On A Pale Horse

I'm not telling you how old I was in 1978 but I was old enough to remember my dad taking me to see Heaven Can Wait at the theatre across the street from Eastland and just down the road from the St. Clair Shores apartments where we lived. He had just picked me up from my Grandma's house (8 Mile & Groesbeck a nice place before Tycoon's moved in).

My dad never really knew what to do with me so he just took me to movies. Which I think was an inherited trait because my other Grandma (his mom) did the same thing with me.

Anyways...it was in this movie I first saw a soprano saxophone and I knew right then and there that was the only instrument that I wanted to play. This was way before Kenny G. totally pussified the sax the way he did. Because this was such a dream I took band for eight years (band fag for life!) and each year I asked the band director if we could add a soprano sax to the line up and every year the answer was 'no'. Well every year that is except my senior year when D.K. added a beautiful soprano sax, from the band budget, but let someone else play it. Just another crushing moment in a series of disappointment.

Jack Warden played Coach Max Corkle in that flick. He also played Morris Buttermaker in the TV adaptation of Bad News Bears (staring little Cory Feldmen). But playing the gruff and hard nosed coach wasn't the only part that he was good at. He was nominated for two supporting actor Oscars in the aforementioned Heaven Can Wait as well as Shampoo and walked away with an Emmy for his part in Brian's Song.

He served in WW2 as a paratrooper and was scheduled to make a jump on D-Day but shattered his leg during a practice jump the day before. It was when he was in bed recuperating he decided to become an actor and made his film debut in 1951 with 'You're in the Navy Now".

He passed away in a New York hospital from a combination of heart and kidney failure, or as his manager called it "Just old age".

September 18, 1920 - July 19, 2006

RIP

Labels: 1920 births, 2006 July deaths, actor, heart failure, kidney failure

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