I wanted to bid farewell to these recently passed, major figures in film history since the chances of them making it into this Sunday night's Oscar "In Memoriam" segment is slim to none.....
And already pointed out in a previous post about the upcoming awards ceremony, come Monday morning, the Academy can count on catching hell about all the iconic, key people they leave out.
BERT I. GORDON (1922-2023 (100) The Amazing Colossal Special Effects Guy....or as I sometimes jokingly referred to him, the Notorious B.I.G..........
His films constitute a major chunk of any Baby Boomer's afternoons at the Saturday Matinee. A prolific writer-director of ultra low budget, cheesy sci-fi-fantasy films, Gordon also created their vivid, but laughably unconvincing special effects. Giant people and creatures were his favorite go-to subjects...."Village Of The Giants", "Food Of The Gods", "Empire Of The Ants", "The Amazing Colossal Man" , "King Dinosaur", "Earth Vs. The Spider" ( a big-ass arachnid), "The Magic Sword" (a big ass dragon) and of course "The Beginning Of The End" (his giant grasshopper epic) Sure, the effects were painfully crummy, but damn the movies reveled in them ......so did us Saturday Matinee kids......
TOPOL (1935-2023 (87) The genial avuncular Israeli actor, forever known for his portrayal of Tevye in Norman Jewison's large scale version of the musical "Fiddler On The Roof"
On stage, the larger-than-life theatricality of the role encouraged actors to shamelessly ham it up, no one more so than the role's originator, the grand comedic Zero Mostel.
But Jewison took a realistic approach to bringing the play to the screen and Topol adjusted the performance to turn the expansive, ranting Tevye into a more universal, recognizable human being.
He never racked up a long filmography, but you never forgot him in anything he appeared in....most memorably in his major supporting role as one of Roger Moore's roughish allies in the Bond film "For Your Eyes Only"
Robert Blake (1933 - 2023 (89) What a long, turbulent and troubled life this ionic actor led.....in a career that stretched to almost the entirety of cinema history.......starting at age 5, when he joined 'The Little Rascals', continuing through his childhood (yes, that's him as the little Mexican boy hanging around Humphrey Bogart at the start of "Treasure Of Sierra Madre"). He toiled on in episodic television until snagging his breakthrough role as as one of the killers in "In Cold Blood".
And from there, an up-and-down career film career. Blake found few roles to take advantage of his natural raw, charismatic intensity.....until TV came calling again with "Baretta", a gritty cop series he enjoyed as a star for 3 years.
After his last film role in David Lynch's "Lost Highway", Blake resurfaced in the worst way imaginable, put on trial for his wife's murder and then later acquitted, leaving a mountain of unanswered questions and theories. (and then later a conviction against him in a civil court).
Memorable work amid a chaotic life......no film buff's likely to forget him.....
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