THE PASSING SCENE OF 2016

Every year brings new hope and more exciting personal adventures. However, with every year we must say good bye to entertainers that have made us laugh a little bit more, cry a little bit harder, and make our daily problems go away. Here are just a few of the the great entertainers that have left us in 2016...

Gene Wilder

Actor and comedian Gene Wilder died from complications from Alzheimer's disease on August 28th at the age of 83. Wilder began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in the TV-series Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1962. Although his first film role was portraying a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde, Wilder's first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, which Wilder co-wrote, garnering the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Wilder is known for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), and Another You (1991). Wilder directed and wrote several of his own films, including The Woman in Red (1984).  His third wife was actress Gilda Radner, with whom he starred in three films. Her death from ovarian cancer led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club.

Italian crooner Julius LaRosa died on May 12th at the age of 86. He was an Italian-American traditional popular music singer, who worked in both radio and television beginning in the 1950s. In the 1950s, he was famous for getting fired from Arthur Godfrey's television show. After consulting with CBS President Frank Stanton, on the morning of October 19, 1953 (in a segment of the show broadcast on radio only), after La Rosa finished singing "Manhattan" on Arthur Godfrey Time, Godfrey fired La Rosa on the air, announcing, "that was Julie's swan song with us." La Rosa tearfully met with Godfrey after the broadcast and thanked him for giving him his "break." La Rosa was then met at Godfrey's offices by his lawyer, manager and some reporters.

Oscar winning actress Patty Duke died on March 29th at the age of 69. She was an American actress of stage, film and television. She first became famous as a teen star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16 for her role in The Miracle Worker, which she had originated on Broadway. She later starred in the sitcom, The Patty Duke Show. She progressed to more mature roles upon playing Neely O'Hara in the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls.

Opera star Patricia Munsel died at the age of 91 on August 4th. She was an American coloratura soprano. Nicknamed "Princess Pat", she was the youngest singer to ever star at the Metropolitan Opera. Munsel ended her career as an opera singer in 1981, and began to perform in musical comedies. She retired from performing in 2008.

Rock icon Prince died at the age of 57 on April 21st. Prince, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. Prince was renowned as an innovator, and was widely known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, and wide vocal range. He is widely regarded as the pioneer of Minneapolis sound. His music integrates a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, psychedelia, and pop. He changed his stage name in 1993 to an unpronounceable symbol , also known as the "Love Symbol".

Carrie Fisher

Actress Carrie Fisher died of a heart attack on December 27th at the age of 60. She was known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films. Fisher was also known for her semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge and the screenplay for the film of the same name, as well as her autobiographical one-woman play and its nonfiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the show. Her other film roles included Shampoo (1975), The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The 'Burbs (1989), and When Harry Met Sally...(1989). She was also the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. She was on a flight from London to Los Angeles when she suffered the initial heart attack on December 23rd.

Rock star and actor David Bowie died on January 10th at the age of 69. Bowie was an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, arranger, painter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, and was considered by critics and other musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. Bowie stopped concert touring after 2004, and last performed live at a charity event in 2006. In 2013, he returned from a decade-long recording hiatus, remaining musically active until his death from liver cancer three years later.

Actress and entertainer Debbie Reynolds died of a stroke at the age of 84 on December 28th, only a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died. Debbie's breakout role was the portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. However, it was her first leading role in 1952 at age 19, as Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain, that set her on the path to fame. In 1959, she released her first pop music album, entitled Debbie.She starred in How the West Was Won (1963), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a biographical film about the famously boisterous Molly Brown. Her performance as Molly Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other notable films include The Singing Nun (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), Mother (1996 Golden Globe nomination), and In & Out (1997).

Singer and big band vocalist Kitty Kallen died on January 7th at the age of 94. Kallen was an American popular singer whose career spanned from the 1930s to the 1960s—to include the Swing era of the Big Band years, the post-WWII pop scene and the early years of rock 'n roll. She is best known for her 1954 solo recording '"Little Things Mean a Lot" — a song that stayed at the U.S. number one spot for nine consecutive weeks, charted in the U.S. for almost seven months. She started out singing for the legendary bands of Jack Teagarden, Harry James, and Jimmy Dorsey.

Character actor Alan Rickman died at the age of 69 on January 14th of cancer. An English actor best known for playing anagonist roles, he was popular on the stage and screen.His big break was his role as the Vicomte de Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1985, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman gained wider notice for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series. His last film was the just completed film Alice Through the Looking Glass, released May of 2016.

Bobby Breen

Child star Bobby Breen died on September 19th at the age of 88. He was first discovered by Eddie Cantor in the 1930s. He was a popular male child singer during the and reached major popularity with film and radio appearances. After fighting in World War II, he largely quit performing. He made a few records on the Motown label in the 1960s. He lived with his family in Tamarac, Florida, and worked as the owner/operator of Bobby Breen Enterprises, a local talent agency.

Singer Kay Starr died on November 3rd at the age of 94. She was an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the 1940s and 1950s. She is best remembered for introducing two songs that became #1 hits in the 1950s, "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Rock And Roll  Waltz". Starr was successful in every field of music she tried: jazz, pop and country. But her roots were in jazz; and Billie Holiday, considered by many the greatest jazz singer of all time, called Starr "the only white woman who could sing the blues.

Character actor George Gaynes died on February 15th at the age of 98. Born to Dutch and Russian parents in Finland, he grew up in France, England and Switzerland and was a US citizen for most of his life. Gaynes' most recognized role in cinema was arguably that of Commandant Eric Lassard in the Police Academy movie series from 1984 to 1994. To television fans, he is perhaps best known as the curmudgeonly but lovable Henry Warnimont on the NBC series Punky Brewster from 1984 to 1988.

Singer Gogi Grant died on March 10th at the age of 91. She is best known for her No. 1 hit in 1956, "The Wayward Wind". In 1957, she supplied the vocals for Ann Blyth's portrayal of Helen Morgan in the biographical film, The Helen Morgan Story. The soundtrack occasioned her return to RCA (the soundtrack album climbed to No. 25 in the Billboard album chart), where she had a minor hit the following year with "Strange Are the Ways of Love." Grant continued to perform into her 80s.

Alan Young

Character actor Alan Young died of pneumonia on May 19th. He was 96. Young was an English-born Canadian-American actor, voice actor, comedian, radio and television host, and personality, whom TV Guide called "The Charlie Chaplin of Television" best known for his role as naive Wilbur Post in the television comedy series Mister Ed from 1961-1966 and as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Disney films, TV series and video games. He also appeared in a number of feature films, starting from 1946, including the 1960 film The Time Machine and from the 1980s gaining a new generation of viewers appearing in numerous Walt Disney Productions films as both an actor and voice artist.

Director Garry Marshall died from complications from a stroke on July 19th.  His notable credits included creating the television show Happy Days and its various spin-offs, developing Neil Simon's 1965 play The Odd Couple for television, and directing Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve, Mother's Day, The Princess Diaries, and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. His last directing credit was this year's movie Mother's Day (2016).

Singer Natalie Cole died of heart failure on January 1st.. She was 65. The daughter of Nat King Cole (1919-1965), Natalie rose to musical success in the mid–1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be", "Inseparable", and "Our Love". After a period of failing sales and performances due to a heavy drug addiction, Cole re-emerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album Everlasting and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac". In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable... with Love, which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole numerous Grammy Awards. She sold over 30 million records worldwide.

Actress and singer Gloria Dehaven died a week after her 91st birthday on July 30, 2016. She was a contract star for MGM during the "Golden Years Of Hollywood".  Despite featured roles in such films as Best Foot Forward (1943), The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), Scene of the Crime (1949) and Summer Stock (1950), and being voted by exhibitors as the third most likely to be a "star of tomorrow'" in 1944, she did not achieve film stardom. She portrayed her own mother, Flora Parker DeHaven, in the Fred Astaire film Three Little Words (1950). Her last film role was playing the love interest of Jack Lemmon in the comedy Out to Sea (1997).

George Kennedy

Character actor George Kennedy died on February 28th at the age of 91 of lung cancer.  He is best remembered for portraying "Dragline" opposite Paul Newman in 1967'S Cool Hand Luke, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His eclectic roster of performances also includes Joe Patroni in 1970's Airport (for which he received his second Golden Globe nomination) and its three sequels, Police Captain Ed Hocken in the Naked Gun series of comedy films and corrupt oil tycoon Carter McKay on the original Dallas television series. He made his last movie appearance in the 2014 crime drama The Gambler.

Television actress Doris Roberts died on April 17th at the age of 90. She received five Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild award during her acting career, which began in 1951. She was perhaps best known for her role as Raymond Barone's mother, Marie Barone, on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, which ran from 1996–2005.

Actress and ghost singer Marni Nixon died from breast cancer at the age of 86 on July 24th. She was an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She is best known for dubbing the singing voices of the leading actresses in films, including The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady. She retired from performing in 2008.

Singer Frank Sinatra Jr. died from a heart attack on March 16th. He was 72. He was the son of cooner Frank Sinatra that was in his father's shadows for most of his life. The younger Sinatra was also a songwriter, an actor, and a conductor. He died in Florida while on tour.

Actress Florence Henderson died on November 24th at the age of 82.. She is best remembered for her starring role as matriarch Carol Brady on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974. . She appeared as a guest on many scripted and nonscripted (talk and reality show) television programs and as a panelist on numerous game shows. She was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in 2010. On November 21, 2016, three days before her death, Florence appeared again on Dancing with the Stars giving moral support to her eldest Brady Bunch daughter Maureen McCormick, who played the popular Marcia Brady. Henderson hosted her own talk show, The Florence Henderson Show, and cooking show, Who's Cooking with Florence Henderson, on Retirement Living TV (RLTV), in the years leading up to her sudden death from heart failure.

These wonderful icons and stars are gone now, but they never will be forgotten...

RIP: ALAN YOUNG

Alan Young, who played the hapless yet protective owner of a talking horse on the popular television comedy "Mister Ed," has died at age 96, according to officials at the Motion Picture & Television Home in Woodland Hills, California.

He died Thursday of natural causes with his children at his side, the organization said.

Young also was a well-received voice actor, with appearances as Scrooge McDuck in many Disney productions and also as Farmer Smurf and other characters in the 1980s-era cartoon.

Young appeared on several shows before being cast as Wilbur Post on "Mister Ed," which became one of the most popular shows in the early 1960s. One of his previous shows, "The Alan Young Show," won a prime-time Emmy.

According to a 1990 story in the Los Angeles Times, famed comedian George Burns financed "Mister Ed" and told his co-owner they should cast Young because "he looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."

Young told the newspaper that Wilbur Post was bumbling while Mister Ed was wily.

"I think it's the same chemistry that made Laurel and Hardy, and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney," he said. "It's the one guy making a fool of the other guy." The show, which ran weekly from 1961 until 1966, featured a horse who talked (with help from a never-seen human voice actor) but Mister Ed spoke only to his owner, much to Wilbur Post's frustration.

Young had 101 acting credits, according to the Internet Movie Database, including the 1960 science fiction film "The Time Machine." He made many guest appearances on television after taking a long break after the end of "Mister Ed."

Young was born in England in 1919 as Angus Young and grew up in Scotland and Canada. He began his entertainment career on the radio at age 13. He had his own show when he was 17.

He was married three times -- to Mary Anne Grimes, Virginia McCurdy and Mary Chipman -- and had four children.

MOVIE REVIEW: AARON SLICK FROM PUNKIN CRICK

Dinah Shore was one of television greatest personalities in the 1950s and 1960s. However, throughout her career Dinah wanted to be an actress as well. She made some cameo appearances and supporting roles in musicals but never really made it as an actress. She tried desperately to get a role in MGM's Show Boat but they passed on her in favor of more opular MGM stars like Kathryn Grayson and Ava Gardner. However, Dinah was not discouraged and instead went to Paramount Pictures to make a strange forgotten musical called Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (aka Marshmallow Moon in the UK). The film was made in 1952 and starred Shore and Alan Young (a decade before Mr. Ed fame). It was directed by Claude Binyon and produced by William Perlberg and George Seaton.

The film was based on a 1919 play by Walter Benjamin Hare. The cinematography was by Charles Lang and the costume design by Edith Head. The movie is sort of a poor man's Lil Abner. The whole thing revolves around the title character, Aaron Slick, a farmer in mid-west America and his neighbor and would-be fiancé, Josie Berry. Aaron loves the farm but Josie dreams of the big city. She wants to sell her farm and travel while Aaron wants her to marry him and settle down but he is too shy to ask her. When a show visits the town Josie agrees to let two of the performers, William Merridew and his partner Gladys, stay at her house.

Merridew pretends that Gladys is his cousin while she is, in reality, his accomplice in crime. The two are confidence artists who are on the run after pulling a land sale scheme in Chicago and are looking for a place to hide out. While walking in the pasture on Josie's farm Merridew steps in some mud near a spring and discovers oil on his foot. Convinced that there is oil on the property he schemes to cheat Josie and offers to buy her land. Aaron, who has an idea what is going on, makes a counter-offer. Merridew thinks that Aaron is after the oil as well so he offers Josie $20,000. Josie sells her farm and goes to Chicago to "live it up". After a short time she finds that the "good life" is not what she really wants. She is homesick for the farm and she misses Aaron. Eventually she goes back to the farm. Eleven songs were written for the film by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, but all of them were pretty much forgettable.

Opera star Robert Merrill rounds out the cast, and actually broke his contract with the Metropolitan Opera in order to make this film. Dinah Shore and Alan Young are a very likeable couple but this precursor to Green Acres does not work. I blame the screenplay as well as the songs. Dinah Shore deserved better in this movie. The movie pretty much flopped and as a result Shore was never cast again in movie in any major role. Luckily, Dinah Shore had more success in records and televisions, because that songbird definitely had talent...

 MY RATING: 4 out of 10

RECENTLY VIEWED: THE TIME MACHINE

As a young boy first getting interested in older movies, I always enjoyed the film The Time Machine. The Morlocks always scared the heck out of me - and years later they still do. The Time Machine also was one of the first movies I bought on DVD in the late 1990s. Even though I have it in my collection, I watched the film again when Turner Classic Movies just recently aired it.

On January 5, 1900, four friends arrive for a dinner in a town in the south of England, but their host, H. George Wells (Rod Taylor), is absent. As requested, they begin without him, but then George staggers in, exhausted and disheveled. He begins to recount his adventures since they last met on New Year's Eve, 1899.

A week earlier, George discusses time as "the fourth dimension" with friends, among them David Filby (Alan Young) and Dr Philip Hillyer (Sebastian Cabot). He shows them a tiny machine that he claims can travel in time, stating that a larger version can carry a man "into the past or the future". When activated, the device blurs, then disappears. Most of his friends dismiss it as a trick; Filby, on the other hand, warns George that if it is not a trick, it is not for them "to tempt the laws of Providence." They agree to meet again next Friday.

George heads to his laboratory and sits in his full-scale model. He pushes the lever forward and watches time pass at an accelerated rate. To his amusement, he observes the changing of women's fashions on a mannequin in the window of a shop across the street. He stops at September 13, 1917 when his house is boarded up. He breaks some boards away and walks inside, where he mistakes a man in uniform for David. It turns out to be David's son James, who informs George that his father had "died in the war", and that they have been at war with Germany since 1914. He tells him that an Inventor lived across the road who disappeared around the turn of the century, and that his father refused to liquidate it, feeling sure the inventor would return some day.

George then travels to June 19, 1940, into the midst of "a new war", which he briefly stops in as his machine is buffeted from side to side, in which course his house is hit and destroyed while he is travelling. George's next stop is August 18, 1966, in a metropolis featuring skyscrapers and an elevated monorail. There is a plaque to his house at the site. However, he is puzzled to see people hurrying into a fallout shelter amid the blare of air raid sirens. An older, grey-haired James Filby tells him to get into the shelter, but seems to remember him, before warning him that "the mushrooms will be sprouting." James spots an atomic satellite zeroing in and flees into the shelter. An explosion turns the sky red and lava floods down the street, after the nuclear explosion causes a volcano to erupt (nature is reacting to man's abuse of technology). Modern civilization is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. George restarts the machine just in time to avoid being incinerated, but the lava covers the machine, then cools and hardens, forcing George to travel far into the future until it erodes away.

He stops the machine on October 12, 802,701, next to a low building with a large sphinx on top. George explores the seemingly idyllic pastoral paradise and finds a great hall. He feels alone and wonders whether humanity still exists, until he hears voices, and spots young adults by a river. A woman is drowning, but the others are indifferent. George rescues her, but is surprised by her lack of gratitude or other emotion. She calls herself Weena (Yvette Mimieux) and her people the Eloi.

As night falls, and the Eloi head into a large building where there is food unlike that in his time, George is surprised to find out that the Eloi have no government, no laws, and no civilization to speak of. Curious, he asks to see their books, but when he finds the books all covered in dust and so rotted by mold that they crumble at his touch, he becomes outraged. He returns to where he had left his time machine, but it has been dragged into the sphinx-building, behind locked metal doors. Weena follows George and insists they go back, for fear of "Morlocks" at night. A bizarre creature covered with long coarse white hair jumps out of the bushes, seizes Weena to prevent her from crying out, and tries to drag her off, but George rescues Weena and wards the beast off with fire. Dazed and shaken, Weena informs him that the hideous creature was one of the Morlocks.

The next day, Weena shows George what appear to be domed well-like air-shafts in the ground. She then takes him to an ancient museum, where the "talking rings" (flat shiny metal rings that can play a recorded message when they are stood vertically on edge and spun like a top) tell of a centuries-long nuclear war/holocaust. It ended after 326 years; by then the atmosphere had become too polluted for humanity to easily survive. One group of survivors remained underground in the shelters and evolved into the Morlocks, while the other group, which became the Eloi, returned to the surface. George starts climbing down a shaft, but turns back when a siren begins blaring (it is the same air-raid sirens heard in the far past during the nuclear war) from atop the sphinx-building. Weena and the rest of the Eloi walk with a slow emotionless trance-like stride across the land like herded livestock (George remarks that the Eloi are "nothing but fatted cattle to the Morlocks"), and complacently file through the now-open doors of the building, conditioned to walk into the doors, drawn in by the siren. When the siren stops, the doors close, trapping Weena and others inside. The Eloi tell George that the sirens mean "all clear", but they have no idea what it means (it originally meant shelter from a nuclear raid; but now used to lure the Eloi to the Morlocks).

To rescue Weena, George climbs down a shaft and enters the subterranean caverns. In one chamber, he finds human bones and realizes that the Morlocks eat the Eloi. Discovering that the Morlocks are sensitive to light, George uses matches to keep them at bay, eventually fashioning a makeshift torch from a thick wooden stick and some tufts of shedded Morlock hair. A Morlock knocks it away, and a Morlock starts overpowering George, but one of the Eloi summons up the courage to beat the Morlock to death, thus showing that the Eloi are not yet entirely docile. They come to their senses and begin the reawakening that George spoke about to Weena the night before in front of the sphinx. George tells the Eloi to start setting fire to material in the cave, driving off the Morlocks, then leads the Eloi up the shafts to safety. Under his direction, they drop dry dead tree branches into the shafts to feed the fire. There is a series of explosions as each of the domed wells spurts fire one by one and sinks into the ground, and then the entire area caves in, crushing and suffocating most of the Morlocks below.

The next morning, George finds the sphinx-building in charred ruins and the doors to the building open again, with his time machine sitting just inside the entrance. He goes to retrieve his machine, but the doors close behind him and he is attacked by the remaining Morlocks. He knocks one against the wall, killing it. In the faint light of the still-smouldering fires, George manages to activate the machine and escape, first a little farther into the future, accidentally, which he realises when he sees the dead Morlock becoming a skeleton, then back to January 5, 1900.

George's friends scoff at his story and leave; only Filby believes him. He shows a flower from the future, which Filby says could not have bloomed in the winter. Filby turns back and hears the machine being activated, but by the time he reaches the laboratory, George is already leaving on his time machine. Filby tries to break the door down but is too late to prevent his friend from escaping back into the future. He realises George moved the machine inside, so he can appear outside the Sphinx where Weena will be. The housekeeper, Mrs. Watchett (Doris Lloyd), notes that George took three books with him, probably to help the Eloi rebuild their civilization. Filby asks Mrs. Watchett which three books she would have taken to restart a civilization, and then he leaves with the hope (which is maintained by his son, as previously seen) that George may yet return, as "he has all the time in the world."

Even though the computer graphics of the 1960 did not amount to much. The film is visually interesting. A remake was made in 2002 which is very watchable, but it misses something this 1960 film had. The Time Machine is a great movie to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I remember doing it, probably 20 years ago - watching it today on another lazy Sunday afternoon brings back great memories...

my rating: 9 out of 10