FRIEL Life Remembered: Arthur Miller...

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was born on October 17, 1915 and died on February 10, 2005.

He made his name with plays which exposed the emptiness of the American dream. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include awards-winning plays such as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.

Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, a period during which he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was married to Marilyn Monroe.

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Ian Carmichael: Actor, Dead at 89...

Ian Carmichael, OBE
(18 June 1920 – 5 February 2010)



Ian Carmichael was an English film, stage, television and radio actor.

Carmichael was born in Hull, Yorkshire. The son of an optician, he was educated at Scarborough College and Bromsgrove School. He was not academically inclined, preferring to lead the local dance band until the stage took his fancy and he studied for a spell at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his stage debut as a robot at the People's Palace in Mile End, East London in 1939. With the outbreak of World War II his acting career was interrupted by service with the Royal Armoured Corps, as a commissioned officer.

He portrayed serious characters in Betrayed (1954), starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner, and in The Colditz Story (1955), but he made his name playing in a series of films for the Boulting Brothers, including Private's Progress (1956), Brothers in Law (1957) and I'm All Right Jack (1959), as well as similar films for other producers, for example School for Scoundrels (1960). He also appeared in the "Pride" segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971).

During the 1960s and 1970s, he was successful on television, including the sitcom, Bachelor Father, based on the story of a real-life bachelor who took on several foster children. But it is probably his portrayals on television of PG Wodehouse's dithering Bertie Wooster and Dorothy L Sayers's elegant Lord Peter Wimsey which underlined his gifts as an exponent of the light English comedy of manners to greatest effect. Carmichael continued to act until shortly before his death.

Ian Carmichael was married twice. His first wife was Jean Pyman (Pym) McLean (1943–1983, until her death). They had two daughters, Lee and Sally. He married Kate Fenton, novelist in 1992. He had five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren

Ian Carmichael died at his home in the Esk Valley on the North York Moors, England. According to his wife, Kate, he had fallen ill over Christmas.

RIP

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Zelda Rubinstein: Actress, Dead at 76...

Zelda Rubinstein
(May 28, 1933 – January 27, 2010)




Zelda Rubinstein was an American actress and human rights activist, best known as eccentric medium Tangina Barrons in the movies Poltergeist (1982) and its sequels, Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), and Poltergeist III (1988). She also made guest appearances in the TV spin-off Poltergeist: The Legacy (1996).

Rubinstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended the University of California and the University of Pittsburgh. She stood just 4 feet 3 inches (130 cm) due to a deficiency of the anterior pituitary gland, which produces growth hormone.

Rubinstein entered the film industry comparatively late, upon returning to the United States after living in London for several years. Poltergeist was her first major film role. She remained active in film and televison from thereon, frequently portraying various psychic characters.

Rubinstein was also known for her outspoken activism for little people and and was an early and public activist raising awareness of Aids-related diseases.

On December 29, 2009, it was reported that, after a month-long stay at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, her close companion and her family made the decision to take Rubinstein off life support due to both kidney and lung failure. Rubinstein died at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles.

RIP

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Jennifer Jones: Actress, Dead at 90...

Jennifer Jones
(March 2, 1919 – December 17, 2009)




Jennifer Jones was an American actress. A five-time Academy Award nominee, Jones won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

Jones was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Phil and Flora Mae Isley, who ran a travelling theatre. She toured with her parents as a child in vaudeville tent shows. Her first stage role, playing a peppermint candy, was at the age of five.

Her father hoped she would become a lawyer, but she persuaded him to let her attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she met and married her first husband, the actor Robert Walker. They travelled to Hollywood.

Hollywood publicised her as an overnight discovery, though this was not strictly true. She had first tried her hand there four years earlier under her real name, Phylis Isley, playing opposite John Wayne in a B picture, New Frontier, and in a small role in the serial Dick Tracy's G-Men (both 1939).

Thanks to her early success, she enjoyed a reputation as a "heavyweight" actress, that got her dramatic roles. There were those who felt that she rarely measured up to them, and that parts in Madame Bovary (1949), Gone to Earth (1950), Carrie (1952) and Tender Is the Night (1962) allegedly exposed her limitations.

She starred in two comedy films, yet they were among her most accomplished work. Cluny Brown (1946), which she made for Ernst Lubitsch and John Huston's Beat the Devil (1954).

It was often stated that Jones was a manufactured star. Two of her three husbands were millionaires. David O Selznick, whom she married in 1949, was a celebrated Hollywood tycoon who had made Gone with the Wind (1950). He took personal charge of her career, casting her in his own pictures and leasing her services to others as a prime attraction. With Selznick's death in 1965, her acting career petered out. She made only three more films, with long intervals between them. The last, The Towering Inferno (1974), offered her only a cameo role as one of those trapped on the upper floors of a burning skyscraper.

In 1971, Jones married her second tycoon – the multi-millionaire industrialist Norton Simon.

With Robert Walker, Jones had two sons – Michael, who predeceased her, and Robert Walker Jr, who also became an actor. Her daughter, Mary Selznick, died aged 21 in 1976.

Jones enjoyed a quiet retirement in Southern California close to her son, Robert. She granted no interviews and rarely appeared in public. She died of natural causes at her home.

RIP

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Ciarán MacMathúna: Irish Broadcaster, Dead at 84...

Ciarán Mac Mathúna
(November 26, 1925 – December 11, 2009)




Ciarán Mac Mathúna was a former Irish broadcaster and music collector. He was a recognised authority on Irish music and lectured extensively on the subject. He travelled around Ireland, England, Scotland and America collecting music.

A native of Co. Limerick, Ciarán Mac Mathúna first joined RTÉ as a radio producer in 1955. One of his first jobs was to travel around the country in the company of a mobile recording unit gathering material for Radio Éireann’s traditional music archive.

Mac Mathúna's long-running Sunday morning radio series Mo Cheol Thú (You are my music) began in 1970 and continued until November 2005, when he retired from broadcasting. Each 45 minute programme offered a miscellany of archive music, poetry and folklore, mainly of Irish origin. It was one of radio's longest running programmes. The last episode was broadcast on 27 November 2005.

For more than 50 years he made an enormous contribution to the preservation and development of Irish traditional music.

Mac Mathúna won two Jacob's Awards, in 1969 and 1990, for his RTÉ Radio programmes promoting Irish traditional music. He received the Freedom of Limerick City in June 2004. He was also awarded honorary doctorates by NUI Galway and the University of Limerick.

In 2007, he was awarded with the Musicians Award at the 10th annual TG4 Traditional Music Awards.

He was married to Dolly MacMahon, who was a singer of traditional songs. She came from Galway an met her husband in 1955. He lived with Dolly, who survives him, in Templeogue, Dublin. He and Dolly had three children and four(?) grandchildren.

RIP

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Liam Clancy: Musician/Singer, Dead at 74...

William 'Liam' Clancy
(September 2, 1935 - December 4, 2009)




Liam Clancy was an Irish folk singer and musician.

He was the last surviving member of the Clancy Brothers, who were credited with bringing Irish traditional music to a world audience in the 1960s. Bob Dylan described Mr. Clancy as the “just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my whole life”.

Born in Carrick on Suir Ireland, he was the youngest of 11 children. As a young man he dreamed of life on the stage, but there was music in his blood too.

In his late teens he met and travelled Ireland with US song collector Diane Hamilton Guggenheim and eventually travelled to the US with her.

His brothers Paddy and Tom had emigrated before him - and along with renowned Armagh singer Tommy Makem - they began performing in New York.

With their trademark Aran jumpers The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem played legendary venues such as the White Horse Tavern in New York.

They became international stars following a performance on the Ed Sullivan television show.

The band played a key role in the 60s folk revival - reworking traditional ballads for both an international and an Irish audience.

When the Clancy Brothers later went their separate ways, Liam pursued a solo career in Canada before reuniting with Tommy Makem to form the hugely popular duo Makem and Clancy. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem did play together again in the 1980s, and in later years Liam, maintained a successful solo career.

Alan Gilsenan directed a full length biography of Liam Clancy, which was released at the 2009 Dublin Film Festival, The Yellow Bittern: The Life and Times of Liam Clancy and includes appearances by Pete Seeger, Jean Ritchie, Bob Dylan, Oscar Brand, Odetta, Josh White, and many others.

Mr. Clancy died in hospital in Cork, Ireland, after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis - scarring of the lungs. His brother Bobby died of the same disease in 2002.

He is survived by his wife Kim and four children.

RIP

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Edward Woodward: Actor, Dead at 79...

Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE
(1 June 1930 – 16 November 2009)



Edward Woodward was an English actor and singer.

Originally a Shakespearean stage actor, he was best known for his roles in the 1960s-1970s television spy series Callan, the 1973 film The Wicker Man, the 1980 Australian biographical film drama Breaker Morant and his lead role in the 1980s American television series The Equalizer.

Woodward was seen in EastEnders earlier this year, playing the role of Tommy Clifford.

The actor was a BAFTA award winner for 'Callan', a Golden Globe award winner for 'The Equalizer' and a News and Documentary Emmy award winner for 'Remembering World War II'.

Woodward had a fine tenor voice, appearing on a number of occasions in The Good Old Days and making a dozen LPs. He also recorded three albums of poetry, capitalising on the reputation he had forged at Stratford as a lyrical speaker of verse.

Woodward died at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro. He had lived in Hawker's Cove, Cornwall, near Padstow and had been suffering from various illnesses, including pneumonia.

Woodward married first, in 1952, Venetia Mary Collett, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, all of whom became successful actors. The marriage was dissolved in 1986, and he married secondly, in 1987, Michele Dotrice, daughter of the actor Roy Dotrice and best known for her role as Betty Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em; they had a daughter. Survivors include his wife and his children.

RIP

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