Gone But Not Forgotten
Like every other news outlet in the world, we here at New York Press traditionally take a moment at the end of the year to pause and remember those who've passed on during the previous 12 months.
Unlike those other boring year-end corpse roundups, which tend to focus on the biggies-Yasser Arafat, Marlon Brando, Captain Kangaroo, Tony Randall, Ray Charles and Ronald Reagan-we prefer to spotlight the less-well-known figures who still, in their own quiet ways, changed all of our lives. Or at least changed ours.
We can't list them all, of course-to be honest, 2004 provided a bumper crop of dead celebs-but here's a tip of the hat to a few of them:
It was a rough year for radio, as a number of legendary DJs bit the dust, including John Gambling, classical host Harry Fleetwood, Hunter Hancock, Scott Muni and the great John Peel.
DJs would of course be nothing without musicians, and this year as every year, the musical world was hit hard. We lost cowboy singer and poet Jim Bob Tinsley, polka king Dick Rodgers, Hobo King Ramblin' Rudy Phillips, brilliant Sinatra musical arranger Billy May, Steely Dan sax player Cornelius Bumpus, Mud's lead singer Les Gray, Siouxsie guitarist John McGeough, Dead Milkmen bassist Dave Blood, Edmund Sylvers of The Sylvers, Jan Berry, r&b legend John Whitehead, guitar god Robert Quine, Arthur "Killer" Kane, Rick James, Laura Branigan, Skeeter Davis, Jerry Scoggins (who sang the Beverly Hillbillies theme), Manson target Terry Melcher, Stax Records co-founder Estelle Axton and, of course, the Great Johnny Ramone.
In a world where film music seems to matter less and less, we also want to remember a couple composers who did it better than most anyone: Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein.
Speaking of movies, we'll also miss Ingrid Thulin (star of The Wild Strawberries and Salon Kitty), Uta Hagen, Ann Miller, Bozo sidekick Ray Rayner, original Dead End Kid Bernard Punsly, Jan Miner ("Madge" on those Palmolive commercials), two of our favorite character actors of all time-John Randolph and Mercedes McCambridge, Paul Winfield, Scorsese standby and legendary crankypants Victor Argo, Carrie Snodgress, Doris Dowling (The Lost Weekend, The Car), Isabel Sanford, original scream queens Fay Wray and Janet Leigh, cool cat John D. Barrymore, Spalding Gray, Harry Babbit (the voice of Woody Woodpecker), Alan King, original Munchkin Elly Annie Schneider, the beyond-legendary Russ Meyer and Larry Buchanan, porn-industry figurehead Jim Holliday, and the profoundly missed Rodney Dangerfield.
And the movies just wouldn't be what they are today if it weren't for Andrew Kuehn and Samuel M. Rubin. Kuehn singlehandedly invented the modern movie trailer, and Rubin turned the idea of selling popcorn, candy and soda in theater lobbies into an industry unto itself.
We will also miss computer animator extraordinaire Jim Ludtke, Jack Paar, tabloid legend Eddie Clontz, DC comics editor Julius Schwartz, original MTV vee-jay J.J. Jackson, game show announcers Art James and Gene Wood, the remarkable Hubert Selby Jr., historian William Manchester, pulp novelist Hugh Cave, Czeslaw Milosz, Larry Brown, Arthur Halley, impenetrable philosopher Jacques Derrida, astronaut Gordon Cooper, alien abductee Betty Hill, DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick, death specialist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, celebrity chefs Jeff Smith and Julia Child, and Al Dvorin, the man who told us all that "Elvis has left the building."
We would also like to once more bid farewell to the irreplaceable and incomparable Gretchen Worden, director of the Mütter Medical Museum and a dear friend. Her intelligence, humor and saucy personality will be deeply missed.