josh pincus is crying

Thelma McQueen was born in Tampa, Florida in 1911. She trained as a dancer and took her stage name from the “Butterfly Dance” after performing it in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She never liked the name “Thelma” and legally changed her name to “Butterfly”.
Although she appeared in an uncredited role in 1939’s “The Women”, Butterfly made her official debut in what would become her most identifiable role—Prissy, Scarlett O’Hara’s maid in the epic Gone with the Wind, uttering the famous words: “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!” She also played Butterfly, Mary Livingstone’s maid in the Jack Benny radio program, for a time during World War II.
By 1947 she had grown tired of the ethnic stereotypes she was required to play and ended her film career.
In 1950, anxious to work with her Gone with the Wind co-star Hattie McDaniel, she reluctantly took another racially-stereotyped role on the television series Beulah. She remained with McDaniel and the show for two years.
In a 1969, she appeared in an episode of The Dating Game.
Refusing to take any more racially-stereotyped roles, Butterfly was approached with very few acting offers. She devoted herself, instead, to other pursuits including study, and received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1975 at the age of 64. In 1979, Butterfly won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as Aunt Thelma, a fairy godmother in the ABC After School Special, “Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid“. She appeared in 1986’s “The Mosquito Coast” with Harrison Ford. Her final role was in a TV remake of “Pollyanna” (called “Polly”) with the Cosby Show’s Keshia Knight Pulliam. (Use that in your next game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.)
In 1980, she sued Greyhound Buslines when she was assaulted in a bus station by a guard who thought she was a pickpocket. The 69 year-old Butterfly had several of her ribs damaged when the guard threw her into a bench. After several years of litigation, she was awarded $60,000.
Butterfly lived in New York in the summer months and in Augusta, Georgia in the winter. She died in Augusta as a result of burns received when a kerosene heater she was attempting to light malfunctioned and burst into flames. A lifelong atheist, she left the contents of her personal bank account to the Freedom From Religion Foundation and donated her body to medical science.
In an interview just before she died, Butterfly said, “Now I am happy I did Gone with the Wind. I wasn’t when I was 28, but now it’s part of black history.”

The challenge word this week on Monday Artday is “paris”.

On July 3, 1971, The Doors’ Jim Morrison died of a heroin overdose in the bathtub of his Paris apartment, essentially ending Robby Krieger’s career.

I see that a band calling itself “Riders on the Storm” is on tour, with a stop near me in Atlantic City, NJ. I’d like to change my comment to John Densmore.

Diane Nemerov was born in New York City into a wealthy Jewish family. Her parents were fur merchants. Her older brother, Howard, served as United States Poet Laureate in 1963 and again in 1988.
When she was 14, she met and fell in love with Allan Arbus, a photgrapher who would later abandon photography for an acting career. (He is most famous for starring as Dr. Sidney Freedman, in the television show M*A*S*H.) Diane married Arbus when she turned 18 and the two had a fashion photography business for more than a decade. In 1959 they ended their partnership and their marriage.
Diane began studying fine art photography. In the 1960s she worked as a photojournalist, received two Guggenheim fellowships and gained critical praise for her disturbing portraits of people on the fringes of society, such as transvestites, dwarfs, giants and prostitutes. Her more famous photographs include “Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park“ and “Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967“. (This photo is echoed in Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining, which features twins in an identical pose.) Her voyeuristic approach has been criticized as demeaning to her subjects. In an effort to dispel this image, Diane undertook a study of “conventional” people, including Gloria Vanderbilt’s infant son, future CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper.
At 48, after a period of depression, Diane commited suicide by ingesting a large quantity of barbiturates. Not convinced that the drug overdose would be effective, she also slit her wrists.

The word offered this week by illustrationfriday.com is “routine”.

Just a few years after his discharge from the US Navy, Leonard Schneider was arrested in Miami, Florida, for impersonating a priest. He had stolen several priests’ clergy shirts and a clerical collar while posing as a laundry man. He then solicited donations for a leper colony in British Guiana after he legally chartered the “Brother Mathias Foundation”. He was found not guilty due to the legality of the New York state-chartered foundation, the actual existence of the Guiana leper colony, and the inability of the local clergy to expose him as an impostor. He made approximately $8,000, sending $2,500 to the leper colony and keeping the rest.
Soon after changing his last name to Bruce, Lenny earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn. From that modest start, he got his first break on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts Show, doing Bavarian impressions of American movie stars.
In the time when stand-up comics would come out on stage in a cute little suit and tell cute little mother-in-law jokes, Lenny Bruce was a trailblazer. His routines touched on previously taboo subjects, like moral philosophy, politics, patriotism, religion, law, race, abortion, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewishness. His stand-up act featured lines like “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”  No comedian of that time would dare tread near that type of subject matter. He appeared on the nationally televised Steve Allen Show, where he commented on the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor to Eddie Fisher by making his first line an unscripted ‘will Elizabeth Taylor become bar mitzvahed?’
San Francisco columnist Herb Caen was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Lenny, writing in 1959: “They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating.”
In October 1961, Lenny was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. He had used the word cocksucker on stage. He was acquitted, but other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity. The increased scrutiny also led to an arrest in Philadelphia for drug possession in the same year, and again in Los Angeles two years later. By 1963, he had become a target of Manhattan DA, Frank Hogan, who was working closely with Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Archbishop of New York. In April 1964, Lenny appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. On both occasions, he was arrested on obscentiy charges upon leaving the stage. Despite despite positive testimony and support from the likes of Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron and Dorothy Kilgallen, Lenny was sentenced to four months in the workhouse.
Lenny was arrested 15 times in two years. His performances were banned in Great Britian. At his first show in Sydney, Australia, he got up on stage, declared “What a fucking wonderful audience” and was promptly arrested.
By 1966 he had been blacklisted by nearly every nightclub in the United States, as club owners feared prosecution for obscenity. The less work Lenny got, the more he turned to drugs. His last performance was June 25, 1966, at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, on a bill with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. The performance was not remembered fondly by promoter Bill Graham, who described Lenny as “whacked out on amphetamines”.
On August 3, 1966, Lenny was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home. Lenny was lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia. Sportswriter Dick Schaap famously eulogized Lenny in Playboy, with the line: “One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That’s obscene.”
Lenny Bruce paved the comedic way for George Carlin, Robin Williams, Chris Rock and many others. Thirty-seven years after his death, Lenny was granted a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction by New York Governor George Pataki.

The challenge word on illustrationfriday.com this week is “detach”.

All Brenda Ann Spencer wanted for Christmas 1978 was a radio.
That’s all.
Just a radio.
Her father bought her a rifle instead.
On Monday, January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on children arriving at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, across the street from her house. She killed two school employees and wounded eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg.
During the six-hour standoff with police, she made such comments to police negotiators as “There was no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun”; “It was just like shooting ducks in a pond”; and “The children looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.” Brenda showed no remorse, no emotion and was totally detached from the incident.
When asked what drove her to this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” Brenda pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. She has been up for parole four times and has been turned down each time.

In 1956, Bob Crane was the number one morning disc jockey on Los Angeles’ KNX-AM radio. He filled the broadcast with sly wit, drumming, and guests such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Bob Hope. Crane known as “The King of the Los Angeles Airwaves.” With high ambitions, Crane pursued acting opportunities. He subbed for Johnny Carson on “Who Do You Trust?” and acted on shows like “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” and “General Electric Theater.” Crane’s one episode performance on the “Dick Van Dyke Show” led to his recurring role as neighbor Dr. Dave Kelsey on the “Donna Reed Show” Crane career was taking off.
In 1965, Crane was offered the starring role in a comedy pilot about Allied prisoners in a German P.O.W. camp, “Hogan’s Heroes.” Crane was nominated for an Emmy twice for his role of the wisecracking Colonel Robert Hogan. During the run of Hogan’s Heroes, Crane met Patricia Olsen (who used the name Sigrid Valdis). Crane divorced his wife of twenty years, and married Patricia on the set of the show in 1970.
There was another Bob Crane that was kept hidden from the public. Crane was obsessed with sex and with sleeping with as many different women as humanly possible. And in the way that some collectors amass stamps or coins, Crane took hundreds and hundreds of explicit photographs of his conquests, including snapshots of himself engaged in sex with these women. He frequented Hollywood strip clubs and topless bars and rarely left alone. Crane departed the “Donna Reed Show”, some say because of a sexually aggressive attitude toward his stage wife. Crane’s first wife and Patricia both turned a blind eye to Crane’s exploits for as long as they could. Crane actually had an affair with the two actresses who played Colonel Klink’s secretary (the latter being Patricia Olsen).
“Hogan’s Heroes” co-star (and future Family Feudhost) Richard Dawson introduced Crane to video salesman John Carpenter who shared Crane’s interest in photography and, as it turns out, sex. Carpenter supplied early versions of video technology (including early VCRs), and he’d often participate in and film group sex with the women that Crane would meet.
In 1971, after six seasons, CBS canceled “Hogan’s Heroes”. Not wanting to let his career decline, he appeared in numerous one-shot guest roles on network series. He made two movies for Disney. NBC gave him another shot at his own series. That lasted three months. Crane purchased the rights to the play “Beginner’s Luck” and toured the U.S. in productions as its director and star. The play brought Crane to Scottsdale, Arizona.
On Wednesday, June 28, 1978, after completing an evening performance of and signing autographs for fans in the lobby, Crane returned briefly to his apartment with Carpenter. Before they left again, Crane argued loudly on the phone with Patricia. Crane and Carpenter then headed to a local bar, where they had drinks with two women whom they had arranged to meet. At about 2:00 A.M., the foursome went to a coffee shop. About half an hour later, Carpenter left to pack for his return trip to Los Angeles the next morning. Back at his hotel room, Carpenter called Crane one final time. Crane was considering ending his lifestyle of heavy partying, and during this last phone call, Crane reportedly told Carpenter that their friendship was over.
Just after 2 p.m. on June 29, Victoria Berry, Crane’s co-star in “Beginner’s Luck”, decided to drop in on Crane at his apartment. After her knock received no answer, she tried the door knob. It was unlocked and the door swung open. When she entered the apartment bedroom she stopped and paused. Crane was lying in a fetal position in the bed. There was a huge dark area behind his head with great sweeps of blood on the wall. His face was so badly beaten that he was unrecognizable from the left side. A video cord was wrapped around his neck.
Approximately 50 pornographic videotapes were found in Crane’s apartment, as well as professional photography equipment in the bathroom for developing and enlarging still shots. A negative strip was found in the enlarger, revealing a woman in both clothed and nude poses. Circumstantial evidence pointed to John Carpenter. Police officers who arrived at the scene of the crime noted that Carpenter called the apartment several times and didn’t seem surprised that the police were there. Further investigation revealed several blood smears were found in Carpenter’s car that matched Crane’s blood type. At that time DNA testing didn’t exist to confirm if it was Crane’s or not. Not enough solid additional evidence could be produced and the case went cold.
In 1992, fourteen years after the murder, the case was reopened. An attempt to test the blood found in the car failed to produce any result due to improper preservation of the evidence. At Carpenter’s trial in 1994, the prosecution showed a videotape of Crane and Carpenter engaging in sex with the same woman to demonstrate their close relationship. However, Carpenter was acquitted on a lack of convincing evidence.
Carpenter died in 1998.
He maintained his innocence to the end.

Here’s Bob Crane — not being Hogan and not having sex.

At 17, Judy Tyler played Princess SummerFallWinterSpring on the Howdy Doody Show. She played the role for two years and moved to Broadway to star in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Pipe Dream. Judy appeared on the cover of Life Magazine and was nominated for a Tony award. Although she lost to Lotte Lenya’s performance in “A Three Penny Opera”, Judy headed for Hollywood. In 1957, she starred in her first film, Bop Girl Goes Calypso, with Bobby Troup, the songwriter who wrote “Route 66″. The same year, Judy began work on her second and final film. She played Peggy Van Alden, the young record promoter who takes Elvis’ character, Vince Everett, under her wing. She gets to deliver one of the classic lines from the film: “I like the way you swing a guitar!”
Three days after filming was completed on Jailhouse Rock, Judy and her husband, Greg, took a vacation. While driving through Rock River, Wyoming, their car swerved to avoid a truck and collided with another truck. Judy and Greg were killed instantly.
Elvis was infatuated with Judy during the filming of Jailhouse Rock. He said he could never watch the film because he was so saddened by her death.

The differences between genres of music has intrigued me for some time. And as different as they seem, these for performers from different eras have something in common.
Tommy Dorsey was a giant in the big band era. His orchestra included, at one time or another, trumpeters Doc Severinsen, and Charlie Shavers, drummers Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson and Gene Krupa, singers Jo Stafford, Dick Haymes and Frank Sinatra and trombonist Nelson Riddle. In 1956, Tommy Dorsey took some sleeping pills and rested after a heavy meal. While asleep, he choked to death on his own vomit.
Bon Scott was the lead singer for Austailia’s AC/DC. Originally, the band’s truck driver, Scott was recruited by Angus and Malcolm Young to replace current singer Dave Evans. Scott accepted the Young brother’s proposal and AC/DC went on to become a wildly popular heavy metal band in their native Australia and later the world. In 1980, at the age of 33, Scott went out for a night of heavy drinking with some friends. He was found dead behind the wheel of a parked car in South London. He had passed out and choked to death on his own vomit.
Jon Bonham was the drummer for Led Zeppelin. After the break-up of The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page saw Bonham drum at a performance and was convinced this was the guy he needed for his new band. Led Zeppelin’s live performances featured half hour drum solos culminating with a manic Bonham banging on his drumkit with his bare hands. Led Zeppelin gained worldwide popularity and are still revered after almost thirty years since their last studio album. In 1980, John Bonham attended a rehearsal for Zeppelin’s upcoming U.S. tour. On the way to the rehearsal, Bonham stopped for breakfast, which included sixteen shots of vodka. He continued to drink heavily after he arrived at the studio. The rehearsal ended late in the evening and the band retired to Jimmy Page’s house. After midnight, Bonham had fallen asleep and was taken to bed and placed on his side. Band manager Benji LeFevre and bassist John Paul Jones found him dead the next morning. During the night, Bonham had choked to death on his own vomit.
Jimi Hendrix was a guitarist, singer and songwriter whose guitar playing was cited as the main influence for many guitarists. Although he only produced three studio albums, his live performances were legendary. His stage act included playing his guitar behind his head, playing with his teeth and then setting the instrument on fire. One evening in September 1970, Hendrix attended a party in London. Afterwards, he was picked up by his girlfriend and driven to her room at the Samarkand Hotel. He had taken nine of her prescription sleeping pills. During the night, Hendrix had choked to death on his own vomit.

Four performers. One common bond.

Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb was born in 1886 in central Copenhagen, Denmark. As a teenager, he apprenticed as a machinist. He married and had two children, but with the outbreak of World War I, he entered the military. In 1916, after his discharge from military service, he headed to America alone, hoping to send for his family later (he didn’t). He had $25 in his pocket and spoke no English. He found work in a foundry. By summer 1917, he worked as an auto mechanic.
In Denmark, Karl’s father worked as a curtain-puller at a theater. Hanging around the theater, Karl got the inspiration to act. In late 1917, Karl appeared in his first picture. It was the first of a series of anti-German propaganda films. Karl was paid three dollars a day. He was making three dollars a week as a mechanic. The films were very successful. Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb changed his name to “Karl Dane” and officially became an actor.
In December 1924, Karl was cast in King Vidor’s “The Big Parade”. The movie was a major success, becoming the second highest grossing silent film of all time, making almost $6.5 million.
Karl worked alongside Rudolph Valentino in “Son of the Sheik”. This film was also a success. Karl signed a contract with MGM in 1926. He began to appear as comic relief in several films including “The Scarlet Letter”, “La Boheme” and “Alias Jimmy Valentine”. Soon after signing his MGM contract, Karl teamed with George K. Arthur as a comedic duo. Together they were dubbed Dane & Arthur. In May 1927 the duo’s first film was an instant success, as were their subsequent films. By June 1927 MGM signed Karl to a long term contract. Dane & Arthur’s last silent short was released in 1928. Their first talkie was released a short time later. George Arthur had distinct British accent. Karl, however, had a thick guttural Danish accent which made his English hard to understand. Five films later, Karl lost his contract with MGM and suffered a nervous breakdown. After some much-needed rest, Dane & Arthur made a few shorts for Paramount and RKO and set out for a short vaudeville tour.
In November 1931, after the tour, Karl and some friends formed a mining corporation. The venture failed. Karl headed back to vaudeville with a solo comedic act. His act was panned by critics and was short lived.
By the summer of 1933, unable to get a movie contract, a desperate Karl had given up on films and turned again to mining. He spent three months driving up and down the West Coast trying to find a good mining deal and ended up losing $1,100 when various ventures never took off. Deeply depressed and broken down, Karl took on several jobs including mechanic, waiter, and carpenter. He was unable to hold any of these jobs. In late 1933, Karl purchased a hot dog stand outside MGM Studios, where just five years earlier he was a huge and productive star. The business failed, as it was shunned by his former friends. Karl tried to find work with his former studio as an extra or carpenter but was turned away. He was seeking a job that would pay $5 a day.
On April 13, 1934, Karl was pick pocketed of all the money he had — $18.
On April 14, 1934, Karl didn’t keep his movie date with a young woman named Frances Leake. A worried Frances arrived at Karl’s apartment. After receiving no response at the door, Frances got his landlady to unlock his apartment door. Inside the tiny unit they found Karl, slumped in a chair, a revolver at his feet and surrounded by his scrapbooks filled with rave reviews and studio contracts. There was also a note which read, “To Frances and all my friends — goodbye.”
Karl had shot himself in the head.

By the time she was six, Anissa (pronounced “ah-NEESE-ah”) Jones was hawking cereal in her first television commercial. A couple of years later, in 1966, Anissa’s acting talents caught the attention of two television producers who were preparing a new television sitcom called Family Affair. They felt Anissa would be perfect in the role of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis. Originally to be an older sister to Johnny Whitaker’s character Jody, upon Brian Keith’s (Uncle Bill) insistence, the role was rewritten to be Jody’s twin sister. Anissa played Buffy for the show’s entire 138-episode run. Her schedule was grueling, often requiring her to either work on the show or for show publicity all year round and sometimes seven days a week. But in June of 1969, Anissa’s hard work payed off. The show was number one in the ratings turning Buffy and Jody into household names. Buffy’s doll, Mrs. Beasley, became the best-selling doll in America during the show’s run.
Anissa’s fame continued to grow. She appeared in several television productions including guest roles in Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and To Rome With Love. She, along with Jimmy Durante, presented the 1967 Emmy Award to The Monkees, for Best Comedy Series. She also starred alongside Elvis in her only movie, The Trouble with Girls. Numerous merchandising deals came her way. There were Buffy paper dolls, Family Affair coloring books and lunch boxes, a Buffy line of children’s clothes, and a Buffy Cookbook in 1971, all prominently featuring Anissa.
Anissa’s younger brother, Paul almost always accompanied her to the studio. Anissa was very fond of her brother. As the star of a hit TV series, Anissa would quite often receive gifts. She demanded that an identical one for her brother accompany any gift she received and if two gifts were not received, she would give hers away.
Family Affair was canceled in 1971, after five seasons. Anissa was thrilled that the show’s run was over, as it meant she could go to school and hang out with her friends. In 1972, Brian Keith contacted Anissa, offering her a role in his new TV sitcom. He assured her she could have the part without an audition. She graciously turned him down. Later in 1972, she auditioned for the part of “Regan MacNeil” in The Exorcist, a role she lost to Linda Blair. Anissa did not want to continue her show business career.
With a deteriorating mother-daughter relationship, Anissa, along with her brother Paul, moved in with their father. After their father’s death, Anissa and Paul were forced to move back with their mother, but Anissa often spent much of her time at a friend’s house. This infuriated her mother so much, that she reported Anissa as a runaway. Anissa was picked up and spent some time in juvenile detention. Upon her release, she began drinking and using drugs.
Hoping to make ends meet until her eighteenth birthday when she would receive royalties from Family Affair, Anissa took a job at Winchell’s Donut Shop in Playa Del Rey, California. At eighteen, Anissa received her $70,000 trust fund and $107,800 in US Savings Bonds from her Family Affair earnings. She and Paul got an apartment together. Anissa bought herself a new Ford Pinto and her brother a loaded Camaro that cost twice as much as her own car. With her newfound freedom, her new wealth and more drugs than she knew what to do with, Anissa began partying hard.
On August 28th, 1976, while attending a party at a friend’s house, Anissa ingested huge doses of the barbiturate Seconal (the drug of choice for Jimi Hendrix, Judy Garland, Charles Boyer and Marilyn Monroe), phencyclidine (PCP), cocaine and methaquaalone (Quaaludes). During the night, her boyfriend checked on her and she was fine. In the morning, her friends found an unresponsive Anissa and called the paramedics. Anissa was declared dead from what the San Diego County coroner called one of the most massive drug overdoses he’d ever seen.
Anissa was eighteen years old.

Eight years later, her brother, Paul, also died from a drug overdose.

Press the “play >” button below to hear Angel and The Reruns’ back-handed tribute to Anissa, “Buffy Come Back”!