Country singer Glen Campbell passed away at the age of 81, after a long and public battle with Alzheimers.

I always loved Glen Campbell! Grew up listening to his music!

Dick Gregory, 1932–2017
 

Dick Gregory, 84, Dies; Found Humor in the Civil Rights Struggle
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(Dick Gregory in 2016. He believed that within a well-delivered joke lies power. Credit Brent N. Clarke/FilmMagic, via Getty Images)

Dick Gregory, the pioneering black satirist who transformed cool humor into a barbed force for civil rights in the 1960s, then veered from his craft for a life devoted to protest and fasting in the name of assorted social causes, health regimens and conspiracy theories, died Saturday in Washington. He was 84.

Mr. Gregory’s son, Christian Gregory, who announced his death on social media, said more details would be released in the coming days. Mr. Gregory had been admitted to a hospital on Aug. 12, his son said in an earlier Facebook post.

Early in his career Mr. Gregory insisted in interviews that his first order of business onstage was to get laughs, not to change how white America treated Negroes (the accepted word for African-Americans at the time). “Humor can no more find the solution to race problems than it can cure cancer,” he said. Nonetheless, as the civil rights movement was kicking into high gear, whites who caught his club act or listened to his routines on records came away with a deeper feel for the nation’s shameful racial history.

Mr. Gregory was a breakthrough performer in his appeal to whites — a crossover star, in contrast to veteran black comedians like Redd Foxx, Moms Mabley and Slappy White, whose earthy, pungent humor was mainly confined to black clubs on the so-called chitlin circuit.

Though he clearly seethed over the repression of blacks, he resorted to neither scoldings nor lectures when playing big-time rooms like the hungry i in San Francisco or the Village Gate in New York. Rather, he won audiences over with wry observations about the country’s racial chasm.

He would plant himself on a stool, the picture of insouciance in a three-button suit and dark tie, dragging slowly on a cigarette, which he used as a punctuation mark. From that perch he would bid America to look in the mirror, and to laugh at itself.

“Segregation is not all bad,” he would say. “Have you ever heard of a collision where the people in the back of the bus got hurt?” Or: “You know the definition of a Southern moderate? That’s a cat that’ll lynch you from a low tree.” Or: “I heard we’ve got lots of black astronauts. Saving them for the first spaceflight to the sun.”

Some lines became classics, like the one about a restaurant waitress in the segregated South who told him, “We don’t serve colored people here,” to which Mr. Gregory replied: “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Just bring me a whole fried chicken.” Lunch-counter sit-ins, central to the early civil rights protests, did not always work out as planned. “I sat in at a lunch counter for nine months,” he said. “When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.”

Mr. Gregory was a national sensation in the early 1960s, earning thousands of dollars a week from club dates and from records like “In Living Black and White” and “Dick Gregory Talks Turkey.” He wrote the first of his dozen books. Time magazine, enormously powerful then, ran a profile of him. Jack Paar, that era’s “Tonight Show” host, had him on as a guest — after Mr. Gregory demanded that he be invited to sit for a chat. Until then, black performers did their numbers, then had to leave. Time on Paar’s sofa was a sign of having arrived.

Newspapers in those days routinely put Mr. Gregory on a par with two white performers, Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, anointing them a troika of modern satire. Just as routinely, he was later credited with paving the way for a new wave of black comedians who would make it big in the white world, notably two talents of thoroughly different sensibilities: the reflective Bill Cosby and the trenchant Richard Pryor.

It was Mr. Gregory’s conviction that within a well-delivered joke lies power. He learned that lesson growing up in St. Louis, achingly poor and fatherless and often picked on by other children in his neighborhood.

“They were going to laugh anyway, but if I made the jokes they’d laugh with me instead of at me,” he said in a 1964 autobiography, written with Robert Lipsyte. “After a while,” he wrote, “I could say anything I wanted. I got a reputation as a funny man. And then I started to turn the jokes on them.”

He titled that book “nigger,” lowercase N. The word — typically reduced these days to “the N-word” — figured prominently in his routines, even as he shunned the obscenities that casually littered the acts of other comedians.

“I said, let’s pull it out of the closet, let’s lay it out there, let’s deal with it, let’s dissect it,” he said in a 2000 interview with NPR. “It should never be called ‘the N-word.’ ”

In 1962, Mr. Gregory joined a demonstration for black voting rights in Mississippi. That was a beginning. He threw himself into social activism body and soul, viewing it as a higher calling.

Arrests came by the dozens. In a Birmingham, Ala., jail in 1963, he wrote, he endured “the first really good beating I ever had in my life.”

He added: “It was just body pain, though. The Negro has a callus growing on his soul, and it’s getting harder and harder to hurt him there.”

In 1965, he was shot in the leg (the wound was not grave) by a rioter as he tried to be a peacemaker during the Watts riots in Los Angeles.

Increasingly, he skipped club dates to march or to perform at benefits for civil rights groups. Club owners became reluctant to book him: Who knew if he might fly off to Alabama on a moment’s notice? As the ’60s wore on, the college lecture circuit became his principal forum.

“Against the advice of almost everyone, he decided to risk his career for civil rights,” Gerald Nachman wrote in “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s” (2003). Some pillars of the movement, like Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, who died in 1971, believed that Mr. Gregory was more valuable to their cause onstage than in the streets. To which Mr. Gregory replied, “When America goes to war, she don’t send her comedians.”

In 1967, his head now ringed with a full beard and bushy hair — no more the thin mustache of earlier years — he ran for mayor of Chicago, more or less as a stunt. The next year he ran for president on the Freedom and Peace Party ticket, getting by his count 1.5 million write-in votes. The official figure was 47,133.

There seemed few causes he would not embrace. He took to fasting for weeks on end, his once-robust body shrinking at times to 95 pounds. Across the decades he went on dozens of hunger strikes, over issues including the Vietnam War, the failed Equal Rights Amendment, police brutality, South African apartheid, nuclear power, prison reform, drug abuse and American Indian rights.

And he reveled in conspiracy theories, elaborating on them in language that could be enigmatic and circuitous. Hidden hands, Mr. Gregory insisted, were behind everything from a crack cocaine epidemic to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; from the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon to the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. Whom to blame? “Whoever the people are who control the system,” he told The Washington Post in 2000.

His fasting led to a keen interest in nutrition. Working in the 1980s with a Swedish health food company, Mr. Gregory developed a weight-reduction powder called Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet. The partners had a falling-out, and the business swooned.

Still, Mr. Gregory remained a fervent health-food advocate. In late 1999, he learned he had lymphoma but rejected chemotherapy, relying instead on vitamins, herbs and exercise. The cancer went into remission.

His activism came at a price, however. For one thing, the cascade of cash that he had once enjoyed turned into a trickle. His family paid, too.

Mr. Gregory moved to Chicago to build a comedy career in the late 1950s. There he met Lillian Smith, a secretary at the University of Chicago, and they were married in 1959. They had 11 children, one of whom, Richard Jr., died in infancy.

In 1973, when cash was still rolling in, they bought a 400-acre farm near Plymouth, Mass. (Why Plymouth? “I think the white folks is coming back, and I’m going to get a handful of Indians and stop ’em there this time,” Mr. Gregory said.) But by the early 1990s, the strapped Gregorys had lost the farm and moved into an apartment in Plymouth.

Over more than five decades of marriage, Lillian Gregory said, she understood her husband’s need — some called it an obsession — to wander off on behalf of this or that cause, typically earning nothing except attention, and sometimes not even that. But Christian Gregory, a chiropractor in Washington, said to The Washington Post in 2000: “He told his 10 children that the movement came before the family. It was a hard pill to swallow.”

Father absenteeism was a familiar phenomenon for the man born Richard Claxton Gregory in St. Louis on Oct. 12, 1932. He was the second of six children. His father, Presley, disappeared after the birth of each child, and finally left for good. The Gregory children were reared by their mother, Lucille, who scraped by on welfare and a meager income as a maid.

“Kids didn’t eat off the floor,” Mr. Gregory said of their Depression-era poverty. “When I was a kid, you dropped something off the table, it never reached the floor.”

Information about Mr. Gregory’s survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Gregory graduated from Sumner High School in St. Louis, then attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill. At both schools he was a track star and enjoyed local fame.

Not that the acclaim was free of complications. In 1961, by then a national figure, he received the key to the city from the mayor of St. Louis. Yet in his hometown he was denied a room at a leading hotel. “They gave me the key to the city,” Mr. Gregory said, “and then they changed all the locks.”

He left college in 1954 and joined the Army, where he was able to work on comedy routines while attached to Special Services. He then returned to college, only to give it up again without graduating.

In 1956 he headed to Chicago, where he worked in small-time clubs at night and at odd jobs by day. He even tried running a club of his own, but that venture failed.

In one part-time job Mr. Gregory sorted mail in a post office. His pattern, he later said, was to toss letters destined for Mississippi into a slot marked “overseas.” That job did not last long.

His real break came in January 1961, when he was asked to fill in for the comedian Irwin Corey, who had canceled a gig at the flagship Playboy Club in Chicago. On the big night, club managers had misgivings; the house was packed with businessmen from the Deep South. No matter, Mr. Gregory said. He insisted on performing.

“I understand there are a great many Southerners in the room tonight,” he began his act. “I know the South very well. I spent 20 years there one night.” He so won over the crowd that Playboy’s Hugh Hefner signed him for three more weeks, then extended the contract.

Despite having sworn off nightclubs in 1973, saying he could no longer work in places where liquor was served, Mr. Gregory returned to them on occasion in later years, a thin presence wreathed in white hair and beard. Though his best days were well behind him, his approach never seemed to waver from principles that he set for himself when starting out. He put it this way in his autobiography:

“I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second. I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man.”

Mel Watkins contributed reporting.

Jerry Lewis
 

Jerry Lewis, the comedian and filmmaker who was adored by many, disdained by others, but unquestionably a defining figure of American entertainment in the 20th century, died on Sunday morning at his home in Las Vegas. He was 91.

Mr. Lewis knew success in movies, on television, in nightclubs, on the Broadway stage and in the university lecture hall. His career had its ups and downs, but when it was at its zenith there were few stars any bigger. And he got there remarkably quickly.

Barely out of his teens, he shot to fame shortly after World War II with a nightclub act in which the rakish, imperturbable Dean Martin crooned and the skinny, hyperactive Mr. Lewis capered around the stage, a dangerously volatile id to Mr. Martin’s supremely relaxed ego.

After his break with Mr. Martin in 1956, Mr. Lewis went on to a successful solo career, eventually writing, producing and directing many of his own films.

As a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Mr. Lewis raised vast sums for charity; as a filmmaker of great personal force and technical skill, he made many contributions to the industry, including the invention in 1960 of a device — the video assist, which allowed directors to review their work immediately on the set — still in common use.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/m...html?smtyp=cur

Rest in peace, Jerry Lewis my old friend... it feels like he was, since I've seen him on TV my whole life... it's so unreal... I will remember him fondly...

Jay Thomas
 

Jay Thomas, was an American actor, comedian, and radio talk show host. His notable television work includes his co-starring role as Remo DaVinci on Mork & Mindy (1979–81), the recurring role of Eddie LeBec on Cheers (1987–89), the lead character Jack Stein on Love & War (1992–95), and a repeat guest role as Jerry Gold on Murphy Brown. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 1990 and 1991 for portraying Gold.

In 1997, he starred in the television film Killing Mr. Griffin, based on the novel of the same name. In film, he co-starred in Mr Holland's Opus and portrayed The Easter Bunny in The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3. He was also an annual guest on The Late Show with David Letterman during the Christmas season, where he told a story about how he met Clayton Moore, who portrayed the self-titled character on The Lone Ranger.Beginning in 2005, he hosted The Jay Thomas Show on Sirius Satellite Radio, and was on every Friday afternoon on Howard 101.

Walter Becker- co founder of Steely Dan
 

Walter Becker, the guitarist and songwriter who made suavely subversive pop hits out of slippery jazz harmonies and verbal enigmas in Steely Dan, his partnership with Donald Fagen, died on Sunday. He was 67.

His death was announced on his official website, which gave no other details. He lived in Maui, Hawaii.

Kate Millett
 

Kate Millett, the activist, artist and educator whose best-selling "Sexual Politics" was a landmark of cultural criticism and a manifesto for the modern feminist movement, has died. She was 82.

"Sexual Politics" was published in 1970, in the midst of feminism's so-called "second wave," when Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Millett and others built upon the achievements of the suffragettes from a half-century earlier and challenged assumptions about women in virtually every aspect of society. Millett's book was among the most talked-about works of its time and remains a founding text for cultural and gender studies programs.

Millett chronicled millennia of legal, political and cultural exclusion and diminishment, whether the "penis envy" theory of Sigmund Freud or the portrayals of women as disrupters of paradise in the Bible and Greek mythology. She labeled traditional marriage an artifact of patriarchy and concluded with chapters condemning the misogyny of authors Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer, but also expressing faith in the redemptive power of women's liberation.

While countless women were radicalized by her book, Millett would have bittersweet feelings about "Sexual Politics," which later fell out of print and remained so for years. She was unhappy with its "mandarin mid-Atlantic" prose and overwhelmed by her sudden transformation from graduate student and artist to a feminist celebrity whose image appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Amused at first by her fame, she was worn down by a "ruin of interviews, articles, attacks."

"Soon it grew tedious, an indignity," she wrote in the memoir "Flying," published in 1974.

She was dubbed by Time "the Mao Tse-tung of Women's Liberation," and rebutted by Mailer in his book "The Prisoner of Sex," in which he mocked her as "the Battling Annie of some new prudery." Meanwhile, she faced taunts from some feminists for saying she was bisexual (she was married at the time), but not gay. During an appearance by Millett at Columbia, an activist stood up and yelled, "Are you a lesbian? Say it. Are you?"

"Five hundred people looking at me. Are you a Lesbian?" Millett wrote. "Everything pauses, faces look up in terrible silence. I hear them not breathe. That word in public, the word I waited half a lifetime to hear. Finally I am accused. 'Say it. Say you are a Lesbian!'

"Yes, I said. Yes. Because I know what she means. The line goes, inflexible as a fascist edict, that bisexuality is a cop-out. Yes I said yes I am a lesbian. It was the last strength I had."

Millett's books after "Sexual Politics" were far more personal and self-consciously literary, whether "Flying" or "Sita," a memoir about her sexuality in which she wrote of a female lover who committed suicide; or "The Loony Bin Trip," an account of her struggles with manic depression and time spent in psychiatric wards.

"There is no denying the misery and stress of life," she wrote. "The swarms of fears, the blocks to confidence, the crises of decision and choice."

The daughter of Irish Catholics, Millett was born in St. Paul, Minn., and was long haunted by her father, an alcoholic who beat his children and left his family when Millett was 14. She attended parochial schools as a child and studied English literature at the University of Minnesota and St Hilda's College, Oxford, from which she graduated with honors.

For a couple of years, Millett lived in Japan, where she met her husband and fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura (they divorced in 1985). They moved to Manhattan in 1963, and Millett embraced the political and artistic passions of the city. She joined the National Organization for Women and began attracting a following for her sculpture, which appeared in Life magazine and has been exhibited worldwide. Through her own Women's Liberation Cinema production company, she directed the acclaimed feminist documentary "Three Lives." She also founded the Women's Art Colony Farm in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Millett taught at several schools, including the University of North Carolina and New York University. In 1968, she was fired from her job as an English lecturer at Barnard College, a decision that stemmed at least in part from her support of student protests against the Vietnam War. The extra free time did allow her to complete "Sexual Politics," which began as her doctoral thesis at Columbia University.

Less known to younger feminists than Steinem or Friedan, she was honored several times late in life. In 2012, she was given the Pioneer Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation and the same year was presented a Courage Award for the Arts prize by her longtime friend Yoko Ono. Millett was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2013 and, in her acceptance speech, reflected on her years as an activist.

"The happiness of those times, the joy of participation, the excitement of being part of my own time, of living on the edge, of being so close to events you can almost intuit them. To raise one's voice in protest, just as the protest is expressed in life, in the streets, in relationships and friendships," she said.

"Then, in a moment of public recognition, the face of the individual becomes a woman's face."

R.I.P.

Edie Windsor

Thank you from my wife and I (f)

So grateful. So sad.

Harry Dean Stanton
 

Harry Dean Stanton, the actor known for roles in movies including "Repo Man" and "Cool Hand Luke" as well as for the TV show "Big Love," has died. He was 91.

Born July 24, 1926, in West Irvine, Kentucky, Stanton grew up singing and faced an early decision between music and acting. Acting won, but many years of struggle would pass before Stanton would become a household name.

His first movie roles came in the mid-1950s: an uncredited part in "The Wrong Man" and turns in "Tomahawk Trail" and "The Proud Rebel" as Dean Stanton. He appeared on several TV shows, including "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." He began attracting notice in higher-profile movies such as "Aliens," "Private Benjamin" and "Escape From New York," but it was with 1984's "Paris, Texas" that he rose to star status.

"Paris, Texas" stars Stanton as a wanderer with amnesia who finds and reconnects with his family. Directed by Wim Wenders, the film proved extremely well-received, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA Award for best director. It holds an impressive 100 percent fresh rating on the movie review site RottenTomatoes.com.

After the success of "Paris, Texas," more notable roles followed for Stanton. He starred in the cult classic "Repo Man" and played a hard-to-love father in "Pretty in Pink." He had roles in "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Wild at Heart," "The Green Mile" and dozens more. In 2006, Stanton took a prominent TV role on the HBO drama "Big Love," playing the megalomaniacal leader of a polygamous sect.

Stanton has been honored with the annual Harry Dean Stanton Film Festival in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the subject of the 2013 documentary "Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction."

Penny Chenery (1922 - 2017), owner of Triple Crown champion Secretariat
 

Penny Chenery, who bred and raced 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat as well as realizing her ailing father's dream to win the Kentucky Derby in 1972 with Riva Ridge, has died. She was 95.

In 1973, Secretariat captured the imagination of racing fans worldwide when he became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, sweeping the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. He won the last leg by a whopping 31 lengths in one of the greatest performances in sports history.

The previous year, Riva Ridge won the Derby and Belmont Stakes.

Both colts were inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

Chenery developed a love of horses as a child and learned to ride at age 5. She attributed her affinity for horses to her father, Christopher Chenery, who founded Meadow Stable, a thoroughbred racing and breeding operation, in Caroline County, Virginia.

After graduating from Smith College in 1943, Chenery worked as an assistant for a company that designed landing craft for the Normandy invasion. Before the invasion, she quit her job and at her father's urging, she volunteered for the Red Cross. In 1945, Chenery traveled to France as a Doughnut Girl to help war-weary soldiers transition to ships headed home at the end of World War II.

Chenery returned from Europe in 1946, and at her father's urging, she attended Columbia University's business school, where she was one of 20 women in her class. Six months from graduation, she got engaged to Columbia Law graduate John "Jack" Tweedy. Her father encouraged her to quit and focus on her wedding. The couple married in 1949.

For nearly 20 years, Chenery was content to be a housewife and mother to the couple's four children in the Denver area. She and her husband helped found and raise the initial money for Vail ski resort in the early 1960s.

Her life changed in 1968 when her father's health and mind began failing and her mother died. His Meadow Stable, which had been profitable, began losing money. Her two siblings had planned to sell it when their father could no longer run the operation.

Chenery took over management of the racing stable, with the help of siblings Margaret Carmichael and Hollis Chenery, and her father's business secretary. The operation was losing money and few took her seriously. Chenery commuted monthly from Colorado to Virginia, but after two more years in the red, selling the stable seemed almost inevitable.

By 1971, her colt Riva Ridge swept the juvenile stakes and won 2-year-old of the Year honors. In 1972, Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby, fulfilling her father's dream in the last year of his life. That same year, Secretariat burst onto the scene, so dominating the 2-year-old races that he won Horse of the Year honors.

In 1973, Secretariat became a pop culture icon with his Triple Crown victory, landing on the cover of Time magazine. For the next four decades, Chenery served as a careful steward of the colt's legacy.

Following Secretariat's retirement, Chenery became an ambassador for thoroughbred racing and remained so after the colt's death in 1989.

She served as the first female president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and president of the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. She became one of the first women admitted to The Jockey Club and helped found the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

Chenery created the Secretariat Vox Populi award annually honoring racing's most popular horse, as well as the Secretariat Foundation, which assists and supports various charities within the racing community.

She received the 2006 Eclipse Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to the thoroughbred industry, and in recent years, she advocated for laminitis research and care advancement as well as efforts to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs in racing.

Chenery was portrayed by actress Diane Lane in the 2010 movie "Secretariat." Chenery had a cameo role as a spectator at the Belmont Stakes.

Sneezy
 

From the CROW clinic:

With heavy hearts, we said goodbye to one of our beloved Animal Ambassadors, Sneezy.

Sneezy first came to us in 2014 after he was hit by a car. He suffered a broken jaw and tail. To prevent infection, his tail was amputated, making him non-releasable. He spent the next few years teaching CROW visitors about the importance of opossums in the environment.

In the recent weeks, as old age began to set in (opossums only live 1-2 years in the wild), arthritis in his hind limbs gradually made it more difficult for Sneezy to walk. His quality of life had declined to the point that veterinarians at CROW had to make the extremely difficult decision to ease his pain.

Sneezy will be greatly missed, but never forgotten.

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Was looking forward to meeting this lil guy on my trip down this year. Rest in peace lil buddy.

Jake LaMotta
 

Boxing legend Jake LaMotta, whom Robert De Niro portrayed in the film "Raging Bull," died at the age of 95.

Born July 10, 1921, LaMotta began fighting when he was just a child, made to do so by his father to help support the family – he'd fight other neighborhood children and adult spectators would throw change into the ring. By 19, LaMotta had honed his skills enough to go pro.

LaMotta was an aggressive fighter with a brutal style that earned him the nicknames "The Bronx Bull" and "The Raging Bull." Among his early fights was a legendary series against Sugar Ray Robinson, beginning in 1942. LaMotta lost their first bout but won their second – he was the first ever to defeat Robinson. Robinson would win four subsequent fights with LaMotta.

In 1949, LaMotta defeated world middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan in a title bout. He held that title until Feb. 14, 1951 – and he lost it in his final fight against Robinson. In a fight that went down in history and was nicknamed the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, LaMotta fought hard but took a beating, and he lost after the winner stopped LaMotta in the 13th round. LaMotta would never regain the championship. After that defeat, he moved to light heavyweight, winning some fights but no titles.

After his retirement from boxing, LaMotta owned and managed bars. He also acted and performed stand-up comedy. He had roles in movies including "The Hustler" as well as several guest-star turns on TV's "Car 54, Where Are You?"

LaMotta also wrote several books about his life and career. One of those books was the 1970 memoir, "Raging Bull: My Story." Ten years after its publication, the movie adapted from it, directed by Martin Scorsese, was released to great critical acclaim. Star Robert De Niro trained with LaMotta until LaMotta deemed him skilled enough to fight professionally. The effort won De Niro an Academy Award.

LaMotta is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Hugh Hefner
 

Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment-industry giant has died.

Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years — as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic. But Mr. Hefner was a stunning success from his emergence in the early 1950s. His timing was perfect.

RIP..... pick door number 2!...i loved that show!