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[DeadCelebrityAlert] Roger Bannister, first to run mile in under 4 minutes, dies

 

LONDON — It was a typical British afternoon in early May: wet, cool and blustery. Not exactly the ideal conditions for running four laps around a track faster than many thought humanly possible. 
A lanky Oxford medical student named Roger Bannister looked up at the white-and-red English flag whipping in the wind atop a nearby church and figured he would have to call off the record attempt.

But then, shortly after 6 p.m. on May 6, 1954, the wind subsided. Bannister glanced up again and saw the flag fluttering oh-so gently. The race was on..

With two friends acting as pacemakers, Bannister churned around the cinder track four times. His long arms and legs pumping, his lungs gasping for air, he put on a furious kick over the final 300 yards and nearly collapsed as he crossed the finish line.

The announcer read out the time:

"3..."

The rest was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. The 3 was all that mattered.

Bannister had just become the first runner to break the mythical 4-minute barrier in the mile -- a feat of speed and endurance that stands as one of the seminal sporting achievements of the 20th century.

The black-and-white image of Bannister, eyes closed, head back, mouth wide open, straining across the tape at Oxford's Iffley Road track, endures as a defining snapshot of a transcendent moment in track and field history.

Bannister died peacefully in Oxford on Saturday at the age of 88. He was "surrounded by his family who were as loved by him, as he was loved by them," the family said in a statement Sunday. "He banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends."

British Prime Minister Theresa May remembered Bannister as a "British sporting icon whose achievements were an inspiration to us all. He will be greatly missed."

Bannister's time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds captured the world's imagination and buoyed the spirits of Britons still suffering through post-war austerity.

"It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile," Bannister said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2012.

Bannister followed up his 4-minute milestone a few months later by beating Australia's John Landy in the "Miracle Mile" or "Mile of the Century" at the Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia with both men going under 4 minutes. Bannister regarded that as his greatest race because it came in a competitive championship against his fiercest rival.

While he will forever be remembered for his running, Bannister considered his long medical career in neurology as his life's greatest accomplishment.

"My medical work has been my achievement and my family with 14 grandchildren," he said. "Those are real achievements."

The quest to break the 4-minute mile carried a special mystique. The numbers were easy for the public to grasp: 1 mile, 4 laps, 4 minutes.

When Sweden's Gunder Hagg ran 4:01.4 in 1945, the chase was truly on. But, time and again, runners came up short. The 4-minute mark seemed like a brick wall that would never be toppled.

Bannister was undaunted.

"There was no logic in my mind that if you can run a mile in 4 minutes, 1 and 2/5ths, you can't run it in 3:59," he said. "I knew enough medicine and physiology to know it wasn't a physical barrier, but I think it had become a psychological barrier."

Bannister was born on March 23, 1929, in the London borough of Harrow. At the outbreak of World War II, the family moved to the city of Bath, where Bannister sometimes ran to and from school.

Bannister's passion for running took off in 1945 when his father took him to a track meet at London's White City Stadium, which was built to host the 1908 Olympics. They watched British middle-distance star Sydney Wooderson, who had emerged as a rival to the trio of Swedish runners who had taken the mile world record down close to the 4-minute mark.

"I made up my mind then when I got to Oxford, I would take up running seriously," Bannister said.

As a first-year student on an academic scholarship at Oxford, Bannister caught his coaches' attention while running as a pacemaker in a mile race on March 22, 1947. Instead of dropping out of the race as pacers normally do, he kept running and beat the field by 20 yards.

"I knew from this day that I could develop this newfound ability," he reflected in later life.

With the 1948 London Olympics approaching, Bannister was running mile times of around 4:10. The 19-year-old was selected as a "possible" for the British Olympic team, but decided he wasn't ready and focused on preparing for the 1952 Helsinki Games.

By then, Bannister was a full-time medical student and had to juggle his studies with his training. By modern standards, his daily half-hour workout was remarkably light.

Bannister was considered the favorite for the Helsinki gold in the 1,500 meters -- the shorter metric mile distance run in the Olympics. Just before the games, he learned that organizers had added an extra round of heats, meaning he would have to run on three consecutive days.

With his rhythm thrown off, Bannister finished fourth in a final won by Josy Barthel of Luxembourg.

Had he won Olympic gold that day, Bannister almost certainly would have retired. But, criticized by the British media and disappointed in his own performance, he decided to keep running, dedicating himself to beating the 4-minute mile and winning gold at the `54 Empire Games.

By 1954, Hagg's record mile time had stood for nine years. Bannister, Landy and American miler Wes Santee were all threatening to break the mark and it became a matter of who would get there first.

"As it became clear that somebody was going to do it, I felt that I would prefer it to be me," Bannister said in an AP interview.

He also wanted to deliver something special for his country.

"I thought it would be right for Britain to try to get this," Bannister said in 2012. "There was a feeling of patriotism. Our new queen had been crowned the year before, Everest had been climbed in 1953. Although I tried in 1953, I broke the British record, but not the 4-minute mile, and so everything was ready in 1954."

Bannister scheduled his attempt for May 6 during a meet between Oxford and the Amateur Athletic Union. He started the day at the St. Mary's Hospital lab in London, where he sharpened his spikes and rubbed graphite on them so they wouldn't pick up too much of the track's cinder ash. He took a midmorning train from Paddington Station to Oxford.

The weather was dank and miserable. Bannister's Austrian coach, Franz Stampfl, told him this might be his best chance. When the flag started to billow gently, he decided it was now or never.

"I calculated there's a 50-50 chance of my doing it," Bannister recalled. "I said, `If there's a 50-50 chance and I don't take it, I may never get another chance to beat Landy to it.' So I said, `Let's do it.'"

Bannister had lined up English runners Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway as pacemakers. Brasher, a steeplechaser, ran the first lap in 58 seconds and the first half-mile in 1:58. Chataway moved to the front and took them through three laps in 3:01. Bannister would have to run the final lap in 59 seconds.

He surged in front of Chataway with about 300 yards to go.

"The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist," Bannister wrote in his book "The First Four Minutes." "The only reality was the next 200 yards of track under my feet. The tape meant finality -- extinction perhaps. I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove on, impelled by a combination of fear and pride.."

Bannister crossed the line and slumped into the arms of a friend, barely conscious. The chief timekeeper was Harold Abrahams, the 100-meter champion at the 1924 Paris Olympics whose story inspired the film "Chariots of Fire." He handed a piece of paper to Norris McWhirter, who announced the time.

The record lasted just 46 days. Landy ran 3:57.9 in Turku, Finland, on June 21, 1954. (The current record stands at 3:43.13, held by Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj since 1999.)

That set the stage for the head-to-head showdown between Bannister and Landy on Aug. 7, 1954, at the Empire Games, now called the Commonwealth Games, in Vancouver.

Always a front-runner, Landy set a fast pace, leading by as much as 15 yards before Bannister caught up as the bell rang for the final lap. When the Australian glanced over his left shoulder on the final bend to check where Bannister was, the Englishman raced past him on the right and won by about four yards in 3:58.8. Landy clocked 3:59, the first time two men had run under 4 minutes in the same race.

Bannister capped his amazing year by winning the 1,500 meters at the European championships in Bern, Switzerland, in 3:43.8, his third major achievement in the span of a few months.

"Each one proved something different," he said. "Each one was necessary."

Sebastian Coe, president of the IAAF, the athletics governing body, said Bannister's death represented a "day of intense sadness both for our nation and for all of us in athletics."

Coe ran a mile in a then-world record time of 3 minutes, 47.33 seconds in 1981, between winning gold medals at 1,500 meters at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.

"There is not a single athlete of my generation who was not inspired by Roger and his achievements both on and off the track," the Briton tweeted Sunday.

Bannister, who was chosen Sports Illustrated's first Sportsman of the Year in 1954, retired from competition and pursued a full-time career in neurology. As chairman of Britain's Sports Council between 1971 and 1974, he developed the first test for anabolic steroids.

Bannister also served as master of Oxford's Pembroke College from 1985-93. In 2012, he edited the ninth edition of a textbook on nervous-system disease and said his most treasured trophy was the lifetime achievement award he received in 2005 from the American Academy of Neurology. He was knighted for his medical work in 1975.

"I wouldn't claim to have made any great discoveries, but at any rate I satisfactorily inched forward in our knowledge of a particular aspect of medicine," he said. "I'm far more content with that than I am about any of the running I did earlier."

Bannister was slowed in later years by Parkinson's, a neurological condition that fell under his medical specialty.

His right ankle was shattered in a car accident in 1975, and he had been unable to run since then. In his late life, he walked with crutches inside his home and used a wheelchair outdoors.

Bannister made several public appearances as part of the 2012 London Olympics. He carried the flame on the Oxford track where he broke the 4-minute mile during the torch relay and attended the final of the men's and women's 1,500 meters at the games.

"I feel I never really left," he told the AP as he watched the action in the Olympic Stadium.

Bannister married Moyra Jacobsson, an artist, in 1955. They had two sons and two daughters and lived in a modest home only minutes away from the track where he made history.
Brasher, who founded the London Marathon, died in 2003 at the age of 74. Chataway died in 2014 at 82.

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[DeadCelebrityAlert] M*A*S*H actor David Ogden Stiers dies at 75

 


M*A*S*H actor David Ogden Stiers died of cancer on Saturday, his agent confirmed. He was 75.

"I am very sad to report that David died this morning March 3, 2018 peacefully at his home in Newport, Oregon after a courageous battle with bladder cancer," Stiers' agent, Mitchell K. Stubbs tweeted. "His talent was only surpassed by his heart."

Stiers earned two Emmy nominations for his role on M*A*S*Has Major Charles Winchester III, a talented surgeon who filled the void left when Larry Linville's Frank Burns left the series. Stiers starred on the series from 1977 to 1983 and followed it with regular appearances on North and South, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Matlock, Touched by an Angel, and Frasier. He earned a third Emmy nomination in 1984 for his portrayal of United States Olympic Committee founder William Milligan Sloane in the NBC miniseries The First Olympics: Athens 1896.

The actor had a prolific voice acting career which included the roles of Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast, Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins in Pocahontas, and Jumba in Lilo & Stitch.

Stiers began his career in 1974 in a minor role in Broadway's The Magic Show. Several small gigs in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Charlie's Angels, and Kojak followed before he earned his place on M*A*S*H.

Stiers was also musically inclined: He served as the associate conductor for the Newport Symphony Orchestra in Oregon and guest-conducted dozens of orchestras around the world.
Rest In Peace

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[DeadCelebrityAlert] Actress Nanette Fabray, who won Tony and Emmy awards, dies at 97

 



Nanette Fabray, the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical comedy star whose work with Sid Caesar on the classic 1950s TV comedy-variety show "Caesar's Hour" earned her three Emmy Awards and a lifetime of television work, has died. She was 97.

Fabray, whose early hearing problem spurred her to become a high-profile advocate for the hearing impaired, died Thursday of natural causes in Palos Verdes, her son, Jamie MacDougall, said.

Fabray had won a Tony for best actress in the 1949 musical "Love Life" and appeared in the 1953 MGM musical "The Band Wagon" — in which she, Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan performed the famous "Triplets" number as "three little unexpected children" — before becoming the female lead on "Caesar's Hour" in 1954.

The live, hourlong NBC show was the successor to Caesar's popular "Your Show of Shows," whose female lead in comedy sketches was Imogene Coca.

But when "Your Show of Shows" ended in 1954 and Caesar and Coca launched their own separate TV shows, Caesar had to find a new leading lady to complete the comedy ensemble that included "Show of Shows" veterans Carl Reiner and Howard Morris.

In his 2003 memoir "Caesar's Hours," Caesar praised Fabray and said, "You can't compare Nanette and Imogene other than that they were both amazingly talented performers.

"Nanette was a different type of performer," wrote Caesar, who died in 2014. "She was what the French call a soubrette: she could sing, dance, act, and look beautiful. She had perfect timing and a sense of comedy and I knew she had scope."

Fabray considered Caesar a "comic genius," who, she said, "encouraged me to try new avenues of funny."

In a 2004 interview for the Television Academy Foundation's Archive of American Television, Fabray said she signed on for her first "Caesar's Hour" show as a guest.

"The minute Sid and I worked together, it was as if we had worked together all of our lives," she recalled. "It was like a theatrical marriage. … I could almost read Sid's mind. It was magic."

Fabray played wife Ann opposite Caesar's Bob Victor in "The Commuters," the recurring domestic sketches set in the suburbs.

But "Caesar's Hour" displayed Fabray's talents in a variety of ways. In one nearly six-minute silent sketch set to Beethoven's 5th Symphony, she and Caesar memorably mime an arguing couple.

In 1956, Fabray won an Emmy as best actress in a supporting role for "Caesar's Hour" — as well as an Emmy for best comedienne. The next year, she won an Emmy for best continuing performance by a comedienne in a series for "Caesar's Hour."

But Fabray was dropped from the show after two seasons when a business manager who handled her money had a meeting in Caesar's office and, without her knowledge, made unreasonable demands for her contract for the third season.

It wasn't until she talked to Caesar at a tribute for the comedian a couple of years later that they both discovered what had happened.

Fabray later starred in a short-lived, 1961 situation comedy on NBC — "Westinghouse Playhouse starring Nanette Fabray and Wendell Corey" — in which she played a Broadway star whose new husband, a widower living in Beverly Hills, has two children.

The series was created by Fabray's second husband, screenwriter Ranald MacDougall. He died in 1973.

Fabray, who received a Tony nomination in 1963 for her performance in the musical comedy "Mr. President," made numerous guest appearances on TV variety shows — as well as appearing regularly on game shows such as "Password" and "Hollywood Squares."

She also played Mary Tyler Moore's mother in two episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," had a semi-regular role as Bonnie Franklin's mother on "One Day at a Time" and played real-life niece Shelley Fabares' mother on four episodes of "Coach."

She also became an outspoken advocate for the hearing impaired.

Fabray, whose own undiagnosed hearing problem affected her grades in high school, was in her early 30s and appearing in a production of "Bloomer Girl" in Chicago when she found she no longer could hear the pit orchestra.

A doctor she found in the phone book predicted she'd lose her hearing in about five years.

She was diagnosed with otosclerosis, a disorder in which excessive growth in the bones of the middle ear interferes with the transmission of sound.

"If I'd known another person in the public eye who had a handicapping problem, it would have given me comfort. But I didn't," she told the Washington Post in 1984. "So I kept my problem to myself. My hearing kept going down."

She said she became "so neurotically involved with my problem, so totally self-involved, so insecure," that it destroyed her life with her first husband, David Tebet.

Fabray, who learned sign language, wore hearing aids until four operations between 1955 and 1977 restored her hearing.

Over the years, she served on the boards of the National Council on Disability, the President's Committee on Employment of People With Disabilities and the Better Hearing Institute, among others.

She received numerous honors for her work, including the President's Distinguished Service Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award and the Screen Actors Guild Humanitarian Award.

The youngest of three children, she was born Ruby Nanette Bernadette Theresa Fabares on Oct. 27, 1920, in San Diego and grew up in Hollywood, where her mother "pushed" her into show business.

Beginning as "Baby Nan," she sang and tap-danced on local vaudeville stages. As a teenager, she won a scholarship to director Max Reinhardt's theater school in Hollywood. That led to a short contract with Warner Bros., where she had small film roles.

A 1939 graduate of Hollywood High School, Fabray became a performer in a musical revue in Los Angeles called "Meet the People," which toured across the country and landed in New York City in late 1940.

She was billed as Nanette Fabares at the time. But that quickly changed.

As she recalled in her 2004 TV archive interview, she was invited to sing at a big benefit in Madison Square Garden. Newspaper columnist and future TV legend Ed Sullivan was the emcee. As Sullivan read her name off a card to introduce her, he mispronounced Fabares by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Miss Nanette Fa-bare-ass."

Recalled Fabray: "I changed the spelling of my name the next day."

Acclaimed conductor Artur Rodzinski later heard her singing in "Meet the People" and sponsored her to study opera at the Juilliard School. But she studied there for only a few months.

By then, she was appearing with Danny Kaye in the hit "Let's Face It!" and she chose musical comedy over opera.

Fabray went on to appear in a string of Broadway musicals over the next decade, including "By Jupiter," "Bloomer Girl," "High Button Shoes," "Love Life," "Arms and the Girl" and "Make a Wish."

"I did 12 Broadway shows — just loved it," she said in the TV archive interview. "I had a wonderful, exciting career onstage."

She is survived by her son and two grandchildren, Kylie and Ryan.

McLellan is a former Times staff writer.

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[DeadCelebrityAlert] Vic Damone, 89

 

Legendary singer Vic Damone passed away on Sunday at the age of 89.

Damone, whose smooth baritone led Frank Sinatra to famously declare he "had the best pipes in the business," died at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla. surrounded by several close relatives.

Damone was a star of scores of television shows and movies, but the crooner did not consider himself a showman in the mold of Milton Berle and Sammy Davis, Jr.

"I never thought of myself that way," Damone wrote in his memoir, "Singing Was the Easy Part."

"That wasn't my particular gift," he wrote. "My gift was singing."

With over 2,500 recordings under his belt, Damone was part of the golden age of lounge singers who came to fame after World War II, including Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and Perry Como.

Damone's first big break came at the age of 14, with Como's help. Damone's was forced to drop out of high school and take a job as an usher at the Paramount Theater in New York City, where he bumped into Como in an elevator. Damone stopped the elevator between floors and started singing.

He asked Como on whether he should continue voice lessons and Como said simply, "Keep singing!"

Fate intervened for Damone again in the summer of 1946, when Sinatra was playing poker at a friend's Manhattan apartment, and one of Sinatra's classics, "Night and Day," came on the radio. Sinatra was astounded when the singer turned out to be Damone, live in the studio. Sinatra phoned the radio station and told Damone: "This is Frank Sinatra, and I want you to stop singing my songs."

Damone thought he was being pranked and barked back, "Yeah, if you're Frank Sinatra, then I'm the Pope."

Months later, Sinatra ended up introducing Damone at a charity fundraiser in Madison Square Garden.

"I'd like to introduce to you Vic Damone," Sinatra said. "This kid's a really great singer. He's got stardust on his shoulders."
Damone was born Vito Farinola on June 12, 1928, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. His parents, Rocco and Mamie (Damone) Farinola, were immigrants from Bari, Italy. His father was an electrician and his mother taught piano. 



























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[DeadCelebrityAlert] John Gavin, Actor in 'Psycho' and 'Imitation of Life,' Dies at 86

 



He was oh-so-close to playing James Bond in 'Diamonds Are Forever' and served as President Reagan's ambassador to Mexico in the 1980s.

John Gavin, the movie heartthrob who starred in Imitation of Life, Psycho and Thoroughly Modern Millie, has died, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. He was 86.

Gavin, who served as President Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Mexico in the 1980s, died Friday morning, said Budd Burton Mossa, a rep for the actor's wife, actress Constance Towers.

He and Towers, a regular on soap operas and the star of the Sam Fuller experimental films Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, married in September 1974.

Hailed as a second coming of Rock Hudson at Universal Pictures, Gavin played Lana Turner's love interest in Douglas Sirk's remake of Imitation of Life(1959); portrayed Sam Loomis, who as Janet Leigh's boyfriend helps solves the mystery of Norman Bates, in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960); and was the object of Julie Andrews' and Mary Tyler Moore's affections in George Roy Hill's Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).

Director William Friedkin wrote on Twitter on Friday, "A sad day, my great friend John Gavin died. This morning. One of the finest men I knew. And like a brother to me. May he Rest In Peace."

In films released in 1960, the Los Angeles native appeared as Julius Caesar in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and helped rescue Doris Day from thieving husband Rex Harrison in the thriller Midnight Lace.

The strapping 6-foot-4 Gavin also starred on two short-lived series in 1964 and '65: as the framed lawman on the ABC Western Destry and as a freighter captain on NBC's Convoy.

The American actor was signed and all set to play James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) before Sean Connery returned after sitting out On Her Majesty's Secret Service (in which George Lazenby played 007) to reclaim the role of the superspy.

In May 1981, Gavin — who spoke fluent Spanish and had been appearing in commercials south of the border for Bacardi rum — quit a Broadway-bound revival of Can-Can to accept President Ronald Reagan's invitation to serve as ambassador to Mexico.

According to a 1983 article in People magazine, he presided over what was then America's third-largest embassy, with 1,181 employees. He resigned from the post in June 1986.

Gavin's film credits also included A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), also directed by Sirk; A Breath of Scandal (1960); the Susan Hayward-starrer Back Street (1961), another remake; Tammy Tell Me True (1961), with Sandra Dee; The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969); and Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You (1970).

Like Reagan, Gavin served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Gavin ran for a second term in 1973 but was defeated by Dennis Weaver.

John Anthony Golenor was born in Los Angeles on April 8, 1931. His mother was born in Mexico, his American father had mining interests in the country, and he grew up bilingual.

He attended St. John's Military Academy in L.A., Beverly Hills High School and Villanova Prep in Ojai, California, before studying the economic history of Latin America at Stanford University. He graduated from college in 1952, then served in the U.S. Navy as an Air Intelligence Officer.

After his military discharge, the dark-haired Gavin was intent on a career in the diplomatic corps but at the suggestion of a friend went into acting. He studied with the respected coach Jeff Corey, landed a contract at Universal and was billed as John Gilmore in Raw Edge (1956).

Through the '60s, Gavin served as special adviser to two secretaries general of the Organization of American States.

While under contract at Universal, Gavin ventured into Mexico against the wishes of the studio and appeared as the title character in Pedro Paramo, a 1967 Spanish-language film set during the Mexican Revolution. A hit outside the U.S., it enhanced his reputation with Universal execs, who cast him in Thoroughly Modern Millie. He won critical accolades for his ability to do romantic comedy.

Gavin later starred as a heart surgeon on the 1979 ABC miniseries Doctors' Private Lives and played Cary Grant in a 1980 NBC telefilm about the life of Sophia Loren (the actress played herself).

He also appeared on Broadway in the 1973 romantic comedy Seesaw, and his TV credits included The Virginian, Hart to Hart, Medical Center, Mannix, The Doris Day Show, The Saint and Fantasy Island.

In 1987, Gavin was named president of Univisa Satellite Communications, then the owner of the Spanish-language TV programmer Univision.

He was married to Cecily Evans from 1957 to 1965. His godfather, prolific songwriter Jimmy McHugh ("I'm in the Mood for Love"), introduced him to Towers.

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