25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

David Bowie

October 25, 2019

David Bowie is an English rock musician, who has also worked as an actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for five decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s, and is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth of his work.

Although he released an album and several singles earlier, Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when the song “Space Oddity” reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era as the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single “Starman” and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie’s impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, “challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day” and “created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture.” The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single “Fame”, co-written with John Lennon, and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer characterised as “plastic soul”. The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album Low ?the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called “Berlin Trilogy” albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single “Ashes to Ashes” and its parent album, Scary Monsters . He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topping single “Under Pressure”, then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with the album Let’s Dance, which yielded the hit singles “Let’s Dance”, “China Girl”, and “Modern Love”. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was Reality, which was supported by the 2003?2004 Reality Tour.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

David Brian

October 25, 2019

David Brian was an American actor and dancer.

Brian was signed by Warner Bros. in 1949 and appeared in such films as The Damned Don’t Cry! and Flamingo Road with Joan Crawford, and Beyond the Forest with Bette Davis. He also had a role in the John Wayne movie The High and the Mighty of 1954 as Ken Childs.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Brian was active in television with guest roles in dozens of shows ranging from dramatic to comedic, from Rawhide to I Dream of Jeannie. In the mid-1950s, he was the lead actor in the TV show, Mr. District Attorney.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

David Carradine

October 25, 2019

David Carradine, born John Arthur Carradine, was an American character actor, best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s television series, Kung Fu and its 1990s sequel series, ‘. He was a member of a productive acting dynasty that began with his father, John Carradine. His acting career, which included major and minor roles on stage, television and cinema, spanned over four decades. A prolific “B” movie actor, he appeared in more than 100 feature films and was nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award. The latest nomination was for his part in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Film projects that featured Carradine continued to be released long after his death. These posthumous credits were from a variety of genres including horror, action, western, martial arts, drama, science fiction and documentary. In addition to his acting career, Carradine was also a musician and pursued a directing career. Influenced by his most popular acting role, he studied martial arts. The child of a frequently married actor, “Jack”, as Carradine was known in his youth, had an unstable childhood. This instability would continue throughout his life as he himself was married several times. He was also frequently arrested and prosecuted for a variety of offenses which often involved substance abuse. His death occurred in June 2009, under unusual circumstances.

He was born John Arthur Carradine”’ in Hollywood, California, the son of Ardanelle “Abigail” and noted American actor John Carradine. He was a brother of Bruce, half-brother of Keith, Christopher and Robert Carradine, and an uncle of Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton. He was the great-grandson of Methodist evangelical author Beverly Carradine and the grandnephew of artist Will Foster.

“Jack” Carradine’s formative years were turbulent. Both of his parents repeatedly married. He was the product of his mother’s second marriage of three, and his father’s first of four. At the time his parents married each other, his mother already had a son, Bruce, by her first husband, whom John adopted. John Carradine planned a large family but, as his son explained in his autobiography, after his wife had a series of miscarriages, he discovered that she had had repeated illegal abortions without his knowledge. This rendered her unable to carry a baby to full term. It was with this backdrop of marital discord that at the age of 5, Jack almost succeeded in committing suicide by hanging. He said that the incident followed his discovery that he and Bruce had different biological fathers. He added that, “My father saved me, and then confiscated my comic book collection and burned it

25 Oct 2019
Live Performance Permalink

David Copperfield

October 25, 2019

David Copperfield is an American illusionist, described by Forbes in 2006 as the most commercially successful magician in history. Best known for his combination of storytelling and illusion, Copperfield has so far sold 40 million tickets and grossed over $1 billion.

Copperfield was born David Seth Kotkin in Metuchen, New Jersey, the son of Jewish parents, Rebecca, an insurance adjuster, and Hyman Kotkin, who owned and operated a men’s haberdashery in Metuchen called Korby’s. Copperfield’s mother was born in Jerusalem, Israel, while his paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. When Copperfield was 10, he began practicing magic as “Davino the Boy Magician” in his neighborhood, and at the age of 14, became the youngest person ever admitted to the Society of American Magicians. Shy and a loner, the young Copperfield saw magic as a way of fitting in and, later, as a way to get girls. As a teenager, Copperfield became fascinated with Broadway and frequently sneaked into shows, especially musicals featuring Stephen Sondheim or Bob Fosse. By age 16, he was teaching a course in magic at New York University.

At age 18, he enrolled at Fordham University, and was cast in the lead role of the Chicago-based musical The Magic Man three weeks into his freshman year, adopting his new stage name “David Copperfield” from the Charles Dickens book of the same name. At age 19, he was headlining at the Pagoda Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Dan Avey

October 25, 2019

Dan Avey was a radio personality and newscaster who worked for over 30 years in the Los Angeles area and received more than 30 major journalism awards including 15 Golden Mikes.

Avey died from cancer at Cedars Sinai on August 15, 2010. He had been fighting the disease for five years, including during much of his stay at KABC.

Avey started his radio career at KXLY in Spokane, Washington during his freshman year in college. From 1972 to 1976, he served as the analyst on Los Angeles Kings broadcasts, where he originally was paired with Jiggs McDonald, and later with Roy Storey and Bob Miller, who like Avey has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1976, he started at all-news KFWB, and in 1978 he also had a short stint at KWIZ in Santa Ana. In 1986, he left KFWB when he was hired by KFI to join Gary Owens’ new morning show. Avey later became the newsman for Geoff Edwards’ midday talk show at KFI. When Edwards left the station in March 1989, Avey and two other people associated with the show were fired a few days later, and Avey returned to KFWB where he worked for the next twelve years.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Dan Duryea

October 25, 2019

Dan Duryea was an American actor of film, stage and television. Duryea graduated from Cornell University in 1928. While at Cornell, Duryea was elected into the Sphinx Head Society. He made his name on Broadway in the play Dead End, followed by The Little Foxes, in which he played the dishonest and not particularly bright weakling Leo Hubbard. He moved to Hollywood in 1940 to appear in the film version in the same role.

He established himself in films playing similar secondary roles as the foil, usually as a weak or annoyingly immature character, in movies such as The Pride of the Yankees. As his career progressed throughout the 1940s he began to carve a niche as a violent, yet sexy, bad guy in a number of film noirs. In so doing he established a significant female following and, over time, something of a cult status. His work in this era included Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, Criss Cross, Black Angel and Too Late for Tears.

From the 1950s, Duryea was more often seen in Westerns, most notably his charismatic villain in Winchester ’73. Other memorable work in the latter part of his career included Thunder Bay, The Burglar, The Flight of the Phoenix, and the primetime soap opera Peyton Place. He also appeared in one of the first Twilight Zone episodes in 1959 as a drunken former gunfighter in “Mr. Denton on Doomsday,” written by Rod Serling. He guest starred on NBC’s anthology series The Barbara Stanwyck Show. In 1963, Duryea appeared as Dr. Ben Lorrigan in the episode “Why Am I Grown So Cold” on the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour.

Duryea was far removed from many of the characters he played in the course of his career. He was married for thirty-five years to his wife, Helen, who preceded him in death on January 21, 1967. The couple had two sons: Peter, who worked for a time as an actor, and Richard.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Dan Haggerty

October 25, 2019

Dan Haggerty is an American actor, best known for the title role in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

He was born in Hollywood, growing up amid the Southern California bodybuilding lifestyle. Online biographies and newspapers suggest that he was born Gene Jajonski in Pound, WI. He had early roles in Muscle Beach Party and the Elvis Presley film Girl Happy. His ease in working with animals got him work as a trainer and handler for Walt Disney films, and he found work as a stuntman on the Ron Ely’s TV show Tarzan.

Haggerty was a free spirit, living in the Malibu Canyons with his animals while making his own furniture and clothing. He also worked as a set builder on films. He appeared briefly in David Carradine’s film, Americana. He provided a fighting dog for the film, played the role of the dog’s trainer and worked on the set design and the actual restoration of the main focus of the film, a broken down carousel.He worked on the motorcycles featured in the film Easy Rider, and had a bit part as a “hippie” in the movie. He showed up in several low-budget biker films of the era as both a supporting player and stuntman before being tapped to play the outdoorsman in the independent film The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. The picture was a surprise hit and spun off into a popular TV series that made Haggerty a household name. He also starred in the 1989 film “Spirit of the Eagle”.

His fame was fleeting, however, as a well-publicized drug arrest and motorcycle crash kept him from work. He appeared often during the late 1980s in the direct-to-video boom, but by the early 1990s devoted his energies to the Studio City restaurant “Haggerty’s Bistro” and marketing his own barbecue sauce. He continued to work as both an actor and infomercial spokesman.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Dane Clark

October 25, 2019

Dane Clark was an American film actor who was known for playing, as he labeled himself, “Joe Average”.

Clark was born Bernard Zanville in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a sporting goods store owner.

He graduated from Cornell University and earned a law degree at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, New York. During the Great Depression, he worked as a boxer, baseball player, construction worker, and model.

Modeling brought him in contact with people in the arts. He gradually perceived them to be snobbish, with their talk of the “theatah”, and “I decided it give it a try myself, just to show them anyone could do it.”