July Farewells

The world’s oldest Twitterer, the Way of the Intercepting Fist, two authors and a bolero singer … we’re better for their coming and passing.

Ivy Bean

Ivy Bean, 104, passed away in her sleep last night after being unwell for several weeks.

Celebrities and politicians including Peter Andre, Sarah Brown and David Miliband paid tribute to the World’s oldest tweeter following her death.

Leading the online tributes was Mrs Brown, who praised the late silver surfer for her ‘great spirit and sense of humour’.

Ivy Bean met pop star Peter Andre through Twitter, after confessing she was a fan of his music

Australian pop star Andre, who had met Mrs Bean and been in regular contact with her on the micro-blogging network, said: ‘I am very saddened to hear that Ivy has passed away.

‘She was a lovely woman who had a brilliant sense of humour. We built up a special friendship and have stayed in touch since we met at one of my signings. I send my condolences to all of the family.’

Mrs Bean, who sent her messages to the world from the care home where she lived in Bradford, counted Andre as one of her celebrity fans.

The pop star was in daily contact with the care home after hearing Ivy was unwell. He spoke to the great-grandmother on the phone and sent flowers just a few days ago.

Labour Party leader candidate Miliband wrote: ‘So sad to read about Ivy Bean’s passing.’

Calum Best said: ‘RIP the very blessed Ivy Bean, our thoughts and love are with ur family.’

DJ Richard Bacon added: ‘Bye bye Ivy Bean. You were bloody cool.’

In recent weeks, staff at the care home where she lived had posted Twitter updates about her condition.

The centenarian had clocked up an astonishing 56,300 followers on the social networking site, and another 5,000 on Facebook.

This morning a series of posts, written by the manager of Ivy’s care home, appeared on her Twitter account which read: ‘Hello all of Ivy’s Twitter friends. By now you will have heard about our dear friend. I cannot explain how we are all feeling here.

‘Ivy passed away peacefully at 12.08 this morning.’

Ivy’s Tweets reached more than 56,300 followers, and she had thousands more Facebook friends

‘I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you but it was a very difficult thing to do.’

Yesterday care home staff revealed that Ivy was seriously ill, but had been ‘sleeping like a baby’.

Manager of Hillside Manor, Pat Wright, said Ivy had a tumour that had not been detected.

Earlier in the week they revealed how Ivy had looked like she was on the road to recovery after being admitted to hospital on July 14, before she took a turn for the worse.

Tributes to the centenarian started to appear on the site this morning, with John Prescott becoming one of the first to pay his respects.

He tweeted: ‘So sad to hear Ivy Bean has died. An inspiration to tweeters young & old & proof you don’t stop learning after 65! Rest in peace Ivy.’

During her high-profile Twitter career Ivy was invited to No.10 to meet then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, after which she tweeted that she had used the private toilet in Mr Brown’s study.

She was also delighted to meet Andre, who planted a kiss on her head, and counted DJ Chris Evans and Calum Best among her followers.

Ivy, a former mill worker, first hit the headlines as the oldest person to embrace technology when she joined Facebook at the age of 102, quickly clocking up several thousand followers and giving her celebrity status

When Ivy was born in 1905, the quickest method of communication was the telegram, and it was not until seven years later that the first national telephone work was established.

One of eight children, Ivy Asquith worked in a mill from the age of 14 and then married Harold Bean, a soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps. After the Second World War they worked in service for the Lord and Lady Guinness at Greens Norton Hall in Northampton.

Ivy retired at 73, a few years after her husband passed away, aged 75. She was living at Hillside Manor care home in Bradford which she moved to at the grand age of 101 after her last care home closed down.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1298433/Ivy-Bean-Stars-pay-tribute-worlds-oldest-Twitter-user.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0v8H0YNL0
July 1973

The Way of the Intercepting Fist

Bruce Lee died on 20 July 1973, 37 years ago this week. CI admits: I was a fan of his as a kid, but I reckon that the acting side of things hasn’t held up well over he ensuing nearly 40 years. It also all seems a little narcissistic as well as downright brutal now. Lee is no doubt responsible for legions of kids making those ridiculous gurgly throat noises as they size each other up.

Bruce Lee, born Lee Jun-fan 27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973) was a Chinese American actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement. He is considered one of the most influential martial artists of the 20th century, and a cultural icon.

Lee was born in San Francisco, California in the United States, to parents of Hong Kong heritage but raised in Hong Kong until his late teens. Upon reaching the age of 18, Lee emigrated to the United States to claim his US citizenship and receive his higher education. It was during this time he began teaching martial arts, which soon led to film and television roles.

His Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, and sparked a major surge of interest in Chinese martial arts in the West in the 1970s. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world as well. He is noted for his roles in five feature-length films, Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Lee; Warner Brothers’ Enter the Dragon (1973), directed by Robert Clouse, and The Game of Death (1978 – finished posthumously, of course).
SCENE FROM FISTS OF FURY:

Lee became an iconic figure known throughout the world and remains very popular among Asian people and in particular among the Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese nationalism through his films. While Lee initially trained in Wing Chun, he later rejected well-defined martial art styles, favoring instead to use techniques from various sources in the spirit of his personal martial arts philosophy he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist). In 2010, he was ranked the 27th greatest American athlete of all time by Time Magazine being the only immigrated athlete on the list.

WARNING: THIS FIGHT SEQUENCE IS HELLISHLY BRUTAL, (AND THOSE CAMERA FLASHES BACK AND FORTH AT THE END ARE HELLISHLY CHEESY)

July 2010

FAREWELL JESSICA ANDERSON

THE impact of Jessica Anderson’s novel Tirra Lirra by the River was so profound, her literary legacy may be reduced to that one book.

“I hope there will be ultimately a biography written,” academic and writer Susan Sheridan said yesterday.

“There is certainly something extraordinary about Tirra Lirra that people remember for a long time, but it would be a pity if she is only remembered for one book.”

Anderson, who was born in Brisbane, died on July 9, in Sydney, aged 93.

Sheridan, who has written a book about the lives of women writers who published relatively late, said Anderson’s best-known novel was published at a time when “there was a huge hunger for stories about women”.

“Tirra Lirra filled the bill perfectly, a story about the interior life, about a woman who was really an artist but didn’t quite believe it, an elderly woman alone, rediscovering her independence.”

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

Published in 1978 when Anderson was 52, the novel was first sent in 1974 to the Australian publishing house Angus & Robertson, and “sent back without comment”, Sheridan said. It was then picked up by Macmillan, and went on to win a Miles Franklin Award.

It was Anderson’s fourth novel, following An Ordinary Lunacy (1963), The Last Man’s Head (1970) and a historical novel about the settlement of Moreton Bay, The Commandant (1975), which her London publishers had jacketed as a bodice-ripper, much to the author’s displeasure.

Elaine Barry, who published a book on Anderson’s work in 1992, said she read Tirra Lirra when it first came out, and immediately gave it to her brother, warning him he might not like it because it was “a woman’s book”.

“But it was also a book you don’t go to bed until you finish,” Barry said.

“My brother said, ‘It might be a woman’s book, but it’s also a terrific book’.”

Anderson was interviewed several times about her work, but she was, Barry said, “notoriously prickly” if asked questions about her private life.

Twice divorced, Anderson moved to Sydney at 18, and stayed there all her life, except for a brief time in London.

Her daughter, Laura Jones, became a scriptwriter, working with Jane Campion on An Angel at My Table and Portrait of a Lady, and with Gillian Armstrong on Oscar and Lucinda.

Anderson also wrote radio scripts, “for the money”, Barry said.

“What was most impressive was her range. The early thrillers were really well done.”

Anderson won a second Miles Franklin Award in 1980 for The Impersonators, which was followed by Taking Shelter (1990) and One of the Wattle Birds (1994). A short story collection was published in 1987.

Tirra Lirra was set in a riverside suburb in Brisbane, but Anderson would “hotly deny” it was autobiographical.

“She wouldn’t hear of it,” Barry said. “She would complain that readers would approach her and say, ‘Oh, you’ve had a facelift’ (the narrator in the story is an old woman nearing death), but she resisted any identification.

“When you write so well, it invites people to imagine you are writing about yourself.”

Anderson was a “staunch supporter of the writer’s cause”, and a long-time member of the Australian Society of Authors.

Anderson’s funeral was held in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park Crematorium.

OLGA GUILLOT

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Olga Guillot, the legendary Cuban bolero singer who became the first Latin artist to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York, has died. She was 86.

The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s office said Guillot died on Monday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach.
Guillot was born in Santiago, Cuba, and was first recognised for her singing talent at age 13, when she placed second in a singing contest with her sister. At 20, she performed with Edith Piaf.

She left Cuba in 1962, two years after the start of the communist revolution, and settled in Mexico. Over the years, Guillot recorded 14 records that went gold and 10 platinum.

She also participated in more than 20 movies, almost always acting as herself.

BERYL BAINBRIDGE – A SERIOUS COMEDIAN

11/24/1934 – 7/2/2010

LONDON (AP) — The acclaimed British novelist Beryl Bainbridge, an acute and acerbic chronicler of human relationships, has died at the age of 75.

Ed Wilson, of her literary agency Johnson and Alcock, says Bainbridge died in a London hospital early on Friday. She had been suffering from cancer.

Bainbridge was born in the port city of Liverpool in north-western England in 1934, and the city’s grit informed her books, which blended humor, tragedy and the absurd.

She published more than a dozen novels, including “A Weekend With Claud,” ”The Bottle Factory Outing” and “Injury Time”.

Several drew on Bainbridge’s own experiences. Her early career as an actress in provincial theatre provided the setting for “An Awfully Big Adventure,” published in 1989 and made into a 1995 movie starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.

As time went by, she increasingly turned to historical settings. “Every Man for Himself” was set aboard the Titanic and “Master Georgie” during in the Crimean War, while “According to Queeney” looked at 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson. “Young Adolf” imagined the aspiring artist Hitler in Liverpool before World War I, to comic and disturbing effect.

“Beryl had an absolutely original voice: she was a serious comedian, all of whose novels ended tragically,” writer Michael Holroyd told The Guardian newspaper.

Bainbridge was a five-time finalist for the Booker Prize, and twice won the Whitbread literary prize.

She was made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.

Details of survivors and funeral plans were not immediately available.

To hear Beryl Bainbridge talking about one of her books, click here