On A Pale Horse

I was raised in a two-paycheck household. Mom & Dad both worked and for awhile there Mom was working full time as well as going to college. Because of this situation I grew up in one big hurry-up-and-wait atmosphere. It was like “Hurry up, get ready we had to leave the house now, now, now!!!! I’m already 10 minutes behind schedule and I still have to drop you off at school!!!! Spoiled brat!” and then 20 minutes later was “Quit whining!!! I don’t care if it’s 6:45 and they don’t unlock the doors until 7am and school doesn’t start until 8:30 get out of the car and sit outside in this 50 morning weather and wait”.

So as life would have it I was 12 and my friend K had a slumber party on a Friday night. Everyone else’s parents picked them up by noonish on Saturday leaving just me hanging out which wasn’t a bad deal because K was my bestest friend in the whole wide world. It was the middle of November and we were stuck out in a house in the middle of Armada so K’s dad took us out, rented some movies and got some pizza. The first movie was FireFox with Clint Eastwood and then, after it got dark, we watched the second movie, Poltergeist. I remember my mom coming in during the middle of it, talking with K’s mom (loudly) and then asking me if I was ready to go… Now. I started to get up but K’s mom AND dad both said that we were in the middle of watching a movie and I couldn't leave now. It was awesome… I got to sit around until I was ready to go. I got to watch that entire movie, uninterrupted and the only time I was scared was when that creepy psychic lady was on the screen. That creepy psychic lady was Zelda Rubinstein.

Zelda Rubinstein attending both the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California and had been a technician at a blood bank before changing career paths and entered acting at age 47. Her first major screen role was in 1981’s awesomely craptastic film "Under the Rainbow” (“The peweral is in de liver”). In 1982 she was cast as Tangina Barrons in Poltergeist (25th Anniversary Edition) a role that she reprised in two sequels.

She was advocate for little people’s rights (she was 4'3") as well as one of the first actors involved in promoting public awareness and education for HIV/AIDS.

Ms Rubinstein suffered a heart attack in December and had been hospitalized at Cedars Sinai in Los Angles. From all that I’ve read is that she didn’t have any family but it was reported that her family and a close companion decided to remove her from life support due to kidney and lung failure shortly after her heart attacked. It seemed like she was making some improvement but on January 27, 2010 she passed away.

R.I.P. - March 28, 1933 – January 27, 2010

SOURCES: PICTURE, IMDB, WIKIPEDIA, NYT

Labels: 1933 births, 2010 deaths, actress, heart attack

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