Maurice Sendak is being remembered, rightly so, for the breadth of his contribution to children’s literature and its recognition of kids not as perfect little angels in an English garden but as, well, kids: selfish, impatient, wondrous, imaginative, raging, loving and wholly unpredictable.
“Where The Wild Things Are” gets a deserved amount of attention in the Sendak canon, because of the colorful, sharp-toothed inhabitants of the world created from one little boy’s imagination. Who can resist that jungle wonderland conjured up and growing wild in Max’s room? I couldn’t. But still, for me and a lot of other kids I knew and even more I don’t know, Sendak’s characters invoked the wonder of another more familiar land that existed on a map but loomed even more weird, dangerous and magnificent in our imaginations – the summer-hot Brooklyn of “Really Rosie.” I had never been there, but at 7 or 8 it seemed like a fantastic place to be, where precocious little girls like me could imagine themselves stars, where alligators danced to the alphabet and where at the end of the day, some good friends, a little moxie and a lot of magical thinking could salvage an ordinary day.
Based on several of Sendak’s books, including “Chicken Soup With Rice,” “Pierre” and “Alligators All Around,” the 1975 animated special followed the adventures of the fabulously self-assured Rosie, voiced with raspy knowing by Carole King. You can have your Jonis and your Carlys – To me, Carole King is the voice of the ’70s. A decade before I discovered the confessional joy of weeping to her “Tapestry” in a dark room with ice cream, that rasp invoked Rosie, a spunky kid who not only imagined a production of a movie based on her life, but strong-armed her friends, the Nutshell Kids, into auditioning to be in it. Bossy kids all over the world took note.
And if King was the voice, Sendak was the heart. He based Rosie on a little girl who used to sing on the street in his Brooklyn neighborhood, and he imbued her with all of the realness, rawness and spunk that one imagines they hand out in New York at birth. Like Ezra Jack Keats’ “The Snowy Day,” these tales weren’t about fresh-faced kids on prairies and in tree-lined suburbs. Rosie was a city kid, like me, who had to create her own wonderland from the heat rising from the concrete and the sounds of busy, crowded urban life.
And the tales she and her friends spin show them to have a lot of the same properties that made Max so recognizable as a real kid, both the admirably down-to-earth parts and the fairly awful ones. Among the Sendak stories brought to life in animation and in King’s sweet, sassy songs – “Alligators All Around,” a balloon-bursting, oatmeal-ordering, people-pushing romp from A-Z; “Pierre,” a cautionary tale of a contrary little boy and a hungry lion, and “The Ballad of Chicken Soup,” a bizarrely morbid fantasy about Rosie’s brother choking to death on a chicken bone.
I remember thinking “Wow, that’s weird” and then thinking “Kids can be horrible sometimes.” Because they can. The other soup-related song on the show was “Chicken Soup With Rice,” which at the time seemed like a cozy, oddly specific ditty about soup, but which now seems like a warm ode to a familiar but indelible comfort of city living – eating hot soup on a cold city day, when the trees are bare, the skies gray and unfriendly, and this soup, maybe made by your grandma as your socks dry, is the only bright spot. And it’s a great, bright spot.
Maurice Sendak was famous for creating a magical world of wild things. But for me, the wildest, most wonderful world he painted was on a city block, where alligators roamed free, and where a little girl, through a story and a song, could make herself and her friends stars…at least for the length of a hot summer afternoon.
Maurice Sendak (AP photo)
NEW YORK — Maurice Sendak, the children’s book author and illustrator who saw the sometimes-dark side of childhood in books like Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, died early Tuesday. He was 83.
Longtime friend and caretaker Lynn Caponera said she was with him when Sendak died at a hospital in Danbury, Conn. She said he had a stroke on Friday.
Where the Wild Things Are earned Sendak a prestigious Caldecott Medal for the best children’s book of 1964 and became a hit movie in 2009. President Bill Clinton awarded Sendak a National Medal of the Arts in 1996 for his vast portfolio of work.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — George Lindsey, who spent nearly 30 years as the grinning Goober on The Andy Griffith Show and Hee Haw, has died. He was 83.
A press release from Marshall-Donnelly-Combs Funeral Home in Nashville said Lindsay died early Sunday morning after a brief illness. Funeral arrangements were still being made.
Lindsey was the beanie-wearing Goober on The Andy Griffith Show from 1964 to 1968 and its successor, Mayberry RFD, from 1968 to 1971. He played the same jovial character — a service station attendant — on Hee Haw from 1971 until it went out of production in 1993.
Lindsey told The Associated Press in 1985 that “America has grown up with me. Goober is every man; everyone finds something to like about ol’ Goober.”
The Associated Press
By TRAVIS LOLLER
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — George Lindsey, who spent nearly 30 years as the grinning Goober on “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Hee Haw,” has died. He was 83.
A press release from Marshall-Donnelly-Combs Funeral Home in Nashville said Lindsay died early Sunday morning after a brief illness. Funeral arrangements were still being made.
Share condolences: George Lindsey
Lindsey was the beanie-wearing Goober on “The Andy Griffith Show” from 1964 to 1968 and its successor, “Mayberry RFD,” from 1968 to 1971. He played the same jovial character – a service station attendant – on “Hee Haw” from 1971 until it went out of production in 1993.
“America has grown up with me,” Lindsey said in an Associated Press interview in 1985. “Goober is every man; everyone finds something to like about ol’ Goober.”
He joined “The Andy Griffith Show” in 1964 when Jim Nabors, portraying Gomer Pyle, left the program. Goober Pyle, who had been mentioned on the show as Gomer’s cousin, thus replaced him.
“At that time, we were the best acting ensemble on TV. The scripts were terrific. Andy is the best script constructionist I’ve ever been involved with. And you have to lift your acting level up to his; he’s awfully good.”
In a statement released through the funeral home, Griffith said, “George Lindsey was my friend. I had great respect for his talent and his human spirit. In recent years, we spoke often by telephone. Our last conversation was a few days ago … I am happy to say that as we found ourselves in our eighties, we were not afraid to say, `I love you.’ That was the last thing George and I had to say to each other. `I love you.’”
Although he was best known as Goober, Lindsey had other roles during a long TV career. Earlier, he often was a “heavy” and once shot Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke.”
His other TV credits included roles on “M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H,” `’The Wonderful World of Disney,” `’CHIPs,” `’The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” `’The Real McCoys,” `’Rifleman,” `’The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” `’Twilight Zone” and “Love American Style.”
Reflecting on his career, he said in 1985: “There’s a residual effect of knowing I’ve made America laugh. I’m not the only one, but I’ve contributed something.”
He had movie roles, too, appearing in “Cannonball Run II” and “Take This Job and Shove It.” His voice was used in animated Walt Disney features including “The Aristocats,” `’The Rescuers” and “Robin Hood.”
Lindsey was born in Jasper, Ala., the son of a butcher. He received a bachelor of science degree from Florence State Teachers College (now the University of North Alabama) in 1952 after majoring in physical education and biology and playing quarterback on the football team.
After spending three years in the Air Force, he worked one year as a high school baseball and basketball coach and history teacher near Huntsville, Ala.
In 1956, he attended the American Theatre Wing in New York City and began his professional career on Broadway, appearing in the musicals “All American” and “Wonderful Town.”
He moved to Hollywood in the early 1960s and then to Nashville in the early 1990s.
“There’s no place in the United States I can go that they don’t know me. They may not know me, but they know the character,” he told The Tennessean in 1980.
At that time, he said the Griffith show “was the first soft rural comedy with a moral.”
“We physically and mentally became those people when we got to the set.”
He did some standup comedy – ending the show by tap and break dancing.
One of his jokes:
“A football coach, holding a football, asks his quarterback, `Son, can you pass this?’ The player says, `Coach, I don’t even think I can swallow it.’”
Lindsey devoted much of his spare time to raising funds for the Alabama Special Olympics. For 17 years, he sponsored a celebrity golf tournament in Montgomery, Ala., that raised money for the mentally disabled.
The University of North Alabama awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1992, and he was affectionately called “Doctor Goober” by acquaintances after that.
Adam Yauch (Photo credit: Serjao Carvalho)
Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons says Adam Yauch, the gravelly voiced Beastie Boys rapper who co-founded the seminal hip-hop group, has died at age 47.
Calls and emails to representatives for the Beastie Boys were not immediately returned. Simmons’ Def Jam label released the Beastie Boys’ first album, “Licensed to Ill.”
The cause of death wasn’t immediately known. Yauch, who’s also known as MCA, was diagnosed with a cancerous parotid gland in 2009. He had undergone surgery and radiation.
At the time, Yauch expressed hope it was “very treatable,” but his illness caused the group to cancel shows and delayed the release of their 2011 album, “Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2.”
He hadn’t performed in public since 2009 and was absent when the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April.
PHOENIX — Former CBS news correspondent and Arizona State University journalism professor Ben Silver has died. He was 85.
The university says he died Wednesday from complications of Parkinson’s disease at his home in St. Louis Park, Minn.
Silver was a CBS national correspondent in the 1960s and covered race riots, school integration and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s accident at Chappaquiddick.
Silver worked at WCKT-TV in Miami from 1957 to 1966, reporting from the Soviet Union and Latin America. He won a Peabody Award in 1960 for his coverage of Latin America.
He began teaching at ASU in 1972 and continued to file CBS reports for several years. He retired in 1990.
He is survived by his wife, six children and 11 grandchildren. Services will be held Sunday in Minneapolis.
NEW YORK — Chris Wallace turned and blew a kiss to a giant portrait of his father, 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace, after memorializing him Tuesday as “the best journalist I have ever known.”
The Fox News anchor also told of when his father tried to steal an interview from him and, when his infuriated son called to confront him, paused when told he had to choose between Chris Wallace and Chris Rock. Mike Wallace didn’t take the interview, but handed if off to Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes instead.
Former colleagues, friends and family members swapped stories about Wallace in an auditorium a few blocks from where he worked, before an audience that included GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and journalism luminaries like Roger Ailes and Carl Bernstein. The public face of TV’s most enduring newsmagazine for nearly four decades, Mike Wallace died at age 93 on April 7.
Some of the stories were flattering, some less so. And despite the somber purpose of remembering the recently deceased, some were hilarious.
Dick Clark helped brought rock 'n' roll into the mainstream with 'American Bandstand'. (AP)
I was not a cool 13-year-old. Most 13-year-olds are not, but I was extra un-cool: Uncoordinated. Jheri curl. Bifocals thicker than the glass window at a check-cashing store.
I needed to know, pronto, what the cool kids were doing, the bands they listened to, the must-know dances, the top tapes on their Walkman playlist because I had no clue what they were.
But my friend Dick Clark did.
And if you had to consult a 55-year-old for coolness advice, it would be Dick Clark. I never met him, but I felt like I knew him. After all, we had a standing date every Saturday afternoon on American Bandstand, along with his even-cooler young friends, who danced like I wanted to dance, dressed like I wanted to dress, and got within a moonwalk’s distance of pretty much every shiny face smiling back to me from my bedroom wall and school locker.
It would be three years before we got cable and I could consult the VJs on MTV for style advice, so along with Don Cornelius and his Soul Train dancers, Dick Clark served as my musical guide all through high school. And as a black girl who liked pop music, American Bandstand was my bridge – my white friends might not watch Soul Train, and my black friends might not usually watch Bandstand, but when New Edition showed up to meet Dick, all of us were watching. Cute knew no color.
And did I mention that Dick was also a pretty reliable New Year’s Eve date?
When Dick Clark died Wednesday, it was apparent his friends were legion: There were friends who credit their careers to him, like West Palm’s Connie Francis, queen of South Florida’s Spring Break scene, and head Belmont Dion DiMucci, who lives in Boca Raton and appeared on Bandstand several times.
"I inducted Dick Clark into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (He was a) dear friend," recalled DiMucci, via email. "I always looked up to him with great love and respect."
Levon Helm appears on 'Imus in the Morning' in a 2007 file photo. (AP)
With songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” ”The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek,” The Band fused rock, blues, folk and gospel to create a sound that seemed as authentically American as a Mathew Brady photograph or a Mark Twain short story.
In truth, the group had only one American — Levon Helm.
Helm, the drummer and singer who brought an urgent beat and a genuine Arkansas twang to some of The Band’s best-known songs and helped turn a bunch of musicians known mostly as Bob Dylan’s backup group into one of rock’s most legendary acts, has died. He was 71.
Helm, who was found to have throat cancer in 1998, died Thursday afternoon, according to his website. On Tuesday, a message on the site said he was in the final stages of cancer.
Share your condolences: Online guestbook | Photos: 2012 notable deaths
Helm and his bandmates — Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel — were musical virtuosos who returned to the roots of American music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy metal and jams. The group’s 1968 debut, “Music From the Big Pink,” and its follow-up, “The Band,” remain landmark albums of the era, and songs such as “The Weight,” ”Dixie Down” and “Cripple Creek” have become rock standards.
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