Estate of the Union

Legacy Carrier

Or
CSK RIP
(From the Derby Dead Pool, where I’m now tied for 28th)
Coretta Scott King, who spent the last 4 decades ensuring that Martin Luther King’s legacy did not fall with him, has died at the age of 78 from complications from a stroke and heart attack suffered last August. A classically trained singer and pianist studying at a Boston conservatory, King put aside her career to support Martin Luther King, Jr., then a young Boston University theology student, but soon one of the leaders of both the Civil Rights Movement and the peace movement aimed at ending the war in Vietnam. She was by his side during the Montgomery bus boycott, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize and spent the years after his death fighting to found the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and then establishing a national holiday in his honor. Under her direction the center focused on the issues that contribute to violence, such as hunger, unemployment, voting rights and racism. Not everyone was full of praise, however. “It is an unconscionable defiant act by a special interest group to take more than their fair share,” said Mississippi Senator Trent Lott. “Was it really necessary for a day of memorials to Mrs. King when a month has already been set aside for Black History Month?”

As if the president speaking in public wasn’t enough to make me think about the sweet embrace of death, the 6th hit of the year was announced yesterday. By comparison, the 6th hit of last year’s record campaign came on Feb. 10. Dawn’s Ashes to Ashes is alone in corralling Coretta and moves into a 4-way for first.

The Leaderboard:
1st Matt 1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Paul - Pushing Daisies 1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Monty - Comedy of Terrors 1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Dawn - Ashes to Ashes 1 hit, 20 points
5th Me - Our Hearse Is a Very, Very, Very Fine Hearse 1 hit, 10 points
(tie) Mark - Beltway Boneyard III: Fillibustering the Grim Reaper 1 hit, 10 points

Uncommon Dead Women...and Others
(Props to Michelle Haus)

Or
The I Die Chronicles
(More kudos to Michelle Haus)

Or
The Die-di Chronicles
(Honorifics to Craig)

Or
Wasserstein In Decline
(Another shameless steal from the Derby Dead Pool)
Chick-lit playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who chronicled 20th century life for gyno-Americans with trenchant humor, has died of lymphoma at the age of 55. Among Wasserstein’s works was the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Heidi Chronicles,” “The Sisters Rosensweig,” and “Uncommon Women and Others,” her first stage success.

Hill’s Angel
Henry McGee, whose mute mugging and persistent perplexion mirrored the world’s failure to understand how The Benny Hill Show was such a success, has died at the age of 75. In other Brit stuff, he played upper class schmucks who got their comeuppance and was famous for being in the Sugar Puffs ads along with the Honey Monster. Don’t bother asking, I have no idea what that means.

He’s Not Breathing, He’s My Brother

Or
Penn is for Heaven
Chris “Fredo” Penn, best known for making brother Sean look normal and thin, was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment at the age of 43. There were no signs of foul play, so let’s start the side bets on what he OD’ed on. Chris’ best role was as Nice Guy Eddie Cabot, Joe Cabot’s whiny but loyal son in Reservoir Dogs. Other highlights included a whiny fat boy who just wanted to dance in Footloose, sexually frustrated whiny husband who kind of bludgeons a girl to death in Short Cuts and the whiniest member of the Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire. In a reversal of fortune from his real life, he played the cool brother in Corky Romano. He would have played Stiffler’s Dad in American Pie 2, but those scenes were deemed not to fit in, because above all else, the American Pie series has been a slave to continuity.

Belle and Rebels

Winters’ Discontent
Shelley Winters, beloved courageous but heart attack-prone swimming yenta, has died of heart failure at the age of 85. Starting out as a sexpot, Winters eventually blossomed into an esteemed character actress, winning two Oscars. Along the way, she took enough lovers to require two tell-all autobiographies, and spanning generations of leading men, from Errol Flynn to Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable to Marlon Brando. She also had an affair with Joe Kennedy, inspiring roommate Marilyn Monroe to get to know the rest of the family. After sexed-up roles in such films as Cover Girl and Sailor’s Holiday, she began to earn more serious roles, primarily as a murder victim in such films as Night of the Hunter, A Double Life (for which her strangler, Ronald Colman, won an Oscar) and A Place in the Sun, for which she was Oscar-nominated. Winters scored a win in 1959 as Petronella Van Daan, one of the Jewish refugees in The Diary of Anne Frank, then again as a cruel mother keeping her blind daughter apart from the black man who befriended her in 1965’s Patch of Blue. Her final nomination came as Belle Rosen, with Winters acknowledging her middle-aged girth with the line, “In the water I’m a very skinny lady,” before swimming to Gene Hackman’s rescue in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure. Pauline Kael was less impressed, noting: “Shelley Winters drowns in this movie, but not soon enough.” Other notable roles included Ma Parker on Batman, sex-crazed gang leader Ma Barker in Bloody Mama, Nana Mary, Roseanne’s grandmother and heroin kingpin Mommy in the blaxploitation flick Cleopatra Jones.

Four of us got the Gene Hackman treatment, with Winters’ death lifting the heavy metal door of failure off our seasons, with 5 points going to rookies Joe (Drop Dead, Gorgeous) and Jessica, to Warren after going 0-for-20 in 2005 and to my International House of Death, creating a 4-way tie for sixth. Much like Stella Stevens, Mark doubted Winters and dropped her from his list after picking her in 2002 and 2003.

A bad week for the Winters extended family as…

Finder of the Lost Life

Or
Game Over
(From the mind of Monty)

Or
The End of the Game
(More props for Monty)
Anthony Franciosa, hot-headed actor and ex-husband of Shelley Winters, died at 77 following a massive stroke. A master of portraying moody troubled characters, Franciosa had plenty of moody, troubled experiences from which to draw. Franciosa was the Sean Penn of his day, developing a reputation for arguments with directors and fellow actors, for sulk sessions in dressing rooms and for punching photographers. These incidents derailed a promising career that had included Tony and Oscar nominations for the stage and screen versions of A Hatful of Rain, and he ended up in European productions and television, in such duds as The Name of the Game, as a member of a publishing troika, the half-season of the TV adaptation of Matt Helm and Finder of Lost Loves, kind of a romantic Quantum Leap.

He’s Done to His Last Heartbreak

Or
In the Eternal Midnight Hour

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Land of 1000 Corpses
(Kudos to James)

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It’s Really Hard Now
Wilson Pickett, a soul music pioneer who may or may not have been one of Shelley Winters’ conquests, has died of a heart attack at 64. Pickett’s hits included “In the Midnight Hour,” “Mustang Sally,” and “Land of a Thousand Dances.” His wild off-stage behavior earned him the nickname Wicked Pickett, with arrests for shouting death threats while driving his car on the front lawn of the mayor of Englewood, NJ, for assaulting his girlfriend, for hitting an 88-year-old man while driving drunk and for carrying a shotgun in his car. Despite his wild side, a 1999 comeback merited a Grammy nomination for It’s Harder Now.

I’s Wide Shut
(Honorifics to Craig)

Or
I, Mortius
Tom Nugent, a College Football Hall of Famer credited with developing the I formation at Virginia Military Institute who probably only ever dreamed of nailing Shelley Winters, has died at the age of 92. The I formation of 5 offensive lineman, a quarterback under center and two backs in line behind him, has emerged as one of the most offensive formations in football, replacing the difficult to execute Q formation, in which two backs stand on either side of a circle of lineman and receivers. In addition to his time at VMI, he coached at Florida State (where he coached Burt Reynolds) and Maryland. He was more an innovator than an executor, compiling an 89-80-3 record over 17 seasons.

An Emir, Running Nozzle, Coach and Singer, Heroic Corporal Fated

Dubai, Dubai, Doomed

Or
Come-a, Come-a Down, Dubai, Doomed, Down Down. Breathing Air is Hard to Do.
Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir of Dubai, has died at the age of 62. The emir had been instrumental in bringing together the eight small Gulf states to form the United Arab Emirates. A horse racing aficionado, the emir had been in Australia for one of the largest and most important horse auctions of the year. The real tragedy is that with the emir’s knowledge of horses and close ties to the Bush family, he would have been a front-runner to take over as permanent head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Katrina and the Waves
Barry Cowsill, a member of the popular 1960s singing family The Cowsills, was found dead on a wharf nearly four months after he disappeared when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. He was 51. The Cowsills made a minor splash with such wholesome pop crap as “The Rain, The Park and Other Things” and “Hair.” They could have been the Partridges, but they balked at calling Shirley Jones “Mommy,” thus inflicting Danny Bonaduce on an unwitting populace.

Rod Dead-eaux
Rod Dedeaux, one of the greatest coaches in baseball history, has died at the age of 91. In his 45 years at the University of Southern California, he won a record 1,331 games, posted 41 winning seasons, won 28 conference championships and 11 national championships. His teams won 5 straight titles from 1970-74 – no other school has won more than 2 in a row. Most notable was the ’73 title. Down 7-0 going into the bottom of the 9th against Dave Winfield (yes that Dave Winfield), who had allowed 1 infield single while striking out 15 over the first 8 innings. 9 batters and just one out later, the Trojans were champs once again. He also was the last man to coach Mark McGwire before he was chemically enhanced, both at USC and on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team. Four decades of pinging aluminum bats took their toll, as on the set of Field of Dreams, where he served as technical advisor, Dedeaux failed to notice that right-handed Ray Liotta had botched the minor technical detail that Shoeless Joe Jackson was a lefty.

You'll Never Find Another Life
(You knew Monty would crop up somewhere)
Or

Lou Rawls’ Parade of Corpses
(More kudos for Monty)

Or
His cancer was a sickness that a pill can’t cure

Or
Lou Rawls over and Dies
(Courtesy of the Derby Dead Pool, where I am now in an 18-way tie for 20th place)
Lou Rawls, the velvet-voiced R&B singer who helped generations get laid, has died of brain and lung cancer at the age of 72. Best remembered for “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” Rawls started in the 1950s with Sam Cooke and later performed with Dick Clark at the Hollywood Bowl in 1959 opened for The Beatles at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. He also was the Jerry Lewis of the United Negro College Fund Telethon – without the cloying and objectification of children – helping to raise hundreds of millions raised for the United Negro College Fund.

Hugh Loss
On March 16, 1968, U.S. Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, Jr., came upon U.S. solders firing on Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai. Thompson put his helicopter between the civilians and the U.S. forces, his crew drawing their weapons on their fellow soldiers to provide cover for Thompson as he confronted the leader of the ground forces and then coaxed civilians out of hiding for evacuation. For his courage, Thompson endured the scorn of and derision of his comrades and a congressman who proved why the House of Representatives is the lower branch of Congress by suggesting that the only man who deserved to be prosecuted in relation to My Lai was Thompson. Thompson’s role was not widely known for decades, but eventually he came to be regarded as an example for all soldiers to follow, appearing at West Point annually to lecture to cadets, and in 1998 Thompson and his crew received the prestigious Soldier’s Medal, the highest honor for bravery not related to conflict with the enemy. Thompson died last week of cancer at the age of 62.