Happy Trails

Cue the “Last Tango for Maria Schneider” headlines.

No butter scene photos for you!

[Guardian: Maria Schneider dies aged 58]

Distinguished character actor Pete Postlethwaite, best known for his roles as Daniel Day-Lewis’s father in In the Name of the Father and as Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects, died Sunday of cancer.  Steven Spielberg once described him as “the best actor in the world.”

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[NYT/AP]

Geraldine Hoff Doyle, who as a young woman was the model for the Rosie the Riveter image of WWII, died on Sunday from complications of arthritis.  She was a 17-year-old metal-presser at a factory outside of Detroit when an Associated Press photographer took a picture of her at work.

She quit two weeks after the photo was taken, as she was a cellist and didn’t want her hands crushed like another woman’s were in a factory accident. She took a job at a soda fountain, where she met her husband. They had 5 children and were married 66 years.

A few liberties were taken with the image by a graphic designer (she wasn’t flexing her guns in the photo), and was used by Westinghouse as part of a campaign to deter strikes. In the mid-70s it was embraced by the feminist movement.

[WaPo and NYT]

Blake Edwards, director of many screwball comedies, died today* of pneumonia.  His movies included Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther, and Victor/Victoria, starring his wife, Julie Andrews.

Enjoy “The Pink Flea” and some Henry Mancini.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36JbQcZkYMQ

*Update/Clarification thanks to the LA Times: Early today for the East Coast, he actually died last night (10:30 PST) in Santa Monica. Damn Gray Lady and her East Coast centrism.

[NYT]

Theodore C. Sorensen died today at the age of 82. He was John F. Kennedy’s right hand guy through the ’50s and JFK’s presidency, and ghost wrote Profiles in Courage and large portions of the 1961 Inaugural address.

[NYT]

The Sports Department here sends a fond auf wiedersehen to the 2010 winner of the Stinque Golden Vuvuzela, Paul the Octopus, who died of old age on Tuesday in Germany. Paul rocketed to global fame this summer when he correctly predicted the outcome of all of Germany’s World Cup games as well as Spain’s victory in the championship game, and of course when he later won the Golden Vuvuzela for Hottest Hottie of the World Cup with 51% of Stinque readers’ votes.

[CNN: World Cup Oracle Octopus Dies, H/T: Walking Still]

An amazing life:

Benoit Mandelbrot, who died on October 14 aged 85, was largely responsible for developing the discipline of fractal geometry – the study of rough or fragmented geometric shapes or processes that have similar properties at all levels of magnification or across all times.

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