[eggplant43]

Katharine Hepburn Dies at 96




By the Associated Press

Katharine Hepburn, an icon of feminist strength and spirit who brought a chiseled beauty and patrician bearing to such films as "The Philadelphia Story" and "The African Queen," died Sunday, her executor and town authorities said. She was 96

The executor of Hepburn's estate, Cynthia McFadden, said Hepburn died Sunday at 2:50 p.m. at her home in Old Saybrook. She had been in declining health in recent years.

During her 60-year career, she won a record four Academy Awards and was nominated 12 times, which stood as a record until Meryl Streep surpassed her nomination total in 2003. Her Oscars were for "Morning Glory," 1933; "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," 1967; "A Lion in Winter," 1968; and "On Golden Pond," 1981.

Despite her success, Hepburn always felt she could have done more.

"I could have accomplished three times what I've accomplished," she once said. "I haven't realized my full potential. It's disgusting." But, she said, "Life's what's important. Walking, houses, family. Birth and pain and joy -- and then death. Acting's just waiting for the custard pie. That's all."

Hepburn, product of a wealthy, freethinking New England family, was forthright in her opinions and unconventional in her conduct.

She dressed for comfort, usually in slacks and sweater, with her red hair caught up in a topknot. She married only once, briefly, and her name was linked to Howard Hughes and other famous men, but the great love of her life was Spencer Tracy. They made nine films together and remained close companions until Tracy's death in 1967.

Her Broadway role in "Warrior's Husband" brought a movie offer from RKO, and she went to Hollywood at $1,500 a week to star opposite John Barrymore in the 1932 film "A Bill of Divorcement." The lean, athletic actress with the well-bred manner became an instant star. The voice Tallulah Bankhead once likened to "nickels dropping in a slot machine" became one of Hollywood's most-imitated.

Hepburn's third movie, "Morning Glory," brought her first Oscar. A string of parts followed -- Jo in "Little Women," the ill-fated queen in "Mary of Scotland," the rich would-be actress in "Stage Door," the madcap socialite of "Bringing Up Baby," the shy rich girl in "Holiday."

Then a theater chain owner branded her and other stars "box-office poison" and her film career waned.

Undaunted, Hepburn acquired the rights to a comedy about a spoiled heiress, and, after it was rewritten for her, took it to the New York stage. "The Philadelphia Story" was a hit.

She returned to Hollywood for the 1940 film version, which featured James Stewart and Cary Grant. Once again she was a top star, with a contract at MGM for "Woman of the Year," "Keeper of the Flame," "Sea of Grass," "Dragon Seed," "Without Love," "State of the Union," "Pat and Mike" and "Adam's Rib."

Her first film with Tracy was "Woman of the Year," in 1942. Legend has it that when they met she commented, "I'm afraid I'm a little big for you, Mr. Tracy." His reply: "Don't worry, I'll cut you down to size." One critic compared them to "the high-strung thoroughbred and the steady workhorse." Tracy never divorced his wife, who outlived him by 15 years; Hepburn, though she led a PBS tribute to Tracy in 1986, rarely mentioned their private relationship.

"I have had 20 years of perfect companionship with a man among men," she said in 1963. "He is a rock and a protection. I've never regretted it." In another interview, she discussed their special screen magic, saying they represented "the perfect American couple."

"The ideal American man is certainly Spencer -- sports loving, man's man, strong-looking, big sort of head, boar neck and so forth. And I think I represent a woman. I needle him, and I irritate him, and I try to get around him, and if he put a big paw out and put it on my head, he could squash me. And I think that is the romantic ideal picture of the male and female in this country."

After leaving MGM in 1951, Hepburn divided her time between the stage -- she appeared in Shaw's "The Millionairess" and Shakespeare's "As You Like It" -- and film. She coolly braved a jungle for "The African Queen" and did her own balloon flying in the low-budget "Olly Olly Oxen Free." She co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in "Suddenly Last Summer," with Jason Robards Jr. in "Long Day's Journey into Night," with Laurence Olivier in the TV movie "Love Among the Ruins" and with Henry Fonda in "On Golden Pond," which won both of them Oscars.

She coaxed the ailing Tracy back onto the set for their roles as wealthy, liberal parents faced with the interracial marriage of their daughter in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." Tracy died before the film's release.

Though an early appearance in "The Lake" promoted Dorothy Parker's famously scathing remark that Hepburn "ran the gamut of emotions from A to B," she worked as tirelessly on stage as in movies.

She starred in the musical "Coco" in 1969. When she broke an ankle during "A Matter of Gravity" in 1976, she went on in a wheelchair.

Fans flocked to see her on Broadway in "West Side Waltz," in 1982, and when the show moved on to Boston, Hepburn displayed her outspokenness by ordering out a spectator who disturbed her by taking pictures.

Hepburn nearly lost a foot in a car accident in late 1982 and spent almost three weeks in a hospital. But by the end of the year she was back before the cameras, co-starring with Nick Nolte in "Grace Quigley," a comedy about a woman teaming with a hit man to help old people who want to die.

"I don't believe in shocking people, but if I got sick and was no longer of any use to myself or anyone else, I would find a way of ending it," she once said.

For many years, she divided her time between New York and Connecticut. Even well into her 70s, she was restless with energy, arising at dawn and going to bed at 7 p.m. when she wasn't appearing in a play or making another film.

She took to writing; her first book, "The Making of 'The African Queen': Or, How I Went To Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind" made her a best-selling author at 77. She followed it up with "Me: Stories of My Life" in 1991.

In 1994, Warren Beatty persuaded a reluctant Hepburn to fly out to Los Angeles and play his aunt in the romantic comedy "Love Affair."

She also appeared in a television movie, "One Christmas." Among the honors coming her way in later years: In 1999, a survey of screen legends by the American Film Institute ranked her No. 1 among actresses.

She was born in Hartford, Conn., on May 12, 1907, one of six children of Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, a noted urologist and pioneer in social hygiene, and Katharine Houghton Hepburn, who worked for birth control and getting the vote for women. "My parents were much more fascinating, as people, than I am," the actress once said. "Mother was really left of center; women's suffrage was her great cause, and I remember appearing at all the local fairs carrying huge flocks of balloons that said 'Votes for Women.' I almost went up with them."

Young Kate was educated by tutors and at private schools, entering Bryn Mawr in 1924. After graduating, she joined a stock company in Baltimore. She made her New York debut in "These Days" in 1928, the same year she married Philadelphia socialite Ludlow Ogden Smith. She divorced him in 1934 and later remarked, "I don't believe in marriage. It's bloody impractical to love, honor and obey. If it weren't, you wouldn't have to sign a contract."

But she also lauded "Luddy" for opening doors in New York for a raw young actress. She berated herself as behaving like "a pig" toward him.

"At the beginning I had money; I wasn't a poor little thing. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to come to New York and get a job as a waiter or something like that.

"I think I'm a success, but I had every advantage -- I should have been," she said.

She had various health problems in later years, including hip replacement surgery and tremors similar to Parkinson's disease.

In a 1990 interview, she told The Associated Press: "I'm what is known as gradually disintegrating. I don't fear the next world, or anything. I don't fear hell, and I don't look forward to heaven.

"There comes a time in your life when people get very sweet to you," she said in another interview. "I don't mind people being sweet to me. In fact, I'm getting rather sweet back at them.

"But I'm a madly irritating person, and I irritated them for years. Anything definite is irritating -- and stimulating. I think they're beginning to think I'm not going to be around much longer. And what do you know -- they'll miss me, like an old monument. Like the Flatiron Building."

[angelize56]

Gary posted this over in the site forum, but I thought I'd put it here for him. Take care. angel<br><img src="http://forums.techguy.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=950490">

Funnyman Buddy Hackett dead at 78
Tuesday, July 1, 2003 Posted: 1:16 AM EDT (0516 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Buddy Hackett, the squat, round, rubbery-faced funnyman who appeared for more than 50 years as a top act in nightclubs, Broadway shows, on television and in such movies as "The Music Man," "The Love Bug" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," has died, his son confirmed Monday night. He was 78.

Hackett died at his Southern California beach house either late Sunday or early Monday, Sandy Hackett told The Associated Press. His body was found Monday.

"He was one of the greatest ever. He was a terrific father. He was my best friend. He prepared me very well for this day, but no matter how much you prepare it still hurts," Sandy Hackett said as he arrived at his mother's house in Los Angeles.

The younger Hackett, who is also a comedian, said he had driven to Los Angeles from his Las Vegas home as soon as he got word of his father's death.

Hackett was invited to join the Three Stooges when "Curly" Howard, the bald-headed member of the comedy team, suffered a stroke in 1946. But Hackett declined, believing he could develop his own comedy style. Playing for small money on the Borscht Circuit for New York City vacationers in the Catskill Mountains, he learned to get laughs with his complaints about being short, fat and Jewish.

His career grew with appearances on the variety TV shows of Jack Paar, Arthur Godfrey and others. Soon he was earning top money in Las Vegas, Florida and Las Vegas. In the beginning his material was suitable for family audiences, but in later years nightclubs advertised his show "For Mature Audiences Only." His performances in those days were noted for their prolific use of four-letters words at a time when that just wasn't done.

"Compared to motion pictures," he remarked in 1996, "I'm very mild these days."

He was born Leonard Hacker in a Jewish section of New York City's borough of Brooklyn on August 31, 1924. For a time he apprenticed in his father's upholstery shop, but at school he found he had a talent for making his fellow students laugh. That was a necessity to offset the taunts about his roly-poly shape.

When he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a few years ago, he quipped that he had left Brooklyn "to get away from the subway" only to discover that the star had been placed above the one in Los Angeles.

"It's a damn circle," he complained.

After graduating from New Utrecht High School, where he played on the football team, Hacker spent three years in the military during World War II, then reinvented himself as Buddy Hackett, standup comedian.

Using other writers' jokes, he flopped in New York City. Realizing only he could write for Buddy Hackett, he moved on to Los Angeles and scored at a small showcase club. He began making big money across the country, and audiences called for his most noted routine, the Chinese waiter.

In 1954, playwright Sidney Kingsley persuaded Hackett to appear on Broadway in "Lunatics and Lovers." Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, described Hackett as "a large, soft, messy comic with a glib tongue and a pair of inquiring eyes."

He also appeared on the New York stage in "Viva Madison Avenue" (1960) and "I Had a Ball" (1964).

Hackett made his film debut in 1953 with "Walking My Baby Back Home." Among his other movies: "Fireman Save My Child," "God's Little Acre," "All Hands on Deck," "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm," "Muscle Beach Party," "Loose Shoes," "Scrooged" and Disney's animated "The Little Mermaid," as the voice of Scuttle.

The comedian appeared on television from the medium's beginnings, starring in two short-lived series: "Stanley" (1956-1957) and "The Jackie Gleason Show" (1968).

He also made guest appearances on numerous sitcoms and played Lou Costello in the 1978 movie "Bud and Lou."

He turned down numerous other offers from TV series, complaining that he could rarely get along with network executives.

"That ends the meeting," he once said of network executives telling him how to structure a comedy show.

Hackett was married to the former Sherry Dubois, whom he met at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills. They had three children: Ivy, Lisa and Sandy, who did a comedy opening act at his father's appearances.

[bassetman]

Bummers, he was funny!

[angelize56]

Judge Baklava: He certainly was! I wonder who's next! You know they seem to go in threes...heard that from my Mom when I was knee high to a grasshopper....a few short years ago of course!

[bassetman]

Seems like yesterday!

[SyscoKid]

Robert McCloskey was 88

By Michael J. Bailey, Globe Staff, 7/1/2003

is books introduced millions of boys and girls to the pleasures and perils of blueberry picking and to the wonders of where the waves meet the land. His renderings of the webbed wanderings of eight tiny ducks also introduced the children to a place of crooked paths and straight-as-an-arrow decency, a place called Boston.

Robert McCloskey, whose storytelling and drawing talents made him a cherished guest at bedtime stories for generations of families, died yesterday at his home in Deer Isle, Maine. He was 88.

His second book was first in fame. In ''Make Way for Ducklings,'' Mr. McCloskey told the tale of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their quest to find a safe place to raise their eight hatchlings. In doing so, Mr. McCloskey gave readers a duck's-eye view of Boston: of flying over the State House and Louisburg Square, of swimming in the Charles River and Public Garden pond, of waddling along Mount Vernon Street.

The book captures not just the cobblestones of Boston, but a bit of its character as well. When the ducks run into that bane of all Bostonians - traffic - their way is made clear by a big-hearted Officer Michael and his pals.

When ''Make Way for Ducklings'' was published in 1941, The New York Times called it ''one of the merriest picture-books ever.'' The book was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1942, given annually to the most distinguished picture-book. ''Make Way for Ducklings'' has been translated into nine languages and has sold about 2 million copies.

To Boston, the book is more than an often-read, often-honored children's tale. It has become a celebrated part of the city's heritage. In 1987, sculptor Nancy Schon - working from an idea by Suzanne de Monchaux - created a bronzed Mrs. Mallard and eight ducklings suitable for climbing by toddlers near the Mallards' eventual home, the pond in the Public Garden. ''I was struck with how this very simple work contained so many messages of caring, messages about the relationship of mothers to children, and so on,'' de Monchaux said last night of ''Make Way for Ducklings.''

''And because the book made Boston a familiar city to so many children, I thought he should be remembered.''

The Public Garden is also the site of the annual ''Make Way for Ducklings'' parade on Mother's Day, featuring hundreds of children dressed in the costumes of their favorite characters.

To this day, tourists and new residents alike tell of how their first impressions of Boston came not from a history textbook or the setting of a TV sitcom, but from a 1,150-word story by a young man who had failed in his attempts to make a living as a painter and who, to his final days, considered himself barely an adequate story-teller.

Born in Hamilton, Ohio, Mr. McCloskey said his first loves were neither drawing nor writing.

''From the time my fingers were long enough to play the scale I took piano lessons,'' he wrote in an autobiographical sketch for ''The Junior Book of Authors'' in 1951. ''I started next to play the harmonica, the drums, and then the oboe. The musician's life was the life for me, that is, until I became interested in things electrical and things mechanical.

''I collected old electric motors and bits of wire. ... I built trains and cranes with remote control, my family's Christmas trees revolved, lights flashed, and buzzers buzzed, fuses blew, and sparks flew! The inventor's life was the life for me, that is, until I started making drawings.''

The illustrator's life, it turned out, was the life for him. He won a scholarship to the Vesper George Art School in Boston in 1932 and served as an apprentice for a muralist.

Living on Myrtle Street on Beacon Hill, he would walk each morning to his art classes on St. Botolph Street. The trip took him across one of his favorite parts of the city, the Public Garden.

When he returned to Boston several years later, he spotted a family of ducks amid snarling traffic near Charles Street. That image, he later recounted in interviews, was filed away.

Mr. McCloskey received further training in New York City and spent a few summers on Cape Cod, intent on making a living as a painter.

While in Manhattan, Mr. McCloskey showed his portfolio of paintings - mainly landscapes and images from medieval mythology - to a children's book editor. To his surprise, the editor suggested he write, as well as illustrate, a children's book. But instead of dragons and mysterious forests, the editor said, Mr. McCloskey should consider other subjects.

Mr. McCloskey returned to his roots in Ohio. He decided to use in his books the sights and sounds, the images and ideas, and the people and places of his life.

It was an idea Mr. McCloskey embraced the rest of his career.

His first book, ''Lentil,'' told the story of a vocally-challenged Midwestern lad who found his calling in the harmonica and, in the process, saved his town's homecoming celebration.

For his next book, Mr. McCloskey returned to that scene near Boston's Public Garden.

According to an interview with The New York Times in the early 1990s, the author finished a story of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their brood of ducklings, with such names as Tom, Dick, and Harry. And Genevieve.

Mr. McCloskey didn't think it was much of a story, but he showed it to his editors at Viking Press. They told him the story was fine and he should go ahead with the illustrations. But, they said, he needed to rename those ducklings - the names he had chosen were too adult.

In creating the illustrations, Mr. McCloskey took a page from naturalist John Audubon, but in a most peculiar setting. He bought four mallards and for weeks let them run free in his apartment in New York. He would crawl next to them, at their level, to see how they waddled; he would plop them in the bathtub to see how they swam. After running out of patience - and Kleenex, according to Mr. McCloskey - he freed the ducks and finished his illustrations.

Annoyed at the suggestion to change the ducklings' names, Mr. McCloskey used in his final manuscript alphabetical nonsense names, from Jack and Kack to Pack and Quack.

To the post-war generation of baby boomers, these names would become as much a part of their childhood lore as Paul Bunyan and Oliver Twist were to generations before them.

Yet, even after the book was greeted with critical and financial success, Mr. McCloskey did not consider himself an author.

''I am primarily an artist, incidentally a writer,'' he said to a reviewer at the time.

During World War II, he married Peggy Durand, the daughter of noted children's author Ruth Sawyer Durand. The couple eventually had two daughters and settled in New York and summered on Scott Island off the coast of Maine.

Mr. McCloskey would use the island and the surrounding Penobscot Bay as the setting for most of the rest of his work. His friends and neighbors became the friends and neighbors in the books. In doing so, he captured a slice of New England life and its people for his stories in much the manner that Norman Rockwell infused his canvas with the people and places of Western Massachusetts. Mr. McCloskey, however, displayed on occasion a sense of the mischievous - dropping one of his pals, Burt Dow, into the belly of a whale, for instance.

Although Mr. McCloskey's other books did not attain the popularity of ''Make Way,'' they succeed in evoking in the reader a similar sense of place and, more importantly, an attachment to a child's perspective of those places and the rituals and rhythms of their lives.

In ''Time of Wonder,'' Mr. McCloskey's first book in color, the landscapes and seascapes of the islands in Penobscot Bay are as animate and unpredictable as the children who ''belly-whop,'' frolic, or, sometimes, hunker down in fear there. With lyrical language and splashes of color, Mr. McCloskey recreates a world where the tides continually fashion new scenes, the forests whisper their vitality in the fog, and the rains march across the islands, the bay, and, finally, you.

The book won the 1958 Caldecott Medal, making Mr. McCloskey the first author to receive this award twice.

His ''Blueberries for Sal'' and ''One Morning in Maine'' won honorable mention from Caldecott. Both were inspired by real-life events of his young daughters, Sarah (''Sal'') and Jane. One collaboration with his mother-in-law, ''Journey Cake, Ho,'' earned Mr. McCloskey another honorable mention from Caldecott.

Among his many honors, Mr. McCloskey was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress in 2000. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Legislature named ''Make Way for Ducklings'' the official state children's book.

Globe Staff reporter Michael Rosenwald contributed to this obituary.

[eggplant43]

Just catching up here. Buddy Hackett is probably one of my favorite all time comedians along with Buster Keaton, and Tottie Fields. I think he brought a lot of joy to a lot of people over the years. I loved it when he was on with Johnny Carson, because he cracked him up so much.

[LANMaster]

I agree Eggplant.
Buddy was a gem. The Jim Carey of his day, for sure.
He will be missed.

[anlore2001]

Singer Barry White dies at 58

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Velvet-voiced R&B crooner Barry White, renowned for his lush baritone and carnal lyrics that oozed sex appeal on songs such as "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," died Friday morning, his manager said.

White, who had suffered kidney failure from years of high blood pressure, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center around 9:30 a.m., said manager Ned Shankman. He was 58.

White had been undergoing dialysis treatment and had been hospitalized since last September.

His work epitomized seductive disco music, also known as "make out" music. The heavyset musician enjoyed three decades of fame for songs like "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" and "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me."

White's canyon-deep, butter-smooth vocals and throbbing musical tempos emphasized his songs' sexually charged verbal foreplay. His 1975 song "Love Serenade" began with the purring, first-person lyrics: "I want you the way you came into the world/ I don't want to feel no clothes ..."

Although his popularity peaked in the 1970s, White received belated recognition for his work in 2000 when he won his first two Grammys for best male and traditional R&B vocal performance for the song "Staying Power."

Born Sept. 12, 1944, in Galveston, Texas, to a single mother, White and his younger brother, Darryl, spent most of their childhood in South Central Los Angeles. He said he had a lifelong love for music. During his early teenage years, he began singing in a Baptist church choir and was quickly promoted to director.

In 1990, White told Ebony magazine that his voice changed overnight from the squeaky tones of a preadolescent to the rumbling bass that made him famous.

"It scared me and my mother when I spoke that morning," he said. "It was totally unexpected. My chest rattled. I mean vibrations. My mother was staring at me, and I was staring at her. The next thing I new, her straight face broke into a beautiful smile. Tears came down her face and she said, 'My son's a man now."'

He was jailed at age 16 for stealing tires, a punishment he credited with helping him straighten out his life and dedicate his efforts to music.

Inspired by the Elvis Presley song "It's Now or Never," White joined the Upfronts soul group as bass singer and cut six singles. For several years, he stayed away from performing and focused on work behind the scenes as a songwriter and producer.

He married a childhood sweetheart, identified only as Mary in his autobiography, and fathered four children with her before they separated in 1969 and later divorced.

White discovered the female trio Love Unlimited -- which included his future second wife, Glodean James -- and produced their million-selling 1972 single "Walkin' in the Rain With the One I Love."

The next year, White returned to performing with the song "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby," which topped the R&B chart and hit No. 3 on the pop chart.

He is credited by some for helping launch the disco phenomenon with his orchestral "Love's Theme" in 1973, which he conducted with his group, The Love Unlimited Orchestra.

In 1974, his album "Can't Get Enough" climbed to the top of the pop charts on the strength of the signature hits "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" and "You're the First, the Last, My Everything."

That year he also married James. The couple had four children together and collaborated on the 1981 album "Barry & Glodean," which featured the songs "I Want You" and "You're the Only One for Me." They divorced in 1988, but he said they always remained good friends.

White suffered a family tragedy in 1983 when his brother, Darryl, was shot and killed in a dispute with a neighbor over change from a $20 bill. In his 1999 autobiography, "Love Unlimited: Insights on Life and Love," Barry White said music likely spared him a similar fate.

After working on more than a dozen albums in the 1970s, his career waned over the next decade as he attempted small comebacks with the albums "The Right Night & Barry White" (1987) and "The Man is Back!" (1989.)

He enjoyed a larger resurgence with 1994 album "The Icon Is Love," and his ballad "Practice What You Preach" became his first No. 1 hit in 17 years. Toward the end of the 1990s, his songs were regularly featured on the Fox comedy series "Ally McBeal" and he made an appearance on the show as himself.

His single "Staying Power," off a 1999 album of the same name, won White two Grammys and proved he hadn't tamed his libidinous lyrics. "Put on my favorite dress, the one that oozes sexiness," he cooed in the title track's opening lines.

That year White's chronic blood pressure problem forced him to cancel several live performances with the group Earth, Wind & Fire and he was briefly hospitalized.

White's survivors include eight children, grandchildren, and his companion Catherine Denton.

[angelize56]

Drew: I was very sad to have found that out earlier this evening. What a deep, unforgetable voice he had! He sounded cool in the Arby's commercials. God bless him. Heaven has another great singer! Take care. angel

[LANMaster]

Buddy Ebsen died Sunday morning.

[eggplant43]

Here's a story about Ebsen. I always liked him.


TV Star Buddy Ebsen Dies at 95

2 hours, 23 minutes ago


By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES - Buddy Ebsen (news), the loose-limbed dancer turned Hollywood actor who achieved stardom and riches in the television series "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Barnaby Jones," has died, a hospital official said Monday. He was 95.




Ebsen died Sunday morning at Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, said Pam Hope, an administrative nursing supervisor. He had been admitted to the hospital, near his home in Palos Verdes Estates, last month for treatment of an undisclosed illness.


Ebsen and his sister Vilma danced through Broadway shows and MGM musicals of the 1930s. When she retired, Ebsen continued on his own, dancing with Shirley Temple (news) and turning dramatic actor.


Except for an allergy to aluminum paint, he would have been one of the Yellow Brick Road quartet in the classic "The Wizard of Oz." After 10 days of filming, Ebsen, playing the Tin Man, fell ill because of the aluminum makeup on his skin and was replaced by Jack Haley.


Television brought Ebsen's amiable personality to the home screen, first as Fess Parker's sidekick in "Davy Crockett."


As Jed Clampett, the easygoing head of a newly rich Ozark family plunked down in snooty Beverly Hills, Ebsen became a national favorite. While scorned by most critics, "The Beverly Hillbillies" attracted as many as 60 million viewers on CBS between 1962 and 1971.


"As I recall, the only good notice was in the Saturday Review," Ebsen once said. "The critic said the show possessed `social comment combined with a high Nielsen, an almost impossible achievement in these days.' I kinda liked that."


The show was still earning good ratings when it was canceled by CBS because advertisers shunned a series that attracted primarily a rural audience.


Ebsen returned to series TV in 1973 as "Barnaby Jones," a private investigator forced out of retirement to solve the murder of his son Hal, who had taken over the business.


"Barnaby Jones" also drew critical blasts. But Ebsen's folksy manner and a warm relationship with his daughter-in-law, played by Lee Meriwether, made the series a success.


"With such a glut of private-eye shows, I didn't see how another one could succeed," Ebsen once said. "I really thought the network was making a mistake." But the series clicked and lasted until 1980.


"I'm the luckiest actor alive," Ebsen said in 1978. "There's not anyone I'd trade jobs with right now."


Ebsen, who was 6 feet 3, jerked sodas until he landed a chorus job in the 1928 "Whoopee," starring Eddie Cantor (news). The dancer sent for his sister Vilma and they formed a dancing team that played vaudeville, supper clubs and shows such as "Flying Colors" and "Ziegfeld Follies."


A screen test led to an MGM contract for the dance team, and they were a hit in "Broadway Melody of 1936." Buddy's style was far removed from that of the reigning dance king of films, Fred Astaire (news). The angular Ebsen moved with a smooth, sliding shuffle, his arms gyrating like a wind-blown scarecrow. He made a charming partner with the tiny Shirley Temple in "Captain January."


His other films of the '30s included "Banjo on My Knee," "Four Girls in White," "Girl of the Golden West" (Jeanette MacDonald (news)-Nelson Eddy (news)) and "My Lucky Star" (Sonja Henie (news)). His first dramatic role was in "Yellow Jack" with Robert Montgomery.


Ebsen was earning $2,000 a week at MGM in 1938, when studio boss Louis B. Mayer summoned him and announced: "Ebsen, in order to give you the parts you deserve, we must own you."


The dancer recalled that he replied: "I'll tell you what kind of a fool I am, Mr. Mayer, I can't be owned." He quit his contract, returning to touring as a dancer and playing Chicago for more than a year in a farce, "Good Night, Ladies." He served three years in the Coast Guard during World War II.


Ebsen toured in "Show Boat," then returned to Hollywood. Producers asked his agent: "Why hasn't he been working in pictures?" His luck began to change when director Norman Foster recommended him to Walt Disney to play Davy Crockett.

Disney had already chosen a young Texan, Fess Parker, for the role but he hired Ebsen as Crockett's partner. When the Crockett episodes were shown on the "Disneyland" series in 1954-55, both Parker and Ebsen became heroes. Millions of children began sporting coonskin hats and singing "The Ballad of Davy Crockett." "Davy Crockett" was also released to theaters.

Ebsen's later films included "Attack," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "The Interns," "Mail Order Bride," "The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band."

In 1993, he made a cameo appearance as Barnaby Jones in the film version of "The Beverly Hillbillies."

He was born Christian Rudolph Ebsen in Belleville, Ill., on April 2, 1908. His father owned a dancing school, where the nicknamed Buddy learned the fundamentals. The family moved to Orlando, Fla., when the boy was 10, and he began pre-medical studies at the University of Florida and Rollins College. But family financial problems forced him to leave school and, at 20, he decided to try his luck as a dancer in New York.

"I arrived in New York with $26.25 in my pocket and a letter of introduction to a friend of a friend's cousin," he recalled. "I got a job in a road company, but the producer said, `That boy one foot taller than the rest of 'em — out!'"

Over the years, the actor also found time to write musical shows, "Turn to the Right" and "Champagne Dada," and a play, "The Champagne General." A lifelong sailor, he piloted his "Polynesian Concept" to victory in a Los Angeles-Honolulu race in 1968 and manufactured ocean-going catamarans.

In 2001, Ebsen started a new, unexpected career: fiction writing. His novel "Kelly's Quest," released by an e-book publisher based in Indiana, became a best seller. He also penned an autobiography, "The Other Side of Oz."

Ebsen was first married to Ruth Cambridge, Walter Winchell (news)'s "Girl Friday," and they had two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce, and he met and married his second wife, Nancy, while both were in the Coast Guard. They had four daughters and a son.

[LANMaster]

I liked him too, Eggplant.

('cept when he played a very convincing bad guy)

Thanks for filling in the details.

Since you were sooooo fond of him LAN...

[angelize56]

You forgot someone Kath!