Sunday Reads

 The Southern Baptist Convention, long on the upswing especially in is influence on GOP politics, is mired in scandal and controversy.

It will be interesting to see how it deals with the ordination of women in light of the departure of noted member Beth Moore.  The SBC is still stuck in the 1950s mindset of women's "place."  Women, of course, do not have a "place."

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No official obit yet, but Jack Benny's only child, Joan, 87, died June 10 of pancreatic cancer, just as her dad died of the disease back in 1974.  Jack and wife Mary Livingstone had adopted her as a baby.  Joan wrote a semi-memoir about her dad called Sunday Nights at Seven.  

Joan's death was mentioned on some Jack Benny fan Facebook pages.

She talked about her famous father last year:

“I’m not sure whether I came in first or second, but I think the show came first,” she told the outlet. “That was fine. We were actually very close because my mother didn’t like to do out much so I went with my dad to all the baseball games. And I traveled with him when he went to different cities, playing concerts. On top of that, he was a great grandfather. He adored his first grandson, Mike. When I was married and had children, I lived not too far away, so Dad would come over every two or three days for a cup of coffee and see his grandchild.”

Despite his lasting success in vaudeville, film, radio and TV, Joan shared Benny “remained pretty unaffected and unchanged” by fame.

“He said in an interview that he had all the foibles that normal people have and they identified with him,” she explained. “The miser, the somewhat pompous, somewhat put upon guy -- all the things that he was on that show, he said was a reflection of the population in general. People identified with that and they also knew in spite of his character, he only played being cheap. People knew that he was a nice man under whatever it was he was playing. He came across as being a really nice person.”

I don't think anybody ever had a bad word to say about him. He and Harpo Marx were perhaps the most beloved of all the male stars in Hollywood during its peak. As for the women, I would have to say Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, and Barbara Stanwyck were the most loved.

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Obituary:  Actor Ned Beatty, 83, probably best known for taking it in the ass in 1972's Deliverance, has reportedly died.  He died of natural causes earlier today.

He went on from that movie, which I refuse to ever see again, to many distinguished roles on television and in the movies:

Ned Thomas Beatty was born in 1937 in Louisville, Ky., and raised in Lexington, where he joined the Protestant Disciples of Christ Christian Church. “It was the theater I attended as a kid,” he told The Associated Press in 1992. “It was where people got down to their truest emotions and talked about things they didn’t talk about in everyday life. ... The preaching was very often theatrical.” For a time he thought of becoming a priest, but changed his mind after he was cast in a high school production of “Harvey.” 

He spent 10 summers at the Barter Theater in Abingdom, Virginia, and eight years at the Arena Stage Company in Washington, D.C. At the Arena Stage, he appeared in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and starred in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” Then his life changed forever when he took a train to New York to audition for director John Boorman for the role of Bobby Trippe. Boorman told him the role was cast, but changed his mind after seeing Beatty audition. Beatty, who married Sandra Johnson in 1999, had eight children from three previous marriages.

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A Pekingese named Wasabi won this year's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.  He is a grandson of Malachi, who won Best in Show in 2012.

AP link

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