Okay, we have come to August, the best month of the year. Relatively long days filled with heat and made for taking it easy at work and vacationing. Beers tase better, people are willing to drink white wine and BBQs abound. Oh, and did I mention it was my birthday month? That used to be a cause for celebration. Now it is a time for being grateful that I am not being written about by some scrivener of obituaries and trying to forget how many trips around the sun I have been on this ride for. Of course, as I have said, if Margalit Fox were the scrivener, I’d willingly get off the ride now. Enough about me, you subject yourself to this thing to read about the dearly departed and in July (my second favorite month), unlike June, there was a lot of activity and we lost some doozy’s. As I did last year, I will note the July loss of Marie Provost, more because I love the Nick Lowe song about her than anything.
Forget Jordon, forget Shaq, forget Kareem, forget Kobe, forget LeBron. Bill Russel was the greatest basketball player ever to grace a court. Check that. He was the greatest teammate in sports. And I don’t say that lightly. And as great an athlete he was, he was a greater civil rights champion and person. He died at 88. Let’s start at the beginning of his career. He failed to make his junior high school basketball team. I hope they fired that coach. He only got one scholarship offer from a relatively unknown college (so much for astute recruiters), the Universtity of San Francisco, a small Jesuit institution. He took that team to the NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. He went on to win an Olympic gold medal and then went to the Boston Celtics where he won 11 championships, including eight in a row; five MVP awards; and was a 12-time all-star. Take that Tom Brady. In 1980 the basketball writers voted him the greatest NBA player and I suspect if the vote were taken today, the result would not change. In 1966 he became the first black person to coach in a major sports league. He did it all and then some. When he was playing, he had no peer until Wilt Chamberlain joined the league and they had a fierce rivalry. Chamberlain, while he had better personal stats, won only two championships. The statue of Russell that the City of Boston erected to honor him has a plaque containing the Russell quote: “The most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.” Russell was the consummate team player. That was him, playing great but making those around him greater than they were.
He gets two paragraphs. He grew up immersed in racism. Born in Louisiana, one of his earliest memories was his grandfather getting in to a shootout with the Ku Klux Klan and his father jumping into a ditch while being shot at. The family moved to Oakland, California which Russell described “tough and dangerous but paradise compared with Louisiana.” That makes it somewhat shocking that he would go to play in Boston which at the time was pretty much the Birmingham of the North. Recall the Bussing crisis in the mid 70’s. Let’s just say that Boston was not the most black-friendly city at the time, not that any were, really. Because of that Russell, who once described the city as “a flea market of racism,” had a strained relationship with the town he won so many championships for. His suburban house was once broken into and racial epithets were painted on the walls and feces was spread on his bed. When they retired his jersey, he refused to go and requested that fans boycott the event as well. He also refused to attend his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, claiming that he should not have been the first Black player inducted (Chuck Cooper would have been his choice). He said at the time: “We foolishly lionize athletes and make them heroes because they can hit a ball or catch one. The only athletes we should bother with attaching any particular importance to are those like [Muhammad] Ali, whom we can admire for themselves and not for their incidental athletic abilities.” He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a boycotted of a game in 1961 when a coffee shop in Kentucky refused to serve Black Celtics players and after Medgar Evers was assassinated, his brother asked Russell to run a youth basketball camp in Jackson Mississippi to bring both Black and White kids together. In the face of death threats, Russell ran the camp. For all of his work, President Obama graced him with the Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian award. Oh, and he was visibly moved when the Celtics re-retired his number in 1999 in a huge celebration. In 2019 he accepted his Hall of Fame ring in a private ceremony. I can keep writing about him but Adam Silver, the NBA Commissioner’s words about him are far more eloquent than anything I could conjure up:
The countless accolades that he earned for his storied career with the Boston Celtics – including a record 11 championships and five MVP awards – only begin to tell the story of Bill's immense impact on our league and broader society. Bill stood for something much bigger than sports: the values of equality, respect and inclusion that he stamped into the DNA of our league. At the height of his athletic career, Bill advocated vigorously for civil rights and social justice, a legacy he passed down to generations of NBA players who followed in his footsteps. Through the taunts, threats and unthinkable adversity, Bill rose above it all and remained true to his belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity.
She lived long and prospered but Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on Star Trek died at 89. Her role in the show was important because it was the first time that a black woman was cast as someone in a position of power. When Whoopie Goldberg first saw the show, she yelled for her mother to “Come quick, come quick. There’s a Black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!” In a scene where her and Captain Kirk kissed it was one of the first time (but not the first – that belongs to Nancy Sinatra kissing Sammy Davis, Jr.) that there was an interracial kiss on a show. Nichols was a singer and dancer and worked in the Duke Ellington band for a few years. She took the Star Trek gig as a bridge to Broadway and worked with her one-time lover Gene Roddenberry to give the character more substance. Her affair with Roddenberry was while he was married. She broke it off when she found out he was also dating another woman. “I could not be the other woman to the other woman,” she wrote in her book “Beyond Uhura.” Seems like Roddenberry had a bit too much time on his hands. Nichols picked the name Uhuru which she said was a feminized version of the Swahili word freedom. After the first year she had decided to leave the show and met the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at an NAACP fundraiser. He approached her saying he was a fan. She told him about wanting to leave the show and he recoiled, explaining how important it was for a Black woman to be portrayed as she was. After that she saw her role in a different light and stayed with the project. After the show and the ensuing movies, she continued to go to Trekkie conventions and became a recruiter for NASA which wanted to interest more woman and minorities in Blacks in the astronaut corps. Perhaps we will hear from her in the future. “Hailing frequencies open, sir.”
The make-believe mafia took it on the chin this month but since I have never watched the Sopranos and have seen only snippets of any of the Godfather movies (it is impossible in modern society not to see them somewhere), I will lead with the real loss for me this month (no not Ivana although we’ll get to her) but Larry Storch who died at 99. Storch most memorably played Corporal Randolph Agarn in F-Troop, an early 60’s sitcom that, while it didn’t run that long, etched itself into the psyche of folks of my era. It was sort of a McHale’s Navy set in a post-civil war era fort in Indian Country. Indian Country is a bad phrase for few reasons. First, the proper term is Native American (the rest of us were immigrants – without papers I might add) but the more egregious reason is that while it may have been called Indian Country, we were actually dispossessing them of it as quickly as possible and turning it into white-man’s country. But I digress. We’re talking about a sitcom here. It was really a fort full of misfit soldiers who were constantly scheming to make deals with the local Indian tribe that generally backfired on them. I was at the right age where Wrangler Jane, the sexy, feisty cowgirl, played by Melody Patterson (who died at 66 in 2015), was an added attraction for me. As for Storch, prior to F-Troop he had been a comedian and character actor. His Agarn character hailed from Passaic, New Jersey even though he had never been there. After F-Troop he made appearances on the “Flying Nun,” “The Love Boat” (who didn’t – I bet I could have been on that show if I tried) and “Love American Style.” Having befriended Bernard Schwartz (p/k/a Tony Curtis) in the Navy, Tony got him roles in movies such as “Sex and the Single Girl,“ and “The Great Race.” Storch was also one of the voices for “Tennessee Tuxedo and His Friends,” a cartoon that I loved.
The back-story on Storch is that he married a woman who had a biracial child. When she began facing racial backlash, she gave the child to a Black couple in Atlantic City to raise. When she married Storch, the child would come to California to visit them. According to the New York Times, when she did, Storch and his wife “would explain to friends that she was an abused child of former neighbors and that they had adopted her, but that she lived most of the year with Black friends.” Later in 1996, Storch told People Magazine that it was a time of embedded racial prejudice and he and his wife “saw no reason to rock the boat.” Lest you wonder, the girl became a professor at Columbia University and told her story in a PBS documentary “Secret Daughter.” In yet another saga, Storch and his wife, well before they were married, conceived a child that they gave up for adoption. After the airing of “Secret Daughter,” they reunited with her as well. Not sure if she taught at Yale. Anyway, that just goes to show that things were sometimes really awry at Ft. Courage.
We move from Fort Courage to The Beaver, where we lost and then didn’t lose but then really lost Tony Dow, Beaver Cleaver’s big brother and confidant on “Leave It to Beaver,” a sitcom (although they were not called that back then) which aired on television (when the little screen really was the little screen – more on that later) from 1957 to 1963. Mr. Dow was 77. Based on an erroneous Facebook post announcing his death by his representative, papers like the New York Times printed Mr. Dow’s obit a tad prematurely. Apparently, not wanting to make his agent look bad, Mr. Dow actually did die, making the mistake really just a small timing gaffe. Dow, as Wally Cleaver, was everything you would want in a big brother when you were a dopey kid prone to getting into mischief. He had the Beaver’s (Jerry Mathers who is still with us at 74) back, never dimed him out to their parents (this is the town of Mayfield so we’re not talking gang warfare or gun possession by the little guy), and dispensed solid advice on how to navigate an eight-year old’s countless, seemingly earth-shattering problems. My older brother was good but frankly, no Wally (sorry Jack). That said, I was no Wally to my younger brothers either. Dow, as Wally, was also good looking, polite to his parents and had real credibility with the adults in the room. He had never thought about acting as a kid. Dow was a swimmer and diver as a child and one day his swim coach asked him if he wanted to go with him to an audition. With no acting experience whatsoever, he snared the role as Wally. Like many a star of a hit television show, he could never shake the stereotype of Wally. It bothered him throughout his 20’s and 30’s he told Sunday Morning, but by 40 “I realized how great the show was.” He did do some other acting (including “Still the Beaver” and “The New Leave It to Beaver”) and directing and ultimately sculpting. In the words of the Beaver: “You know something, Wally? I'd rather do nothin' with you than somethin' with anybody else.” That’s brotherly love.
Okay onto the La Faux Cosa Nostra. Now real-life gangsters get shot in the head and dumped in landfills in Staten Island, or jailed for life under the RICO laws. The celluloid bad guys die of old age. That is what happened in the case of Sonny Corleone and Paulies, Walnuts and Cicero. The real embodiment of Sonny, James Caan, died at 82. Like you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s, you didn’t have to see the “Godfather” movies to know of James Caan who had a long and storied career. By the time he was cast as Sonny by his old college buddy from Hofstra University (yes, the Harvard of Hempstead), Francis Ford Coppola, the movie’s director, he had already been in the Western “El Dorado” starring John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, and starred in “Brian’s Song,” a true story about the relationship between Gale Sayers, the great running-back of the Chicago Bears (played by Billie Dee Williams), and his 26-year-old teammate, Brian Piccolo, who died of cancer. In the “Godfather,” Caan was originally hired to play the role of Michael Corleone which ultimately went to the more well-known Al Pacino. Caan’s character, Sonny, was more of a skirt-chasing, hothead who ultimately got gunned down. He played the role so convincingly that he was twice awarded “Italian of the Year” in New York which would have been fine had he not been a Jewish guy from Sunnyside, Queens. He was also once denied entry into a country club because a board member accused him of being a “made” guy. After the Godfather, his career went into overdrive and he was in films such as “Cinderella Liberty,” “The Gambler,” “Rollerball” and “A Bridge Too Far” to name a few. However, Caan shared some attributes with his Sonny character. He was once questioned in the death of a man who fell from a fire escape and died, and he was arrested after he brandished a loaded handgun in public. He also succumbed to cocaine addiction for a time rehabbed and rebounded. After a few years of inaction, Coppola cast him in the movie “Gardens of Stone.” He did a few other movies and then wound up on the small screen (which by the way aren’t so small anymore as you can snag an 85-inch model at Best Buy for just under $2300.00), in “Las Vegas” in which he played the head of security for a casino. For language purists, it is Caan who is attributed with ushering in the rather ethnic phrase “bada-bing.” Can’t get better than that.
Judging from my Twitter feed, which admittedly is skewed, Tony Sirico who portrayed Peter Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri, on “The Sopranos” and who died at 79, received far more buzz than the passing of Mr. Caan. This perhaps has more to do with the popularity of the Sopranos, which went off the air in 2007, than it does about the relative popularity of the two individuals. Mr. Sirico actually began his career as a movie mafioso by committing various acts of extortion, robbery and weapons possession (he was arrested 28 times), which wound him in the infamous Sing Sing prison on a four-year sentence. While there, a group of ex-con actors performed a show and Mr. Sirico decided that he could act as well as the folks he saw and when he got out, he chased the bright lights. He told Vanity Fair magazine that with 28 arrests and only two convictions, He “must have some natural charisma.” He was an extra in Godfather II and ultimately played Tony Stacks in “Goodfellas.” Woody Allen cast him in “Bullets over Broadway,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” and “Wonder Wheel,” to name a few and was also the voice of Vinny, a wiseguy dog on “Family Guy.” Although his Soprano’s character killed more than anyone else (nine), he had rules that he would not break. He insisted that Mr. Walnuts never be portrayed as a “rat” and he did not want him to kill a woman although he broke that rule when, during one episode, he suffocated a nursing home resident with a pillow when she caught him stealing her life savings. He was happy, however, when his friends from the neighborhood didn’t give him any flak for it. Perhaps they were happy he didn’t garrote her.
Of the three, my personal favorite, and not just because of his amazing daughter, is Paul Sorvino who died at 83. While his signature role may have been Paulie Cicero in “Goodfellas” (who lost Ray Liotta in May), he grew up idolizing the tenor Mario Lanza and started his career as a singer. Acting didn’t go well for him at first and like many a thespian, he waited tables, bartended and sold cars. He once told the New York Times that in his early acting years: “most of the time I was just another out-of-work-actor who couldn’t get arrested.” That turned around when Carl Reiner cast him in “Where’s Poppa.” After that, he was cast as everything from God (“The Devil’s Carnival”) to Henry Kissinger (Oliver Stone’s “Nixon”) who sometimes acted like God. He was in a host of films from “Reds,” to “Blood Brothers” to “Dick Tracey.” He also did a lot of Broadway, receiving a Tony nomination for Best Actor in “That Championship Season.” He was also on television in Law and Order. Later in life he found joy as a sculptor telling the Florida Sun-Sentinel that he enjoyed it so much because “No one really tells you how to finish something. Acting onstage is like doing sculpture” while “acting in movies is like being an assistant to the sculptor.” Not bad for a guy from Bensonhurst.
Moving from the mock mafia to the real, Gerry (Gerald) Shargel, a noted trial and appellate attorney who represented real life mafia figures such as John Gotti, Tony “Pro” Provenzano and Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, died at 77. Shargel combined the ability to engage in effective courtroom theatrics with a real studied knowledge of the law and the ability to work hard to bring the two together. That usually spelled success for his clients but as a criminal defense lawyer, success is not always gauged by acquittals as much as it is by being able to minimize the punishment your clients often deserve. That said, he had his share of acquittals. Over the course of his career, he represented every type of client but it is his work for La Cosa Nostra that garnered him the most attention. He was once removed from a case because the prosecutor (John Gleeson) argued that he was house counsel to an organized crime family. Like many a defense lawyer, his clients weren’t always happy with him. John Gotti was recorded on a wiretap saying of Mr. Shargel, whose office was on the 37th floor, “I’m gonna show him a better way than the elevator out of his office.” Like me, Mr. Shargel believed that whether a criminal defendant committed the crime is of no moment. It is whether the government can prove he committed that crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Those are the rules of the game and Mr. Shargel played by those rules as well as anyone.
Ivana Trump, the woman who coined the phrase “The Donald” for her then husband, the man who would be President, Donald Trump, died at 77. Even though the two divorced after 15 years of marriage in a rather acrimonious manner, she will always be inextricably intertwined with Mr. Trump, for better or worse (and maybe even in sickness and in health). While her husband was brash and some would say uncouth, she was sophisticated and polished. Ultimately, she and her ex-husband became friendly and she counseled him when he was President to the extent that anyone “counseled” him. Indeed, she once told ABC news she was the first Mrs. Trump and therefore is the true First Lady, causing Melania Trump’s spokesperson to say that Melania was the First Lady and will use that “title and role to help children and not sell books,” and that “there is clearly no substance to this statement from an ex.” Following the divorce, she became the Queen of QVC, hawking lines of clothes and jewelry to the masses. Her eternal resting place, where the LIV Golf International series, the Saudi-backed upstart to the PGA, was just staged to tepid reviews, is Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ. One would expect her ex to join her there someday. No word on Melania’s plans for a final resting place but one doubts an eternal ménage à trois.
Bob Rafelson, the director of “Five Easy Pieces,” but for me, more importantly, the creator of The Monkees, died at 89. He is credited with being at the forefront of the New Hollywood movement of the 70’s where more artistic freedom was given to directors who often became the focal point of the project rather than the film studio. He started a film company that ultimately became BBS and produced such hits as “Easy Rider” and “The Last Picture Show.” BBS won an Oscar for the film “Hearts and Minds”, a 1974 Vietnam war documentary and then shut down. But for me, forget all that, it’s all about the Monkees. Rafelson said the show was based on his own experience playing in a band in Mexico and that the idea predated the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night.” When they pitched the show, they wanted the Dave Clark Five or the Lovin’ Spoonful to be the band but when neither bit they decided to form their own group and put an ad in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter looking for musicians. I think they only got one actual musician (Mike Nesmith who died in December, 2021) but they came away with a band. According to Rafelson, the whole show was really created in the editing room. I’m a believer.
Don’t aske me why the font changed. Apparently, divine intervention. While I now subscribe to Jimmy Conaty’s position that the ankle may be the sexiest part of the body (don’t dismiss it out of hand as I first did. Just think about it first), I am not generally a fan of feet. You really don’t want me to get into it but that said, I am a bigger person than that and include this month the loss of Bruce Katz at 75. Mr. Katz started the Rockport Shoe Company which was really the first company to market a comfortable, casual walking shoe. Back in the heyday of shoes made by Church’s of England and Allen Edmonds in the States, it was all leather and classically designed footwear. Mr. Katz ushered in the era of the rubber sole (The Beatles rubber Soul was not about the bottom of a shoe, nor, apparently, was it the genesis of Mr. Katz’ invention) and sold comfort over classics and the market took to it. With Covid having pretty much done away with any semblance of a business dress code, the casual, rubber-soled shoe is king. Katz ultimately sold the company to Reebok and fulfilled a lifelong dream of designing a sailboat and sailing around the world. Once on dry land again he started Samuel Hubbard, named for his grandfather and built that company. These shoes are made for walking.
Staying with business we’ll move to Sumner Feldberg, who co-founded T.J. Maxx who died at 98. Now I have never been to a T.J. Maxx store so I can’t speak to the shopping experience. Come to think of it, I can now only speak to the Amazon shopping experience since that is pretty much where me and America shops. Anyway, Mr. Feldberg attended Harvard which was interrupted by a stint in the Air Force during WWII. He was in the first class of Harvard Business School dubbed the “millionaire business school class of 1949.” It included James Burke who headed Johnson & Johnson, C. Peter McColough of Xerox, Thomas Murphy of Capital Cities/ABC and William Ruane of the Sequoia fund, among others. At Harvard he roomed with Marvin Traub who went on to run Bloomingdales. Mr. Feldberg went into retailing helping to establish, in addition to T.J. Maxx; Zayre’s and BJ’s Wholesale, where I do shop occasionally. The problem with BJ’s is at my age I need to keep an actuarial chart handy to ensure that I will live long enough to use the 12 bottles of Ketchup or 24 tubes of toothpaste I buy. T.J. Maxx was started because Mr. Feldman wanted to by Marshalls and the company refused to sell. He thus poached a top Marshall’s merchandiser and set up a formidable competitor. He refused to buy into the myth that you had to have good instincts into fashion and style to be in the retail clothing business. “In most cases, it’s common sense and hard work.” I think that would be true of most things.
Howard Slusher, a sports agent and die-hard negotiator, died at 85. As an agent, Slusher was negotiating a shoe deal with Nike on behalf of NBA great Paul Westphal. Phil Knight, the owner of Nike, was so impressed with Slusher’s relentless haggling for his client that he turned to an aid and said “I want you to hire that son-of-a-bitch,” which Nike did according to the book “Just Do It” by Donald Katz. Slusher was brought in by Nike to negotiate the tough deals. According to Mr. Knight, who was taught by Slusher that he could get a good deal on a cab by going to the last driver in the queue at the airport and demanding a big discount, “Howard was first and foremost a negotiator. He made it an art form and did it better than anyone.” As a players’ rep, he had countless athletes including Lynn Swan, Dan Fouts, Todd Bell and others. Unlike many agents he did not take a percentage from his clients but instead charged by the hour which he said was a better deal for the player. Not surprisingly, as a relentless bargainer, he was born in Jersey City. In order to keep away from the neighborhood bullies he often sought refuge in the local public library and he told People magazine that he “figured while I was there, I might as well read.” Apparently, time well spent.
John Froines, a chemist who also happened to be one of the Chicago Seven (formally the Chicago Eight until Judge Julius Hoffman – no relation to Abbie – severed Bobby Seale, a defendant he had ordered bound and gagged in the courtroom, from the case) died at 83. Froines had just received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale when he was recruited by Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis to assist in disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Unlike some of his more colorful co-defendants, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Froines was strait laced and serious. Judge Hoffman, who presided over the case, made no bones about the fact that he believed the defendants should be found guilty but the jury wasn’t with him and acquitted Froines and another defendant Lee Weiner of all charges. An appeals court later threw out most of the other convictions. Froines later worked for OSHA (and hence the same government who tried him for amongst other things, crossing state lines to incite a riot) where he formulated important guidelines for workplace safety. He finished his career teaching. While he remained committed to social justice, he admitted that people change, once stating: “nobody’s a student activist at 50. You’d have to have your head examined.” Very Churchillian of him.
Well folks. That’s July in the books. Feel free to write, comment and most importantly tell your friends to sign up as I crave readers more than life itself. Make good use of August because before you know it, we’ll be freezing our asses off in the dark.