OT: RIP David and Gregory

Just felt compelled to write a memorial note to two prominent persons(non-music related) whose deaths occurred today: Gregory Peck, a great actor who with his handsome good looks and richly-resonant baritone voice captured my adolescent heart and kept it thru maturity, and David Brinkley, my most favorite news commentator who always sliced thru the layers of strategem and artifice in the political world with unusual daring and inimitable humor. I'm guessing that there are many members who might feel the same way.

Good night, David!

Good night, Gregory!

My regards to both.

Peck was one of those men who you really like to know what his opera voice would sound like (if so trained).

I always liked Peck's his easy going yet strong screen persona even if he would come across a little stiff at times. However, there in back of him somewhere was always a huge billboard that flashed 'integrity'.

Peck did have a recording of classical music. He put that 'richly-resonant baritone voice' to good use in narrating Copland's 'Lincoln Portrait' with Mehta and the LAPO ... a pretty fair version of the piece.

Yes, which is why casting him in that role (in THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL) wasn't exactly type casting. Gregory Peck had this aura of real class, integrity, and dignity (rare commodities all, to be sure) around him, always, and that was hard to hide even when playing a villain.

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Currently available in a Double Decca release, and thus one of the very few Los Angeles Philharmonic recordings for London/Decca that is actually available for sale in the United States. Would that there were more....

As much as I admire Peck as an actor, I just couldn't see him as that kind of 'bad guy.' (compare Olivier's contrasting roles in Boys from Brazil and Marathon Man, or Henry Fonda in <whatever> and Once Upon a Time in the West).

Frank Decolvenaere To reply by e-mail, replace NMBR with 1612.

'You are no bigger than the things that annoy you.' Jerry Bundsen

Here in the UK, I contrived to be entirely ignorant of the existence of David Brinkley, until the broadcast of a certain episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can only echo the sentiment of a brief obituary posted to uk.media.tv.buffy-v-slayer: He got too old and wrinkly. Buffy was of course the source of most of my contemporary cultural information. I shall now sink deeper into ignorance. JD

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Serena Scott Thomas, who appeared as a guest baddie on one episode of 'Buffy,' today told me that she still gets recognized by the show's fans on the basis of that single appearance.