“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up! You trusted us!” Stephen Furst was delivering pizzas to supplement his struggling acting career. Ever the innovator, he included his head shot with every pie he delivered. One day, he made a delivery to producer Matty Simmons, who was getting ready …
Adam West ended the decades-long controversy in a single sentence on an episode of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory: “It should be me, Keaton, Kilmer, Lego, Bale, and the pretty boy Clooney.” Adam passed away on June 9, 2017 after a short battle with leukemia. He was 88. Here’s my own memory of West’s …
Kurt Cobain never wanted to be the voice of his generation. In a suicide note to his imaginary childhood friend “Boddah,” Kurt lamented that he no longer “felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing for too many years now.” Kurt took his own life on April 5, 1994. His body …
Linda Martinez was a child prodigy. From the time she was able to stand and reach the piano, she was picking out melodies on the ivory keys. She began formal lessons at Yamaha Music Education System in Orange County, California. Linda began winning music competitions as a youngster, winning the 1991 Yamaha International Junior Original Concert …
Born Alice Jones in Edinburgh, Scotland, Quinn O’Hara (taking the more colorful Anglo name) was named the first “Miss Scotland” as an entrant in a beauty contest that predated the Miss Universe Pageant. She moved to southern California when she landed uncredited roles in a trio of Jerry Lewis films in the early 1960s. In 1966, …
Chris Cornell, the pioneering grunge guitarist and founder of the bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, performed for the last time on May 17. His final song of the evening was a cover of Led Zeppelin’s In My Time of Dying. After the show, he hanged himself in his Detroit hotel room. He was 52.
A runner-up in the 1951 Miss Universe pageant, Anita Ekberg was offered a “starlet’s contract” by Universal Pictures, despite speaking very little English. She was given small roles in a handful of films including Blood Alley, Hollywood or Bust and the Martin & Lewis comedy Artists and Models. However, Anita was the darling of the …
Mary Frances Penick was given the nickname “Skeeter” by her grandfather because she was a bundle of energy. The outgoing youngster met Betty Jack Davis in high school and the two became best friends. Going by the name “The Davis Sisters,” Skeeter and Betty sang in school, in church and, eventually, on a Detroit radio station. …
A clerk at a Chicago Marshall Fields department store, Mary Dorothy Slaton was spotted by band leader Herbie Kay in a local talent show. Herbie introduced her to the vaudeville circuit, where she sang under the stage name “Dorothy Lamour,” a play on her stepfather’s surname of “Lambour.” Soon, Dorothy had her own fifteen minute radio show …
After signing with an agent at five years-old, Erin Moran was cast as a regular in the wildlife adventure series Daktari in 1968. She went on to film several theatrical movies, including Melvin Van Peebles’ social commentary Watermelon Man and the family drama 80 Steps to Jonah in which she played a blind girl. Erin appeared …
