Well, this morning I got an email from the “Who’s Alive and Who’s Dead” mailing list about his death and it says 82 and that reports of him being 95 were not true. CNN updated their obit in the wee hours this morning to include this:
Quote:
| The actor was widely reported to have been born in 1910, but his son Ted Lewis said Saturday that his father was born in 1923. |
Damn, this is confusing!
CC said he was 95. At this point, I’m wonderering if anyone ever knew how old he really was.
Vampire’s ages are often the subject of dispute.
RIP The guy that played the judge in USED CARS.
They’re gonna need a bigger hearse.
Quote:
| NEW YORK (AP) – Peter Benchley, whose novel “Jaws” terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, has died at age 65, his widow said Sunday. Wendy Benchley, married to the author for 41 years, said he died Saturday night at their home in Princeton, New Jersey. The cause of death, she said, was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive and a fatal scarring of the lungs. |
What gets lost in the hoopla around Spielberg’s adaptation is that Jaws is a fairly ordinary, at times downright awful book.
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His Wikipedia biography didn’t seem to have a whole lot of info, so…
Quote:
| Thanks to Benchley’s 1974 novel, and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie of the same name a year later, the simple act of ocean swimming became synonymous with fatal horror, of still water followed by ominous, pumping music, then teeth and blood and panic. “Spielberg certainly made the most superb movie; Peter was very pleased,” Wendy Benchley told The Associated Press. “But Peter kept telling people the book was fiction, it was a novel, and that he no more took responsibility for the fear of sharks than [“Godfather” author] Mario Puzo took responsibility for the Mafia.” Benchley, the grandson of humorist Robert Benchley and son of author Nathaniel Benchley, was born in New York City in 1940. He attended the elite Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, then graduated from Harvard University in 1961. He worked at The Washington Post and Newsweek and spent two years as a speechwriter for President Johnson, writing some “difficult” speeches about the Vietnam War, Wendy Benchley said. The author’s interest in sharks was lifelong, beginning with childhood visits to Nantucket Island in Massachusetts and heightening in the mid-1960s when he read about a fisherman catching a 4,550-pound great white shark off Long Island, the setting for his novel. “I thought to myself, 'What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn’t go away?”’ he recalled. Benchley didn’t start the novel until 1971 because he was too busy working with his day jobs. “There was no particular influence. My idea was to tell my first novel as a sort of long story … just to see if I could do it. I had been a freelance writer since I was 16, and I sold things to various magazines and newspapers whenever I could.” Proudest achievement While Peter Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for “Jaws,” and authored several other novels, including “The Deep” and “The Island,” Wendy Benchley said he was especially proud of his conservation work. He served on the national council of Environmental Defense, hosted numerous television wildlife programs, gave speeches around the world and wrote articles for National Geographic and other publications. “He cared very much about sharks. He spent most of his life trying to explain to people that if you are in the ocean, you’re in the shark’s territory, so it behooves you to take precautions,” Wendy Benchley said. The author did not abide by the mayhem his book evoked. In fact, he was quite at ease around sharks, his widow said. She recalled a trip to Guadeloupe, Mexico, last year for their 40th wedding anniversary, when the two went into the water in a special cage. “They put bait in the water and sharks swim around and play games,” she said. “We were thrilled, excited. We’d been around sharks for so long.” Besides his wife, Peter Benchley is survived by three children and five grandchildren. A small family service will take place next week in Princeton, Wendy Benchley said. |
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Richard Dickson They’re gonna need a bigger hearse. What gets lost in the hoopla around Spielberg’s adaptation is that Jaws is a fairly ordinary, at times downright awful book. |
Although that’s hard to argue with, without his book we’d have missed out on one of the best movies ever made.
Without Jaws there could probably be no Meg.
As for Meg, Nick, I hope you guys are thinking of a dedication or at least a mention to Mr. Benchley. He deserves it.
No love for Akira Ifukube? RIP great composer of Gojira. 02.08.2006
Another one of the greats has gone away. George Jefferson’s white neighbor Tom is dead.
The man was a pioneer in giving pale faces hope that they could satisfy the sisters.
Uncle Owen has farmed his last moisture.
What does Phil Brown and Bruce Spence have in common? ROTS.
I saw this yesterday, he was a great actor. Of course he also played Ambassor Tomalok - shifty Romulan type in Next Generaton.
But as G’kar he truly rocked.
I agree, he was a great actor. And he was another one of those ‘hey, it’s THAT guy’ actors that you would recognize whenever he showed up, kinda like Vincent Schiavelli. He had a unique look about him that seemed to lend itself well to being cast as a bad guy, though by all accounts he was a very nice man. He did truly come into his own as G’Kar, though.
Just ran across this on another board and couldn’t believe it. He was the best thing on B5.
RIP Richard Bright
"Al Neri: Our friend and associate Hyman Roth is in the news. The High Court of Israel turned down his request to live there as a returning Jew. He landed in Buenos Aires last night offering a “gift” of a million dollars if they’d let him stay. They said no. His passport’s been invalidated, except for his return trip to the States. " - Godfather Part 2
He was a good background figure in the GODFATHER films. Off the top of my head I think only him, Pacino, Keaton, and Shire are in all 3 films. Sofia Coppolla was sort of in all of them.
http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/2...040284000.html
Just heard the news. It’s really sad. He was great as the silent yet deadly bodyguard.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Judas Booth RIP Andreas Katsulas. G’Kar on TV’s ‘Babylon 5’, and in movies he was the one armed man in ‘The Fugitive’ and the bad guy in ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’. Kinda a cool character actor. Apparently died of lung cancer, aged 59. |
Wow! That’s some cool makeup. I never watched Babylon 5, but I remember Katsulas for his roles in The Fugitive and the TV movie The Death of the Incredible Hulk.
Here he is sans makeup:
