the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

bobby rush, 89, currently touring the US

Don King, 92!

Glynis Johns is 100 years old today. She appeared in Mary Poppins, The Sundowners, and the Burton & Taylor version of Under Milk Wood, but seems to have dropped off the radar after the early 1970s.

Glynis Johns is 100 today, Happy Birthday Glynis 🎁🎂 pic.twitter.com/vhTT94qM0B

— 🇬🇧📺 Classic British TV 📺🇬🇧 (@Classicbritcom) October 5, 2023

Happy birthday!

Glynis Johns plays Diane's mum (!) in an early episode of Cheers from 1982, so not dropped off the radar entirely after the early 1970s.

In the original cast of A Little Night Music, "Send In The Clowns" written for her!

i *thiiiink* i have a copy of sandy gall's "travels with the mujahideen" in a box somewhere (everything is in a box still)

I somehow confused Sandy Gall and France Gall in that moment.

France Gall's Voyages avec les moudjahidines long suppressed, of course.

Director and Warhol associate Paul Morrissey, 85.

film director jerzy skolimowski (85)

made DEEP END (1971), which of course features can's "mother sky" on its soundtrack (as does their LP CAN SOUNDTRACKS)

even more importantly the relevant if annoyingly dubbed extract i just watched on youtube also features BURT KWOUK as a hot-dog seller :)

(i mean he made loads of other films, that was the one i was interested in just now)

I saw it at the NFT a couple of months ago. Along with a few of his Polish films.

I'd thought he died a few years ago but turns out that was Andrzej Żuławski, one for the people you get mixed up thread maybe

Skolimowski's The Shout just played at the Quad Cinema here in NYC. One of the screenings had a "pre-recorded introduction" from the director, but I saw another screening so can't report on what that was about.

i haven't seen the shout for years -- my sister taped it off TV we shared a flat and she was a film student, we watched it quite a lot iirc

Jack Jones (of “Wives and Lovers” fame)

or infamy as it were

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lipton - famous for writing The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide and numerous works on the psychology of warfare, brainwashing, etc.

LIFTON. (fuck, at least spell his name right)

Judy Chicago. I don't know why I thought/assumed she was dead, but she's got a big retrospective show.

Knew she was alive, but surprised to find out that Madhur Jaffrey is 90.

honestly i thought Jimmy Tarbuck pegged out years ago

lou adler, 88, is still around

...and a year later, he's produced the new Neil Young album!

Been Lou Adler'd, Barry Sadler'd

Apparently, Mick Jagger is still alive.

wolf biermann

...it's just a shot away

english 12-tone composer thea musgrave (95)

Tine Louise, 89, last surviving cast member of "Gilligan's Island."

A three hour tour

Peter Schickele a.k.a. P. D. Q. Bach, still alive at 88

Jules Feiffer, 94

Owen Oyston, 89.

Sam The Sham Samudio, 86

Connie Francis, 85

Connie Stevens, 85 (I think they have come up before)

oh, I always get those two mixed up

I know Conie Francis is still alive because she has been the top internet takedown notice person since Prince died.

What does that mean, sorry?

it means if you put up a youtube video with her music in it, the video will be immediately taken down

Ah. How weird that the Connie Francis team is so on it! Or is it all handled by YouTube?

bit of a mystery box, but you get the feeling that there has been some sort of central edict which they are just following

Don't fuck with Connie Stevens

Connie Francis I mean, lol

vg+

Habermas

I was sure that he died not that long ago, but eventually realised I was thinking of Enzensberger

i mean up to about an hour ago AS Byatt would have been an answer.

ramblin’ jack elliott (92) (of course he's upthread, at 90)

(im watching on old arena doc abt woody guthrie and elliott popped up as he should, everyone else in the doc is dead but not he)