Category: obituaries

bell hooks, the trailblazing author, feminist, educator, and activist, died today at the age of 69.

hooks, whose given name was Gloria Jean Watkins, based her pen name on great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks. She chose to style her pen name in all lowercase letter in order to highlight her message, rather than herself. hooks was a major voice in the American (and international) feminism — she pioneered what is not known as intersectional feminism, and wrote about how gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality in books such as And There They Wept and Ain’t I A Woman? Black Women and Feminism. Her formulations are now a key part of the Fourth-Wave Feminist movement.

During her life, hooks authored more than forty books, including essays, poetry, and children’s books. As a cultural critic, she turned her eye to cinema in Reel to Real, wherein she discussed how films impact individuals, especially black female viewers. She also contributed to several documentaries, including My Feminism and BaadAsssss Cinema. You can find all of these titles on or about bell hooks in the AU Library’s Media collection.

• bell hooks: Cultural Criticism and Transformation
• Feminist Futures: Finding the Joy (Lecture Given at American University)
• My Feminism (DVD 7765)
• Black Is — Black Ain’t
• Voices of Power: African American Women
• Is Feminism Dead? 

Today we honor Terry Jones, immortal member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a tv program which truly needs no introduction. Jones was a founding Python, establishing the troupe along with Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin. When Monty Python’s Flying Circus premiered in the UK in 1969, the troupe presented a zany, silly, and irreverent sketch comedy show that was both smart… and absolutely ridiculous. There had never been anything like it before, and the show was a hit in the UK and abroad.

Jones is credited as the man responsible for Flying Circus’ surrealist comedy and pacing. Instead of punch lines ending a sketch, Jones often appeared as a naked organist, or he had Graham Chapman barge in dressed in military regalia and declare a sketch “too silly.” Jones also wrote the famous ‘Spam’ sketch.

Even though Flying Circus only aired until 1974, Jones and the rest of the troupe reunited to film several movies. Jones co-directed or directed most of the Python movies, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Meaning of Life and The Life of Brian. After honing his directing skills on these films, he went on to direct other movies, including Erik the Viking and several documentary series. Some of these documentaries were based on his own scholarly works, as Jones also found time to publish monographs on Chaucer. He also wrote over a dozen children’s books.

It’s hard to capture the amazing life of this man in a simple blog post. I grew up watching (selected) Flying Circus sketches, and I can’t count the number of times Jones has made me laugh as Sir Bedivere or Mandy Cohen. He’d also probably hate this obituary, so I’ll just leave you with this:

D.A. Pennebaker, pioneer of American cinema verite and chronicler of 1960s counterculture, died this past weekend at the age of 94.

Documentary filmmaking was not Pennebaker’s first career, but his formative experiences and skills uniquely prepared him to spearhead a new type of documentary filmmaking. As a young man, he studied engineering at Yale University, and then went on to found Electronics Engineering, where he helped create the first computerized airline reservation system. It was only after selling the company that he turned to filmmaking, and he directed his first film, Daybreak Express, in 1953. Afterwards, he joined a filmmaking co-op and directed documentary shorts for a wide variety of clients, most notably news magazine programs. During this time, he and collaborator Robert Leacock invented one of the first portable synchronous sound cameras. With this new technology, Pennebaker was able to get up close and personal with the subjects of his documentaries.

Though he made a name for himself with short documentaries, what put Pennebaker on the map was his groundbreaking 1967 film Don’t Look Back. This film followed Bob Dylan on his 1965 British tour, and captured the musician as he transitioned from his acoustic folk routes to electric rock and roll.  It’s considered by many to be the first rock documentary, and the opening sequence the first modern music video.

Pennebaker further cemented his status as counterculture documentarian with Monterey Pop, which chronicled the 1967 Monterey Pop festival. In this film, Pennebaker captured iconic performances from Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, and the Who.

Pennebaker’s fascination with music didn’t end with the 1960s. Throughout the latter part of the 20^th century, Pennebaker created documentaries around or about David Bowie, John Lennon, the Broadway musical Company, and my favorite synth-pop band Depeche Mode.

He received just one Oscar nomination in 1994 for The War Room, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Though he didn’t win, Pennebaker became the first documentarian to receive an honorary Oscar. You can check out all of these D.A. Pennebaker titles from the Media Collection

• Don’t Look Back (DVD 2281)
• Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (DVD 150)
• Primary (DVD 13485)
• The War Room (DVD 1013)
• Dance Black America (DVD 6024)
• Timothy Leary’s Wedding: You’re Nobody til Somebody Loves You (Streaming)
• Town Bloody Hall (Streaming)
• Monterey Pop (Streaming)

Franco Zeffirelli, the famed director behind many a Shakespeare adaptation, died in Rome this weekend at the age of 96.

His earliest days seemed to predestine him for the drama he would become celebrated for. Born out of wedlock in Florence, Italy, his mother made up his surname based on a mistranslation of a Mozart aria. During WWII, he fought with Italian partisans against Mussolini’s fascist regime before becoming an interpreter for the British army. After the war, he studied at the University of Florence, where he got his first taste of the wonder of stage and opera.

He began his opera career in the 1950s, first working as a production assistant, then set designer, and later directing productions in Italy and the United States.  He gradually transitioned into theatre, and he directed Shakespeare productions in London throughout the 1960s. He became known for his lavish sets and lush costuming, and he carried these hallmarks with him when he began directing films. His first film, The Taming of the Shrew (1967), starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The film was a moderately successful, but his big break came the next year with Romeo and Juliet. This sumptuous film is still considered one of the best adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedy, and thousands of American students watch it every year in classrooms.

After these two early successes, Zeffirelli took a break from Shakespeare and focused on making more religious films, such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), and Jesus of Nazareth (1977), which earned mixed reviews from critics and audiences. After a decade adapting operas for the big screen, he experienced a sort of career renaissance after the release of Hamlet (1990), starring Mel Gibson, and Jane Eyre (1996).

As with many men in Hollywood, Zeffirelli was not without controversy. He was a demanding, difficult director—some would say abusive, and allegations of sexual harassment followed him from Romeo and Juliet onwards. Bruce Robinson, who played Benvolio in that film, later became a screenwriter and based the character of Uncle Monty from Withnail & I, on the Italian director.

Zeffirelli will be remembered in Hollywood as beyond as a director who retold our best known stories in sumptuous, lush fantasy worlds. You can find the following of his works in our collection:

• Romeo and Juliet (DVD 5806)
• La Boheme (DVD 7103)
• The Taming of the Shrew (DVD 9159)
• Hamlet (DVD 5914)
• La Traviata (DVD 2327)

In addition to these DVDs, you can view many of his stage productions through The Metropolitan Opera streaming service, available with your AU credentials.

Doris Day, the acclaimed and beloved actress died this past Monday, May 13^th. For many people, Day is the face of post-war American cinema, and is known not only for her films, but her crooning voice.

Day was born in Ohio in 1922, and was a near-professional dancer before a car accident shattered her leg. Forced to give up dance, she took singing lesson while she recovered, and soon began singing in local clubs. She moved to singing with touring big bands just after WWII, and launched her film career in 1948 with Romance on the High Seas at Warner Brothers. She starred in minor musicals at the studio before landing the lead role in Calamity Jane in 1953.

By the time the 1960s rolled around, she’d stared in films like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and began starring in romantic dramas with Rock Hudson, such as Pillow Talk. Her films were some of the decade’s most successful, and she regularly topped the box office in the early 60s.

Despite her commercial success and popular appeal, Day garnered an interesting reputation. She was consistently characterized as a sunny, all-American virginal angel, despite the fact that the characters she played were often anything but. Contemporary feminists panned her, but more recent feminist critics have re-examined her movies. Almost all the characters she played in romantic dramas were career women, and they were often more concerned about their professional success than romantic pursuits.

These themes carried over into her situation sitcom, The Doris Day Show, which aired from 1968 to 1973. Though she began the series playing a widow who somewhat reluctantly returns to work as a secretary at a magazine, by the time the final season aired, her children had been written out, and her widow was a seasoned reporter. The show chronicled the life of an American working woman and would influence an entire genre of sitcoms and situation comedies.

You can check out these Doris Day films from Media Services:

• Calamity Jane (DVD 338)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (DVD 3529)
• Young Man With a Horn (DVD 337)
• Love Me or Leave Me (DVD 6664)
• The Doris Day and Rock Hudson Comedy Collection (DVD 4071)
• Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (DVD 10649)
• The Pajama Game (DVD 10603)