Russell Scott

Clowns, as we all know, are terrifying. But somehow, at least two generations of Colorado kids managed to suspend their fear (for the most part, anyhow) when it came to Russell Scott, aka Blinky the Clown, who spent more than three consecutive decades on Denver TV. He died yesterday at age 91, but he left behind memories, plus photos and videos like those on view below.

Scott wasn’t a simple man, as Westword’s coverage of him over the years demonstrates. Take this excerpt from “Tears of a Clown,” a 2004 piece about a documentary looking at his singular career:

Photo by Paul Tantrow
Russell Scott in his early eighties.

Who’s had the longest continuous run on Denver television? Russell Scott is first by a big, red nose. As Blinky the Clown, Scott hosted Blinky’s Fun Club, a proudly anachronistic Channel 2 kiddie program, for 33 years. Although Scott has been absent from the tube since 1998, when former Channel 2 general manager Bill Ross shuttered the Fun Club, he’s making a TV comeback tonight thanks to videographer Brian Malone, whom Blinky serenaded with his signature song — “Happy Birfday to You!” — when Brian was a tot.

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Malcolm Brown

NEW YORK — The phone calls went out from Saigon’s Xa-Loi Buddhist pagoda to chosen members of the foreign news corps. The message: Be at a certain location tomorrow for a “very important” happening.

The next morning, June 11, 1963, an elderly monk named Thich Quang Duc, clad in a brown robe and sandals, assumed the lotus position on a cushion in a blocked-off street intersection. Aides drenched him with aviation fuel, and the monk calmly lit a match and set himself ablaze.

Of the foreign journalists who had been alerted to the shocking political protest against South Vietnam’s U.S.-supported government, only one, Malcolm Browne of The Associated Press, showed up.

The photos he took appeared on front pages around the globe and sent shudders all the way to the White House, prompting President John F. Kennedy to order a re-evaluation of his administration’s Vietnam policy.

“We have to do something about that regime,” Kennedy told Henry Cabot Lodge, who was about to become U.S. ambassador to Saigon.

Browne, who died Monday at a New Hampshire hospital at age 81, recalled in a 1998 interview that that was the beginning of the rebellion, which led to U.S.-backed South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem being overthrown and murdered, along with his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, the national security chief.

“Almost immediately, huge demonstrations began to develop that were no longer limited to just the Buddhist clergy, but began to attract huge numbers of ordinary Saigon residents,” Browne said in the interview.

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Art Heyman

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) – Duke announces Art Heyman, the captain of the Blue Devils’ first Final Four team, has died.

The school said Tuesday family members say Heyman died Monday night in Florida. The cause of death was not available. He was 71.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski says Heyman was “one of the elite players to ever wear a Blue Devil uniform.”

Heyman led Duke to a 69-14 record from 1960-63 and averaged 25 points and nearly 11 rebounds. He was the most outstanding player of the 1963 Final Four.

He’s tied for 12th on Duke’s career scoring list (1,294 points) and is one of three Blue Devils to average a double-double for three straight seasons.

Heyman was drafted by the New York Knicks in 1963 and played eight seasons in the NBA and ABA.

Recent Notable Deaths

August 21, 2012

William Thuston 65 Mathematician

J. Frank Raley 85, Politician

August 22, 2012

John Davidson  87, Politician

August 23, 2012

Jerry Nelson 78, Puppeteer

Steve Von Bren 91, Hall of Fame Football Player

Bob Myrick 59, Baseball Player

Aubrey Dunn 84, politician

August 24, 2012

Dale Sommers 68, Radio personality

August 25, 2012

Neil Armstrong 82, Astronaut

Phyllis Diller

LOS ANGELES — Phyllis Diller, the housewife turned humorist who aimed some of her sharpest barbs at herself, punctuating her jokes with her trademark cackle, died Monday morning in Los Angeles at age 95.

“She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face,” her longtime manager, Milton Suchin, told The Associated Press.

Diller suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999. The cause of her death has not been released.

She was a staple of nightclubs and television from the 1950s – when female comics were rare indeed – until her retirement in 2002. Diller built her stand-up act around the persona of the corner-cutting housewife (“I bury a lot of my ironing in the back yard”) with bizarre looks, a wardrobe to match (by “Omar of Omaha”) and a husband named “Fang.”

Wrote Time magazine in 1961: “Onstage comes something that, by its own description, looks like a sackful of doorknobs. With hair dyed by Alcoa, pipe-cleaner limbs and knees just missing one another when the feet are wide apart, this is not Princess Volupine. It is Phyllis Diller, the poor man’s Auntie Mame, only successful female among the New Wave comedians and one of the few women funny and tough enough to belt out a `standup’ act of one-line gags.”   read more…

Scott Mckenzie

Talented singer and songwriter, Scott McKenzie, states Wikipedia, died on Saturday, August 18, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. In memory, be sure and wear some flowers in your hair!

Scott McKenzie was best known for singing the 1967 hit single, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” It was written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas.

McKenzie (Philip Blonheim) was born in Jacksonville, Florida, but he grew up in North Carolina and Virginia. He moved from Florida, with his family, when he was only a baby (six months old).

By the 1950s, this future talented singer, songwriter and guitarist grew up, becoming friends with the son of one of his mother’s friends, John Phillips. In the mid-1950s he sang briefly with Tim Rose in a high school group called The Singing Strings, and later with Phillips, Mike Boran and Bill Cleary formed a doo wop band, The Abstracts.

In New York, The Abstracts became The Smoothies, and they recorded two singles with Decca Records.  read more….

Joey Kovar

Joey Kovar, cast member of “The Real World: Hollywood,” was found dead Friday morning. He was 29.

Kovar was staying at a friend’s house in the Chicago area, according to TMZ. A female friend who found his body noticed blood running out of Kovar’s ears and nose, and called 911. He was pronounced dead at the scene by responders.

TMZ reports that Kovar’s family suspect that drugs are to blame for his death, which wouldn’t be surprising; his “Real World: Hollywood” stint was punctuated by a stay in rehab for drugs and alcohol.

Also read: Dr. Drew’s Celeb Rehabbers: How Clean Are They Now?

Kovar also sought treatment for cocaine and Ecstasy on “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew.”

Fellow “Celebrity Rehab” alum Jennifer Gimenez expressed her sympathy in a statement, saying that her “heart breaks” for Kovar.

Phyllis Thaxter

 

Phyllis Thaxter, 92, an actress who had an active film career in the 1940s and ’50s and capped it with her portrayal of Clark Kent’s mother in the 1978 version of “Superman,” died Tuesday at her home in Orlando, Fla., said her daughter, actress Skye Aubrey. She hadAlzheimer’s disease.

After watching her screen test, MGM executives chose Thaxter, a stage actress, to play opposite Van Johnson in the World War II drama “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” (1944).

A string of roles as the wife or romantic partner followed, as Thaxter appeared with Burt Lancaster in “Jim Thorpe — All American” (1951), James Cagney and Gig Young in “Come Fill the Cup” (1951), Ronald Reagan in “She’s Working Her Way Through College” (1952) and Gary Cooper in “Springfield Rifle” (1952).

Thaxter also received good notices for her film work in the 1945 thriller”Bewitched”and the 1950 film noir “The Breaking Point” with John Garfield.

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Helen Gurley Brown

 

Brown died Monday at a hospital in New York after a brief hospitalization, Hearst CEO Frank A. Bennack, Jr. said in a statement.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York said in a statement, “Today New York City lost a pioneer who reshaped not only the entire media industry, but the nation’s culture. She was a role model for the millions of women whose private thoughts, wonders and dreams she addressed so brilliantly in print.”

“Sex and the Single Girl,” her grab-bag book of advice, opinion, and anecdote on why being single shouldn’t mean being sexless, made a celebrity of the 40-year-old advertising copywriter in 1962.

Three years later, she was hired by Hearst Magazines to turn around the languishing Cosmopolitan and it became her bully pulpit for the next 32 years.

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Ron Palillo

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Ron Palillo, the actor best known as the nerdy high school student Arnold Horshack on the 1970s sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter,” died Tuesday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. He was 63.

Palillo could not be revived after suffering an apparent heart attack at his home about 4 a.m., said Karen Poindexter, a close friend of the actor. He was pronounced dead at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center.

Palillo was inextricably linked to the character he played from 1975 to 1979 on “Kotter,” the ABC sitcom, in which the title character returns to his Brooklyn alma mater to a group of loveable wiseguys known as the Sweathogs. Horshack was the nasally teen who yelped, “Oooh, oooh,” as his hand shot skyward when a teacher posed a question.

Though the show was a ratings success, and propelled co-star John Travolta to stardom, the series only lasted as long as a high school education. For Palillo, its end brought difficulty.

He said he felt exiled throughout the 1980s, unable to find parts, sinking into depression, and rarely venturing from his apartment. When offers did come, he felt typecast as Horshack.

“While I loved him, I really loved him, I didn’t want to do him forever,” he told the Birmingham News in 1994.

Palillo was born April 2, 1949, in Cheshire, Conn. His father died of lung cancer when he was 10 and he developed a stutter. His mother thought getting him involved in a local theater might help. He fell in love with the stage. He attended the University of Connecticut and earned parts in Shakespearean productions before his big break.

When he auditioned for “Kotter,” he thought he’d be passed over for others who had more of a tough-guy New York look. His dying father’s voice inspired his character’s wheezing laugh, he told the News

He is survived by his partner of 41 years, Joseph Gramm, a retired actor.