The passing year

Oh, what a year 2014 was—quite the blogging rollercoaster, really. so many comentworthy events, so little time…

Well, first of all, 2014 saw so many deaths in the arts, leaving massive gaps in the talent pool for those of us to whom they brought such enjoyment.

(Oh—there was one different death of note this year, nowhere near the arts. Or even the humanities. Inveterate sectarian-hate monger Ian Paisley finally is face-to-face with his maker, and I hope she gives him what-for. Paisley sadly lived much too long and has left a legacy of inhumanity that will doubtless carry on for years. But I’ve got him out of the way.)

Among those lost: the extraordinarily gifted Robin Williams, comedic pioneer Joan Rivers, caustically brilliant Elaine Stritch and all-round genius Sid Caesar.

Shirley Temple Black, the child star who made hundreds of thousands of Americans forget how dreary life was during the Great Depression, and whose box office bankability saved 20^th Century-Fox Studios from bankruptcy—she’s gone, too. As is poet, writer, activist Maya Angelou and P.D. James, acclaimed writer of psychologically dense detective novels.

Lauren Bacall, one of the sultriest women to ever saunter across a screen, died aged 89. But no one who ever saw her on the silver screen—when it was truly silver—or heard her husky voice is ever going to get her out of his/her cortex.

Pete Seeger was pretty much an institution—so much more than a performer. If you go anywhere near the Hudson River without protective gear, you can thank Seeger. And if you listen to any pop music from the last half of the 20^th Century, chances are it was influenced somehow by Seeger.

If you’re not a fan of NPR, you may not know Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Tappet Brothers. Their call-in car repair advice show ran for decades, and was beloved by hundreds of thousands; maybe millions. Every one of us felt like we’d lost a family member when it was announced that Tom (who was either Click or Clack; I never quite figured that out) died last month. Thankfully, a lot of stations are rerunning their shows, because they were never really about the cars.

I deeply felt the loss of two Brits—Bob Hoskins and Richard Attenborough. Both were spectacularly good actors, delivering an amazing range of characters, from sociopaths to Santa Claus and storybook pirate. Attenborough was also a brilliant director—think Gandhi, Shadowlands and A Chorus Line. But Hoskins famously held his own against a cast of ‘toons, which has to be the ultimate test of an actor.

I did not post here about the death of James Garner, primarily because I said what I had to say in a Facebook post: “Yeah, yeah, yeah—Maverick, Rockford, blah, blah, blah. For me Garner will always be Hendley the Scrounger in The Great Escape” (which also starred Attenborough). And the seminal Yank sequence for me was the Fourth of July celebration:

(It occurs to me that David McCallum and John Leyton might the last featured players in that scene still alive. Bronson, McQueen, Pleasence, Coburn, Garner, Attenborough, James Donald, Gordon Jackson, Jud Taylor and Angus Lennie are all gone now.)

Two more I’ll miss are Warren Clarke and Eli Wallach. Clarke will forever be associated in my mind with the TV series based on Reginald Hill’s detective novels; there is but one Andy Dalziel, and Clarke is he. And Wallach—again, what a range of characters he gave us.

The good thing about such giants crossing the bar is that they were almost all quite advanced in years. Williams definitely died too soon, but he and the rest had extraordinary careers lasting decades, and they gave us all laughter, tears and food for thought. It’s a good legacy.