Gil-no-more

Edward Herrmann, perennial special guest star as patriarch Richard Gilmore on Gilmore Girls, has died of brain cancer at the age of 71. The fraternal triplet of Egon Spengler and Hoover from Animal House, Herrmann pulled off the rare feat of playing both America’s most famous crippled President – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – in an Emmy-nominated performance, and a year later playing America’s most famous crippled baseball player – Lou Gehrig, in another TV movie. He played a law student who cracked under pressure in The Paper Chase and a battle-hardened surgeon who finds his limit in an episode of MASH. His patrician bearing and voice led to a long string of roles as politicians, priests, and Bucky Larson’s reformed porn star father, as well as steady narration work as the spokesman for Dodge, and pretty much everything on The History Channel.

Into Each Life, Rainer Must Fall

Or

Rainer in Pain Falls Mainly Where She’s Lain

Or

When it Rainers, it Pours

(Meritorious mention for Monty)

Or

Returning to the Good Earth

(Additional accolades for Monty)
Luise Rainer, about whom it is often said, "Winning an Oscar isn't so difficult. After all, they gave Luise Rainer two" has died of pneumonia at the age of 104. Rainer was starting to emerge as a stage and film star in Austria and Germany when she skipped out during Hitler’s rise to power to find fame in Hollywood. There, she made 9 movies, winning back-to-back Oscars for Best Actress in 1936 (for The Great Ziegfeld) and 1937 (for The Good Earth). As the heartbroken Anna, Ziegfeld’s common-law wife, Rainer scored the Oscar for one telephone call, smiling through tears and struggling for composure as she congratulated Ziegfeld on his marriage to Billie Burke, then hung up and dissolved in sobs, the kind of over the top histrionics early voters loved. The German-born child of Jewish parents repeated by playing O-Lan, the stoic Chinese peasant wife of Wang Lung from the Pearl S. Buck novel. Having won in a biopic and for faking an accent, all Rainer needed was to have played a crip to complete the Hollywood hat trick of Oscar bait, but MGM president Louis Mayer decided that it made more sense to put his two-time Oscar winner in subpar melodramas rather than the more serious roles she craved. Rather than kowtow, Rainer gave up the business, opting instead to aid orphaned refugees of the Spanish Civil War, appearing at war bond rallies in the United States, entertaining Allied troops during World War II, and appearing in a few plays and TV appearances. A role was developed specifically for her in La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini, but Rainer still had a bit of diva-ishness in her that led Fellini to cut the role and the aggravation.

Needs a Little Help from 6 Friends

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Up Where he Belongs

(Props to Mike L)

 

Or

He Ain’t Feeling Alright

(An epithany shared with Mike L.)

Joe Cocker, gravelly voiced spasmodic British blues singer and cover artist, is now powerless to stop you if you elected to get up and walk out on him, having died of lung cancer at the age of 70. Feel free to leave your hat on for the funeral. His cover of The Beatles’ "With a Little Help from My Friends" became his anthem, as he performed it at Woodstock and for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee, and it became the theme song to The Wonder Years. He hit #5 with a cover of You Are So Beautiful in 1974, and won a Grammy for the 1983 duet Up Where We Belong, best remembered from An Officer and a Gentleman. 

Morguey and Bess

Or

Bess this Mess

Bess Myerson, who broke up the shiksa hegemony of the world’s beauty pageants, then became Ed Koch’s beard, has died at the age of 90. Rising out of the Bronx to win Miss New York City, Myerson carried the hope of all Jews still dealing with the one-two punch of the Holocaust (if you believe in that kind of thing) and the anti-Semitic theory that they had dragged the country into war with her to Atlantic City where she won the 1945 pageant, the first that carried a scholarship for the winner. Her triumph was short-lived, as several pageant sponsors didn’t want a Jewish spokeswoman and many hotels and country clubs closed their doors to her, so many of her appearances were canceled. With her calendar cleared, she went on an anti-defamation crusade. TV was more forgiving, and she appeared on I’ve Got a Secret for 9 years, then became New York’s first consumer affairs advocate, where she helped push through the first regulation in the nation requiring retailers to post unit prices to make comparison shopping easier and helped recover millions of dollars for defrauded consumers. When Koch ran for mayor of New York, Myerson was always on his arm, fostering the idea that marriage might be in the offing and countering rumors that the lifelong bachelor was gay. Her favorite daughter image was tarnished when she started an affair with a married sewer contractor 21 years her junior that blossomed into an indictment on corruption charges. Though she was acquitted, her profile was decidedly lower from then on, and by the end she had become so obscure that it took 3 weeks for anyone to realize she was *that* Bess Myerson.

Im-Mobley

Mary Ann Mobley, who stepped into the shoes of the not even remotely similar-looking Dixie Carter as Mrs. Drummond in the final season of Diff’rent Strokes after the latter had had enough of listening to Danny Cooksey, has died at the age of 77. The first Mississippian to represent the United States at the UN as Miss America in 1959, Mobley went on to a thoroughly nondescript acting career highlighted by stints as one of the lesser lights on Match Game ’76, bit parts in two Elvis movies – Harum Scarum and Girl Happy – and a plethora of cameo appearances. She also married the equally bland Gary Collins, forming the couple mostly likely to happily occupy a Sears catalog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkZ0ZjatY0

Wax Off

(Hat tip to Monty)

Ken Weatherwax, bug-eating son on The Addams Family, has died of a heart attack at the age of 59. Other than later Addams Family-related appearances, he never acted again. Weatherwax claimed that he was typecast, ignoring the fact that his role consisted mostly of giggling and wooden deliveries. Making it to age 59, he was somewhat of an elder statesman among child actors, and outlived fellow Addamses Carolyn Jones (Morticia) (53) and Ted Cassidy (Lurch) 46.