FATS WALLER MEETS AL CAPONE

Prohibition reigned that New Year of 1926, and Chicago was a wide- open town. When the mobs staked out their territories, he who trespassed died - rubbed out by hired hands. Alphonse "Al" Capone had made his share of "arrangements". Recent mass carnage had left him sole proprietor of a chain of breweries, brothels, speakeasies and gambling dens that netted millions. The press, politicians and the police were all in his pocket. He was 27.

Thomas "Fats" Waller was another kind of prodigy. To him, a "mob" was what packed in to hear you at Harlem rent parties. The "family" were your musical mentors, people like James P Johnson and Willie "the Lion" Smith; an "arrangement" was something you did on the piano. His experience with booze and women was strictly from the consumption end, and his only brush with the law was dodging the prcoess server to avoid paying alimony. When Fats left New York for Chicago to play a few gigs, he was 21 years old.

The ebullient young man with the dazzling jazz style was a big hit at the Sherman Hotel. His nightly audience included men with wide lapels and bulging pockets. One evening Fats felt a revolver poked into his paunchy stomach. He found himself bullied into a black limousine, heard the driver ordered to East Cicero. Sweat pouring down his body, Fats foresaw a premature end to his career, but on arrival at a fancy saloon, he was merely pushed toward a piano and told to play. He played. Loudest in applause was a beefy man with an unmistakable scar: Al Capone was having a birthday, and he, Fats, was a present from "the boys".

The party lasted three days. Fats exhausted himself and his repertoire, but with every request bills were stuffed into his pockets. He and Capone consumed vast quantities of food and drink. By the time the black limousine headed back to the Sherman, Fats had acquired severeal thousand dollars in cash and a decided taste for vintage champagne...

RIP: RICCI MARTIN

Ricci Martin, an entertainer and the youngest son of legend Dean Martin has died, according to multiple reports. He was 62.

Family members say Martin was found dead at his home in Utah on Wednesday, according to Variety. A cause of death has not yet been determined, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Martin followed his father into show business, working as a musician and entertainer. In the 1970s, he released a single, "Stop, Look Around" with Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys. The two also worked together on Martin's album,Beached. Wilson, who died in 1998, went on to marry Martin's sister Gina in 1987, but the pair divorced one year later.

In the 1990s, Martin began performing at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas and other clubs alongside Desi Arnaz, Jr. (son of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball) and Billy Hinsche. Martin took the gig as a replacement for his older brother Dean Paul Martin, who was killed in a military plane crash in 1987 and had launched the group alongside Arnaz and Hinsche.

In 2002, Martin wrote a memoir, That's Amore, about growing up in the Martin family in Beverly Hills, California, and the A-list stars who would frequently visit their home.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Martin is survived by his three daughters, Pepper, Montana and Rio; by his mother, Jeanne Martin; an older brother, Craig, and by four sisters, Gail, Deana, Gina and Sasha....

COOKING WITH THE STARS: CARY GRANT

This receipe from classic Hollywood legend Cary Grant really made my mouth water. It really looks tasty, and there is nothing like good BBQ in the summer...

Cary Grant’s Oven-Barbecued Chicken

Ingredients:
3 chickens, 1 ½ lbs each (or 1 chicken, 4.5 lbs), cut into pieces
Olive or vegetable oil for frying
1 cup ketchup
½ cup Worcestershire sauce
½ cup water
½ cup A-1 sauce
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup cider vinegar
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 tbsp cornstarch (or more if needed)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Heat olive or vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium till hot. Fry the chicken pieces in the hot oil in batches till browned. Season with salt and pepper as you cook.
Place browned chicken pieces in a 9x13 baking dish. In a saucepan, combine ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, water, A-1 sauce, sugar, cider vinegar, onion and garlic. Whisk together over medium heat till warm.

In a small bowl, whisk together 2 tbsp cornstarch with 2 tbsp cold water till smooth. Slowly add the cornstarch mixture to the barbecue sauce, whisking till incorporated. Continue to whisk over medium heat till the sauce is hot, bubbly, and thickened. Remove from heat. Pour the sauce evenly across the top of the chicken pieces. Cover the roasting dish with foil.

Bake the chicken for 60-75 minutes, or until the meat is tender and well cooked. Remove from the oven. If you’d like to serve extra sauce with the chicken, skim the fat drippings from the top of the sauce. To thicken the leftover sauce, pour it into a saucepan and heat over medium. Mix together equal amounts of cornstarch and water, a half tablespoon at a time, and slowly whisk into the sauce. Heat and add the cornstarch mixture, stirring constantly, till desired consistency is reached. Serve chicken warm with the thickened barbecue sauce on the side.

THE TRAGEDY OF BARBARA THOMASON ROONEY

Carolyn Mitchell was one of those girls who seemed destined to make headlines. And did she ever.

Born with stars in her eyes in Phoenix in 1937, she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager.

While still in high school in Inglewood, the curvy teen adopted a new name, Barbara Thomason, and began entering bathing suit beauty contests from Hermosa Beach to Palisades Park.

She got her first headline after a Santa Monica pageant in June 1954: “Blonde, 17, Chosen Muscle Beach Queen.” She was described as “a bouncy, blue-eyed blonde in a white bathing suit,” with hourglass measurements recorded down to the half-inch.

Thomason won a roomful of beach beauty trophies, and that led to pin-up modeling. But she dreamed of acting.

In 1955, she made her screen debut (as Carolyn Mitchell) in an episode of “Crossroads,” an ABC morality-play series.

A few years later, she won a small part in the biker flick “Dragstrip Riot,” with Fay Wray. Next came a marquee-topping role in Roger Corman’s cult film “Cry Baby Killer,” the debut of co-star Jack Nicholson.

As those two B-movies flickered on silver screens, Thomason/Mitchell made another headline, on Aug. 12, 1958: “Starlet Takes Sleeping Pills at Mickey Rooney’s Home.”

Red Doff, Rooney’s flack, said he had a perfectly reasonable explanation — even if it wasn’t.
Barbara Thomason passed out at Mickey Rooney's home in August 1958 after taking too many sleeping pills. They were married by the end of the year.

Thomason accidentally took some pills, he said. After she got woozy, she was stripped naked and dunked in Rooney’s pool by pals trying to revive her. Later they dumped her at a hospital, where she recovered.

And no one was surprised when Thomason became Mrs. Rooney No. 5 in a secret service in Mexico on Dec. 1, 1958.

The bride was 21, the groom 38.

The union wasn’t legal since Rooney’s fourth divorce wasn’t yet inked, but they fixed that detail with a do-over ceremony five months later in L.A.

Thomason gave up her budding career to become a full-time mommy. She delivered four babies in exactly four years, beginning with Kelly Ann on Sept. 13, 1959, and ending with Kimmy Sue on Sept. 13, 1963, with two in between.

Whatever joy the children brought was tempered by Rooney’s financial swoon. He was broke, despite earning $12 million in hundreds of film roles over 35 years. He went bankrupt in 1962 as Uncle Sam dunned him for $100,000 in back taxes.

When she married a movie star, Thomason must have expected a glamorous life. Instead, she was awash in diapers and on a tight budget, keenly aware that her husband had resumed another chronic bad habit: philandering.

In 1965, Rooney traveled to the Philippines to film Ambush Bay, a war drama costarring Hugh O’Brian. While Rooney was away, Thomason got cozy with a muscular young actor, a Yugoslav émigré named Milos Milosevic.

As their affair began, Milosevic’s movie career was taking off. He had a bit part in the “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” and he played the title demon in “Incubus,” the William Shatner horror film done in the Esperanto language.

Rooney returned from the Philippines in November 1965 to discover that the demon had moved in while he was gone. Rooney retreated to a hotel and filed for divorce. Barbara had second thoughts when she learned that he wanted custody of their children.

The couple met on Jan. 30, 1966, in a hospital room where Rooney was being treated for an intestinal bug. Thomason swore she would dump Milosevic, and Rooney surprised everyone by agreeing to reconcile. Barbara then had to break the news to Milosevic, who was still shacked up in the Rooneys’ Brentwood home. The Yugoslav was known for a volcanic temper, and no one expected him to leave his lover meekly. But friends who accompanied Thomason home said Milosevic seemed to take the news calmly. They went into the master bedroom together at about 8:30 that night.

The next day, when Thomason didn’t respond to knocks on the locked bedroom door, her friend Wilma Catania used a screwdriver to break in. On the floor in the master bath, Milosevic was sprawled atop his lover. Thomason had been shot under the chin, Milosevic in the temple. Police judged it a murder-suicide at Milosevic’s hand, using a .38 pistol that Rooney kept for protection.

No one could explain why the shots were not heard, even though her children and a maid were in bedrooms just down the hall.

The tragedy created Thomason’s curtain-closer headline: “MICKEY ROONEY’S WIFE NO. 5 SLAIN.”

Her children were raised by Barbara’s mother. Rooney married three more times before he died in 2014 at the age of 93, and he never spoke of the murder. The tragedy is of course that Barbara was killed so young, but another tragedy is she is barely remembered at all...

REMEMBERING A DEAR FRIEND - BOB COWLEY

Last month I lost another dear friend who inspired me in my Bing Crosby collection. Bob Cowley made a tribute tape for Bing Crosby in 1974 that he sent to the crooner, and he got a personalized letter back from him. Bob Cowley was a genius with anything dealing with radio, and in the days before the computer and CDs, he made this tape for Bing sound better than anything I have ever heard. I corresponded with Bob from the late 1990s until 2010 when ill health ended our communication.

Robert C. “Bob” Cowley, age 96, of Toledo, passed away on Tuesday, June 14, 2016, at Vibrant Life Senior Living-Jackman Lodge, Temperance, MI. He was born on May 11, 1920, in Lincoln, Nebraska to the late Charles Harold and Gladys (Nelson) Cowley. He began an interest in radio and electronics in his early teens, experimenting with old radios and amplifiers. The Cowley family moved to Toledo in 1941 where Bob worked at Strong Electric for 2 years before his career at WSPD began as an engineer in 1943. During those early years he worked in radio, traveled around northwest Ohio, with Art Barrie of WSPD radio doing remote live radio broadcasts. In the 50's at the inception of TV Broadcasting, he switched to WSPD Television studios.

He married Ruth L. Wollenweber on April 14, 1948, and in their early years of marriage he repaired radios and televisions for friends and neighbors for a little extra cash. While the children were growing up, he took a lot of home movies which he later transferred to video tapes. He built a Schober Electronic Organ with a full 32 range of pedals from a mail order kit. It was used in their home until donated to Our Savior Lutheran Church in Cincinnati. When their house was built in 1956, Bob did all the wiring and majority of the woodwork.

On Sunday mornings he taped the church services which were taken to “shut-ins”. He also did recordings at home of sermons by area pastors for a Sunday morning radio broadcast called “Lutheran Chapel of the Air” on WCWA for 25 years. He was a member of Hosanna Evangelical Lutheran Church in Monclova.

Bob is survived by his loving wife of 68 years, Ruth; their children, Susan Sturtz, Judy (Ralph) Fuehr, Linda (Mike) Maas, and David (Jennifer) Cowley; 9 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren, 4 great-great-grandchildren; and a sister-in-law, Betty Cowley. He was also preceded in death by sisters, Margaret Putnam, Mildred Hites, and Marie Eighmey, and a brother, Paul Cowley.

Funeral services will begin at 12 Noon on Monday, June 20, 2016, at David R. Jasin-Hoening Funeral Home, 5300 N. Summit St., Toledo, OH 43611, with Pastor Scott Mosher, officiating. Visitation will begin in the funeral home at 10 a.m. and continue until the time of the service. Burial will follow in Ottawa Hills Memorial Park, Toledo.

Those wishing to make a contribution in Bob's memory are asked to consider Hosanna Evangelical Lutheran Church, Monclova, or Hospice of Northwest Ohio. Many thanks to Foundation Park, Hospice of Northwest Ohio and Vibrant Life of Temperance for the special care given to Bob.

I will never forget the videos and audio tapes that Bob sent me, and if anyone wants a copy of Bob's excellent tribute to Bing, please contact me. Rest in peace dear friend...

RIP: BILL CARDILLE

Longtime Pittsburgh personality and TV host Bill Cardille died at 1:15 a.m. today at his home in McCandless.

Mr. Cardille, 87, recently had been diagnosed with liver cancer.

Mr. Cardille was the co-creator and host of "Chiller Theatre," which has been off the air since January 1984 but is remembered for its late-night horror flicks.

His daughter, Lori Cardille, posted on June 24 on Facebook that her father -- known by the moniker "Chilly Billy" -- was ailing. Thousands of cards and letters arrived in the mail over the next few weeks, and Ms. Cardille said her sister, Maria Johnson, spent last night reading many of them to their father.

“Dad truly was at peace,” she said.

Legions of Pittsburgh-area kids, their parents and Saturday-night babysitters, grew up watching him host “Chiller Theatre” and/or “Studio Wrestling.” To be sitting around the TV set, watching the early black-and-white movies on WIIC (later, WPXI), was for many the height of innocent weekend fun.

His first job in television was at WICU in Erie. Part of his job involved hosting a Saturday-morning spelling bee, then doing commercials for Erie Brewing during half-inning breaks of Cleveland Indians games.

“I don’t drink,” he recalled, “and in those days, you could drink beer on the air... the company sent me a case a week and the engineers would drink it.”

He pretended to take a sip during the commercial “and then I’d pour mine down the sewer. They were the happiest rats in Erie.”

One day, after yet another game ended early and there was on-air time to kill, he asked it it were possible to get a camera to the station’s front sidewalk. From there, he proceeded to interview people on the street, just chatting them up.

It was something he later enjoyed during the closing of “Studio Wrestling.” As the crowd filed out, Mr. Cardille would interview the fans.

He and wife, Louise, returned to Pittsburgh on Labor Day weekend, 1962. He’d been offered a management position in Erie but turned it down, convinced his future was as a director and announcer.

“So I came here and made $110 a week, with a wife and two kids. I thought there was a future,” Mr. Cardille once said.

Funeral arrangements were not complete, although Ms. Cardille said there likely will be private and public services early next week...

RIP: GARRY MARSHALL

Garry Marshall knew how to tug at moviegoers' heartstrings, whether with unlikely love in "Pretty Woman" or sentimental loss in "Beaches."

But it was goofy, crowd-pleasing comedy that endeared the writer and director to generations of TV viewers in hit sitcoms including "Happy Days", "Laverne & Shirley" and "Mork & Mindy." Marshall, who died Tuesday at 81, said in a 1980s interview that humor was his necessary path in life.

"In the neighborhood where we grew up in, the Bronx, you only had a few choices. You were either an athlete or a gangster, or you were funny," the New York native said.

Marshall also had a memorable on-screen presence, using his hometown accent and gruff delivery in colorful supporting roles that included a practical-minded casino boss untouched by Albert Brooks' disastrous luck in "Lost in America" and a crass network executive in "Soapdish."

He died at a hospital in Burbank, California, of complications from pneumonia following a stroke, his publicist Michelle Bega said in a statement. An outpouring of respect and affection quickly followed.

Ron Howard, who starred as all-American teen Richie Cunningham on "Happy Days" before going on to become one of Hollywood's top directors, wrote on Twitter that Marshall went by a simple mantra, "Life is more important than show business."

"He was a world class boss & mentor whose creativity and leadership meant a ton to me," Howard added.

Richard Gere, who starred opposite Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," said in a statement that "everyone loved Garry. He was a mentor and a cheerleader and one of the funniest men who ever lived. He had a heart of the purest gold and a soul full of mischief. He was Garry."

Henry Winkler, who starred as Fonzie on "Happy Days," saluted Marshall in a tweet as "larger than life, funnier than most, wise and the definition of friend."

"A great, great guy and the best casino boss in the history of film," actor-filmmaker Brooks posted on Twitter.

He rejected retirement, serving as a consultant on CBS' 2015 reboot of "The Odd Couple," starring Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon, and appearing in an episode this year as Oscar's father, Walter. Among his final credits was "Mother's Day," a film released last April starring Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson and Roberts.

Marshall, the brother of actress-director Penny Marshall, earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and worked at the New York Daily News. But he found he was better at writing punchlines.

He began his entertainment career in the 1960s selling jokes to comedians, then moved to writing sketches for "The Tonight Show" with Jack Paar in New York. He caught the eye of comic Joey Bishop, who brought him to Los Angeles to write for "The Joey Bishop Show."

Sitcoms quickly proved to be Marshall's forte. He and then-writing partner Jerry Belson turned out scripts for the most popular comedies of the '60s, including "The Lucy Show," ''The Danny Thomas Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

In 1970, they turned Neil Simon's Broadway hit, "The Odd Couple," into a sitcom starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall and produced by Marshall. It ran for five seasons and proved the beginning of a TV sitcom empire that lives on in unending 21st-century reruns.

In January 1979, Marshall had three of the top five comedies on the air with "Happy Days," which ran from 1974-84; "Laverne & Shirley" (1976-83), which starred Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, and "Mork & Mindy" (1978-82) with newcomer Robin Williams.

After cranking out what Marshall once estimated to be 1,000 sitcom episodes, he switched his focus to the big screen with 1984's "The Flamingo Kid," a coming-of-age story starring Matt Dillon, which Marshall wrote and directed.

He concentrated on directing with his later films, including 1986's "Nothing in Common," with Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason; "Overboard" (1987) starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell; "Beaches" (1988) with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey; "Pretty Woman" (1990) and "Dear God" (1996) with Greg Kinnear and Laurie Metcalf.

The Gere-Roberts pairing that helped make "Pretty Woman" a smash hit did the same for "Runaway Bride," which reunited them in 1999. "The Princess Diaries" in 2001 was another winner, although Marshall suffered a flop with "Georgia Rule" (2007), starring Jane Fonda and Lindsay Lohan.

Marshall is survived by his wife, Barbara, and the couple's three children, Lori, Kathleen and Scott...