Departed During 2023

[tango15]

Whatever the circumstances of his son's death, having myself lost an only son in a tragic accident, I felt a great deal of empathy with him. The circumstances of the accident broke him, and the fact that his claims about it were largely brushed aside by the courts simply made matters worse. I am amazed that he has lived to 92, but I imagine he must have been well taken care of in his declining years.

[OneHungLow]

Whatever the circumstances of his son's death, having myself lost an only son in a tragic accident, I felt a great deal of empathy with him. The circumstances of the accident broke him, and the fact that his claims about it were largely brushed aside by the courts simply made matters worse. I am amazed that he has lived to 92, but I imagine he must have been well taken care of in his declining years.

What a decent humane thing to say.

+1

[OneHungLow]

On Jimmy Buffet's demise.

Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76.

His death was announced in a statement on his website. The statement did not say where he died or specify a cause. Mr. Buffett had rescheduled a series of concerts this spring, saying that he had been hospitalized, although he offered no details.

Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, salt water and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads.

Mr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, and “Margaritaville,” his 1977 breakthrough hit, was his only single to reach the pop Top 10.

“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”

Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western” — a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics.

His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.

“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/

Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”

The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett’s muses, and no place was more important than Key West, Fla. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early 1970s.

“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”

The locales provided Mr. Buffett with more than just a breezy sailing life and grist for his songwriting. They were also the impetus for the creation of a tropical-themed business empire that included a restaurant franchise, a hotel chain and boutique tequila, T-shirt and footwear lines, all of which made him a millionaire hundreds of times over.

“I’ve done a bit of smugglin’, and I’ve run my share of grass,” Mr. Buffett sang of his early days trafficking marijuana in the Florida Keys in “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”

“I made enough money to buy Miami,” he went on, alluding to his subsequent entrepreneurial pursuits. “But I pissed it away so fast/Never meant to last/Never meant to last.”

His claim to squandering his wealth notwithstanding, Mr. Buffett proved to be a shrewd manager of his considerable fortune; Forbes this year estimated his net worth at $1 billion.

“If Mr. Buffett is a pirate, to borrow one of his favorite images, it is hardly because of his days palling around with dope smugglers in the Caribbean,” the critic Anthony DeCurtis wrote in a 1999 essay for The New York Times. “He is a pirate in the way that Bill Gates and Donald Trump have styled themselves, as plundering rebels, visionary artists of the deal, not bound by the societal restrictions meant for smaller, more careful men.”

(The comparison to Mr. Trump was strictly financial; Mr. Buffett was a Democrat.)

Mr. Buffett was also an accomplished author; he was one of only six writers, along with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and William Styron, to top both The Times’s fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. By the time he wrote “Tales From Margaritaville” (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he once embraced.

“I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy,” he told The Washington Post in 1989. “I’m not old, but I’m getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.”

“I still have a very happy life,” he went on. “I just don’t do the things I used to do.”

[OneHungLow]

On Jimmy Buffet's demise.

James William Buffett was born on Dec. 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Miss., one of three children of Mary Loraine (Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr. Both his parents were longtime employees of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company. His father was a manager of government contracts, and his mother, known simply as Peets, was an assistant director of industrial relations.

Jimmy was raised Roman Catholic in Mobile, Ala., where he took up the trombone at St. Ignatius Catholic School. He went to high school at another Catholic institution in Mobile, the McGill Institute.

In 1964 he enrolled in classes at Auburn University. He flunked out and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi. He also began performing in local nightclubs. He graduated with a degree in history in 1969 before moving to the French Quarter of New Orleans and playing in a cover band on Bourbon Street.

In 1970 he moved to Nashville, hoping to make it as a country singer while working as a journalist for Billboard magazine. (Mr. Buffett was credited with having broken the story about the disbanding of the pioneering bluegrass duo Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.) “Down to Earth,” his debut album, was released on Andy Williams’s Barnaby label that year. It sold a reported 324 copies.

Mr. Buffett’s second album for Barnaby, “High Cumberland Jubilee,” went unreleased until 1976, long after he had signed with ABC-Dunhill and recorded “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” released in 1973, which featured the debauched party anthem “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”

Mr. Buffett had a fondness for puns. The title “A White Sport Coat” was inspired by the song “A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),” a 1957 pop hit for the country singer Marty Robbins. Another album was called “Last Mango in Paris.”

Mr. Buffett’s album “Living and Dying in ¾ Time,” released in 1974, included a version of the comedian Lord Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk.” “Come Monday,” a lovelorn track from that record, became his first Top 40 hit.

“A1A,” also from 1974, was named for the oceanfront highway that runs along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. It was Mr. Buffett’s first album to contain references to Key West and maritime life. But it was his platinum-selling “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” (1977), which contained the blockbuster hit “Margaritaville,” that finally catapulted him to stardom. “Fins,” another hit single, was released in 1979.

A series of popular releases followed, culminating in 1985 with “Songs You Know by Heart,” a compilation of Mr. Buffett’s most beloved songs to date. It became the best-selling album of his career.

Mr. Buffett also opened the first of his many Margaritaville stores in 1985. That was the year that Timothy B. Schmit, a the former bassist with the Eagles who was then a member of the Coral Reefer Band, coined the term Parrot Heads to describe Mr. Buffett’s staunch legion of fans, the bulk of whom were baby boomers.

A supporter of conservationist causes, Mr. Buffett moved away from the Keys in the late 1970s because of the area’s increasing commercialization. He initially relocated to Aspen, Colo., before making his home on St. Barts in the Caribbean. He also had houses in Palm Beach, Fla., and Sag Harbor, on eastern Long Island.

In addition to touring and recording, activities he pursued into the 2020s, Mr. Buffett wrote music for movies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Urban Cowboy.” He also appeared in movies including “Rancho Deluxe” and “Jurassic World” and on television shows including the “Hawaii Five-O” revival of the 2010s, on which he starred as the helicopter pilot Frank Bama, a character from his best-selling 1992 novel, “Where Is Joe Merchant?”

An avid pilot, Mr. Buffett owned several aircraft and often flew himself to his shows. In 1994 he crashed one of his airplanes in waters near Nantucket, Mass., while taking off. He survived the accident, after swimming to safety, with only minor injuries.

In 1996 another of Mr. Buffett’s planes, Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by the Jamaican police, who suspected the craft was being used to smuggle marijuana. Onboard the airplane, which sustained little damage, were Bono of U2; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; and Mr. Buffett’s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later admitted the incident was a case of mistaken identity, inspiring Mr. Buffett to write the song “Jamaica Mistaica,” a droll sendup of the affair.

Mr. Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett; two daughters, Savanah Jane Buffett and Sarah Buffett; a son, Cameron; two grandsons; and two sisters, Lucy and Laurie Buffett.

In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Buffett was asked about a previous remark in which he somewhat incongruously cited the wholesome choral director Mitch Miller and the marauding Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte as two of his greatest inspirations.

“Mitch Miller, for sure,” Mr. Buffett said, doubtless in acknowledgment of the way his own fans sang along with him at concerts. “In the old days: ‘Sing Along with Mitch’? Who didn’t?”

“But Jean Lafitte was my hero as a romantic character,” he continued. “I’m not sure he was a musical influence. His lifestyle influenced me, most definitely, ’cause I’m the very opposite of Mitch Miller.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/arts ... %20details.

[PHXPhlyer]

Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dead at 75
Richardson was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last month in recognition of his work saving Americans, most recently WNBA player Brittney Griner.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries ... rcna103126

Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy under President Bill Clinton, died Saturday, according to the Richardson Center for Global Engagement. Richardson was 75.

Mickey Bergman, Vice President of the Richardson Center, commented in a statement, “Governor Richardson passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. He lived his entire life in the service of others — including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad," Bergman said.

"There was no person that Governor Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”

Richardson was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last month in recognition of his work saving Americans, most recently WNBA player Brittney Griner.

Over the last three decades, Richardson traveled the world negotiating and securing the release of American prisoners and hostages in Bangladesh, North Korea, Sudan, Colombia, and Iraq. The nonprofit organization the Richardson Center was created to support the former governor in facilitating dialogue and global peace between countries with strained diplomatic relations.

PP

[OneHungLow]

Texas-born actor who made her home in the UK and was known for her roles in TV’s Fall of Eagles, The Golden Bowl and Dallas

The acting career of Gayle Hunnicutt, who has died aged 80, could be defined in two acts. As an up-and-coming starlet in Hollywood she was often cast for her stunning beauty. Then, after marrying the British actor David Hemmings, she moved to the UK, where she played big parts in two major television mini-series, The Golden Bowl (1972) and Fall of Eagles (1974).

After a divorce she married the journalist and editor Sir Simon Jenkins, and alongside her acting career became a fixture of the British social scene. She may, though, be best remembered for the final three seasons of Dallas, from 1989 to 1991, in which she played Vanessa Beaumont, an English aristocrat whose long-ago affair with JR Ewing produced a son he had never known existed.

Hunnicutt was born in Texas, not far from Dallas in Fort Worth. Her father, Sam, was a colonel in the army; her mother, Mary (nee Dickerson), gave birth to Gayle while her husband was serving in New Caledonia during the second world war. Her parents did not support her desire to go to college, but she won a scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles, and paid for her time there with part-time work while studying English and theatre.

Spotted in a college production by a talent scout from Warner Brothers, she made her debut on the television naval comedy Mister Roberts at the age of 23 in 1966, and then in Roger Corman’s Peter Fonda/Nancy Sinatra classic film Wild Angels, about a San Pedro motorcycle gang.

Once asked whom she would most want to look like, Hunnicutt replied Audrey Hepburn, whose beauty, like hers, was often described as “porcelain” or even “cold”. But Hepburn also projected a certain vulnerability, whereas Hunnicutt seemed to carry her beauty naturally. Rather than Hollywood’s typecasting of her as a beauty queen, she needed parts that played on a contrast between fragile beauty and steely character.

She caught notice in 1967 for her role as a woman trying to con Jed Clampett out of his fortune in a two-part episode of The Beverly Hillbillies on TV, and then playing opposite James Garner in the film Marlowe (1969) as the older sister, Mavis Wald, protecting secrets in a film based on Raymond Chandler’s novel The Little Sister.

By then she had met Hemmings, at a party at the actor Peter Lawford’s beach house. She described it as love at first sight, and they married in 1968. Hemmings characterised them as the “poor man’s Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton”, and although Gayle “always thought that was silly”, her new husband seemed intent on replicating the conflict of the Taylor/Burton relationship. Within three months of the wedding he began a very public affair with the actor Samantha Eggar, yet despite his serial infidelity they remained married, and moved to Britain, where their son, Nolan, was born.

She co-starred with Hemmings in In Fragment of Fear (1970) , and then was directed by him in Running Scared (1972) with Robert Powell. In 1973 she played in Scorpio, in which Michael Winner wasted the talents of Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon, then again alongside Hemmings in Voices, which was less interesting than her next horror film, The Legend of Hell House.

What she really gained from being in Britain was theatre opportunities, and in 1973 she was in fellow-American Michael Rudman’s Hampstead theatre production of Peter Handke’s Ride Across Lake Constance, alongside Alan Howard, Jenny Agutter, Nigel Hawthorne and Nicola Pagett.

In 1972 she also starred on the small screen in the BBC’s adaptation of Henry James’s The Golden Bowl as Charlotte Stant, playing, for the first time, a transatlantic character. She followed up with another success on the BBC as the Tsarina Alexandra in Fall of Eagles (1974), and that year also played in Nuits Rouges (aka Shadowman in its English dubbed version), George Franju’s homage to the fictional criminal genius Fantômas, in which she was memorable in an Irma Vep-style bodysuit being chased by police across the Paris rooftops.

She revisited Fantômas in three episodes of the eponymous 1980 French mini-series, directed by Claude Chabrol and Luis Buñuel’s son, Juan Luis. In the BBC’s 1978 TV film Dylan she played Liz Reitel, a woman having an affair with Ronald Lacey’s Dylan Thomas, drinking his way through his ill-fated final American tour.

Hunnicutt had divorced Hemmings in 1974, and married Jenkins in 1978, by which time she was a notable presence on stage and in quality television roles. In London in 1979 she ranged from playing Hedda in the Watermill theatre’s production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler to being Peter Pan at the Shaftesbury theatre. That year she also starred in a double episode of The Return of the Saint with Ian Ogilvy, which was later repackaged as a TV movie.

She would play in another Saint TV movie, The Brazilian Connection (1989) with Simon Dutton as Simon Templar. She also returned to Raymond Chandler as a femme fatale opposite Powers Boothe in an episode of the mini-series Marlowe, Private Eye in 1983. In the first episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984) opposite Jeremy Brett, she played Holmes’ great female rival, Irene Adler. In 1985 she starred as Donna Lloyd with Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon in Arthur Penn’s thriller film, Target.

Her most personal project was a two-hander, The Life and Loves of Edith Wharton, which debuted in 1995 at the Hampstead theatre and toured for many years afterwards; according to Jenkins, she identified with the troubled Anglo-American writer. Later she played the writer Mary Wollstonecraft in another two-hander, The Two Marys. Her last screen role came in a 1999 episode of CI5: The New Professionals.

Having written a book called Health and Beauty in Motherhood in 1984, two decades later she published Dearest Virginia, a moving collection of her father’s love letters written while he was serving in the South Pacific.

She and Jenkins divorced in 2009; her sale of the Primrose Hill house they had lived in for three decades became an episode of a 2012 reality show, Selling London.

She is survived by Nolan, another son, Edward, from her marriage to Jenkins, and five grandchildren, Poppy, Theo, Oscar, Dash and Nia.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... 20obituary

[PHXPhlyer]

Steve Harwell, Smash Mouth singer, dead at 56

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/04/entertai ... index.html

Steve Harwell, the former lead singer of the rock group Smash Mouth, died Monday, his manager tells CNN.

He was 56.

No cause of death was shared, but Harwell had been receiving hospice care over the weekend. He died at his home in Boise, Idaho, with family and friends by his side, according Robert Hayes, the manager of Smash Mouth.

“Steve Harwell was a true American Original. A larger than life character who shot up into the sky like a Roman candle,” Hayes said in a statement to CNN. “Steve should be remembered for his unwavering focus and impassioned determination to reach the heights of pop stardom. And the fact that he achieved this near-impossible goal with very limited musical experience makes his accomplishments all the more remarkable. His only tools were his irrepressible charm and charisma, his fearlessly reckless ambition, and his king-size cajones.”

Harwell was a founding member and longtime lead singer of Smash Mouth, best known for its chart-topping singles “All Star” and “I’m a Believer.”

During Harwell’s career, the band was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for “All Star,” a song which later achieved cult status after its appearance on the sound track of the 2001 animated film “Shrek.”

“It’s weird, people ask me, ‘Do you get bored of playing these songs?’ I’m like, ‘Why would I get bored of playing them? This is what puts bread and butter on my table,’” Harwell told Vice of the group’s best known hits in a 2014 interview. “You know, there’s always somebody in the crowd who hasn’t heard it. Or hasn’t seen it live. When I go out onstage, I look at it that way. Once that classic song starts, people just go bananas. Has ‘Free Bird’ ever got old?”

Harwell himself went to great lengths to boost the band’s early fame – personally taking their “Astro Lounge” to radio stations across the country to get it played across the airwaves.

“We never do anything traditional,” Harwell said in 1999. “We never go through the front door. It’s always the back door, or an open window or something, to get our stuff played.”

Since Harwell left the band in 2021 over health issues, the group has continued to perform with new lead vocalist Zach Goode.

“Steve lived a 100% full-throttle life. Burning brightly across the universe before burning out,” Hayes concluded his statement. “Good night Heevo Veev. Rest in peace knowing you aimed for the stars, and magically hit your target.”

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

They're dropping like flies!

Gary Wright, singer of the mid-1970s hit ‘Dream Weaver,’ dies at 80
He was a founding member of the U.K.-based band Spooky Tooth and an in-demand session musician who played on all of George Harrison’s solo albums.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ga ... rcna103322

Gary Wright, the musician best known for his hit singles “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive,” has died. He was 80. Wright’s son Dorian confirmed the news to Variety; no cause of death was announced.

He was a founding member of the U.K.-based band Spooky Tooth and was an in-demand session player from the late ’60s on, playing on all of George Harrison’s solo albums — including his epochal 1970 debut, “All Things Must Pass” — and on Ringo Starr’s early singles (and, much later, with Starr’s All-Starr Band) as well as Nilsson, Tim Rose, B.B. King and many others. Yet he will be best remembered for the mid-1970s hits mentioned above, which were part of a vaguely mystical, synthesizer-driven style of hit single of the era — Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” is another example — and which saw him appearing on many music shows, wearing satin gear and rocking a keytar.

His first album for Warner Bros., “The Dream Weaver” — with a title track inspired by a trip to India with Harrison — was released in 1975, and while the single was a slow builder, by the following spring it was a major hit and Wright had become a big star. However, it was nearly two years before he followed with “The Light of Smiles,” and his subsequent efforts did not approach his previous success. His last charting single was 1981’s “Really Wanna Know You.”

In the following years, Wright specialized in instrumental and soundtrack work — although he made a surprise appearance in the 1992 film “Wayne’s World,” singing a re-recorded version of “Dream Weaver” — but he returned to more conventional rock music and issued a series of albums, with the last one, “Connected,” being released in 2010. He toured frequently, as a solo act, with Spooky Tooth and with Ringo’s All-Starr Band.

Over the years, his songs have continued to be covered — Chaka Khan recorded a blazing version of “Love Is Alive” for her 1984 smash album “I Feel for You” — and sampled by artists ranging from Jay-Z to Tone-Loc.

PP

[OneHungLow]

He is bound for heaven or hell. Hell being more likely if you believe in those places. The savagery and violence that he tacitly supported in the hostel wars marked him out as an evil man, and as bad as the worst of the criminals on both sides of the Apartheid divide, many who are still in positions of power or escaped justice.

https://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/southafrica1/8.htm

Controversial South African politician and traditional minister of the Zulu ethnic group Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has died at the age of 95, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Saturday.

Buthelezi founded the Inkatha Freedom Party, the third largest political party in South Africa when the country transitioned from the racist apartheid system to a democratic one in 1994.

He was admitted to hospital in July following a failed medical procedure to ease his back pain, his family said at the time.

“Prince Buthelezi, who served as the democratic South Africa’s first Minister of Home Affairs, passed away in the early hours of today, Saturday, 9 September 2023, just two weeks after the celebration of his 95th birthday,” Ramaphosa said in a statement on Saturday.

According to Ramaphosa, arrangements for his mourning and funeral will be announced after consultations with the Zulu royal family.

“Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle, the transition which secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic dispensation,” said Ramaphosa.

Buthelezi was part of the late Nelson Mandela’s first cabinet when the latter became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

Mandela appointed him as a minister of home affairs, a position he continued to hold in the second administration of former president Thabo Mbeki.

His legacy has remained a contested one due to the role he played during South Africa’s apartheid era, including heading the administrative region of Zululand, a part of the “homelands” regions that were the cornerstone of the apartheid government’s policy of separate development.

His party was also blamed for the pre-election violence that engulfed the country and the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal before the country’s historic 1994 elections.

Now known as KwaZulu-Natal province, the region was one of the 10 “homelands” created by the white-minority government meant to group Black South Africans according to their ethnicity in the country’s mostly rural areas.

These were meant to keep the apartheid system intact by installing so-called “puppet leaders” leading to Buthelezi being labeled a sell-out by liberation movements like the ruling African National Congress at the time.

A former member of the ANC Youth League, in 1975 he formed what was later to be known as the Inkatha Freedom Party, an outfit founded on an ideology of Zulu nationalism which he initially aligned to the African National Congress but later got involved in violent clashes with ANC supporters in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The violence that erupted between Inkatha and the ANC in the 1980s and early 1990s remains one of the bloodiest in South African history and a dent in Buthelezi’s political career. Many were killed in the clashes which took place in the then Zululand and later spread to areas including the Transvaal, now the Gauteng province.

These culminated in what got to be known as the Shell House Massacre in 1994.

Nineteen IFP supporters were shot and killed by ANC security guards after nearly 20,000 of them marched to Shell House in Johannesburg, which was then the headquarters of the ANC, banned in 1990.

They were opposing the upcoming elections and accused the ANC of undermining Zulu leaders and chiefs.

In the early 1990s, leaders of the apartheid government admitted to funding the Inkatha Freedom Party as they sought to destabilize the struggle against apartheid and what was increasingly looking like a road to the end of white minority rule.

Buthelezi opposed apartheid but his stance on controversial issues regarding the oppressive system put him at odds with ANC leaders.

This included his opposition to international sanctions against apartheid and his support for free markets at a time when most liberation movements were largely socialist and African nationalists.

His leadership of the Zululand administration was considered a betrayal to Black South Africans as the “homelands” system was an integral part of the apartheid machinery.

With the growth and significance of his IFP party, Buthelezi wanted his party to play a bigger role during the negotiations for a peaceful transition to democracy, but he withdrew from the negotiations and threatened to boycott the historic 1994 elections after his proposals, including the autonomy of the Zululand region, were rejected.

However, he agreed to participate in the elections about a week before they were held, winning 10% of the national vote and forming part of Mandela’s coalition government which also included the National Party.

He remained a lawmaker in South Africa’s Parliament from 1994 until his death and the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party until he was replaced at its national conference in 2019.

Throughout his political career, Buthelezi remained deeply involved in the affairs of the Zulu nation, serving as a traditional prime minister and advisor to the late King Goodwill Zwelithini and his successor, his son King Misuzulu KaZwelithini.

In 2022, he oversaw the installation of Misuzulu as the new king of the Zulu nation amid fierce, internal disputes within the Zulu royal family about who was the rightful heir to the throne.

During his last days, it had become apparent that the two had fallen out, with a sickly Buthelezi questioning the new king.

Buthelezi turned 95 last month.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/wo ... 08355.html

[PHXPhlyer]

Ian Wilmut, a British scientist who led the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep, dies at age 79
Wilmut set off a global discussion about the ethics of cloning when he announced that his team had cloned Dolly using the nucleus of a cell from an adult sheep.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science ... rcna104373

Ian Wilmut, the cloning pioneer whose work was critical to the creation of Dolly the Sheep in 1996, has died, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland said Monday. He was 79.

Wilmut set off a global discussion about the ethics of cloning when he announced that his team at the university’s Roslin Institute for animal biosciences had cloned Dolly using the nucleus of a cell from an adult sheep.

It marked the first time that a genetically identical mammal was created from an adult cell and spurred questions about the potential cloning of humans.

Wilmut later focused on using cloning techniques to make stem cells that could be used in regenerative medicine.

“With the sad news today of Ian Wilmut’s passing, science has lost a household name,’’ Bruce Whitelaw, the director of the Roslin Institute, said. “Ian led the research team that produced the first cloned mammal in Dolly. This animal has had such a positive impact on how society engages with science, and how scientists engage with society.’’

PP

[Karearea]

The folk singer-songwriter Roger Whittaker has died at the age of 87.

His greatest hits include Durham Town, The Last Farewell, New World in the Morning and his 1982 version of Wind Beneath My Wings. Worldwide, he sold nearly 50m records since the summer of 1962 when, aged 26, he began writing songs and singing in Welsh folk clubs while studying zoology, biochemistry and marine biology at the University of Bangor.

Whittaker had his first big breakthrough when he was asked to appear on an Ulster television show in Northern Ireland called This and That.

An extremely proficient whistler, his extraordinary composition Mexican Whistler later reached No 1 in three different European countries.

But it wasn’t until he released Durham Town (The Leavin’) that he got a Top 20 hit in the UK. The song’s success took him by surprise, according to comments published on his website. “I just didn’t have any faith in that song at all,” he is reported to have said. “Far from promoting the single in Britain, I went off to Finland for a cabaret season and television appearances.”

By the time he returned in November, Durham Town was rapidly ascending the British charts.

Whittaker was born in Nairobi to English parents in 1936, and the music of east Africa left a mark on his childhood. “In over 30 years of singing and playing musical sounds, the wonderful drumming, and those marvellous, infectious rhythms, have played a great part in everything I have ever written and sung,” he said.

Whittaker retired in 2012 and is survived by his wife, Natalie, whom he married nearly 60 years ago after three months’ courtship, and their five children: Emily, Lauren, Jessica, Guy, and Alexander.

Guardian: Roger Whittaker, folk singer famous for Durham Town, dies aged 87

[OneHungLow]

Ek is heeltemal jammer vir jou, jou familie en Suid Afrika...

[Woody]

David McCallum

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/a ... es-90.html

[Karearea]

Oh Illya...

[Karearea]

Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin - The Lighter Side of Spying [13:21]

[tango15]

An excellent set of clips Karearea. One of my favourite programmes of the era, and it's clear that the onscreen chemistry between those two was something special.

[PHXPhlyer]

Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter dies aged 43

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/africa/z ... index.html

Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter Zoleka Mandela has died of cancer at the age of 43, a family spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.

“Zoleka passed away on the evening of Monday, September 25th, surrounded by friends and family,” the statement, shared on her official Instagram account, said.

She documented her battle with cancer on the account. On August 23, she wrote: “What do I tell my children? How do I tell them that this time around, I may not get to live my life as a survivor? How do I tell them everything will be okay when it’s not? I’m dying … I don’t want to die.”

Nelson Mandela's granddaughters Swati Dlamini, Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway and Dorothy Adjoa Amuah are flanked by producers Graham Swanepoel, left, and Rick Leed.
Nelson Mandela's granddaughters to be featured on TV reality show
The Nelson Mandela Foundation also issued a statement Tuesday, saying it “extends its heartfelt condolences to the Mandela family on the passing of Zoleka Mandela, tragically last night.”

“We mourn the loss of a beloved grandchild of Mum Winnie and Madiba and a friend of the Foundation.”

The foundation described her as “a tireless activist for Healthcare and justice.”

“Her work in raising awareness about cancer prevention and her unwavering commitment to breaking down the stigma surrounding the disease will continue to inspire us all,” it said.

Her activism also included road safety campaigns after her 13-year-old daughter, Zenani, was killed in a car crash in 2010.

PP

[OneHungLow]

Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin - The Lighter Side of Spying [13:21]

I had forgotten how good The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was!

Poor old David McCallum losing Jill Ireland to Charles Bronson.

[PHXPhlyer]

Michael Gambon, actor who played Dumbledore in 'Harry Potter' films, dies at 82
The star of the stage and the screen “died peacefully in hospital,” following a bout of pneumonia, his family said in a statement.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mich ... rcna117801

Actor Michael Gambon, known for playing Professor Albus Dumbledore in multiple “Harry Potter” movies has died, his family said in a statement Thursday.

He was 82.

“We are devastated to announce the loss of Sir Michael Gambon,” said the statement issued on behalf of his wife, Anne, and son Fergus by publicist Clair Dobbs.

It added that he “died peacefully in hospital,” following a bout of pneumonia with the pair at his bedside.

“We ask that you respect our privacy at this painful time and thank you for your messages of support and love,” the statement added.

Born Oct. 19, 1940, in Dublin to a seamstress mother and an engineer father, Gambon left school at 15 and seven years later he qualified as an engineer having completed his apprenticeship.

But the lure of the stage, inspired by a local theater group, proved too strong and he began to tread the boards professionally in the early 1960s.

In 1962, legendary Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier made him one of the founding members of the National Theatre at London's Old Vic, alongside other emerging greats including Derek Jacobi and Maggie Smith.

As Gambon built his reputation on stage, roles on TV and movies followed including the lead role in 1986's widely acclaimed “The Singing Detective” in which he played a writer suffering from a debilitating skin condition whose imagination provided the only escape from his pain. It would make him a household name in Britain.

Other notable roles included a psychotic mob leader in “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” in 1989, the elderly King George V in “The King’s Speech” in 2010 and Lord Salisbury in 2017’s “Victoria & Abdul.”

He also had parts in director Wes Anderson comedy films 2004’s “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” and 2009’s “Fantastic Mr Fox.”

Frequently nominated for awards, he won the Olivier Award three times and the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award twice. He also won four British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards for his television work.

He also won three Olivier Awards and two ensemble cast Screen Actors Guild Awards — for 2001’s “Gosford Park” and “The King’s Speech.”

Gambon was knighted for his services to drama in 1998.

But he was perhaps best known for his role as Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” franchise, taking over the role from the late Richard Harris from the third installment in the eight-movie series.

Although the role raised Gambon’s international profile and introduced him to a new generation of fans, he once acknowledged not having read any of J. K. Rowling’s best-selling books.

Among those to pay tribute was Richard Harris’ son, Jared Harris, who wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Gambon was a “brilliant actor” and he lived “unforgettably in my memory.”

Actor James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the Harry Potter film series, also paid tribute on X, where he called Gambon, “a legend.”

He would retire from the stage in 2015 after struggling to remember his lines in front of an audience because of his advancing age.

Fiercely protective of his private life, Gambon married Anne Miller and they had one son, Fergus. He is also survived by two sons he had with set designer Philippa Hart.

PP

[OneHungLow]

Michael Gambon was superb in The Singing Detective which seems like it was on TV yesterday but was in fact shown in 1986! Tempus fugit. He was also an engineer, a PPL and a prankster... (watch the video)...

The Times published some irreverent anecdotes about the man, whose stage appearances were always memorable, and who as one of the most furious of the thespian furiosi, had a corner on the Top Gear track named after him...

Sir Michael Gambon, who has died at 82, loved a wind-up. He was once at a lunch with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, who asked what being a knight meant. “It means I can sleep with any English woman I choose,” he said. They laughed, but Gambon insisted the Queen had given him this perk. On the pretext of visiting the loo, he went to the bar and asked if anyone was English. Finding a woman who was, he explained the joke, returned to his table and she dropped by later. “I’m ready, Sir Michael,” she purred. He was less keen when the joke was on him. Playing Lear for the RSC, he was upstaged by Antony Sher’s Fool and told his co-star: “The play’s called King Lear, not ‘King Lear plus a c*** in a red nose’.”

Early in his career, Gambon could be unreliable. John Dexter, director of Brecht’s Life of Galileo at the National, warned him that he would be sacked if he continued to arrive late to rehearsals. When Gambon next arrived late, it was with tears pouring down his face. “My mother died last night,” he wailed. Dexter fell for this act but Gambon later said he regretted that his lie meant he couldn’t invite his mother to see the performance that made his name.