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Leon Wildes, a prominent immigration lawyer best known for his landmark, yearslong fight in the 1970s to prevent John Lennon from being deported and enable the former Beatle to receive permanent residency in the U.S., has died at age 90.
Wildes died Monday (Jan. 8) at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. His son — immigration attorney and Englewood, New Jersey Mayor Michael Wildes — said that he had been in failing health after a series of strokes.
“Dad felt he effectively lived the American Dream for a kid from Olyphant PA and spent his life facilitating the same experience for scores more,” said Michael Wildes, who is also the managing partner for the firm his father helped start, Wildes & Weinberg. “He was beloved by his family, was extraordinarily humble, and beloved by our Bar.”
Leon Wildes was a graduate of the New York University School of Law who co-founded Wildes & Weinberg in 1960 and, by the end of the decade, had gained enough stature to serve as president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. His name would become part of musical and political history after an old law school classmate, Alan Kahn, called in 1972 and told him that Lennon and Yoko Ono needed his help getting their visas extended.
Wildes agreed to meet with the couple at the Manhattan offices of Apple Records, the label founded by the Beatles in the late 1960s. But he did have one embarrassing confession about Lennon and his artist wife.
“I have no idea who these people are,” he told Kahn, later saying he misheard their names as “Jack Lemmon and Yoko Moto.”
What Wildes initially thought would be a formality turned into one of the most dramatic legal struggles of the era. Lennon and Ono had moved from England to New York City, trying to track down Ono’s daughter from a previous marriage, Kyoko Chan Cox, whom her ex-husband had abducted.
John and Yoko also were active in the New Left politics of the time, opposing the Vietnam War and backing efforts to defeat President Richard Nixon in his bid for re-election. With the minimum voting age lowered from 21 to 18, Lennon’s plans included a 1972 tour of the U.S. that would potentially attract millions of young people.
As government files later revealed, some Nixon supporters feared that Lennon could damage Nixon politically. In a February 1972 memo sent to Sen. Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican and a member of a Senate subcommittee on internal security, aides recommended a “strategic countermeasure,” terminating Lennon’s visa. (The government would also try to deport Ono, a Tokyo native, but she was granted permanent residency in 1973).
Thurmond forwarded the memo to Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, whose deputy, Richard Kleindienst, contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In March, the INS informed the British rock star that his visa would not be extended. Officials cited a drug bust in London in 1968, when Lennon pleaded guilty to possession of “cannabis resin.” Under U.S. law at the time, non-residents faced deportation if “convicted of any law or regulation relating to the illicit possession” of narcotic drugs or marijuana.
Over the next two years, Lennon and Ono endured ongoing government harassment, with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover at times personally involved. Their phone was tapped and their whereabouts closely followed. Lennon would say the pressure helped lead to the temporary breakup of his marriage. The musician left for Los Angeles in 1973 and embarked on what he called his “long weekend” of drinking and drugs, ending with the couple reconciling in 1975.
Meanwhile, musicians and writers and other public figures urged the government to let him stay. Letters of support were signed by everyone from Fred Astaire and Dick Cavett to Saul Bellow and Stevie Wonder. Bob Dylan composed a hand-written note praising John and Yoko as enemies of “this mild dull taste of commercialism” forced on the culture by the “overpowering mass media.”
The Lennons didn’t always help their case. When the couple held their first press conference to discuss the deportation order, the two pulled tissues out of their pockets and declared the birth of a new country, “Nutopia,” a paradise with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people.” As representatives of Nutopia, John and Yoko granted themselves diplomatic immunity.
Yoko later apologized, Wildes would recall.
“Leon, you have to understand. We are artists. We have a message,” she told him.
Thanks to Wildes’ ingenuity and the shocking twists of politics in the 1970s, Lennon’s deportation was delayed and ultimately revoked. Wildes found a loophole in the immigration drug law after Lennon told his lawyer that he had been found guilty of possessing hashish, not marijuana (“Hash is much better than marijuana!” Lennon joked). Wildes also highlighted an obscure, unacknowledged government policy of “prosecutorial discretion,” under which officials used varying standards in deciding immigrant cases to pursue.
Meanwhile, the FBI’s targeting of Lennon ended after Nixon’s re-election in 1972, and the INS campaign to deport him began to lose momentum after the growing Watergate scandal led Nixon to resign in August 1974. By October 1975, Mitchell was among many former Nixon officials serving jail time, and Lennon was celebrating an extraordinary week of milestones. On Oct. 7, a federal appeals court judge in New York reversed the deportation order, citing the government’s “secret political grounds.” Two days later, on Lennon’s 35th birthday, Ono gave birth to their son, Sean.
For a final hearing, in July 1976, Wildes brought in Norman Mailer and Gloria Swanson, among others, to testify on Lennon’s behalf, and the INS granted the musician his green card.
“It’s great to be legal again,” Lennon said after the hearing.
The legacy of Lennon’s struggles would endure for decades. When President Barack Obama launched his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), for which some children of immigrants were granted temporary relief from deportation, he drew upon reasoning similar to what Wildes had revealed on behalf of Lennon: prosecutorial discretion.
Rock stars, too, were affected. Mick Jagger, who also had been arrested in England on drug charges, was among those who found it easier to travel to the U.S.
“I have in my passport a notation stating that the ineligibility of my visa is withdrawn ‘because of the Lennon precedent’,” Jagger said in a 2005 book, Memories of John Lennon, published upon the 25th anniversary’s of Lennon’s murder. “So I have him in my memory every time I enter this country.”
Wildes continued to practice law after his time with Lennon and was an adjunct professor for more than 30 years at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. His honors included the Edith Lowenstein Memorial Award for excellence in advancing the practice of immigration law and the Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award.
Wildes was married three times, most recently to Alice Goldberg Wildes, and is survived by two children, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Descended from European Jews, Wildes grew up in a small Pennsylvania community where he was often the only Jew in his class. He attended Yeshiva College as an undergraduate and became interested in immigration law after working with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in the late 1950s. Wildes published articles in the Cardozo Law Review among other journals and wrote a book on the Lennon case, John Lennon Vs. the USA, that came out in 2016.
An opera fan when he was young, he would become fully vested in the Beatles universe, to the point of using “Imagine” as music when a caller to his office was placed on hold. He remained close to Yoko, appeared in the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon and even attended some Beatles conventions, among them the Chicago-based Fest for Beatles Fans.
“I spoke there three times, and every time after I spoke, dozens of people came up, shook my hand and thanked me for what I had done for John Lennon,” he told Pennyblackmusic.co.uk in 2017. “And I learned from these wonderful people that it is really something to marvel about and to enjoy this beautiful music of the Beatles. I learned a lot about that kind of music, and now I favor it as well.”
Annie Nightingale, the pioneering BBC Radio 1 DJ, has died at 83. A statement shared Friday (Jan. 12) and attributed to her family says she “passed away yesterday at her home in London after a short illness.”
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Nightingale was the first female DJ on BBC Radio 1, where she started in 1970, ultimately becoming the station’s longest serving DJ. In 2010, Nightingale entered the Guinness Book of Records as the longest serving female radio presenter, a record she still holds. Her last broadcast was in late December 2023.
“Annie was a pioneer, trailblazer and an inspiration to many,” her family’s statement continues. “Her impulse to share that enthusiasm with audiences remained undimmed after six decades of broadcasting on BBC TV and radio globally.”
“Never underestimate the role model she became,” the statement went on. “Breaking down doors by refusing to bow down to sexual prejudice and male fear gave encouragement to generations of young women who, like Annie, only wanted to tell you about an amazing tune they had just heard. Watching Annie do this on television in the 1970s, most famously as a presenter on the BBC music show The Old Grey Whistle Test, or hearing her play the latest breakbeat techno on Radio One is testimony to someone who never stopped believing in the magic of rock n’ roll.”
BBC Radio 1 also reflected on Nightingale’s career and her impact. “Annie was a world class DJ, broadcaster and journalist, and throughout her entire career was a champion of new music and new artists,” Aled Haydn Jones, Head of BBC Radio 1, said in a statement posted to BBC Radio 1’s Instagram account. “She was the first female DJ on Radio 1 and over her 50 years on the station was a pioneer for women in the industry and in dance music. We have lost a broadcasting legend and, thanks to Annie, things will never be the same.”
Born near London in 1940, Nightingale began her career as a journalist and television presenter, later launching a line of clothing shops. She first came on the BBC Radio 1 airwaves in February 1970.
Nightingale is being widely celebrated, with BBC Radio 1’s other famous Annie, Annie Mac, writing on Instagram, “What a devastating loss. Annie Nightingale was a trailblazer, spirited, adventurous, fearless, hilarious, smart, and so good at her job. This is the woman who changed the face and sound of British TV and Radio broadcasting forever. You can’t underestimate it.”
Radio 1’s Pete Tong also commemorated Nightingale, recalling that “Annie was a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role model, who possessed a relentless passion to discover and champion new & groundbreaking music. During her career Annie championed everything from prog rock and punk to acid house, techno, big beat, breakbeat, dubstep and grime.
“Annie’s always been a massive inspiration for me in the sense that she carved out the path at Radio 1,” Tong continued, “proving you could have a career in radio by just staying in your lane and specializing in championing new and exciting artists. Play what you love. She wrote the book on what music radio could be.”
The Voice contestant Lauren Duski is mourning the death of her mother, Janis Duski, in a touching tribute posted to Instagram. According to TMZ, which first reported the news, the Tuscarora Township Police in Indiana River, Michigan, said Janis was found dead in an apparent suicide.
In her Instagram post, Lauren Duski says she was hesitant to share the news publicly but thought she might be able to help others through her mother’s story.
“I wasn’t planning on sharing this but these last few days I’ve been feeling the most violent pull in my heart to remind you to please talk to one another,” Duski wrote. “If you’re struggling, do not be ashamed. Do not be ashamed. Do not be ashamed. Your mental health is nothing to be ashamed of and neither is talking about it. We are all trying to navigate this beautiful, messy life. I’ve learned that even the strongest humans have a breaking point. Be patient and gentle with yourself. Minute by minute. Please do not lose hope. Trust in God. There is always another chance…and there will never be another you.”
Duski competed on season 12 of The Voice in 2017 and chose to join Blake Shelton’s team among the three coaches who turned their chairs for her audition. The country singer finished as the season’s runner-up.
Lauren’s late mom can be seen, alongside her dad, celebrating her daughter’s success backstage in her blind audition video, in which she covered Jewel’s “You Were Meant for Me.”
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Three of Duski’s covers on The Voice hit the Billboard Hot 100 following her season: “Deja Vu” (No. 43), “The Dance” (No. 92) and “Ghost in This House” (No. 98).
Read Lauren’s full message about her mom below:
Said goodbye to my best friend and hero this past Friday. My mom was the greatest human I’ve ever known. There was no one who loved harder. She offered her entire being — heart and soul to everyone she encountered and always held up the mirror to remind you of how wonderful and special you were. She set the bar above the moon. She adored her family and her grandchildren. She was an endless dreamer. brilliant. an absolute powerhouse. Top of her class AND president in dental school. Served as a captain in the United States Air Force. She pioneered the Wolverine Patriot Project alongside the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and made it her mission to provide oral health care to disabled and homeless Michigan military veterans. We called her “Yoda” for her endless wisdom, energy, wit, and humor. She was selfless in every way. She never quit. Especially with a fishing pole in her hand. She loved to spend time exploring and road tripping across country with just a road map.
She saw God in everyone and everything.
Mom, you are infinitely loved. I will miss you every second of every day. I still don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to do this without you. I will thank God every day for our 32 years together and see you every time I look in that mirror.
I wasn’t planning on sharing this but these last few days I’ve been feeling the most violent pull in my heart to remind you to please talk to one another. If you’re struggling, do not be ashamed. Do not be ashamed. Do not be ashamed. Your mental health is nothing to be ashamed of and neither is talking about it. We are all trying to navigate this beautiful, messy life. I’ve learned that even the strongest humans have a breaking point. Be patient and gentle with yourself. Minute by minute. Please do not lose hope. Trust in God. There is always another chance…and there will never be another you.
We have the opportunity to save a generation and beyond. Say “I love you” every chance you get. Don’t wait. You never know the true impact you have on those around you.
I love you, mom. Forever. May you rest in glorious peace.
Janis Patricia Duski – 1964-2024
If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, available 24 hours, at 1-800-273-8255.
David Soul, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed star of hit 1970s cop series Starsky & Hutch and soft rock balladeer has died at 80. In a statement on Soul’s site, the actor’s wife, Helen Snell, wrote, “David Soul – beloved husband, father, grandfather and brother – died yesterday (4 January) after a valiant battle for life in the loving company of family. He shared many extraordinary gifts in the world as actor, singer, storyteller, creative artist and dear friend. His smile, laughter and passion for life will be remembered by the many whose lives he has touched.”
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The star born David Richard Solbert on Aug. 28, 1943 in Chicago bounced between acting and singing for much of his career following an itinerant childhood in which his family moved from South Dakota to Berlin, where his father, history and political science professor Dr. David Solberg, served as the senior representative for the Lutheran World Federation refugee relief organization in the early 1950s.
According to his official bio, the talented baseball player was offered a pro contract with the Chicago White Sox after graduating from high school, but opted instead to join his family in Mexico after his second year of college, where he befriended a group of radicalized students who gifted him a guitar and taught him their nation’s indigenous songs. Soul later hitchhiked back to the Midwest and auditioned for a gig singing folk songs at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a Univ. of Minnesota coffee house which had once hosted a young Bob Dylan.
After co-founding the Firehouse Theater in Minneapolis in the 1960s and foreshortening his last name to the more pithy “Soul,” the actor hit upon a gimmick of performing his folk songs while wearing a ski mask and calling himself “The Covered Man.” That bit landed him agency representation from the William Morris Agency, “sight unseen,” and a recurring spot on The Merv Griffin Show, where he performed his masked act; he also signed with MGM Records and released his debut album, The Covered Man.
After his first TV role in the light children’s series Flipper, Soul got a spot on the comedy I Dream of Jeannie and appeared in a 1967 episode of Star Trek, which led to his next gig playing Joshua Bolt on the comedy Western Here Come the Brides from 1968-1970. Soul appeared in a few more small screen gigs before Clint Eastwood cast him as a police officer in the gritty 1973 crime drama — and Dirty Harry sequel — Magnum Force.
That cop turn led to the defining role of Soul’s career as detective Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson on the police procedural Starsky & Hutch (1975-1979), where he starred alongside Paul Michael Glaser’s David Michael Starsky in the popular series in which the men tore around the fictional city of Bay City, CA in their signature red Ford Gran Torino with a white stripe on the side.
Soul went on to make cameos in a number of other popular 1970s dramas and comedies — Cannon, Gunsmoke, Ironside, Medical Center, The Streets of San Francisco and All in the Family, among many others — while also directing and and producing films and theater productions throughout the 1980s and staring in a number of West End production after moving to London in the 1990s.
He also launched a parallel music career with a series of soft rock hits under his stage name, beginning with his 1976 self-titled debut album, which featured a mix of originals and covers of songs by Leonard Cohen and Dr. Music. His 1976 ballad “Don’t Give Up On Us” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (while also topping the UK charts) and was followed by the 1977 No. 1 UK hit “Silver Lady” (which hit No. 5 on the U.S. charts). Several more albums followed, with diminishing returns, including 1977’s Playing to an Audience of One, 1979’s Band of Friends, 1982’s The Best Days of My Life and his final full-length, 1997’s Leave a Light On.
Listen to “Don’t Give Up On Us” below.
Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning stage and screen star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie “Mary Poppins” and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100.
Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles of natural causes. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession — precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multi-faceted. Anything less was giving less than her all.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in playing the role on only one level,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “The whole point of first-class acting is to make a reality of it. To be real. And I have to make sense of it in my own mind in order to be real.”
Johns’ greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the show’s hit song “Send in the Clowns” to suit her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 film version to Elizabeth Taylor.
“I’ve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that,” Johns told the AP in 1990. “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in the theater.”
Others who followed Johns in singing Sondheim’s most popular song include Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John. It also appeared in season two of “Yellowjackets” in 2023, sung by Elijah Wood.
Back when it was being conceived, “A Little Night Music” had gone into rehearsal with some of the book and score unfinished, including a solo song for Johns. Director Hal Prince suggested she and co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to give book writer Hugh Wheeler some ideas.
“Hal said ‘Why don’t you just say what you feel,”’ she recalled to the AP. “When Len and I did that, Hal got on the phone to Steve Sondheim and said, ‘I think you’d better get in a cab and get round here and watch what they’re doing because you are going to get the idea for Glynis’ solo.”’
Johns was the fourth generation of an English theatrical family. Her father, Mervyn Johns, had a long career as a character actor and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, because her parents were visiting the area on tour at the time of her birth.
Johns was a dancer at 12 and an actor at 14 in London’s West End. Her breakthrough role was as the amorous mermaid in the title of the 1948 hit comedy “Miranda.”
“I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine; I swam like a porpoise,” she told Newsday in 1998. In 1960’s “The Sundowners,” with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. (She lost out to Shirley Jones in “Elmer Gantry.”)
Other highlights include playing the mother in “Mary Poppins,” the movie that introduced Julie Andrews and where she sang the rousing tune “Sister Suffragette.” She also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of “The Circle,” W. Somerset Maugham’s romantic comedy about love, marriage and fidelity, opposite Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.
“I’ve retired many times. My personal life has come before my work. The theater is just part of my life. It probably uses my highest sense of intelligence, so therefore I have to come back to it, to realize that I’ve got the talent. I’m not as good doing anything else,” she told the AP.
To prepare for “A Coffin in Egypt,” Horton Foote’s 1998 play about a grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie, she asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape of himself reading some lines and used it as her coach.
In a 1991 revival of “A Little Night Music” in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, the mother of Desiree, the part she had created. In 1963, she starred in her own TV sitcom “Glynis.”
Johns lived all around the world and had four husbands. The first was the father of her only child, the late Gareth Forwood, an actor who died in 2007.
Bob Fead, who held key positions with such powerhouse labels as Liberty Records and A&M Records from the 1960s into the 2000s, died Tuesday (Jan. 2) at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Wasserman Campus in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 89.
Fead was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska — the youngest of four children and the son of a semi-pro baseball player who died at an early age. Fead found work in Omaha selling men’s clothing but had a dream to move west. He soon found himself in Los Angeles working for a shirt company, but a chance meeting at a party with a record executive landed him a promotions job, on the spot, at Liberty Records.
Fead thrived at Liberty and helped drive radio airplay for such artists as Bobby Vee, Gene Pitney, Willie Nelson, Jan and Dean, Del Shannon and Vikki Carr. He worked alongside famed producer (and longtime friend) Snuff Garrett.
After five years at Liberty, Fead was recruited by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss to join them at their fledgling A&M Records, where he eventually rose to senior vp of sales and marketing. While there, Fead worked with such legendary acts as Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Quincy Jones, the Carpenters, Cat Stevens and Peter Frampton. As part of a deal that moved manufacturing and distribution to RCA, Fead shifted to RCA to oversee all aspects of sales and distribution for A&M and associated labels.
Fead later launched Alfa Records, a U.S.-based division of Japan’s Alfa Music, and found immediate success with 1960s singing star Lulu, whose “I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do)” made the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1981. Alfa also put Billy Vera and the Beaters on the map with a pair of Hot 100 hits that same year: “I Can Take Care of Myself” and “At This Moment.” The latter song belatedly reached No. 1 in January 1987 (on Rhino Records) after it was featured on the hit TV series Family Ties.
Fead also served as president of both Monument Records and Michael Nesmith’s Pacific Arts Video. In February 1982, A Pacific Arts Video release, Michael Nesmith in Elephant Parts, won a Grammy for video of the year — making it the first Grammy ever awarded for a video.
Fead was next tapped to be president of Famous Music, a division of Paramount Pictures, where he managed music rights related to such classic films as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Godfather and Footloose.
Fead next landed at Warner/Chappell Music, where he managed publishing rights for his old friend, Quincy Jones, and developed a longtime publishing relationship with Burt Bacharach, serving as president of Bacharach’s publishing company.
Bacharach died last February. A&M co-founder Moss died last August, as did Harold Childs, the label’s senior vice president of promotion and sales.
Fead gave his personal time to various philanthropic ventures, including serving as president of the music chapter of City of Hope. He also served as a board member and later became president of Society of Singers, a philanthropic organization that helped singers experiencing financial problems. He would often invite friends to entertain at a small venue in L.A. and donate all the money from ticket sales to the organization. Some of the artists who performed, at Fead’s request, included Mac Davis, Jeff Barry, Jerry Fuller and the long-married Jackie DeShannon and Randy Edelman.
Fead additionally served on the board of ASCAP and The Johnny Mercer Foundation.
Fead was introduced to his future wife, Beverlye, 40 years ago by music agent John Doumanian. The Feads were longtime residents of Montecito, Calif. In 2018, Beverlye wrote a warm recap of her husband’s life and career for The Montecito Journal. In the piece, she told the story of his fortuitous hiring at Liberty Records.
“After college, he came to California to work for a shirt company,” she wrote. “The first night he arrived in Los Angeles, he went to a party, and it changed the course of his life forever. He met a man who said Bob would make a good promotion man in the music business. He was willing to pay $85 a week, which was a lot of money in those days; Bob accepted the offer on the spot. He had no idea what to do, or what a promotion man was. His new employer gave him a record, told him to take it to radio stations to promote. He did. That was how he came to Liberty Records and to a business he has loved to this day.”
Until his retirement at age 81, Fead commuted between his home in Montecito and L.A. for work. More recently, the Feads returned to L.A. to be closer to family.
Songwriter and current ASCAP president Paul Williams issued a statement on the passing of his longtime friend (and fellow Omaha native): “Bob was an important piece of so many success stories, including mine…his passion was wrapped in a camouflage that made people comfortable and accepting of his opinion of a new artist. Both [his] opinion and advocacy changed lives! To those who were blessed to know him, may your sweetest of memories grow stronger with every mention of his name. God bless you, Bob Fead.”
Fead is survived by his wife, Beverlye; children Michael (and his wife, Tera) and Laurella Fead (from a marriage to Marilyn Fead); brother Bill Fead; grandchildren Max Clark and Jackson Fead; and relatives from his wife’s side of the family, including Jim and Leslie Hyman, Terry Hamermesh, Tessa Hamermesh, Alex Hyman and Gideon Hyman.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests tribute donations be made to the Motion Picture Television Fund (Compassionate Care Fund) at https://mptf.com/ways-to-give/.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican actor Ana Ofelia Murguía, who gave voice to the character of “Mama Coco” in the popular Pixar film Coco, has died, Mexican officials said. She was 90. Mexico’s National Fine Arts Institute announced Murguía’s death Sunday without providing a cause of death. “She leaves an enormous void on our country’s […]
Shecky Greene, the gifted comic and master improviser who became the consummate Las Vegas lounge headliner and was revered by his peers and live audiences as one of the greatest standup acts of his generation, has died. He was 97.
His widow, Marie Musso Green, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that her husband died early Sunday (Dec. 31) at their home. She said her husband of 41 years died of natural causes.
Those who saw Greene in his decades of comedy dominance on the Vegas Strip in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s said that with a mic in his hand he could roam a room and work a crowd like no other.
He couldn’t wait to abandon written jokes for the shared thrill of improv.
“I’ve never had an act,” Greene told the Las Vegas Sun in 2009. “I make it up as I go along.”
Greene made huge fans of his fellow entertainers including Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and, most famously, Frank Sinatra, who hand-picked him as his opening act for a stretch. Greene couldn’t resist the gig with the biggest star in America at the time, but the two big personalities butted heads frequently, and the relationship ended with the comic taking a beating from the singer’s cronies at the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach.
It led to his most famous joke: “Frank Sinatra once saved my life,” Greene would say. “A bunch of guys were beating on me and Frank said, ‘OK that’s enough.’”
Sinatra wasn’t actually there, Greene later said, but the beatdown was real. Also true was the oft-repeated story of Greene driving his Oldsmobile into the fountains at Caesars Palace in 1968, a consequence of what he conceded was a serious alcohol problem and a dangerous desire to go for a drive when he was a few drinks in.
He got a famous joke out of that moment too, later saying that when the cops arrived at his submerged car, whose windshield wipers running, he told them, “No spray wax please!”
With a body like a linebacker’s, a wit as quick as lightning and a voice that suggested he could’ve been a lounge singer instead of a lounge comic, Greene in the course of a night would plow through dozens of impressions, do extended riffs at audience members’ tables and turn musical standards into parody songs on the spot.
Tony Zoppi, who for decades was entertainment director of the Riviera Hotel, said Greene was the finest comic mind he ever saw.
“He’ll walk out on a stage and do an hour off the top of his head,” Zoppi told the Los Angeles Times. “A waitress dropped a glass — he did 15 minutes.”
He made appearances in films including 1967’s Tony Rome with Sinatra, 1981’s History of the World Part I with Mel Brooks, and 1984’s Splash with Tom Hanks, showed-up on network sitcoms including Laverne & Shirley and Mad About You, and was a constant guest on talk and variety shows.
But he never really clicked on the screen. He needed a crowd he could interact with, and a whole night to woo them. That meant never becoming as famous as comic contemporaries like Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett or Carson. But he pulled the same six-figure-a-week paychecks as they did for live shows.
Born Fred Sheldon Greenfield, Greene took to singing, acting, making jokes and doing mock accents while growing up on the North Side of Chicago.
He served in the Navy in World War II in the Pacific.
On returning to Chicago, he went to community college and thought he might become a gym teacher, but started doing comedy nightclub gigs for money.
An offer of a two-week gig at the Prevue Lounge in New Orleans turned into a six-years stint.
He did his first show in Las Vegas in 1953. He found he and the Strip were a perfect match, and within a few years he owned the town. In 1956, he opened for a young Elvis Presley at the New Frontier.
“The kid should never have been in there,” Greene told the L.A. Times in 2005. “He came out in a baseball jacket. Four or five musicians behind him had baseball jackets on. It looked like a picnic. After the first show they switched the billing, and I headlined.”
Greene would remain a Vegas mainstay, his playgrounds places like the Riviera and the Tropicana, for the next 30 years.
From 1972 to 1982 Greene was married to Nalani Kele, a dancer whose show, the Nalani Kele Polynesian Revue, was a long-running nightclub hit. And in 1985, he married Marie Musso, daughter of jazz saxophonist Vido Musso.
Greene gained his share of national fame eventually. He could fill Carnegie Hall, and guest-hosted both Carson’s Tonight Show and The Merv Griffin Show.
He grappled with addictions to both drinking and gambling, neither ideal for a man who spent most of his time in Las Vegas. He also struggled with what were later diagnosed as severe depression and panic attacks, both of which made it increasingly difficult to perform as he got older.
Greene moved to Palm Springs in an attempt at retirement in his late 70s in 2004, but the stage still had appeal, and he returned for a stint in Las Vegas at the Suncoast Hotel and Casino in 2009.
Returning to a city now dominated by the likes of Celine Dion and Cirque du Soleil, Greene found he could stroll through casinos anonymously.
“I’m a legend,” he told the Sun in 2009, “but nobody knows me in Vegas anymore.”
Tommy Smothers, one half of the boundary-pushing comedy folk duo the Smothers Brothers, has died at age 86. His younger brother Dick Smothers, with whom he delivered eyebrow-raising political satire on network TV in the ‘60s, shared a statement on his brother’s Tuesday (Dec. 26) passing with The Hollywood Reporter and the National Comedy Center.
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According to the statement, Tommy Smothers died “peacefully… at home with his family” following a “recent battle with cancer.”
“Tom was not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life, he was a one-of-a-kind creative partner,” Dick Smothers said in the statement. “I am forever grateful to have spent a lifetime together with him, on and off stage, for over 60 years. Our relationship was like a good marriage – the longer we were together, the more we loved and respected one another. We were truly blessed.”
With Tommy on acoustic guitar and Dick on double bass, the duo performed satiric and farcical folk music with a socio-political bent beginning in the late ‘50s. By the early ‘60s, they were making regular appearances on various variety programs, from The Judy Garland Show to The Jack Paar Show.
The duo’s first album, The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion, was released in 1961 and followed by several popular comedy LPs: 1962’s The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers, which hit No. 40 on the Billboard 200 the following year; 1963’s Curb Your Tongue, Knave!, their highest-charting album at No. 13 in 1964; and their final album, Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which reached No. 164 in 1968. The top 40 1966 album Mom Always Liked You Best! was titled after Tommy’s signature phrase, which was often delivered in the midst of staged feuds with his brother, who would play the smarter straight man to Tommy’s sillier, innocent persona. Mom Always Liked You Best! and 1963’s (Think Ethnic!) were both nominated for the best comedy performance Grammy.
Only one song from the group, “Jenny Brown,” hit the Billboard Hot 100, reaching No. 84 on Oct. 12, 1963.
Following a one-season sitcom from 1965-1966, The Smothers Brothers Show, the duo landed a network variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which aired on CBS from 1967-1969. CBS hoped the show would bring in a younger, savvier audience during a decade marked by massive generational change but ended up getting more than it bargained for. Despite playing an unworldly, stammering goof on television, Tommy was the more liberal and politically driven of the two behind the scenes, pushing their comedy in a direction that gently skewered American culture, religion and the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Following complaints from viewers and sponsors, CBS censors and network execs clashed with the Smothers Brothers, but Tommy was steadfast in refusing to self-censor or kowtow. The show was canceled in April 1969 despite the Smothers Brothers having a contract through 1970; the duo filed a breach-of-contract suit against CBS, which they won in 1973 to the tune of $776,300.
In June, the same month the show’s final episode aired, it won an Emmy for outstanding writing achievement in comedy, variety or music for its platoon of writers, which included a young Steve Martin and the versatile writer/musician Mason Williams, who had had a No. 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 with “Classical Gas.” In 1968, Pat Paulsen won an Emmy for special classification of individual achievements for his appearances on the show. He ran for president that year under the slogan “If nominated I will not run, and if elected I will not serve.”
In announcing his candidacy on the Smothers Brothers’ show, Paulsen said, “Now I ask you: Will I solve our economic problems? Will I ease the causes of racial tension? Will I bring a peaceful end to Vietnam? Sure, why not?” Paulsen’s campaign slogans included “We’ve upped our standards, now up yours.”
Prior to its cancelation, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour boasted performances from edgier acts than what you’d find on most network variety shows. Aside from Cream, Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Donovan, Ray Charles, Pete Seeger, Simon & Garfunkel, the show hosted a performance from The Who that ended with the band smashing their guitars (as per usual) and an explosives accident that sent a piece of metal into drummer Keith Moon’s arm and briefly set Pete Townshend’s hair on fire. Baez’s stint on the show was also notable: She saluted her then-imprisoned husband at the time, David Harris, who was jailed for refusing military service; CBS censors edited out Baez explaining the reason for his jail time.
The duo made a few other TV shows in the ’70s, which were less successful than their highly influential Comedy Hour, which is now celebrated as an essential piece of television and cultural history that paved the way for the arrival of the button-pushing, irreverent variety show Saturday Night Live in 1975. They appeared sparingly over the ensuing decades, popping up for a televised 1988 anniversary special and a 2009 episode of The Simpsons. The Smothers Brothers officially retired from touring in 2010, over a half century after their live debut.
Tom Smothers is survived by his children Bo and Riley Rose Smothers, grandson Phoenix, Marcy Carriker Smothers, sister-in-law Marie Smothers, and several nephews and a niece. His son Tom and sister Sherry Smothers preceded him in death.
Additional reporting by Paul Grein.
Bobbie Jean Carter, the sister of Nick and Aaron Carter, has died. She was 41.
Bobbie Jean’s sister, Angel Carter, confirmed her sibling’s passing through Instagram on Sunday (Dec. 24).
“To my older sister Bobbie. You had a great sense of humor, and a lively spirit. Growing up, I was your baby, and you were my best friend,” she captioned a montage of childhood photos. “Life wasn’t fair to you, that I know. Sometimes, it feels like you didn’t have a shot, no matter what.”
Angel’s remembrance also referenced the substance abuse-related deaths of her sister Leslie, who died in January 2012 at age 25, and her twin brother, Aaron, who passed away in November 2022 at 34 years old.
“Experiencing innocence instead of being burdened by trauma, pain, and suffering is incredibly important for children, particularly at such a young age,” she continued. “I know why Leslie, Aaron, and now you ended up in the circumstances that you did. I share that pain we experienced during our childhood and I’m sorry you didn’t have an opportunity for a better life.”
The cause of Bobbie Jean’s death had not been provided at press time, but Angel asked her Instagram followers to “break down barriers” and “reduce stigmas” around mental health.
“The generational dysfunction stops now,” she wrote. “Please visit @onoursleevesofficial to learn more about how you can get involved, and how to be there for your loved ones.”
Bobbie Jean served as a wardrobe stylist and makeup artist during Aaron’s tours in the early 2000s, according to TMZ. She also appeared on the Carter family’s 2006 E! reality TV show, House of Carters, where her struggles with addiction and substance abuse were documented. Since then, she has led a relatively private life outside of the spotlight, but was arrested on alleged drug and theft charges earlier this year.
She died in Florida on Saturday morning (Dec. 23), TMZ reports, citing her mother, Jane Carter.
“I am in shock from learning of the sudden death of my daughter, Bobbie Jean, and I will need time to process the terrible reality of this happening for the third time,” Jane told the outlet, referencing the deaths of Bobbie Jean, Leslie and Aaron. “When I am able to think clearly, I’ll release a fuller statement, but until then, I would request to be left to grieve in private.”
She continued, “[H]owever deeply a parent feels the loss of a child, the suffering of a young child at the loss of a parent must be much greater. So, I would ask the sympathetic to say a prayer for my precious 8-year-old granddaughter Bella, who previously lost her father and is now also left without her mother.”
Bobbie Jean is survived by a daughter, Bella.
See Angel’s tribute to her sister below.