List of 10 long-lived arts figures
The article has good reviews of two of Bergman and Antonioni films.
After Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died on the same day, those shocked by their passing were outnumbered only, perhaps, by those shocked that Antonioni had still been alive, at age 94. Here is our list of 10 quietly long-lived arts figures who are still with us:
• Sid Caesar, 85. Pray for a screen comeback for the TV legend so his final credit won’t be as “Old Army Buddy” in Comic Book: The Movie.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 88. The oldest living Nobel laureate for literature, the author of Cancer Ward returned to Russia in 1994 after his exile, and now writes speeches and pamphlets in which he rails against East and West alike.
• Arthur C. Clarke, 89. How great a sci-fi writer is the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood’s End? So great, he has actually found the secret for travelling into the future: take care of yourself and just wait.
• Vera Lynn, 90. The British songbird whose songs like “The White Cliffs of Dover” kept morale high in World War II has outlasted the Nazi threat by 62 years. The optimism of her wartime hit “We’ll Meet Again” was made to seem outdated at the climax of Dr. Strangelove, but then again she has outlived all of that movie’s principals. Who’s old hat now, Stanley Kubrick?
• Olivia de Havilland, 91. Hollywood’s full of humiliations for older actresses. For example, de Havilland’s onscreen paramour Dick Powell (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935) has been dead for 44 years.
• Les Paul, 92. Never mind mere survival: The man who pioneered the solid-body electric guitar – without whom rock `n’ roll couldn’t have existed – is still playing every Monday at New York’s Iridium Club.
• Budd Schulberg, 93. He helped write A Star Is Born – the original 1937 version, starring Janet Gaynor – and also won an Oscar for writing On the Waterfront. So you kids stay off his lawn.
• Pinetop Perkins, 94. Three years ago, this piano bluesman became the oldest person ever nominated for a Grammy. He still gigs weekly, like Les Paul, at the Broken Spoke in Austin, Tex.
• Studs Terkel, 94. The famed broadcaster and documentarist of the U.S. working class recently said, “The older you are, the freer you are, as long as you last.” The productive Terkel seems to believe it; he’s got a memoir coming out in November. (J.D. Salinger, seven years younger, hasn’t published anything new for 42 years.)
• Albert Hofman, 101. Not strictly an artist, but this European scientist’s creation of LSD in 1938 made acid rock, Robert Crumb and other ’60s innovations possible. Here’s a one-hour NFB documentary on him: tinyurl.com/yr44r7
-Garnet Fraser
But, there are others, too, such as Jack LaLanne and Wow!!! Lena Horne
Born Sept. 26, 1914, Jack LaLanne says he started life “as a weak, sick, miserable kid,” who was addicted to sugar. He learned about exercising and eating healthy when he was 15 and began his fitness crusade. At age 35, he was a living example of the positive effects of exercising and eating right.”
Trained as a chiropractor, LaLanne began advocating weight training in the 1930s even though doctors at the time thought the new practice would give people heart attacks and lower their sex drives. Science has since proved LeLanne was right…
LaLanne took his ideas on health and fitness to the national airways with the Jack LaLanne Show, which ran from 1951-1985. The show earned LaLanne a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. [...]
http://www.wpostflash.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/070608/GAL-07Jun08-77378/captions/PHO-07Jun08-77383.html
Jack LaLanne — who’s planning a long swim for his 95th birthday — demonstrates how to keep in shape in the gym of a Washington hotel. (Photos By Carol Guzy — The Washington Post)
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