Dead, Not Forgotten

Famed author and thinker Arthur C. Clarke died March 19, 2008, at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka after experiencing breathing problems. He was 90 years old. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome since 1988.

Clarke’s impact on science, literature and popular culture cannot be underestimated. He always seemed to go places no one had gone before and it is easy to see how he would get there if you consider his well known three laws.

1. “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
2. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
3. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke was born December 16, 1917 in Minehead, Somerset, United Kingdom and earned a first-class degree in mathematics and physics at King’s College London. Though he is best known for his works of fiction, he also impacted real science with more than just his thinking. During WWII he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defense system which contributed to the RAF’s success during the Battle of Britain. After the war he served as the Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society. He is credited as the first person to promote the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal for communication purposes.

Clarke’s most famous work of literature is “A Space Odyssey.” It is based upon his 1948 work, “The Sentinel,” which he wrote for a BBC competition. The work was not accepted for the competition but the stage was set for a primary theme of Clarke’s work, an advanced but clueless mankind is shocked into growth by its interaction with a superior alien intelligence. Of course, the book was made into the famous science fiction move, “2001: A Space Odyssey” directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Arthur C. Clarke moved to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1956. In Sri Lanka is was able to persu one of his greatest loves, scuba diving. Sri Lanka also inspired the locale for his novel The Fountains of Paradise, in which he first described a space elevator. This, he believes, will be his ultimate legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete.

A space elevator is described as “… a tether, usually in the form of a cable or ribbon, spanning from the surface near the equator to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. As the planet rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity, and also keeps the cable taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and reach orbit without the use of rocket propulsion. Such a structure could hypothetically permit delivery of cargo and people to orbit at a fraction of the cost of launching payloads by rocket.”

I think of Clarke when I hear people talk about the possibility of life other than on earth. He summed it up well when he said, “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.”

We are a little more alone in the universe today having lost Arthur C. Clarke.

Popularity: 20%

Merv Griffin was at the forefront of some of the most visible industries of the second half of the 20th century. His multi-decade success as a talk show host, the wildly successful game shows his production company created and his well publicized deals in the real estate industry made him a standout among his peers.

After a childhood of entertaining the neighborhood and producing “shows” with the local kids, Griffin began his professional career as a singer when he was 19 on San Francisco Sketchbook, a nationally syndicated radio program based at KFRC in San Francisco. Being overweight at the time, Griffin did not easily move on from radio. After trimming down, however, he started a four year stint as a singer known for his good looks with big band leader Freddy Martin. Soon his entrepreneurial spirit kicked into high gear and he launched his own record label, Panda Records. His release Songs by Merv Griffin is reported to be the first American album recorded on magnetic tape.

After considerable success in the music business, including his hit “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts”, which sold over three million copies, a chance nightclub performance in front of Doris Day started him on the next step in his career when she helped him land a screen test at Warner Bros. and subsequent film roles.

In the late 50s Merv Griffin began what would become the first of the three major paths of his career; the game show business. He started as a host, first on the Mark Goodson and Bill Todman production called Play Your Hunch and then on an evening game show for ABC called Keep Talking.

Luck came his way when Jack Paar mistakenly walked on the live set of Play Your Hunch and launched him on the second major path of his career: television talk shows. Griffin took advantage of the moment and got an impromptu, walk through interview with Paar and soon was invited to substitute for Paar on The Tonight Show. His own daytime talk show followed, but soon failed. NBC offered him a new game show to host and produce, Word for Word, in 1963. The next year his production company created the iconic Jeopardy! which still enjoys great success.

When NBC canceled Jeopardy! in 1975, a short lived situation, Griffin produced the show’s successor, Wheel of Fortune. Though it was only moderately successful in its original version, a syndicated version starring Pat Sajak and Vanna White is a television mainstay to this day.

Meanwhile, back in 1965, Griffin also began a nearly non-stop presence as a talk show host on American TV that ended in 1986 when he retired from is then long running The Merv Griffin Show and sold his production company, Merv Griffin Enterprises, to Columbia Pictures Television unit for $250 million. His TV game show legacy turns out not to be over though. His current production company, Merv Griffin Entertainment, began pre-production on a new syndicated game show set to air in September 2007, Merv Griffin’s Crosswords.

After his retirement Griffin was quick to get bored and soon, after making considerable gains through investments he started on his third major career path in real estate. A notable event was his well publicized feud with Donald Trump for control of Resorts International, an operator of hotels and casinos from Atlantic City to the Caribbean. Griffin eventually acquired Resorts International for $240 million. Over his career in real estate he has also owned the Beverly Hilton Hotel (Beverly Hills), St. Clerans Manor (an Irish hotel), and Paradise Island (the Bahamas).

Merv Griffin’s phenomenal success in all that he tried left him one of America’s richest men.

Merv Griffin was born in San Mateo, California. He died in Los Angeles California of prostate cancer August 12, 2007. He was 82 years old. He said once that his tombstone would say, “I won’t be back after this message.”

For more information:
See Merv Griffin’s filmography

Popularity: 72%

Makeup and masks have been part of the theatrical palette since the beginning but in Hollywood, CA makeup was made special by William Tuttle. In fact, it wasn’t until 1982 that an Academy Award was established for makeup artistry but Tuttle had already been awarded an honorary Academy Award in 1965 for his makeup work on the 1964 film, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. The film depicted actor Tony Randall as seven different supernatural characters in a traveling carnival. Each was so completely transforming visually and personally that Randall said it changed him into the characters he was playing in a way that relieved him of having to think about his approach; he just became them.

Tuttle was the head of the makeup department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where he worked on more than 300 films over 35 years. Not all of them required fantastic faces though, as he was often called upon to do beauty makeup as well. His work in that area led to advances in makeup techniques and a proprietary beauty product line for professional makeup artists called Custom Color Cosmetics that is still manufactured as of this writing.

William Tuttle also left his makeup mark on the small screen in shows such as The Twilight Zone. One of my favorites was Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1963). It starred William Shatner as Bob Wilson, a recently recovered nervous breakdown sufferer who was quickly going back for more as he insanely imagined an impish demon outside on the plane’s wing slowly destroying the plane bit by bit.

Originally from Jacksonville Florida, William Tuttle worked in vaudeville as a comic and violinist before he moved to Los Angeles when he was 18 and took art classes at USC with Charles Schram, who became his life-long collaborator. The two would apprentice at Twentieth Century Pictures with Jack Dawn. Dawn moved to MGM and Tuttle went with him and followed him as head of the department when Dawn departed.

As the back lots were closing and the studio “system” was dying William Tuttle packed up his department. He kept scores of plaster masks that he made of stars and used to speed the application of their makeup, even if they were not there. These he eventually donated to USC, where he taught from 1970 to 1995.

William J. “Bill” Tuttle died July 27, 2007 at his home in Pacific Palisades, CA at 95 years of age.

For more information:
William J. “Bill” Tuttle’s filmography

Popularity: 24%

French actor Michel Serrault appeared in more than 130 films but he was best known for his film and stage role of Albin Mougeotte, also known as Zaza Napoli, the long suffering, cross dressing queen of the stage at the Saint-Tropez nightclub, La Cage Aux Folles.

While the club’s manager and Albin’s lover, Renato Baldi (played by Ugo Tognazzi) struggled to keep the club on an even keel, a new destabilizing element enters the scene in the form of Baldi’s son, Laurent Baldi (played by Rémi Laurent). He has fallen in love with the daughter of a conservative minister and in order for them to marry the families must meet and get along. It is the setup for hillarious interactions that undermine Albin’s security and made Michel Serrault known around the world.

The 1978 film went a long way in putting a human face on gay people in society at a time when they were securely under the thumbs of conservative pressures. Consider that the Stonewall riots had occurred only nine years before and that it was only 5 years after The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders. It was still four years before the first U.S. State, Wisconsin, outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Michel Serrault died July 29, 2007 of cancer at his home in Honfleur, France. He was 79 years old.

For more information:
Michel Serrault’s IMDB filmography

Popularity: 23%

I have received many inquiries regarding the cause of Yolanda King’s death. Having made periodic searches since her death for autopsy results, I have now found that no public autopsy was performed and none is planned. A private autopsy was performed but the family has declined to release the results. They continue to say, as they did at the time of her death, that they believe she died from heart disease.

Read the original Dead, Not Forgotten obituary of Yolanda King

Popularity: 47%