LOUIS ARMSTRONG COLLECTION ONLINE

The new year is underway and it should be a terrific one for fans and students of trumpeter - bandleader Louis Armstrong. "The world is more interested than ever in Louis Armstrong," says Michael Cogswell, Director of The Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, NY. "That's evident not only from the ever-increasing number of people from around the world who visit our Museum," he reports, "but also from the number of researchers using our archives and the great popularity of recent Armstrong films and books." Because in part of a $105,384, two-year grant from the Museums for America program of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), cataloging for the three largest collections at the Armstrong House Museum is already online.By the end of 2011, the entire collection will be included.

"Thanks to the vision and generosity of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, we have been able to build a world-renowned research archives," says Cogswell."And now, thanks to this IMLS grant, our catalog will be online for everyone to peruse and enjoy."

Project Archivist Ricky Riccardi, an Armstrong expert, has spent the past 15 months arranging, preserving, and cataloging more than 200 cubic feet of Armstrong material.

"Working with this collection has been an absolute dream come true, but getting to share it online with other Armstrong lovers from around the world really makes this something special," Riccardi enthuses. "And it's not just for Armstrong experts; the online catalog will appeal to music fans, art historians, 20th-century pop culture buffs, musicians, photographers, you name it. There's something for everyone."

Cogswell adds, "One of our most common reference questions is, ‘What kind of trumpet did Louis Armstrong play?' Now, anybody, anywhere in the world 24/7, can simply go on the web to learn the make, model, and serial numbers and to see photos of Louis's own gold-plated trumpets."

According to publicity, "The Louis Armstrong House Museum holds the world's largest archives devoted to a single jazz musician. Its collections encompass more than 5,000 sound recordings, 15,000 photographs, 30 films, 100 scrapbooks, 20 linear feet of letters and papers, and six trumpets. Researchers, record companies, publishers, film producers, public school students, and many others routinely use these materials. Since 1994, more than a dozen books and recordings have been published based on research from the collections, including Terry Teachout's Pops, a notable book of 2010.

The research core of the archives is the Louis Armstrong Collection, comprising Satchmo's vast personal trove of home-recorded tapes, photographs, scrapbooks, manuscript band parts, and other materials discovered inside his modest house in Corona, Queens, after his wife, Lucille, passed away in 1983. A grant from the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation made possible the Museum's acquisition of the world's largest private collection of Armstrong material from Jack Bradley, Armstrong's friend and a noted jazz photographer."

Bradley's items included hundreds of candid, previously unpublished photographs of Armstrong taken or collected by Bradley over five decades.

The direct link to The Louis Armstrong House Museum's catalog is here

THE PASSING SCENE OF 2010

As we say goodbye to the year that was 2010, we also say goodbye to some wonderful entertainers. Many of them performed and delighted audiences with their talents for generations. These wonderful entertainers left us this year - they are gone but hopefully not forgotten...

Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis (1925 - 2010)
Actor. Born Bernard Schwartz, his father was a tailor who immigrated from Hungary; he was brought up in poverty in a tough Bronx neighborhood. He would go on to be one of the greatest actors of a generation, starring in films such as Some Like It Hot and The Defiant Ones.

Leslie Nielsen (1926 - 2010)
Actor. Born Leslie William Nielsen, he was a World War II-era Royal Canadian Air Force veteran. He attended the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts and Neighborhood Playhouse (New York City actor's training school) before beginning steady television work in the late 1940s. He gained his greatest fame in comedy movies such as Airplane! and Naked Gun.

Barbara Billingsley (1915 - 2010)
Actress. Born Barbara Lillian Combes, she attended Los Angeles Junior College in the mid 1930s and then moved to New York City, where she worked as a model. In the 1950s she represented a generation of housewives playing Mrs. Cleaver on the television series, Leave It To Beaver.

Tom Bosley (1927 - 2010)
Actor. He will be remembered for his role as the patriarch Howard Cunningham in the popular TV series "Happy Days" (1974 to 1984). Born in Chicago, he served in the US Navy, and attended DePaul University following his return home.

Rue McClanahan (1934 - 2010)
Actress. Best known as the co-star of the popular TV sitcom The Golden Girls. Born Eddi-Rue McClanahan, she grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma, graduated from the University of Tulsa, and began a career as an actress in 1957.

Art Linkletter (1912 - 2010)
Television and Radio Personality, Author. He hosted two of the longest-running programs in broadcast history and was a presence in American media for more than six decades. "Art Linkletter's House Party," a variety show, debuted on radio in 1944 and was seen on CBS television from 1952 to 1969.

Dennis Hopper (1936 - 2010)
Actor, Director. He was considered one of Hollywood's most outspoken and versatile actors. He appeared in over 150 motion pictures during his lifetime, working as both an actor and film director, in a career that spanned over five decades. He was known in the motion picture industry for his anti-establishm.

Lena Horne

Lena Horne (1917 - 2010)
Entertainer. She broke through racial barriers as the first black performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, her grandparents were active in the NAACP and she was a cover girl for the organization's monthly bulletin at the age of two.

Patricia Neal (1926 - 2010)
Actress. Striking, husky-voiced leading lady of stage and screen. She won a Best Actress Academy Award for "Hud" (1963). In 1965 Neal nearly lost her life to a series of crippling strokes, but fought back and triumphantly resumed her career.

Peter Graves (1926 - 2010)
Actor. Born Peter Aurness, he participated in athletics and was an accomplished musician before beginning his career as a radio announcer, where he utilized his robust speaking voice. After studying drama at the University of Minnesota, he followed his older brother James Arness into the entertainment field.

Fess Parker (1924 - 2010)
Actor. Born Fess Elisha Parker, Junior in Fort Worth Texas, he would become famous for playing Davy Crockett on television.

Jimmy Dean (1928 - 2010)
Entertainer. Jimmy Ray Dean was an American country music singer, television host, actor and businessman. Although he may be best known today as the creator of the Jimmy Dean Sausage brand, he first rose to fame for his 1961 country crossover hit "Big Bad John"; and became a national television personality.

Lynn Redgrave (1943 - 2010)
Actress. She had a long career on stage, television, and film. The child of a distinguished British theatrical family, she was raised within the show-business milieu and studied at the London School of Speech and Drama before making her professional stage debut in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Jean Simmons (1929 - 2010)
Actress. A leading lady of captivating beauty, she appeared in British and American motion pictures. She was only 15 when chosen for the role of 'Heidi' in the 1944 picture "Give Us the Moon", followed with performances in "Great Expectations" as 'Young Estella' (1946) and "Black Narcissus" (1947).

John Forsythe (1918 - 2010)
American Stage, Television and Film Actor. Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning three decades, as single playboy father Bentley Gregg in the 1950s sitcom Bachelor Father (1957–1962); as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend on the 1970s crime drama Charlie's Angels (1976–1981).

Gloria Stuart (1910 - 2010)
Actress. Best remembered for her Academy Award nominated role of the more mature, 'Rose Calvert ' in the multi-Academy Award winning motion picture, "Titanic" (1997). Stuart's film career spanned nearly seven decades. During the "Golden Age" of Hollywood she worked along side James Cagney, Claude Rains, and Eddie Cantor.

Dixie Carter

Dixie Carter (1939 - 2010)
Actress. She graduated from the University of Memphis and competed in the 1959 Miss Tennessee pageant, earning first runner-up. She then began an acting career, first on the Memphis stage and later in New York City theaters. Her most famous role was on TV's Designing Women

Kevin McCarthy (1914 - 2010)
Actor. The younger brother of author Mary McCarthy, they were both orphaned when their parents fell victim to the 1918 influenza epidemic, and he would be raised by various relatives. His most famous role was in The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

Gary Coleman (1968 - 2010)
Actor. As a child he appeared in episodes of "The Jeffersons" and "Good Times" before attaining celebrity status as a star of the NBC situation comedy "Diff'rent Strokes", where his character's usual retort to his brother (played by Todd Bridges) "What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" became a national catchphrase.

Jill Clayburgh (1944 - 2010)
Actress. A star of both the large and small screens, she was twice nominated for the Academy Award as Best Actress. Raised in an upper class Manhattan family, she received a degree in theater from Sarah Lawrence College in 1966.

Robert Culp (1930 - 2010)
Actor, Screenwriter. Best known for his work in television, he earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy (1965-1968), the espionage series, where he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents.

James MacArthur (1937 - 2010)
Actor. He is most identified with the role of Detective Danny "Danno" Williams in the long-running police drama "Hawaii Five-O" (1968 to 1979). The line "Book 'em, Danno", often used during the series' run, is one of the most memorable in television history.

Mitch Miller (1911 - 2010)
Conductor, Record Producer. He shall probably be best remembered for getting a large television audience to "Sing Along With Mitch" on Friday nights in the early 1960s.

Blake Edwards (1922 - 2010)
Motion Picture Director, Screenwriter, Producer. He is best remembered for the "Pink Panther" film series. Born William Blake Crump, his parents divorced while he was a child, and his mother would remarry to Jack McEdwards, a Hollywood production manager who helped to get Edwards in the business. He was also married to Julie Andrews.

J. D. Salinger (1919 - 2010)
Novelist, Short Story Writer. His book "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) is considered the classic 20th Century novel of alienated youth. It has sold over 60 million copies worldwide.

Eddie Fisher (1928 - 2010)
Entertainer. One of America's most popular singers of the 1950s, his career was later overshadowed by his private life. The Philadelphia native began performing as a teen and got his big break in 1949 with an appearance on Eddie Cantor's radio show, which led to a recording contract with RCA Victor.

Zelda Rubinstein (1933 - 2010)
Actress. She is best remembered as the ghost-hunting psychic from the "Poltergeist" movies of the 1980s. The 4'3" Rubinstein, who preferred the designation "little person", attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Berkeley.

Meinhardt Raabe (1915 - 2010)
American Actor. One of the last surviving Munchkin-actors in The Wizard of Oz, he was also the last surviving cast member with any dialogue in the film. At 4'7", he played the coroner in The Wizard of Oz in 1939, with his lines being: "As coroner, I must aver. I thoroughly examined her. And she's no...

Frances Reid (1914 - 2010)
Actress. She is fondly remembered for her role of Alice Horton in the daytime TV serial "The Days of Our Lives", from the show's debut in 1965 until 2007. Raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of a banker, she studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and made her Broadway debut in 1939.

Kathryn Grayson

Kathryn Grayson (1922 - 2010)
Singer, Actress. She starred in a number of film and Broadway musicals from the 1940s to the 1960s. Born Zelma Kathryn Hedrick, she moved from North Carolina to St. Louis with her family where, at 12, she was discovered singing on the stage of an empty opera house. She became one of MGM's best loved singing stars.

Agathe Von Trapp (1913 - 2010)
Entertainer. She was a member of the Von Trapp family of singers, who escaped Nazi-occupied Austria and found success in America. Their story was told in the Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film "The Sound Of Music" (1965), in which she was portrayed as Liesl, the daughter who was "16 going on 17.

Billie Richards (1921 - 2010)
Actress. Known primarily for voice characterizations, she shall be remembered as the title lead in the 1964 television special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". Raised in Toronto, she was dancing by age two and at five was appearing in a revue titled "The Merry Makers".

Ilene Woods (1929 - 2010)
Actress, Singer. She voiced the title role of Walt Disney's 1950 animated classic "Cinderella". Born Jacqueline Ruth Woods, she originally wanted to be a teacher, but was pushed into show business by an ambitious mother who arranged for her to receive dance and music lessons.

Steve Landesberg (1936 - 2010)
Actor, Comedian. Best remembered as Arthur P. Dietrich, the intellectual, unflappably deadpan detective from the long-running 1970s television series "Barney Miller".

Art Gilmore (1912 - 2010)
Voice Artist, Actor. Best remembered as the 'voice' for such hit television shows as "The Red Skelton Show " and "Highway Patrol", he had a career that spanned over 6 years.

Marie Osborne (1911 - 2010)
Actress. Appearing in around two dozen Hollywood features, she was silent film's first major child star. Born Helen Alice Myers, she was placed at age three months with a foster family named Osborn who changed her name to Marie and later added an "e" to their surname.

Dorothy Provine

Dorothy Provine (1935 - 2010)
Actress. Born to a businessman and an interior designer, she was raised in Washington. She was educated at the University of Washington, where she received a BA in Theater Arts and began performing in several amateur stage productions. Her most famous role was as Milton Berle's wife in the comedy It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963.

These stars have stopped glowing but they will never fade away...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: GUY LOMBARDO

Guy Lombardo was New Year's Eve for the better part of 50 years. When he died in 1977, so did New Year's Eve for many people. This undated picture below is a great picture of Guy Lombardo. He stayed up for midnight on New Year's Eve for years and yet here he is catching a snooze. It is a classic picture of a classy guy...

RIP: LINA ROMAY

Lina Romay, who sang with the Latin-inflected Xavier Cugat orchestra in the early 1940s before beginning a decade-long career as a film and TV actress, has died. She was 91. Romay's son, Jay Gould, says his mother died Dec. 17 of natural causes at a hospital in Pasadena.

Romay began her entertainment career by touring as the Cugat orchestra's lead singer.

A performance with the orchestra in the 1942 Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth film "You Were Never Lovelier" led to roles in some 15 other films and appearances on the Milton Berle Show, the Red Skelton Show and other TV programs.

An exceptionally fine singer, she was often heard on popular radio shows of the 1940's such as Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. She sang on Hollywood Canteen and in USO shows broadcast to American serviceman overseas during WW2. My research has uncovered her appearances on at least 15 Command Performance radio shows. She also was featured in several Mail Call broadcasts, and with the Marx Bros, quite an impressive lineup! She sang on Bing Crosby's Philco Shows and others. She even had her own radio show, some of which are available by some private collectors. We know, based on what I've read, her early days as the lead female singer with Xavier Cugat's orchestra, while he was the headlining at the Waldorf Astoria. But I think she left his employ when she signed a film contract with MGM during that period. She also has appeared on Broadway, most notably in Michael Todd's Peep Show and singing in many small venues.

Her show business career ended in 1953, but from the late 1970s into the 1980s, she worked as a Spanish-language radio announcer for horse races at Hollywood Park Racetrack.

SPOTLIGHT ON JEAN ARTHUR

Jean Arthur was born on October 17, 1900 and was arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur. So much was she part of it, so much was her star personality defined by it, that the screwball style itself seems almost unimaginable without her." Arthur has been called "the quintessential comedic leading lady."

Arthur is best known for her feature roles in three Frank Capra films: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), films that championed the everyday heroine. A memorable later performance was in George Stevens' Shane (1953), her last screen appearance. Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier (1943). However, she never won an Oscar.

Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene in Plattsburgh, New York to Protestant parents Johanna Augusta Nelson and Hubert Sidney Greene. She lived off and on in Westbrook, Maine from 1908 to 1915 while her father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland, Maine as a photographer. The product of a nomadic childhood, Arthur also lived at times in Jacksonville, Florida; Schenectady, New York; and, during a portion of her high school years, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan. She came from a family of three older brothers: Donald Hubert (1891), Robert B. (1892) and Albert Sidney (1894). Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from Norway who settled in the American West. She reputedly took her stage name from two of her greatest heroes, Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) and King Arthur.

The turning point in Jean Arthur's career came when she was chosen by director Frank Capra to star in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Capra had spotted her in a daily rush from the film Whirlpool in 1934 and convinced Cohn to have Columbia Studios sign her for his next film as a tough newspaperwoman who falls in love with a country bumpkin millionaire. Arthur co-starred in three celebrated 1930s Capra films: her role opposite Gary Cooper in 1936 in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town made her a star, while her fame was cemented with You Can't Take It With You (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939, both with James Stewart. She was re-teamed with Cooper, playing Calamity Jane in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), and appeared as a working girl, her typical role, in Mitchell Leisen's 1937 screwball comedy Easy Living opposite Ray Milland. So strong was her box office appeal by 1939 that she was one of four finalists that year for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind; the film's producer, David O. Selznick, had briefly romanced Arthur in the late 1920s when they both were with Paramount Pictures.

She continued to star in films such as Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings in 1939, with love interest Cary Grant, 1942's The Talk of the Town, directed by George Stevens (also with Grant), and again for Stevens as a government clerk in 1943's The More the Merrier, for which Jean Arthur was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (losing to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette). As a result of being in the doghouse with studio boss Harry Cohn, her fee for The Talk of the Town (1942) was only $50,000 while her male co-stars Grant and Ronald Colman received upwards of $100,000 each. Arthur remained Columbia's top star until the mid-1940s, when she left the studio and Rita Hayworth took over as the studio's reigning queen. Stevens famously called her "one of the greatest comediennes the screen has ever seen", while Capra credited her as "my favorite actress".

Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in Shane (1953)Arthur "retired" when her contract with Columbia Pictures expired in 1944. She reportedly ran through the studio's streets, shouting "I'm free, I'm free!" For the next several years, she turned down virtually all film offers, the two exceptions being Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), in which she played a congresswoman and rival of Marlene Dietrich, and as a homesteader's wife in the classic Western Shane (1953), which turned out to be the biggest box-office hit of her career. The latter was her final film, and the only color film she appeared in.

Arthur next decided to teach drama, first at Vassar College and then the North Carolina School of the Arts. While teaching at Vassar, she stopped a rather stridently overacted scene performance and directed the students' attention to a large tree growing outside the window of the performance space, advising the students on the art of naturalistic acting: "I wish people knew how to be people as well as that tree knows how to be a tree."

Her students at Vassar included the young Meryl Streep. Arthur recognized Streep's talent and potential very early on and after watching her performance in a Vassar play, Arthur said it was "like watching a movie star." Jean Arthur died quietly in retirement on June 19, 1991 at the age of 90...

MOVIE SHOWCASE: IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

If you want to watch simply a fun movie then I recommend "IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD". Despite its length (192 minutes the original film ran), the movie flies by, and does not drag at all. The movie is an American comedy film directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers. The ensemble comedy premiered on November 7, 1963. Ensemble cast is an understatement, because as many stars as possible are crammed into the movie.

"Smiler" Grogan (Jimmy Durante), a suspect in a long ago tuna factory robbery and on the run from the police, careens his car off a twisting, mountainous road in the Southern California desert and crashes. Five motorists stop to help him - Melville Crump (Sid Caesar), a dentist; Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters), a furniture mover; Dingy Bell (Mickey Rooney) and Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett), two friends on their way to Las Vegas; and J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle), who owns an edible seaweed company. Just before he kicks the bucket (quite literally), Grogan tells the five about $350,000 (equal to $2,510,687 today) buried in the (fictitious) Santa Rosita State Park, near the Mexican border, under a mysterious "big W". Initially, the motorists try to reason with each other and share the money, but it soon becomes an all-out race to get the money first.

Unbeknownst to them all, Captain T. G. Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) of the Santa Rosita Police Department has been patiently working on the "Smiler" Grogan case for years, hoping to someday solve it and retire. When he learns of the fatal crash, he suspects that Grogan may have tipped off the passersby, so he tracks them by various police units. His suspicions are confirmed by their behavior.

Everyone experiences multiple setbacks en route to the money. Crump and his wife Monica (Edie Adams) charter a shabby World War I biplane and harrowingly make it to Santa Rosita but get stuck in the basement of a hardware store. They free themselves with the help of some dynamite conveniently located in the basement.

Dingy and Benjy charter a modern plane, but after their alcoholic pilot (Jim Backus) lets the two fly the plane, erratically, and consequently gets knocked unconscious while he attempts to make a drink in the back of the plane, the terrified friends are forced to land the plane themselves. On the ground, two cab drivers, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, whisking Dingy and Benjy away from the airport, and Peter Falk, in a separate cab driving Crump and Monica away from the hardware store, thus also get in on the hunt.

Pike's furniture truck crashes into the vehicle containing Finch, his wife Emmeline (Dorothy Provine), and his overbearing dictatorial mother-in-law, Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman). The three persuade Pike to ride off for help on a girl's bicycle, then flag down a British army officer, Lt. Col. J. Algernon Hawthorne (Terry-Thomas), to get them to Santa Rosita, and drive past Pike when he attempts to thumb Hawthorne's vehicle down. After many arguments, most caused by Mrs. Marcus, she and Emmeline refuse to go any farther, and Finch and Hawthorne leave them behind.

Pike tries to get motorist Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) to take him to Santa Rosita, but Meyer betrays Pike and races for the money on his own. Pike, outraged over Meyer, destroys a service station at which Meyer has been forced to stop due to a tire blowout. After the rampage, Pike steals the station's tow truck and picks up Mrs. Marcus and Emmeline. Mrs. Marcus calls her beatnik son Sylvester (Dick Shawn), who lives near Santa Rosita, to get the money, but the almost Oedipally obsessed Sylvester races hysterically to the defense of his mother, running out on his beautiful bedroom companion (Barrie Chase). Meyer experiences his own setbacks, including losing his car and nearly being drowned. All the while, Culpepper and the police department secretly track their activities.

Eventually, all the characters meet up at the state park and search for the Big W. Culpepper orders all policemen to leave the area and goes in solo to retrieve the money but actually plans to take the money to Mexico to escape his dysfunctional family and unsatisfying job after the police department tells Culpepper that his pension won't change. Emmeline, alone and wiping her face at a water fountain, ironically the only one who wanted no part in any of the matter, is the first to recognize the Big W, composed of four palm trees standing at odd angles. Culpepper comes out of the bushes as Emmeline makes the discovery. Emmeline offers to split the money evenly with Culpepper and openly states her wishes to leave all her troubles behind, and maybe even live in a convent (reminding the audience that both Tracy and Provine are Roman Catholic in real life), but in saying so, unwittingly reveals to Culpepper the location. Minutes later, however, Pike, then the others, notice the palm trees and frantically began digging, while Culpepper quietly mixes in with the others and watches. Eventually Sylvester is the only one left in the resulting hole, and his attempts strike the suitcase containing the money. After the suitcase is opened and the group unsuccessfully attempts to strike deals with each other on the money's distribution, Culpepper identifies himself and orders the now-stunned ensemble to turn themselves in, saying a jury may be more lenient. The ensemble climb into the two taxis (Falk's cab had Caesar, Silvers, Adams, Hackett, and Rooney, and Rochester's cab had Berle, Merman, Winters, Provine, Terry-Thomas, and Shawn) and drive out of the park, initially intending to turn themselves in.

But when the two taxicab groups see Culpepper traveling out of the park's exit in the opposite direction with the money, they reverse direction and follow him. Meanwhile, after a number of unsuccessful attempts to reach Culpepper to tell him that his pension would be trebled, the police department revokes his pension and orders his arrest. After a long and frantic chase sequence, all eleven men in the group end up stranded on the fire escape of an old building slated for demolition. While trying to keep from falling off, the men lose control of the suitcase containing the money, and all $350,000 flutters down to the crowd watching below after the suitcase opens. The men then all attempt to climb down a Santa Rosita Fire Department aerial ladder truck, but their combined weight makes the firemen lose control of the ladder, causing the ladder to pivot and rotate wildly and fling the men in many different directions, resulting in many injuries and landing all the men in the hospital awaiting arrest, and eventually to crash into the ground.

In the hospital, the dejected group, in casts and with varying degrees of immobility and pain, criticize Culpepper for taking the money, but he says they will get off easy with the justice system because he will have the harsh sentence. He adds that maybe ten or twenty years from now, there'll be something he can laugh at, but the rest remain unsympathetic. The three women then enter, with Mrs. Marcus (in the middle) scolding all of the hospitalized men. Mrs. Marcus promptly slips on a banana peel that Benjy had thrown on the floor moments before and is carried off on a gurney by interns. Everyone, even Culpepper, begins to laugh hysterically.

A sequel was talked about a few years ago, but hopefully they will never tinker with this 1960s comedy masterpiece...

RIP: VOICE OF THE LONE RANGER

Fred Foy, an announcer best known for his booming, passionate lead-ins to "The Lone Ranger" radio and television series, died Wednesday of natural causes at his Woburn, Mass., home, his daughter said. He was 89.

Nancy Foy said her father worked as an actor before landing the job as the announcer and narrator on "The Lone Ranger" radio show in 1948.

The show's live lead-in introduced its masked cowboy hero and his trusted horse with the line: "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty 'Hi-Yo Silver!' ... The Lone Ranger!"

Foy's dramatic introduction and narration, performed in a powerful baritone, were so good it "made many people forget there were others before him," said radio historian Jim Harmon, who called him "perhaps the greatest announcer-narrator in the history of radio drama.

"He pronounced words like no one else ever had — 'SIL-ver,' 'hiss-TOR-ee.' But hearing him, you realized everyone else had been wrong," Harmon wrote in his book, "Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearances in Film, Television and Other Media."

Foy never tired of giving a spirited rendition of "The Lone Ranger" introduction to anyone, anywhere, who would ask, his daughter said.

"Dad would do the intro at the drop of a hat," she said. "He loved it. He loved for us to let people know so he would be asked to do it."

Foy was born in Detroit in 1921, graduated from that city's Eastern High School in 1938 and landed a job on the announcing staff of radio station WXYZ in Detroit in 1942. He was drafted into the Army that year and served in an Armed Forces Radio unit in Cairo during World War II.

Foy returned to WXYZ in 1945, then three years later won the job on "The Lone Ranger," even stepping into the lead role for one radio broadcast when actor Brace Beemer had laryngitis.

Foy's son, Fritz Foy, said the introduction's signature opening line, "Hi-Yo, Silver!" was done by an actor on the radio show, though his father belted it out for the TV series.

Foy also performed on radio series including "The Green Hornet" and "Sgt. Preston of the Yukon."

In 1960, Foy began working for the ABC network. He spent five years as an announcer on the "The Dick Cavett Show" and narrated documentaries. He left ABC in the mid-1980s and later retired to Woburn, Nancy Foy said.

Foy is survived by his wife of 63 years, Frances Foy, their three children and three grandchildren.