WilliamShatner.com :: The Official Shatner Website (PNphpBB2)

Rest in Peace Tom Snyder

WilliamShatner.com Forum Index » WilliamShatner.com Message Boards » William Shatner Main Discussion

Author

Message

CaptLogan

Post subject: Rest in Peace Tom Snyder

Posted: Jul 30, 2007 - 03:39 PM

Member

Joined: Nov 17, 2002
Posts: 7598
Location: Boston, Massachusetts

Tom Synder Passes away

July 30, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO --Talk show host Tom Snyder, whose smoke-filled interviews were a staple of late night television, has died after a struggle with leukemia. He was 71.

Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia, his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz told The Associated Press on Monday.

Known for his improvised, casual style and robust laughter, Snyder conducted a number of memorable interviews as host of NBC's "The Tomorrow Show." Among his guests were John Lennon, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s, then moved into local television news. He anchored newscasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before moving to late night.

"He loved the broadcast business," said Marciarose Shestack, who co-anchored a noontime newscast with Snyder at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the 1960s. "He was very surprising and very irreverent and not at all a typical newscaster."
Related:
Video YOUTUBE: Tom Snyder highlights
Message Board Your memories of "The Tomorrow Show"?

In 1972, Snyder left news to host "The Tomorrow Show," which followed "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

His catch phrase for the show was: "Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air." Snyder smoked throughout his show, the cigarette cloud swirling around him during interviews.

He gained more fame when Dan Ackroyd lampooned him in the early days of Saturday Night Live.

In 1995, he returned to late night television as the host of "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" on CBS. The program followed David Letterman's "Late Show" until 1998, when Snyder was replaced by Craig Kilborn.

Snyder announced on his Web site in 2005 that he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

"When I was a kid leukemia was a death sentence," he wrote then. "Now, my doctors say it's treatable!"

Horowicz met Snyder in 1982 and worked with him at WABC in New York before producing the "Tom Snyder" television show.

"He was a great guy and very talented," Horowicz said.

_________________

littlestar

Post subject:

Posted: Jul 30, 2007 - 05:56 PM

Member

Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 8167
Location: CA

Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman Dies at 89

Jul 30, 6:18 AM EST
The Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, the president of his foundation said. He was 89.

"It's an unbelievable loss for Sweden, but even more so internationally," Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which administers the directors' archives, told The Associated Press.

Bergman died at his home in Faro, Sweden, Swedish news agency TT said, citing his daughter Eva Bergman. A cause of death was not immediately available.
Through more than 50 films, Bergman's vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.

Bergman, who approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, became one of the towering figures of serious filmmaking.

He was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera," Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.

Bergman first gained international attention with 1955's "Smiles of a Summer Night," a romantic comedy that inspired the Stephen Sondheim musical "A Little Night Music."

"The Seventh Seal," released in 1957, riveted critics and audiences. An allegorical tale of the medieval Black Plague years, it contains one of cinema's most famous scenes — a knight playing chess with the shrouded figure of Death.

"I was terribly scared of death," Bergman said of his state of mind when making the film, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the best picture category.

The film distilled the essence of Bergman's work — high seriousness, flashes of unexpected humor and striking images.

In a 2004 interview with Swedish broadcaster SVT, the reclusive filmmaker acknowledged that he was reluctant to view his work.

"I don't watch my own films very often.

I become so jittery and ready to cry ... and miserable. I think it's awful," Bergman said.

Though best known internationally for his films, Bergman also was a prominent stage director. He worked at several playhouses in Sweden from the mid-1940s, including the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, which he headed from 1963 to 1966. He staged many plays by the Swedish author August Strindberg, whom he cited as an inspiration.

The influence of Strindberg's grueling and precise psychological dissections could be seen in the production that brought Bergman an even-wider audience: 1973's "Scenes From a Marriage." First produced as a six-part series for television, then released in a theater version, it is an intense detailing of the disintegration of a marriage.

Bergman showed his lighter side in the following year's "The Magic Flute," again first produced for TV. It is a fairly straight production of the Mozart opera, enlivened by touches such as repeatedly showing the face of a young girl watching the opera and comically clumsy props and costumes.

Bergman remained active later in life with stage productions and occasional TV shows. He said he still felt a need to direct, although he had no plans to make another feature film.

In the fall of 2002, Bergman, at age 84, started production on "Saraband," a 120-minute television movie based on the two main characters in "Scenes From a Marriage."

In a rare news conference, the reclusive director said he wrote the story after realizing he was "pregnant with a play."

"At first I felt sick, very sick. It was strange. Like Abraham and Sarah, who suddenly realized she was pregnant," he said, referring to biblical characters. "It was lots of fun, suddenly to feel this urge returning."

The son of a Lutheran clergyman and a housewife, Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on July 14, 1918, and grew up with a brother and sister in a household of severe discipline that he described in painful detail in the autobiography "The Magic Lantern."

The title comes from his childhood, when his brother got a "magic lantern" — a precursor of the slide-projector — for Christmas. Ingmar was consumed with jealousy, and he managed to acquire the object of his desire by trading it for a hundred tin soldiers.

The apparatus was a spot of joy in an often-cruel young life. Bergman recounted the horror of being locked in a closet and the humiliation of being made to wear a skirt as punishment for wetting his pants.

He broke with his parents at 19 and remained aloof from them, but later in life sought to understand them. The story of their lives was told in the television film "Sunday's Child," directed by his own son Daniel.

Young Ingmar found his love for drama production early in life. The director said he had coped with the authoritarian environment of his childhood by living in a world of fantasies. When he first saw a movie he was greatly moved.

"Sixty years have passed, nothing has changed, it's still the same fever," he wrote of his passion for film in the 1987 autobiography.

But he said the escape into another world went so far that it took him years to tell reality from fantasy, and Bergman repeatedly described his life as a constant fight against demons, also reflected in his work.

The demons sometimes drove him to great art — as in "Cries and Whispers," the deathbed drama that climaxes when the dying woman cries "I am dead, but I can't leave you." Sometimes they drove him over the top, as in "Hour of the Wolf," where a nightmare-plagued artist meets real-life demons on a lonely island.

Bergman also waged a fight against real-life tormentors: Sweden's powerful tax authorities.

In 1976, during a rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theater, police came to take Bergman away for interrogation about tax evasion. The director, who had left all finances to be handled by a lawyer, was questioned for hours while his home was searched. When released, he was forbidden to leave the country.

The case caused an enormous uproar in the media and Bergman had a mental breakdown that sent him to hospital for over a month. He later was absolved of all accusations and in the end only had to pay some extra taxes.

In his autobiography he admitted to guilt in only one aspect: "I signed papers that I didn't read, even less understood."

The experience made him go into voluntary exile in Germany, to the embarrassment of the Swedish authorities. After nine years, he returned to Stockholm, his longtime base.

It was in the Swedish capital that Bergman broke into the world of drama, starting with a menial job at the Royal Opera House after dropping out of college.

Bergman was hired by the script department of Swedish Film Industry, the country's main production company, as an assistant script writer in 1942.

In 1944, his first original screenplay was filmed by Alf Sjoeberg, the dominant Swedish film director of the time. "Torment" won several awards including the Grand Prize of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, and soon Bergman was directing an average of two films a year as well as working with stage production.

After the acclaimed "The Seventh Seal," he quickly came up with another success in "Wild Strawberries," in which an elderly professor's car trip to pick up an award is interspersed with dreams.

Other noted films include "Persona," about an actress and her nurse whose identities seem to merge, and "The Autumn Sonata," about a concert pianist and her two daughters, one severely handicapped and the other burdened by her child's drowning.

The date of the funeral has not yet been set, but will be attended by a close group of friends and family, the TT news agency reported.

OH DEAR...WHO is number 3?

_________________

littlestar

Post subject:

Posted: Jul 30, 2007 - 06:01 PM

Member

Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 8167
Location: CA

I spoke too soon.....

French Actor Michel Serrault Dies

Jul 30, 5:51 AM EST
The Associated Press

French actor Michel Serrault, whose hit performance as a transvestite in the film and stage versions of "La cage aux folles" (The Birdcage) catapulted him to international stardom, has died, his priest said Monday. He was 79.

Serrault died Sunday of cancer in his home in the northwestern city of Honfleur, Rev. Alain Maillard de La Morandais said.

Serrault appeared in more than 130 films during a career that spanned half a century. After debuting as a comic actor, Serrault became one of France's most versatile stars, playing a serial killer, a grizzled farmer, a crooked banker and accused rapist.

"I'm against those who only want to entertain," Serrault said in 2002. "I am very happy with all the roles I've played, and I take responsibility for them all."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid homage to Serrault's "impressive filmography," calling the actor a "monument of the world of the theater, the cinema and the television."

Born on Jan. 24, 1928, in Brunoy, south of Paris, Serrault initially set his sights on the priesthood, briefly entering a seminary. He dropped out, he later explained, because of the vow of chastity.

After studying acting in Paris, Serrault began as his stage career playing in cabarets.

He made his silver screen debut in 1954 in Jean Loubignac's "Ah! les belles bacchantes" (Oh, the lovely bacchantes), which was released as "Peek-a-boo" in the United States. His first big break came in 1972, with a leading role in Pierre Tchernia's "Le Viager" (The Life Annuity.)

Speaking Monday on LCI television, Tchernia called Serrault "perhaps the greatest French actor," saying he gave to his profession "all his talent, all his strength, all his humor, all his affection."

It was his role as flamboyant gay nightclub owner Albin Mougeotte, also known as Zaza Napoli, in the theater and film versions of the mega-hit "La cage aux folles" (The Birdcage) that catapulted him to fame worldwide.

His performance in director Edouard Molinaro's 1978 movie won him the first of three Cesar awards — the French version of the Oscar.

Serrault remained active, featuring in films through his late seventies. Among his final films was Pierre Javaux's 2006 "Les enfants du pays" (Hometown Boys), about the role of African soldiers in WWII.

Serrault is survived by his wife, Juanita, and daughter, Nathalie.

_________________

morgram

Post subject: Re: Rest in Peace Tom Snyder

Posted: Jul 30, 2007 - 10:40 PM

Member

Joined: Sep 19, 2005
Posts: 3320

Status: Offline

CaptLogan wrote:

I thought he was dead.

_________________
"Leave the starship commanding to Bill because he already knows how to do it better than anybody else!" -morgram

CaptJTK

Post subject:

Posted: Jul 31, 2007 - 07:28 PM

Member

Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 3528
Location: New Jersey USA

Yesterday wasn't a good day:

Former 49ers Coach Bill Walsh Dead at 75
SAN FRANCISCO, Mon Jul 30, 03:29 PM

Bill Walsh, the groundbreaking football coach who won three Super Bowls and perfected the ingenious schemes that became known as the West Coast offense during a Hall of Fame career with the San Francisco 49ers, has died. He was 75.

Walsh died early Monday following a long battle with leukemia, according to Stanford University, where he served as coach and athletic director.

Walsh didn't become an NFL head coach until 47, and he spent just 10 seasons on the San Francisco sideline. But he left an indelible mark on the United States' most popular sport, building the once-woebegone 49ers into the most successful team of the 1980s with his innovative offensive strategies and teaching techniques.

The soft-spoken native Californian also produced a legion of coaching disciples that's still growing today. Many of his former assistants went on to lead their own teams, handing down Walsh's methods and schemes to dozens more coaches in a tree with innumerable branches.

Walsh went 102-63-1 with the 49ers, winning 10 of his 14 postseason games along with six division titles. He was named the NFL's coach of the year in 1981 and 1984.

Few men did more to shape the look of football into the 21st century. His cerebral nature and often-brilliant stratagems earned him the nickname "The Genius" well before his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.

Walsh twice served as the 49ers' general manager, and George Seifert led San Francisco to two more Super Bowl titles after Walsh left the sideline. Walsh also coached Stanford during two terms over five seasons.

Even a short list of Walsh's adherents is stunning. Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Dennis Green, Sam Wyche, Ray Rhodes and Bruce Coslet all became NFL head coaches after serving on Walsh's San Francisco staffs, and Tony Dungy played for him. Most of his former assistants passed on Walsh's structures and strategies to a new generation of coaches, including Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, Andy Reid, Pete Carroll, Gary Kubiak, Steve Mariucci and Jeff Fisher.

Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship program in 1987, helping minority coaches to get a foothold in a previously lily-white profession. Marvin Lewis and Tyrone Willingham are among the coaches who went through the program, later adopted as a league-wide initiative.

He also helped to establish the World League of American Football — what was NFL Europe — in 1994, taking the sport around the globe as a development ground for the NFL.

Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004 and underwent months of treatment and blood transfusions. He publicly disclosed his illness in November 2006, but appeared at a tribute for retired receiver Jerry Rice two weeks later.

While Walsh recuperated from a round of chemotherapy in late 2006, he received visits from former players and assistant coaches, as well as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Born William Ernest Walsh on Nov. 30, 1931 in Los Angeles, he was a self-described "average" end and a sometime boxer at San Jose State in 1952-53.

Walsh, whose family moved to the Bay Area when he was a teenager, married his college sweetheart, Geri Nardini, in 1954 and started his coaching career at Washington High School in Fremont, leading the football and swim teams.

He had stints as an assistant at California and Stanford before beginning his pro coaching career as an assistant with the AFL's Oakland Raiders in 1966, forging a friendship with Al Davis that endured through decades of rivalry. Walsh joined the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 to work for legendary coach Paul Brown, who gradually gave complete control of the Bengals' offense to his assistant.

Walsh built a scheme based on the teachings of Davis, Brown and Sid Gillman — and Walsh's own innovations, which included everything from short dropbacks and novel receiving routes to constant repetition of every play in practice.

Though it originated in Cincinnati, it became known many years later as the West Coast offense — a name Walsh never liked or repeated, but which eventually grew to encompass his offensive philosophy and the many tweaks added by Holmgren, Shanahan and other coaches.

Much of the NFL eventually ran a version of the West Coast in the 1990s, with its fundamental belief that the passing game can set up an effective running attack, rather than the opposite conventional wisdom.

Walsh also is widely credited with inventing or popularizing many of the modern basics of coaching, from the laminated sheets of plays held by coaches on almost every sideline, to the practice of scripting the first 15 offensive plays of a game.

After a bitter falling-out with Brown in 1976, Walsh left for stints with the San Diego Chargers and Stanford before the 49ers chose him to rebuild the franchise in 1979.

The long-suffering 49ers went 2-14 before Walsh's arrival. They repeated the record in his first season, with a dismal front-office structure and weak-willed ownership. Walsh doubted his abilities to turn around such a miserable situation — but earlier in 1979, the 49ers drafted quarterback Joe Montana from Notre Dame.

Walsh turned over the starting job to Montana in 1980, when the 49ers improved to 6-10 — and improbably, San Francisco won its first championship in 1981, just two years after winning two games.

Championships followed in the postseasons of 1984 and 1988 as Walsh built a consistent winner and became an icon with his inventive offense and thinking-man's approach to the game. He also showed considerable acumen in personnel, adding Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, Roger Craig and Rice to his rosters after he was named the 49ers' general manager in 1982 and the president in 1985.

"Bill pushed us all to be perfect," Montana said years later. "That's all he could handle as a coach, and he taught all of us to be the same way."

Walsh left the 49ers with a profound case of burnout after his third Super Bowl victory in January 1989, though he later regretted not coaching longer.

He spent three years as a broadcaster with NBC before returning to Stanford for three seasons. He then took charge of the 49ers' front office in 1999, helping to rebuild the roster over three seasons.

But Walsh gradually cut ties with the 49ers after his hand-picked successor as GM, Terry Donahue, took over in 2001. Walsh was widely thought to be disappointed with John York, DeBartolo's brother-in-law who seized control of the team in 1998 and presided over the 49ers' regression to the bottom of the league.

But Walsh stayed active through his posts on various advisory boards, plus writing, lecturing and charity work. He also became more involved at San Jose State, directing a search committee to hire a new athletic director and football coach in 2004, and served in various leadership positions at Stanford.

Walsh wrote two books and taught classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

"I'm doing what I want to do," he told the AP in an interview in 2004. "I hope I never run out of things that interest me, and so far, that hasn't happened."

Walsh's son, Steve, an ABC News reporter, died of leukemia at age 46 in 2002

_________________
Speaking as an enourmously unlikable person, I find it difficult to maintain grudges against all those that want to kill me, don't you? - Alan Shore

All times are GMT - 8 Hours

WilliamShatner.com Forum Index » WilliamShatner.com Message Boards » William Shatner Main Discussion