Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine dies at 96

Her most famous film was Alfred Hitchcock's 'Suspicion,' for which she won an Academy Award

 

Joan Fontaine in 1985 in Beverly Hills, Calif.

AP Photo/Michael Tweed

De Havilland, who was nominated that year for Hold Back the Dawn, went on to win two Oscars of her own for leading roles in the 1946 film To Each His Own and the 1949 picture The Heiress. Now aged 97, de Havilland lives in Paris.

Academy Award–winning actress Joan Fontaine, who found stardom playing naive wives in Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and "Rebecca" and was also in films by Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Nicholas Ray, died Sunday. She was 96.
Fontaine, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland, died in her sleep in her Carmel, Calif., home on Sunday morning, said longtime friend Noel Beutel. Fontaine had been fading recently and died peacefully, he said.
Fontaine's pale, soft features and frightened stare made her ideal for melodrama, and she was a major star for much of the 1940s. For Hitchcock, she was a prototype of the uneasy blondes played by Kim Novak in "Vertigo" and Tippi Hedren in "The Birds" and "Marnie." The director said he was most impressed by Fontaine's restraint. She credited George Cukor, who directed her in 1939's "The Women," for urging her to "think and feel and the rest will take care of itself."
Fontaine appeared in more than 40 movies, including "Gunga Din," "Jane Eyre" and Max Ophuls' historical drama "Letter from an Unknown Woman." She was also in films directed by Wilder ("The Emperor Waltz"), Lang ("Beyond a Reasonable Doubt") and, wised up and dangerous, in Ray's "Born to be Bad." She starred on Broadway in 1954 in "Tea and Sympathy" and in 1980 received an Emmy nomination for her cameo on the daytime soap opera "Ryan's Hope."
"Suspicion," released in 1941, featuring Fontaine as a timid woman whose husband (Cary Grant) may or may not be a killer, brought her a best actress Oscar and dramatized one of Hollywood's legendary feuds, between Fontaine and de Havilland, a nominee that year for "Hold Back the Dawn."
The honor gave Fontaine the distinction of being the only actor or actress ever to win an Academy Award for a starring role in one of Hitchcock's many movies.
De Havilland went on to win two Oscars of her own for leading roles in 1946's "To Each His Own" and 1949's "The Heiress."
"You know, I've had a hell of a life," Fontaine once said. "Not just the acting part. I've flown in an international balloon race. I've piloted my own plane. I've ridden to the hounds. I've done a lot of exciting things.
 http://on.aol.com/video/joan-fontaine-dead--academy-award-winning-actress-dies-at-96-518051934

Vo Nguyen Giap dies at 102; Vietnamese general

 

Vo Nguyen Giap, the communist general widely regarded as one of the military geniuses of the 20th century, who masterminded the defeat of the French and the war against the Americans in Vietnam, has died. He was 102.

Giap died Friday at a military hospital in Hanoi, the Associated Press reported, citing a government official.
Though Ho Chi Minh was the symbol of Vietnam's fight for independence and reunification, it was Giap who carved out the victories. From Dien Bien Phu to Khe Sanh to the Tet offensive, his name became synonymous with the battles that defined a chapter of world history and emboldened liberation movements from Africa to Latin America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vo_Nguyen_Giap

Võ Nguyên Giáp in 2008
Nickname	Anh Văn (Brother Van)
Born	(1911-08-25)25 August 1911 Lộc Thủy, Quảng Bình Province, French Indochina
Died	4 October 2013(2013-10-04) (aged 102) Hanoi, Vietnam
Allegiance	Vietnam
Service/branch	Vietnam People's Army
Years of service	1944–1991
Rank	General
Commands held	Việt Minh Vietnam People's Army
Battles/wars	World War II First Indochina War Vietnam War Battle of Dien Bien Phu Tết Offensive Easter Offensive Fall of Saigon
Awards	Resolution for Victory Order

Eydie Gorme dies at 84; pop singer did 'Blame It on the Bossa Nova'

Eydie in 1962.
Background information
Birth name	Edith Gormezano (some sources indicate Edith Garmezano)
Born	(1928-08-16)August 16, 1928[1] The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died	August 10, 2013(2013-08-10) (aged 84) Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
Genres	Latin pop, big band, swing, traditional pop music
Occupations	Singer
Years active	1950–2009
Website	Official website

Gormé was born as Edith Gormezano^[1] (census sources indicate Edith Garmezano) in The Bronx, New York in 1928, the daughter of Nessim and Fortuna, Sephardic Jewish immigrants. Her father, Nessim, a tailor, was from Sicily and her mother, Fortuna, was from Turkey. Gormé was a cousin of singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka.^[3][4]
She graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1946 with Stanley Kubrick in her class. She worked for the United Nations as an interpreter, using her fluency in the Ladino and Spanish languages, while singing on Ken Greenglass' band during the weekends.^{[citation needed]}

Eydie Gorme, a pop vocalist who entertained nightclub audiences and TV viewers as a solo artist and with her husband, Steve Lawrence, died Saturday. She was 84.

Gorme died at a Las Vegas hospital of an undisclosed illness, said her publicist, Howard Bragman.
Since the mid-1950s, first as a soloist and then as part of the Steve and Eydie duo, Gorme sang pop hits, standards and show tunes while decked out in sequins and engaging in playful stage patter.
Her first album with Lawrence, "We Got Us," won a Grammy Award in 1960. The two also recorded separately, he making Billboard's top 10 with "Go Away Little Girl" in 1962 and she having a hit with "Blame It on the Bossa Nova" in 1963 and winning a Grammy for "If He Walked into My Life" in 1966. Together they starred in the Broadway musical "Golden Rainbow" in 1968.
"Eydie has been my partner onstage and in life for more than 55 years," Lawrence said in a statement. "I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and even more the first time I heard her sing. While my personal loss is unimaginable, the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time."
Gorme (pronounced Gor-MAY) had been a singer with the Tex Beneke Band when Steve Allen hired her for his New York variety TV show in 1953. Lawrence was also part of the show's ensemble, and the two sang and acted in comedy sketches. They made the leap with Allen when his "Tonight" show was picked up by the NBC network in 1954, and for three years they were regulars on the late-night hit.
In 1957 Gorme appeared with comedian Jerry Lewis at the Palace Theatre on Broadway and with comic Joe E. Brown in Las Vegas. That December she married Lawrence in Las Vegas. They returned to television in 1958 with "The Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Show" before Lawrence was called to the Army.
While he served for two years, she performed on her own, and upon his discharge in 1960 they resumed their professional partnership, billing themselves as Steve and Eydie.
"What has been the nature of their success?" Allen said in a 1996 Times story. "First, the fact that they are a couple has something to do with it. Secondly, they are damned good singers. And thirdly — this has both hurt and helped them — they concentrated for the most part on good music. This lost them the youthful audience, who prefer crap to Cole Porter's music. But it endeared them to people with sophisticated taste."
Gorme was born Aug. 16, 1928, in the Bronx, N.Y., to Sephardic Jewish immigrants. Her father was a tailor from Sicily and her mother was from Turkey. Before her singing career took off, Gorme worked as a Spanish-language interpreter.
In the mid-1960s she was pitched the idea of a Spanish-language recording. "Amor" and a follow-up album with the Mexican group Trio Los Panchos became hits in the U.S. and Latin America.
Gorme and Lawrence continued to perform on television variety shows, winning an Emmy for the 1978 special "Steve and Eydie Celebrate Irving Berlin," and on tour as a duo and opening for Frank Sinatra and others.
Besides her husband of nearly 56 years, Gorme is survived by their son David and a granddaughter. The couple's other son, Michael, who had a heart condition, died in 1986 at age 23.

Steve and Eydie - 1960's Pop Medley

Eydie Gorme dies at 84; pop singer did 'Blame It on the Bossa Nova'

http://mashable.com/2013/07/14/amar-bose-dead/

Dr. Amar Bose Dies at 83

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By Eric Larson16 minutes ago

Dr. Amar Bose, founder of audio manufacturing company Bose Corporation, died on Friday at his home in Wayland, Mass. He was 83. His death appears to be of natural causes.
A sophisticated engineer with a knack for classical music, Dr. Bose was known for his revolutionary research in acoustical engineering. He built his unique expertise into the company's products, such as concert-hall-quality speakers and noise-canceling headphones.
He founded the company in 1964 while studying electrical engineering at the postgraduate level at MIT. Unlike most entrepreneurs of the day, he kept the company's financial information private and declined to offer public stock, letting him focus on his research without the burden of earnings announcements.

SEE ALSO: Listen Up: Here's a Brief History of Headphones

Dr. Bose received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from MIT, all in electrical engineering, and also served as a faculty member from 1956 to 2001. In 2011, he donated the vast majority of Bose's shares to MIT, under the agreement that the school not sell any stock or partake in the company's management.
He was born Amar Gopal Bose on Nov. 2, 1929, in Philadelphia, Pa. to a Bengali father and American mother. He has two children with his ex-wife, Prema: Dr. Vanu Bose, owner of Cambridge, Mass.-based company Vanu, Inc.; and Maya Bose. His second wife, Ursula, and one grandchild also survive

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Amar G. Bose, Acoustic Engineer and Inventor, Dies at 83

By GLENN RIFKIN

Published: July 12, 2013

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Amar G. Bose, the visionary engineer, inventor and billionaire entrepreneur whose namesake company, the Bose Corporation, became synonymous with high-quality audio systems and speakers for home users, auditoriums and automobiles, died on Friday at his home in Wayland, Mass. He was 83.

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Michael Quan

Amar G. Bose, chairman of Bose, with a Wave radio in 1993.

His death was confirmed by his son, Dr. Vanu G. Bose.

As founder and chairman of the privately held company, Dr. Bose focused relentlessly on acoustic engineering innovation. His speakers, though expensive, earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.

And by refusing to offer stock to the public, Dr. Bose was able to pursue risky long-term research, such as noise-canceling headphones and an innovative suspension system for cars, without the pressures of quarterly earnings announcements.

In a 2004 interview in Popular Science magazine, he said: “I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by M.B.A.’s. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.”

A perfectionist and a devotee of classical music, Dr. Bose was disappointed by the inferior sound of a high-priced stereo system he purchased when he was an M.I.T. engineering student in the 1950s. His interest in acoustic engineering piqued, he realized that 80 percent of the sound experienced in a concert hall was indirect, meaning that it bounced off walls and ceilings before reaching the audience.

This realization, using basic concepts of physics, formed the basis of his research. In the early 1960s, Dr. Bose invented a new type of stereo speaker based on psychoacoustics, the study of sound perception. His design incorporated multiple small speakers aimed at the surrounding walls, rather than directly at the listener, to reflect the sound and, in essence, recreate the larger sound heard in concert halls. In 1964, at the urging of his mentor and adviser at M.I.T., Dr. Y. W. Lee, he founded his company to pursue long-term research in acoustics. The Bose Corporation initially pursued military contracts, but Dr. Bose’s vision was to produce a new generation of stereo speakers.

Though his first speakers fell short of expectations, Dr. Bose kept at it. In 1968, he introduced the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting speaker system, which became a best seller for more than 25 years and firmly entrenched Bose, based in Framingham, Mass., as a leader in a highly competitive audio components marketplace. Unlike conventional loudspeakers, which radiated sound only forward, the 901s used a blend of direct and reflected sound.

Later inventions included the popular Bose Wave radio and the Bose noise-canceling headphones, which were so effective they were adopted by the military and commercial pilots.

A Bose software program enabled acoustic engineers to simulate the sound from any seat in a large hall, even before the site was built. The system was used to create sound systems for such diverse spaces as Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Sistine Chapel and the Masjid al-Haram, the grand mosque in Mecca.

In 1982, some of the world’s top automakers, including Mercedes and Porsche, began to install Bose audio systems in their vehicles, and the brand remains a favorite in that market segment.

Dr. Bose’s devotion to research was matched by his passion for teaching. Having earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, Dr. Bose returned from a Fulbright scholarship at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi and joined the M.I.T. faculty in 1956.

He taught there for more than 45 years, and in 2011, donated a majority of his company’s shares to the school. The gift provides M.I.T. with annual cash dividends. M.I.T. cannot sell the shares and does not participate in the company’s management.

Dr. Bose made a lasting impression in the classroom as well as in his company. His popular course on acoustics was as much about life as about electronics, said Alan V. Oppenheim, an M.I.T. engineering professor and a longtime colleague.

“He talked not only about acoustics but about philosophy, personal behavior, what is important in life. He was somebody with extraordinary standards,” Professor Oppenheim said.

Dr. William R. Brody, head of the Salk Institute in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, was a student in Dr. Bose’s class in 1962. He told Popular Science: “His class gave me the courage to tackle high-risk problems and equipped me with the problem-solving skills I needed to be successful in several careers. Amar Bose taught me how to think.”

Amar Gopal Bose was born on Nov. 2, 1929, in Philadelphia. His father, Noni Gopal Bose, was a Bengali freedom fighter who was studying physics at Calcutta University when he was arrested and imprisoned for his opposition to British rule in India. He escaped and fled to the United States in 1920, where he married an American schoolteacher.

At age 13, Dr. Bose began repairing radio sets for pocket money for repair shops in Philadelphia. During World War II, when his father’s import business struggled, Dr. Bose’s electronics repairs helped support the family. After graduating from high school, Dr. Bose was admitted to M.I.T. in 1947, where he studied under the mathematician Norbert Wiener, along with Dr. Lee.

An avid badminton player and swimmer, Dr. Bose spent several weeks each year at his vacation home in Hawaii.

Dr. Bose and his ex-wife, Prema, had two children, Vanu, now the head of his own company, Vanu Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., and Maya Bose, who survive him, as does his second wife, Ursula, and one grandchild.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/business/amar-g-bose-acoustic-engineer-and-inventor-dies-at-83.html?_r=0

Esther Williams dies at 91; athletic star of aquatic musicals

The Los Angeles native and swimming champion was coaxed into the movies at MGM, where she starred in a series of popular Technicolor spectaculars in the 1940s and '50s.

The water, Esther Williams once quipped, was her favorite costar.

With her beauty, sunny personality and background as a champion swimmer, Williams shot to stardom in the 1940s in the "aqua musical," an odd sub-genre of films that became an enormous hit with the moviegoing mainstream, fanned popular interest in synchronized swimming and turned Williams into Hollywood's Million Dollar Mermaid.
The MGM bathing beauty, whose underwater extravaganzas made her one of the most popular actresses of the era, an idol in competitive swimming and a fashion force, died in her sleep early Thursday in Beverly Hills, said her publicist, Harlan Boll. She was 91.

Her movies — including "Bathing Beauty," "Jupiter's Darling" and "Million Dollar Mermaid" — were as light as sea foam, but she stuck with their mix of romance, comedy and underwater spectacle, concluding that she would "rather be a commercial success than an artistic flop."
Her legions of fans didn't seem to mind — for a time she was a top 10 box office draw.
As Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote in 1984: "Esther Williams did more for a bathing suit than John Wayne ever did for a cowboy hat, Tom Mix for a horse, Errol Flynn for a sword, Ronald Colman for a pith helmet or Cary Grant for a tuxedo."
MGM's Louis B. Mayer had pursued Williams — a teenage swimming champion — to star in aquatic films as an answer to ice-skating star Sonja Henie, whose films were making money for 20th Century-Fox.
At the time, Williams, a Los Angeles native, was recovering from her disappointment at not having been able to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics in Finland because of the war in Europe.
She was starring with Johnny Weismuller in Billy Rose's live Aquacade revue in San Francisco but had no experience in acting, singing or dancing. She intended to return to her job as a stock girl at I. Magnin in Los Angeles, hoping to become a buyer for the store.
But Mayer kept calling, and eventually wooed her with promises of stardom. Her screen test with Clark Gable resulted in a contract offer from MGM.
Aware of her shortcomings, Williams showed remarkable aplomb by insisting on a training period to learn about making movies. Meanwhile, MGM had launched a publicity campaign featuring her in various bathing suits, her face ablaze with a smile. She appeared on the cover of half a dozen movie magazines and became a favorite pinup of American soldiers.
Like so many other starlets of that time, Williams was first glimpsed on screen in an Andy Hardy movie — the 1942 "Andy Hardy's Double Life," starring Mickey Rooney. By the time she starred opposite Red Skelton two years later, studio executives had so much faith in her that the film, originally called "Mr. Coed," was released as "Bathing Beauty." It was a smash hit.
By then MGM had built a $250,000 swimming pool for Williams on Sound Stage 30 — 90 feet wide, 90 feet long and 25 feet deep. A "bucket camera" was devised to follow her underwater. The pool was filled with special-effects equipment to create underwater fountains, geysers and fireworks, and there was a central pedestal with a hydraulic lift that could raise Williams 50 feet out of the water.
"Like Venus on the half-shell," she said.
Technicolor was new then, and Williams was resplendent in her shocking pink one-piece bathing suit, swimming gracefully in the pale green water.
Williams first worked with genius choreographer Busby Berkeley in 1949 on "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," one of the rare films in which she doesn't have a water scene. When she saw how Berkeley created dancing scenes for herself, Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, she could "foresee my liberation" in swimming films, she once said.
"MGM made money off me, but they never understood the art form," she said years later. "Not until the fifth picture did I even get a choreographer."
Williams and Berkeley made two more films together: "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952), which was one of her most popular, and "Easy to Love" (1953). The latter featured a finale in which Williams and 80 water-skiers carried big flapping flags while speeding over the water and, at another point, Williams dangled from a trapeze hanging from a helicopter.
Despite the spectacular feats, however, the allure of the aquatic film began to fade.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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