Some Monday Reads

 It appears Fox "News" is losing its grip on the so-called "culture wars."

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I knew I left somebody out when I was writing about obituaries last week.  I forgot to mention the death of German-born  actress Elke Sommer, 85, who had her career peak in the 1960s, most infamously as Kay Bergdahl in the legendary turkey The Oscar (1966), one of my favorite movies of all time.  She is perhaps better known for her appearance in A Shot in the Dark and other more prestigious films than the all-time turkey.

However, who could ever forget her thankless role as the love interest of the despicable Frankie Fane, played by Stephen Boyd, who chewed up the scenery every chance he got?  During one lover's spat in the film, she says, "You represent everything I loathe."  Boyd's retort, "You mean everything you love."

And then near the end of this legendary movie, when Elke's character finally sees Frankie for the turd he really was when he tried to "buy" the Academy Award.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a clip on YouTube, but her parting shot at Fane was:  "I do hope your Oscar keeps you warm on cold nights."  Timeless turkey.

Snip:

Born Elke Schletz in 1940 in Berlin, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, she was evacuated with her family to Bavaria during the war. Intending to work as an interpreter, she was spotted by celebrated Italian director Vittorio De Sica after winning a beauty contest on a trip to Italy in 1958, and subsequently offered roles in a string of Italian comedy films. She crossed back into more serious work with the West German drama The Death Ship, opposite Horst Buchholz (who would go on to appear in cowboy classic The Magnificent Seven).

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Sommer died in Los Angeles October 28 of heart failure.  Her second husband died earlier this year.

Fun fact:  She was reportedly fluent in seven languages though she typically cited five or six in interviews.

Other BC Races

 Since I am off to a late start today because of continuing my move, I will post these races off and on for the next day or so.  Source is NBC Sports YouTube channel.   The races were held at Lexington, Kentucky's Keeneland Racecourse.

Distaff:  Nitrogen

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Turf:  Benvenuto Cellilni

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Filly and Mare Turf Sprint:  Kathynmarissa, a daughter of TC winner American Pharoah

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Dirt Mile:  Further Ado, but Owen Almighty probably won the race in this photo finish.

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Sprint:  T.O. Elvis

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Juvenile Fillies:  Emphatic

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Juvenile Turf:  Haffner

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Filly and Mare Sprint:  Ways and Means

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Juvenile:  Hughes

 

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Juvenile Turf Sprint:  Liver Tango

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Juvenile Fillies Turf:  Sun Goddess

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Mile:  Deterministic

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Turf Sprint:  Bacio

Breeders' Cup Classic 2026

 The race courtesy of NBC Sports:

Sovereignty, who is retiring, probably has sewn up Horse of the Year. 

Golden Tempo made a bid at the top of the stretch, but he was probably too far back to be in play.

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Friday Night on the Obituary Pages

 There have been a LOT of obits of prominent people in the past few days.  Here are a few of them:

Labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union Dolores Huerta, died October 28 at the age of 96.   She was  a major figure in the history of civil rights in the U.S.

Earlier this year, she revealed that she had been raped and had two children resulting from the rapes by fellow UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez, which deservedly destroyed his reputation for good.

Snip:

In California – where Huerta helped found the United Farm Workers (UFW) union – her death was deeply felt. It was in California’s Central valley that she laid the foundations for the United Farm Workers, and helped organize the 1965 Delano grape strike – a national boycott of table grapes that resulted in better wages and working conditions for grape pickers. Several schools in California bear her name, and murals across the state depict her likeness. And in 2018, California declared 10 April – her birthday – Dolores Huerta Day.

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Actress Barbara Barrie, 95, decided, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, to get physicians to "assist" her in her "suicide," died as a result.

Snip:

Barrie made her Broadway debut in The Wooden Dish in 1955. In 1959, she appeared in The Beaux Stratagem, and in 1966, she starred in Happily Never After. She then appeared in the 1956 film Giant, a role that came about because she was visiting her family when the movie was filming in Corpus Christi.

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Patrick Stewart, 86, known for his roles such as playing the captain in one of the Star Trek television sequels or reboots or whatever, died of the horrible Alzheimer's disease and Lewy Body dementia, it was reported.

Snip:

In the late 1980s, Stewart had decades of classical theater work in England under his belt but was unfamiliar in America when he was given command of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Star Trek: The Next Generation producer Robert Justman happened upon a UCLA lecture featuring Stewart and witnessed him reading from Shakespeare in his trademark patrician style. Justman called the actor in for an audition against the wishes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who didn’t think a bald Brit could be the face of the new series.

After a contentious casting process, Stewart won over the famously persnickety Roddenberry and signed a long-term contract to play Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, thinking there was no way the show would last beyond one season.

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The show was a hit.

Stewart grew up in an abusive household complete with domestic violence on the part of his father.

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Some Photos of Mount Shasta

 This past weekend, I went on a small group hike in northern California, with a hike near Mount Shasta.  Here are a few pictures I took from the Spring Hill Trail on the outskirts of Mount Shasta City and of the Old Ski Bowl at the base of the mountain itself:

Some Reads for Tuesday

 A paper whose editorial board wasn't going to endorse a candidate for Ohio governor reversed course.  Gee, I wonder why?

Snip:

But condemnation has to mean something. Our politics have been debased for a decade, but this we will not accept. A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party.

We are better than this. We have a responsibility to show it.

Today, we endorse Democrat Amy Acton for governor.

Ramalama Ding-Dong was beyond the pale in this election.

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You know you're scraping bottom when you enlist Alex Jones as the keynote speaker to your vile event:

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Obituary:  Actress Susan Saint James, 80, died yesterday after battling pancreatic cancer.  She had roles in the television series McMillan & Wife, and Kate & Allie.  She won an Emmy in the latter series.

Snip:

Saint James was born Susan Jane Miller in Los Angeles in 1946. She was raised in Rockford, Ill. She told PEOPLE in 1977 that at age 7, she saw a Rhonda Fleming film and knew “I’d be a movie star, be friends with people in Hollywood, and have a legitimate reason to see Rock Hudson every day for five years.” By age 10, she was an avid moviegoer. She told PEOPLE she saw the classic The King and I 31 times. 

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She graduated high school at 16 and enrolled briefly at Connecticut College, which was a women’s college at the time. She also spent time in France, where she became fluent in the language. She then headed to New York to try modeling. “But I was overenthusiastic and they kept telling me to develop ‘chic reserve.’” she said in 1977. She enjoyed a few years of success.

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Obituary: Marjoe Gortner

 Completely overlooked by much of  the media and by people like me  was the recent death of one-time noted evangelist Marjoe Gortner, who died on October 2 at the age of 82.  He had been the youngest person ever ordained as a minister at the age of four.  He was clearly a prodigy of some kind, but he was pretty much exploited by his family and others because of his extraordinary (for his age) speaking ability.

In early adulthood, Marjoe (his name a combination of Mary and Joseph)  abandoned evangelism, exposing all the fraud and deceit involved in it and turned to acting, which was a natural outgrowth of his background.   In the early 1970s, he became the subject of a documentary called Marjoe, which won the Academy Award of 1972 for Best Documentary.  What is interesting is in the decades following its release, it was believed to have been a lost film, but the original negatives and related elements were found in 2002 and restored in 2002.  It is available on DVD. I have a copy of it.  Cynicism runs amok in this film.

Gortner was married five times, the first time when he was a mere 16 in 1960.  Early marriages were rampant in the United States then, but Marjoe's was still an outlier.  

He spent his later years in New Mexico.  He died of congestive heart failure.

It appears the death wasn't announced until a couple of weeks ago, so I don't feel so bad about being late to write about it here.

NYT:

He was born into the business, the fourth generation of a family of ministering men. But it was his mother, Margaret, known as Sister Marge, who taught him the trade, writing the scripts for his sermons and drilling him in daylong sessions.

He rarely stumbled. When he did, Marge’s teaching method involved pressing a pillow over his face or holding his head under a running faucet. These tactics were successful not only because they were terrifying, but also because they didn’t leave any telltale marks.

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These days, that sort of thing would have landed Marge in jail.

The obituary from Legacy, which goes into more detail about his life without readers having to pay to read it is here.