Last Man Out 2005, & Others Who will be Missed.....
As befits the man who destroyed or saved cricket, according
to your point of view, the scoreboard of the famous departed
showed Kerry Packer as Last Man Out in 2005. Here in the first
month of 2006 I make a final salute to a few of them I grew
up with and who meant something to me, one way or another.
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, died on Boxing Day, 26th December
aged 68. Packer died Australia’s richest man. He was
a tycoon, gambler and sportsman. A big man in every sense.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he turned it into gold.
Inheriting a newspaper empire from his dad, Sir Frank, who
called him “Boofhead”, he sold the press holdings
to Murdoch and moved into TV with Channel 9, and never looked
back. He later sold the Channel to Alan Bond for an unheard
of A$1billion at the time and bought it back 3 years later
for a quarter the price. At his death he was personally worth
A$7 billion. His main claim to fame is sticking it to the
Australian Cricket Board in 1976 and totally reinventing cricket
as a spectator sport. Packer looked like a white version of
Mike Tyson, almost as ugly and just as dangerous. Unsurprising
really, since he boxed as a heavyweight at school. A prodigious
gambler, he once lost A$28m on a 3-week losing streak in London.
He gave large sums of money secretly to charity and coming
back after a massive heart attack in 1990 he reported the
experience had convinced him that there was “***kin’
Nothing” on the other side. He reminded me in some ways
of Jemima’s dad, Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, another freebooter,
but much more appealing and none of the Ayn Rand’ish
fascisti superior man crap about him.
In Music it’s been a bad year for drummers.....
A bevy of 60’s drummers just hitting their 5th Cycle
shuffled this mortal coil; Spencer Dryden of Jefferson Airplane,
Charlie Chaplin’s nephew no less; John Capaldi of Traffic,
Keith Knudsen of the Doobies, Chris Curtis of the Searchers.
Not a drummer but writer/singer of all those sappy sappy love
songs of the early 70’s from Bread, Jimmy Griffin passed
on to that mawkish place in the sky. You know the ones, “Baby
I’m-a Want You”, “Make it With You”,
and “Everything I Own”.
A greater loss to music was Johnny Johnson, dead at 80. You
may not know this man’s name, but the second you heard
him play you’d recognise the music. He was the legendary
rock and blues pianist by way of Meade Lux Lewis and somehow
out there all on his own, who did those soaring, driving and
sublime piano solos back of Chuck Berry, in the mid 50’s
when rock was being born and still great. Little Richard and
Jerry Lee Lewis had their manic pop/rock moments, sure - but
Johnson was the real thing and untouchable, then or since
for sheer genius and excitement. "Johnny B. Goode"
was Berry’s a tribute to Johnson, who played with him
for over 20 years, including the classics, "Roll Over
Beethoven," "Maybellene," "Back in the
U.S.A." and "Sweet Little Sixteen." I could
take or leave Berry, but there just wasn’t enough on
tape of this guy.
Thespians always seem to be part of our lives and mark the
passing of time. Among the very well known, I include some
of those actors whose faces we know but not always their names.
Sir John Mills: after a long and distinguished stage and film
career at 97. His was a talented acting family, his wife Mary
Hayley Bell and his daughters Juliet and Hayley were all accomplished
actors. He began as a somewhat diminutive leading man in the
30’s, taking on clean cut types in dozens of post-war
British war movies, until taking on more nuanced roles such
as “Tunes of Glory “ with Alec Guinness and in
David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” .
Anne Bancroft at 73 of uterine cancer, talented New York actress,
wife of Mel Brooks, forever associated with her portrayal
of Mrs Robinson and the wonderful Bronskis duet with Brooks
in “To Be or Not To Be”.
John Bennett, prolific and talented British character actor
who died aged 75. Played in countless horror movies and TV
series as well as more dramatic roles in movies like “Lawrence
of Arabia”, Charlotte Gray” and “The Pianist”.
Dave Allen, Irish comedian who made his name in the 60’s
with his popular TV show on BBC. Allen was known for his refreshing
and acerbic wit, social commentary on various sacred cows
from sex to religion, all of which was a welcome change to
standard BBC fare. Allen would simply sit on a stool with
a fag in one hand and an Old Bushmills in the other and hold
court.
John Vernon, talented Canadian character actor aged 72, who
played wonderfully smooth and sinister villains, morally bankrupt
officials and heartless authority figures in numerous American
films and TV since the 1960s. Apart from a great line in villains,
among his best movies were “Point Blank” with
Lee Marvin and a great performance in the role of Nessim opposite
Anouk Aimée in “Justine”, a woeful stab
by George Cukor in1969 at Durrell’s Alexandrian Quartet.
Vincent Schiavelli, at 58 of lung cancer, American character
actor and cookbook author with a long and incredible face.
Ideal for those rich psychopathic roles.
In the literary field we lost Saul Bellow and Arthur Miller,
but I prefer to remember these two:
Andrea Dworkin, writer & feminist, died aged 58. The seemingly
angry face of radical feminism, she maintained pornography
was the precursor to rape and should be banned, thereby upsetting
many in her natural constituency in the civil rights/free
speech movement and becoming one with unlikely allies on the
Christian Right. Lacking Gloria Steinem’s looks she
was an easy target for bad comics and other male chauvinists
taking a cheap shot at the Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM).
Hunter S. Thompson, by suicide aged 67. Hardly a surprise,
but will be sadly missed. Any man who could write and make
us laugh out loud as he did with the sheer vividness and iconoclasm
of his prose was a genius. Of many manic moments I treasure
his reportage on the Nixon campaign train most.
Of sportsmen George Best at 59, succumbed to years of booze
and worse. I bumped into him off and on in Hong Kong and he
was as nice as everybody said. I’m not into sport but
his wizardry and dash avoiding vicious fouling and still scoring
was sheer poetry. His good looks, self-destructiveness and
pulling power with women made him a classic 60’s icon.
Public figures who departed this year include Pope John Paul,
whose most important contribution was his part in the freeing
of Eastern Europe, and the saintly Brother Roger of Taizé,
whose throat was cut aged 90 before a horrified congregation
of 2000 churchgoers by a crazed Romanian women (see my articles
on the BA website <www.baliadvdertiser.biz> for obits
on both). Another high prelate to go was the wonderfully named
Cardinal Jaime Sin, largely responsible for the removal of
corrupt Philippine Presidents, Marcos and Estrada. A man of
some humour he remarked while seated between Imelda and Marcos
that he “now knew how his Saviour felt on the Cross”.
Curious Imelda rose to the bait, to be told it was because
he was placed “between two thieves”.
John DeLorean, carmaker aged 80. Nobody could quite make out
whether DeLorean was an American conman or visionary, or both.
With his amazing looking automobile he certainly got the British
Labour government back in the 60’s to believe his car
would put the British car industry back in the running, provide
the answer to unemployment in Northern Ireland and be a crowning
achievement of Britain’s “white heat of technology”
movement, along with Concorde. Sadly none of it was to be.
Terri Schiavo, who finally died in a Florida hospital aged
41 after a long legal battle when her doctors and husband
withdrew her life support system after years in a coma, against
the wishes of her parents. A tragic situation made obscene
by politicians, and in particular Jeb Bush, the President’s
brother and Governor of Florida, who sought to make political
capital by misleading and inflaming the Christian Right .
The judge’s final decision to allow the withdrawal of
life support was vindicated beyond question a few months later
when the post mortem confirmed that Terri Schiavo had no brain
function and was in a complete and irrevocable vegetative
state.
And lastly Royalty; Prince Rainier dead at 81, a rather pathetic
figure battered by tragedy and family scandal, who nevertheless
managed to retain the independent status of his tiny principality.
A far cry from that most romantic of all weddings way back
when in the 50’s to actress Grace Kelly.
The only thing missing in 2005 seems to be the passing of
some archetypal monsters like Idi Amin or Pol Pot, whom we
not be in the least sorry to see the back of. Does that make
it a good year or a bad one I wonder?
