A Few Who Have Left the Stage, and Our Lives: 2015


Each year, we count up our losses — the passing of those who in the course or the whole of their lives were notable for their presence, for their achievements, for their personalities, for those moments when fame or something like it knighted or benighted them.

Memory and space are not democracies, of course, unlike the lengthy list that accumulates at Wikipedia every year, which appears to make an effort to circle the globe and search the nooks and crannies of accomplishment in every nation and municipality (which speaks well of the likelihood that even our own preordained passing might well be noticed by someone, somewhere).

So, we too choose to notice any number of people who have touched us, sometimes through specific, personal contact, sometimes for their impressive lives of achievement and contribution, sometimes for a singular kind of thing: a song, a book, a performance, a role in another singular life.

It is like an annual parade passing — full of leaders, writers, elected personages of high standing, singers of songs, poets, band leaders and band members, game players and athletes, more-than-average citizens, owners and inventors, people who encountered fame head on or were struck glancing blows by it.

Their proximity and contributions added to the richness of our own more humble lives. Take writers, for instance. When writers pass, they stop writing: books, essays, stories in the dwindling newspapers and magazines, poems, plays, words shaped to form a novel, a tale, six stanzas or librettos, the words spoken by actors on a stage.

Thusly, there will be no more words from the great, Nobel Prize-winning and complicated German writer Günter Grass, who spent his life writing novels that addressed the impossible 20th-century history of Germany through characters that included a boy who willed himself to stop growing in “The Tin Drum” and Hitler’s dog in “Dog Years.”

There will be no more thick, addictive books from Colleen McCullough, the Australian novelist who produced a melodramatic best seller called “The Thorn Birds,” then proceeded to delve into Roman history in a series of story-telling triumphs that began with the stories of Marius, Sulla and a young Julius Caesar and ended with Caesar and Cleopatra.

There will be no more elliptic, haunting novels by E. L. Doctorow, who chased American history as if it were an elusive heiress through “Ragtime,” “Billy Bathgate” and “The March,” among many books. There will be no more poems from Rod McKuen, who, for a time in the 1960s, was the hugely popular Pied Piper of quasi-lonely young men who, he wrote, “were left with the Saturday night consolation prize, the Sunday paper,” and no more poems from the much more respected and less best-selling Philip Levine.

For that matter, there will be no more true-crime books from Ann Rule, who knew Ted Bundy, and no more thick volumes on the history of Soviet horrors like “The Great Terror” by Robert Conquest. And no more of the elegant medical writings and books of Oliver Sacks, and the less elegant, but totally juicy novels of Jackie Collins, sister of Joan.

Actors from the silver screen and the small screen remain with us forever. There are no small roles in small or big movies or shows, and so we remember the rich face of Al Molinaro who played a guy named Delvecchio in “Happy Times” and Murray the cop in “The Odd Couple.” We remember Jack Larson, who spent part of his life as Jimmy Olsen on the 1950s “Superman” show, and Judy Carne, for being on “Laugh-In” (and being married to Burt Reynolds) and Gary Owens, who told us that “Laugh-In” was coming from “beautiful downtown Burbank,” and Alex Rocco, who got shot in the eye as Moe Greene in the climactic cleanup at the end of “The Godfather.”

We remember the shining old-movie beauty of Joan Leslie as Gary Cooper’s love in “Sergeant York” and the good girl in Bogart’s “High Sierra,” the boyish face of good man Martin Milner in “Route 66” on television and as the book-reading kid who got shot storming the beaches in “Sands of Iwo Jima.” We remember French suave personified in Louis Jordan, courting Leslie Caron in “Gigi,” and Rod Taylor, the hunky, not-quite-big-star in “The Time Machine” and “Young Cassidy.” Then there’s “Our Gang” member Dickie Moore, who gave Shirley Temple her first screen kiss. Trust me, it’s all there, somewhere, on celluloid, in digital, big screen, YouTube, the back of my mind.

Fred Thompson, who was a senator and once ran for president, straddles the line — he was a district attorney on “Law and Order,” where he can be seen any time you want, and appeared in any number of movies.

Leonard Nimoy and Christopher Lee were part of our fascination with space. Nimoy transcended the “Star Trek” series as Mr. Spock, becoming a kind of gentle philosopher. Lee was a villain in the second round of “Star Trek,” which — hold on to your hats — is back again, but touched pop culture over and over as the bad wizard in “Lord of the Rings” and the most memorable Dracula ever (excuse me Lugosi and Langella and all the rest). I did not see “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and so cannot comment how good Gunnar Hansen was as Leatherface.

Fame is funny — it’s almost like a pool table or six or two degrees of separation. Here’s one for you: Three Dog Night (“Joy To The World”) lost co-founder and lead vocalist Cory Wells and keyboardist Jimmy Greenspoon, not to mention June Fairchild, an actress who was noticed in the Cheech and Chong get-high movie “Up in Smoke” and suggested the band’s name to her boyfriend, a band member. Her life is an abject lesson in what even a light touch of the spotlight can do to a vulnerable soul.

These annals of pop and rock and blues are full of one-hit wonders, but B.B. King wasn’t one of them; the king of the blues led a musical life that was one big hit. Not quite so big, but totally memorable, were the stylings of Ben E. King, with and without the Drifters: “Up On the Roof” and “Stand By Me.” And there were one-hitters — Billy Joe Royal with “Down in the Boondocks,” Frankie Ford with “Sea Cruise” — and multiple-memorable hitters, like Lesley Gore with “It’s My Party” and Lynn Anderson with “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” and Little Jimmie Dickens, a Grand Old Opry mainstay.

Ernie Banks (“Play Two,” Chicago Cubs), Minnie Miñoso (Chicago White Sox) and eternal Yankee Yogi Berra form many of our baseball memories, where it’s always déjà vu all over again.

Locally, the losses included, most notably and most recently, Austin Kiplinger, a forward-looking gentleman and publisher of the old school who treasured history enough to help in the creation of a museum of Washington history and serve as president of Tudor Place. He defined the idea of leading a full life in the midst of history.

You could find no one more helpful and kinder than Cherie Cannon.

Both Moses Malone, player, and Flip Saunders, coach, are fondly remembered by fans of the Washington Wizards (the Bullets in Malone’s time). And let’s throw in Dean Smith, the classy University of North Carolina basketball coach, for causing so much pain to the Georgetown Hoyas and the Maryland Terrapins.

We left people out. This happens — in life and in death. But imagine, for just a moment, all these people at a lawn party, say at Tudor Place or the Kennedy Center or your backyard. Who would be watching out for Uggie, the dog from “The Actor” and Jack the Bulldog Sr., the Hoya mascot?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *