FRIEL Life Remembered: Miles Davis...

Miles Davis was an American trumpeter, bandleader and composer, that died on September 28th, 1991 at Santa Monica, California, aged 65.

He was probably the most influential and financially successful of all jazz musicians - as well as the most controversial.

Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

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Patrick Swayze, Actor, Dead at 57...

Patrick Wayne Swayze
(August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009)




Patrick Wayne Swayze was an American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter. He was best-known for his roles as romantic leading men in the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost and as Orry Main in the North and South television miniseries. He was named by People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991.

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born in Houston, Texas, where his mother, Patsy, ran a dance school. At his primary school and Waltrip High School in the city, Patrick was teased for being a sissy when he made his way to dance lessons.

After school, Swayze went to New York to train as a dancer at Harkness Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet School. His first professional engagement was with Disney on Parade in 1978, and soon afterwards he joined the Broadway cast of the musical Grease.

His first film was the forgettable Skatetown, USA (1979), an attempt to cash in on the roller-disco craze, in which Swayze played Ace, and he had a number of minor roles in television, including a part in an episode of M*A*S*H.

In 1984's Red Dawn, Swayze took the lead as Jed, the head of a gang of teenagers who turn themselves into guerrilla fighters after a Russian invasion of America. The film, a kind of advertisement for the right to bear arms, was cited by The Guinness Book of Records as containing the greatest number of acts of violence in any movie.

After Grandview, USA (1984), a dull comedy drama in which he played a driver in a demolition derby, Swayze appeared the following year in the television miniseries North and South, a civil war drama in which he gave one of his better performances.

Youngblood (1986) was a dire ice hockey movie in which he appeared with Rob Lowe and Keanu Reeves. In Road House (1989), Swayze plays a philosophy graduate turned bouncer who manages to transform the fortunes of a seedy roadside bar. The film's obvious badness ensured it a kind of cult following.

After Ghost Swayze played a Zen thug in Point Break (1991), an action thriller about surfing bank-robbers, which also starred Keanu Reeves. This was perhaps the most successful period of his career. But though Swayze continued to act as steadily, almost all his subsequent films fared badly at the box office.

He played a doctor in India in City of Joy (1992), and a positively alarming drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar (1995), though he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance.

In 1996 Swayze fell from a horse and hit a tree. Both his legs were broken, and he suffered detached tendons in his shoulder. Swayze recovered, but took little work until 2000, when he co-starred in Waking Up in Reno with Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron, and in Forever Lulu with Melanie Griffith.

In 2001 he had a part in the surreal Donny Darko, and in 2004 took a cameo (as a dance instructor) in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, a lacklustre sequel. That year he also played Allan Quatermain in a television film of King Solomon's Mines.

In 2003 he appeared in the Broadway production of Chicago, and in 2006 he took on the role of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls in the West End.

His most recent films included The Fox and the Hound 2, in which he provided the voice of an Alpine Dachsbracke; a comedy called Christmas in Wonderland; and Powder Blue, in which he plays the owner of a strip club in Los Angeles.

Most recently, Swayze starred in A&E network's "The Beast," which debuted in January. Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late January 2008, and underwent chemotherapy and other treatments at the Stanford University Medical Center. He agreed to take the starring role of an undercover FBI agent before his diagnosis. The network agreed to shoot an entire season of the show after Swayze responded well to cancer treatment.

"The Beast" was canceled in June because of Swayze's illness, after doctors told him the cancer had spread to his liver.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa shooting King Solomon's Mines. Swayze was married since 1975 to Lisa Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. Lisa and Patrick did not have any children.

Swayze's publicist, Annett Wolf, confirmed that he had died of pancreatic cancer. Swayze died with his family at his side, twenty months after being diagnosed.

RIP

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Edward Kennedy, US Politician, Dead at 77...

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
(February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)



Edward Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. In office since November 1962, Kennedy served nine terms in the Senate. He was one of the most influential and longest-serving senators in US history - a liberal standard-bearer who was also known as a consummate congressional dealmaker - the Irish-American senator had been battling brain cancer, which was diagnosed in May 2008.

For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy was born in Boston and raised in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and England. He graduated from Harvard in 1956 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1959. His 1958 marriage to Virginia Joan Bennett produced three children and ended in divorce in 1982.

He was a manager in his brother John's successful 1960 campaign for president, then worked as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Kennedy entered the Senate in a 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by John. Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006.

Kennedy once ran for the Presidential office, in the 1980 election, but it ended in a primary campaign loss to incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Due to his long history and influence in the legislature, he became known as "The Lion of the Senate". More than 300 bills that Kennedy wrote have been enacted into law, and he was known for his ability to work with Republicans and to find compromises among Senate members with disparate views.

Kennedy's personal life was often subject to criticism, but his 1992 marriage to Victoria Anne Reggie stabilized his life.

Kennedy died of brain cancer on Tuesday, August 25, 2009, at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife Victoria, his sister Jean Kennedy Smith, and his three children.

RIP

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Don Hewitt, Television news pioneer, Dead at 86...

Donald Shepard Hewitt
(December 14, 1922 – August 19, 2009)




Don Hewitt was an American television news producer and executive, best known for creating 60 Minutes, the CBS news magazine in 1968, currently the longest-running prime time broadcast on American television.

Born in 1922 in New York, Hewitt started his career in newspapers. "His picture experience prompted a friend in 1948 to tell him about television, where CBS News had a job opening," according to a CBS statement. He told reporters years later his response was: "Whatavision?"

He directed the first television network newscast on May 3, 1948, featuring Douglas Edwards, the network said. In 1960, he was named executive producer of "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite," a position he held for five years. In 1963, the Cronkite broadcast became the first to go to a half-hour format.

Hewitt's innovations included the use of cue cards for news readers -- an early version of the electronic teleprompter that is used today, CBS said. In addition, he was the first to use "supers" -- captions and other written information superimposed on the lower third of the television screen. And he was the first to use the film "double" -- cutting back and forth between projectors.

Hewitt also produced and directed coverage for the three main television networks for the first-ever televised presidential debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

Hewitt stepped aside as executive producer of 60 Minutes in 2004 at 81. He is an eight-time Emmy Award winner. Hewitt is the author of Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television, in which he chronicles his life as a newsman. He is also the author of the book Minute by Minute, a look at the history of 60 Minutes. On April 3, 2008, Hewitt was honored with Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism.

Hewitt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2009. He died at his home in Bridgehampton, New York, surrounded by his family. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Marilyn Berger, and four children.

RIP

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Les Paul, Electric Guitar Pioneer, Dead at 94...

Lester William Polsfuss
(June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009)


Les Paul was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible." His many recording innovations include overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording.

His innovative talents extended into his unique playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many of the guitarists of the present day.

He was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin to George and Evelyn Polsfuss. The family name was first simplified by his mother to Polfuss before he took his stage name of Les Paul.

Paul first became interested in music at the age of eight, when he began playing the harmonica. After an attempt at learning to play the banjo, he began to play the guitar. By 13, Paul was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist. At the age of 17, Paul played with Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and soon after he dropped out of high school to join Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, Missouri. In the 1930s, Paul worked in Chicago in radio, where he performed jazz music.

Paul was dissatisfied with the acoustic guitars that were sold in the mid 1930s and began experimenting with a few designs for an electric model on his own. Famously, he created "The Log," which was one of the first solid-body electric guitars (1939).

In 1948, Paul was injured in a near-fatal automobile accident, which shattered his right arm and elbow. Doctors set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar.

In 1949, Les Paul married the singer Iris Colleen Summers, who later changed her name to Mary Ford at his suggestion. Capitalising on his innovative sound-on-sound technique, he multi-tracked his wife's vocals and his instrumental backing. The couple had a string of hits in the first half of the 1950s. In their radio and television appearances, Les Paul used what he called the Les Paulveriser, a backstage electronics system controlled from a black box attached to his guitar.

It was at this time that the Gibson Les Paul guitar – a manufactured guitar based on Paul's solid-body concept of the late 1930s – burst on to the market. The Gibson Les Paul was deliberately conceived as a high-end instrument. The contract between Les Paul and Gibson, endured until the early 1960s, when he fell out with the company over design changes. He continued to play, with his wife, and by 1962, when they divorced, they had cut 36 gold discs together.

Subsequently Les Paul increasingly exchanged his life as a professional musician for one as a professional inventor. During the 1970s he recorded two albums with the influential country guitarist Chet Atkins. One of the results, Chester and Lester (1976), won them a Grammy for best country instrumental performance.

In recent years, Les Paul (in his nineties) continued to play a regular Monday night session at a jazz club in New York, where rock stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page sometimes came to listen to him.

Paul, whose ex-wife died in 1977, had three sons and an adopted daughter. Paul was the godfather of rock guitarist Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band, to whom Paul gave his first guitar lesson. In 1978, Paul and ex-wife Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1988, Paul was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Jeff Beck. Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005 for his development of the solid-body electric guitar. In 2006, Paul was inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Les Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, NY. His family and friends were by his side. His attorney Michael Braunstein said that Paul had been "in and out of the hospital" because of illness.

RIP

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Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Special Olymics Founder, Dead at 88....

Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver
(July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009)




Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a member of the Kennedy family (one of the most prominent American political families of the 20th century).

Mrs Shriver founded the Special Olympics in the 1960s as a national organization. She helped demonstrate that the mentally disabled can triumph on the field of competition and lead rich and productive lives outside the walls of institutions.

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald). Her eight siblings include President Kennedy, former New York Senator Bobby Kennedy and serving Senator Edward Kennedy, who is currently battling brain cancer.

She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London, England; and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, graduating in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology; after which she went to work for the United States Department of State in the Special War Problems division.

In 1950, she became a social worker at the then-named Federal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, and the following year she moved to Chicago, Illinois, to work with the House of the Good Shepherd and the Chicago Juvenile Court.

On May 23, 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, New York. Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the Democratic U.S. Vice Presidential candidate in 1972 (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President).

Shriver actively campaigned for her elder brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, during his successful 1960 U.S. presidential election. In 1968, she helped Ann McGlone Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement.

Her daughter, Maria Shriver, is married to actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Shriver was a Democrat, she was a vocal supporter of the pro-life movement.

Shriver, who was believed to have suffered from Addison's disease, had several health setbacks in recent years, and on November 18, 2007, she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; she spent several weeks there.

Shriver died at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts in the early hours of Tuesday morning (Aug. 11th). The immediate cause of her death has not yet been disclosed.

Her husband, her five children and her 19 grandchildren were all with her when she died.

RIP

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John Hughes, Film Director, Dead at 59...

John Hughes, Jr.
(February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009)




John Hughes was an American film director, producer and writer. He made some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon's Vacation; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Weird Science; The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Hughes, born in Lansing, Michigan, began his career as an ad copywriter in Chicago. During this time, he created what became the famous Edge "Credit Card Shaving Test" ad campaign.

His first attempt at comedy writing was selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers.

His first directorial effort, Sixteen Candles, won almost unanimous praise when it was released in 1984, due in no small part to its more realistic depiction of middle-class high school life. Hughes was responsible for a slew of films in the 1980s that defined what it meant to be an American teenager, from the music to the fashion to the social faux pas. Though he graduated to more adult fare with films like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and had his biggest hits with explicitly family-oriented material like “Home Alone".

In recent years, Hughes had stepped back from the movie business to spend more time with his family, as well as maintain a functioning farm in northern Illinois and support independent arts.

Hughes died suddenly of a heart attack, while walking in Manhattan, New York City, where he was visiting his family.

Hughes is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy; two sons and four grandchildren.

RIP

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