Mickey Rooney, Master of Putting On a Show

He stood only a few inches taller than five feet, but Mr. Rooney was larger and louder than life. From the moment he toddled onto a burlesque stage at 17 months to his movie debut at 6 to his career-crowning Broadway debut in “Sugar Babies” at 59, he did it all. He could act, sing, dance, play piano and drums, and before he was out of short pants he could cry on cue.

Mr. Rooney’s personal life was as dynamic as his screen presence. He married eight times. He earned $12 million before he was 40 and spent more. Impulsive, recklessly extravagant, mercurial and addicted to playing the ponies and shooting craps, he attacked life as though it were a six-course dinner.

Along with Deanna Durbin, Mr. Rooney was given a special Academy Award in 1939 “for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth.” The next year he received his Oscar nomination for “Babes in Arms.” His second nomination was for his performance in the film version of William Saroyan’s “Human Comedy” (1943) as the messenger boy who delivers telegrams from the War Department telling families in a small California town that their sons have died. That movie seems saccharine and preachy more than 70 years later, but time has not tarnished the desolation on Mr. Rooney’s face when he reads those telegrams.

Nobody ever doubted his talent. Of his “all but unimprovable” performance in “National Velvet,” James Agee wrote, “He is an extremely wise and moving actor, and if I am ever again tempted to speak disrespectfully of him, that will be in anger over the unforgivable waste of a forceful yet subtle talent, proved capable of self-discipline and of the hardest roles that could be thrown it.”

 

Sheila Guyse, Singer and Star in ‘Race Movies,’ 88

 Sheila Guyse, center, performing in "Lost in the Stars." George Karger/Pix Incorporated

Sheila Guyse, a popular actress and singer who appeared on Broadway and in so-called race movies in the 1940s and ’50s, and who for a time, despite limited opportunities in the entertainment industry, appeared headed for broader fame, died on Dec. 28 in Honolulu. She was 88. The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter Sheila Crystal Devin said. For several years, Ms. Guyse (rhymes with “nice”) was compared to stars like Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne and Ruby Dee, black actresses who broke through racial barriers. But by the late 1950s she was out of show business, a result of some combination of health problems, a religious conversion and family obligations. 

 Ms. Guyse’s husband did not want her to have a career, Ms. Devin said.

Ms. Guyse’s first two marriages had ended in divorce, and she was a struggling single mother when she met Joseph Jackson, a New York sanitation worker so enthralled by her that he would sometimes follow her in his garbage truck. After they married, in the late 1950s, Ms. Guyse stopped performing and became increasingly involved with a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Queens.

“It wasn’t easy to be a glamorous movie star with people following you for your autograph and now you’re home making pancakes,” Ms. Devin said. “She did it, but I don’t think it was easy.”

Etta Drucille Guyse was born on July 14, 1925, in Forest, Miss. She took Sheila as a stage name. She followed her father, Wilbert, to New York when she was a teenager and, her daughter said, lived for a time in a Harlem rooming house with Billie Holiday. 

Her first marriage, to Ms. Devin’s father, a tailor named Shelby Irving Miller, was very brief. Her second, to Kenneth Davis, whom she had met while both performed in “Finian’s Rainbow,” lasted eight years. Mr. Davis, who was white, became a dancer with American Ballet Theater. In 1952, a photograph of the couple appeared on a cover of Jet with the headline “Negro Women With White Husbands.”

“I don’t go about looking for difficulties,” Ms. Guyse said in the article. “It took me a long time to decide to marry Ken, but I’m glad I did. We’ve been very happy. Intelligence and understanding are needed to make a marriage like ours succeed. It takes more than love. You have to have a mind of your own and be able to ignore what the world is saying and thinking about you.”

Jean Stapleton, Who Played Edith Bunker, Dies

An AP story: Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker's far better half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV's groundbreaking 1970s comedy "All in the Family," has died. She was 90.

TheNY Times puits it differently: Stapleton, Archie’s Better Angel, Dies at 90

David F. Smith/Associated Press - Jean Stapleton, left, and Carroll O'Connor held their Emmy awards in 1972 in Hollywood, CA

 Jean Stapleton, the character actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive — up to a point — housewife on the groundbreaking series “All in the Family” made her, along with Mary Tyler Moore and Bea Arthur, not only one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s but a symbol of emergent feminism in American popular culture, died on Friday at her home in New York City. She was 90.

Marvin Hamlisch

From a NY Times Arts article: In a career that spanned film, television, theater and recorded music, Marvin Hamlisch won seemingly every award available in each medium. He died on Monday in Los Angeles. An obituary is here. He was only 68.


(A video gallery of trailers and excerpts from some of the films and musicals featuring Mr. Hamlisch’s music is here.)

This is my music: Marvin Hamlisch

Mr. Hamlisch, bespectacled and somewhat gawky, could often appear as the stereotypical music school nerd — in fact, at 7, he was the youngest student to be accepted at the Juilliard School — but his appearance belied his intelligence and easy banter with the likes of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. And his melodies were sure-footed and sometimes swashbuckling. “One,” from “A Chorus Line,” with its punchy, brassy lines, distills the essence of the Broadway showstopper. The show started as a series of taped workshops with Broadway dancers, then evolved into a show that opened at the Public Theater in 1975 and moved to Broadway later that year. It ran for 6,137 performances, the most of any Broadway musical until it was surpassed by “Cats."

In more recent years, Mr. Hamlisch also became an ambassador for music, traveling around the country and performing and giving talks at schools. He often criticized the cuts in arts education.

“I don’t think the American government gets it,” he said during an interview at the Orange County High School of the Arts in Santa Ana, Calif. “I don’t think they understand it’s as important as math and science. It rounds you out as a person. I think it gives you a love of certain things. You don’t have to become the next great composer. It’s just nice to have heard certain things or to have seen certain things. It’s part of being a human being.”

Despite all the awards he received over the years, Ms. Blair said Mr. Hamlisch was always most focused, and most excited about, whatever current project he had going. And, she said, he was always appreciative of his gift: “He used to say, ‘It’s easy to write things that are so self-conscious that they become pretentious, that have a lot of noise. It’s very hard to write a simple melody.’ ”

Lupe Ontiveros

Actor Jacob Vargas who was by her side Thursday night confirmed Ontiveros passed away on Twitter around midnight Friday. “My friend Lupe Ontiveros just passed away. May you rest in peace. Thank you for your great contribution to film and TV. You will be missed,” wrote Vargas. Onitveros was reportedly suffering from liver cancer, according to TMZ.
One of Ontiveros’ first roles was playing a maid on the television series “Charlie’s Angels.” And since that role she estimated she played a maid at least 150 times on screen, or 300 if you count her stage performances too. For many young Latinos who were sons and daughters of domestic workers Ontiveros was a familiar name long before she became a household name for playing Selena Quintanilla’s murderer Yolanda Saldivar in “Selena.”
   For me, seeing Ontiveros on screen was meaningful because it was a sign that our parents’ work was recognized by Hollywood. Even when Ontiveros played roles in which her character was talked down to or humiliated it was still meaningful because she played the human part—those were real stories many of us had heard before from our moms, aunts and neighbors.
“At first my only lines were ‘Si, señor, no, señor,’ you know, that kind of shit,” Ontiveros told the LA Weekly.

Antsy Cabby in ‘On the Town

Betty Garrett, the brassy comic actress who played Frank Sinatra’s ardent, taxi-driving pursuer in the movie “On the Town,” Archie Bunker’s liberal foil of a neighbor in “All in the Family” and a sardonic landlady in “Laverne & Shirley,” died on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 91.

In “On the Town” (1949), she played a love-struck cabby, Brunhilde Esterhazy, who chases after an overwhelmed sailor (Sinatra), one of three sailors on a wartime leave in New York. (Gene Kelly and Jules Munshin were the other two.) While Sinatra is trapped in her cab hoping to see sights like Luchow’s restaurant and Radio City Music Hall, she pesters him in song to “Come Up to My Place.” Earlier that year she played a lovestruck fan who swoons for Sinatra — wearing a baseball uniform instead of Navy whites — in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the story of a team in the sport’s younger days that is surprised when its new owner is a woman (Esther Williams). While one of the movie’s most memorable songs was “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg,” again with Kelly and Munshin joining Sinatra, Ms. Garrett had a lively turn in “It’s Fate, Baby, It’s Fate.”