Coffee-Table Notes

William Hurt – Actor   Born March 20, 1950; died March 13, 2022    William Hurt, who has died aged 71, was an actor who won an Oscar for his role in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985). Adapted from Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, director Hector Babenco’s film cast Hurt as Luis Molina, a gay prisoner sharing a cell with a political activist during Brazil’s then current military dictatorship. Luis survives his ordeal by recounting scenes from the wartime movie that gives Babenco’s film its title.   It was a bravura role for Hurt, who came to prominence several years earlier in his big screen debut, playing an obsessed scientist in the Ken Russell directed Altered States (1980). The run of films that followed saw Hurt play a small town lawyer opposite Kathleen Turner in Body Heat (1981), then a Vietnam war veteran reuniting with college buddies at their classmate’s funeral in The Big Chill (1983). Both were directed by Lawrence Kasdan. The same year as The Big Chill, Hurt played a Russian police

John Stahl – Actor Born June 23, 1953; died March 2, 2022   John Stahl, who has died aged 68, was an actor who was latterly best known for his regular roles in two iconic TV series’. In Game of Thrones (2012-2013), Stahl played Rickard Karstark, taking over from Stephen Blount in series two as a chief member of Robb Stark’s war council, who vows revenge after his two sons are killed by Jaime Lannister, only to end up himself executed by Stark in series three.    Three decades earlier, Stahl began a lengthy stint on Take the High Road (1982-2003), the rural Scottish Television soap opera later rebranded as High Road. Stahl was farmer Tom Kerr, better known to viewers and other characters as Inverdarroch. Both characters utilised Stahl’s towering presence, which combined a commanding sense of authority tempered by a benign empathy that was never far away.   Beyond these two high profile roles, Stahl was a stalwart of theatre in Scotland, appearing in most of the country’s major producing

Sally Kellerman – Actress, singer Born June 2, 1937; died February 24, 2022    Sally Kellerman, who has died aged 84, was an actress who came to prominence with her bravura turn in M*A*S*H*. (1970), Robert Altman’s adaptation of Richard Hooker’s Korean War set novel. Kellerman played head army nurse Major Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan, a text-book study of uptight efficiency and repressed sexuality that was in direct conflict with the laidback anarchy that prevailed elsewhere.    This was relayed in two scenes that made Hot Lips the butt of elaborate pranks. The first saw her exposed to a gathered throng when the tent she was showering in was ripped asunder. The second saw her liaison with Robert Duvall’s similarly tightly wound surgeon, Frank Burns, broadcast to the camp on loud speakers in an incident that provided her nickname.     Despite her character being on the receiving end of such chauvinistic antics, Kellerman had the last laugh, when she was nominated for an Oscar. She also

Ronnie Spector – Singer Born August 10, 1943; died January 12, 2022    Ronnie Spector, who has died of cancer aged 78, was a singer whose early records fronting The Ronettes defined the sound of 1960s girl groups with something more provocative than some of their saccharine-laden peers. Spector’s euphoric vocals were key to the success behind The Ronettes’s run of hit singles; Be My Baby (1963); Baby, I Love You (1963); (The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up (1964); Walking in the Rain (1964) and more. In a pre British invasion era, these bite-sized melodramas became the soundtrack to teenage yearning.    There wasn’t anything submissive or demure in Spector’s vocal style. She delivered every desire-filled line with pure joy. This was complemented by The Ronettes’ kohl-eyed beehived look and a more assured attitude than some other groups. “We weren’t afraid to look hot,” Spector wrote in her 1989 memoir, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness. “That was our image.”   While

J ohn Miles –  Singer, songwriter, musician Born April 23, 1949; died December 5, 2021    John Miles, who has died aged 72, was a singer and songwriter, whose composition, Music, became a piece of classic rock, which travelled far beyond its 1970s roots. Written and recorded for Miles’ debut album, Rebel (1976), Music is a first person ode to the redemptive power of its subject.    Music’s lyrics consist of just two four-line stanzas sung two and a half times throughout the song’s just shy of six minutes duration. Miles’s words punctuate extended instrumental passages that shift gears and tempos several times in a sketchbook history of modern pop that moves from piano-led balladeering to progressive soft rock and disco.    Accompanied by long-term bassist and co-writer Bob Marshall and drummer Barry Black, this is fleshed out by arranger Andrew Powell’s orchestral flourishes, as the song comes full circle to confirm music’s transcendent force.    Miles said he wrote Music in half an ho

Peter Bogdanovich – Film director, actor, writer   Born July 30, 1939; died January 6, 2022   Peter Bogdanovich, who has died aged 82 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease, was a film director who was at the centre of the rise of new American cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s. His best-known films were steeped in his devotion to old Hollywood, with early successes The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973) on one level lovingly realised pieces of fantasy wish fulfilment.   The Last Picture Show, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, was a dead-end town rites of passage that won Oscars for Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman. What’s Up, Doc? was a riotous update of screwball comedies. One of its stars, Ryan O’Neal, also appeared in  Paper Moon (1973) as a depression era conman who hits the road with a ten-year-old girl that may or may not be his daughter.    The child was played by O’Neal’s own daughter, Tatum O’Neal, who became the youngest actor to win

Alvin Lucier – Composer Born May 14, 1931; died December 1, 2021   Alvin Lucier, who has died aged 90, was a pioneering composer, whose boundless curiosity set down a template for generations of sound artists and sonic architects who followed in his wake. His explorations of the physical properties of sound were quietly radical and endlessly inquisitive in his extrapolation of sound from non-traditional sources. These included brain sensors, pencils and teapots.   Key works include I Am Sitting in a Room (1969), in which Lucier recorded himself talking as he explained what he was about to do. Lucier then played back the speech and re-recorded it, repeating the process until his words blur into the void, and only resonant frequencies remain. The influence of a room’s architecture and acoustic properties were key to Lucier’s work, and it was the unpredictability of the end result that intrigued him. In this sense, Lucier’s experimental approach was rooted in science as much as sound.   T

Bob Baker – Television writer Born July 26, 1939; died November 3, 2021    Bob Baker, who has died aged 82, was a television writer, who helped bring to life two of the small screen’s most iconic creations. Along with his writing partner Dave Martin, who died in 2007, Baker co-penned thirty-eight episodes of Doctor Who (1971-1979) during the children’s SF show’s 1970s golden age. Known as the Bristol Boys, the duo’s work began with The Claws of Axos (1971), and, over eight stories, straddled the regeneration of Jon Pertwee’s third Doctor into Tom Baker’s fourth incarnation of the eccentric Time Lord.    This included the programme’s tenth anniversary story, The Three Doctors (1972-1973), which saw the first and second Doctors, played respectively by William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, join forces with Pertwee in a battle to save Time. Baker and Martin’s tenure on Doctor Who also saw them create K9, the pompous dog-based mobile computer that went on to have a series of its own. Bake

David McKail – Actor, writer,   Born March 13,1938; died December 6, 2021   David McKail, who has died aged 83, was an actor best known for his long running role as police surgeon Dr McKenzie in TV drama, A Touch of Frost (1992-2008). Beyond that, he was a long standing stalwart of theatre in Scotland and beyond. In the guise of Frederic Mohr, he was also an accomplished playwright. This nom de plume was drawn from his German grandfather’s name out of a desire for his writing to stand on its own terms. All this made McKail a proudly Scottish renaissance man, possessed with a vast intelligence and a mischievous wit.    David Fredrick Mohr McKail   was born  in Glasgow, the youngest of three children to David and Janetta McKail (nee Mohr). He grew up in Bridgeton, and, as a war child, spent three years in Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae. He attended John Street Elementary School, then John Street Senior Secondary School for a term before moving to Allan Glen's School.    While his fa

Robbie Shakespeare – bass guitarist, record producer Born September 27, 1953; died December 8, 2021    Robbie Shakespeare, who has died aged 68, was one of the greatest bass guitarists of the last half-century. His muscular but laidback style saw him form a long-term creative partnership with drummer Sly Dunbar that led to them becoming one of the most in-demand rhythm sections in the world.    The duo released six albums under their own name, and played crucial roles as the rhythmic spine of records by numerous other artists. These ranged from key reggae classics by the likes of Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Black Uhuru and Burning Spear, to playing with Grace Jones during her early 1980s peak.    As part of Island Records’ Nassau based studio band, the Compass Point All Stars, Sly and Robbie worked on a trilogy of albums by Jones. Led by the vocalist’s ice-cool delivery, Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing (1981) and Living My Life (1982) fused reggae, funk and electronics, Shakespeare’