A Pair to Remember

Or
Gentlemen Prefer Pulses
The two and only Jane Russell, vexer of censors and inspiration for single entendre movie taglines, has been betrayed by her chest, succumbing to a respiratory illness at the age of 89. Howard Hughes’ obsession with milk was never more useful than when he discovered Russell and her 38 Ds and cast her in the western The Outlaw, notable primarily for posters deemed to reveal too much of her talents, despite the movie being generally less scandalous than a Snickers commercial by modern standards. Censorship proved to be the mother of invention, and with cleavage being off limits, Hughes answered with amplitude, designing a cantilever bra to push Russell’s muscles into every scene. With a few notable movies on her resume, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Russell’s career mostly served as a punchline for costars like Bob Hope, who said that culture was the ability to describe Russell without moving your hands, movie posters, like The French Line: “Jane Russell in 3-D. It'll Knock both your eyes out!" and The Tall Men: “They Don't come ANY BIGGER," and cartographers, as evidenced by Alaska’s twin mountains named The Jane Russell Peaks.

The Duke of Flatline

Duke Snider, the biggest thing to come out of Compton until Easy-E, has died at the age of 84. The third best center fielder in New York in the 1950s, providing the convenient rhyme with Dubuque, Snider was accustomed to being the other guy, having made his major league debut in the same game where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. He lacked the cache of Mantle and the athleticism of Mays, but Snider was the only one of the three to hit 40 HRs in 5 straight seasons and led all major leaguers with 326 HRs and 1,031 RBI in the 1950s while leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to 6 pennants in 11 seasons. Snider was the only player to hit 4 HRs in a World Series twice, including the lone championship for Brooklyn in 1955. He also was the last living player who was on the field when the Dodgers finally overcame the New York Yankees and hit the last homer in Ebbets Field before the team left in 1957. While the West Coast welcomed major league baseball, LA Coliseum, with its 440-foot right center field fence – 100 feet deeper than the Brooklyn bandbox – was less inviting and Snider’s production dropped, though he did pick up a second World Series ring in 1959. With the second-year New York Mets stockpiling ex-Dodgers, Giants and Yankees to offer daily Old-Timers Games to bring in fans, in 1963 Snider was back on the East Coast, notching his 400th HR and 2,000 hit, but losing 111 games in the process. Snider closed out his career with an unproductive season with the San Francisco Giants, then managed in the Dodgers and San Diego Padres minor league systems and served as a broadcaster for the Padres and Montreal Expos.

Five Rounds, Somewhat Less Rapid!

In need of Doctoring, William Nicholas Stone Courtney, who led the stalwart United Nations Intelligence Taskforce to defend the earth from Daleks, Cybermen, the Master and Flipper People as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart on Doctor Who, has died of cancer at the age of 81. Bearing a name that helps explain how the British lost the Falklands, Lethbridge-Stewart brought the exiled Doctor into UNIT as a scientific advisor. Although he rarely agreed with the Doctor or understood the extraterrestrial threats before him, the Brigadier met every challenge with a stiff upper lip and a hail of bullets and rocket fire. Brought out of retirement to battle interdimensional knights, Lethbridge-Stewart saved the planet by besting the Destroyer of Worlds with only his service revolver, the most expensive prop the BBC could muster.

Uncle Leo, Goodbye!

(Props to Monty)

Or
Lesser for Two Weevils
The sounds have stopped emanating from Len Lesser's body, the New York Jew who somehow briefly got the jump on Josey Wales in Missouri, with his death from pneumonia at the age of 88. Lesser spent 50 years as “Hey, it’s that guy” until the beak nose and thick city accent landed him the role of a lifetime as Jerry Seinfeld’s protocol-obsessed Uncle Leo. Other roles included a prison guard in Papillon, building a bridge for Kelly’s Heroes and playing one of Frank’s more demonstrative friends on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Snatched

David F. Friedman, fan of gore and boobs, has died of heart failure at the age of 87. The film producer got his start with “nudie-cuties” – straightforward documentary footage of Florida nudists with titles like Goldilocks and The Three Bares that fell just short of the censor’s axe, before graduating into putting an adult spin on classic tales, like The Erotic Adventures of Zorro, The Adult Version Of Jekyll and Hide and The Erotic Judgment at Nuremberg, aka Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S., and Life is Beautiful, and Sexy, aka Love Camp 7. In addition, Friedman produced the first splatter film, Blood Feast, the heartwarming take of an Egyptian caterer in Miami who enjoys decapitating women, which he promoted by supplying theaters with airline vomit bags to distribute to customers. Made for $24,500, the film reportedly earned millions.

Coins on the Eyes of Kenneth Mars

Or
Women are From Venus, Dead Man is Mars

Or
Achtung, Baby
(Props to Monty)
Kenneth Mars, best remembered for his DVD Premiere Award-nominated turn as Grandpa Longneck in The Land Before Time IX: Journey to the Big Water, has vallowed in is grandvudder’s vudshtapps (Vudshtapps, Vudshtapps, ), succumbing to pancreatic cancer at the age of 75. A favorite of Mel Brooks, Mars played Nazi-loving playwright Franz Liebkind, composer of Springtime for Hitler in The Producers and Police Inspector Kemp, whose artificial arm had a mind of its own in Young Frankenstein. When not characterizing all of Europe with the same broad accent, Francis’ boss Otto Mannkusser on Malcolm in the Middle, Senator Donner, who tried to shut down the Misfits of Science in their pilot episode, and Alan Stanwyk's father in law in Fletch.

We Are a Fatality

Chuck Tanner, the manager traded for a catcher, has died at the age of approximately 80. Tanner was an amiable baseball man fated to deal with jackasses like Dick Allen and Wilbur Wood, who he coaxed to an MVP award and a 24-win season, respectively, Charlie O. Finley, who hired him for a season then traded him for Manny Sanguillen as part of the house cleaning. All of which prepared him to deal with the collection of cranks reprobates on the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates, including Dave Parker, Bert Blyleven, Willie Stargell and Bill Madlock. We Are Family was more like We Are Fraternity, with tales of baseball Annies and drugs filling the pages of a tell-all, but the team could flat out play, winning 98 games, sweeping Cincinnati in the NLCS and then rallying from a 3 games to 1 deficit to win the World Series. After being fired by the Pirates, Tanner wrapped his career with the unfathomably nice Dale Murphy in Atlanta, and lost 89, 92 and were on the way to 106 losses when he got fired. Nice guys really do finish last.

The Boys are Back Inground Again

(Props to Don)

or
The Crowd Thins Out
(Additional accolades for Don)
Gary Moore, best remembered from his time in Thin Lizzy, has died at the age of 58. The ex-Skid Row (not that one, a different one) guitarist joined the Irish rock band in 1973 to complete a tour after Eric Bell quit suddenly, and later performed in Colosseum II.

Round Peggy in a Rectangular Hole

Peggy Rea, bit player in two decades worth of TV, has died of heart failure at the age of 89. Best remembered as Boss Hogg’s wife Lulu, Rea also played Grace’s mother-in-law on Grace Under Fire, Olivia’s cousin on The Waltons, Nana in Meego, and, in her first role in 1953, a nurse on I Love Lucy.

Getty ‘R Done

J. Paul Getty III, apple well removed from the tree, has been reunited with his ear at the age of 54. The grandson of the oil man who was once the richest man in the world was living a clichéd bohemian life frequenting nightclubs, selling paintings and homemade jewelry and acting as an extra in movies when he was kidnapped at the age of 16 in 1973 by Italian gangsters and held for $17 million ransom. After the family refused to pay after 3 months, his severed ear was sent to a newspaper. With the boy damaged, the old financial wizard was able to negotiate the ransom down to $3 million, of which he contributed $2.2 million, the most his accountants said would be tax deductible, then loaned the rest to his son at 4% interest, so essentially he made a profit on his own grandson’s kidnapping. And when he called to thank him for paying the ransom, Grandpa didn’t take the call. After learning his family viewed him with the same regard as one has for a dented can of tomato soup, he fell heavy for alcohol and drugs, which led to a drug overdose that caused a stroke that left him paralyzed, unable to speak and partially blind. So apparently, you can be too rich.