Online voting has begun for the 12th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards — click the link to see the nominees for the best in the horror genre from 2013.
The website is fun to browse in its own right because some of the categories are illustrated, such as the Best Toy, Model, or Collectible where one of the nominees is the 72-card set of Art of Robert Aragon Trading Cards.
Norm Lewis as Inspector Javert in Les Miserables.
By James H. Burns: Stage and television vet Norm Lewis made headlines this week, signed to be Broadway’s first African-American actor in the title role of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Hal Prince’s celebrated adaptation of Gaston Leroux’ Phantom of the Opera.
Robert Guillaume rather famously played the role in Los Angeles nearly twenty-five years ago, taking over from Great Britain’s and Broadway’s original Phantom, Michael Crawford…
But the news reminded me of a fairly intriguing bit of fantasy lore:
Sammy Davis Jr. had his heart set on playing the part, and — if my memory serves — even recorded some tracks, to show Webber he could handle the part.
Davis, you see, was a major monster (and presumably fantasy) movie buff!
In fact, Davis said in one of his memoirs, he made Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee hip to just how successful their Hammer Studios horror films were in the United States. Running into them at a British studio, Davis said their jaws collectively dropped when he mentioned their films’ American box office tally.
Christopher Lee, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Cushing.
The duo also made a relatively unknown cameo appearance in Davis’ and Peter Lawford’s One More Time, directed by Jerry Lewis, a sequel to their earlier Salt and Pepper, where they portrayed “swinging nightclub owners in London.” In a secret laboratory, Cushing seemed to be reprising Baron Frankenstein, and Lee was again decked out as Count Dracula…
Phantom of the Opera’s production team may have felt that Davis’ celebrity was simply too strong to successfully essay the role.
Sadly, a Davis tenure beneath the Paris Opera House may have been mis-fated, as he became ill not long-after the musical’s initial ballyhoo, and he passed in 1990.
But Webber has said in recent years that he regretted the lost opportunity for Davis to embody “The Music of the Night.”
Addendum: A YouTube video exists of Davis singing “Music of the Night” on the 1988 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. (Video has some glitches, but audio seems complete.)
Update 03/22/2014: Added Davis YouTube to article.
Ken Utsui in Attack From Space.
It seems odd that in the same week the original Captain Video died, the Japanese actor who played the space super hero known here as Starman (kind of a Green Lantern type) also passed away. The man who played Japan’s first cinematic superhero died March 14 of natural causes at the age of 82.
In the 1950s, Ken Utsui starred in 60 films for Shintoho, including the Super Giant series. After he moved to Daiei film in 1963 he starred in another 52 films. He also appeared frequently on TV.
This musical tribute on YouTube has lots of clips of his movie work.
[Thanks to James H. Burns for the story.]
Thanks to everyone who responded to Ed Green’s audition video for The Reel Deal. It is currently among the top ten entries with the most “likes” – over 700 at the moment. The show will announce the first round of callbacks on March 24. Stay tuned to see if Ed makes the cut!
(For an explanation of the competition click here.)
No foolin’! Detcon1, the 2014 North American Science Fiction Convention, will hike some of its pre-registration rates on April 1.
On April 1 full adult attending memberships rise to $70. To encourage attendance by families and younger fans, young adult and child membership prices will remain at $50 and $25 respectively. Supporting memberships remain unchanged at $35. Online registration and a printable form is available here.
Pre-supporter discounts remain in effect for pre-registrations but will not be given for memberships purchased at-the-door. People who pre-supported at the Passenger level qualify for a $20 discount, while those who pre-supported at the Driver level qualify for a $40 discount. A list of pre-supporting members can be found here.
Celebrated sf writer Lucius Shepard died in Portland (OR) March 18 at the age of 70. He reportedly suffered a stroke last year and had been in poor health for some time.
He won a Hugo and a Nebula, and a host of other awards, but the truest measure of his popularity in the sf genre may be the Locus Poll, where he registered eight wins between 1985 and 2001 – for seven pieces of fiction and a collection.
Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University in 1980 and sold his first story, “Black Coral,” in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall.
Critics found in his work the influence of his travels throughout Southeast Asia, Central and South America, and concern for impoverished third-word countries generally. During the early 1980s he worked as a freelance journalist covering the civil war in El Salvador. Thereafter he primarily wrote fiction. His first novel, Green Eyes, appeared in 1984.
Fans grouped him with the cyberpunk movement. In 1985 he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. His novella “R&R,” which won a Nebula in 1986, later became part of his novel Life During Wartime (1986). He won a Hugo for his novella “Barnacle Bill the Spacer” in 1993.
He was also an award-winning poet whose “White Trains” received a Rhysling Award in 1988.
Update 03/20/2014: Deleted reference to service in armed forces. Corrected age at death.
Ursula K. Le Guin is the winner of the 2014 Ken Kesey Award for Fiction from Portland-based Literary Arts, which annually celebrates notable Oregon writers in their Oregon Book Awards & Oregon Literary Fellowships program. Le Guin was honored for The Unreal and The Real: Collected Stories Vol. 1 and 2.
This is her second Oregon Book Award, the other given in 1992 for her novel Searoad.
“I am delighted that The Unreal and the Real was given the Oregon Book Award for fiction,” said Le Guin. “I presented the fiction award at the first OBA ceremony, in 1987 — it was the H.L. Davis Award then, and as I remarked last night, to me it still is…. The audience was, as always, large, friendly, and unruly. Portland really is a great town for book people, and Oregon Literary Arts is a great part of it.”
[From a Book View Cafe press release.]
Two popular TV shows referenced famous sf writers last week.
Morris Keesan alerted me to the first instance. His e-mail came with the subject line “Trivia Not About Ray Bradbury” — which he knows is rare as hen’s teeth at File 770.
Jeopardy! episode #6797 challenged contestants with a Final Jeopardy category titled “British Authors.” They were given this answer:
The author of more than 50 books, he won 6 Hugo awards & was nominated for a 1968 Oscar.
(As you doubtless know, on Jeopardy! players are shown an answer and must come back with the appropriate question.)
Keesan said, “Because of File 770, my first thoughts were ‘Ray Bradbury was a screenwriter. No, wait, he wasn’t British.’”
The winning question is here. Both contestants who made it to Final Jeopardy got it right.
Another writer was referenced on last week’s Big Bang Theory episode “The Mommy Observation”. Raj and Leonard had a quick exchange about exactly which of Harlan Ellison’s Outer Limits episodes Terminator’s premise was stolen from.
[Thanks to Morris Keesan and John King Tarpinian.]
WordPress tracks search terms that deliver hits to this blog and I have to say the connection is not always obvious to me. Today’s winning entry in that line is —
That it registered here means someone found a promising item and clicked through. And if I want to know what they hit I could repeat the search myself. Except I’d hate to discover I really did write about this at some point. I’d prefer to think I never have…
Louisville fan Michael Sinclair died March 14 after a long decline. His wife of 26 years, Christa Cook-Sinclair and son, Alex, were with him at the end.
Michael Sinclair under attack by Godzilla.
Sinclair was an avid science fiction reader who got his first taste of fandom at the original RiverCon in 1975, having found out about it from an article in a Louisville paper. That weekend he met John Guidry for the first time – future chair of the 1988 New Orleans Worldcon won in large measure by Sinclair’s efforts as bid party host.
In Sinclair’s fannish memoir at The Thunder Child he claimed to have become involved working conventions as a result of a loc he wrote to File 770 after the 1979 NASFiC:
File 770 (Mike Glyer’s science fiction fan newzine, reporting on fanzines, sf clubs, conventions, fan funds and fanac) [was] whining about something. I think it had to do with [a fan] huckstering out of his hotel room. In any event, I wrote a rebuttal letter to File 770, saying, “The last thing the fannish world needs is either a Con run by or and or/criticized by lawyers.” Cliff Amos saw the letter and called me up to ask if I wanted to work on RiverCon. I said I would like to work on the film program, but would like to have a budget and not depend on library flicks.
Sinclair surely knew the chuckle this would bring from the many friends he made hosting the string of Hurricane-themed bid parties that brought the 1988 Worldcon to New Orleans – a committee chaired by lawyer John Guidry, and with three more lawyers in the leadership.
The New Orleans in 1988 bidders bankrolled the travel of the charismatic Sinclair all over the country to host room parties where he could dispense Southern charm and hospitality, and French Quarter well drinks. He greeted everyone, “Here, have a Hurricane!” and handed them a potent cup of vodka, rum, and fruit juices, mixed with enough grenadine to turn it fire engine red. This was extremely popular.
The Worldcon bidding system is in large measure a test to destruction. Fans want there to be lots of great bid parties anyway, but implicit in that demand is a test of the bid committee’s creative and logistical competence. Unless a group can put together a string of good bid parties, the thinking goes, you can rule out any chance of them coping with the challenge of an actual Worldcon.
So as an audition for a New Orleans Worldcon, Sinclair’s parties led to a ballot box triumph over three competing bids.
However, Sinclair had never intended to be part of running the Worldcon. Once New Orleans won he was done. Ever since then fandom has made sure to ask whether the folks running the impressive parties are the same ones who’ll be running the con.
Say Da to Moscow bid passport.
Before long the Sinclairs found they missed the fun of those bid parties. Casting about for inspiration, Christa and Mike created a “Say Da to Moscow” Worldcon bid. Because their idea germinated in 1989, two years before the Soviet Union fell apart, they didn’t have to worry about winning, only about having a good time. The bid theme was a satirical play on the idioms and symbols of the USSR’s Communist Party. Led by “Mikhail Sinclair,” Party Theoretician and General Secretary, the bid’s Central Committee included the late Bruce Pelz, Hotel Liaison; Tony Ubelhor, Minister of Propaganda; Maureen Dorris, Minister of Defensive Camouflage; Jack Reed, Chronicler Emeritus; and miscellaneous Party Members and agents.
Bid parties were paid for by the sale of $5 presupports, which came with a convincing looking passport with all kinds of stuff in Cyrillic lettering.
Christa and Mike soon shelved the party scene as their son Alexander came along in 1990.
The family’s memorial plans are still to be made but, as Mike wished, he will be remembered with a wake later this year at Midwestcon.