“Limitless
undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on
across the universe.”
John Lennon
Music of the Sixties Forever: Ward Swingle, musician who made Bach swing, dies a...
Music of the Sixties Forever: Ward Swingle, musician who made Bach swing, dies a...: By Adam Bernstein January 20 Ward Swingle, who formed a singing group that reimagined Bach and Mozart with driving jazz rhythms and...
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Year One, 1955: lvis before the rhinestone jumpsuits and the drugs...
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Timothy Leary. Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they Deserve: If the doors of perception were cleansed,
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60's TV
Julia
Rusty Hamer played the son on the Danny Thomas Sow. His career later stalled and he committed suicide in 1990. Angela Cartwright, appeared in The Sound of Music and was Penny on TV's Lost in Space. she’s a photographer.
Donovan state prison inmate Sirhan Sirhan loses round in federal court
Kennedy assassin to remain in
San Diego
By Matt Potter, Jan. 8, 2015
One of San Diego's most
notorious inmates will remain behind the walls of the state's Donovan
Correctional Facility here following a federal judge's ruling that evidence of
a possible conspiracy does not absolve Sirhan Bishara Sirhan of guilt in the
June 1968 slaying of Robert F. Kennedy.
The convicted assassin
"has failed to meet his burden of establishing actual innocence,"
wrote judge Beverly Reid O'Connell in her January 5 order denying a bid by
Sirhan for a writ of habeas corpus.
“Likewise, Petitioner has
failed to demonstrate that he falls within the narrow exception warranting an
evidentiary hearing at this stage."
The latest in a long string of
legal efforts by Sirhan, now 70, was filed in May 2000. Despite multiple
rejections by federal courts, his attorneys have continued to appeal the case,
asserting in part that others were behind the killing of the Democratic presidential
candidate.
"Though Petitioner
advances a number of theories regarding the events of June 5, 1968,"
O'Connell's ruling says, "Petitioner does not dispute that he fired eight
rounds of gunfire in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel.
"After reviewing the
evidence, the Court agrees with the findings of Magistrate Judge Wistrich.
Petitioner does not show that it is more likely than not that no juror, acting
reasonably, would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."
Much of Sirhan's latest bid for
freedom has been based on testimony of eyewitness Nina Rhodes-Hughes, which was
not presented at Sirhan's 1969 trial.
"What has to come out is
that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes, a television
actress, told CNN in April 2012. "The truth has got to be told. No more
cover-ups."
O'Connell's ruling dismisses
that argument. "Ms. Rhodes-Hughes disputes the location and number of
gunfire shots; yet, importantly, she does not assert that Petitioner is
innocent.
"First, Ms.
Rhodes-Hughes’s recollection was recorded decades after the events took place,
which calls into question its reliability. Second, her declaration confirms
that Petitioner was a shooter that evening," the judge wrote.
"Ms. Rhodes-Hughes states
that she was in the kitchen, she saw Petitioner fire his gun, and she witnessed
men attempt to subdue him. Ms. Rhodes-Hughes does not state that she saw a
second shooter.
“She suggests that there was
more than one shooter because she counted twelve to fourteen shots rather than
eight, and she testifies that gunfire originated in both the left and right
sides of the room….
"Ms. Rhodes-Hughes
describes how she fainted, was trampled by individuals in the kitchen, awoke
with a wet dress, and had one shoe knocked off her foot.
“A jury reasonably may have
concluded that witnesses could not be expected to pinpoint the exact location
of those two parties in the midst of such chaos."
Questions regarding a second
shooter and how many shots were fired have long dogged the case, but
O'Connell's ruling rejected evidence presented by skeptics, including an audio
tape of the assassination that one expert witness has maintained proves there
were two shooters.
"At most, Petitioner
creates a sense of doubt about the number of gunshots fired in the kitchen on
June 5, 1968," said the judge, "but contemporaneous eyewitness
statements do not support a second shooter theory."
Arguments that Sirhan was
hypnotically programmed, perhaps by the Central Intelligence Agency or other
anti-Kennedy government or mob actors, were also rejected.
Sirhan’s next legal steps have
not been announced, but the latest ruling is unlikely to silence skeptics, who
have included one-time San Diego Tribune reporter Robert Blair Kaiser and
author of the book R.F.K. Must Die.
"I am more convinced than
ever that Sirhan Sirhan didn’t think this up all by himself, and that he killed
Kennedy in a trance," writes Kaiser in the epilogue to the 2008 edition of
the book.
"Yes, that he was
programmed to kill Senator Kennedy and programmed to forget he was programmed.
Of course Sirhan was lying much of the time. He was programmed to lie. That was
part of the cover-up.
"Of course, he was a
psychotic when he killed Kennedy. His programmers induced the psychosis. But it
only lasted for a time. Sirhan worked through that sickness (if you need to
call it that) as he gradually came to see himself as an Arab hero, giving
himself a sense of importance that he had never felt before."
Donna Douglas dies; actress played Elly May on 'Beverly Hillbillies'
Donna Douglas played Elly May Clampett and
Buddy Ebsen played her father, Jed, on "The Beverly Hillbillies."
"I loved doing Elly May," Douglas said. (CBS Photo Archive / CBS via
Getty Images)
By CLAIRE NOLAND
Donna Douglas, who played Elly
May Clampett on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” dies in Louisiana
Donna Douglas, a Louisiana
beauty queen turned actress who tapped into her poor Southern roots for the
role of Elly May Clampett in the long-running TV sitcom "The Beverly
Hillbillies," has died. Her age was variously reported as 81 or 82.
Douglas died of pancreatic
cancer Thursday in Baton Rouge, La., her niece Charlene Smith told the
Associated Press.
The show — about the down-home
Clampetts who strike it rich with an Ozarks oil well and move to California —
became an immediate hit when it began airing on CBS in 1962. It starred Buddy
Ebsen as patriarch Jed, Irene Ryan as Granny, Max Baer Jr. as Jethro and
Douglas as Elly May, a buxom tomboy character who had curly blond pigtails,
wore gingham and blue jeans and loved her "critters."
It was far from a stretch for
Douglas, who was born "way out in the country, outside Baton Rouge,
Louisiana," she told the Toronto Star in 1988. "I really am a country
girl.... My folks were real poor."
After winning beauty contests
in her home state, Douglas headed to New York City in the mid-1950s in search
of modeling jobs and wound up on television as a billboard girl on "The
Steve Allen Show." She took acting lessons and landed a few parts in other
TV series before writer and producer Paul Henning asked her if she thought
she'd be right for his new show, "The Beverly Hillbillies."
"I just looked at him and
grinned," Douglas told AP Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas in 1965.
"Could I handle Elly May? Why, it was just like my own life."
She had to retrieve the
Southern accent she had tried to lose, and she had no trouble with the dogs,
skunks, mountain lion, chimpanzee and other animals Elly May adored on the
series.
"I loved doing Elly
May," the actress would recall. "And, of course, 'The Beverly
Hillbillies' was a story about the American dream. No matter who tried to
slicker us or take advantage of us, we always came out on top. We were never
the losers. We set a good example."
Douglas' other TV appearances
included a memorable 1960 "Twilight Zone" episode, "Eye of the
Beholder," with a "before and after" storyline about a woman who
undergoes multiple operations to change her appearance. Actress Maxine Stuart
played the patient under wraps and Douglas had the "revealed" part.
She also landed a few movie
parts, highlighted by a starring role opposite Elvis Presley in the 1966
riverboat musical "Frankie and Johnny."
After "The Beverly
Hillbillies" ended in 1971, Douglas had a few other acting jobs and worked
in real estate. Eventually she moved back to Louisiana and in her later years
sang gospel music and gave inspirational speeches to church congregations and
Christian organizations.
In 2011 she settled a lawsuit
with Mattel Inc. and CBS Consumer Products after she argued they hadn't sought
her permission to create an Elly May Barbie doll using her image.
"The Beverly
Hillbillies" remained popular with TV viewers in reruns years after
original episodes aired, and Douglas traveled widely to meet fans of the show.
"The two questions I get
all the time are, can I really whistle, and do I really love animals,"
Douglas told USA Today in 1993. "The answer is yes to both."
Douglas, who was married and
divorced twice, is survived by a son, Danny P. Bourgeois, according to the
Associated Press.
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