Victor Spinetti, Susan Tyrrell, R.I.P.

Two more fascinating people I liked have departed ....  Victor Spinetti [1933-2012], above with The Beatles in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, where he is hilarious as the "camp, nervy, irritable" [according to The Daily Telegraph] tv director with that mohair sweater; he was also marvellous in their HELP! and THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, and appeared in many others including TAMING OF THE SHREW in 1967 with The Burtons. Victor, half-Welsh, half-Italian, was wholly marvellous on stage and screen and knew just about everybody from Marlene to Coward and John Lennon, and had great stories to tell, he came across as a happier Kenneth Williams. His long career including lots of stage roles and directing, as well as working with Joan Littlewood in SPARRERS CANT SING and OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR, and the UK stage version of THE ODD COUPLE. You can just picture him in the Jack Lemmon role... RIP indeed. I must see if his biography is available. It is, plus a CD of his live show! I have ordered both.

Susan Tyrrell [1945-2012] an actress who gave one of the screen’s most convincing portraits of alcoholism as the young barfly in John Huston's 1972 boxing movie the very downbeat  FAT CITY, died June 16 in Austin. She was 67.

She appeared in more than 75 movies and television shows, and had used a wheelchair for the past 12 years after her legs were amputated below the knee as a result of complications from a blood clotting disorder.

She appeared in ANDY WARHOL'S BAD (1977), and was Johnny Depp’s biker grandmother in director John Waters’s comedy CRY BABY (1990). Other roles included parts in Lelouch's romantic western ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE in '77 (review at westerns label) and FORBIDDEN ZONE. FAT CITY remains her best known role where she is totally mesmerising.

RIP also, the critic Andrew Sarris, aged 82, from THE VILLAGE VOICE. I am not familiar with his work here in the UK, where we got all those Pauline Kael books ...  but he was certainly one of the major 'names' in film culture.