...with brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• Lillian Ross, who had a legendary career as a writer/reporter for The New Yorker - she was hired in 1945, and wrote her last piece for the magazine in 2011 - has passed away at the age of 99.
In The New Yorker, it is written that she “was not just a contributor but a creator—one of those whose style and tone became a standard to which later writers aspired. That tone—acutely observant, intimate, and very frequently amused—emerged in some of her earliest and best-known pieces, including her Profile of Ernest Hemingway and the five-part series on the making of John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage. (The Xeroxes of her articles made for distribution in the nation’s journalism classes, if piled on top of one another, would reach to the moon.) She was a master of the Talk of the Town form, with its comic distillation of social mores.” Her profile subjects ranged from Ernest Hemingway and John Huston to Robin Williams and Lin-Manuel Miranda, but one of her best-known pieces was “The Yellow Bus,” in which she accompanied a class trip of twelfth graders from an Indiana town with a total population of 355, as they visited New York for the first time.
One of the best books of its kind is “Reporting,” which is a compilation of Lillian Ross pieces from The New Yorker … I heartily recommend it.
• Variety reports that Jake LaMotta, the onetime world middleweight boxing champion known as the “Raging Bull,” and who was the subject of the 1980 Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro movie of the same name, has passed away. He was 95.
The story notes that “after retiring from the ring, LaMotta continued to entertain as a comedian, actor, and bar manager. His credits include playing a bartender in the 1961 film The Hustler, starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason.
”Raging Bull” is simply one of the best American movies ever made, featuring one of the best performances ever by an actor … and if you’ve never seen it, you should.
• Lillian Ross, who had a legendary career as a writer/reporter for The New Yorker - she was hired in 1945, and wrote her last piece for the magazine in 2011 - has passed away at the age of 99.
In The New Yorker, it is written that she “was not just a contributor but a creator—one of those whose style and tone became a standard to which later writers aspired. That tone—acutely observant, intimate, and very frequently amused—emerged in some of her earliest and best-known pieces, including her Profile of Ernest Hemingway and the five-part series on the making of John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage. (The Xeroxes of her articles made for distribution in the nation’s journalism classes, if piled on top of one another, would reach to the moon.) She was a master of the Talk of the Town form, with its comic distillation of social mores.” Her profile subjects ranged from Ernest Hemingway and John Huston to Robin Williams and Lin-Manuel Miranda, but one of her best-known pieces was “The Yellow Bus,” in which she accompanied a class trip of twelfth graders from an Indiana town with a total population of 355, as they visited New York for the first time.
One of the best books of its kind is “Reporting,” which is a compilation of Lillian Ross pieces from The New Yorker … I heartily recommend it.
• Variety reports that Jake LaMotta, the onetime world middleweight boxing champion known as the “Raging Bull,” and who was the subject of the 1980 Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro movie of the same name, has passed away. He was 95.
The story notes that “after retiring from the ring, LaMotta continued to entertain as a comedian, actor, and bar manager. His credits include playing a bartender in the 1961 film The Hustler, starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason.
”Raging Bull” is simply one of the best American movies ever made, featuring one of the best performances ever by an actor … and if you’ve never seen it, you should.
- KC's View:
