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.”

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.

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”!

On Tuesday, I saw this girl on the train.

Jerzy Kosinski walked a fine, sometimes blurred, line between bullshitter and storyteller. Kosinski was born Josek Lewinkopf in Poland in 1933. As a child during World War II, he avoided the Nazis by using a false identity. He lived with a Roman Catholic Polish family in eastern Poland under the name, Jerzy Kosinski, an assumed name given to him by his father. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate. In 1957, Kosinski emigrated to the United States by forging letters from Polish authorities guaranteeing his loyal return, which were needed for leaving the country at that time. Once in the United States, he graduated from Columbia University. He was a lecturer at Yale, Princeton, Davenport University, and Wesleyan. In 1965, he became an American citizen.
His 1965 book The Painted Bird garnered mixed reviews. A story of a child during the Holocaust, Kosinski always insisted it was based on his own experience. However, when the book was translated and published in Poland, the family he had lived with took great exception to the abuse that was described in detail. Kosinski claimed “poetic license”.
In August 1969, Kosinski was invited, by his friend Wojciech Frykowski, to a small get-together in Los Angeles. Coming from New York, Kosinski’s luggage was lost by the airline. He phoned Frykowski, told him of this mishap and explained he would have to miss the party. The party was given by Sharon Tate and everyone there was murdered by intruders under the orders of Charles Manson.
He won the National Book Award in 1969 for Steps. In 1975, Chuck Ross, a Los Angeles freelance writer conducted an experiment with Steps by sending 21 pages of the book to four publishers under the pseudonym Erik Demos. The book was turned down by all of them including Random House (which originally published Steps) and Houghton Mifflin (which published three of Kosinski’s other novels). His 1971 book Being There was made into an Academy Award nominated film starring Peter Sellers.
A 1982 Village Voice article accused Kosinski of plagiarism. The article alleged that a great deal of Kosinski’s work was lifted from Polish manuscripts, virtually unknown by American readers. Kosinski always maintained that he loved to tell outrageous lies, particularly to the rich, intellectual and famous. They were so eager to be entertained, he explained, that they willingly suspended disbelief, and they were so confident of their superiority that they deserved to be played for fools. The truth of the Village Voice charges remained a matter of debate.
In addition to his writing, Kosinski appeared 12 times on The Tonight Show during 1971-73, posed half-naked for a New York Times Magazine cover photograph by Annie Leibovitz in 1982, and presented the Oscar for screenwriting in 1982. He also played the role of a Bolshevik revolutionary in Warren Beatty’s film Reds.
On May 3, 1991, despondent over a prolonged period of writer’s block, coupled with an irregular heartbeat as well as severe physical exhaustion, Kosinski took a fatal dose of barbiturates and washed it down with a rum and Coke. He then twisted a plastic shopping bag around his head and taped it shut around his neck. He was found dead in the bathtub in his New York apartment.

Mary Bickford Dunn was born in 1898 in Ontario, Canada. After her father died, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and sister. While working as a secretary, the attactive Marie applied for and landed an acting job at the Hollywood studio owned by Mack Sennett. Sennett dubbed her “the exotic French girl,” and rechristened her “Marie Prevost.” Prevost joined his gang of infamous Sennett Bathing Beauties. Marie was in good company with other Sennett Beauties including future screen legend Gloria Swanson, Mabel Normand (who is credited with throwing the first custard pie in movies, it’s target being Fatty Arbuckle), and future Mrs. Clark Gable, Carole Lombard.
Marie’s star was rising fast. She showed the studio heads that she was more than just a pretty face and was given roles that allowed her to display her smart, comic timing. Often playing roles just short of risqué, her characters always turned out to be good girls by the end of the pictures. Marie worked with some of the greatest directors of the time, including Frank Capra, Cecil B. DeMille, Mervyn LeRoy. She was one of the busiest and most popular actresses of the 1920s. In 1926, while traveling in Florida, Marie’s mother was killed in a car accident. Her mother’s death hit her hard and she drowned her depression in alcohol.
Marie continued working, but the alcohol started to affect her physical appearance and she started to put on weight…and the studios began to notice. She found herself sliding down the Hollywood ladder. In the early 1930s she was able to find work, often portraying the wisecracking best friend. But, the girl who had once been a major player was reduced to bit roles with few lines.
A star just a decade earlier, Marie was now in her mid-thirties and considered a has-been. By 1934, she had no work at all and her financial situation deteriorated dramatically. The downward spiral became greatly aggravated when her weight problems forced her into repeated crash dieting in order to keep whatever bit part a movie studio offered. Her “crash diets” consisted of large amounts of alcohol and no food.
On January 23, 1937, police were called to a rundown apartment building in Los Angeles after neighbors complained of a continuously-barking dog. Inside, they found Marie dead on her bed. Her dog, without food or water for days, had chewed up her arms and legs in a futile attempt to awaken her. With the combination of alcoholism and self-imposed malnutrition, Marie had starved herself to death.