Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2009 (21. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)

2009-06-12 / 21. szám

Hungarian Journal

"Kung Fu" Star David Carradine Found Dead in a Bangkok Flotel Room

BANGKOK - Actor David.Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu” who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited police sources as saying the 72-year-old Carradine was found Thursday morning hanged in his luxury hotel room, - naked and bound in a closet. A preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the room’s curtains. It cited police as saying he had been dead at least 12 hours and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

“There was a rope tied around his neck and another rope tied at his sex organ, and the two ropes were tied together” police commander Lt. Gen. Worapong Siewpreecha told reporters. “Under these circumstances we cannot be sure that he committed suicide but he may have died from a sex act gone wrong,” he said.

The star of 1970s TV series “Kung Fu” and the “Kill Bill” movies was in the Thai capital to shoot a film called “Stretch.”

He died three days before the shooting was to end.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith. In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his prominent early film roles was as singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby’s 1976 biopic “Bound for Glory.”

Blit h^ was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series “Kung Fu,” which aired in 1972-75. He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine’s grandson in the 1990s syndicated series “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.”

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part saga “Kill Bill.” The character, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003’s “Kill Bill - Vol. 1.” In that film, one of Bill’s former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates. In “Kill Bill - Vol. 2,” released in 2004, Thurman’s character comes face to face again with Bill himself. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.

Bill was a complete contrast to his TV character Kwai Chang Caine, the soft-spoken refugee from a Shaolin monastery, serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West. He left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.

After “Kung Fu,” Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick “Death Race 2000.” He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman’s “The Serpent’s Egg” in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western “The Long Riders.” But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films. Tarantino’s films changed that. “All I’ve ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago ... is just to be in one,” Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004.

“There isn’t anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn’t do,” he said. “All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin’s courage to take and put me in the spotlight.”

One thing remained a constant after “Kung Fu”: Carradine’s interest in Oriental herbs, exercise and philosophy. He wrote a personal memoir called “Spirit of Shaolin” and continued to make instructional videos on tai chi and other martial arts.

In a 2004 interview, Carradine talked candidly about his past boozing and narcotics use, but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes. “I didn’t like the way I looked, for one thing. You’re kind of out of control emotionally when you drink that much. I was quicker to anger.”

“You’re probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions,” Carradine said. “Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.

“It’s time to do nothing but look forward.”

L.A. Times reporter Reed Johnson sums up the actor’s multi-faceted personality like this:

As an actor, and possibly as a human being, David Carradine was a walking yin-yang symbol, a bundle of opposites tightly stitched together. As a younger man, his lean, taut frame suggested both graceful selfpossession and a capacity for explosive violence. Several of his best roles, both in film and television, cast him as a thinking-person’s action hero, poised in perpetual tension between contemplative inner peace and outward aggression and hostility.

Married five times, Carradine had a personal life as volatile as any of his film roles. One reviewer described Carradine’s autobiography, “Endless Highway,” as a “dreary catalog of human disaster,” i.e. the actor’s own life. Since he appeared in many less than memorable movies in the past 20 years, and even in the good ones he often portrayed the darker side of human nature, “Carradine will be remembered for his grittiness, to be sure, but also for imparting a certain strange beauty to ugly acts and dark arts”.

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PLEASE JOIN US FOR OUR MONTHLY HUNGARIAN FORUM,

Friday, June 12, 2009 at Noon

The Friday Forum is an informal get together of the Hungarian American Community & friends in Silicon Valley & the San Francisco Bay Area. Our invited guest will be Kati Juhaszka, a Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley. I shall also discuss the new fingerprint requirements for Hungarian passport applicants, effective 6-28-09, and my efforts to design an Emergency Preparedness Program for the Consulate and the Hungarian American community in the Bay Area. Please bring your question, comment, share ideas & network.

The Honorary Consulate General of Hungary in San Francisco, Atrium Conference Room 2000 Alameda de Las Pulgas, San Mateo , CA 94403

(1 block South of Fwy 92 at Alameda , exit 11, & 20th Ave )

RSVP & Questions:

Eva E. Voisin, 650.573.7351 evoisin@ix.netcom.com

(Please note our tentative future meeting dates: Sept. 11, Oct. 2, Nov. 6.) Our August meeting will be held on August 20, at SF City Hall, where we will raise the Hungarian Flag at City Hall Balcony to celebrate St. Stephen’s Day.

DIRECTIONS

Take Fwy 92, take exit, # 11, at the Alameda de Las Pulgas, turn south & go to the 2nd signal light, crosstreet 20th Ave, & turn right onto our campus, which houses 3 buildings. The Alameda 2000 building will be on your left, with plenty of parking on the right.I f you need an elevator, or wish to park underground, go to the Garage. When you turn right onto our campus, from the Alameda , the garage to the 2000 building will be on your left. Park anywhere & take the elevator to the 1st floor, the Atrium Conference Room, also on the 1st floor.

jjí }JC

The Honorary Consulate General of Hungary in San Francisco, has jurisdiction over Northern California and Nevada , USA. We provide passport, visa services, authentication of signatures, notarial services, certification of documents, Civil Registry in Hungary of births, deaths, marriages and divorces abroad. We disseminate information and assist with trade, customs, business, academic and tourism information and promotion, resettlement, retirement, study & travel in Hungary ; we organize business, academic & artistic conferences. We give assistance in personal and business emergencies.

Judge Puts 'Columbo' Actor Falk in Conservatorship

AP - LOS ANGELES - A judge placed former “Columbo” star Peter Falk in a conservatorship Monday to ensure his daughter could occasionally visit the ailing 81- year-old actor.

Falk’s wife of more than 30 years, Shera, will remain in control of his personal care and affairs.

Falk has advanced dementia, likely from Alzheimer’s disease, one of his doctors testified.

Catherine Falk petitioned in December to take over her father’s affairs despite a sometimes contentious relationship with Falk and his wife. By court order, she will be allowed a 30-minute visit with her father every other month.

Peter Falk is of Hungarian descent. His great-grandfather was Miksa Falk, a well-known Hungarian writer and politician. He was the editor of the liberal newspaper the Pester Lloyd.

The Emmy-winning actor slipped rapidly into dementia since a series of dental operations in late 2007, Dr. Stephen Read testified Monday, the final day of a two-day conservatorship hearing.

Read said it was unclear whether Falk’s condition worsened as a result of anesthesia or some other reaction to the operation.

Read first evaluated Falk in June 2008 before the actor was scheduled to undergo hip surgery. His dementia and apparent Alzheimer’s disease worsened after that procedure, and Read said the actor no longer remembers his signature role in the series “Columbo.”

Falk won four Emmys for his starring role in “Columbo.” He also received Academy Award nominations for movies in 1959 and 1960.

For months, he has lived in a guesthouse at his Beverly Hills home that has been converted into an art studio and living quarters. He has around-the-clock care, and Shera Falk testified that she cooks dinner for her husband nightly. Falk in 2005 designated Shera Falk to be his caregiver and the keeper of his estate.

Catherine Falk, 38, withdrew a petition to take over control of the actor’s finances, saying she was only concerned about visiting her father. The hearing placed a spotlight on a series of slights within the family that led to the court action. Catherine Falk alleged Shera Falk ridiculed her father, slammed the door in her face and cut off contact with him when he grew ill.

Június 12. 2009