For many of us, judging by the newspapers, part of the ritual of saying goodbye to the Old Year and greeting the New is a nostalgic, slightly morbid look back at some of those familiar and famous faces who won’t be making it into 2004 with us. I have to say I share the compulsion, if that’s not too strong a word for it, and sometimes wonder why. I guess it’s mostly a kind of salute to people whom we don’t know, but with whom we’ve shared our lives and who have, one way or another, meant something to us. That, and the need to note the passage of time, combined with a reminder of our own mortality. As I grow older, I find myself noting the ages of these famous departed, those who flamed out early and those who stayed long. The average age of the men and women here is around 80, which is quite respectable. Though since most of them are famous, they are probably rich too-and have been able to look after themselves better than most.
As an Englishman, born toward the end of WW2 my list reflects some 50’s nostalgia and as a young man in London during much of the 60’s this too has had an obvious affect on the people I’ve chosen. But what, I wonder, does anyone born in the 1970’s and after feel or know about someone like Bob Hope, who died last July age 100? He’s totally of my parent’s generation, not mine. I never thought him the least bit funny. The only reason he’s on my list is because “Son of Paleface”, was the very first movie I ever saw.
Roy Jenkins (82)
Roy Jenkins was one of Britain’s most liberal and decent politicians and as a radical reforming Home Secretary in the Harold Wilson Labour government in the 60’s made his mark by legalising abortion, homosexuality and making divorce easier. He was also an ardent supporter of the EU. As a result he was detested by Right and Left alike. Harold Wilson said he was “more of a socialite than a socialist”. With his plummy voice, lisp, and taste for the good life Britons called him “Woy” and liked him. Had he been less principled he almost certainly would have become one of the country’s better PM’s. As it was, he split the Labour Party to set up the Social Democrats paving the way for Tony Blair and New Labour.
Gianni Agnelli (81)
Last January, following a long battle with prostate cancer. “He was the symbol of everything we were and are”, said the Speaker of Italy’s lower house. Everything the Italian male wanted to be, more like. The son of a Bourbon princess, he was good looking, powerful and a lover of fast cars and beautiful women. But it was Agnelli’s genius in the car industry with Fiat that contributed most to Italy’s postwar rise from poverty to the world’s 6th richest state that really marked him out.
Dr Robert Atkins (72)
Died last April, of a head injury following a fall. Dr Atkins was the guru of the controversial and hugely successful Dr Atkins Low Carb Diet introduced in 1972 by which dieters can eat unlimited meat, eggs, fish and shellfish but hardly any carbohydrates like, bread, potatoes and pasta. He is credited with changing the body shapes of celebs like Jennifer Aniston, Minnie Driver, Demi Moore and Geri Halliwell. Through his books and products Dr Atkins became a very rich man and was roundly hated for it by most of the medical profession, who say his diet can cause osteoporosis, heart and kidney disease. Having suffered a cardiac arrest in April 2002 it was a source disappointment to some that his death was not cardio-related. The Atkins diet is probably the fastest way to lose weight and is relatively safe, over a short period of time. It is not a good lifetime diet. Eat less, eat right and exercise more remains the only way.
Suzy Parker (69)
Iconic model of the 50’s, in fact Diana Vreeland said hers was the face of the 50’s. She was not only gorgeous, she was intelligent and funny and typified that part of America that isn’t all a-twitch with the French. Her character inspired the reluctant beatnik model Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (1957) and she was Richard Avedon’s most challenging muse. She retired from the high life in 1962. Always a class act.
Gregory Peck (87)
At 6ft 3in tall with chiselled good looks, the lanky Peck was the pillar of moral rectitude standing up for decency and tolerance all expressed in a characteristic rich baritone. Nowhere was this better displayed than in his Oscar-winning role as Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962). An integrity pretty much shown in real life too. Always a supporter of liberal causes, he was an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, and the abuse of corporate andpolitical power generally. In this, the 2nd Bushite age, he shall be missed.
Katharine Hepburn (96)
Not the sexiest or the most loveable of the great stars Hepburn too had a feminine integrity all her own. Beneath a steely and serene ego, she had an authority, natural eccentricity and spunky Yankee good sense, like some humorous but gritty Great Aunt. In Hollywood and in a man’s world Hepburn always more than held her own. Spencer Tracy, to whom strangely she deferred, was a lucky and much lesser person.
John Schlesinger (77)
British film director, who along with Tony Richardson and Joseph Losey among others, epitomised British film making in the 60’s. He directed “A Kind of Loving” (1962), “Billy Liar” (1963), and “Darling” (1965), giving starring roles to Alan Bates, Tom Courtney and Julie Christie respectively. He went on to make a magnificent and much underrated big-budget production of Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd”, which in turn led to his biggest international success “Midnight Cowboy” (1969). His last film of note was the excellent “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” (1971) with Peter Finch.
Elia Kazan (94)
The brilliant stage and film director who helped found the Actors’ Studio. He directed the first stage productions of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Death of a Salesman”. He made movies like “Viva Zapata!”, “On the Waterfront” and “East of Eden”. Later came “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Sweet Bird of Youth” by Tennessee Williams with Paul Newman, followed by “Splendor in the Grass” with Beatty and the achingly beautiful Natalie Wood in her best role by far. He was a father figure to the actors Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Rod Steiger, and Warren Beatty. He was much hated in some quarters for his piratical womanising and for naming names during the McCarthy era. Much to its discredit Hollywood never honoured him for his work. If ever there was a more egregious case of facile liberals, who’d never been tested themselves, judging their creative superiors, this was it.
George Plimpton (76)
A lifelong Democrat and East Coast patrician, humorist, journalist, actor and founder of the Paris Review in 1952, which featured the work of E.M. Forster, Vladimir Nabokov, Ernest Hemingway, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch, Plimpton was the kind of American Europeans understood, liked and admired. In the 70’s his parties in New York provided the preppy, literary, alcoholic and heterosexual alternative to the nightly saturnalia at Andy Warhol’s Studio 54. Famously went some distance with Archie Moore, the Detroit Lions and the baseball leagues and took sports journalism to new levels.
Madame Chiang Kai-shek (106)
The original Dragon Lady. Born into the formidable Soong dynasty one of 3 sisters and 2 brothers whose fates were inextricably linked to the that of 20th Century China, Mei-ling married the Generalissimo or Peanut as “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell called him, in 1927. Petite and eloquent the US-educated Mei-ling became the international face and voice of the New China. She addressed Congress in 1943 and was hugely instrumental in swinging US support and money to the Nationalist cause. She had legendary charm and a ferocious temper, not to mention a determination to defend her interests which was blood-chilling.
David Hemmings (62)
Dead at 62 of a heart attack. This strikes home a bit closer than most since he and his wife Gayle Hunnicutt lived in the house next door to mine and he’s about my elder brother’s age. Hemmings was another icon of London’s “swinging 60’s” starring in Antonioni’s “Blow Up”, a role loosely based on photographer David Bailey. He went on to make a highly polemical and wonderful big-budget movie “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1968) with Tony Richardson directing. It seems to me Hemmings went from romantic lead to “old fart” roles in no time at all, but it was in fact 30 years. He had a great appetite for life and he lived it well, in every sense. It is a pity he left so soon.
Alan Bates (69)
After a long battle with cancer. One of England’s most versatile and talented stage and screen actors. He got his first break in 1956 as a founder member of George Devine’s English Stage company at the Royal Court in London, where he played Cliff in John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” and Mick in Pinter’s “The Caretaker”. Then came movies like “A Kind of Loving” and “Zorba”. His most noteable films were Ken Russell’s “Women in Love” and one of my all-time favourite movies, Joseph Losey’s marvelously elegiac “The Go-Between” (1970).
Bob Monkhouse (75)
Dead from cancer in the last days of the year. Anybody who’s watched TV in Britain over the past 40 years must have seen Bob Monkhouse. He was the UK’s gameshow meister sans pareil. There was something compellingly awful about him, with his ever ready smile and chummy jokes, hiding God knows what behind the grinning mask. Monkhouse, who was most often described as “smarmy” routinely drew audiences of up to 20 million. He was the 3rd most popular performer on television in the UK and yet another TV survey showed him to be the most hated. Go figure that.... Perhaps we get a hint when we learn that aged 7 he was writing stories for comics Beano and Dandy and at 14 was doing cartoons for Hotspur, Wizard and Adventure. By 17 he had graduated to writing over 100 60-page porn novelettes, several Sexton Blake novellas and selling nude photographs of his secretary in Oxford Street. He went on to do 12 films including the “Carry On” series and most famously the quiz program “Opportunity Knocks”. In 1993 he was awarded the OBE by a grateful nation. You can’t keep a good man down....
Then there was Bob Hope (100) the sly, craven comic genius who made so many awful movies and entertained US troops in WW2 and Korea but who knew his day was done in Vietnam when pot-smoking GI’s heckled him and held up signs saying “PEACE, NOT HOPE”......Kathleen Winsor (83) voluptuous raven-haired beauty who wrote the original“bodice ripper” romp “Forever Amber”, and who along with Anya Seton fired our fevered blood in those distant pre-Chatterley days. Black-clad and sombre-voiced Johnny Cash gone at 71 and Robert Palmer, dead of a heart attack at 54, a be-suited hipster of “white-boy cool” in contrast to Bryan Ferry’s lounge lizard, both of which were visually rather musically, compelling. And last the bibulous professorial, ambassadorial and magnificent Senator and Democrat, Pat Moynihan.
And these shall NOT be missed.......
Idi Amin (78 ) in exile in Saudia Arabia, the sadistic buffoon and tyrant of Uganda with the wit and cunning of a Nile crocodile. Uday & Qusay Hussein, the hellish sons of a psychopathic and criminal father, shot dead by US troops in Mosul, Iraq. Foday Sankoh (65) the murderous rebel leader in Sierra Leone and crony of the just-as-foul Charles Taylor, who made a speciality of child amputations, died in UN custody. Last and probably least offensive, comes Argentina’s ignoble and posturing military jackass, General Leopoldo Galtieri, who led his country to humiliation and economic ruin by invading the Falklands.
