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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1770 on: December 19, 2018, 02:30:36 AM »
Laverne & Shirley was a bit of a family affair. Her older brother Garry (who died at the age of 81 in 2016) wrote, produced and created the show. Her older sister Ronny Hallin was also involved with the show (she was a TV producer in her own right) as was her father (who helped with the music, if I recall correctly).

Later she would go on to briefly marry Rob Reiner -- she auditioned to play his wife on All In The Family, but the role went to Sally Struthers -- and her daughter from a previous marriage, Tracy Reiner (who Rob adopted during their marriage), would star in A League of Their Own as Betty "Spaghetti" Horn.

Some of the "bit parts" she was in before her big break:

* a Head and Shoulders commercial as the "plain" girl opposite the "pretty" girl played by Farrah Fawcett;

* a guest appearance on the hit television series That Girl, starring Marlo Thomas;

* Myrna Turner, the secretary for Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple. She had that role for four years. Her last appearance on the show was in an episode where she married her longtime boyfriend Sheldn ("they forgot the O on my birth certificate"), played by her then-husband Rob Reiner. Her real-life siblings Garry and Ronny, were also in that episode, playing Myrna's brother and sister, Werner Turner and Verna Turner.
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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1771 on: December 27, 2018, 08:28:57 PM »
SISTER WENDY BECKETT (1930-2018)

Born in Johannesburg, she spent part of her childhood in Edinburgh where her father was studying to be a doctor. A frail girl, by her own admission, she joined the Notre Dame de Namur sisters – the order that ran her own school – and would spend a total of 17 years in various convent schools before graduating from Oxford University as an honor student in literature in 1954. Health problems, combined with the dream of a contemplative life, which she had abandoned when she entered her order of teaching nuns, led her to a Carmelite convent in Norfolk, England, where she became a hermit.

She taught herself about art and art history, taking copious notes on works she only saw in the many books that crowded her trailer. A visitor to the convent, the cook and devout Catholic Delia Smith, was so impressed by Sister Wendy’s writing that in the late 80s she persuaded the Catholic Herald newspaper to publish them as a weekly series. More articles and a book followed, and Sister Wendy happened to be at an exhibit in Norfolk when a BBC crew was filming a documentary on Germaine Greer. She was asked to give her opinions….

Producer Nicholas Rossiter got Sister Wendy to talk about the paintings in Britain’s National Gallery for a 1991 BBC documentary. She and Moving Art were an instant hit. The next year, a more ambitious series, Sister Wendy’s Odyssey, became the most successful BBC art program since Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.

Sister Wendy continued to do eponymous TV series into her 80s, marked by perhaps her most ambitious program, Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting. That 1997 series took her 30,000 miles through Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. to talk about works ranging from prehistoric cave paintings to Picasso and Pop Art.

By 2002, Beckett had published some 20 books and completed 11 art programs for public television. Royalties and residuals amounted to an income large enough for her to replace her trailer-hermitage for a newer model, with heat, and to put aside some money for her retirement, as well as help pay the convent's expenses.

For all of her unique features as a commentator, it was Beckett's ease in describing nude paintings that most confounded her viewers. Standing before a double nude portrait by modern British painter Stanley Spencer, she observed, “I love all those glistening strands of his hair. And her pubic hair is so soft and fluffy.”

Often in frail health, she spent most of her public life in a wheelchair and only stood up to deliver her light, witty comments before the camera. She once said she persisted because she had a calling to talk about art in ways the average person could appreciate. “If you don't know about God, art is the only thing that can set you free,” she explained. “It challenges the human spirit to accept a deeper reality.”
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1772 on: December 28, 2018, 05:31:48 PM »
The Hollywood Reporter: "Norman Gimbel, Famed Oscar- and Grammy-Winning Lyricist, Dies at 91"

Norman Gimbel, the Oscar- and Grammy-winning lyricist whose career included Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song," Jim Croce's "I Got a Name" and the themes to Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, has died. He was 91.

Gimbel died Dec. 19 at his longtime home in Montecito, Calif., son Tony Gimbel told The Hollywood Reporter.

The Brooklyn native shared his original song Academy Award with David Shire for "It Goes Like It Goes," performed by Jennifer Warnes for Norma Rae (1979), starring Sally Field in an Oscar-winning turn.

With music by his most frequent writing partner, Charles Fox, Gimbel wrote the lyrics to the wonderfully melancholy "Killing Me Softly With His Song," and Flack's version earned them the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1973. (The song, which spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, was first recorded by Lori Lieberman a couple years earlier, and the Fugees' hip-hop cover version was a hit decades later.)

Gimbel and Fox also collaborated on Croce's "I Got a Name," released the day after the singer's death in a plane crash Sept. 20, 1973. The song served as the theme to The Last American Hero (1973), starring Jeff Bridges.

"I've always felt that lyric was among the very best from Norman's pen," Fox wrote in his 2010 biography, Killing Me Softly: My Life in Music. He noted that he and Gimbel had written more than 150 songs together over 30 years.

"Norman's lyrics have extraordinary beauty and sensitivity and understanding of the human condition," Fox wrote. "There's never a waste or [an] excessive word."

The duo also earned original song Oscar noms for writing "Richard's Window," performed by Olivia Newton-John for The Other Side of the Mountain (1975), and "Ready to Take a Chance Again," sung by Barry Manilow for Foul Play (1978).

Gimbel and Fox wrote the themes for the Garry Marshall comedies Happy Days (their names/credits are seen on the record that's placed on the jukebox turntable during the opening credits), Laverne & Shirley ("Making Our Dreams Come True") and Angie, as well as music for other shows including Paper Chase, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Wonder Woman.

...Gimbel also wrote the English lyrics for "The Girl From Ipanema," featuring Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz, which won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965 and is one of the most recorded songs of all time.

He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984.
ACB, BK, CT, NG, SA: FU. FUATH. 100x.

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1773 on: January 04, 2019, 09:12:20 PM »
Not even a week into the new year....

BOB EINSTEIN (1942-2019):

Bob Einstein, who died on Wednesday, of cancer, at the age of seventy-six, was the king of the dummy gag. As the recurring character Super Dave Osborne, a hapless stuntman in the mold of Evel Knievel who appeared on late-night variety TV and, later, on shows of his own, Einstein had a fake version of the character walloped by a wrecking ball, flung out the passenger window of a moving car, dropped from the top of Toronto’s CN Tower, crushed by a piano, driven off a pier, knocked from the top of a speeding bus, and, among many more indignities, whacked in the crotch with a golf club.

[He] reëmerged later in life as part of Larry David’s coterie of Hollywood weirdos on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”—funny enough to run with the crowd but not famous enough to play himself. As Marty Funkhouser, an obtuse and aggrieved friend of David’s, he got to explore his Jewishness and the rage that had lived just beneath the surface of Super Dave.

Marty Funkhouser is a singular character in American comedy—earnest and petty and mean and kind and dumb—and perhaps the truest expression of Einstein’s famed wit and bitter sense of humor. But when I think of Einstein I’ll think of that Super Dave dummy being smashed, smushed, and otherwise maimed—with the laugh track screaming—yet always coming back for more.



Super Dave, in Memoriam: Bob Einstein’s Mass-Culture Parody
Ian Crouch, The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/super-dave-in-memoriam-bob-einsteins-mass-culture-parody

DARYL DRAGON (1942-2019):

A classically trained pianist, Dragon played keyboard for The Beach Boys from 1967 to 1972. He was given the nickname "Captain" by lead singer Mike Love due to Dragon's penchant for wearing a captain's hat onstage.

In 1971, Dragon met his future wife, Toni Tennille, when she hired him to play piano for a musical called Mother Earth. Shortly thereafter, Dragon suggested that Tennille join The Beach Boys on their next tour as an acoustic pianist. While on the tour, Dragon and Tennille soon began a romantic and musical relationship, performing in smaller venues together when not on tour with The Beach Boys.

Going by the stage name The Captain and Tennille, the duo quickly formed a following. On the strength of the song "The Way I Want to Touch You," the team scored a record deal with A&M Records in 1974. Their song "Love Will Keep Us Together" climbed to No. 1 in 1975, where it remained for four weeks. It won the Grammy for record of the year that same year.

Follow-up hits included “Do That to Me One More Time,” “Shop Around,” “I’m On My Way” and “Muskrat Love.”

Between 1975 and 1979, five of their albums hit gold or platinum.

Dragon and Tennille were married in 1975 and stayed together until they divorced in 2014. They still remained close, and Tennille was at his side when he died.

"He was a brilliant musician with many friends who loved him greatly. I was at my most creative in my life, when I was with him," Tennille told the Hollywood Reporter.

On American Bandstand in 1975:


HERB KELLEHER (1931-2019):

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines’ affable cofounder died at the age of 87. Sadly, we lost a friend and a mentor, as did countless others.

[He was] repeatedly voted as the best CEO in the airline industry. And according to Fortune magazine, which consistently recognizes Southwest among the world's top 10 most admired companies, Fortune noted, "Kelleher was perhaps the best CEO in America." Herb has been called a pioneer, fierce competitor and innovator. All of those labels ring true, but Kelleher was more than that.

He changed the world.

Herb and the people of Southwest Airlines created the greatest success story in the history of commercial aviation. They did it with a disruptive business model and a hard-to-replicate culture that business schools tout in case studies and airlines and business all over the globe try to emulate.

For almost 30 years we’ve been asking, “What if you could build a company that is as human as the human beings in it? What if you could create a culture that inspires impassioned people to come to work fully-awake, fully-engaged, firing on all cylinders because they know they are doing epic work?"

Herb did it.



20 Reasons Why Herb Kelleher Was One Of The Most Beloved Leaders Of Our Time
Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinandjackiefreiberg/2019/01/04/20-reasons-why-herb-kelleher-was-one-of-the-most-beloved-leaders-of-our-time/#687e32a6b311
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1774 on: January 16, 2019, 07:41:36 PM »
CAROL CHANNING (1921-2019)

Singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" on a TV special, 1957:


As the "Mystery Guest" on What's My Line, date unknown:


Singing the title song from Hello, Dolly!, 1965:


On Conan O'Brien, 1997/98:



rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1775 on: January 31, 2019, 08:49:19 PM »
DICK MILLER (1928-2019)

Born in The Bronx, he kicked around at various jobs in New York, including bits of Broadway acting and gag writing for TV shows. He made his way to Los Angeles, where he drifted into Roger Corman's circle. According to one account, Corman asked him what he wanted to do in Hollywood. "I want to be a writer." "I don't need writers," said Corman. "OK, I'm an actor."

Corman cast him in 1955's Apache Woman - and over 20 movies after that, only once playing the lead. Miller got to work with pretty much everyone who passed through Corman's 'factory': Coppola, Cameron, Sayles, Dante....

It was the latter who would be Miller's 'partner' in the latter half of his career. Joe Dante made a point of casting him in every single one of his films.

"Across nearly 200 credits, he never had top billing on a movie; rarely had his name in lights.... What he did have, though, was the character actor’s gift for making just about every movie he showed up in a little bit better, and a little more real. Miller had a singular talent for taking small parts and making them far more memorable than those with a dozen more lines to their names, or imbuing empty characters with a grouchy twinkle that stuck with you well after his invariably single scene was done. He was funny, and laid-back, and never forgot that acting was, first and foremost a job—but one he clearly got one hell of a kick out of doing." - William Hughes, AV Club


rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1776 on: February 13, 2019, 08:49:48 PM »
OPPORTUNITY (2004-2019)

It was only supposed to last for 90 days.

It lasted fifteen years. And covered over 28 miles of terrain.

After a months-long dust storm covered Mars - and the rover's solar panels - last year, it seemed like its batteries completely ran out of power. One final attempt at regaining contact failed, and NASA was forced to end the program.

“Opportunity’s just been a workhorse,’’ said deputy project scientist Abigail Fraeman, who as a student at 16 was inside the control center as part of an outreach program when the rover landed on Mars. “It’s really a testament, I think, to how well the mission was designed and how careful the team was in operating the vehicle.”

“It’s going to be very sad to say goodbye,” said John Callas, the mission’s project manager. “But at the same time, we’ve got to remember this has been 15 years of incredible adventure.”

Even before leaving its landing site, Opportunity found evidence of water on the Red Planet. Little round bits called 'blueberries' were made of a mineral that could only form in the presence of liquid water. Other minerals - hematite, gypsum - provided even more evidence that the planet had been wet in its past.

“Being able to really roll right up to an outcrop and examine it, to look up close with your hand lens, do the chemistry measurements … it allows you to really feel like you’re there,” said NASA’s acting director of planetary science Lori Glaze. “That absolutely changed the way we go about doing planetary exploration.”

The rover is survived at Mars by Curiosity, the InSight lander and six orbiting spacecraft. NASA’s next rover mission, which will seek out signs of ancient life, will launch in 2020.

As for Opportunity, its metal shell will remain in the spot where it sent its last message, on the rim of Endeavour Crater. “It’s always going to be there,” said NASA’s associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, “like a monument, or a shipwreck.”

It is a marker of where humanity has been. And a beacon for whatever comes next.



A digital panorama of Opportunity at Greeley Haven near Endeavour Crater, where it spent the winter of 2011-2012:
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1777 on: February 16, 2019, 03:18:17 PM »
I still haven't watched Disney/Pixar's WALL-E but from what I hear it's a very touching story involving robots. Opportunity's last earthbound message was apparently just as touching as anything in that film:

Quote
“She was so scared her last message was, ‘My battery is running low and it’s getting dark’, like how depressing is that?
ACB, BK, CT, NG, SA: FU. FUATH. 100x.

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1778 on: February 19, 2019, 08:53:38 PM »
BETTY BALLANTINE (1919-2019)

Elizabeth Norah Jones was born September 25, 1919 in India. At 12 she moved with her family to Jersey in the Channel Islands, where she met Ian Ballantine in 1938. By New Year’s they were engaged and in June 1939 were married and on their way to New York. Thanks to a $500 wedding present, they started selling mass-market paperbacks to the US for the UK's Penguin Books. When wartime shortages lowered the quality of books they could import, they started publishing their own. They were mostly reprints at first, but when they left Penguin to form their own firm, Bantam Books, they started publishing paperback versions of classics like The Great Gatsby and science fiction anthologies. Seeking more freedom than the board of directors at Bantam would allow, in 1952 they again set up their own publishing house: Ballantine Books.

At Ballantine, they broke with custom and began simultaneous publication of hardcover and paperback editions of books. Generous royalty arrangements helped them attract many science fiction authors, including Frederick Pohl, Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, and Theodore Sturgeon.

They picked up the rights for The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the 1960s. Tolkein's UK publisher Houghton Mifflin was hesitant at first, but they eventually came around to Ballantine's offer of $2,500 when unauthorized editions started appearing.

They sold Ballantine Books to Random House in 1973, and stayed on to run the paperback division. Eventually the couple would "semi-retire" to do freelance consulting and editing. Among the works they had a hand in are Shirley MacClaine's autobiography Out on a Limb and Dinotopia.

During their 56 years of marriage and publishing, they shared business duties, though Betty did most of the editing and Ian acted primarily as publisher. Ian died in 1995. The Ballantines received numerous honorary awards and were voted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008.

"We really, truly wanted and did publish books that mattered," Ballantine told the science fiction-fantasy magazine Locus in 2002. "And science fiction matters because it's of the mind, it predicts, it thinks, it says, 'Look at what's happening here. If that's what's happening here and now, what's it going to look like 10 years from now, 50 years from now, or 2,000 years from now?' It's a form of magic. Not abracadabra or wizardry. It is the minds of humankind that make this magic."

rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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solvegas

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1779 on: February 21, 2019, 02:01:49 PM »
Peter Tork, 77 years old and guitarist for The Monkees, died of cancer today. :( For those of you not old enough to have been alive to see The Monkees TV show from 1966 to 1968, Tork played the jokester goofball character of the band. Gawd, I feel old. :(

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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1780 on: February 21, 2019, 05:45:50 PM »
My favorite story about The Monkees is that, at the height of their career, they were so big that JIMI HENDRIX was their opening act! :D
ACB, BK, CT, NG, SA: FU. FUATH. 100x.

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1781 on: February 21, 2019, 09:24:55 PM »
A much better group than people give them credit for.
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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salem

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1782 on: February 22, 2019, 03:21:03 AM »
DICK MILLER (1928-2019)

Born in The Bronx, he kicked around at various jobs in New York, including bits of Broadway acting and gag writing for TV shows. He made his way to Los Angeles, where he drifted into Roger Corman's circle. According to one account, Corman asked him what he wanted to do in Hollywood. "I want to be a writer." "I don't need writers," said Corman. "OK, I'm an actor."

Corman cast him in 1955's Apache Woman - and over 20 movies after that, only once playing the lead. Miller got to work with pretty much everyone who passed through Corman's 'factory': Coppola, Cameron, Sayles, Dante....

It was the latter who would be Miller's 'partner' in the latter half of his career. Joe Dante made a point of casting him in every single one of his films.

"Across nearly 200 credits, he never had top billing on a movie; rarely had his name in lights.... What he did have, though, was the character actor’s gift for making just about every movie he showed up in a little bit better, and a little more real. Miller had a singular talent for taking small parts and making them far more memorable than those with a dozen more lines to their names, or imbuing empty characters with a grouchy twinkle that stuck with you well after his invariably single scene was done. He was funny, and laid-back, and never forgot that acting was, first and foremost a job—but one he clearly got one hell of a kick out of doing." - William Hughes, AV Club



I always liked Dick Miller, so instantly recognisable, and the list of film/tv credits is astonishing. Even if most of them were small roles. My cousin and I always remarked that Dick Miller had been in practically everything. His credits include

The Howling
The Terminator
Gremlins
Innerspace
Gremlins 2
Small Soldiers
The Hole

to name but a few

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solvegas

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1783 on: March 08, 2019, 10:02:30 PM »
Announced today on March 8, 2019 that actor Jan-Michael Vincent died of cardiac arrest on February 10, 2019 at the age of 73. Best known for his role as pilot Stringfellow Hawke on the TV series " Airwolf " , 1984 to 1988, and for his role in 1983's  TV mini-series " The Winds of War " , he was also known for his good looks and messed up personal life. Why it took nearly one month to announce the death is somewhat confusing. ???

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1784 on: March 25, 2019, 08:39:32 PM »
LARRY COHEN (1941-2019)

Born in New York City, he became a film buff at an early age. He managed to land a job as a page at NBC, and quickly taught himself how to write screenplays. His scripts, mainly in the crime drama genre, were picked up for series like The Defenders and The Fugitive. By the mid 60s, he had enough experience and clout to create his own series: Branded , about a disgraced cavalry officer, and The Invaders, about a man trying to convince people of an alien invasion.

When those shows ended their runs, he started directing movies. He debuted in the 'Blaxploitation' genre, with a trio of films. Bone (1972), Black Caesar (1973), and Hell Up In Harlem (1973). Horror was next, with It's Alive coming in 1974. He kept working in the "B movie" genre, with notable entries including Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) and The Stuff (1985). He still squeezed in TV work, writing for Columbo and NYPD Blue, among other shows.

While low in budget and therefore quality, Cohen was quick to note that his movies tackled relevant issues. "Things were going on all over the country and the world that I wanted to try and deal with in my films," Cohen said in a 2017 interview with Diabolique Magazine. "Take [his 1985 feature] The Stuff, which was about products being sold on the market that kill people. There are still so many products like that being sold today. In those days, you still had cigarettes being advertised on television."

He continued writing and directing into the 2000s; his last film of note was teh Colin Farrell vehicle Phone Booth (2003)

Trailer for the 2017 Bio-documentary King Cohen:

rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie