaniment was "Happy Days Are Here Again." "It was obvious to all of us that our beloved Soupy was unrepentant," the fan wrote, "and we repressed youths were behind him. I must dispute the thesis . . . that Froggy from 'Andy's Gang' was the cause of '60s rebelliousness. It was Soupy who inspired my generation to anarchy."
Sales called the episode "the most brilliant minute of ad-lib in television history because it proved how powerful the medium is."
Later that year he invented a dance called "The Mouse," a loony version of the Twist in which Sales bared his upper teeth, raised his hands to his ears and wiggled his fingers while chewing in time to the music. He performed it several times on "The Ed Sullivan Show," where he met dancer Trudy Carson. They were married in 1980.
When animation took over children's programming in the 1960s, personalities such as Shari Lewis and Sales began to lose their appeal. In 1966 his show was not renewed in New York and went into syndication. A new version was produced and syndicated in 1978-79.
During the next few decades, Sales starred in a short-lived Broadway comedy and became a regular panelist on the long-running TV game show "What's My Line?" He also was a featured performer in the musical variety show "Sha Na Na" from 1978 to 1981.
In the mid-1980s, he emceed a radio show on WNBC in New York, sandwiched between Don Imus and Howard Stern. He acted in several movies, notably in the role of Moses in the 1993 cult comedy " . . . And God Spoke."
He once acknowledged that his trademark pie routine hurt his career: "Producers say, 'Hey, all he does is throw pies.' It kept me off a lot of shows."
His authority in pie-tossing even landed him in court -- as an expert witness. In 1974 he was called to testify in the court-martial of a sailor accused of pitching a pie into an officer's face. Noted defense attorney William Smith enlisted Sales to tell how, after launching more than 19,000 creamy missiles, he had never been prosecuted for assault with a pie. Pie-hurling, Sales told the court, was "a harmless joke" designed to "relieve tensions and frustrations." He offered to perform at the Port Hueneme naval base Christmas show if the charges were dropped but was turned down. The sailor was found guilty.
Sales kept up club appearances through the 1990s, performing before audiences of baby boomers.
"A lot of people grew up watching me," he told The Times several years ago. "I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right. That's fine and dandy. I'm flattered."
He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Trudy Carson Sales; sons Tony and Hunt from a previous marriage; a brother; and four grandchildren.
John William Tuohy
Soupy Sales Dies
Vic Mizzy
Vic Mizzy, a film and television composer best known for writing the memorable theme songs for the 1960s sit-coms "Green Acres" and "The Addams Family," has died. He was 93.
Mizzy launched his TV career in 1960 when he was asked to compose music for the dramatic anthology series "Moment of Fear."He quickly moved on to score episodes of "Shirley Temple's Storybook" and "The Richard Boone Show" and to write the themes for "Klondike" and the Dennis Weaver series "Kentucky Jones."Then came an offbeat assignment: “The Addams Family,” the 1964-66 TV series based on Charles Addams' macabre magazine cartoons and starring John Astin as Gomez Addams and Carolyn Jones as his wife, Morticia.
For his theme song, Mizzy played a harpsichord, which gives the theme its unique flavor. And because the production company, Filmways, refused to pay for singers, Mizzy sang it himself and overdubbed it three times.
The song, memorably punctuated by finger-snapping, begins with: "They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky: the Addams family."In the 1996 book "TV's Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes From 'Dragnet' to 'Friends,' " author Jon Burlingame writes that Mizzy's "musical conception was so specific that he became deeply involved with the filming of the main-title sequence, which involved all seven actors snapping their fingers in carefully timed rhythm to Mizzy's music."
For Mizzy, who owned the publishing rights to "The Addams Family" theme, it was an easy payday."I sat down; I went 'buh-buh-buh-bump [snap-snap], buh-buh-buh-bump," he recalled in a 2008 interview on CBS' "Sunday Morning" show. "That's why I'm living in Bel-Air: Two finger snaps and you live in Bel-Air."
The season after "The Addams Family" made its debut, Mizzy composed the title song for “Green Acres,” the 1965-71 rural comedy starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.For "Green Acres," Burlingame observed in his book, Mizzy "again conceived the title song as intertwined with the visuals" of the show's title sequence and telling the story of wealthy Oliver and Lisa Douglas moving from New York to a farm in the country. Burlingame on Monday described the themes for "The Addams Family" and "Green Acres" as "two of the best-remembered sitcom themes of all time.""Vic was an old-school songwriter who believed in melody and hummability," Burlingame said. "
He thought that people ought to be able to easily remember a theme."Vic was one of the wittiest composers I ever met, and he had an uncanny ability to incorporate his own personal sense of humor into his music."Mizzy's use of bass harmonica and fuzz guitar in the music of "Green Acres," for example, "was somehow perfect for that show's setting, and it only added to the humor of the situations," Burlingame said.In the case of "The Addams Family," he said, "you've got the harpsichord, which lends this antique, sort of macabre quality to the theme. But then you add the lyrics, which make it funny.
So you have the perfect combination of macabre and amusing. It was just right for that show's sensibility."Mizzy's many TV credits include writing the themes for Phyllis Diller's 1966-67 sitcom "The Pruitts of Southampton" and "The Don Rickles Show" (1968-69), for which Mizzy also conducted the orchestra.Among his movie credits as a composer are the Don Knotts comedies "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken," "The Reluctant Astronaut," "The Shakiest Gun in the West," "The Love God?" and "How to Frame a Figg."
Born in Brooklyn on Jan. 9, 1916, Mizzy learned to play the piano as a child. While he was a student at New York University, he and his friend Irving Taylor began writing songs and sketches for variety shows.They appeared on radio's "Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour" and won an amateur contest on the Fred Allen show. The team's first published song was "Your Heart Rhymes with Mine."Mizzy, who served four years in the Navy during World War II, had a number of hits with Taylor, including "Three Little Sisters" and "Take It Easy." Under a later partnership with Mann Curtis, Mizzy had hits such as "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time," "The Whole World Is Singing My Song" and "The Jones Boy."
John William Tuohy
Vic Mizzy
Joseph Wiseman
Joseph Wiseman, a stage and screen actor who played the sinister title character in "Dr. No," the 1962 film that introduced Sean Connery as James Bond, has died. He was 91.Wiseman, who had been in declining health in the last few years, died Monday at his home in Manhattan, said his daughter, Martha Graham Wiseman.
The Canadian-born Wiseman already had appeared on Broadway numerous times and in films such as "Detective Story" and "Viva Zapata!" when he was cast as the mysterious villain opposite Connery's 007.The diabolical Dr. No was a formidable foe.As Los Angeles Times movie critic Philip K. Scheuer put it: "Out pfui-ing Fu Manchu, Dr. No reveals himself to be the head of a vast underworld organization called SPECTER and dedicated to the destruction and domination of mankind. And, by gad, he has the equipment to pull it off."Wiseman hadn't an inkling that he was participating in the launch of what became one of the most successful movie franchises of all time."I had no idea it would achieve the success it did," he told The Times in 1992 with a laugh. "As far as I was concerned, I thought it might be just another grade-B Charlie Chan mystery."
Although Wiseman was part of movie history, his daughter said he viewed "Dr. No" with "great disdain.""He was horrified in later life because that's what he was remembered for," she said. "Stage acting was what he wanted to be remembered for."
Born in Montreal on May 15, 1918, Wiseman began acting in summer stock as a teenager and made his Broadway debut in 1938 playing a bit part in Robert E. Sherwood's "Abe Lincoln in Illinois."Over the years, he appeared in Broadway productions such as "Antony and Cleopatra," "Detective Story," "The Lark," "Incident at Vichy," "In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer" and a revival of "The Tenth Man."Among his other film credits are "The Night They Raided Minsky's," "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" and "The Valachi Papers."On television, Wiseman played the recurring role of crime boss Manny Weisbord on the 1980s series "Crime Story."
Over the years, he was a guest star on series such as "The Untouchables," "The Twilight Zone," "The Streets of San Francisco" and "Law & Order."In 2001, he was back on Broadway in the National Actors Theater production of "Judgment at Nuremberg," playing opposite Maximilian Schell."A life being enacted onstage is a thing of utter fascination for me," Wiseman told the New York Times. "And acting, it may begin out of vanity, but you hope that it's taken over by something else."With a laugh, he added; "I hope I've climbed over the vanity hurdle."Wiseman's second wife, dancer and choreographer Pearl Lang, died in February. In addition to his daughter from his first marriage to Nell Kinard, he is survived by his sister, Ruth Wiseman.
John William Tuohy
Joseph Wiseman
Dickie Peterson,
Dickie Peterson, lead singer for the group Blue Cheer (Named after a street brand of LSD) died in October 2009 of cancer. He was 63. The group had a hit with the song Summer Time Blues
John William Tuohy
Dickie Peterson
Al Martino
Al Martino, (Born Alfred Cini) died in October of 2009. Martino played the Sinatra like character Johnny Fontane in the film series, The Godfather. Martino arrived on the music scene in the 1950s and hit his stride in the 1960s with the song Spanish Eyes.
His Italian immigrant parents ran a masonry business, and he worked alongside his brothers as a bricklayer while growing up.However, he was more interested in music, and was inspired by Al Jolson and Perry Como to try his own hand at singing. When his boyhood friend Alfredo Cocozza changed his name to Mario Lanza and became an international opera star, the possibility of a career in music suddenly seemed plausible
After service with the United States Navy in World War II, including being a part of the Iwo Jima invasion where he was wounded, he commenced his singing career. Adopting the stage name Al Martino (after his maternal grandfather's last name), he performed in local nightclubs for a time, and moved to New York in 1948 with Lanza's encouragement. He went on to win first place on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television program, thanks to a rendition of Como's "If," and that exposure helped him land a recording contract with the Philadelphia based independent label, BBS
His single "Here in My Heart" was number one in the first UK Singles Chart, published by the New Musical Express on November 14, 1952, putting him into the Guinness Book of World Records. "Here in My Heart" remained in the top position for nine weeks in the United Kingdom, setting up a record for the longest consecutive run at number one, which over half a century on, has only been beaten by four other tracks ("I Believe" (11 weeks), "Cara Mia", "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" and "Love Is All Around
Martino has stated that Mario Lanza dropped his plans to record this song after he called Lanza in Los Angeles, California and explained that his own recording would be neglected if he did so.
A transatlantic chart-topper, "Here in My Heart" earned Martino a gold disc. Its success secured Martino a record label deal with Capitol Records, and he released three more singles — "Take My Heart," "Rachel," and "When You're Mine" — through 1953, all of which hit the U.S. Top 40. However, Martino's contract was taken over by a Mafia connected management team, which ordered Martino to pay $75,000, as a safeguard for their investment. Martino made a down payment to ensure his family's safety, then fled to the United Kingdom where his popularity allowed him to perform successfully for a time, headlining at the London Palladium. He continued to record in the UK with moderate success, but his work received no exposure back in the U.S. In 1958, thanks to the intervention of a family friend, Martino was allowed to return home and resume his recording career
Martino faced an uphill battle re-establishing himself, especially with the counteracting arrival of rock and roll. He recorded for 20th Century Fox during the late 1950s, but the label ended up dropping him. A new album, The Exciting Voice of Al Martino (1962) secured a new deal with Capitol, and was followed by a mostly Italian language album, The Italian Voice of Al Martino. He also made several high-profile television appearances to re-establish his visibility.
He scored a major comeback hit with 1963's "I Love You Because." Arranged by Belford Hendricks, Martino's cover version went to number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and number one on the corresponding Easy Listening chart. The accompanying album of the same name went Top 10 in the Billboard 200, and Martino remained a regular visitor to the charts for over a decade afterwards, with hits including "Painted, Tainted Rose" (1963) plus "Always Together," "I Love You More and More Every Day", "Tears and Roses" and "We Could" (all 1964).
One of the most successful Martino hits was "Spanish Eyes", achieving several gold and platinum discs for sales. Recorded in 1965, the song reached number 5 on the UK Singles Chart when re-issued in 1973. Even today, this classic by composer Bert Kaempfert (his original title for the song was "Moon Over Naples") is among the 50 most-played songs worldwide. Another hit was a disco version of "Volare", (also known as "Nel blu, Dipinto di Blu"). In 1976, it reached number one on the Italian and Flemish charts, and was in the Top Ten in Spain, The Netherlands and France, as well as in many other European countries.
In the U.S., Martino had eleven Top 40 hits in the Billboard pop singles chart in the 1960s and 1970s, with 1963's "I Love You Because" (#3) and 1964's "I Love You More and More Every Day" (#9) both reaching the Top Ten. He also sang the title song for the film, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
Apart from singing, Martino played the role of Johnny Fontane in the 1972 film The Godfather, as well as singing the film's theme, Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather).
He played the same role in The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III, as well as The Godfather Trilogy: 1901-1980. Martino died on October 13, 2009 at his childhood home in Springfield, Pennsylvania, 6 days after his 82nd birthday.
His Italian immigrant parents ran a masonry business, and he worked alongside his brothers as a bricklayer while growing up.However, he was more interested in music, and was inspired by Al Jolson and Perry Como to try his own hand at singing. When his boyhood friend Alfredo Cocozza changed his name to Mario Lanza and became an international opera star, the possibility of a career in music suddenly seemed plausible
After service with the United States Navy in World War II, including being a part of the Iwo Jima invasion where he was wounded, he commenced his singing career. Adopting the stage name Al Martino (after his maternal grandfather's last name), he performed in local nightclubs for a time, and moved to New York in 1948 with Lanza's encouragement. He went on to win first place on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television program, thanks to a rendition of Como's "If," and that exposure helped him land a recording contract with the Philadelphia based independent label, BBS
His single "Here in My Heart" was number one in the first UK Singles Chart, published by the New Musical Express on November 14, 1952, putting him into the Guinness Book of World Records. "Here in My Heart" remained in the top position for nine weeks in the United Kingdom, setting up a record for the longest consecutive run at number one, which over half a century on, has only been beaten by four other tracks ("I Believe" (11 weeks), "Cara Mia", "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" and "Love Is All Around
Martino has stated that Mario Lanza dropped his plans to record this song after he called Lanza in Los Angeles, California and explained that his own recording would be neglected if he did so.
A transatlantic chart-topper, "Here in My Heart" earned Martino a gold disc. Its success secured Martino a record label deal with Capitol Records, and he released three more singles — "Take My Heart," "Rachel," and "When You're Mine" — through 1953, all of which hit the U.S. Top 40. However, Martino's contract was taken over by a Mafia connected management team, which ordered Martino to pay $75,000, as a safeguard for their investment. Martino made a down payment to ensure his family's safety, then fled to the United Kingdom where his popularity allowed him to perform successfully for a time, headlining at the London Palladium. He continued to record in the UK with moderate success, but his work received no exposure back in the U.S. In 1958, thanks to the intervention of a family friend, Martino was allowed to return home and resume his recording career
Martino faced an uphill battle re-establishing himself, especially with the counteracting arrival of rock and roll. He recorded for 20th Century Fox during the late 1950s, but the label ended up dropping him. A new album, The Exciting Voice of Al Martino (1962) secured a new deal with Capitol, and was followed by a mostly Italian language album, The Italian Voice of Al Martino. He also made several high-profile television appearances to re-establish his visibility.
He scored a major comeback hit with 1963's "I Love You Because." Arranged by Belford Hendricks, Martino's cover version went to number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and number one on the corresponding Easy Listening chart. The accompanying album of the same name went Top 10 in the Billboard 200, and Martino remained a regular visitor to the charts for over a decade afterwards, with hits including "Painted, Tainted Rose" (1963) plus "Always Together," "I Love You More and More Every Day", "Tears and Roses" and "We Could" (all 1964).
One of the most successful Martino hits was "Spanish Eyes", achieving several gold and platinum discs for sales. Recorded in 1965, the song reached number 5 on the UK Singles Chart when re-issued in 1973. Even today, this classic by composer Bert Kaempfert (his original title for the song was "Moon Over Naples") is among the 50 most-played songs worldwide. Another hit was a disco version of "Volare", (also known as "Nel blu, Dipinto di Blu"). In 1976, it reached number one on the Italian and Flemish charts, and was in the Top Ten in Spain, The Netherlands and France, as well as in many other European countries.
In the U.S., Martino had eleven Top 40 hits in the Billboard pop singles chart in the 1960s and 1970s, with 1963's "I Love You Because" (#3) and 1964's "I Love You More and More Every Day" (#9) both reaching the Top Ten. He also sang the title song for the film, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
Apart from singing, Martino played the role of Johnny Fontane in the 1972 film The Godfather, as well as singing the film's theme, Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather).
He played the same role in The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III, as well as The Godfather Trilogy: 1901-1980. Martino died on October 13, 2009 at his childhood home in Springfield, Pennsylvania, 6 days after his 82nd birthday.
John William Tuohy
Al Martino
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