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Tag: Obituary

All the latest breaking obituaries. Browse THEGAYUK’s complete collection of news, articles and commentary on obituaries.

  • In Memory: Rudolf Hruska

    In Memory: Rudolf Hruska

    While December is a time for frantic shopping, making space in the freezer for a turkey and singing about Rudolf the red nosed reindeer, to me there is a day when I think about another Rudolf who just so happened to be one of the greatest engineer and car designers in the world. To me, he is anyway.

    Rudolf Hruska (2 July 1915 – 4 December 1995) was an Austrian engineer and responsible for the design and production of one the greatest cars to come from Italy. The Alfasud.

    The Alfasud was not only a departure for Alfa Romeo, it also helped kick start employment in the southern region of Italy. An area in need of something major due to high levels of unemployment. This, however, would be one of the many Achilles heels that the Alfasud would suffer in its 18-year production run.

    Rudolf Hruska was entrusted in the development of the factory in Pomigliano d’Arco. No mean feat really, the brief was quite simple. Starting from scratch, build a factory, design and develop a car and see to it that 20’000 people employed could build it. There were problems along the way with typical strike action here and there. Not to be perturbed by this, Rudolf carried on and the factory was up and running some 2-3 months later than set out.

    CREDIT: Wikipedia
    CREDIT: Wikipedia

    He single handedly changed the Alfa Romeo tradition of front engine, rear wheel drive. He didn’t even have to use an Alfa Romeo engine that was available at the time. Having been involved with Porsche and VW (then KDF) and knowing his way around the layout, he designed a compact flat 4 cylinder engine for the new car. Different in many ways to the German flat four but still with the added benefits of compactness and this time water cooled.

    His body concept for a light compact car weighing in total no more that 800 to 900kg was clothed in a design by Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Ital design studio who also designed the pretty Sprint coupe.

    He was not only responsible for the Alfasud. There were many other cars he was involved in too. To have a man responsible for the development of another 2 favourites of mine. Working alongside fellow Austrian, Ferdinand Porsche, he blessed us with skills on the Volkswagen Beetle before the second world war and was also involved in the Fiat 128. That, in turn, gave us mechanical components for the Fiat X1/9. Hruska also developed good links with Nuccio Bertone who was the father of the X1/9. He was a connected man.

    It seemed there was nothing Rudolf couldn’t do. Develop a tank? Yes, he did. The Tiger 1 of 1943. Developed racing cars for Cisitalia, other projects for Alfa Romeo, Fiat and Simca

    In 1980 at the age of 65, Hruska retired. He carried on working through his retirement for I.DE.A (Institute of Development in Automotive Engineering) I.DE.A were also responsible for the 1990 Fiat Tempra. Another car close to my heart and in my fleet.

    On December 4th, 1995 Rudolf Hruska passed away.

  • RIP Jackie Collins, Dies From Breast Cancer Aged 77

    The author Jackie Collins has died at the age of 77 from breast cancer in Los Angeles.

    The family of Jackie Collins have confirmed that best selling author Jackie Collins has died from breast cancer at the age of 77.

    A statement released by the family said,

    “It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful, dynamic and one-of-a-kind mother,”

    “She was a true inspiration, a trailblazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words,”

    In her lifetime Collins is credited with selling over 500 million books. At the time of her death Collins had penned 32 novels and had largely defined the “bonkbuster” genre.

    Her sister, Joan Collins told People Magazine in the US that she was devastated by the news.

    “She was my best friend. I admire how she handled this. She was a wonderful, brave and a beautiful person and I love her,”

    Jackie Collins has long been a strong advocate for the LGBT community. In an interview with Out magazine she revealed that as a teenager she had crush on a boy called Peter, who later committed suicide. She said,

    “When I was 15 and thrown out of school, I went to a drama school, a preparatory academy in England, and there was this lovely guy there called Peter,” she says. “He was my first gay crush, really, and we got along like a house on fire — and one day he committed suicide. And that made me think really deeply about the problems that some poor guys go through when they want to come out.

    “I’ll never forget Peter,” she says. “He was so good-looking; he had curly hair, and he was tall and lovely. He just couldn’t come out, and then he killed himself. He must have been about 17, maybe.

    Right from the beginning of her writing career Collins had introduced gay characters. She said,

    “I’ve written 29 books, and I’ve always had gay characters, right from the very beginning

    “Sometimes they might be a little clichéd, and sometimes not.”

    She leaves behind three children.

     

  • COMMENT | Why We Loved Cilla

    Saturday teatime. In my house, this meant my mum would cook a special tea, steak or gammon with pineapple if we were very lucky, which we’d eat on trays in front of the telly. And tea and Saturday night TV in the late 1980s and 1990s would mean Blind Date and Cilla Black.

    At its peak, Blind Date had viewing figures of 15 million viewers. Impressive enough but Cilla Black’s reign as Queen of British Television was the second act of a long career.

    The story of Priscilla White, the cloakroom girl at The Cavern Club and pal of The Beatles that became a pop star is well documented. Cilla may never have been as credible as a Dusty Springfield or as cool as a Sandie Shaw but amongst her back catalogue were songs from some of the greatest writers of all time. And let us not forget Burt Bacharach, a man who knows a thing or two about female singers has claimed that her version of one of his greatest songs Anyone Who Had a Heart was his favourite. Not too shabby for a woman often derided for her vocal ability.

    Looking back now on her career, the amount of time she remained Our Cilla and a major star is what’s truly impressive. Today a ‘’hot’’ pop star can be casually dumped by their record label barely after the first album has hit the internet and winners of talent shows are sent back to obscurity at the slightest whiff of declining recording sales, Cilla managed to move from pop music to light entertainment and television in a way that never seemed jarring, remaining a big name in the process.

    Her TV career actually began with her own BBC show in the late 60s and early 70s. But it was with the double whammy of Surprise Surprise and Blind Date that introduced her to new generations. And Cilla did cross generations. She managed the rare feat of being a true family entertainer, Auntie Cilla; an audience who remembered her from the peak of her pop stardom sitting down with their own children to watch light, often silly but more often than not fun shows together. Her flame red hair and unique mangling of the English language may have been easy to mock and the programmes she hosted would be regularly sneered at by highbrow critics. But her popularity and ability to draw an audience remained undiminished.

    Saturday night television was very different when Cilla was the Queen of it. This was the pre-Cowell era, a time before phone voting and copycat talent shows. Of course the producers of Blind Date were probably every bit as much the cynical puppet masters that the X Factorproduction team are today but now it seems like a kinder, gentler time. When the stakes are a trip to the Costa De Sol and some awkwardly scripted flirting, it seems quite quaint compared to the possibility of a Christmas number one and all the music industry corporate baggage that comes with it.

    Despite her love of sequins and spangles, and a pair of legs that even in later years women half her age would have killed for, Cilla was never glamorous. But she was showbusiness. An old school style of Champagne glass ever present in hand, never leave the house without a full face of make up and killer heels on, summer seasons and pantomime showbusiness. It barely exists now. Entertainers have been largely replaced by presenters and proficient autocue readers on TV and you’re likely to find somebody who came third in Big Brother playing Aladdin down the local theatre at Christmas rather than someone who learnt their craft on the working men’s club circuit.

    Reading the tweets and tributes about Cilla Black, I know mine was not the only household that invited her into our homes at Saturday teatime. She was a guest who made us chuckle, occasionally may have made us cringe a little and a guest we had fond memories of.

    Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.

  • RIP: Anne Meara Dies

    Anne Meara actress and comedian and wife of Jerry Stiller and mother of actor Ben Stiller and of actress Amy Stiller died yesterday aged 85.

     

    Extremely well-known to US Audiences, she is instantly recognisable to us as for her role as Cynthia’s meddling mother-in-law in Sex And The City. Married to Stiller for 61 years during which they constantly performed together, although he and Ben became bigger stars, Ms. Meara still appeared in over forty movies in her long career that included Fame, The Boys From Brazil, The Daytrippers and she co-starred with her son in Zoolander and The Night At The Museum.

    Here is a clip of Jerry and Anne on Good Morning Joe TV Show in 2012 when they were honoured by the Actors Fund.

    @RogerWalkerDack

  • Leading UK HIV Specialist, Martin Fisher Dies

    Professor Martin Fisher a leading HIV specialist has died. He was instrumental in field of HIV medicine and research over two decades. (more…)

  • RIP: Gay Film Maker Richard Glatzer Dies

    Filmmaker Richard Glatzer, the co-writer and co-director of Still Alice, died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Glatzer and husband Wash Westmoreland were a writing and directing team who were responsible for a string of very successful eclectic indie movies.

    Their first collaboration in 2001 was The Fluffer a comedy about a young man employed for a ‘vital role’ in the adult entertainment industry who finds himself falling for a gay-for-pay porn star whose hedonistic lifestyle may lead them both to destruction. In 2006 the pair won a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for Quinceañera with a plot that focused on a multigenerational Mexican-American family preparing for their daughter’s quinceañera against the backdrop of a gentrifying neighbourhood in LA. Then Glatzer and Westmoreland executive-produced a heart-breaking movie in 2008 called Pedro about Pedro Zamora the AIDS activist who was cast on MTV’s The Real World and died aged 22,

    Their last film Still Alice is a movie about a fifty-year-old linguistics professor who develops early onset Alzheimer’s disease for which Julianne Moore won a Best Actress Academy Award. Some critics have suggested a connection between Glatzer’s own battle with ALS and the raw, honest depiction of illness in the film.

    British-born Westmoreland and Glatzer’s partner for 20 years issued the following statement:

    ‘I am devastated. Rich was my soul mate, my collaborator, my best friend and my life. Seeing him battle ALS for four years with such grace and courage inspired me and all who knew him.

    In this dark time, I take some consolation in the fact that he got to see Still Alice go out into the world. He put his heart and soul into that film, and the fact that it touched so many people was a constant joy to him.

    Thank you to everyone for this huge outpouring of love. Richard was a unique guy — opinionated, funny, caring, gregarious, generous, and so so smart. A true artist and a brilliant man. I treasure every day of the short twenty years we had together.

    I cannot believe he has gone. But in my heart and the hearts of those who loved him he will always be alive.’

    Richard Glatzer (January 28, 1952 – March 10, 2015)

  • RIP: Leonard Nimoy, Lived Long And Prospered

    The veteran classically trained actor who was known the world over as Spock the deadpan Vulcan logician whose cool head helped Captain Kirk out of many a near miss on ‘STAR TREK’ has died at aged 83.

    Back in 1968 when talking about the character he created he told a New York Times reporter, “‘It’s all in the years. Five words. That’s what they want to hear”. His early autobiography I am Not Spock was wildly misconstrued as his resentment to his ticket to fame and fortune, but he corrected that misunderstanding with his second memoir in 1995 called ‘I Am Spock’.

    In fact he was so wedded the most famous space series of all time that after his screen death he went on to direct two Star Trek movies: The Search for Spock in 1984, and The Voyage Home in 1986 for which he also wrote the story. He was in fact so much more than just an actor and enjoyed a hugely successful career that included directing the blockbuster comedy Three Men and A Baby’ acting on stage and both big and small screens as well as making several albums of his music, photography (with several exhibitions mounted of his portraiture) and prolifically producing books of his poetry.

    Among the outpouring of tributes that are all over the media today, one of the most endearing ones came from George Takei the actor who played Sulu alongside him in Star Trek for many years. He said, “Today, the world lost a great man, and I lost a great friend. We return you now to the stars, Leonard. You taught us to “Live Long And Prosper,” and you indeed did, friend. I shall miss you in so many, many ways.”

    As we Trekkies and non-Trekkies will too.

  • Lesley Gore, the party girl, dies 68

    The American singer/songwriter and out Lesley Gore who has just died aged 68 will always be very fondly remembered for her big hits in the 1960s, which became some of the very first ‘gay anthems’.

    Her infectious and popular songs that made her a worldwide success included “It’s My Party (I Can Cry If Of I Want Too)” recorded when she was just 16-years-old, and “It’s Judy’s Turn to Cry”, and “You Don’t Own Me” all had the most campest lyrics ever. In 1965, she appeared in the beach party beach party film ‘The Girls on The Beach’ in which she performed three songs: Leave Me Alone, It’s Gotta Be You and I Don’t Want to Be a Loser.

    Lesley Gore composed songs for the 1980 movie Fame for which she received an Academy Award Nomination, and she recorded her last album in 2005 entitled Ever Since. An out lesbian, who had been with her partner Lpis Sasson a jeweller designer for 33 years, Ms Gore also hosted the PBS TV series In The Life which focused ion LGBT matters in 2004.

    Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein,[ May 2, 1946 – February 16, 2015)

  • OBITUARY | Steve Strange, leading light of the 80s

    Steve Strange one of the leading lights of the 1980’s new wave/punk music scene and a prominent promoter in London’s vibrant nightclub scene, has died at the age of 55.

    Strange was the lead singer and frontman of the group Visage who were closely linked to the burgeoning ‘New Romantic’ fashion movement of that period, and who were best know for their hit ‘Fade to Grey’. He and fellow band member Rusty Egan also hosted nights at the celebrated Blitz Club in Covent Garden, one of the ‘hot’ spots to be seen and hear the new music that was emerging. From there they parlayed their success into packed nights at Camden Palace which people still talk about today with such great affection. They were both members of the extraordinary colourful set that fellow member Boy George captured in his autobiographical show Taboo.

    In Blizted! his own very candid autobiography Strange made it known that he had relationships with both men and women, and wrote very open and frankly of his long battle with his heroin addiction.

    Boy George tweeted he was ‘heartbroken’ about the death of Strange adding, “he was such a big part of my life”. It’s a sentiment shared by all of us who grew up and/or ‘came out’ during that glorious time when people like Strange were real life stars and not just ‘reality’ ones.

    Steve Strange (Steven John Harrington) 28th May 1959 – 12th February 2015

  • Demis Roussos: King Of Kitsch Kaftans Dies

    Larger than life Greek pop singer Demis Roussos who started his career as part of the progressive rock group Aphrodite’s Child along with fellow member Vangelis, became a major presence as a solo artist in the UK pop scene in the mid-1970s.

    His most successful single “Forever And Ever” was No. 1 in the Charts in 1976, and he followed that with five other Top Ten Hits. As his career grew so did his waistline and so too did his signature kaftans which were the epitome of camp, and they just got bigger and brasher.

    Roussos’s other claim to fame came in June 1985, when he was one of the passengers of TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome, which was hijacked by Hezbollah-backed terrorists and diverted to Beirut. He and most of the 153 passengers were held on the plane for 17 days.

    Demis Roussos 15 June 1946 – 25 January 2015

  • Anne Kirkbride And The End Of An Era

    We have lost a real TV legend. The warmth and genuine sorrow expressed at the tragic death of Anne Kirkbride shows how over four decades, the character of Deirdre Barlow had earned a place in more than just the Soap Hall of Fame.

    Think of that character – first there were the distinctive physical characteristics; the big glasses of course, the unique vocal tics and the neck vein that was so prominent it had Facebook pages devoted to it. Then you focus in on the stories and the moments.

    Scrambling desperately through the scattered contents of a lorry that had crashed into The Rovers, looking for Baby Tracey.

    Marrying Ken in the same week as the Royal Wedding and being the only woman, aside from Camilla, who came close to stealing focus from Diana.

    ”Free Deirdre”

    And of course… The Ken-Deirdre-Mike Baldwin love triangle.

    It is not exaggerating to say that the character of Deirdre was at the centre of some of the most watched and talked about TV moments of the past 40 years.

    These were big moments. To coin that horrible American phrase, watercooler moments. But such moments are getting rarer. In a time of Netflix and it’s VOD rivals and hundreds of digital TV channels, the days when a number in excess of 20 million people would sit down and watch a single TV show are long gone.

    The soaps of course still have that power to occasionally produce storylines that land on the front of the tabloids, as do reality shows. But with an increasingly splintered audience even they are not quite the big conversation pieces they would have been even 10 years ago.

    Binge watching means that we of course still talk about telly. Witness a group of Breaking Bad devotees getting together. But we now tend to watch at our own pace. The idea of a family gathering in the living room to stare at the box in the corner and watch the same thing at the same time is becoming increasing quaint, the relic of a pre internet age.

    The mourning for Anne Kirkbride is a sign of a character that we have watched several times a week over the past forty years who was part of big moments we have shared. Moments that made millions of us stop and watch.

    When Ken and Deirdre were eventually reconciled, the news was announced on the scoreboard at Old Trafford during a game between Manchester United and Arsenal. It read: “Ken and Deirdre reunited. Ken – 1, Mike – 0.” If such a storyline happened now, it would be all over Twitter and Facebook or we’d wait to catch up online at the weekend.

    TV has changed. How we watch it has changed too. In a world of often bewildering choice though, there is still a place for sharp writing and strong acting. But now technology means that we are as likely to find it as our own speed, sometimes years after the TV shows we obsess over were first produced. There may never be a soap plot that gets tens of millions of us holding our breath one night quite like Deirdre being sent to jail or the time that Mike Baldwin knocked on the door. But for those of who us who saw it, discussed it and lived it we will never forget Anne Kikbride. She was part of our conversation. She was part of our lives.

     

    Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you’d like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.