Remembering Arnold Palmer

No one has ever had a greater influence on the spread of golf in America, and around the world, than Arnold Palmer. His charismatic approach to the game, and to life, was perfect for the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when people were acquiring leisure time and television popularized sports. His good looks and hard-charging golf game made for the ideal advertisement for golf. But he was also an admirable figure, always accessible and deeply involved in charity work. His fans loved him (“Arnie’s Army”) and as befits his moniker, he was truly “The King of Golf.”

Remembering Hugh O’Brian, Greta Friedman and The Kiss, Johan Botha, Crazy Eddie Antar

Hugh O’Brian was the handsome actor best known for playing the lawman Wyatt Earp on the adult Western, “The Life And Legend of Wyatt Earp” (1955-1961), He also organized The Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Foundation for high school students after working with Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Africa. Greta Friedman was one of the subjects of one of the most famous photographs of the 20th Century – a uniformed man kissing a dental assistant in Times Square on V-J Day in 1945 – done by Alfred Eisenstaedt and featured in Life Magazine. Johan Botha was the well-known South African opera tenor. Eddie Antar founded a consumer electronics chain famous for its television commercials, but he ultimately went to jail for fraud.

Remembering Vera Caslavska, Phyllis Schlafly, Dee Dowis, Fred Hellerman

In 1968, Czechoslovakia instituted political reforms that threatened Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. One of the strongest supporters of the reforms was the Czech Vera Caslavska, the greatest female gymnast of the 1960’s. She was forced to go into hiding when Soviet tanks invaded Prague but she emerged to become the star of the 1968 Summer Olympics and bowed her head on the podium during the playing of the Soviet national anthem. She emerged a hero throughout the world. Phyllis Schlafly was the conservative author and speaker who lobbied against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Dee Dowis was an option quarterback who became perhaps the greatest offensive football player in the history of The Air Force Academy. Fred Hellerman was one of the founders and original members of the famous 1950’s folksinging group, The Weavers.

Remembering Roger Tsien

Roger Tsien was the UCSD biochemist who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie. In the 1960’s, Shimomura discovered GFP, green fluorescent protein, in a Puget Sound jellyfish. In the 1990’s, Chalfie figured out how to infuse GFP into other animals and then Tsien refined GFP and developed color variants that could be inserted into cells and genes. The fluorescence that was created permits scientists to study the cellular mechanisms and genetic activity involved in biologic reactions. This, in turn, allows the study of disease mechanisms in conditions such as HIV and cancer. Dr. Tsien’s work has implications in many fields of medicine, genetics, and neurobiology.

Remembering James Cronin

James Cronin won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Val Fitch, for his work in discovering matter-antimatter asymmetry. This finding was instrumental in theories on the development of the universe and the “Big-Bang” theory. Early in his career Cronin was exposed at the University of Chicago to some of the 20th Century’s great physicists including Enrico Fermi and Murray Gell-Mann. This exposure was what turned Cronin to particle physics and the study of the anomalous decay of the neutral K-meson, which led to the discovery of charged particle (CP) violation and matter-antimatter asymmetry.

Remembering Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder had a remarkable career in the movies as a comedian. Although he broke in with a serious movie “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), he made his mark in Mel Brooks films including “The Producers” (1968), “Blazing Saddles” (1974), and “Young Frankenstein” (1974). Besides this, he teamed with Richard Pryor as the most successful black-white comedy team in move history. Finally, he did a tour de force performance as Willy Wonka in the movie adaptation of Roald Dahl classic “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” (1971). Long with several other great performances he remains one of the geniuses of American movie comedy.

Remembering Toots Thielemans, Jeremiah O’Keefe, Steven Hill, Marvin Kaplan

Toots Thielemans was the Belgian jazz harmonica player, generally considered to be the best in the world. He played with everyone from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker to George Shearing to Quincy Jones, he was a respected virtuoso in Europe and North America. Some of his greatest work came doing movie themes including for “Summer of ’42”, and especially for “Midnight Cowboy”. Jeremiah O’Keefe was a fighter ace during World War II who went on to become the mayor of Biloxi, Mississippi, where he battled racial discrimination for decades. Steven Hill was the handsome actor who studied at The Actor’s Studio. He was compared favorably with Marlon Brando but his career had ups and downs including a brief stint on “Mission Impossible” (1966-1967) and a long-running role in “Law And Order” (1990-2000). Marvin Kaplan was the actor with the distinctive Brooklyn accent who became famous for his voiceover in the animated series “Top Cat” (1961-1962) and a comic turn in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963)

Remembering the Presidential Medal of Freedom and General John Vessey Jr., Dr. Donald Henderson, Jack Riley, Kenny Baker

Introduced in 1945, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian award. General John Vessey Jr. won the Award for his combat experience in Vietnam and for being the 10th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Donald Henderson won the Award for his public work in the area of biosecurity and for his direction in eradicating smallpox, the first disease eradicated by man. Jack Riley was actor who played one of sitcoms most memorable characters, the neurotic Elliot Carlin in the Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978). Kenny Baker was the diminutive actor who played the robot R2-D2 in the Star Wars series.

Remembering John McLaughlin, Sulie Harand, Fyvush Finkel, Arthur Hiller

John McLaughlin was the television host of The McLaughlin Group, the show that featured pundits at a roundtable discussion of issues of the day. It was the pioneer of the multiperson debate and McLaughlin’s trademark phrases and offbeat style helped popularize the format. Sulie Harand was the actress from Chicago who turned her talents to training other young performers at her family’s renowned Harand Camp of The Theater Arts in Elkhart (now Kenosha), Wisconsin. Fyvush Finkel was one of the top performers in the Yiddish Theater of Brooklyn and Manhattan, who went on to Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and several shows on network television. Arthur Hiller was the movie director, who is best known for directing the 1970 blockbuster Love Story.

Remembering Glenn Yarbrough, David Huddleston, Chris Sizemore

In the late 1950’s, folk singing was the fastest growing musical craze in America, especially on college campuses. One of the top groups of the era was The Limeliters, who featured the beautiful tenor of Glenn Yarbrough. His was one of the top voices of the genre and he is best remembered for a record he made in 1965 after leaving the group, “Baby, The Rain Must Fall”. David Huddleston was the actor who did two memorable turns, first in Blazing Saddles (1974) and then in The Big Lebowski (1998). Chris Sizemore was the true-life woman with multiple personalities who became the subject of the movie The Three Faces of Eve (1957), which featured an Academy Award winning performance by Joanne Woodward.