Van Johnson
December 14, 2008 on 5:41 pm | In Obituaries | No Comments
CHARLES VAN JOHNSON
August 25, 1916 to December 11, 2008
by Katharine Blossom Lowrie
The perennial “guy next door”
Despite his lightweight reputation as the perennial “guy next door” in musicals and comedies of the ’40s and ’50s, Van Johnson (above with Esther Williams in an MGM publicity still ) accrued first-rate reviews for sturdier roles: the values-burdened naval lieutenant who relieves Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) of his command in Edward Dmytryk’s 1954 adaptation of the Herman Wouk novel, “The Caine Mutiny”; Deborah Kerr’s illicit lover in Dmytryk’s 1955 adaptation of Graham Green’s “The End of the Affair,” and a bomber pilot in two WWII films, “A Guy Named Joe” (1943) and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” (1944), in which the one-time chorus boy proved he could hold his own against the formidable Spencer Tracy.
An MGM musical junkie
Bill Stark
December 9, 2008 on 7:23 am | In Eulogies | No CommentsGOOD-BYE TO “HOT STUFF”
A Belated Eulogy for Bill Stark
1935 to 2007
And so began the sitcom
Bill and I divorced decades ago. So how did I end up folding his boxers, suffering his impatience, relinquishing the remote and sneezing from his cats? Esophageal Cancer. His third go-round. Sixteen years ago, a surgeon carved a tumor the size of a golf ball out of my ex-husband’s throat. Bill’s neck ended up looking as if a pit bull had mistaken it for dinner - his karma, I suppose, for a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. Good news is, they got the sucker out.
Except the Big C struck again in 2006. With a vengeance. Inoperable this time. What began as squamous cell carcinoma bred a tumor on Bill’s vocal chord, and the adjacent lymph glands welcomed it like a lover. “Chemo and radiation are your new best friends,” his oncologist told him. (I soon began to wonder who Bill’s worst enemies were.) Quickly wasted by chemo, he required a feeding tube after radiation toasted his tongue and scorched his throat to the point he could no longer swallow. He lost 60 pounds in a heartbeat, and his blood pressure plummeted to a point where most folks greet St. Peter. When the tumor blockaded his oxygen, a tracheotomy was performed. And so began the sitcom.
Everything transpired through a tube