JACKIE COLLINS, NOVELIST WHO WROTE OF HOLLYWOOD’S GLAMOROUS SIDE
Jackie Collins, left, with her sister, the actress Joan Collins, at the 2009 Vanity Fair Oscar party in West Hollywood, Calif. Credit Evan Agostini/Associated Press
SEPT. 19, 2015
Jackie Collins, the best-selling British-born author known for her vibrant novels about the extravagance and glamour of life in Hollywood, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 77.
The cause was breast cancer, her family said in a statement.
Long before the emergence of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchise, Ms. Collins dominated the publishing industry’s more lascivious corners.
She wrote more than 30 books, many of them filled with explicit, unrestrained sexuality, and sold more than 500 million copies worldwide. Her first novel, “The World Is Full of Married Men,” was published in 1968. Australia and South Africa banned it because of its frank depiction of extramarital sex. Other earlier works included “The Stud,” in 1969, and “Rock Star,” in 1988.
Ms. Collins, the younger sister of the actress Joan Collins, wrote her books in longhand on either white printer paper or yellow legal pads, regularly churning out prodigious numbers of pages.
Writing in The New York Times in 1993, Barry Gewen said of Ms. Collins’s “American Star: A Love Story” that it might more appropriately be titled “Coming Up for Air.”
In 2006, reviewing her “Lovers & Players” in The Times, the critic Janet Maslin described Ms. Collins’s writing as “crypto-celebrity gamesmanship” in which the author “maneuvers her characters through a story as if she were playing by a strict set of rules.”
Many of Ms. Collins’s novels became fodder for movies and television mini-series. In 2001, for instance, she published “Hollywood Wives: The New Generation,” which followed “Hollywood Wives,” “Hollywood Husbands,” “Hollywood Kids” and “Hollywood Divorces.” It became a New York Times best seller and, in 2003, was made into a TV movie starring Farrah Fawcett, Robin Givens, Jack Scalia and Melissa Gilbert.
She was found to have stage-four breast cancer in 2007, according to People magazine’s website, and had written five books since then. Her latest, 600-plus-page novel, “The Santangelos,” was published in June.
In an interview in 2007 with The New York Times Magazine that coincided with the publication of her 25th book, “Drop Dead Beautiful,” Ms. Collins said she did not care what reviewers would say about it.
“I never pretended to be a literary writer,” she said. “I’m a school dropout.”
She said in the interview that she did not feel that the increasingly explicit nature of pop culture made her fiction seem quaint.
“Fifteen-year-old girls still read my novels under the bedcovers with a flashlight,” she said. “But it’s true that I published my first novel in 1968, when no one was writing about sex except Philip Roth.”
Ms. Collins with a copy of her first book in 1968. Credit Bob Dear/Associated Press
Jacqueline Jill “Jackie” Collins was born on Oct. 4, 1937, in London. Survivors include her three daughters, Tracy, Tiffany and Rory, and her sister, Joan.
Ms. Collins’s second husband, Oscar Lerman, died of cancer in 1992 after the couple had been married for 27 years. Four years later, her fiancé, Frank Calcagnini, died of brain cancer.
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NBA LEGEND MOSES MALONE, THE ‘CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARDS’
Moses Malone (right) rests on the bench during a game against the New York Knicks in 1984. Malone, a three-time NBA MVP, has died at the age of 60. Ray Stubblebine/AP
September 13, 2015 1:04 PM ET
NBA legend Moses Malone, a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player and voted one of the NBA’s greatest 50 players of all time has died. He was 60 years old.
The 6-foot-10 Malone earned the moniker “Chairman of the Boards” for his rebounding prowess. He was a 13-time all-star who was part of the Philadelphia 76ers that defeated the Los Angeles Lakers for the 1983 NBA championship.
The news of Malone’s passing was first reported by ESPN and later confirmed in a statement by the Philadelphia 76ers, but the organization did not immediately provide a cause of death.
“It is with deep sense of sadness that the Sixers family mourns the sudden loss of Moses Malone. It is difficult to express what his contributions to this organization – both as a friend and player – have meant to us, the city of Philadelphia and his faithful fans. Moses holds a special place in our hearts and will forever be remembered as a genuine icon and pillar of the most stored era in the history of Philadelphia 76ers basketball. No one person has ever conveyed more with so few words – including three of the most iconic in the city’s history. His generosity, towering personality and incomparable sense of humor will truly be missed. We will keep his family in our thoughts and prayers and as we are once again reminded of the preciousness of life.”
According to the CBS Sports, those iconic words referred to a prognosis Malone made in of how many consecutive games his 76ers would win during the 1983 playoffs.
“The ‘three of the most iconic in this city’s history’ part refers to ‘fo, fo, fo’ — Malone famously and succinctly predicted that Philadelphia would sweep each round of the playoffs in 1983. He was just off — the Sixers lost one game in the postseason.”
Malone was the first player to be drafted to the pros straight from high school. He was drafted by the ABA’s Utah Stars when he was 19 years old. He also is the NBA’s all-time leader in offense rebounds with 6,731, according to NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner. This puts Malone more than 2,000 offensive rebounds ahead of Celtics great Robert Parish who is second on that list.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called Malone “among the most dominant centers to ever play the game.”
“We are stunned and deeply saddened by the passing of Hall of Famer Moses Malone, an NBA legend gone far too soon. Known to his legions of fans as the ‘Chairman of the Boards,’ Moses competed with intensity every time he stepped on the court. With three MVPs and an NBA championship, he was among the most dominant centers ever to play the game and one of the best players in the history of the NBA and the ABA. Even more than his prodigious talent, we will miss his friendship, his generosity, his exuberant personality, and the extraordinary work ethic he brought to the game throughout his 21-year pro career. Our thoughts are with Moses’ family and friends during this difficult time.”
Malone’s death comes on the heels of the passing of another NBA great, Darryl Dawkins, known as “Chocolate Thunder” who passed away last month at 58 years old.
Malone was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001. He played for the NBA’s Houston Rockets twice, the Washington Bullets, Atlanta Hawks. He finished his two decade long career with the San Antonio Spurs in the 1994-95 season.
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MAX-G. BEAUVOIR, LEADER OF HAITIAN ‘VOODOO’ RELIGION
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Max-G. Beauvoir, supreme leader of the Haitian hybrid of Catholicism and African animism commonly — and inaccurately — known as voodoo, died Saturday at 79, Haitian President Michel Martelly said Sunday.
Beauvoir, a U.S.- and French-educated chemical engineer, became Ati, or supreme leader, of the National Confederation of Haitian Vodou, as it is properly spelled, in 2008. About three-quarters of Haiti’s population is believed to practice vodou, which Haiti officially recognized as a religion in 2003.
Martelly extended sympathies Beauvoir’s family, calling his death “a great loss for the country.” The cause of death wasn’t reported, and funeral plans are pending.
François Max-Gesner Beauvoir founded a temple, Le Péristyle de Mariani, in 1974 in his hometown of Mariani. Amid the Haitian diaspora during the violent Duvalier regimes — which he was sometimes accused of associating with — he and his wife fled to Washington, D.C., where he founded the Temple of Yehwe, a nonprofit group promoting Afro-American religious thought, in 1996.
Beauvoir returned to Haiti and in 2005 launched the Federasyon Nasyonal Vodou Ayisyen, now called the National Confederation of Haitian Vodou.
Much of Beauvoir’s work as Ati was challenging what he saw as racist stereotyping of vodou, which means “spirit” or “god” in Fon language of Benin and was brought to the Caribbean from West Africa with the slave trade during the 18th century. He was particularly critical of Hollywood’s portrayal of vodouists as outré doll-stabbing witches and warlocks.
“The voice of Hollywood has grown beyond the border of the United States,” Beauvoir told The New York Times in 2008. “It’s everywhere. The voice of Max Beauvoir is very small compared to that.”
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 