Obituaries

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Bruce Surtees ((July 23, 1937 – February 23, 2012)

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The American cinematographer Bruce Surtees, who has died aged 74, became known as "the prince of darkness" for his muted and often lugubrious style of lighting. However, while Surtees was well-suited to the nocturnal street scenes of Dirty Harry (1971), the Rembrandt-esque arrangements of The Beguiled (1971) and the claustrophobic interiors of Escape from Alcatraz (1979), all directed by Don Siegel, he was also at home with the wide open spaces of the western Joe Kidd (1972) and the surfing movie Big Wednesday (1978).

His deceptively simple black-and-white scheme for Lenny (1974), Bob Fosse's semi-documentary biopic of the comedian Lenny Bruce, earned Surtees an Oscar nomination. The film's compelling stand-up sequences owe almost as much to the expert lighting of the nightclub as they do to Dustin Hoffman's performance. As Hoffman paces the stage, chased by his own shadow, the light captures wisps of cigarette smoke and almost carries the smell of bourbon.
Dustin Hoffman in Lenny. Bruce Surtees was Oscar-nominated for his black-and-white cinematography Dustin Hoffman in Lenny. Bruce Surtees was Oscar-nominated for his black-and-white cinematography. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/United Artists

Cinematography was the Surtees family trade. Bruce was born in Los Angeles, where his father, Robert, was starting out as a camera assistant and operator. Robert had worked regularly with the acclaimed cinematographer Hal Mohr, and chose Mohr for one of Bruce's middle names. When Bruce was a teenager, Robert hit his stride as a director of photography, winning his first Oscar for King Solomon's Mines (1950).

Bruce attended the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, gained experience as a technician for Disney and assisted his father on films including The Hallelujah Trail (1965). He had proved to be a reliable camera operator – memorably capturing a motorcycle chase in Coogan's Bluff (1968) – and Siegel gave him the chance to graduate to the role of cinematographer on his US civil war film The Beguiled. In his autobiography, A Siegel Film, the director remembered Surtees's response to this offer: "Bruce's face became flushed, his breathing heavy … Tears appeared in his eyes and he spoke with great difficulty." Surtees rose to the technical challenges of The Beguiled, which starred Clint Eastwood as an injured soldier recuperating in a house full of women whom he seduces.

While many mainstream cinematographers employ three or more principal sources of light in a set-up, Surtees experimented with fewer and used them at lower levels. He achieved increased depth and contrast in the process, as well as creating stronger shadows. For one sequence in The Beguiled, he relied on a solitary bulb to replicate candlelight. Siegel was thrilled: "We didn't care that it was black, that it wouldn't show up on a television screen when the studio sold the picture to some network in a couple of years. Screw them. We liked it. It was exciting."

Surtees's drab palette complemented The Beguiled's gothic tone, Louisiana locations and the montage of sepia war photographs used in its title sequence. The film was a box-office disappointment but ensured his lengthy collaboration with Siegel and Eastwood. In Dirty Harry, a deserted sports stadium was eerily lit and shrouded in mist for the scene in which Eastwood's cop confronts the serial killer Scorpio. Eastwood's directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (1971), was shot around Carmel, California, where the star later became mayor and Surtees's own family also settled. His breezy location photography – including scenes at the Monterey jazz festival – matched the star's freewheeling role as Dave, a late-night DJ, but he introduced heavier shadows as Dave is threatened by his jilted lover. The film was made for a modest cost with a small crew and Surtees's efficiency was valued by Eastwood, who has always prided himself on bringing in films on time and under budget.

For Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973), influenced by the star's spaghetti westerns, Surtees favoured a wide aperture to ensure as much light as possible was captured in the Eastern Sierra setting of California. In the opening and closing sequences, he achieved a spectral light as Eastwood's mysterious stranger appears and disappears amid the shimmering desert haze. Eastwood's later westerns The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985) were shot in autumn, with Surtees exploiting the softer light and low sun. On Escape from Alcatraz, his last film with Siegel, the minimal lighting matched the grey and blue prison uniforms. After Pale Rider, he was replaced as Eastwood's regular cinematographer by his former camera operator Jack Green.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Surtees lit leading men such as Gene Hackman (in the noirish Night Moves), John Wayne (in his final role, in The Shootist) and Laurence Olivier (in the much-derided epic Inchon). Major actors were not always pleased with the prospect of languishing in Surtees's signature shadows, but the glossy, bright lighting he provided for Risky Business (co-photographed with Reynaldo Villalobos, 1983) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984) enhanced two of the decade's biggest box-office stars, Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy. In his later years, Surtees could still be relied upon to give an extra polish to middling material such as The Crush (1993), Corrina, Corrina (1994) and the television film Dash and Lilly (1999), the last of which brought him an Emmy nomination.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/28/bruce-surtees

Loved the man's work, especially on two of his Siegel collaborations - THE BEGUILED and DIRTY HARRY, two films that couldn't look more different in their colour palettes. DIRT HARRY's saturated hues (probably best evident in the main tiles) and inky blacks constitutes some of the most beautiful cinematography I've seen in cinema.



RIP.

Fantastic cinematographer. Loved the looks of DIRTY HARRY, ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ, NIGHT MOVES, and others that he worked on. Sad loss.

Rest in peace.

Damn. RIP.

x

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17249596

rip, Ralph McQuarrie.

Warren Stevens (1919-2012)

RIP Doc Ostrow from FORBIDDEN PLANET. 92 years ain't bad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/movies/warren-stevens-busy-character-actor-dies-at-92.html

By and large knew him for guest roles in things like Ironside and Star Trek (By Any Other Name). One of those oh so familiar faces. Good innings indeed.

RIP, WS

Just saw him pop up in MADIGAN a few nights ago.

Garry Wahlberg, 90 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/garry-walberg-actor-klugman-312594

as a Quincy fan it's quite sad but nonetheless a good innings. Didn't realise he was in Star Trek (Balance of Terror) but did his fair share of westerns. Remember him also for his brief moment in Andromeda Strain. One of those faces that cropped up in so much.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/02/local/la-me-patricia-medina-20120502

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Patricia Medina, a British-born actress whose Hollywood career as a leading lady in the 1950s spanned the talking mule comedy "Francis" and Orson Welles' crime-thriller "Mr. Arkadin," has died. She was 92.

Medina, the widow of actor Joseph Cotten, died Saturday at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, said Meredith Silverbach, a close friend. She had been in declining health.


A petite, dark-haired beauty who launched her film career in England in the late 1930s, Medina was married to actor Richard Greene when she arrived in Hollywood after World War II.

"She was a stunning woman," said Silverbach. "In her youth, they called her 'the most beautiful face in England.' "

Initially signed to MGM, Medina went on to play leads in movies such as "Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion" (1950), "Sangaree" with Fernando Lamas (1953), "Plunder of the Sun" with Glenn Ford (1953), "Botany Bay" with Alan Ladd (1953) and "Phantom of the Rue Morgue" with Karl Malden (1954).

She also played opposite Louis Hayward in the early '50s adventure films "Fortunes of Captain Blood," "The Lady and the Bandit," "Lady in the Iron Mask" and "Captain Pirate."

Medina and Greene were divorced in 1951. In 1960, in a ceremony at the home of David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones, she married the widowed Cotten, who had made his feature film debut in Welles' 1941 classic "Citizen Kane."

They appeared in a number of stage productions together, and Medina made her Broadway debut in 1962 in "Calculated Risk," starring Cotten, who died in 1994.

They were "blissfully devoted to one another," United Press International Hollywood reporter Vernon Scott wrote in 2000.

"Medina and Cotten were a curious pair," Scott wrote. "She is a vivacious extrovert. Cotton was a gentlemanly Virginian, a quiet, considerate man.

"At myriad parties and industry events they were inseparable, among the most popular couples in town. They represented stability in this socially unstable community."

One of three sisters whose mother was English and father was Spanish, Medina was born in England on July 19, 1919, and grew up in Stanmore, about an hour from London. She spent a number of years in Paris while growing up and was fluent in French, Italian and Spanish.

"In England I was nearly always cast as someone of mysterious origin, not too clearly designated but probably from some Southern European country," Medina told The Times in 1947. "Here they decided in my first film, 'The Secret Heart,' that I should be a Yankee. In my second I'm definitely English. It's all rather confusing, I must say."

She met Greene while they were working at the same studio in England, and they married in 1941. They later co-starred in the 1944 romantic comedy "Don't Take It to Heart" and appeared together in the 1949 film "The Fighting O'Flynn."



Medina, who lived in Westwood, wrote the 1998 autobiography "Laid Back in Hollywood."

She had no immediate survivors.

Goober from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW and HEE HAW.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/obit/story/2012-05-06/goober-pyle-george-lindsey-obit/54787304/1

Yes, I grew up watching both.

Andrew Sarris dies at 83:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/movies/andrew-sarris-film-critic-dies-at-83.html?_r=1&smid=tw-share

Brilliant critic. Armond White's "dad."

This is a sad day.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q9PgO2rvXPM/T-IPg3d8NbI/AAAAAAAAAW0/slk497YpHl0/s1600/sarris-hitch-new-yorker.jpg

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-susan-tyrrell-20120620,0,6380146.story

67 is too young. What a shame. Rest in peace.

Richard Lynch, horror actor and others

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18531452

the archetypal TV baddie of the 70s and 80s. Be it Galactica, Galactica 80 (less said) and even Richard Hatch's Galactica Second Coming, or his four (often creepy) Starsky & Hutch appearances, a white slaver in TJ Hooker etc he was the man you went to it seemed.

Nora Ephron, Writer-Director of Sleepless in Seattle, Dies at Age 71

Nora Ephron, one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood as the creative force behind such blockbusters as You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, died on Tuesday at age 71.

The three-time Oscar nominee "passed away June 26, 2012 at 7:40 pm at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center surrounded by her family. The cause of death was acute myeloid leukemia," her family tells PEOPLE in a statement. "We thank you all for your thoughts."

A writer and director who was as comfortable with romantic comedies as she was with hard-hitting dramas with social themes, Ephron's films featured strong female roles that attracted such A-listers as Meg Ryan, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Cher.

The daughter of playwrights and sister to three other writers, Nora was married and divorced to author Dan Greenberg before marrying Watergate investigative reporter Carl Bernstein. She based her searing novel and screenplay Heartburn on the collapse of their marriage.

She also wrote the screenplays for the drama Silkwood (starring Streep and Cher) about nuclear activist Karen Silkwood, but was best known – and reached the highest levels of success – with her lighter fare.

Described both affectionately – and sometimes not – as "chick flicks," the wildly successful trio of Harry, Sleepless and Mail (co-written with sister Delia), had Ryan falling in love with Billy Crystal or Tom Hanks – and turned the actress into a mega-star.

Ephron's last film was the time-shifting Julia Child foodie flick Julie & Julia and in 2008 she wrote a bestseller about aging called I Feel Bad About My Neck.

At the time of her death she was married to her third husband, Goodfellas writer Nicholas Pileggi.


Another great one has gone May she rest in peace.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/entertainment/television/TV-Legend-Andy-Griffith-Dies161204445.html

:(

Very sad news. Rest in peace.

Check out all of the fuckwits on Twitter posting about the death of "Andy Griffin":
https://twitter.com/#!/search/andy%20griffin



Fucking pathetic.

Griffith was a legendary man. The world's a bit heavier without him.

Somewhat belated, but George Leech (Bond stunt performer/arranger and bit-part player from 62-85, as well as many other movies) passed away on June 17th.

http://www.007.info/News295.asp

R.I.P.

RIP.

He had the cojones to jump into a pool of frenzied sharks, and not just for THUNDERBALL. Huge props to that guy.

Sad to note the passing of one of the great comedic talents of UK tv and radio Eric Sykes.

Rip

BBC News Link

lachesis wrote:

Sad to note the passing of one of the great comedic talents of UK tv and radio Eric Sykes.

Rip

BBC News Link

Indeed so, very sad. I met him about six years back when I got his book signed. Funny even at that. Sorely missed.