The Black Country roots of a Hollywood screen legend

By Calvin Palmer

Mention West Bromwich and I think of an amorphous town in the industrial region of England known as the Black Country. If asked to name its famous personalities I would list people associated with the town’s football club, West Bromwich Albion. Players such as Ronnie Allen – who attended my old school, Hanley High School; Jeff Astle; Tony Brown; Bryan Robson; Laurie Cunningham; and Cyrille Regis spring readily to mind.

Comedian and TV presenter Frank Skinner also hails from West Bromwich, as does Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant.

That used to sum up West Bromwich for me.

But through watching the Turner Classic Movie channel in recent months, I have since learned that West Bromwich was the hometown of one of Hollywood’s top actresses in the 1930s, as well as realizing the enormous presence British actors had in the golden age of Hollywood.

Watching many of the old Hollywood films, I will often detect an English accent in one or more of the players and, when the film has ended, I Google the title and search out their biographies.

Watching The Prisoner of Zenda last night, I detected an English accent in the actress Madeleine Carroll, playing the role of Princess Flavia opposite Ronald Colman.

Madeleine Carroll. Picture courtesy of allstarpics.net.

Sure enough, a Google search revealed she was English, born and raised in West Bromwich. She later attended the University of Birmingham where she gained a Bachelor of Arts in French.

She made her screen debut in the British film The Guns of Loos (1928) and went on to feature in several silent films. She regularly appeared on the London stage and in 1933 British Film Weekly named her as the Best Actress of the Year.

Carroll was chosen by director Alfred Hitchcock to play opposite Robert Donat in The 39 Steps (1935) and the film launched her into international stardom. She was offered a deal by Paramount Pictures and went on to star with Gary Cooper in The General Died At Dawn (1936) and opposite Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).

The Prisoner of Zenda is a good example of the strong British presence in Hollywood films of that era. Of the seven major roles, four are played by English actors – Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C Aubrey Smith and David Niven.

Carroll starred in Blockade (1938) opposite Henry Fonda and then teamed up with Fred McMurray in three light comedies in 1939. She appeared opposite Gary Cooper again in the 1940 film Northwest Mounted Police and starred with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in Safari the same year.

In October 1940, Carroll’s sister, Guigette, was killed during a German air raid on London. The death had a profound effect on her and she began to devote more of her time to the war effort and less to film making. Her last film during the war years was with Bob Hope in My Favorite Blonde (1942).

Carroll secured a release from her contract with Paramount and became a nurse with the Red Cross and served in a field hospital in Italy in 1944.

After the war, she became involved in humanitarian relief to war ravaged Europe, especially work involving children. She eventually resumed making movies although not as prolifically as before. Her final film appearance came in Otto Preminger’s The Fan (1949.)

In an interview some years later she said: “Movies? Just say I got out when the going was good.”

Although she became a U.S. Citizen in 1943, Carroll spent her retirement in Europe, first France and then later Spain, where she died in 1987, aged 81.

Her career of 43 films is celebrated in the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a star at 6707 Hollywood Blvd. In 2006, to commemorate the centenary of her birth, a monument was erected in Town Square, West Bromwich, as well as plaques at the two houses she grew up in.

Who would have thought the south Staffordshire town had such a famous daughter?

For more information go to Madeleine Carroll.

‘An American In Paris’ musical leads to the wit of Oscar Levant

By Calvin Palmer

Musicals as a form of entertainment hold little appeal for me. To have characters carrying on a dialogue and then suddenly bursting into song, and often a dance routine as well, seems so unrealistic.

Opera is an entirely different matter. It is singing all the way and with the added bonus of some of the finest music that has ever been written. Also opera stars can sing and hit all the notes as they are written.

So why did I sit through An American In Paris on the Turner Movie Classics channel the other night? Is it a sign that I am losing it once and for all, a portent of my decline into old age?

Frankly, I was stressed. Earlier in the day, I had received some distressing news from the UK and I just wanted something to keep my mind occupied and sad thoughts at bay.

And, as musicals go, it isn’t the worst one that has ever seen the light of day. The music of George Gershwin helps lift it to a higher plane among the genre.

The 16-minute ballet finale also struck me as being ahead of its time. Had someone involved in the choreography been experimenting with mind-altering drugs? It seemed almost trippy. At the time the film was released, 1951, a trip meant a journey from one place to another. People would take a trip to London, Paris or New York. It would take another decade before the word trip gained a whole new meaning.

After having watched one of these old movies, I tend to look it up on Google and Wikipedia gives me all the background details. More often than not I also check out the biographies of the stars.

I discovered that Greer Garson was British, after watching Mrs Miniver, and that her co-star Walter Pidgeon was Canadian.

In the case of An American In Paris, I checked out  the biography of Oscar Levant who plays the part of struggling concert pianist Adam Cook. Prior to the seeing the film, Levant had never registered on my cinema radar.

Levant was a pianist and composer in real life.  He had studied under Arnold Schoenberg and had written scores for more than 20 films.

His career later moved to radio and TV, hosting The Oscar Levant Show from 1958 to 1960 before it was taken off the air because of his comments about Mae West’s sex life.

Dear Oscar was something of  a wit and his Wikipedia entry concludes with some of his famous quips. One of them seared into my soul:

It is not who we are but what we fail to become that hurts.

Another Levant quote made me smile.

Leonard Bernstein is revealing musical secrets that have been common knowledge for centuries.

Ouch!!!

A few nights later, Leslie Caron, one of the stars of An American In Paris, cropped up again on the TMC channel in the musical Gigi.

I remember my parents had the EP of Gigi that used to be cranked out on an old record player. An EP was the size of a vinyl single but contained four or five tracks rather than just two. I have to admit that, as a child, I thought The Night They Invented Champagne was brilliant. I had a lot to learn in those days.

I caught the song in the movie. It didn’t quite have the same affect as it did 50 years ago, proof positive that my musical education has progressed over the years.

On Sunday night, the TCM channel featured My Fair Lady. I can well remember when it was released in 1964, my parents, aunts and uncles oooing and aaahing, thinking it was the best film ever made. With Beatlemania sweeping both sides of the Atlantic, and the British pop scene in full swing, My Fair Lady  just didn’t cut it.

The only thing that stops me from instantly flipping channels when it comes on TV is the delectably gorgeous Audrey Hepburn.

I have to confess to liking the song I Could Have Danced All Night.  Well, it is such a catchy and up tempo tune. I have another confession. I also liked Kathy Kirby’s cover of Secret Love, released in 1963.

I didn’t sit and watch My Fair Lady but caught a few minutes here and a few minutes there. I left it on while I worked in the office but as soon as I heard I Could Have Danced All Night strike up, I went back to the TV set. But as I watched the number something seemed wrong, even if I am smitten by Audrey Hepburn. She didn’t appear to be actually singing. I don’t ever remember any mention of her ever having a wonderful singing voice.

I went back to Google and Wikipedia once the number had finished. My suspicions were right. Hepburn’s singing was deemed inadequate and her voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon.

It seems a little odd to cast someone to star in musical when they cannot sing but I guess that’s Hollywood for you. Never let an absence of a particular talent stand in the way of box office takings. Remember Clint Eastwood singing in Paint Your Wagon. I rest my case.

I will leave the final word to Oscar Levant who once remarked:

Strip away the false tinsel from Hollywood and you find the real tinsel inside.

Skyline and the Cowboys

By Calvin Palmer

TV ads for the movie Skyline were shown yesterday during the coverage of NFL games.

A more appropriate voice-over at the end of the ad would be: “Utter Bollocks. Coming to a cinema near you on Friday. Rated IQ 13.”

Speaking of utter bollocks, the phrase sums up perfeclty the display by the Dallas Cowboys against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. The outlook for Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips now looks grim.

Is Phillips to blame for the Cowboys being 1-7 for the season? I don’t think so. The poor performances are down to the players. In terms of effort and application, any high school team would put these overpaid “stars” to shame.

Oh I can see the likes of say corner back Mike Jenkins strutting his stuff in the Dallas nightclubs, telling all the girls he “plays” for the Dallas Cowboys. I am afraid his definition of “play” is at considerable variance with what most Cowboys fans understand by the word.

Jenkins, like most of the Cowboys players, seems to have forgotten the sporting maxim, “You are only as good as your next game.”

Sadly, for the Cowboys, their next game is against the in-form New York Giants.  And it will take more than a mere seven days to stop the rot that has blighted America’s team.

I have witnessed some appalling performances by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the past two seasons but nothing that compares with the egregious display by the Cowboys yesterday evening. Yup, they were bad — diabolically bad!

At the start of the season, the Cowboys were thinking they would reach the Superbowl, due to be played in their brand new stadium. The operative word being “thinking”. I doubt anyone outside the Dallas Cowboys organization thought that was a realistic proposition and I daresay a few within it also thought the notion preposterous.

If you can hear a loud metallic scraping noise throughout the day, do not be alarmed. It is only the sound of knives being sharpened to stab Wade Phillips in the back.

“Et tu, Jerry!”

Florida proposes tax incentives for film makers to turn clock back to 1950s

By Calvin Palmer

A Florida state Representative wants film makers to turn the clock back to the 1950s and to encourage them to do so, a bill has been introduced that would increase the tax credits for production costs for shows promoting traditional family values.

The little-known provision was slipped into a 75-million-dollar incentive package that Republican leaders who hold the majority in the state House of Representatives hope will bring more entertainment industry jobs to Florida.

Shows considered “family friendly” would benefit from the provision to increase the tax credits from two to five percent.

Those productions are defined as films or TV shows with a “cross-generational appeal” that includes a “responsible resolution of issues.” Smoking, profanity, nudity and sex are also out, along with what the state’s sex crime laws define as “obscene”.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Representative Stephen Precourt, said: “Think of it as like Mayberry.” He was referring to the referring to The Andy Griffith Show.

“That’s when I grew up — the ’60s,” Precourt said. “That’s what life was like. I want Florida to be known for making those kinds of movies: Disney movies for kids and all that stuff. Like it used to be, you know?”

Shows featuring gay characters would not be the kind of thing Precourt would want to invest public dollars in.

Gay rights groups have blasted the proposed legislation, saying it subsidizes discrimination.

“Instituting 1950s-style movie censorship does nothing to support real-life families or help Florida’s struggling economy,” said Ted Howard, executive director for Florida Together, a coalition of 80 groups that advocate for equal rights.

Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger said nontraditional family values could include anything from “drug abuse to excessive drunkenness to homosexual families.”

“It’s a good concept to encourage people to produce more quality family entertainment in the state,” Stemberger said. “It’s a good thing.”

I guess any planned production of California Republican state Senator Roy Ashburn’s life story will not take place in Florida. Ashburn, a father of four, revealed earlier this week he was gay after being arrested for driving under the influence.

No matter how hard the ultra-conservatives try to pretend their world is squeaky clean, someone from among their ranks always makes them appear a laughing stock, as well as hypocrites.

And for all their railing about “big government” controlling people’s lives, these conservatives seem pretty enthusiastic about trying to control the content of films and TV shows in tune with their fantasy world.  The proposals of this bill are censorship in another guise.

The far right always likes to look back on a “golden age” when things were allegedly so much better than they are now. The only problem is that it has never existed, save only in the minds of right-wing politicians.

[Based on reports by The Palm Beach Post and AFP.]

Comedy actor Ian Carmichael dies at 89

By Calvin Palmer

He was the bumbling upper-class Oxbridge graduate Stanley Windrush in the Boulting Brothers’ comedy film classics Private’s Progress (1956) and I’m All Right Jack (1959) and later the monocled English gentleman Bertie Wooster in the BBC TV series The World of Wooster, based on the Jeeves novels by P.G Wodehouse.

Ian Carmichael died yesterday at his home in the Esk Valley on the North York Moors, after falling ill between Christmas and the New Year, said his wife Kate. He was 89.

Born in Hull in 1920, the son of an optician, his film career began with serious roles in Betrayed (1954), starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner, and in The Colditz Story (1955).

But it was his comedy roles in films for the Boulting Brothers that endeared him to the British public.

One of the most memorable scenes from Private’s Progress sees Carmichael (Private Windrush) disguised as a German officer behind enemy lines but he cannot speak German. Suddenly, he is confronted by a real German officer who addresses him. Carmichael puts on a brave face and in his inimitable way stammers: “Ich… Ich…Ich…”

In School for Scoundrels (1960) he formed part of the triumvirate of comedy acting genius, appearing alongside Alastair Sim and Terry-Thomas, in one of my all-time favorite comedy films from a bygone age. In the clip below, he appears with Alastair Sim, Dennis Price and Peter Jones.

Of course, School For Scoundrels is also remembered for the tennis match between Carmichael and Terry-Thomas.

Carmichael’s career turned to television in the 1960s and 1970s. He starred opposite Dennis Price in The World of Wooster and had further success as Lord Peter Wimsey in several drama series based on the mystery novels by Dorothy L Sayers.

He appeared in the BBC serial Wives and Daughters in 1999 and also appeared in the ITV hospital drama The Royal as recently as last year.

He made his stage debut as a robot at the People’s Palace in Mile End, East London in 1939, but with the outbreak of the Second World War interrupted his acting career. He served with the  the Royal Armoured Corps, as a commissioned officer in the 22nd Dragoons.

As a reporter with the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter, I conducted an interview in 1990 with  his second wife, the novelist Kate Fenton, during the launch of her debut novel – The Colours of Snow. When the interview was over, I asked her to thank Ian for bringing so much joy with his wonderful performances.

English comedy acting has lost one of its all-time greats. Once again, I will say, “Thank you, Ian.”

[Based on a report by The Daily Telegraph.]

Recipe for success fails to find approval

By Calvin Palmer

Christmas this year brought just two DVDs into the household. How times have changed. But such are the spin-offs of the economic recession, in general, and my lack of income, in particular.

Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia (2009), starring Meryl Streep in the role of American culinary icon Julia Child, helped pass Boxing Day night (December 26 for American readers). It was one of my wife’s Christmas presents.

 If found it a binary film. I loved the scenes that explored the post-war life of Child and her path to success in the art of cooking and French cuisine.

Streep’s portrayal of Child’s larger-than-life character reminded me at times of Benny Hill’s Fanny Haddock character based on Britain’s equivalent of Julia Child, Fanny Cradock.

Julie & Julia also featured Dan Aykroyd’s Saturday Night Live sketch from 1978, where he parodied Child and continued cooking despite bleeding profusely from a cut to the thumb.

Add in the street scenes from Paris and Stanley Tucci’s marvelous supporting role as Paul Child, Julia’s husband, and I feasted on a delicious appetizer, entrée and dessert.

In contrast, those scenes charting Julie Powell’s challenge of cooking the 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking within 365 days, and documenting the attempt in a blog, were more like cold leftovers.

Amy Adams injected a certain charm into the role of Powell but failed to flesh out her character with any real substance. Powell’s blog was supposedly littered with four-letter words but it was strange they never appeared in the dialogue with her husband (Chris Messina). Usually if someone writes the f-word, it tends to feature in their day-to-day conversation.

But while Powell’s rite of gastronomic passage attracted a faithful and growing readership, and later media interest, it did not gain the approval of Child.

It is said that during her life Child did not suffer fools gladly, so her reaction to the blog is hardly surprising. All Powell was doing was following the recipes – Child’s creativity and intellectual property – and writing a commentary in the process.  The idea in and of itself is novel but where is the artistry in such an exercise?

The Powell approach to blogging and subsequent fame and fortune got me thinking. After all, I would not be adverse to a degree of fame and would certainly enjoy a modest fortune from my blogging activities.

So yesterday, I came up with the challenge of recreating the Great Pyramid of Giza in my backyard and to document in a blog the daily progress, setbacks and moments of hilarity. So here it is.

A Geezer Builds On Giza

Day One:

I stepped out into the backyard armed with a measuring tape and suddenly realized it is not big enough to accommodate the structure. Finding 200,000 skilled craftsmen and laborers to work for nothing, even in these times of high unemployment, may prove difficult. Also dragging 2.3 million blocks of limestone through a Jacksonville suburb would likely cause severe traffic disruption and we already have the construction on Interstate 10. The project is hereupon cancelled.

Invictus conquers with an uplifting tale

By Calvin Palmer

The unifying role of sport is the theme of director Clint Eastwood’s latest film Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman in the role of South Africa’s president, Nelson Mandela.

The story tells of Mandela’s bid to unite a country after the decades of Apartheid kept blacks and coloreds apart from the white population.

Picture courtesy of http://www.moviesonline.ca.

In any regime change, what went before is usually discredited and swept away by the new.

For South Africa, its rugby team – the Springboks – was a national icon revered by the whites and came to typify the years of Apartheid. Blacks in the country would support the opposing team rather than the Springboks because what the team represented.

On coming to power, Mandela was quick to realize the need of uniting the country into a cohesive entity that would enable it to prosper, thus allowing the social wrongs to be righted.

He was wise enough to know that getting rid of the Springboks, as his party wished to do, would plunge the country into chaos. The whites made up the bulk of the army and police force, as well as controlling the economy.

Mandela could hold the moral high ground with his party. He had been imprisoned for 30 years and forced to do hard labor. Many men would seek revenge on their captors but Mandela knew the power of kindness and how doing the unexpected can sometimes break down barriers.

Cynics may say that the South African rugby team, particularly its captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), was manipulated by a politician for his own ends. But it is cynics who often poison the well of humankind.

Eastwood sees people as people; black, white, brown or yellow are all part of a humanity that shares fundamental values. The differences between people are far outweighed by the common experiences and personal aspirations they share.

Invictus builds on his last film Gran Torino, which exposed the moral bankruptcy of racism at the street level, and demonstrates how institutionalized racism is just as redundant as a philosophy and detrimental to the well being of a nation.

Where divisions exist, bridges have to be built and Mandela as a politician is astute enough to realize that the Springboks are part of the bridge that will lead to a united country.

As a leader of 42 million people, Mandela shares his vision with Pienaar the leader of 15 men on the rugby field and Pienaar responds. He wants success for his team by winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup, a success that will bring Mandela and the country an even greater and lasting victory.

The film succeeds on many levels, most notably with the match sequences. It is always difficult to bring the action of sporting contests to the big screen without them looking stage-managed. The action on the field in this film looks about as real as it can be, even including a look-alike of the All Blacks awesome  Jonah Lomu. American audiences will look on aghast at the crunching tackles executed by players without shoulder pads and helmets.

And just like Helen Mirren in Stephen Frears’ The Queen (2006)  became Queen Elizabeth II, so Freeman becomes Nelson Mandela. In both instances the likenesses are uncanny.

But whereas The Queen stuck to the facts, Invictus suffers from a Hollywood version of events, according to The Daily Telegraph. But as the old saying goes, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” And Invictus is without a doubt a good story.

When the Oscar nominations are announced in a few months, it will come as no surprise to see Invictus among the contenders for the Best Film award, as well as competing in several of the individual categories.

Invictus takes its title from a 19th century poem by William Ernest Henley whose words gave Mandela inspiration to endure the hardship of his time in prison. The title means “unconquered” in Latin. The last stanza reads:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

A memorable line from the film comes from one of Mandela’s white security guards discussing the merits of rugby with a black colleague whose choice of sport is soccer, as was the case with most of South Africa’s black population.

The white security guard explains: “Soccer is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, while rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.”

Eastwood demonstrates with Invictus that we all have the capacity to be gentlemen if given the chance and banish hatred from our hearts.

Invictus rated PG-13, 134 mins.

Product placement finds its way to BBC News

By Calvin Palmer

Product placement in movies is a big deal and an effective form of subtle advertising.

It always seems strange how everyone’s TV set in a movie just happens to be a Sony and their laptop an Apple.

And what is good for movies now appears to have extended to TV news interviews.

BBC America’s World News tonight featured an interview with photographer David Burnett who has produced a book, 44 Days, documenting the revolution in Iran in 1979.

Burnett was interviewed in his office/studio. Being a keen photographer I was interested as to what camera he uses. In the background a camera mounted on a tripod had one of Canon’s signatory white telephoto lenses attached.

Another one of his cameras lay on a table next to Burnett. Its lens was at a 60-degree angle to the camera that was filming him. Looking closely and with some difficulty, it was possible to make out that it too was a Canon.

The interview showed some of the poignant images Burnett had captured in 1979 in Tehran, with him providing the narration. It then cut back to him. At some point, someone had moved his camera so that it was now pointing directly at the one filming the interview. The Canon name was much easier to read.

I was left wondering who had instigated this change in the camera’s position.

The interview did dispel one myth that regularly floats around Leica Talk, a forum on the Digital Photography Review Web site. The Leica is not the camera of choice of most photojournalists or press photographers. Of course, notable exceptions do exist – Thorsten Overgaard springs to mind with his Leica Digilux 2. But in the main, photographers pitched into frontline news situations, and faced by daily deadlines, will carry either Canon or Nikon cameras because of their rugged build and telephoto lens capabilities.

Hard news demands a tough camera and Leica’s M8/M8.2/M9 cameras do not have the same kind of durability that Canon and Nikon cameras possess to withstand the rigorous demands of capturing news as it happens.

Farrah Fawcett dies at 62 after battle with cancer

By Calvin Palmer

Farrah Fawcett who rose to fame in the 1970s TV series Charlie’s Angels died today at the age of 62 after a battle with a rare form of cancer.

Fawcett died about 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, said Paul Bloch, her publicist.

Farrah Fawcett poster that became an icon of the 1970s.

As an actress, Fawcett was initially dismissed for her role as Jill Munroe in Charlie’s Angels, one of the “jiggle” series on ABC-TV in the late 1970s.

But she transformed her career and some popular perceptions in 1984 with The Burning Bed, a television movie about a battered wife that brought her the first of three Emmy nominations. She further established herself as an actress in the play and later feature film Extremities, about a rape victim who takes revenge on her attacker.

For many, the poster of her wearing a wet one-piece swimsuit and a blinding smile endured.

“If you were to list 10 images that are evocative of American pop culture, Farrah Fawcett would be one of them,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University. “That poster became one of the defining images of the 1970s.”

The poster sold five million copies within six months, outstripping the records of such previous sex symbols as Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. It wound up selling a reported 12 million copies.

In 1995, at age 50, Fawcett posed partly nude for Playboy magazine. The following year, she starred in a Playboy video, All of Me, in which she was equally unclothed while she sculpted and painted.

She told an interviewer she considered the experience “a renaissance,” adding, “I no longer feel … restrictions emotionally, artistically, creatively or in my everyday life. I don’t feel those borders anymore.”

Robert Duvall cast Fawcett as his wife in his 1997 independent film The Apostle, about a Texas Pentecostal preacher who escapes to Louisiana after accidentally killing his wife’s lover. Again, she won praise.

“That woman’s work has been very underrated,” Duvall told Texas Monthly, citing her Emmy-nominated performance in “Small Sacrifices,” a 1989 TV movie in which her character kills her children. “That woman knows how to act.”

She received her final Emmy nomination in 2003 for guest-starring on The Guardian on CBS.

In September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had anal cancer.

As she underwent treatment, she enlisted the help of actor Ryan O’Neal, with whom she had a 17-year relationship and was the father of her son, Redmond, born in 1985.

This month, O’Neal said he asked Fawcett to marry him and she agreed. They would wed “as soon as she can say yes,” he said.

Her struggle with painful treatments and dispiriting setbacks was recorded in the television documentary Farrah’s Story. Fawcett sought cures in Germany as well as the United States, battling the disease with iron determination even as her body weakened.

“Her big message to people is don’t give up, no matter what they say to you, keep fighting,” her friend Alana Stewart said. NBC estimated the May 15, 2009, broadcast drew nearly 9 million viewers.

In the documentary, Fawcett was seen shaving off most of her trademark locks before chemotherapy could claim them. Toward the end, she’s seen huddled in bed, barely responding to a visit from her son.

Born Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was named Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett by her mother, who said she added the Farrah because it sounded good with Fawcett. She was less than a month old when she underwent surgery to remove a digestive tract tumor with which she was born.

After attending Roman Catholic grade school and W.B. Ray High School, Fawcett enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Fellow students voted her one of the 10 most beautiful people on the campus and her photos were eventually spotted by movie publicist David Mirisch, who suggested she pursue a film career. After overcoming her parents’ objections, she agreed.

Soon she was appearing in such TV shows as That Girl, The Flying Nun, I Dream of Jeannie and The Partridge Family.

Majors became both her boyfriend and her adviser on career matters, and they married in 1973. She dropped his last name from hers after they divorced in 1982.

By then she had already begun her long relationship with O’Neal. The couple never married.

[Based on reports by the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times.]

Forensics expert says Carradine did not commit suicide

By Calvin Palmer

Actor David Carradine did not commit suicide according to the findings of an independent forensics expert.

The 72-year-old actor’s brothers, Keith and Robert, issued a statement today saying Dr Michael Baden has concluded Carradine’s death was not suicide.

Baden said further information from Thailand is needed for a final determination as to the cause of death.

Carradine’s brothers expressed gratitude for the outpouring of support during a “profoundly painful time” and also thanked the U.S. and Thai authorities for their work.

The star of the TV series Kung Fu and more recently Kill Bill was found dead a week ago in a closet of a Bangkok hotel room.

Thai media reported suicide or accidental autoerotic asphyxiation as possible causes of death.

[Based on a report by the Associated Press.]