Notable Passing, 2013, H-L

This group of obits runs the gamut from a former stripper to the greatest actress of her generation (Julie Harris) to one of my favorite comic book artists to Trixie Norton (who was also a former stripper). Jane Kean played Trixie of "The Honeymooners" when Jackie Gleason recast the wives of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton with musical actresses so he could incorporate elaborate production numbers and comedy songs; Sheila MacRae was the new Alice. We would watch the Gleason show every Saturday night. It used to come on right after "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges ("By now my lungs were aching for air.") I saw Kean play Sally in a summer stock production of "Follies" at the Valley Forge Music Fair with Robert Alda, Vivian Blaine, and Selma Diamond. I was about 12 years old and had saved up my allowance to pay for the ticket (It had to be $10 or so.)

Gleason's variety show ran until the early 1970s and CBS  then replaced the middlebrow humor exemplified by Gleason, Lucille Ball, and shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction," and "Green Acres" to be replaced by more sophisticated sitcoms like "All in the Family," "MASH," and the Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore shows. These shows were much more adult, but I did miss the innocent silliness of Ralph and Ed, Alice and Trixie arguing in that tiny Brooklyn apartment. (There were many jokes about Trixie's past as an exotic dancer.)

Harris was also a sitcom actor, appearing in an awful piece of tripe about a family that made pickles. It was ridiculous, but she was brilliant of course and I suppose she had to pay the rent. I only met her once, when she was appearing Off-Broadway in a play called "The Fiery Furnace" and I got her autograph. She was charming and gracious. 

Haji, 67, Canadian actress and former exotic dancer who starred in several Russ Myers sexploitation films including “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” and “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” as well as John Cassavettes’ “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,” her last film was the memorably titled “Killer Drag Queens on Dope.”

Helen Hanft, 79, leading actress of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, best known for Tom Eyen’s “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down,” also appeared in such plays as “Women Benhind Bars,” “In the Boom Boom Room,” and “Gus and Al,” and the films “Next Stop, Greenwich Village” and “Manhattan.”

Julie Harris and James Dean in "East of Eden"

Julie Harris, 87, winner of five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play (“I Am a Camera,” “The Lark,” “Forty Carats,” “The Last of Mrs. Lincoln,” “The Belle of Amherst”), one of the American theater’s treasures, she also starred in “Member of the Wedding,” “Marathon 33,” “Skyscraper,” “The Au Pair Man,” “Lucifer’s Child,” “The Fiery Furnace,” “The Glass Menagerie,” “The Gin Game,” and the film version of “Member of the Wedding” (Oscar nomination), other films include “East of Eden,” “The Haunting,” “Harper,” “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” Emmy Awards for “Little Moon of Alban” and “Victoria Regina,” played Lilimae Clements on “Knots Landing” and made several guest shots including “Columbo,” “Medical Center,” “The Big Valley,” and “The Virginian.”

Carmine Infantino, 1925-2013

Comic book legend Carmine Infantino died this week at 87. The DC artist and editor is credited with saving Batman in the early 1960s--before the campy TV show--by giving the Caped Crusader a "new" look. He replaced Dick Sprang's childish boxy, angular drawings with a fluid, almost avant-garde style. He also co-created the Silver Age Batgirl (in response to ABC's request for a female companion for the Gotham Goliath). There had been a previous Bat-Girl--Betty Kane, niece of heiress Kathy Kane, secretly Batwoman. But the new Batgirl aka Barbara Gordon, daughter of Police Commissioner Gordon, was not a silly teenager with a crush a Robin, like Betty. She was a "dynamic daredoll."

Infantino also created the new Flash and launched the Silver Age of Comics. After World War II, many superheroes titles were scrapped with only the big three--Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman--surviving. Responding to a demand for more caped do-gooders, Infantino re-invented the Golden Age Flash and launched the Silver Age of Comics. More Golden Agers such as Green Lantern, Hawkman, and The Atom, were reborn. He also co-created such heroes as Deadman, Animal Man, and The Elongated Man, an amateur sleuth able to stretch his body like Mr. Fantastic, Plastic Man, and Mr. Gum.

He was magnificent at sci-fi settings. His futuristic cityscapes for the planet Rann in the Adam Strange series always took my breath away. Strange was an archaeologist who travels to distant Rann by means of the zeta-beam to save the Rannians from whatever menace was befalling them that month. Evidently, they needed someone from Earth to solve their problems since they couldn't handle any themselves.

I met Infantino once at a recent Comic Con and got his autograph on The World of Carmine Infantino paperback edition. I was hoping he'd drawn a Batman or Adam Strange, but only got his signature.