A glance at a list of those who died in 2015 shows how little we know of the world in which we live. Here are endless people who achieved fame or notoriety around the world in fields foreign to most of us – from champion Bridge masters to cricket players. Just choosing at random my birthday in July 2015, I find an Indian classical musician, an Irish horse racing commentator, an Australian politician, an Italian poet and an American computer scientist. None of whose names I have ever heard before.
My little list is simple and consists not of the most important people who died in 2015 but the ones who gave me pleasure. In a world of trouble, in the bleak midwinter, it is nice to celebrate those who brought a little joy to the world. So I have skipped politicians and potentates and even the ex-wives of Cary Grant and Johnny Carson.
In sports, I am far from alone in thinking fondly of the beloved clown prince of basketball, Meadowlark Lemon, nor of Yogi Berra whose career was illustrious, and his way with words adorable. It has been truly said that his greatness of heart was attested by the fact that even the legions of Yankee haters from other American league cities, among whom I count myself, couldn’t resist Yogi.
Ken “The Snake” Stabler, the quarterback of the Oakland Raiders in their piratical heyday, was another favorite of mine. He was notorious for being a party animal, but few players gave fans so thrilling a rollercoaster ride on the field, especially with his last minute, come from behind heroics. He is often included in top ten lists of those players not in the Hall of Fame who should be. Perhaps he has been denied the honor because of his bad attitude.
This was the man who said training camp was so boring that “without the diversions of whiskey and women, those of us who were wired for activity and no more than six hours sleep a night might have gone berserk.” But this was also a man who was deeply involved in charitable endeavors and who, though he died of colon cancer, left instructions to donate his brain and spinal cord for research into degenerative brain disease.
For lovers of New Orleans, it was a sad year as the wonderful talent behind so much music from that musical city, Alan Toussaint, died. He wrote songs (“Southern Nights,” “Play Something Sweet”, “I Like It Like That,” “Working in a Coal Mine”), performed himself and produced many others. His horn arrangements grace the Band’s “Rock of Ages” and his work can be heard in performances by dozens of entertainers. To name just a few: Ringo, Lee Dorsey, Aaron Neville, Joe Cocker, Bonnie Raitt, Three Dog Night, Patti LaBelle, Boz Scaggs, Bo Diddley, Robert Palmer.
The only thing more characteristic of New Orleans than music is food and in 2015 Paul Prudhomme who taught us all to enjoy red beans and rice and to blacken fish died. So did Dick Brennan Jr. of the famous restaurant family who made Commander’s Palace into a culinary landmark. I wish I were there this minute sitting down to turtle soup, chicory coffee lacquered quail and pecan crusted fish.
I will miss having no new books from several authors. No more of the idiosyncratic spin on our history of E.L. Doctorow. No more brainy musings on our curious, but unreliable brains from Oliver Sacks. No more chilly Swedish mysteries to be unraveled by Henning Mankells’s downbeat detective Kurt Wallander.
Several working actors entertained us for year and years. I have a soft spot for Christopher Lee, the king of campy B movies who playing Dracula, the Mummy, Fu Manchu, Rasputin and, in a slightly more elevated or at least better paid sort of film, villains in the worlds of Star Wars, Tolkien and James Bond.
When I was about ten I fell for Robert Loggia as the frontier lawman in the title role of the Disney miniseries, “The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca.” He followed me everywhere thereafter, proving the nine lives thing was no joke. He had guest shots on every TV series for three decades and popped up as a hood on “The Sopranos” and in “Scarface,” a drunken sailor in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” dancing on a giant piano in “Big” and vanquishing aliens in “Independence Day.”
No one was ever funnier than Stan Freberg in his prime. He was really a radio talent who did voice work for cartoons and made comedy records, especially the album “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America” which never grows old –“rumble, rumble, rumble, mutiny, mutiny, mutiny.” His parodies of Dragnet, Elvis and Belafonte are also memorable, though his comic take on Joe McCarthy gave the suits the willies. He was also the genius behind oddball ads, such as those for Jeno’s Pizza Rolls starring the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
Finally, the irresistible Maureen O’Hara died in 2015. She was Dublin born but by the age of 18 Hollywood had snapped her up on the strength of her abundant red hair, green eyes, Gaelic lilt, statuesque figure and no nonsense attitude. She was soon starring in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “How Green Was My Valley,” and going toe to toe with the big lug in half a dozen John Wayne films, most notably “The Quiet Man.”
Of course the royal road to movie immortality is starring in a kid’s picture since they last forever, and she has two to her credit. She’s the all too logical mother in “Miracle on 34th Street” and the divorced mother of twins in “The Parent Trap.” She was also good in “Our Man in Havana,” “Sitting Pretty,” and “Spencer’s Mountain.” She was often stuck playing good wives to ne’er-do-wells, but you always got the feeling that she was tougher, and more sensible than any of the silly men around her who included Stewart, Fonda, Alec Guinness, Tyrone Power and, in a touching turn late in her career, as John Candy’s mother in “Only the Lonely.” A great star.