Three Notable Passings

This morning, actor Glenn Ford died at the age of 90. When most people think of Glenn Ford, they think of Pa Kent from the 1978 Superman, but that film only scratches the surface of the actor. Ford made several important films, among them two of my favorites, The Blackboard Jungle (which introduced millions to the Billy Haley and the Comets hit "Rock Around the Clock") and the noir classic The Big Heat. I never had half the trouble Ford had as a teacher in the first film and I'll never look at a pot of hot coffee in quite the same way after the second film.

Ford often played tough, rugged characters, but he also had a kind of quiet strength about him that you can detect in nearly all of his roles. My favorite Ford film isn't talked about much, the Western 3:10 to Yuma.

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Singer/songwriter Jumpin' Gene Simmons (not the wildman from Kiss) passed away yesterday at 69. Simmons was one of the first artists to appear on the Sun Records label and worked as an opening act for the young Elvis Presley. Simmons was from the strange and wonderful Itawamba County, Mississippi. Favorite song title: "Peroxide Blonde in a Hopped-Up Model Ford."

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Joseph Stefano, who wrote the screenplay for Psycho and was co-creator of the original television series The Outer Limits died yesterday. He was 84.

Stefano made several changes to Robert Bloch's original novel for the Hitchcock film, most notably the book's opening. Early in the novel, Bloch has Marion Crane arriving at the Bates Motel with her death quickly following. Stefano didn't like it.

"My feeling was that, since I did not know anything about this girl, I wasn't going to care about her when she was killed. So we backed the story up a bit and learned something about her so that when she was killed, it would have more impact."

It sure did.