Grim Reader, June 4, 2010: Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper and Louise Bourgeois
by Michael Schaffer
JUNE 3, 2010 TAGS:
Gary Coleman, an Associated Press obit informs us, “wanted to escape” the catchphrase he made famous. It’s a good thing he wasn’t around to read this week’s coverage of his death at age 42.
“Packed inside Gary Coleman's 4-foot-8-inch frame was the spark of an actor who would become a national phenomenon, a television star who turned ‘Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?’ into a cultural catchphrase,” begins the Salt Lake Tribune, the top paper in Coleman’s adopted state of Utah. “The feisty young Coleman became an instant star, thanks to his trademark wisecrack, ‘Whatchu talkin’ bout, Willis?,’” explains The Root. Even the lame attempts at pop-culture humor break out the line. “Now he’s up in heaven saying, ‘Watchu talking ‘bout, angels?’” riffs dlisted.com.
In fact, the Coleman obits are just as predictable as the comic comeback made famous by Diff’rent Strokes character Arnold Jackson: Coleman’s is perhaps the archetypal tale of child stardom’s lingering curse. “For a while, it seemed that Gary Coleman's cherubic face was everywhere, from TV to T-shirts to lunchboxes,” writes USA Today. But, of course, that’s just the setup. Lunchbox ubiquity inevitably gave way to a post-TV life that “quickly devolved into a sorry spectacle of lawsuits, countersuits, recriminations and hurt feelings,” according to the Washington Post.
Coleman battled his parents and managers over money, declared bankruptcy, was arrested for incidents including a fight with a woman twice his weight, worked briefly as a mall security guard, and launched an attention-seeking freak-show bid for California governor (he finished eighth). He also battled health problems related to the kidney condition that had originally kept him from growing to full height. For reasons that baffle Grim Reader, the New York Times’ lede describes this cavalcade of ignominy as “a well-publicized string of financial and personal difficulties.” Yes, that’s one way to put it.
But the Times is also among the few outlets to devote serious attention to what Coleman’s fame, playing the Harlem-reared wiseacre adopted by a white millionaire, actually represented, quoting a critic who derided his act as “a form of latter-day minstrelsy.”
The sad state of the former child star may ultimately be so well known to Americans — another Diff’rent Strokes kid also died young; the actor who played Willis did jail time — that it’s impossible to find anything novel to say about the train-wreck that was Coleman’s adult life. Better, perhaps, to look overseas, where the Guardian breaks out its literary big guns in remembering this diminutive TV actor. Coleman’s post-Hollywood career, the British paper declares, was a real life illustration of “F Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that ‘there are no second acts in American lives.’” OK, then.
*
Dennis Hopper was Hollywood’s “unbridled id,” in the words of the New York Daily News’ Joe Neumaier. The obits all go high up with descriptions of Hopper’s persona as a “bad boy” (Variety), “wild man” (Associated Press) and “enfant terrible” (CNN) with a “drug- and alcohol-fueled reputation” (Los Angeles Times). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the New York Post is among the most colorful in its depiction of that lifestyle. “In his heyday, Hopper's daily intake of stimulants included 30 beers, a half-gallon of rum and 3 grams of coke,” the second paragraph of Annie Karsi’s article reports.
But Hopper the artist also gets his due, with obit writers praising his harrowing roles in flicks like Blue Velvet and Apocalypse Now. “Hopper could fairly be regarded as one of the angry young men who had helped to spark the revolution” that transformed popular movies during the decade that followed his classic Easy Rider, declares the Telegraph’s Marc Lee. The Guardian, meanwhile, reaches a bit in turning Hopper himself — who the conservative Big Hollywood notes was a loyal Republican later in life — into a symbol of that favorite obit theme: dashed innocence. “His persona, on and off the screen, signified the lost idealism of the 1960s,” the paper declares.
Still in the arts, there are a slew of obits this week for Louise Bourgeois, “perhaps the last twisted sphinx of surrealistic psychology, and the final vehicle of Abstract Expressionistic seriousness,” according to New York magazine. If that description doesn’t explain much about what the French-born, Manhattan-based sculptor did, look no farther than the Independent’s headline, which describes her creations thusly: “Shocking, bruising, ghoulish and erotic.” The New York Times does the nicest job with Bourgeois’ biography, describing her childhood in France with a domineering, adulterous father who “instilled a resentment and an insecurity” that shaped much of her later work.
Chris Haney wouldn’t have to wait for the obituaries to know the names of Bourgeois’ or Hopper’s major works: The co-inventor of the board game Trivial Pursuit “worked 16-hour days writing questions,” the New York Times reports, after coming up with the idea while serving as a photo editor for the Montreal Gazette. A few friends made small investments in the project; after Haney sold to Selchow and Righter, all of them got rich. “One of Canada’s most successful cultural exports,” the National Post says. No kidding: 100 million games have been sold in 17 different languages, according to the Globe and Mail. A quarter-century later, it’s still enough of a cultural touchstone that lots of Trivial Pursuit-themed writing appears in the obits. Grim Reader’s favorite is this headline from The Australian: “Which Trivial Pursuit inventor has died?”
The Associated Press catches late-breaking word of the death of Rue McLanahan, the second of TV’s Golden Girls to die in just over a year. (Bea Arthur died last April). McLanahan was an Obie-winning stage actress before crossing into TV, where she did a stint opposite Arthur in Maude and then “brought the sexually liberated Southern belle Blanche Devereaux to life” in the geriatric comedy series. The sexually liberated roles didn’t stop there: Well into her 70s, McLanahan appeared in a Logo comedy as the batty mother of a drag queen. One episode, filmed while McLanahan was recovering from knee surgery, featured her in a sex scene “in which the bed broke, forcing her to hang on to a windowsill to avoid tumbling off..”
Also this week, there are send-offs for Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky, “one of the most daring writers of the Soviet era,” in the words of the BBC. Voznesensky, the Associated Press says, was known for “unusual rhymes and bold metaphors [that] contrasted sharply with other Soviet poetry.”… Peter Orlovsky, meanwhile, was known for poems that “were playful and frank, featuring unusual spellings and a conversational style,” according to the Washington Post. But that description runs low in the piece, because he was better known as “a longtime muse, inspiration and companion of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg,” Orlovsky’s partner of 40 years…. Danish conductor/composer Ole Schmidt gets a lengthy obit in London’s Telegraph, but it’s not all good news: The piece opens by noting that Schmidt’s high-profile 1975 series of conducting engagements “rarely lived up to the promised billing” and adds that his compositions represented “an acquired taste.”
In more accessible music, the Detroit News remembers Ali Ollie Woodson, the 1980s-era lead singer for the legendary Motown act the Temptations. “Woodson was known for his way with a song,” the article opens, in the week’s least useful obit lede. (The man was a singer, for Heaven’s sake: He better have been known for his way with a song!) If that’s what local obit writing entails, it’s almost enough to make you forgive the rival Detroit Free Press for using wire copy to cover a Motown figure. Though not a Temptations member during the group’s 1960s heyday, Woodson “helped restore the group to hit-making glory,” the paper’s Associated Press piece explains, crooning new hits that played “an integral part in keeping the Temptations from becoming just a nostalgia act.”
Grim Reader sees a lot of obits these days that detail the various debauched exploits of celebrities. So it seemed like a change of pace to read the beginning of the Independent’s piece on British character actor Richard Stapley: “Stapley belonged to a generation of movie actors who plied their trade during the halcyon days of Hollywood – when stars were great and dalliances were discreet,” it says. Of course, the obit then tries to make Stapley’s long-gone dalliances as public as possible, noting that his “diamond blue eyes and a deep, educated English accent … caught the eye of the movie-makers – and a number of actresses as well.” He briefly rented a house with Gloria Swanson, though the obit explains that “whether it was a practical arrangement or something more was not revealed by Stapley.”
While we’re on the subject of euphemism: A couple weeks ago, Grim Reader covered the obits of General Oswaldo López Arellano, a Honduran military ruler variously remembered for his anticommunism and his close ties to Washington. It’s a pity none of those thorough, comprehensive American obits opened with as frank a lede as the one from the Times of London: Arellano, the story declares, “was the very model of a banana republic strongman.”
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
“Packed inside Gary Coleman's 4-foot-8-inch frame was the spark of an actor who would become a national phenomenon, a television star who turned ‘Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?’ into a cultural catchphrase,” begins the Salt Lake Tribune, the top paper in Coleman’s adopted state of Utah. “The feisty young Coleman became an instant star, thanks to his trademark wisecrack, ‘Whatchu talkin’ bout, Willis?,’” explains The Root. Even the lame attempts at pop-culture humor break out the line. “Now he’s up in heaven saying, ‘Watchu talking ‘bout, angels?’” riffs dlisted.com. In fact, the Coleman obits are just as predictable as the comic comeback made famous by Diff’rent Strokes character Arnold Jackson: Coleman’s is perhaps the archetypal tale of child stardom’s lingering curse. “For a while, it seemed that Gary Coleman's cherubic face was everywhere, from TV to T-shirts to lunchboxes,” writes USA Today. But, of course, that’s just the setup. Lunchbox ubiquity inevitably gave way to a post-TV life that “quickly devolved into a sorry spectacle of lawsuits, countersuits, recriminations and hurt feelings,” according to the Washington Post.
Coleman battled his parents and managers over money, declared bankruptcy, was arrested for incidents including a fight with a woman twice his weight, worked briefly as a mall security guard, and launched an attention-seeking freak-show bid for California governor (he finished eighth). He also battled health problems related to the kidney condition that had originally kept him from growing to full height. For reasons that baffle Grim Reader, the New York Times’ lede describes this cavalcade of ignominy as “a well-publicized string of financial and personal difficulties.” Yes, that’s one way to put it.
But the Times is also among the few outlets to devote serious attention to what Coleman’s fame, playing the Harlem-reared wiseacre adopted by a white millionaire, actually represented, quoting a critic who derided his act as “a form of latter-day minstrelsy.”
The sad state of the former child star may ultimately be so well known to Americans — another Diff’rent Strokes kid also died young; the actor who played Willis did jail time — that it’s impossible to find anything novel to say about the train-wreck that was Coleman’s adult life. Better, perhaps, to look overseas, where the Guardian breaks out its literary big guns in remembering this diminutive TV actor. Coleman’s post-Hollywood career, the British paper declares, was a real life illustration of “F Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that ‘there are no second acts in American lives.’” OK, then.
*
Dennis Hopper was Hollywood’s “unbridled id,” in the words of the New York Daily News’ Joe Neumaier. The obits all go high up with descriptions of Hopper’s persona as a “bad boy” (Variety), “wild man” (Associated Press) and “enfant terrible” (CNN) with a “drug- and alcohol-fueled reputation” (Los Angeles Times). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the New York Post is among the most colorful in its depiction of that lifestyle. “In his heyday, Hopper's daily intake of stimulants included 30 beers, a half-gallon of rum and 3 grams of coke,” the second paragraph of Annie Karsi’s article reports.
But Hopper the artist also gets his due, with obit writers praising his harrowing roles in flicks like Blue Velvet and Apocalypse Now. “Hopper could fairly be regarded as one of the angry young men who had helped to spark the revolution” that transformed popular movies during the decade that followed his classic Easy Rider, declares the Telegraph’s Marc Lee. The Guardian, meanwhile, reaches a bit in turning Hopper himself — who the conservative Big Hollywood notes was a loyal Republican later in life — into a symbol of that favorite obit theme: dashed innocence. “His persona, on and off the screen, signified the lost idealism of the 1960s,” the paper declares.Still in the arts, there are a slew of obits this week for Louise Bourgeois, “perhaps the last twisted sphinx of surrealistic psychology, and the final vehicle of Abstract Expressionistic seriousness,” according to New York magazine. If that description doesn’t explain much about what the French-born, Manhattan-based sculptor did, look no farther than the Independent’s headline, which describes her creations thusly: “Shocking, bruising, ghoulish and erotic.” The New York Times does the nicest job with Bourgeois’ biography, describing her childhood in France with a domineering, adulterous father who “instilled a resentment and an insecurity” that shaped much of her later work.
Chris Haney wouldn’t have to wait for the obituaries to know the names of Bourgeois’ or Hopper’s major works: The co-inventor of the board game Trivial Pursuit “worked 16-hour days writing questions,” the New York Times reports, after coming up with the idea while serving as a photo editor for the Montreal Gazette. A few friends made small investments in the project; after Haney sold to Selchow and Righter, all of them got rich. “One of Canada’s most successful cultural exports,” the National Post says. No kidding: 100 million games have been sold in 17 different languages, according to the Globe and Mail. A quarter-century later, it’s still enough of a cultural touchstone that lots of Trivial Pursuit-themed writing appears in the obits. Grim Reader’s favorite is this headline from The Australian: “Which Trivial Pursuit inventor has died?”
The Associated Press catches late-breaking word of the death of Rue McLanahan, the second of TV’s Golden Girls to die in just over a year. (Bea Arthur died last April). McLanahan was an Obie-winning stage actress before crossing into TV, where she did a stint opposite Arthur in Maude and then “brought the sexually liberated Southern belle Blanche Devereaux to life” in the geriatric comedy series. The sexually liberated roles didn’t stop there: Well into her 70s, McLanahan appeared in a Logo comedy as the batty mother of a drag queen. One episode, filmed while McLanahan was recovering from knee surgery, featured her in a sex scene “in which the bed broke, forcing her to hang on to a windowsill to avoid tumbling off..”
Also this week, there are send-offs for Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky, “one of the most daring writers of the Soviet era,” in the words of the BBC. Voznesensky, the Associated Press says, was known for “unusual rhymes and bold metaphors [that] contrasted sharply with other Soviet poetry.”… Peter Orlovsky, meanwhile, was known for poems that “were playful and frank, featuring unusual spellings and a conversational style,” according to the Washington Post. But that description runs low in the piece, because he was better known as “a longtime muse, inspiration and companion of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg,” Orlovsky’s partner of 40 years…. Danish conductor/composer Ole Schmidt gets a lengthy obit in London’s Telegraph, but it’s not all good news: The piece opens by noting that Schmidt’s high-profile 1975 series of conducting engagements “rarely lived up to the promised billing” and adds that his compositions represented “an acquired taste.”In more accessible music, the Detroit News remembers Ali Ollie Woodson, the 1980s-era lead singer for the legendary Motown act the Temptations. “Woodson was known for his way with a song,” the article opens, in the week’s least useful obit lede. (The man was a singer, for Heaven’s sake: He better have been known for his way with a song!) If that’s what local obit writing entails, it’s almost enough to make you forgive the rival Detroit Free Press for using wire copy to cover a Motown figure. Though not a Temptations member during the group’s 1960s heyday, Woodson “helped restore the group to hit-making glory,” the paper’s Associated Press piece explains, crooning new hits that played “an integral part in keeping the Temptations from becoming just a nostalgia act.”
Grim Reader sees a lot of obits these days that detail the various debauched exploits of celebrities. So it seemed like a change of pace to read the beginning of the Independent’s piece on British character actor Richard Stapley: “Stapley belonged to a generation of movie actors who plied their trade during the halcyon days of Hollywood – when stars were great and dalliances were discreet,” it says. Of course, the obit then tries to make Stapley’s long-gone dalliances as public as possible, noting that his “diamond blue eyes and a deep, educated English accent … caught the eye of the movie-makers – and a number of actresses as well.” He briefly rented a house with Gloria Swanson, though the obit explains that “whether it was a practical arrangement or something more was not revealed by Stapley.”
While we’re on the subject of euphemism: A couple weeks ago, Grim Reader covered the obits of General Oswaldo López Arellano, a Honduran military ruler variously remembered for his anticommunism and his close ties to Washington. It’s a pity none of those thorough, comprehensive American obits opened with as frank a lede as the one from the Times of London: Arellano, the story declares, “was the very model of a banana republic strongman.”
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
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