Sylvia Robinson, pioneer of rap music dies

 

The Sugar Hill Gang were the first group to score a top 40 hit with a rap record

Sylvia Robinson, known to many as the mother of hip-hop, has died aged 75.

The former soul singer set up trail-blazing record label Sugar Hill Records in 1979 with her husband Joe.
She produced hip-hop's first commercially successful single, Rapper's Delight, and co-wrote Grandmaster and Melle Mel's anti-drugs anthem White Lines (Don't Do It).
Robinson died of congestive heart failure in New Jersey, said her publicist Greg Walker.

Early success
Born Sylvia Vanterpool in New York, she had a long career in the music industry before the arrival of rap.
She scored several novelty hits in her teens as Little Sylvia, but scored a huge hit with Love Is Strange in 1957, recorded with her guitar teacher McHouston "Mickey" Baker.
The pair's song, with its suggestive "how do you call your loverboy" refrain, is known to millions from its use in Dirty Dancing.

It was co-written by Bo Diddley, after Robinson secured permission from the bluesman to reversion one of his stage instrumentals into a jukebox smash.
The duo had a few more modest hits before they broke up, while Robinson achieved sporadic success in the 60s as a writer and producer.

Club revelation
As a solo artist, she had a hit in 1973 with the sexually suggestive Pillow Talk, an early prototype of disco music, and a direct influence on Donna Summer's heavy-breathing hit Love To Love You Baby.
But it was 1979 when she first experienced rap and latched on to its potential.
It was at a club called Harlem World in Manhattan, where a DJ called Lovebug Starski was talking and chanting over a mix of R&B records.
"I saw him talking to the kids and saw how they'd answer back," she told Vanity Fair magazine in 2005.

 

DJ Grandmaster Flash was an early signing to the Sugar Hill label

 

"He would say something every now and then, like 'Throw your hands in the air,' and they'd do it. If he'd said, 'Jump in the river,' they'd have done it.
"A spirit said to me, 'Put a concept like that on a record and it will be the biggest thing you ever had.'"
Robinson recruited three unknown MCs - Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee - and recorded Rapper's Delight, 15 minutes long and backed by a sample from Chic's Good Times.
A seven-minute edit was put together and the song crossed over to the mainstream, eventually charting at 36 in the Billboard Hot 100.
"When it came out, nothing was the same afterwards," hip-hop historian Harry Allen told US radio network NPR in 2000.
"By making it palpable, it made hip-hop as a commercial medium possible."
Although the Sugar Hill Gang never equalled the success of their debut, the label continued to score hits.
Among them were Apache, That's The Joint and The Message - the song widely credited with bringing social consciousness to hip-hop and the first rap song ever added to the US National Archive.
Sugar Hill Records was eventually closed in 1986, and its studios in Englewood, New Jersey burned down in 2002.
Sylvia Robinson is survived by her sons Joey, Leland and Rhondo and 10 grandchildren. Mr Robinson died of cancer in 2000.

David Z Goodman

David Z Goodman, who died on September 26 aged 81, wrote the screenplay for the controversial thriller Straw Dogs (1971), one of the great banned films of the 1970s, which revealed rural Britain to be just as brutal as the mean streets of downtown America.

Starring Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician living with his British wife (the then unknown Susan George) in a fictional village in Cornwall, Straw Dogs marked a watershed in the way sexual violence is depicted in the cinema. Because it featured two disturbing and graphic rape scenes, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) only agreed to its uncut release on video some 30 years later.

David Zelag Goodman (right) with Sam Peckinpah

 

Goodman's screenplay depicted a middle-class couple besieged by a sexually ravening gang of yokels. Though based on The Siege Of Trencher's Farm, a 1969 novel by the Scottish author Gordon Williams, the director, Sam Peckinpah, ordered Goodman to write in some controversial scenes that do not occur in the original.

"They've added a rape scene, an act of buggery and lots of violence," Williams complained.

"Mr Williams has a penchant for his own work," Peckinpah retorted. "I don't."

When Peckinpah, who urged more violence than Goodman cared for, was advised by the BBFC's newly-installed secretary, Stephen Murphy, to make some changes, he produced a final cut (approved for theatrical release) in which Susan George's character appeared to enjoy being violated. Fleet Street erupted. Thirteen reviewers wrote to The Times, condemning Straw Dogs for being "dubious in its intention [and] excessive in its effect".

The notice that most upset Goodman was written by the American Pauline Kael. In an otherwise positive review, Kael concluded that Peckinpah had made "the first American film that is a fascist work of art".
All this caused enormous controversy, bracketing the film alongside The Devils, Family Life and A Clockwork Orange (all also released in 1971) in terms of its sexually violent content. Uncut, Straw Dogs was not approved for release on video in Britain until 2002.
David Zelag Goodman was born on January 15 1930 in New York. His orthodox Jewish parents wanted him to become a rabbi, sending him to a yeshiva to be trained. But at 18 he became totally secular, took a degree in English at Queens' College, studied Drama at Yale University, and became a playwright.
In 1954, when he was 24, Goodman's anti-war drama High Named Today was produced off-Broadway, The New York Times reviewer hailing him an "original" and "talented" writer.
His film breakthrough came in England in 1959, at the Bray studios in Berkshire, with the script for the Hammer adventure film Stranglers of Bombay. During the 1960s he wrote American television episodes of The Untouchables, Combat! and Mr Broadway.
For Hollywood Goodman scripted the mystery thriller Man on a Swing (1974), starring Cliff Robertson, and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), a remake of the Raymond Chandler story starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe.
His first venture into science fiction, Logan's Run (1976), starring Michael York, was the result of Goodman being brought in after several other writers had failed to deliver; in the end he earned sole credit for the script.
As a "script doctor" Goodman demonstrated a knack of quickly identifying screenplay flaws, as when Sherry Lansing brought him in to work on the thriller Fatal Attraction. According to his friend, the film and television producer Zev Braun, Goodman said to Lansing of the Glenn Close character: "You can't let her off the hook. You should kill her. Let's drown her!"
Braun worked with Goodman on Freedom Road, a 1979 miniseries with Muhammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson. With Braun as co-writer, Goodman also scripted Cover, the story of the poisoning of the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, which is currently in pre-production.
Goodman's work has lasted: Monte Walsh was remade in 2003 as a television film; a remake of Straw Dogs was released a fortnight ago; and a remake of Logan's Run is in production at Warner Bros.
David Zelag Goodman is survived by Marjorie, his London-born wife of 61 years, and their daughter, Professor Kevis Goodman, a scholar of British Romanticism who teaches English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Implantable pacemaker inventor Wilson Greatbatch dies

 

The pacemaker was named one of society's 10 most important recent engineering contributions

 

The man who invented the first successful implantable cardiac pacemaker, Wilson Greatbatch, has died in Buffalo, New York, aged 92.

His pacemaker was first implanted in humans in 1960 and keeps the heart beating in a regular rhythm.
Now, hundreds of thousands of people receive pacemakers every year.
Greatbatch's cause of death is not known. But Larry Maciariello, his son-in-law, told reporters his health had been "intermittent".
He held more than 150 patents.
The first successful implant of a pacemaker took place at the Buffalo Veterans' Affairs Hospital. The 77-year-old patient lived for 18 months after the device was implanted.
In 2010, Greatbatch marked the 50th anniversary of the medical device.
His company Greatbatch Ltd - formerly Wilson Greatbatch Ltd - was founded in 1970 and manufactures batteries for the implantable pacemaker.
Inventing was Greatbatch's lifelong passion. In 1998 he was admitted to the National Inventors' Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
In 1983, the implantable pacemaker was named one of the 10 great engineering contributions to society in the part 50 years, by the National Society of Professional Engineers.
"Nine things out of 10 don't work," Greatbatch told the Associated Press in 1997. "The 10th one will pay for the other nine."
In his later years, Greatbatch worked on possible cures for Aids.
He was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize for lifetime achievement in 1996, aged 76.
He also challenged the next generation of inventors to develop nuclear fusion using a type of helium found on the moon.
Fossil fuels, Greatbatch believed, will be exhausted by 2050.
Greatbatch studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and the University of Buffalo, where he then taught engineering between 1952 and 1957.
Greatbatch served in the Navy as a rear gunner and dive bomber during World War II. He also taught in the Navy's radar school.
Greatbatch was married to his wife, Eleanor for more than 60 years. They had five children together.

Dad's Army co-writer David Croft dies at the age of 89

Television writer David Croft dies aged 89

David Croft, co-writer and producer of classic comedies including 'Allo 'Allo and Hi-de-Hi has died at the age of 89, his family has announced.

He died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Portugal. His family called him a "truly great man" in a statement.
Croft's military sitcoms It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Dad's Army, written with Jimmy Perry, were hits in the 1970s.
He is also credited with Are You Being Served and its 1990s spin-off Grace and Favour.
Actor Melvyn Hayes, one of the stars of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, called Croft a "genius" and said it was "a privilege to work with" him.
"There were no swear words in his shows. His programmes were the kind of thing you could sit in front of the TV and watch with your grandmother and grandchildren," he said.
Welsh actress Ruth Madoc, who played Gladys Pugh in Hi-de-Hi, also paid tribute to the writer.

He just knew what tickled people, what made people smile”

Ian Lavender, Private Pike in Dad's Army

 

"He'd let you look in the camera lens and he'd teach you about that shot.
"He was a very, very clever man and not only did he do television but he slipped so easily into producing, writing and directing theatre, too."
Jon Plowman, former head of comedy at the corporation, said Croft "invented a whole genre of comedy that was all his own".
"The world is a less funny place for his going," he added.
Croft, who was awarded an OBE in 1978 for services to television, worked alongside Jeremy Lloyd on both the department store sitcom and wartime farce 'Allo 'Allo, which was set in Nazi-occupied France.
Comedians and writers have taken to Twitter to post tributes. David Walliams wrote: "Such sad news," while Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell added: "His best monument is that his shows are still repeated."
Fruitful partnership
All of Croft's hits were produced for the BBC, the last being Oh, Doctor Beeching in 1993 - after which he retired from the corporation.
A decade later, Croft was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards.
Croft was born as David John Sharland to stage actress Annie Croft and Reginald Sharland, a successful Hollywood radio actor.
He enlisted in the army during World War II, which was to provide some of his later comic inspiration for Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum.

 

Wartime sitcom Dad's Army was one of Croft's most enduring creations

Dad's Army was the first of his series to come to TV screens, in 1968, and marked the start of his fruitful and long-lived comic partnership with Jimmy Perry.
The BBC initially had misgivings about the concept - which followed the fortunes of a Home Guard platoon, the last line of defence should the Germans have invaded Britain during World War II.
But the affection with which the characters were treated soon endeared the show to audiences and corporate bosses alike.
The series went on to gain the creative partnership a trio of awards from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain in 1969-71.
More than 40 years after it was first screened, the sitcom is still being shown.
Ian Lavender, who played the hapless Private Pike in the series said Croft was "a great comic writer".
"He just knew what tickled people, what made people smile," he said.
"I have never come across anyone in the Home Guard who said Dad's Army was a disgrace.
"They say they all had a Mainwaring in their platoon. We were laughing with them, not at them."
Among Croft's other achievements, he wrote scripts for numerous well-loved pantomimes and produced television shows in Hollywood and Australia.
The statement posted on his official website by his family added: "He was a truly great man, who will be missed by all who had the great fortune of knowing and loving him."
It added that he would have been "proud that you had all been watching", a nod to the tagline that appeared at the end of Croft's TV sitcoms.

Wade Mainer

Mainer’s idiosyncratic technique created a softer sound than the three-fingered style formerly associated with bluegrass, and represented a significant change from the heavier drop-thumb style known as “clawhammer”. His style of playing and his skill at translating traditional songs into sounds akin to modern country influenced better-known musicians such as Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt. As a result, his versions of songs such as Maple on the Hill and Take Me in the Lifeboat later became bluegrass standards.

Wade Mainer

 

Mainer reached the summit of his fame in the early 1940s, but never fully adapted to his life as a celebrity. In 1941 the American folklorist Alan Lomax arranged for Mainer to entertain Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at “An Evening of American Folklore” at the White House. Mainer turned up in bib overalls with a red bandanna in his pocket and, at supper after the show, spilt ice cream on the First Lady’s dress: “I started to wipe it off and she said 'Oh, don’t bother.’” The next thing Mainer knew, the president’s wife had made a swift exit. “She said, 'Excuse me,’ then went off and came back with a fresh dress,” he recalled.

The following year Mainer sang with Woody Guthrie in the folk musical Chisholm Trail on CBS radio – an engagement that Mainer had almost missed out on due to his moral rectitude. “They gave me a song to sing called Dodge City Jail that had a lot of rough talk,” Mainer recalled. “I said, 'No, I don’t want to do that,’ and Woody stepped in and said, 'If you play the banjo, I’ll sing it.’”

Some attributed Mainer’s comparatively low musical profile to the fact that he failed to make it to the Grand Ole Opry at this early stage in his career. The show’s director invited Mainer to come and play in 1941, but the musician was under contract to a radio station in Knoxville at the time, and was prevented from going to Nashville by his boss.

By the late 1940s Mainer’s brand of old-time music was being overshadowed by modern country and, in 1953, he gave up. Resigned to the idea that he would never make it as a musician, he moved to Michigan and worked in obscurity at a General Motors plant.

Wade Mainer was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, on April 21 1907 and grew up in a poor farming community. He taught himself to play the banjo on an instrument made from a groundhog’s hide and, while working as a labourer, would perform at corn-shuckings and bean-stringings.
In the mid-1920s Mainer joined his older brother Joseph (“JE”), who worked at a cotton mill in Concord and played the fiddle. They formed a band called The Mountaineers and by 1934 had landed a slot on the local radio station.
By the mid-1930s the Mainers were one of the most popular country acts in the south-eastern United States. “People would come to our shows after riding two hours on horses,” Mainer said. “Some would walk to the shows carrying lanterns so they could see their way back home.” By 1937 Wade had formed his own group, The Sons of the Mountaineers, with which he made more than 100 recordings for RCA’s Bluebird subsidiary.
In 1937 he married Julia Brown, who performed as “Hillbilly Lily” on a local radio station and with whom he had five children.
During the folk revival of the 1960s a generation of younger fans rediscovered Mainer and, with his wife on guitar, he became a regular performer at bluegrass festivals. In 2002, 60 years after he had first been refused permission to perform there, he finally appeared at the Grand Ole Opry.
“Don’t complain and tell people your problems,” Mainer liked to say, “’cause half the people don’t want to hear them and the other half are glad you got ’em.”
He is survived by his wife and by three sons and a daughter. Another son predeceased him.

Kenya's Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai dies aged 71

 

Wangari Maathai was an inspiration for many women across Africa

Kenya's Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai has died in Nairobi while undergoing cancer treatment. She was 71.

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for promoting conservation, women's rights and transparent government - the first African woman to get the award.
She was elected as an MP in 2002 and served as a minister in the Kenyan government for a time.
Ms Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which has planted 20-30 million trees in Africa.

'Role model and heroine' "It is with great sadness that the family of Professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25 September, 2011, at the Nairobi Hospital, after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer," 
"Her loved ones were with her at the time.
"Professor Maathai's departure is untimely and a very great loss to all who knew her - as a mother, relative, co-worker, colleague, role model, and heroine; or who admired her determination to make the world a more peaceful, healthier, and better place."

The organisation did not provide further details.
Ms Maathai, who was a professor of veterinary anatomy, rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s-90s.
Under the former government of President Daniel Arap Moi, she was arrested several times, and vilified.
In 2008, Ms Maathai was tear-gassed during a protest against the Kenyan president's plan to increase the number of ministers in the cabinet.
In her speech accepting the Nobel prize, Ms Maathai said she hoped her own success would spur other women on to a more active role in the community.
"I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership," she said.

Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker dies aged 71

 

Robert Whitaker exhibited his work all over the world

Photographer Robert Whitaker, best known for this work with The Beatles during the 1960s, has died aged 71.

Whitaker took many pictures of the Fab Four, including a cover for the album Yesterday and Today featuring meat and dismembered dolls.
But the controversial image was pasted over with a much less graphic shot of the band for the album's US release.
Whitaker captured other acts including Cream and Mick Jagger and covered the war in Cambodia and Vietnam.
The British photographer also worked during the conflict between Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1970s.
Whitaker first photographed the Beatles on their visit to Australia in 1964 where he had been working for the Melbourne Jewish News.
'Hard work'
Their manager Brian Epstein gave him the job of staff photographer for his company, leading him to work with other artists including Cilla Black.
He chronicled The Beatles' concerts at New York's Shea Stadium and on their final world tour in 1966.
The photographer was also on hand to capture them in more informal poses during this period.
Whitaker said that it had been "hard work" to set up the Yesterday and Today "butcher" pose, in which the band members wore white coats.
"I had to go to the local butcher and get pork. I had to go to a doll factory and find the dolls. I had to go to an eye factory and find the eyes. False teeth.
"There's a lot in that photograph," he said.
The image was published on a number of occasions in the music press before being withdrawn on grounds of taste.
Towards the twilight of his career, Whitaker was engaged in creating a digital archive of his body of work.

Brian Kelley

Brian Kelley, who has died aged 68, was a former American spy accused, and later exonerated, of being a double agent working for the Russians from inside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Brian Kelley

For two years, in 1999-2000, Kelley was hounded by the FBI in the mistaken belief that he was the “mole” for whom they were searching inside US intelligence. Although innocent, the CIA officer was kept away from his desk for nearly two years and confronted with “facts” that might have been borrowed from a spy novel: that he visited strip clubs, was paid in diamonds, took trips to Panama, and had access to pertinent information at certain crucial times.

Code-named Grey Deceiver, Kelley was, the FBI said, the most damaging mole ever in American intelligence. Because of his “treachery”, American agents abroad had been executed and the Russians handed highly sensitive information about US military capability.

In fact, the double agent was not working at the CIA at all, but within the FBI itself: Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent code-named Grey Day, had spied for Russia for 22 years in what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in US history”.

With Aldrich Ames, a counter-intelligence officer working for the CIA and also a Soviet spy, Hanssen had betrayed three Russians secretly spying for the FBI — including a Soviet general code-named Top Hat — who were executed by Moscow. When he was working for the KGB, Hanssen even directed a study of potential traitors in the FBI when — as he alone knew — he himself was the mole.

Eventually, in an unprecedented operation, the FBI paid a defector $7 million to pull a file from KGB headquarters in Moscow. The file contained an audiotape of the mole talking to his Russian handler, which agents expected to contain Kelley’s voice. Instead, the aghast investigators heard the voice of one of their own men: Hanssen. It was Hanssen, not Kelley, who had been paid in diamonds for his spying, Hanssen who had frequented a strip club, and he who had been in the right places at the right time.

Brian Joseph Kelley was born on January 8 1943 at Waterbury, Connecticut, and graduated from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont with a degree in Political Science. He joined the US Air Force in 1964, and spent 20 years with the Office of Special Investigations on counter-intelligence work. In 1984 he moved to the CIA.
Five years later he worked out a method used by Moscow to communicate clandestinely with deep-cover agents called “illegals”. The discovery led to the unmasking of the State Department diplomat Felix Bloch, a suspected spy who was photographed meeting a KGB “illegal” in Vienna and exchanging a briefcase believed to contain secrets.
But Bloch got away, leading the FBI to suspect that Kelley had tipped off the very man he was investigating. They tapped his phone and tried to trap him into confessing.
When agents secretly searched Kelley’s home, they found a map of a park marked, they said, with places at which he would leave secret documents for the KGB.
They even spotted a KGB officer in the park and were convinced that the spy was picking up documents left there by Kelley; only later did they realise that the park was also yards from Hanssen’s house in the same neighbourhood. Kelley had used the map to plot his jogging routes.
The false accusations against Kelley and his family continued for a further two years. His two sisters were confronted and interrogated by the FBI, as were his three grown-up children, his friends and his colleagues. His daughter, who was also working at the CIA, was taken into an interview room and told that her father was a spy. Agents even threatened to go to the nursing home where Kelley’s ailing mother was living and tell her that her only son was a traitor.
After finally being exonerated, Kelley worked in the Office of the National Counter-intelligence Executive; he retired from the CIA in 2006. While working for the government he earned numerous intelligence awards, and in retirement became a teacher.
According to a CIA spokesman, Preston Golson, Kelley had kept the faith with his country and his colleagues. The Pentagon press secretary, George Little, a former CIA spokesman, called him “a national treasure”. Explaining his story in an interview in 2006, Kelley said: “I just want to make sure that what happened to me never happens again to anyone.”
Brian Kelley, who died of an apparent heart attack on September 19, is survived by his wife, Patricia, and by their two sons and one daughter.

Former Newmarket trainer Michael Jarvis dies

 

Philip Robinson rides Rakti in 2005 

 

Former Newmarket trainer Michael Jarvis has died, aged 73.

Jarvis guided Carroll House to victory in the 1989 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and landed the 2005 Epsom Oaks with Eswarah.
He retired in February after having heart surgery in 2009. He was also treated for prostate cancer.
Royal Ascot winner Rakti, who also won the Champion Stakes and Lockinge Stakes, was among his horses and he trained numerous Group One winners.
Former jockey Mick Kinane said: "It's very sad news. He was a lovely man to ride for and a lovely man to know.

Cornelius Lysaght,
  Horse racing correspondent

The word 'gentleman' is badly over-used on these occasions, though in talking about Michael Jarvis, I can't think of anyone who could possibly come up with a better one. But his invariably quiet, measured tones and unswerving politeness disguised a steely edge that made the team from Kremlin House Stables in Newmarket's Fordham Road feared by all rivals. So, racing finds itself mourning a second racehorse trainer this week after the death of Ginger McCain. Two more different people doing the same job it is hard to imagine, but there is no difference in the intensity of the pain felt at their loss. Two legends of the sport, one who went about his highly effective business rather more flamboyantly than the other went about his, are gone. A sad week.

"He was a thorough gentleman. It's so unfortunate that he didn't get to enjoy his retirement and such is life.
"Carroll House got me off to a great start. I'd have to say he got me on to the international stage in winning an Irish Champion Stakes and then going on to win an Arc.
"He was my big breakthrough horse so he'll always have a high place in my book."
Roger Varian, who took over the Kremlin House Stables after Jarvis's retirement said: "It's a terribly sad day. Michael passed away this afternoon having lost his battle against cancer.
"His achievements and racing exploits go without saying but, first and foremost, he was a wonderful man - a true gentleman and I imagine a great husband, a great father and a good friend to many.
"That was Michael Jarvis.
"He happened to be a great racehorse trainer as well but, first and foremost, he was just a wonderful man.
"He won many big races but probably put up the bravest fight of his life against cancer. He battled hard and he saw it out as long as he possibly could."
Philip Robinson enjoyed many major successes as Jarvis' stable jockey, including five Group One wins with Rakti.
He told At The Races: "It's really heartbreaking. I was trying to get to see him at the weekend but I was informed by his wife Gay that he was in a very bad way and not able to talk. It's very sad.

 

Jarvis retired in February 

  "All you can say is that he was a very, very nice man. I've never known anybody say a bad word about him. That for me sums it up.
"He was a gentleman and he wasn't just a normal trainer - he was an exceptional trainer, who was able to get the best out of horses.
"It's devastating news.
"We had a run of a few exceptional years. We won the French Derby with Holding Court, the Italian Derby with Morshdi and then Rakti came along. We had a purple run and it was lovely to be there with him.
"At the time we enjoyed it and it was a privilege to be there with him."

US singer Dolores Hope dies at 102

 

Dolores Hope released her first album aged 83

US singer Dolores Hope, who was married to comedian Bob Hope for 69 years, has died at the age of 102.

Family spokesman Harlan Boll said she died of natural causes at her home near Los Angeles on Monday.
Dolores Hope, who met her husband while singing in a nightclub in 1933, accompanied him on trips to entertain US troops from the 1940s onwards.
"Together, they brought countless hours of laughter and cheer to Americans everywhere," said friend Nancy Reagan.
Hope gave up her singing career to raise the couple's four adopted children before joining her husband on his troop tours.
In 1966, her rendition of Silent Night in front of thousands of GIs brought a standing ovation.
In 1990, she was the only female entertainer to perform in Saudi Arabia when she sang for troops taking part in Operation Desert Storm.

 

Hope celebrated her 100th birthday in 2009

 

Marie Osmond, the Pointer Sisters and Ann Jillian did not perform, in order to avoid offending Saudi sensibilities.
But Hope was given the go-ahead to perform and sang White Christmas.
She released her first album, Dolores Hope: Now and Then, when she was 83.
Her husband died at the age of 100 in 2003.
"Both the entertainment world and the church have lost a woman of profound faith, gifted musical talent and dedication," said Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H Gomez.
"The death of Dolores Hope leaves a huge void in southern California," he added.

Red Rum trainer Ginger McCain dies aged 80

When the colourful racehorse trainer Ginger McCain wanted to mark his fourth Grand National victory, some 27 years after the last, there was only one place to do it.
Following Amberleigh House's win in 2004, he quietly made his way to the Aintree grave of his beloved triple National winner Red Rum, buried alongside the winning post.
He joked that the horse, who had died nine years earlier, spoke to him about his latest triumph.
"[Red Rum] said 'let him win it twice more and he might be nearly as good as me'," said McCain.
"It's just lovely to know he's buried where he is on the line and every time a horse goes across to win you can hear him saying 'well done, but you're not as good as me'. He was like that."
McCain, who has died aged 80 after suffering from cancer, was a character who lit up Aintree with his unaffected love for the four-and-a-half mile race that captures the world's attention.
As the years progressed, his face became as red as the horse's name with which he was so inextricably associated.

I'm no legend, I was associated with a horse who was a legend Ginger McCain

He was politically incorrect, eccentric yet somehow endearing. Speaking to Ginger was like talking to a slightly barmy yet commanding uncle. He had an uncanny knack of putting a smile on your face.
In 2005, McCain sparked a sexism row when he claimed a woman jockey could never win the Grand National, but he downplayed the controversy a year later.
"People are very nice to an old dog like me, which is lovely," said McCain. "There was that episode last year - the silly, silly stuff with Carrie Ford, and I said if she won the Grand National, I would bare my bottom.
"When we went in, the gateman shouted: 'Hey, Ginger, if that woman wins the National, they'll be queuing up all the way to Anfield to kick your backside.' That's typical of what I get, and it makes for a very, very good day."
McCain was saved a kicking as Ford finished fifth on Forest Gunner.
And despite his public pronouncements, he was on pretty good terms with leading women in the sport, such as National-winning trainer Jenny Pitman and BBC presenter Clare Balding.
McCain met Red Rum's owner, the wonderfully-named Noel Le Mare, when he drove a taxi.
"I'd pick him up right on the dot of 12 o'clock, and drive him home, and he'd invite me in for a drink," he recalled.
"Well, I was brought up in a family in which you didn't drink whisky, or even sherry, unless someone had died or got married and I'd have three enormous scotches and talk horses. It went on from there.
"The guv'nor had three ambitions in life: to marry a beautiful woman, make a million and, at 86, he fulfilled his final ambition to win the Grand National, and he did it three times with 'Red', and was second twice, which was magic."
He persuaded the owner to part with £6,000 for the horse, who was discovered to be lame as a novice chaser so McCain sent him to the seaside at Southport.

McCain's beloved Red Rum on the beach at Southport

"He came back with us sound as a bell," said McCain.
"Being at Southport, with the beach and the sea, was very important to him, and I don't think we quite appreciated it at the time.
"We had one of the best all-weather gallops in the country, and the best swimming pool, and the water was great for his legs. "
Red Rum became a hero to racegoers and once-a-year punters, but he began his National career as villain when he overhauled the gallant, exhausted top-weight Crisp in the final strides of the 1973 race.
"It was very much like the tortoise and the hare. The old horse stuck his head down and ran to the line. The tortoise won," said McCain.
A year later, Rummy emerged from his stables behind a second-hand car showroom to win again. He was runner-up twice before a historic third victory in 1977.
"Red Rum is given a famous reception. You've never heard the like of it at Liverpool," boomed BBC commentator Peter O'Sullevan, who like the horse was born in Ireland.
The horse, like his trainer, thrived on the heady atmosphere of Grand National day.
"He loved Aintree, and revelled in the challenge, and was a complete professional, a great character, and, it may seem silly to say it, but he was a horse with a great charisma, like I have never seen in any other horse," said McCain.
Red Rum may not have been the classiest racehorse.
He never won Cheltenham Gold Cups, for example, like Best Mate and Kauto Star, and was third behind Arkle and Desert Orchid in a 2004 Racing Post poll to find their readers' all-time favourite racehorse.
But he made the world's most famous race, a marathon over 30 fences including daunting obstacles such as Becher's Brook and The Chair, his own.
"You know, one of your daft reporter fellows said it must have been like losing the wife when he died," said McCain.
"Losing the wife? There are 25 million women in this country - what a daft thing to say - but there was, and always will be, only one Red Rum. "
They will never make another Red Rum, and they will never make another Ginger McCain. Two racing greats who were made for each other.
Ginger, like his son whom he handed the training reins to in 2006, was also christened Donald but widely known by his nickname.
Born in Southport, Lancashire, he started out as a used car salesman but became synonymous with the horse nicknamed 'Rummy'.
"I'm no legend, I was associated with a horse who was a legend," he would say.
In 1977, Red Rum was brought into the TV studio where the BBC Sports Review of the Year show was staged.

 

 Sports Personality Classics - Red Rum 1977

 "He was listening to the applause in the back and thought it was for him all the time," said McCain.After his retirement the following year, the bay gelding who was placed in 52 of his 100 races embarked on a second career as a travelling celebrity."He switched on Blackpool Lights, he opened hypermarkets, pubs, and cricket clubs," his trainer said at the time."He really enjoys it. He likes seeing people and doing these unusual things."When Aintree staged a special Red Rum meeting to mark his 30th birthday in 1995, the course attracted 10 times the usual crowd.

It was a fitting tribute as his successes in the 1970s came at a time when the race was struggling for sponsorship.
"People say he saved the Grand National and when I think about it and analyse it, I think they are right," said McCain.
Any trainer's relationship with a horse they see and care for every day can be an emotional bond. As McCain watched Red Rum die, he had tears in his eyes.
"He was a very, very big part of our lives for 23 years," he recalled.
"He had a charisma all of his own. He loved people and people loved him. The old lad was magic," said McCain.
An epitaph fit for Ginger.

---

Red Rum completes historic hat-trick

Desmond FitzGerald

Desmond FitzGerald, the 29th and last Knight of Glin who died on September 14 aged 74, was a connoisseur of the decorative arts who worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum and the fine art auctioneers Christie’s and, as a campaigning president of the Irish Georgian Society, helped to save many architectural treasures over the Irish Sea from dereliction or insensitive development.

The greater part of his energies, however, he devoted to restoring and preserving his family’s ancestral seat of Glin Castle, on the Shannon estuary in Co Limerick.

The Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald and his wife Madam Olda FitzGerald in the grounds of Glin Castle 

 

The Knight of Glin, also called the Black Knight, is one of three ancient Irish hereditary titles dating from the 13th and 14th centuries and recognised by Irish Republican governments. (FitzGerald’s kinsman, Adrian FitzGerald, the 24th Knight of Kerry, is known as the Green Knight; Maurice FitzGibbon, who died in 1611, was the 12th and last White Knight.)

The Black Knights descend from a younger or illegitimate son of John FitzGerald, 1st Baron Desmond, grandson of Maurice FitzGerald, a companion-in-arms of Strongbow, the 12th century Norman conqueror of Ireland. Glin, an estate which once encompassed more than 30,000 acres, was granted to this branch of the FitzGerald family in the early 14th century by their overlord at the time, the FitzGerald Earl of Desmond.

Unlike their ill-fated overlords, the Knights of Glin survived both the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland and the Cromwellian and Jacobite wars, even though they were invariably on the losing side. In 1567 the then Knight of Glin, Thomas FitzGerald, was hanged, drawn and quartered and had much of his estate confiscated for his role in the Desmond Rebellion against Elizabeth I. Legend has it that his mother seized his severed head and drank his blood before gathering his body parts for burial. In the Jacobite wars of the 17th century another Knight was told that if he did not surrender, then his six-year-old son (who had been kidnapped and tied to a cannon) would be blown to bits. He replied that as he was virile and his wife was strong, it would be easy to produce another son.

Other colourful ancestors include “The Cracked Knight”, who is said to have ridden his horse up the back stairs; “The Big Knight”, who took solace in the whiskey bottle; and “The Knight of the Women”, who was reputed to have fathered at least 15 illegitimate children, but was forgiven because he was a Gaelic scholar (and native speaker) revered by the local people.

But Desmond FitzGerald would refer to the “general improvidence” of his ancestors. For generations the Knights of Glin kept debt collectors at bay by setting a mob on to them, although the 21st Knight, Richard, spent time in a Dublin prison for unpaid monies. By the time the 24th Knight, Colonel John Bateman FitzGerald, inherited the castle in 1781, the debts could no longer be avoided. The original medieval castle of Glin was a ruin and the Knights had moved into a new “castle” — in reality a long thatched house overlooking the River Shannon. Expensive carriages, 5,000 acres of land and many treasured family heirlooms had to be sold to make ends meet.
The Colonel’s marriage to Margaretta Maria Gwyn, a wealthy Englishwoman, led to a temporary respite in the family’s inexorably declining fortunes. He added a large Georgian house to the castle in 1795, where she oversaw the installation of neo-classical plasterwork ceilings and a dramatic double flying staircase. But they never got around to finishing the third floor and, when the Colonel died in 1803, it was found he had no money left. An auction was held of the entire contents of the house — the only things not sold were the family portraits and the library shelving. In the 1820s “The Knight of the Women” added battlements and false arrow loops, but the third floor remained unfinished — a maze of exposed rafters and bat colonies.
Yet the family was tenacious in hanging on to what remained of its patrimony. In 1923 Desmond’s grandfather, the 27th Knight, saved the castle from being raided by a Sinn Fein mob. Confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, he refused to leave the castle, roaring: “You’ll have to burn it with me inside, boys.” On hearing this, the rebels were said to have dispersed to a village hostelry while the Knight used the petrol they had left behind to run the farm machinery.
Desmond FitzGerald inherited the castle and title aged 12, on the death of his father from tuberculosis in 1949. By this time, all that remained of the estate was 500 acres of park and grazing land. The castle was dilapidated and there was very little good furniture.
Things began to look up after his mother, Veronica, married again in 1954. Her second husband was the Canadian millionaire, Ray Milner. Together they set about restoring Glin Castle after centuries of neglect and, after moving back to Glin from London in 1975, Desmond and his wife Olda threw their own energies into the project.
They spent decades combing auction rooms in an attempt to buy back the pictures, drawings and china that had been sold in leaner times, steadily restoring the fabric of the building and “filling in the incomplete pretensions of the 18th and 19th century” as Desmond put it, including completing the top floor. A plaque in the garden bears the legend 1785-2002 — a construction span of 217 years.
They started a bed and breakfast business and in 2002 turned the castle into a small hotel which did well for a number of years, and where the 29th Knight, a youthful and handsome figure into his 70s, continued to cut a dash in his signature tweed jacket and black polo neck sweater. But the international credit crunch and the Irish economic nosedive hit them hard and finances became increasingly strained.
In 2009 hundreds of paintings and objets d’art from Glin Castle went under the hammer at Christie’s, raising two million euros: “Glin has been the ancestral property of my family for over 700 years,” FitzGerald explained. “It is my greatest hope that it will continue to remain in the family and be enjoyed and cherished long into the future.”
Desmond John Villiers FitzGerald was born on July 13 1937, the youngest of three children and an only son. His father, the 28th Knight of Glin, was a keen fisherman and driver of vintage sports cars, for which he was known locally as “the Nippy Knight”. His English mother, Veronica Villiers, was a considerable beauty and a cousin of Winston Churchill.
His parents’ marriage was tempestuous, but the children did not see them much. Desmond, along with his sisters, Rachel and Fiola, lived in four dilapidated rooms on the unfinished third floor of castle, while their parents occupied the main floor. He described his childhood as lonely.
During the Second World War (in which the Republic of Ireland was neutral), his father tried to join the Irish Guards but failed the medical. Desmond recalled an occasion when, holidaying in County Kerry, they discovered that a German was staying at the same hotel: “My mother, who was a very forthright woman, informed the manager that she would not have dinner in the company of a German, so she ordered her dinner in her bedroom. All the other people in the hotel followed her example, which caused quite a ripple. She had a plan that if they came up the river Shannon, she would ask all the officers to dinner, and when they sat down, they would be given poisoned soup.”
Desmond was sent to England from the age of eight and claimed to have gone to “more schools than you’ve had hot dinners”. But he settled down at Stowe, an “architectural paradise” which inspired him to study Architecture and Art History at university.
He first went to the University of British Columbia, where his mother lived part-time after her second marriage. He then took a Master’s degree at Harvard. In 1965 he moved to London, where he got a job at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a curator in the furniture department.
FitzGerald had collected antiques from his early teens and in London he spent much of his spare time prowling around antique shops, finding it possible to buy Irish antiques quite cheaply, as few people knew anything about Irish furniture, and Irish collectors concentrated on silver and glass.
It was around this time he met his first wife, Loulou de la Falaise, who would become famous as the muse of Yves St Laurent, but the marriage lasted less than a year. They remained friends, however, and in 1970 he married Olda Willes, a great friend of Loulou’s.
After returning to Ireland in 1975 FitzGerald was appointed Christie’s Irish representative and became involved in the Irish Georgian Society, founded in 1958 by Desmond Guinness. “While a certain animosity still exists towards these homes given that they were arguably the product of an enslaved society,” he argued, “people should remember that the craftsmen who fashioned them came from the Irish community as a whole.” He served as the society’s president from 1991.
FitzGerald wrote and lectured extensively on Irish art, architecture and decorative arts. A governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, he published a family history, The Knights Of Glin in 2009. Other books he published included Irish Furniture (2007) and The Irish Country House (2010, both co-written with James Peill). He was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and served on the boards of the Irish Landmark Trust and the Castletown Foundation.
Desmond and Olda FitzGerald had three daughters; the eldest, Catherine, is married to the actor Dominic West and was previously married to the Earl of Durham.
The Knight was philosophical about having no son to inherit the Glin title and estate: “I can’t really feel too sad about it. A male heir would have inherited an impossible burden”. None the less Olda, Catherine, Honor and Nesta FitzGerald intend to continue the restoration of Glin Castle to which he contributed so much.

Michael Hart

Michael Hart typed in hundreds of the texts himself, starting with the US Declaration of Independence. 

Michael Hart, who has died of a heart attack aged 64, referred to himself as the "grandfather of ebooks", but his real aim was to change the world. In 1971, he realised that electronic texts could be copied and distributed at no cost, and he founded Project Gutenberg to make out-of-copyright books freely and universally available. His mission was to "help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy".
Since this was in the pre-internet days of the early Arpanet, there were only a couple of dozen computers on the network, but as Hart said, echoing Confucius: "Even the greatest journeys start with but a single step." At the end of Hart's journey, Project Gutenberg's aim was to distribute a billion free ebooks: 10m books in 100 languages.
The project started by accident, after a Fourth of July fireworks display. A student at the University of Illinois, Hart had been given some free time on the mainframe computer. "We were just coming up on the American bicentennial and they put faux-parchment historical documents in with the groceries," he said in 2002. "So, as I fumbled through my backpack for something to eat, I found the US Declaration of Independence and had a lightbulb moment. I thought for a while to see if I could figure out anything I could do with the computer that would be more important than typing in the Declaration of Independence, something that would still be there 100 years later, but couldn't come up with anything, and so Project Gutenberg was born."
Hart thus became the internet's first information provider, before the internet had been invented. As he said later: "Project Gutenberg was just one of those great combinations of luck and being the right person in the right place at the right time." In the beginning, he typed every word himself, originally on a Teletype terminal on to punched paper tape. After the Declaration of Independence, John F Kennedy's inaugural address, Lincoln's Gettysburg address and other civic documents, he started on the King James Bible. It finally appeared online in 1989. The first novel was Moby-Dick.
For 17 years, "it was just me tilting at windmills," said Hart. He typed in 313 books before the next breakthrough: he linked up with the University of Illinois's new PC user group. With help from a colleague, Mark Zinzow, Hart set up a mailing list to publicise his project, and started asking for volunteers to contribute. By the end of the year, the e-library had grown to about 1,600 titles. It was an early example of "crowdsourcing" and paralleled the growth of personal computing and the open-source programming movement.
As volunteers took over the rapidly growing project, Hart set up the non-profit Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation in 2000. With books increasingly being scanned rather than retyped, Distributed Proofreaders was set up, providing volunteers to check them. These scans now make up a large proportion of the project's 36,000 texts.
In an email interview with the journalist Richard Poynder in 2006, Hart stated: "The biggest problem is the time it takes to do the necessary copyright research before making an e-text. The next biggest is dealing with the constant threat of lawsuits, which come in every year."
In particular, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998), which extended US copyright terms by 20 years, had a devastating effect, shrinking the public domain by, in Hart's view, a million books. He told Poynder: "We spent nearly the entire 1980s working on an edition of Shakespeare that was expected to go into the public domain, but failed to do so when the copyright laws were changed."
Hart was born in Tacoma, near Seattle, in Washington state. His father was an accountant, and his mother – a former wartime codebreaker – was a business manager at a department store. Both decided to retrain as teachers. In 1958, the family moved to Urbana, Illinois, where his father taught Shakespeare studies and his mother taught mathematics at the University of Illinois. After various adventures and a stint in the army, where he served in Korea, Hart enrolled at the university's Urbana-Champaign campus in 1971. He graduated in two years. Then Project Gutenberg took over his life.
He supported himself by doing odd jobs, and was extremely frugal. He told Poynder: "It's hard for me to spend $10 on dinner; the average is well under $5. I have no cable [TV] or cell phone. I ride a bicycle most of the time. I also wear garage sale clothes; in fact I live just about totally on garage sales." An unpaid appointment as adjunct professor at Illinois Benedictine College helped him to solicit donations for his project. "I know that sounds odd to most people, but I just never bought into the money system all that much. I never spent it when I got it. It's all a matter of perspective; most people spend the vast majority of their money on things I just don't care about."
Earlier this year, on 16 July, Hart wrote to supporters such as the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle to say he was "working to create a graceful exit" from the project "without any of the repercussions that could take place when I shuffle off this mortal coil". He was feeling his age, and planned to move to Hawaii.
Hart is survived by his mother, Alice, and his brother, Bennett.

• Michael Stern Hart, digital archivist, born 8 March 1947; died 6 September 2011

Father Jesús Silva

Father Jesús Silva, who died on September 8 aged 78, was a Spanish priest who founded a “city republic” for underprivileged children and a celebrated international boys’ circus, El Circo de Los Muchachos.

Father Jesus Silva 

Silva established La Ciudad de los Muchachos (the City of Boys) at Benposta, near Orense in Galicia, in 1956. The inhabitants were all boys from deprived backgrounds, aged from about four to 20.

The children ran the “republic” themselves, electing a mayor from among their number, while others took on various civic duties; the city had its own police force, public health officials, financial advisers and guardians of public morals. Racial and social distinctions were not recognised; attendance at Mass was not obligatory.

Concrete blocks were constructed to house dormitories, dining halls and classrooms. There was a bakery, petrol station, pottery factory, souvenir shop, supermarket, printing press and shoemaker.

The city even had its own currency, into which visitors had to change whatever money they were carrying (even Spanish pesetas) in order to make purchases.

Although the community near Orense closed in 2003, Father Silva’s example at Benposta has been taken up in many other countries — particularly in South America — where similar communities have been set up for street children. Although some now have resident adults, these have no more rights or powers than the children.

Jesús Cesar Silva Mendez was born at Orense on January 25 1933, the son of an architect. He decided to become a Jesuit priest, and a year before his ordination in 1957, he rescued 15 orphans and abandoned boys from the streets of Orense and gave them lodging at his mother’s house.
It was a gesture which did not go down well with his bishop, who cut off Silva’s stipend. Undeterred, he converted his mother’s house to include dormitories, workshops, classrooms and even a gym before his brother Jose Manuel, a lawyer, bought 30 acres of land outside the town for about £12,000. The property was called Benposta and handed over to Father Silva for his pioneering City of Boys. Later a second branch was established in a 16th-century monastery at Celanova, 20 miles away, for another 300 children.
Although Benposta received generous donations, the main burden of fund-raising fell on the shoulders of Father Silva.
His great-uncle was Manuel Feijoo, a celebrated Spanish circus impresario who combined with the Castilla family to create Madrid’s Circo Price and the touring Circo Americano; and for years Father Silva was chaplain to all the Spanish circuses, conducting Mass or baptising children under the Big Top.
He decided to put his circus heritage to good use, and in 1963 created an International Circus School at Benposta. He then founded El Circo de Los Muchachos, the boys’ own circus, to help fund the city. Originally the artistes came from Benposta, but they were later joined by young people from all parts of Spain, France, Spanish Guinea and Brazil.
The circus first hit the road in 1965, and for four years toured Spain and Portugal. In 1970 it went to France, with more than 100 artistes . The tour was sponsored by Jean Roche, director of the French Cirque Amar. Things turned sour, however, when the French impresario cancelled the contract, which became the subject of court action; the Muchachos were stranded in Amiens for two months until new engagements could be found.
Over the Christmas period in 1970-71 they were a triumph at the Grand Palais in Paris. They later enjoyed successful tours in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Canada, Japan and Australia.
The circus raised money for the city (the performers were reportedly paid £1.70 a week, with all their expenses covered by the company). Many of the boys went on to successful careers in other circuses.
Father Silva, who was awarded a UN peace medal , lived a modest life in Benposta, residing in a brick hut. His motor scooter was eventually replaced by a white Citroën estate car, his only indulgence.

Spartacus TV actor Andy Whitfield dies at 39

 

Andy Whitfield was relatively unknown before he was cast as Spartacus

 

Andy Whitfield, the British star of US TV drama Spartacus: Blood and Sand, has died at the age of 39.

Whitfield died on Sunday in Sydney, Australia, 18 months after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, his family and manager said.
His wife, Vashti, described him as "our beautiful young warrior".
Whitfield was born in North Wales and moved to Australia in 1999. Actor Liam McIntyre took over Whitfield's role in the TV series when he became ill.
"On a beautiful sunny Sydney spring morning, surrounded by his family, in the arms of his loving wife, our beautiful young warrior Andy Whitfield lost his 18-month battle with lymphoma cancer," his wife said in a statement.
'Courage and strength' "He passed peacefully surrounded by love. Thank you to all his fans whose love and support have helped carry him to this point. He will be remembered as the inspiring, courageous and gentle man, father and husband he was."
Chris Albrecht, president and chief operating officer of US TV network Starz, said he was "deeply saddened" by Whitfield's loss.
"We were fortunate to have worked with Andy in Spartacus and came to know that the man who played a champion on-screen was also a champion in his own life," Albrecht said in a statement.
"Andy was an inspiration to all of us as he faced this very personal battle with courage, strength and grace," he added.
Whitfield played the title role in all 13 episodes of the first series, screened in 2010, and was about to shoot the second series when he was diagnosed with cancer.
Spartacus, which attracted media attention in the US for its graphic scenes of sex and violence, was first seen in the UK on the now defunct Bravo channel before moving to Sky One.
In an interview with the Deadline Hollywood website last year, Whitfield said having cancer had taught him some important lessons.
"After the initial shock - I was a healthy young man and had no idea this could happen - it was frustrating that the first season was ending on such a high note."
But he added he then found "time to heal, figure things out and spend time with my family. Stay in the now and enjoy every moment."
Whitfield's Spartacus co-star Lucy Lawless also paid tribute to the actor in a statement to EW:

"Andy Whitfield left an indelible mark on all of us in the Spartacus family," she said. "He was a gentle man who never said a bad word about anyone, a gifted photographer, engineer (no really!) and a brilliant actor.
"How lucky we were to have him grace all our lives. Godspeed, Andy!"

US film actor Cliff Robertson dies aged 88

 

Cliff Robertson died one day after his 88th birthday, his secretary said

 

Oscar-winning Hollywood actor Cliff Robertson has died at the age of 88.

He played a young John F Kennedy in the biographical 1963 film PT-109 and won an Academy Award in 1968 for his performance in Charly as a mentally disabled man.
Robertson remained a popular TV and film actor from the mid-1950s onwards. He later found a new generation of fans as Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man movies.
His secretary said he had died in New York state of natural causes.
"My father was a loving father, devoted friend, dedicated professional and honourable man," his daughter Stephanie Saunders said in a statement quoted by Associated Press news agency.
"He stood by his family, friends, and colleagues through good times and bad. We will all miss him terribly."
Based on the award-winning book Flowers for Algernon, 1968's Charly saw Robertson play mentally disabled bakery worker Charlie Gordon - the subject of an experiment to increase human intelligence.
He starred in the film opposite the English actress Claire Bloom.
In 1972, Robertson made his debut as a director on J.W Coop, a film he co-wrote and starred in as an ageing rodeo cowboy.
Robertson was blacklisted by Hollywood for several years after blowing the whistle on a studio chief who was subsequently accused of embezzlement.
Columbia Pictures head David Begelman pleaded no contest to charges of grand theft and was fined and sentenced to three years' probation, though he was hired to run MGM three years later.
In 2002, Robertson was cast as Peter Parker's kindly uncle Ben in Sam Raimi's adaptation of Spider-Man. Despite being killed in the first film, he appeared in flashback in the following two movies.

David Davies

David Davies kept his party political sympathies to himself in the officers’ mess

"It's deliberate Tory policy to create high unemployment to weaken the unions." This was an unusual mantra for a retired lieutenant colonel, but David Davies, who has died aged 93, was an unusual army officer. He was born in Yorkshire to the unlikely union of a coalmining, former Welsh rugby international, Howell Davies, and the daughter of a mill owner, Mary Wood. For a sport-obsessed young man at a time of high unemployment, the army offered opportunities for cricket and rugby, as well as travel, and he joined up in 1935.
David saw second world war service as a private in the the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the Desert Rats. He was shocked when, in the 1990s, he recognised a former soldier who had suffered severe burns, talking of his north African experiences on a documentary. David had administered what he thought at the time was futile first aid to the same man in 1941, before the soldier was transported back to field hospital. Now, here was the casualty, 50 years later, alive and well on television.
His outlook as a lifelong member of the Labour party was crystallised by his experiences in wartime, and he recalled a Welsh private delivering a lecture on the evils of capitalism from the back of an army canteen wagon, based on Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
War demanded a more meritocratic approach to promotion, and David moved up the ranks quickly. He served on the Gold Coast of west Africa and was appointed MBE for his work in the development of the Ghanaian health system. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned.
During the 60s he kept his Labour party membership to himself, and some of the officers' mess whisperings about Harold Wilson being a closet communist caused him a good deal of anger. He served in Germany, and his final posting in the 1970s was as admin officer of the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot. A career army man he may have been, but above he was a peaceable, gentle man who rarely raised his voice in anger.
He is survived by his partner of the last 13 years, Joyce Ovens; his sons, John and Russell, from his marriage to Bernice Graham, who died in 1989; and his grandsons, Max and Jacob.

Mike Terry

Mike Terry, who died on August 29 aged 86, was a journalist of the sort that has now all but disappeared from Fleet Street; many of the tales told about him involved his glass eye – a legacy of the war – staring up from the bottom of someone else’s pint glass.

His career inside the office reached its peak in the 1960s, when he was one of the gifted young editorial figures on Hugh Cudlipp’s Daily Mirror who took tabloid newspapers into the hitherto uncharted territory of in-depth news and features. Terry did so first as the Mirror’s features editor, a pivotal post in the paper’s campaign to show its new ambition, and then as its Northern editor.

Mike Terry, as presented in The Sun after the bingo catastrophe

 

His career beyond the office – usually in the Mirror pub known as The Stab in the Back – was just as celebrated. One colleague recalled being joined by Terry at The Stab. Asked what he wanted to drink, Terry replied: “I’ll have a double brandy and a vodka and Scotch with some ginger ale, and not too much ginger ale.” Having explained that he wanted this concoction in one glass, Terry then added: “When I drink this I may go a bit of a funny colour. I’m taking these tablets to stop me drinking. Take no notice.”

During such hard-drinking sessions Terry would frequently remove his glass eye and drop it into a pint of beer. Occasionally he would forget it in the Gents. Either way, it provoked shouts of anguish from whichever unlucky soul discovered it leering up at him.

Such excesses took their toll, and Terry was fired from the Mirror in 1970. He then found a sub-editing berth on the Sun, gave up the drink, and passed on the fruits of his undoubted charm, talent and experience with unfailing good humour. He did, however, make one notorious cock-up.

This occurred due to an uncharacteristic failure to check the paper’s bingo numbers. The subsequent misprint, on May 19 1984, left 3,000 Sun readers under the impression that they had scooped the top prize of £40,000. One hired a Rolls-Royce to arrive at the paper’s office and claim his “prize”. It was typical of Terry’s good grace that, to assuage readers’ ire, he agreed to appear in an apology wearing a dunce’s cap, under the headline “I’m the Bingo bungler”.

Michael Dungate Terry was born on February 15 1925 in Findon Valley, at the foot of the South Downs. His father, Thomas, a barrel-chested Sussex yeoman who had served in the trenches through most of the First World War, was a stained-glass craftsman. His mother, Ella, had been a nurse. Michael, an only child, attended Worthing Grammar School, but left when his father’s business went bankrupt to start his career in journalism on the Worthing Herald.
Aged 18 he joined the Wiltshire Regiment, where he served as a lieutenant. After D-Day he was involved in fierce fighting around the village of Tilly-Sur-Seulles. After one patrol was cut down by a booby trap, Terry led a platoon to see if there were any survivors, only to trigger a landmine; he lost his right eye in the blast and sustained shrapnel injuries so severe that doctors thought he would not walk again. Despite his wounds he managed to drag one injured soldier back behind the lines, but the rest of his platoon was killed in the explosion.
After the war he remained briefly in the Army before rejoining the Worthing Herald. He then moved to London, working at The South London Chronicle, the Evening News and the News Chronicle. Once, when short of copy for the Evening News’s gossip column, Terry bought a box of live crustaceans from Billingsgate and released them in Mayfair. The story ran with the headline: “Crabs In Curzon Street”.
There was more to him than drinking, crabs and bungled bingo: Terry had a love of poetry and recited beautifully in his rounded baritone. It was a voice he also deployed to great effect while bashing out songs by Jimmy Witherspoon and Big Bill Broonzy at the bars of packed pubs.
He never lost his love of jazz, nor of lone country hikes. One such ramble almost ended in disaster when he fell while descending Great Gable, in the Lake District, after nightfall. Coming to in the dark, bleeding from a cut head and not knowing if he had landed on a precipice, he decided that the safest course of action was to stay awake until daybreak. To keep himself going he set about reciting every piece of Shakespeare he knew. Several hours later he still had not reached the end of his repertoire when dawn enabled him to complete the descent in safety.
He retired to Hook Norton in Oxfordshire in 1988 after helping see The Sun through its troubled move to Wapping.

Mike Terry married Sheila Latham in 1952. She died in 2004, and he is survived by their daughter and by two sons, both of whom work in journalism.

Salvatore Licitra

Salvatore Licitra, the opera singer, who died on Monday aged 43, was a contender for the title of the world’s next great tenor and had already been acclaimed the “new Pavarotti” on account of his ringing high notes, strong lower register, and considerable stamina.

He was catapulted to fame in dramatic fashion, stepping in at the last moment for Pavarotti in a gala performance of Puccini’s Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on the evening of May 11 2002.

Salvatore Licitra

 

Only 55 hours earlier, on Thursday May 9, Licitra had been relaxing at his family’s apartment in Milan. Then his manager in New York, JF Mastroianni, called. “He asked me if I feel good,” Licitra said later. “I responded that I was rested and asked him why. He said maybe there is some job for me. I asked him what type of work. He said: 'I’ll let you know.’”

Within the hour Mastroianni called back, uttering the decisive words: “Are you ready for a trip? There is some problem with Luciano.”

After Mastroianni’s call, Licitra was unable to sleep, watching television until 3.30am. He then caught a flight to London and Concorde to New York. Arriving at 9am on Friday morning, he reached the Met two hours later and spent another 12 hours going over a videotape of the production and attending piano rehearsals.

Pavarotti only added to the tension. His scheduled appearance was regarded by many as the likely finale to the superstar’s 41-year career in staged opera, and he dithered all day over whether to let his fans down or risk making a strained and under par appearance. Licitra knew only at about 7pm — an hour before curtain — that he would be going on stage. He finally met the conductor, James Levine, when the maestro dropped in to his dressing room 15 minutes later.

Licitra put any nerves behind him. He earned lengthy ovations for his two big arias and, at the end of the opera, received a three-minute standing ovation from the audience of 4,000, each of whom had paid as much as $1,800 for their non-refundable tickets to hear Pavarotti. The critics agreed that a star had been born.
Salvatore Licitra was born on August 10 1968 at Berne, Switzerland, to Sicilian parents, and returned to Italy as a teenager to open a graphics shop with his brother. He started singing at 18, mimicking great Italian tenors such as Caruso and Gigli. He worked as a graphic artist on layouts for Italian Vogue, and studied at Carlo Bergonzi’s vocal academy until 1998, when he ran out of money.
Although scheduled to sing as an understudy at the Verona festival that summer, he so impressed the conductor Daniel Oren that he made his debut on the opening night as Riccardo in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera.
Licitra was considered a genuine tenore spinto, with a voice finely balanced between the lyrical and the dramatic but with sufficient heft to play the heroes of the Italian core repertoire of Verdi and Puccini.
In Italy the frenzied search for the “Fourth Tenor”, or at least an heir to Pavarotti and his ageing Spanish contemporaries Placido Domingo and José Carreras, is likened to a papal succession. The difference is that the singing contest is carried out in full view of the faithful.
Licitra’s talent, and the drama of his substitution for Pavarotti, meant his name was added to the list of candidates for this vacancy.
After his triumph at the New York Met, he appeared on opera stages and concert platforms around the world. Under the baton of Ricardo Muti he sang at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and regularly appeared at La Scala and other venues in Europe, the United States and the Far East.
Offstage, Licitra was quick-witted, sunny and informal. He dispensed with the usual starry entourage, preferring the company of his parents, his brother and his fiancée.

Salvatore Licitra had spent nine days in a coma after crashing his scooter. His fiancée, who was riding pillion, was unhurt, but he never regained consciousness.

Vann Nath

Vann Nath, who died yesterday probably aged 66, was one of only seven known survivors of S-21, the secret prison in Cambodia where, between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed more than 14,000 people; guards spared his life when they discovered he was an artist, putting him to work producing portraits of Pol Pot.

Vann Nath with some of his works depicting tortures inflicted by the Khmer Rouge

After the fall of the regime Nath painted the horrors he had witnessed, and became one of Cambodia's foremost artists. But it was his incarceration and remarkable survival for which he was most famous.

He had been arrested by the Khmer Rouge, the fanatical Kampuchean communists whose policies led to an estimated 1.5 to 2 million deaths, while working in rice fields near his home in Battambang, in the north-west of the country. Chained and put in a truck, he was transferred to S-21, where he arrived on January 7 1978. Like many of the Khmer Rouge's "enemies", he never knew why he had been arrested; 17 years later he described the Kafkaesque nature of his first interrogation:

"'What was the problem that caused them to arrest you?' the interrogator asked.

I said I didn't know.

'The Organization isn't stupid,' he said. 'It never catches people who aren't guilty. Now think again – what did you do wrong?'

'I don't know,' I said again."
At S-21, an interrogation facility in the grounds of a former high school in Phnom Penh, prisoners were tortured until they revealed "accomplices", and were made to write confessions admitting to "crimes against the regime". Those who weren't killed outright or through torture died of starvation and disease. "We were so hungry, we would eat insects that dropped from the ceiling," Nath told the court during the recent, belated trial (on charges of crimes against humanity) of the prison's chief, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch. "We would quickly grab and eat them so we could avoid being seen by the guards. The conditions were so inhumane and the food was so little, I even thought eating human flesh would be a good meal."
Prisoners were shackled together, and when one died it could be hours before the guards came to take the corpse away: survivors ate their spoonfuls of thin rice porridge next to the dead bodies but, said Nath, "we didn't care because we were like animals".
After a month at S-21, already so weak he could hardly stand, Nath was unchained from the other prisoners and taken to see Duch, who had read his file and seen that he had trained as an artist. After questioning, Nath was moved to a workroom where he was made to paint propaganda portraits of Pol Pot. From then on, he was given more to eat, and kept in better conditions, and was able to survive until the Vietnamese invasion which overthrew the Khmer Rouge in January 1979.
Vann Nath was born into a farming family in Battambang. As a teenager he spent several years as a monk, then took up an apprenticeship with an artist. In 1969 he jointly set up a small business painting cinema placards, billboards, and private portraits. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975 he was evacuated to the countryside to work in the rice fields, where he was eventually arrested.
When the regime fell and the Vietnamese opened S-21 as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Nath returned to paint scenes from prison life: a prisoner being whipped on the floor; a baby being taken from its mother; a guard pulling out a victim's fingernail. The unsparing nature of these images stemmed from a pledge he had made with fellow inmates when first imprisoned: everyone in the cell agreed that whoever survived would tell the families of the others what had happened.
Accordingly Nath felt it was his duty to tell the stories of those who had died. His graphic paintings now hang on the walls of the museum, bearing witness to the brutality that thousands suffered but only a handful survived to describe.
After being freed, Nath enlisted in the Cambodian Army, fighting the lingering Khmer Rouge insurgency in the Thai border region. After landmark elections in 1993, which followed peace accords in 1991 that ended decades of foreign meddling and conflict, Nath started painting again and began to receive wide recognition for his work. Since then, his pictures have hung in exhibitions around the world.
He also became, through writing and interviews as well as through his paintings, a leading advocate of justice for the victims of Khmer Rouge atrocities. In 1998 he published A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21 to tell his story in his own words, and he featured prominently in the documentary S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine (2003), in which he interrogated his former persecutors.
The trial of Duch was the first to be held at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia. It ended last July with his conviction and a 35-year sentence. So far, it is the only case to be completed. Case 002, in which the four most senior former members of the Khmer Rouge regime still alive are due to stand trial, will be the court's last. The tribunal's spokesman, Neth Pheaktra, could not confirm whether Nath would again have been called to testify.
In 2007 Nath was awarded the Hellman/Hammett Award, given by Human Rights Watch to writers who have shown bravery in the face of political persecution.
He owned a restaurant in Phnom Penh named after his wife, Kith Eng, which houses a gallery of his work.
When Nath became ill with kidney disease in 2005, donations from patrons and friends from around the world helped pay for his treatment.
Vann Nath and his wife had two children who died during the Khmer Rouge genocide. After 1979 Nath was reunited with his wife and they had three more children. She and they survive him.

Rosel Zech

Rosel Zech in Fassbinder's Veronika Voss. 

'I never felt so comfortable with any other director,' she said.

According to the German actor and writer Peter Berling, the most important thing for the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was "to surround himself with people who needed him for their own survival … from the beginning he wanted to create a 'family', something he himself never had". One devoted member of this family was Rosel Zech, who has died of bone cancer aged 69.
Sadly, Veronika Voss (1982), in which Zech became a Fassbinder star, was the director's penultimate film, released less than four months before his death, aged 37, of a drug overdose. "I never felt so comfortable with any other director," Zech declared. "We were just at the beginning and had many plans together." One of these was a biopic of the writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg, the uncompleted script of which was found beside Fassbinder's dead body.
As Veronika Voss, Zech splendidly followed Hanna Schygulla (The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979) and Barbara Sukowa (Lola, 1981) in the third of Fassbinder's BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) trilogy, a flamboyant, metaphorical and ironic onslaught on Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. Zech portrays a drug-addicted screen idol of the previous decade, now at the end of her career, who subsists on memories of past grandeur, which includes Nazi Germany.
It took almost 10 years from the time of Zech's first meeting with Fassbinder before he gave her a leading role. They met on the set of Ulli Lommel's Tenderness of the Wolves (1973), in which Zech had a bit part, and on which Fassbinder was producer and co-editor. Much later he cast her as the respectable suburban wife of a corrupt unfaithful building contractor (Mario Adorf) in Lola. There was nothing in the role, however well played, to suggest the range of emotions Zech brought to her nuanced portrayal of Veronika Voss, and her Marlene Dietrich-like rendering in that film of Memories Are Made of This.
Zech recalled that Fassbinder made her feel "loved, cherished and protected" throughout the shoot of Veronika Voss. Harry Baer, who was in the film, claimed that "Zech performed with such selflessness that in the suicide scene, she actually took 30 pills. They were made of sugar to be sure, but the excessive dose was sickening all the same."
Rosalie Helga Lina Zech was born out of wedlock in Berlin. Her father was an inland waterway boatman and her mother was a dressmaker. She started acting in provincial theatre, gradually moving to the Schauspielhaus Bochum, in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was then run by the celebrated stage director Peter Zadek. It was Zadek who gave Zech her first leading roles on stage and television. They worked together throughout her career. "I found a great coach in Peter Zadek," said the football-mad Zech. Among her best roles in the 1970s were Hedda Gabler, Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Nina (The Seagull) and Cordelia (King Lear).
Zech had a long and busy career on German television, where she became known for her parts in several popular mini-series, such as the mother in The Oppermann Family (1983), based on the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger about a German-Jewish family at the start of Hitler's rise to power; The Officer Factory (1989), set in a military academy; and as the severe mother superior in For Heaven's Sake (2002-11), set in a convent.
As television and the stage ("Theatre is the pinnacle for me," she once said) took up most of Zech's time, her films were few and far between. Outstanding among them, however, was Percy Adlon's Salmonberries (1991), an atmospheric Alaska-set drama in which Zech played a reserved librarian from East Germany lured into a love affair with an androgynous half-Inuit orphan played by kd lang. Zech shone as a sexy but repressed woman, who slowly blossoms when loved.

• Rosalie Helga Lina Zech, actor, born 7 July 1942; died 31 August 2011