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Al Jazeera 28 June 2009 A public hearing organised by a UN team investigating alleged war crimes by Israel and Hamas during the Gaza war is under way. As part of its investigations into the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza conflict, the UN fact-finding mission will listen to testimony from victims of the conflict for two days in Gaza City and hold a second round of public hearings on July 6 and July 7 in Geneva.  During the hearing, which began on Sunday and is being screened live for the public and the media, the mission will hear from victims of alleged violations and from experts on the context and impact of the Israeli siege and military operations.Gaza's reconstruction is being hampered by Israel's blockade of Gaza [EPA] The public hearings, which are a part of the information-gathering work of the fact-finding mission, will enable victims, witnesses and experts from all sides in the conflict to speak directly to the international community. In Geneva, the mission will hear from victims of alleged violations in Israel and the West Bank, as well as from experts on a variety of military and legal issues. Geneva has been chosen as the venue of the second round of hearings since the fact-finding mission has so far not received permission to enter Israel to hold the sessions in southern Israel and the West Bank. ( >>Continued ) | ||||||||||
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Mood:
 cynical **Poster's Note: Please keep these words in mind when you read the following archived article from 2003: 'Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger...' In case you have forgotten, Ratzinger is now the Pope. The time span in this article covers at least 5 popes, including Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II and the current man holding the title, Benedict XVI [a.k.a Ratzinger]I note with interest the stories about how disturbed the Pope was at hearing the clerical abuse report from Ireland. I find this to be sheer hypocrisy, and I also do not think that asking for public apology from anyone even BEGINS to cover what must be done to bring even a tiny amount of justice for the victims. Nothing can ever make up for this obscenity and crime against humanity that has been covered up down through the years. The reason I am posting this now has to do with the release of the Ryan report in Ireland, detailing the 'Endemic' rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care', which was also happening in the North of Ireland. >>Read the 1962 Vatican document (PDF file) Antony Barnett, public affairs editor The Observer Sunday 17 August 2003 The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church. The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a 'blueprint for deception and concealment'. One British lawyer acting for Church child abuse victims has described it as 'explosive'. ( >>Continued ) | ||||||||||
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By Matt Dickinson Scotsman 10 June 2009 OIL giant Shell has agreed to a £9.6 million settlement to end a lawsuit alleging it was complicit in the execution of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.  The company, which continues to operate in Nigeria, insisted it was not involved in the 1995 hangings of six people, including Mr Saro-Wiwa, a poet. But it said it had agreed to settle in the hope of aiding the "process of reconciliation".Ken Saro-Wiwa "This gesture also acknowledges that, even though Shell had no part in the violence that took place, the plaintiffs and others have suffered," the company said. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court, claimed Shell colluded with Nigeria's former military government to silence environmental and human rights activists in the Ogoni region. The oil-rich district sits in the southern part of Nigeria and covers about 400sq miles. Shell started operating there in 1958. The main complaint against Shell focused on activities by its subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria. The lawsuit claimed that, in the 1990s, Shell officials helped to give Nigerian police weapons, participated in security sweeps of the area, and hired government troops who shot at villagers protesting over the construction of a pipeline. It also alleges Shell helped the government capture and hang Ken Saro-Wiwa, John Kpuinen, Saturday Doobee, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbokoo and Dr Barinem Kiobel on 10 November, 1995. Mr Saro-Wiwa, the leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, led rallies against Shell. He blamed the company for myriad oil spills and gas fires in the region. His son, Ken Saro-Wiwa jnr, 40, said that, although Shell had denied any wrongdoing, "the fact that they would have to settle is a victory for us". He added: "I think he (his father] would be happy with this." Apart from compensating the families, the money from Shell will pay for years of legal fees. A large chunk of the settlement – roughly a third – will create a trust that will invest in Nigerian social programmes, covering educational endowments, agricultural development, enterprise and adult literacy. However, the settlement will have a negligible effect on Shell's shareholders: it amounts to less than one-hundredth of 1 per cent of Shell's annual revenue and is comparable to the annual cost of renting one of the supertankers that Shell uses to deliver Nigerian oil to other countries. Shell has consistently maintained that it never advocated violence and that it lobbied Nigerian officials to grant Mr Saro-Wiwa clemency. Critics say Shell did so because of the bad publicity the case had generated. Jenny Green, a lawyer for the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, who helped to file the lawsuit in 1996, said: "Is it enough to bring back the lives of our clients? Obviously not." But she said the case would send a message to multinationals that operate in developing countries. "You can't commit human rights violations as a part of doing business," she said. The Shell settlement ends one of several legal cases that have been brought against energy companies by indigenous peoples where they operate. Villagers in Indonesia are suing Exxon Mobil, claiming it employed guards who kidnapped, tortured and murdered civilians, while Chevron is awaiting a verdict from a judge in Ecuador in a dispute over the role of Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001, in causing environmental damage in the Amazon rain forest. At least one additional lawsuit alleging human rights abuses by Shell in Nigeria is pending in the New York court. | ||||||||||
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**Unfortunately for the family and fans of David Carradine, there are many conflicting reports of David's death. Some have termed it a suicide and some an accidental death due to auto-eroticism, but the family is criticising the Thai authorities for their handling of the case and the publishing in a local paper of death photos. They have asked the FBI to assist them in their investigation of what really happened. Davids body is due back home in LA on Monday. David Carradine, who was found dead on June 4 aged 72, was the lanky, sad-eyed American actor catapulted to fame as Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s cult television series Kung Fu; after two decades in the doldrums, his career took sail again when he played the assassin-turned-victim in Quentin Tarantino's two-part film saga Kill Bill. Telegraph.co.uk 07 Jun 2009  Although he appeared in more than 100 feature films by eminent directors such as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby, Carradine's best-known role remained that of Caine, an orphaned Shaolin monk travelling the American West in the 1800s, serenely spreading wisdom wherever he went. Despite his total ignorance of the martial arts, of which his odd, long-haired and metaphysically-minded screen character was a virtuoso exponent, Carradine's portrayal of the fugitive Chinese-American was one of the more unexpected television successes of its time, and played on British screens between 1972 and 1975.After Kung Fu, Carradine starred in the 1975 cult film Death Race 2000; with Liv Ullmann in Bergman's The Serpent's Egg in 1977; and with his brothers in the 1980 Western The Long Riders. For the next two decades his career languished, but being cast by Tarantino changed that. David Carradine was born John Arthur Carradine on December 8 1936 in Los Angeles, the son of the Hollywood character actor John Carradine. He claimed origins as exotic as the television character with which he made his name: he was said to have had English, Irish, German, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian and Cherokee blood. After studying Drama at San Francisco State University he began work as an actor, changing his given name to David and taking stage roles as well as parts on television and in film. He had intended initially to concentrate on Shakespeare and had ambitions to play Hamlet on Broadway, but instead found himself chiefly consigned to B-movie status. In Kung Fu, the character of the young Caine was shown in childhood encounters with his blind teacher, Master Po, seen in flashback. These would invariably end with an enigmatic observation from Po to his protégé "Grasshopper" – a nickname which, accompanied by cod-philosophical musings, briefly became a popular catchphrase.  Carradine's earlier roles included the lead in Shane (the 1966 television series based on the 1949 novel of the same name with Jill Ireland as the young widow) and as a gunslinger in Taggart (1964), a film Western based on a novel by Louis L'Amour. He also starred in the Broadway version of Peter Shaffer's play The Royal Hunt of the Sun in 1965.After his breakthrough in the Kung Fu series, Carradine starred in several exercise videos teaching the martial arts of Tai qi and Qi Gong. Having had no knowledge of any martial art before landing the Kung Fu part, he not only developed an interest in it but became an avid adherent and practitioner. Not everyone was impressed. "David Carradine is about as good a martial artist as I am an actor," noted the martial arts expert Chuck Norris, who comprehensively trounced him in Lone Wolf McQuade (1983). Twenty years later Carradine's career suddenly revived when he was cast as the eponymous anti-hero in Quentin Tarantino's homage to martial arts films, Kill Bill. Highly stylised, it featured the actress Uma Thurman, in a yellow jumpsuit, wreaking vengeance in a series of extreme fight scenes, one opposite Carradine, who earned a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.  Carradine was able to profit from his renewed fame, becoming the spokesman for the Yellowbook telephone directories in the United States. He was also the television face of the tea firm Lipton ("This ain't no sippin' tea"), in a memorable commercial where he paid homage not only to Kung Fu, but also to the Three Stooges.He was interested in oriental herbs, exercise and philosophy, wrote a personal memoir called Spirit of Shaolin and continued to make instructional videos on tai qi and other martial arts. He often pondered death. In a magazine interview in 2004, he said he used to keep a single action Colt .45, loaded, in his desk drawer, and confessed to contemplating suicide often. In the event, he was reportedly found hanged at a hotel in Bangkok. Curiously he had once recalled "sitting in the window of the third or fourth floor of the Plaza Hotel for about an hour thinkin' about just tippin' off. "And that was at a time when I was having more fun than you could imagine. I just thought: 'Who the f--- cares, man? Why don't I just split?' Of course I didn't, so there you go." David Carradine was married five times. His first marriage, in 1960, to Donna Lee Becht, ended in 1968, and he married, secondly, Linda Gilbert in 1977. This marriage ended in 1983, and in 1988 he married Gail Jensen. In 1998, he married his fourth wife, Marina Anderson, but this was dissolved in 2001. On Boxing Day 2004, David Carradine married Annie Bierman at a ceremony in Malibu performed by his attorney, and a long-time friend of his fifth bride. He was father to several children. | ||||||||||
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By Adrian Blomfield in St Petersburg Independent.ie Friday June 05 2009 **If TinyPic takes down this picture of Hitler, it will be the THIRD time in two days. -- EDIT: They DID! The current image is hosted by Imageshack :-p Russia has accused Poland of provoking the outbreak of the Second World War by refusing to accede to the "very modest" demands of Nazi Germany.  The Russian defence ministry posted a potentially inflammatory essay on its website, claiming that Poland resisted Germany's ultimatums in 1939 only because it "wanted to obtain the status of a great power".The lengthy diatribe also lashed out at Britain and France for giving the Poles "delusions of grandeur" by promising to intercede if the Nazis invaded. "Anyone who has been minded to study the history of the Second World War knows it started because of Poland's refusal to meet Germany's requests," the statement written by Colonel Sergei Kovalev, a senior researcher at the ministry, read. "The German demands were very modest." Appearing to take Germany's demands at face value, the defence ministry insisted that the Nazis were interested only in building transport links across the Polish Corridor to East Prussia and assuming control of Gdansk, which had been designated a free city. Western historians largely recognise that Poland would have lost its independence had it acceded to the demands, pointing to Hitler's policies of Lebensbraum and the creation of a "Greater Germany" as evidence. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, prompting Britain and France to declare war. Poland's foreign ministry said it would summon the Russian ambassador to Warsaw to demand an explanation, as the allegations showed signs of triggering a row between the two countries. Image | ||||||||||
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By Luke Salkeld Daily Mail 01st June 2009  Whipped into fantastical shapes, these clouds hang over the darkening landscape like the harbingers of a mighty storm But despite their stunning and frequent appearances, the formations have yet to be officially recognised with a name. They have been seen all over Britain in different forms - from Snowdonia to the Scottish Highlands - and in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, but usually break up without producing a storm. And some experts believe the stormy weather phenomenon deserves its very own classification. Experts at the Royal Meteorological Society are now attempting to make it official by naming it 'Asperatus' after the Latin word for 'rough'. If they are successful, it would be the first variety of cloud formation to be given a new label in over half a century 'It is a bit like looking at the surface of a choppy sea from below,' said Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, who identified the cloud from photographs sent in by members. 'We try to identify and classify all of the images of clouds we get in, but there were some that just didn't seem to fit in any of the other categories, so I began to think it might be a unique type of cloud.' He added: 'The underside of the clouds are quite rough and choppy. It looks very stormy, but some of the reports we have been getting suggest that they tend to break up without actually turning into a storm.'  The Royal Meteorological Society is now gathering detailed information for the days and locations where the asperatus clouds have been seen in an attempt to understand exactly what is causing them. Officials will then apply to the UN's World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva to have the new cloud type considered for addition into the International Cloud Atlas, the system used by meteorologists across the globe. Professor Paul Hardaker, Chief Executive of the RMS, said: 'There would probably need to be quite a lot of heat around to produce the energy needed to generate such dramatic cloud formations. 'They are quite dark structures so there must be a lot of water vapour condensing in the cloud.'  Skies over Scotland: This scene from Perthshire could help confirm the new 'Asperatus' classification _____  To see more examples of unusual types of clouds, including a section on cloud art and music to watch clouds by, visit: cloudappreciationsociety.org | ||||||||||
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**People in this country often do not know about the history of mine. They wonder why I say that it is safer for someone with my past to stay here rather than to go back home. This is a story from the recent news which I have added the pertinent pictures to in order to show you that the North of Ireland's past is not quite dead and buried. It returns often to torture innocent people who only want to live in peace. Kevin McDaid was a Catholic, married to a Protestant woman. He was also a community worker and was trying to save a man's life at the time of his horrific beating by a loyalist mob. The killing of Kevin McDaid and the brutal beating of Damien Fleming during an attack by a loyalist gang last Sunday expose the bitter sectarianism that still scars Northern Ireland Caroline Davies and Henry McDonald The Observer Sunday 31 May 2009 Silence fell as the hearse bearing Kevin McDaid's coffin stopped at the exact spot he was murdered, yards from his Coleraine home.  Then, just as his son Ryan, 22, helped by pallbearers, hoisted his father's body on to his shoulders and began the slow march along the narrow walkway to his front door, music could be heard. Strains from the flutes of loyalist marching bands floated across the River Bann, wafting over the mourning party. Photo: Kevin McDaid, brutally murderedIt was too cruel a coincidence. On one side of the river, Catholic grief. On the other, the ritualistic show of Protestant pageantry. On the day Kevin McDaid's corpse was brought home, a victim of the violent sectarianism Northern Ireland is supposed to have laid to rest, Coleraine amply demonstrated just how fractured is the thin veneer of the peace that exists in the province today. It has been one week since Mr McDaid, 49, a father of four, a volunteer cross-community youth worker, a Catholic married to a Protestant, died of a heart attack, having been brutally beaten by a loyalist mob. He and his wife, Evelyn, had come to the aid of their neighbour, Damien Fleming, 46, who, having been beaten and kicked, is clinging to life in a Belfast hospital. Evelyn's badly bruised face is testimony to the sickening violence that even a woman has been subjected to.  Evelyn McDaid - she is Protestant and her husband was Catholic "They came here to kill and they did, they killed my Kevin," Evelyn said. "They killed him because of his religion, that's what it was all about, they would have killed me, too, if I hadn't have been pulled to safety. "I don't know how I am going to let him go, I have just got him back after five days and that was agony. I just don't know how I am going to cope when they go to take him, but I will, I have to for my boys. "Kevin dying is so unfair because he was always the peacemaker, he was a community worker, involved in cross-community work and everything. If he was alive today he would have been disgusted at what has happened." Standing with a knot of locals paying their respects outside the McDaids' neat, pebble-dashed terrace home, Sinn Féin councillor Billy Leonard said: "The impact of this last week has been really, really terrible. Really traumatic." Surveying The Heights, the Catholic enclave where last Sunday bare hatred, hammers, clubs and cudgels demonstrated how far from real grassroots unity Northern Ireland remains, he added: "There's such a lot of anger here. A lot." There was anger and shame, too, on the other side of the river, where the Protestant marching season was under way with the Pride of the Bann march. Long planned, the march route had been voluntarily shortened out of deference to the McDaid and Fleming families. So it did not cross the Bann bridge, which leads to The Heights . The pipes, flutes, drums and banners of some 40 bands paraded in the town's main streets, watched by a thin line of spectators. But the occasion seemed subdued. "It's a disgrace," said one Protestant. "Everyone is ashamed. People just daren't talk about it in case they get tarred themselves, you know. But Coleraine isn't really like that. It's just gangs, on both sides," he insisted. Perhaps. But this is where sectarianism is at its most potent, among the young and dispossessed and disillusioned. There is no greater metaphor for sectarian division in Ulster than the Protestant Rangers versus Catholic Celtic rivalry. It is tribalism in the raw. And statistics prove that sectarian incidents in Northern Ireland spike during the Scottish soccer season. McDaid and Fleming appear to have been picked at random by the mob, who rampaged through this Catholic district after Rangers won the Scottish premiership. Witnesses have spoken of more than 30 drink-fuelled loyalists piling out of "Scott's" bar looking to "teach the Fenians a lesson". On The Heights estate they spilled out of cars, chanting: "We are the UDA." They found Fleming, a disabled man who had lost his job in a meat factory. They had got their "taig". Whether or not this was a UDA attack, it is a disturbing illustration of the sectarian hatred that still lurks, especially in diehard loyalist areas, of which Coleraine certainly has its share. "This has been bubbling away for years now," said Leonard, as both families appealed for no reprisals.  Damien Fleming critically ill on life support "Look at him," declared Fleming's brother, Bobby, as the family released photographs of his horrific injuries. "Would you like your brother, sister, mother, father, lying like that? No, you wouldn't. Is it worthwhile? We're human. Hurt nobody else," he urged. Many of those gathered at The Heights on Friday bore the scars of former battles. Last August, 100 loyalists descended on the enclave. Six people were injured. Some spoke of beatings, of daily having to run the gauntlet in their own estate. "That's what it's like here. All the time," said Ryan McDaid, 22, who cradled his father as he died. It was concern over the young man's safety that prompted his father to leave the house on that fateful evening. Ryan says he has since received a loyalist death threat. "Oh, they're here now," he muttered as two uniformed police officers patrolled the end of the road at a discreet distance. "Where were they on Sunday?" McDaid's family is said to believe the Police Service of Northern Ireland did not do enough to curb loyalist violence and accuse officers of negotiating with loyalists on the day of the murder. Rangers were expected to win and the Coleraine Catholics had discussed the consequences - band marches, gloating gangs, union flags thrust aloft - and the inevitable raid into their neighbourhood. But prior to the game, a group of defiant teenagers did string a line of green, white and gold pennants across the street. The fact that there is now a cross-party appeal for witnesses to help the police is because all are desperate to keep a lid on this type of violence. Despite being a university town, Coleraine remains one of those places in Northern Ireland where ancient hatred regularly bubbles to the surface . Fifty years ago some shopkeepers and businesses put up job advertisements in their windows advising that "Only Protestants need apply". Although such advertisements were made illegal decades ago, the town remains a hotbed of extreme loyalism, which is sullenly opposed to the Belfast-based leaderships of the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Volunteer Force, both of which have tried to move loyalism in a more political direction. Those accused of murder, attempted murder, assault and affray last Thursday in Ballymena magistrates' court clearly have some support within the Protestant and loyalist community. Seventeen armed police officers, some in riot gear, had to form a human barrier in court around 70 supporters of the defendants and the victims' families and friends. The tension in the court-house and the palpable fear back in Coleraine illuminate a wider problem facing Ulster loyalism as it tries to cope with the changing Northern Ireland. While the majority of the UDA's six brigades contemplate giving up arms - one in particular, South East Antrim, has confirmed to the Observer it is poised to decommission weapons - one of its units remains opposed to handing over guns. That unit is the so-called North West Brigade led by a notorious loyalist terrorist known as The Mexican and which includes Coleraine. Nationalists who have lived in the town all their life are sceptical about moves by the Northern Ireland Office to try to bring the Coleraine loyalists in from the cold. John Dallat, an SDLP member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, criticised both Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland secretary, and the security minister Paul Goggins this weekend over what he called their "pussyfooting" with local loyalist terrorists. "The ministers were reluctant to say that any members of the local UDA may have been involved in the attacks last Sunday," said Dallat. "Everyone in Coleraine knows otherwise." He added: "This was an organised invasion of a vulnerable area, and not a whim among a couple of guys watching football in a pub. You do not go to watch a Rangers match with a hammer or a cudgel." About 58,000 people live in Coleraine borough, of which Catholics make up 20%. For decades during the Troubles the Catholic community kept its head down, fearful of demonstrating any aspect of Irish nationalist culture. At the start of the Troubles, with thousands of Protestants fleeing from nearby Derry city into Coleraine, the town's only Hibernian band folded and from 1969 onwards there was no celebration of Irish culture. The loyalists claim it as their town, now. But the rest of Coleraine just wants peace. On the white railings outside McDaid's home, green and white Celtic shirts are tied, alongside bouquets, and verses. One reads: "Peace is the destination and the way. Love is the path we must take." It is signed "A Protestant". | ||||||||||
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Belfast Telegraph Monday, 11 May 2009  Prolific US screen and television writer John Furia Jr, who penned popular series including Bonanza, The Waltons and Hawaii Five-O among many others, has died at 79. The Writers Guild of America West disclosed Furia’s death in a statement. Furia, a former president of the WGAW, was a longtime advocate for Hollywood writers. He was also a founding chairman of the Writing for Screen and Television Division at the University of Southern California’s film school and was a full professor there teaching screen and television writing. “John’s character and dignity touched and influenced generations of writers from the founders of the Guild itself to the newest of student-associates,” said WGAW president Patric M Verrone. Image source | ||||||||||
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By LYNN ELBER Associated Press 25 April 2009 LOS ANGELES (AP) — Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" and who won a Tony Award for the musical "Mame," died Saturday. She was 86.  Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.This Aug. 29, 1988 file photo shows actress Beatrice Arthur accepting her Emmy award at the 40th annual Emmy Awards ceremony in Pasadena, Ca. "She was a brilliant and witty woman," said Watt, who was Arthur's personal assistant for six years. "Bea will always have a special place in my heart." Arthur first appeared in the landmark comedy series "All in the Family" as Edith Bunker's loudly outspoken, liberal cousin, Maude Finley. She proved a perfect foil for blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), and their blistering exchanges were so entertaining that producer Norman Lear fashioned Arthur's own series. In a 2008 interview with The Associated Press, Arthur said she was lucky to be discovered by TV after a long stage career, recalling with bemusement CBS executives asking about the new "girl." "I was already 50 years old. I had done so much off-Broadway, on Broadway, but they said, `Who is that girl? Let's give her her own series,'" Arthur said. "Maude" scored with television viewers immediately on its CBS debut in September 1972, and Arthur won an Emmy Award for the role in 1977. The comedy flowed from Maude's efforts to cast off the traditional restraints that women faced, but the series often had a serious base. Her husband Walter (Bill Macy) became an alcoholic, and she underwent an abortion, which drew a torrent of viewer protests. Maude became a standard bearer for the growing feminist movement in America. The ratings of "Maude" in the early years approached those of its parent, "All in the Family," but by 1977 the audience started to dwindle. A major format change was planned, but in early 1978 Arthur announced she was quitting the show. "It's been absolutely glorious; I've loved every minute of it," she said. "But it's been six years, and I think it's time to leave." "Golden Girls" (1985-1992) was another groundbreaking comedy, finding surprising success in a television market increasingly skewed toward a younger, product-buying audience. The series concerned three retirees — Arthur, Betty White and Rue McClanahan — and the mother of Arthur's character, Estelle Getty, who lived together in a Miami apartment. In contrast to the violent "Miami Vice," the comedy was nicknamed "Miami Nice." As Dorothy Zbornak, Arthur seemed as caustic and domineering as Maude. She was unconcerned about the similarity of the two roles. "Look — I'm 5-feet-9, I have a deep voice and I have a way with a line," she told an interviewer. "What can I do about it? I can't stay home waiting for something different. I think it's a total waste of energy worrying about typecasting." The interplay among the four women and their relations with men fueled the comedy, and the show amassed a big audience and 10 Emmys, including two as best comedy series and individual awards for each of the stars. In 1992, Arthur announced she was leaving "Golden Girls." The three other stars returned in "The Golden Palace," but it lasted only one season. Arthur was born Bernice Frankel in New York City in 1922. When she was 11, her family moved to Cambridge, Md., where her father opened a clothing store. At 12 she had grown to full height, and she dreamed of being a petite blond movie star like June Allyson. There was one advantage of being tall and deep-voiced: She was chosen for the male roles in school plays. Bernice — she hated the name and adopted her mother's nickname of Bea — overcame shyness about her size by winning over her classmates with wisecracks. She was elected the wittiest girl in her class. After two years at a junior college in Virginia, she earned a degree as a medical lab technician, but she "loathed" doing lab work at a hospital. Acting held more appeal, and she enrolled in a drama course at the New School of Social Research in New York City. To support herself, she sang in a night spot that required her to push drinks on customers. During this time she had a brief marriage that provided her stage name of Beatrice Arthur. In 1950, she married again, to Broadway actor and future Tony-winning director Gene Saks. After a few years in off-Broadway and stock company plays and television dramas, Arthur's career gathered momentum with her role as Lucy Brown in the 1955 production of "The Threepenny Opera." In 2008, when Arthur was inducted in the TV Academy Hall of Fame, Arthur pointed to the role as the highlight of her long career. "A lot of that had to do with the fact that I felt, `Ah, yes, I belong here,'" Arthur said. More plays and musicals followed, and she also sang in nightclubs and played small roles in TV comedy shows. Then, in 1964, Harold Prince cast her as Yente the Matchmaker in the original company of "Fiddler on the Roof." Arthur's biggest Broadway triumph came in 1966 as Vera Charles, Angela Lansbury's acerbic friend in the musical "Mame," directed by Saks. Richard Watts of the New York Post called her performance "a portrait in acid of a savagely witty, cynical and serpent-tongued woman." She won the Tony as best supporting actress and repeated the role in the unsuccessful film version that also was directed by Saks, starring Lucille Ball as Mame. Arthur would play a variation of Vera Charles in "Maude" and "The Golden Girls." In 1983, Arthur attempted another series, "Amanda's," an Americanized version of John Cleese's hilarious "Fawlty Towers." She was cast as owner of a small seaside hotel with a staff of eccentrics. It lasted a mere nine episodes. Between series, Arthur remained active in films and theater. Among the movies: "That Kind of Woman" (1959), "Lovers and Other Strangers" (1970), Mel Brooks' "The History of the World: Part I" (1981), "For Better or Worse" (1995). The plays included Woody Allen's "The Floating Light Bulb" and "The Bermuda Avenue Triangle," written by and costarring Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. During 2001 and 2002 she toured the country in a one-woman show of songs and stories, "... And Then There's Bea." Arthur and Saks divorced in 1978 after 28 years. They had two sons, Matthew and Daniel. In his long career, Saks won Tonys for "I Love My Wife," "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Biloxi Blues." One of his Tony nominations was for "Mame." In 1999, Arthur told an interviewer of the three influences in her career: "Sid Caesar taught me the outrageous; (method acting guru) Lee Strasberg taught me what I call reality; and ('Threepenny Opera' star) Lotte Lenya, whom I adored, taught me economy." In recent years, Arthur made guest appearances on shows including "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Malcolm in the Middle." She was chairwoman of the Art Attack Foundation, a non-profit performing arts scholarship organization. Arthur is survived by her sons and two granddaughters. No funeral services are planned. Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report. | ||||||||||
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By James Bone in New York Independent.ie Saturday February 14 2009 Her husband died in the attack on the World Trade Centre after phoning to say that he loved her. Yesterday, as she flew to commemorate his 58th birthday and to establish a scholarship in his name at the high school where they met, Beverly Eckert also met her death in a fiery plane crash. The outspoken September 11 widow was among 50 people who died when a Continental Connection commuter plane nosedived into a house in upstate New York, killing everyone on board and one person on the ground. ( >>Read on ) | ||||||||||
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