PEGGY RAE, TV ACTRESS WITH MATRONLY AURA
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK
Published: February 11, 2011
Peggy Rea, a matronly actress who had supporting roles on popular television series from the 1970s to the ’90s, died on Saturday at her home in Toluca Lake, Calif. She was 89.
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Peggy Rea in the 1980s.
The cause was complications of heart failure, Kimmie Burks, a friend, said.
Ms. Rea played Rose Burton, Olivia Walton’s cousin, on “The Waltons”; Lulu Hogg, Boss Hogg’s wife, on “The Dukes of Hazzard”; and Jean Kelly, the mother-in-law of Brett Butler’s character, on “Grace Under Fire.” Ms. Rea’s first role on television was as a nurse on “I Love Lucy” in 1953. She also appeared on “All in the Family,” “Step by Step” and “Gunsmoke,” among other shows.
Peggy Jane Rea was born March 31, 1921, in Los Angeles. She left the University of California, Los Angeles, to attend business school, then took a job as a production secretary at MGM.
In 1947 she moved to New York to act on stage. She appeared on Broadway twice in 1950: as Eunice Hubbell in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and in the Cole Porter musical “Out of This World.” She gave up acting for a time and worked as a production secretary on “Gunsmoke” and other television shows in Los Angeles.
Ms. Rea returned to acting full time in 1962. Her film credits include parts in “7 Faces of Dr. Lao” (1964) and “In Country” (1989).
Ms. Burks said no immediate family members survive.
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J. PAUL GETTY III, HAD EAR CUT OFF BY CAPTORS
By BRUCE WEBER
Published: February 7, 2011
J. Paul Getty III, who was a grandson of the oil baron once believed to be the richest man in the world and who achieved tragic notoriety in 1973 when he was kidnapped by Italian gangsters, died Saturday at his home near London. He was 54.
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Associated Press
J. Paul Getty III, missing his right ear, left the police station in Lagonegro, Italy, on Dec. 15, 1973, after kidnappers freed him.
His son, the actor Balthazar Getty, confirmed the death in a statement relayed in an e-mail from Laura Hozempa, one of his agents. Mr. Getty had been wheelchair-bound since 1981, when a drug overdose caused him to have a stroke that left him severely paralyzed, unable to speak and partly blind.
At the time of his abduction, Mr. Getty was just 16 and living on his own in Rome, where his father, J. Paul Getty II, had, for a time, helped oversee the family’s Italian business interests.
Expelled from a private school, the young Mr. Getty was living a bohemian life, frequenting nightclubs, taking part in left-wing demonstrations and reportedly earning a living making jewelry, selling paintings and acting as an extra in movies. He disappeared on July 10, 1973, and two days later his mother, Gail Harris, received a ransom request. No longer married, she said she had little money.
“Get it from London,” she was reportedly told over the phone, a reference either to her former father-in-law, J. Paul Getty, the billionaire founder of the Getty Oil Company, or her former husband, who lived in England.
The amount demanded was about $17 million, but the police were initially skeptical of the kidnapping claim, even after Ms. Harris received a plaintive letter from her son, and a phone call in which a man saying he was a kidnapper offered to send her a severed finger as proof he was still alive. Investigators suspected a possible hoax or an attempt by the young Mr. Getty to squeeze some money from his notoriously penurious relatives.
“Dear Mummy,” his note began, “Since Monday I have fallen into the hands of kidnappers. Don’t let me be killed.”
The eldest Mr. Getty refused to pay the kidnappers anything, declaring that he had 14 grandchildren and “If I pay one penny now, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.” His son said he could not afford to pay.
Three months after the abduction, the kidnappers, who turned out to be Calabrian bandits with a possible connection to organized crime, cut off Mr. Getty’s ear and mailed it, along with a lock of his hair, to a Roman newspaper. Photographs of the maimed Mr. Getty, along with a letter in which he pleaded with his family to pay his captors, subsequently appeared in another newspaper. Eventually the kidnappers reduced their demands to around $3 million. According to the 1995 book “Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty,” by John Pearson, the eldest Mr. Getty paid $2.2 million, the maximum that his accountants said would be tax-deductible. The boy’s father paid the rest, though he had borrow it from his father — at 4 percent interest.
The teenager, malnourished, bruised and missing an ear, was released on Dec. 15; he was found at an abandoned service station, shivering in a driving rainstorm. Nine men eventually were arrested. Two were convicted and sent to prison; the others, including the man prosecutors said was the head of the Calabrian Mafia and the mastermind behind the abduction, were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The aftermath of the ordeal left Mr. Getty as a reckless personality; the year after his release he married a German photographer whose name has been variously reported as Gisela Zacher and Martine Zacher. They lived for a time in New York, where they consorted with the art crowd of Andy Warhol. Mr. Getty became a drug user and a heavy drinker. His grandfather had died in 1976, and after his overdose, he sued his father for $28,000 a month to pay for his medical needs.
Mr. Getty’s marriage ended in divorce. Beside his son, survivors include his mother, who cared for him after his stroke; a brother, Mark; two sisters, Aileen and Ariadne; a stepdaughter, Anna Getty; and six grandchildren and stepgrandchildren.
Some time after Mr. Getty’s release, his mother suggested that he call his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom, which he did. The eldest Mr. Getty declined to come to the phone.
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting from New York, and Ravi Somaiya from London.
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CHARLES SELLIER JR., CREATOR OF ‘GRIZZLY ADAMS’
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: February 4, 2011
Charles Sellier Jr., a producer and director of family-friendly films and television shows and the creator of the popular 1970s NBC series “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” died on Monday at his home near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He was 67.
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Grizzly Adams Productions
Charles Sellier Jr. in the 1980s.
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NBC, via Photofest
Dan Haggerty and his friend Ben in “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.”
Darryl Howard, a longtime friend, said that Mr. Sellier died unexpectedly but he did not specify the cause.
Almost always working independently, Mr. Sellier (pronounced sell-ee-AY) produced, and often wrote and directed, more than 30 movies and over 200 television shows — many with religious themes, some historical and others examining science. But he was best known for writing the 1972 novel “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” which he later adapted for a movie and the television series.
Loosely based on an actual person who escaped into the wilderness in 1853 after being accused of a murder he didn’t commit, Grizzly Adams is a bearded, barrel-chested man (played by Dan Haggerty) who counts among his friends raccoons, skunks, ferrets, deer, coyotes, porcupines, an eagle and, of course, the abandoned grizzly bear cub who matures into a powerful companion named Ben.
Adams’s human companions are an old trader, Mad Jack the Mountain Man (Denver Pyle), and an Indian named Nakoma (Don Shanks). While Grizzly protects the wildlife from harm and aids people coming through the forest, he must watch out for bounty hunters seeking the price on his head.
The series ran on NBC from early 1977 until late 1978, but concluded more definitively with a 1982 television movie, “The Capture of Grizzly Adams,” in which a bounty hunter draws Grizzly back to civilization and Grizzly proves his innocence.
Among Mr. Sellier’s other films, usually as writer and producer, are “In Search of Noah’s Ark,” “In Search of Historic Jesus,” “The Bermuda Triangle” and “The Lincoln Conspiracy,” based on a 1977 book he wrote with David W. Balsiger. The book and movie theorized that Lincoln’s assassination resulted from a conspiracy involving Northern politicians determined to block his lenient Reconstruction policies.
Mr. Sellier’s television shows and mini-series include “Mark Twain’s America,” “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House” and “The Greatest Heroes of the Bible.”
Charles Edward Sellier Jr. was born in Pascagoula, Miss., on Nov. 9, 1943, the only child of Charles and Gladys Carson Sellier. His father was a shipping clerk working on the Gulf Coast. Mr. Sellier is survived by his wife of 25 years, Julie Magnuson, and a son, William.
Faith suffused his life. “He was born a Cajun Catholic, then became a Mormon and later an evangelical Christian,” Mr. Howard said of his friend. “He was very devout, studied the Bible and prayed every day without fail.”
Still, beyond the religious themes in much of his work, Mr. Sellier saw himself as a pragmatic businessman. He followed market research, he told The New York Times in 2006, producing films because he saw an appetite for them. “You may come back to me in five years and ask, ‘Why is the only thing you make sci-fi movies?’ ” he said.