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1-9 of 9
- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Roger Williams was born on 1 October 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He was an actor, known for Somewhere in Time (1980), Untamed Heart (1993) and M. Butterfly (1993). He died on 8 October 2011 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Costume Designer
- Additional Crew
Angela Alexander was born on 27 November 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was a costume designer, known for The Party (1968), Jungle Heat (1957) and Hell Bound (1957). She was married to Wesley Jeffries. She died on 8 October 2011 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.- Allen "Al" Davis, the man who is synonymous with the Oakland Raiders franchise of the National Football League and its earlier American Football League incarnation, was born on the Fourth of July, 1929 into a Jewish family in Brockton, Massachusetts. Raised in Brooklyn and educated at the borough's Erasmus High School, he played football at Syracuse University, but was cut from the varsity team.
After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in English from Syracuse in 1950, he began his football career as a line coach at Adelphi College from 1950 to 1951. He became head coach of the U.S. Army team at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia from 1952 to 1953, then served as line coach at The Citadel. In 1957, he moved on to the University of Southern California, where he served as line coach for two years.
With the placing of an American Football League franchise in Los Angeles, Davis was able to move into pro ball. He served as the offensive end coach of the AFL's Los Angeles Chargers from 1960 to 1962, and then was named head coach and general manager of the AFL's struggling Oakland Raiders at the age of 33. Davis took a team that was 9-33 in th first three years of its existence and whipped them into shape in one season. In 1963, his first year as a pro head coach, he was voted the AFL Coach of the Year after his Raiders went 10-4. His success in his four season as head coach led to him being named AFL Commissioner in April 1966.
His reign was short-lived. Although the AFL had always contended with the NFL in the signing of college players and Canadian Football League Players, Davis launched an aggressive campaign to recruit top NFL's top players, thus driving up the salaries of football players in both leagues. Due to the rising costs of salaries, AFL owners met with NFL owners and agreed to a merger after the 1970 season. Davis opposed the merger and quit as AFL Commissioner, returning to Oakland as managing general partner of the Raiders. The glory days of Al Davis were about to commence.
For a generation, the Oakland (and later Los Angeles) Raiders became one of the top teams in pro football, winning 13 divisional championships, one AFL title (1967), and three Super Bowls from 1967 through 1985. The Raiders in 1985 were one of the most famous, and storied franchises in all American sports, up there with the Yankees, Red Sox, Lakers, Celtics, and Canadiens.
Beginning in 1980, Al Davis played David against the Goliath that was NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle (under whom the merger of the AFL and NFL was effected). Davis wanted to move his Raiders to Los Angeles after the city of Oakland refused to expand the Oakland Colesium, but his plans were blocked by the League. Davis filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, and his franchise became the Los Angeles Raiders for the 1982 NFL season after a federal district court ruled in Davis' favor. The following season, Los Angeles Raiders won Superbowl XVIII in 1984. It was the high-water mark of Al Davis' career.
The team has won only one conference championship in the last 22 seasons, the back-in-Oakland (having returned in 1995 after the city agreed to expand the Colesium) losing Super Bowl XXXVII in 2002 to the Buccaneers. Davis seemed to be consumed by lawsuits against the NFL and municipalities.
Other than his three Super Bowl victories, the great Al Davis will be remembered for being a pioneer in for providing opportunity to minority players, coaches and executives when pro football was still dominated by racist owners hostile to African Americans. Int he AFL, Davis scouted and drafted African American players from the traditionally black colleges ignored by the NFL. He was the first owner to hire a Hispanic-American head coach (Tom Flores) and an African American head coach (Art Shell). His selection of Amy Trask to be CEO of the Raiders made him the first (and lamentably, so-far the only) NFL owner to put a woman in charge of an NFL team.
Al Davis was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a Team and League Administrator in 1992. - Mikey Welsh was born on 20 April 1971 in Syracuse, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Weezer: Hash Pipe (2001), The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009) and Weezer: Video Capture Device - Treasures from the Vault 1991-2002 (2004). He died on 8 October 2011 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ingvar Wixell was born on 7 May 1931 in Luleå, Norrbottens län, Sweden. He was an actor, known for Rigoletto (1987), Aïda (1977) and Great Performances (1971). He was married to Margareta Wixell. He died on 8 October 2011 in Malmö, Sweden.- Sound Department
- Actor
- Music Department
Preben Mortensen was born on 27 April 1945 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was an actor. He died on 8 October 2011 in Denmark.- Carlos Lanari was an actor, known for Nine Queens (2000), Nada x perder (2001) and Autumn Sun (1996). He died on 8 October 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Bob Grimes heard the song, "All My Life" on the radio when he was fourteen. It became his favorite song. All his school friends knew this, and would tease him by singing the song outside his window. So Bob told me: "I just had to have this song. The price of sheet music was 35 cents in those days." This left Bob with a hefty 65 cents for school supplies. This 35 cents represented his first sacrifice for a collection that would number over 30,000 songs. His mother found out he had bought "There's a Small Hotel," then "These Foolish Things" and said "Don't you evah bring another piece of music into this here house," words that fell on deaf ears. His enthusiasm for the songs of Hollywood and Broadway is shown by the number of copies he has made for his performer friends over the years.
Grimes was born in 1922 in Longview, in northeast Texas, about 120 miles east of Dallas and about 60 miles west of Shreveport. He was exposed to the accents of Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. "I had such a horrible southern accent that in school, even the kids laughed at me." Bob's Aunt Annie gave the family her upright piano. In the bench he found treasures he hadn't dreamed existed, Sheet Music! After failing at piano lessons he still got excited to just hold the music in his hands, to read it, to smell it, was like entering the world of show business. Bob's father, according to Bob, Joe had the most marvelous personality in the world. He led the community sing a longs and did all kinds of public speaking. Bob had an obsession with movie star photos and sheet music. His mother's only interest was playing cards and raising a family, and she forbade Bob to spend his money on sheet music. But Bob's sisters loved it and would drive him around, never missing a junk shop. He would bring music home and have his photo taken next to a pile of music on his front step. Now if he did this, the this pile might reach the sixth floor of his apartment building in San Francisco.
When Bob was asked "What are your top ten favorite songs?" he made a list. The list had fourteen songs, then he added, he also had a favorite Gershwin song and a favorite Porter song, and a favorite film song, and a favorite Broadway score, and a favorite novelty song, and a favorite torch song, favorite Kern song and a favorite Arlen song and a favorite Mercer song and ...
When Bob Grimes was eight years old, his brother had a job delivering circulars for the Aladdin Theatre. His brother didn't like the job and so he gave the job to Bob. After several months, the theatre gave Bob free admission for at least a couple of years. Beginning in 1930 Bob saw every "B" movie ever made. His love of film music was born. Before he started collecting sheet music, he wrote to all the stars in Hollywood and asked for their photo. The collection ranged from Renée Adorée to Vera Zorina. In the 1930s no one seemed to know what to do with Bob Grimes. He wasn't being asked to join the football or baseball teams, so his father, Joe, who owned the plumbing and electrical store, ordered sheet music from a music wholesaler for Bob to sell. This was not what his mother had in mind. But his mother eventually couldn't stop him and she later confided, "I wish I had something to enjoy as much as you do."
During World War II Bob Grimes was working in an office in Zamboanga, right on the Basilan Strait, part of the Philippine Islands. Everybody hated it but Bob, who pretended it was his castle. Bob Grimes moved to San Francisco in 1947, leaving his sheet music in Texas, because he was beginning to feel that everyone thought he was nuts for having such a weird hobby. But He couldn't control his urge, and started collecting opera scores, because a friend said he should elevate his taste. After working for a while for the Western Pacific railroad in San Francisco, he took a job with Patrick & Company Stationers. He liked being around people more than sitting at a desk, so he stayed there for 35 years. Soon after moving to San Francisco he started to itch for his music, so his mother happily boxed it and shipped it to San Francisco. She was free of it at last. During Bob Grimes' employment at Patrick & Co. stationers he became well known to the customers as a guest on Jim Eason's KGO radio show, with guests such as Gloria Swanson, Kirk Douglas, Mel Tormé. Bob's distinctive voice was heard from Vladivostok to Valparaiso on KGO radio for twenty years. His voice was so distinctive one day he called the record store, and when the lady who answered learned he was Bob Grimes, she gasped, "You're the Bob Grimes?! Why, you're almost a celebrity!"
Nothing delighted Bob Grimes more than finding a rare piece of musical history. In the Public Library he discovered that there were two title songs copyrighted for the 1936 film San Francisco (1936). The one by Gus Kahn, Bronislau Kaper and Walter Jurmann was accepted and published. The other was written by Walter Donaldson and Harold Adamson, already successful composers of "You" from The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and others. It was never published, so after contacting the Library of Congress and waiting eight months, Bob asked Michael Feinstein (then Ira Gershwin's assistant) to look for it in the files at MGM. It turned up and Michael sang it on the phone to Bob, who was so ecstatic he had Michael repeat it three times. This was the first time the song had been performed in 46 years! For many years, The official song of the city had been the 1936 song 'San Francisco' but in 1969, a film of Tony Bennett singing 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' against a backdrop of cable cars, was shown at a Board of Supervisors meeting and the Board unanimously adopted the ballad as the official song. At the time there were minor cries and protests, but the matter eventually rested. Bob Grimes threw a fit. One day after appearing on a radio trivia show with Merla Zellerbach and Fred Goerner, Bob brought up the topic. Fred had a radio show on KMPX and held a poll, which resulted in a vote that was ten to one in favor of the 1936 song. [Merla wrote a story about it in 1972 which irritated I Left My Heart's... writers, George Cory and Douglass Cross. Bob received a call from the ballad's composer, George Cory, and he went on a 15 minute tirade, ending with "I hope there's a good earthquake and you're the first one to go!" Controversial writer Warren Hinckle took the Texas steer by the horns and on Thursday, May 3, 1984 the supervisors deadlocked on whether 'I Left My Heart' should be dumped in favor of 'San Francisco.' Nearly 300 people crowded into Supervisors' chambers and downstairs in the Rotunda of City Hall, authorities estimated that 5000 people were inside the building. They cheered and whistled for 'San Francisco.' The highlight of the day was soprano Pamela Brooks, who recreated Jeanette MacDonald's rendition while strolling down the majestic marble staircase.
In 2010, when Grimes was eighty-eight years old, he arranged the sale of his lifelong collection of sheet music to the Michael Feinstein Archive. - Nina Sorokina was born on 13 May 1942 in Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia]. She was an actress, known for Bolshoi Ballet '67 (1965), Anna Karenina (1975) and Camera Three (1955). She died on 8 October 2011 in Moscow, Russia.