Gone but Not Forgotten
Thursday, January 2, 2020 at 8:00AM We've been remiss of lately marking the passing of showbiz greats and with Oscar night fast approaching and with it another "in memoriam" people we've lost are suddenly in mind. (This time of year is always a major challenge to keep up with given the mania of awards season.) Here are five stars, four of whom became famous right around the same time as each other, that passed away in December.
Let this small remembrance make amends for our lateness in paying tribute...
Sue Lyon in "Night of the Iguana"
Sue Lyon (1946-2019)
The beautiful blond Iowan will live on forever as Dolores "Lolita" Haze in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film version of the infamous novel about an older man's obsession with a 12 year old girl. For the film version they upped Lolita's age a bit. Lyon won the Golden Globe for "Promising Newcomer" at just 15 and though she'd never have a film success that big again she would later co-star in films like The Night of the Iguana (1964)... as another teenage seductress, 7 Women (1966), Evil Knievel (1971) and Alligator (1980).
Jerry Herman with two of his Dollys, Pearl Bailey and Carol Channing
Jerry Herman (1931-2019)
While we never much cared for his snarkiness about Stephen Sondheim's genius musicals, Herman's own musical gifts were great... just of a different temperment altogether. He called his shows "his children" and few composers could write showtunes as catchy yet non-annoying (*cough Webber*). Our personal favourite (i.e. karaoke go to) of all his songs was "I Am What I Am" from the seminal La Cage Aux Folles with "Bosom Buddies" from Mame a close runner up. But he will surely live on for all eternity due to the multiple glories of Hello Dolly. Herman wrote a memoir called "Showtune" but it's unfortunately out of print.
Claudine Auger (1941-2019)
The French actress, a runner up for "Miss World" in 1958, became famous as a Bond Girl -- she was "Domino" in the mega hit Thunderball (1965). She was actually the first French Bond Girl (though other Gallic actress have since followed including, most recently, Lea Seydoux) and her acting career stretched all the way into the 1990s in Europe though she never had a film remotely as famous as Thunderball again.
Anna Karina (1940-2019)
The Danish actress, born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer, is best known as a French actress, having made the jump to Paris when she was just 18. Coco Chanel reportedly chose her stage name. After becoming a popular model she emerged as a major fixation of the French New Wave. In 1961 when she was just 21 she made her film debut starring in Michel Deville's Tonight or Never, married Jean Luc Godard and starred in his film A Woman is a Woman. Other famous Godard films followed like Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965) and Pierrot le Fou (1965). She mostly worked in French cinema though made the odd appearance in other cinemas here and there. The multi-talented beauty also wrote novels and in 1973 wrote, produced, directed, and starred in her own film Vivre Ensemble (1973).
and last but definitely not least...
Danny Aiello (1933-2019)
This beloved Italian-American character actor will always be special to 80s kids as the Papa from Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" (1986) which is when yours truly first took note of him. But that proved just an appetizer to his eventual pop culture cache.
Though he'd started in movies in the 1970s with the Robert DeNiro baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), his true breakthrough came via or adjacent to (depending on your preference) that giant Madonna hit when he gave two perfect supporting performances in two indisputable classics nearly back-to-back: Best Picture nominated romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987) and Spike Lee's amazing Do The Right Thing (1989). He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the latter.
He worked steadily from the early 70s through the mid Aughts. Among his many film credits are also Radio Days, Harlem Nights, City Hall, 2 Days in the Valley, Pret-a-Porter, Once Upon a Time in America, The Cemetery Club, Hudson Hawk, Once Around, The Godfather Part II, and Lucky Number Slevin. Aiello also wrote a memoir called "I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else" which is thankfully much cheaper to get your hands on than the Herman autobiography linked above.
Reader Comments (11)
It's criminal not mentioning Vivre sa vie when talking about Karina, surely her best performance and her biggest showcase part for Godard.
Jerry Herman's "Showtune" is a must read for anyone interested in Broadway.
Sue Lyon is quite good in The Night of the Iguana, a film I feel is criminally underappreciated. She has a palpable chemistry with Richard Burton, undercutting his childish manner with a wonderful sense of mature authority. Reminiscent of Carroll Baker in another Tennessee Williams' work Baby Doll. Great work. Rest in peace.
In December we also lost puppeteer Carroll Spinney who performed as both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on television as well as multiple films. Spinney played the two roles for the joy of countless children for 49 years till he was forced to retire from advanced dystopia. Spinney died and literally hours later Sesame Street received its lifetime achievement award from the Kennedy Center.
article coloré et informatif. Je veux vraiment continuer ce merveilleux film
Aiello a warm affable reliable prescene in any scene,worked wonders with Cher.
Peter
They don't do their homework over here. They watch too many american films, even mediocre ones, but they have no time for the masterpieces of World Cinema.
Peter & DL -- i shoula known not to include Anna Karina after her fans hijacked another wildly unrelated thread to complain that we hadn't written about her and to diss a current male actor for no reason as he is also totally unrelated to her. As for not watching masterpieces of world cinema here at TFE... well, I confess I've never been all that obsessed with Godard but if you think THIS site doesn't watch international cinema, how are you functioning at every other american website??? it seems the bulk of american websites only watch a couple of subtitled pictures a year and never anything older than the right now.
at least we do lots of festival reviews, interviews, and the occassionall retrospectives! but anyway lesson learned; Anna Karina fans are very obsessive so I personally shant write about her again since i'm definitely not an expert on her
Sue Lyon burst out of the gate so strongly but from what I've read her private life was messy to say the least and she was plagued with emotional issues. Really very sad but she is terrific in both Lolita and Night of the Iguana, which I agree with Brookesboy is underappreciated.
I going on the hunt for that Jerry Herman book!! It seems fitting that he and Carol Channing passed away within the same year.
Nathaniel as far as Anna Karina goes or any other star with a devoted following you're never going to be able to satisfy everyone. No matter how hard you try you'll miss someone's favorite.
You do a great job of covering international cinema, both new and older, and I for one thank you for that.
Danny Aiello belonged to that great group of supporting performers that you could always count on to contribute a fantastic performance in great films and an oasis of quality when they found themselves in junk.
Particularly DL but also Peter (who used the word "criminal"): Nathaniel was polite but I am going to be less so.
This blog is one of the best American blogs to cover international film. Just look at their coverage of the International Film Oscar, European Film Awards etc each year to get the evidence. Your comments tend to indicate that you are not regulars here (which probably means you won't return to read this).
Either way, can you find somewhere else to expunge your personal demons rather than unfairly criticising here? You're the very example of the term "toxic people".
Vivre Sa Vie, if you haven't seen that film. Then you don't deserve to be watching films at all.