July – August farewells

A movie star, a theatre director who wanted to throw money from the roof of parliament, a beautiful singer and activist, and a university professor – we’re better for their being here.

Farewell Christoph Schlingensief

Christoph Schlingensief, the German stage director who scandalised conservative Wagnerians with a rotting hare at the Bayreuth Festival, died on Satuirday, August 21 of lung cancer, aged 49. The media-savvy provocateur had been diagnosed with the illness in early 2008.

The worm-riddled image appeared in his 2004 staging of “Parsifal,” and incensed those who thought Wagner’s epic about redemption deserved a nobler image than a dead Easter bunny.

Born in 1960 in Oberhausen, Schlingensief studied German, philosophy and art history in Munich before turning to stage and screen with a vengeance.

Schlingensief’s films carried titles like “100 Years of Adolf Hitler” and “The German Chainsaw Massacre.” His art actions were whimsical and politically inspired. He asked all six million unemployed Germans to jump into Austria’s Lake Wolfgang to flood the favorite holiday town of then Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1997, he was arrested at the Kassel Documenta art exhibition for titling a work “Kill Helmut Kohl.”

Farewell Christoph Schlingensief

He almost won funding from Deutsche Bank AG for a performance piece titled “Save capitalism, throw the money away!” in which he intended to fling 100,000 deutsche marks from the roof of the Berlin Reichstag.

He directed numerous movies, plays and operas, including at the renowned annual Richard Wagner festival in Bayreuth, Germany, and in Manaus, Brazil.

Schlingensief’s plays, mostly staged in Germany, Switzerland and Austria often proved controversial as they came with strong political messages.

Schlingensief is survived by his wife, Aino.

Farewell Abbey Lincoln

'There are gorgeous women, there are spirited women, there are genius women — Abbey Lincoln was all of that. You don't find an artist that embodies this kind of level of physical beauty and cerebral magnificence in one package.'

Abbey Lincoln, a jazz singer and songwriter known for her phrasing, emotion and uncompromising style, died on Saturday in New York at age 80.

As a young woman, Lincoln made a splash not only because of her voice, but her beauty. Early album covers featured her in slinky dresses, and she appeared in a Jayne Mansfield movie wearing the dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

She collaborated in music with the drummer Max Roach, whom she married in 1962. Under his influence, Lincoln turned her back on that image, casting herself instead as a civil rights advocate, dressing in African-inspired clothing and hairstyles, and making music with a political tone.

She had been declining in health for the past year. Her death was confirmed by friend and filmmaker Carol Friedman, who has been working on a documentary on Lincoln’s life.

Lincoln made records and acted in films in the 1950s and ’60s, then saw her career surge again in the 1990s when she found new voice as a songwriter.

Over her long career, Lincoln acted with Sidney Poitier and collaborated in music with the drummer Max Roach, whom she married in 1962 but later divorced.

In later years, she had chart-topping albums with “You Gotta Pay the Band,” which she recorded with Stan Getz, and “Devil’s Got Your Tongue,” in which she rebuked some rappers, comics and filmmakers for profiting from the denigration of black culture.

Her 1960 collaboration with Roach and Oscar Brown Jr., “We Insist! (Freedom Now Suite),” was a testament against racism.

Explaining her image makeover in 1993, Lincoln told The Associated Press, “This dress was more important than I was. People in the audience were looking at my exposed breasts and the shape of my body, and it didn’t have nothing to do with the music.

“… It wasn’t a dream of mine to be a star, so Max came along at the right time to help save me from myself. Otherwise, I would have become an alcoholic and unhappy.”

Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in 1930, Lincoln was the daughter of a handyman and grew up with 11 brothers and sisters in rural Calvin Center, Mich. She discovered music early, teaching herself piano and singing in music and school.

Lincoln worked as a maid as a teenager, but continued to sing, and eventually worked her way on to the nightclub circuit in Honolulu and then played supper clubs in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, performing under the name Gaby Wooldridge, and then Gabby Lee. Her manager and songwriter eventually came up with the stage name Abbey Lincoln.

Her work with Roach began in 1957 with the album “That’s Him.”

In the 1960s, she had several film roles, starring in the independent film “Nothing But a Man,” a story about a black railroad worker in the South in love with a preacher’s daughter, and then opposite Poitier in “For Love of Ivy” in 1968.

Lincoln’s career fell quiet in the 1970s and ’80s, after her marriage to Roach ended. She recorded on small independent labels, but she found new fame and acclaim when she signed with Verve Records/France and released “The World Is Falling Down,” in 1990, an album that featured such jazz stars as pianist Hank Jones and trumpeter Clark Terry.

She released nine more albums for Verve, the last, “Abbey Sings Abbey,” which featured reinterpretations of her own compositions, in 2007. Lincoln also acted again for the first time in decades, with a brief role in the 1990 Spike Lee film “Mo’ Better Blues.”

In 2003, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized her with its Jazz Masters Award, the nation’s highest jazz honor.

“I’ve done what I please, told people to go bug off and exercised my independence,” Lincoln told the AP in 1993.

Friedman said the world had lost “an amazing genius.”

“There are gorgeous women, there are spirited women, there are genius women — Abbey Lincoln was all of that,” she said. “You don’t find an artist that embodies this kind of level of physical beauty and cerebral magnificence in one package.”

Farewell Marilyn Monroe: 5 August 1962

48 years ago today: farewell Marilyn Monroe

Screen icon Marilyn Monroe has been found dead in bed at her Brentwood, Los Angeles home.

The 36-year-old actress’ body was discovered in the early hours of this morning by two doctors who were called to her Brentwood home by a concerned housekeeper.

The doctors were forced to break into Miss Monroe’s bedroom after being unable to open the door. She was found lying naked in her bed with an empty bottle of Nembutal sleeping pills by her side.

The local coroner, who visited the scene later, said the circumstances of Miss Monroe’s death indicated a “possible suicide”.

From rags to riches

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on 1 June 1926 in Los Angeles.

Her mother, Gladys Baker, had mental problems which resulted in Norma Jeane spending most of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages.

She wed her neighbour, Jimmy Dougherty in 1942, but the marriage failed in 1946 due to Norma Jeane’s new-found fame as a photographic model.

In 1944 while her husband was serving in the South Pacific with the Merchant Marines, Norma Jeane was discovered by photographer David Conover.

By 1946 she had signed her first studio contract with 20th Century Fox and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Since 1947 she has appeared in 30 films, including The Prince and the Showgirl, Bus Stop, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire and Some Like it Hot, for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy.

Her 1954 marriage to baseball star Joe DiMaggio lasted just nine months and on 29 June 1956 the star married playwright Arthur Miller.

But that marriage ended in 1961. Miss Monroe’s romantic life has long been the subject of speculation and she has been linked with President Kennedy.

Millions of fans around the world will be deeply shocked by the star’s premature and tragic death.

‘Go Gently into Your Night’

Robert Glaisher: 15/07/1953 – 08/07/2010

Farewell Rob Glaisher

She feels it close now, the appointed season:
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.
Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design.
And darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.

From ‘The death of the bird’ by A.D.Hope.

The electron microscopy laboratory, hidden in the basement of the Applied Science Building on the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, was the arena of operation for a remarkable microscopist and visionary teacher. Here, Robert Glaisher educated students to become scientists, not ‘stamp collectors’ or ‘knob twiddlers’ or simply being good at passing exams. Here, he taught students to think critically, to solve problems and to add skills to their toolbox as apprentice scientists, which they could use to obtain employment. In his 16 years of teaching at La Trobe University, he made a crucial difference to many students’ career choices.

Robert completed a Bachelor of Applied Physics with Distinction from RMIT in 1974 and in 1975 began work as an electronics technician in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne before embarking on further studies. In 1978, he enrolled in a Masters preliminary year, completing it with first class honours and receiving a Postgraduate Research Scholarship. While undertaking his PhD studies, Robert was a resident medical physics tutor at Newman College and a laboratory demonstrator in the third year diffraction laboratory for the School of Physics. It was here that his patience and dedication to undergraduate and postgraduate students became apparent. Robert could take a black and white photograph covered in an array of dots and lines and, through exclaiming excitedly and pointing out the finer detail, would instill a sense of achievement in the undergraduate student producer of the image.

Rob’s PhD thesis High Resolution Electron Microscopy of Tetrahedral Semiconductors was completed in 1987.  The day the thesis was submitted, he left for his first post-doctoral position as a research associate in the Physics department of Arizona State University. Here, he continued to explore his research interests in imaging semiconductor material and developed some general principles for studying defects and interfaces. He applied himself to other research projects which involved high-resolution imaging of metals and semiconductors, and widened his breadth of experience and expertise. Another post-doctoral position at Oxford University followed.  When getting off the train at Oxford, he recalled feeling that ‘he had arrived’ and immersed himself in the scholarly atmosphere with great joy.

Rob loved both of his post-doctoral positions and he established an international reputation in high resolution microscopy, publishing a number of seminal papers in the field. He began to develop a real sense of what industry needed from new graduates. He returned to Australia in 1990 to undertake his third post-doctoral position in the Electron Microscope Unit at the University of Sydney. During his three years in Sydney, he applied his now considerable research expertise to the field of layered compound semiconductors.  He formed strong collaborative links with research groups at the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics and with the Telecom Research Laboratories.

In 1993 Rob, by now pre-eminent in his field, took a position in the Physics department at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University. He came armed with an impressive research record, a thorough background in all aspects of scattering theory and a mastery of the technical skills in specimen preparation and instrumentation. La Trobe gained a first rate scientist with a broad knowledge of physics and instrumentation, many contacts in a rather specialized circle and a talent for teaching and assisting emerging researchers.

Rob set out attempting to shape the University toward his vision for a research community with strong ties to industry. With great tenacity, Rob established an analytical facility that could be accessed by industry and students. His design was a deliberate synthesis of seemingly disparate users. He wanted students to learn in an environment close to what they would face once out in the real world, and the money earned from outside users supported his specialised teaching with expensive instrumentation. Rob’s network of professional microscopy contacts and highly developed practical skills allowed him to obtain and maintain instruments that are unusual to have in a regional university campus.

Rob was a challenging yet gentle teacher. Teaching extended beyond his specialized subjects; it included conducting tours and hands-on sessions with local school children and supporting PhD students from other disciplines allowing them access to highly specialized studies in Bendigo.  Rob has been a mentor to many postgraduate students from a range of areas including physics, instrumentation, biotechnology, plant physiology, chemistry and ceramics. His support for students went far beyond just the academic curriculum. He helped students and colleagues think about and plan their careers. He derived great satisfaction from following the careers of those students who maintained contact with him. In 2008, Rob received a Carrick award (now ALTC – Australian Teaching and Learning Council) for excellence in teaching Electron Microscopy. The award is testament to Rob’s capacity to develop and deliver amazing courses that are highly valued and appreciated by students and fellow staff.

About ten years ago Rob transformed the somewhat disjointed structure of electron microscopy at the Melbourne campus by unifying it with the small Bendigo Electron Microscopy facility. In achieving this, he earned a high degree of respect for his managerial skills, his vision of a functional unit and his ability to work with strong characters across a range of disciplines, each of whom had their own particular requirements from the facilities. At the same time, he developed an innovative subject on imaging and materials characterisation at Bundoora, using the same principles as he had for his Bendigo subjects.

But universities in the 21^st century are very different from Rob’s vision of scholarship and learning. At the end of 2007, with a management structure in place, and to remove the strain of constant travel between campuses, Robert relinquished his Bundoora responsibilities to refocus his efforts on his Bendigo activities. In 2009 Rob went on a period of extended leave.

Rob was a very private person, and we will never know the anguish he experienced about his family, his work and his own well-being during his last year of teaching at the university and while on leave.

‘Go gently into your night’ was the greeting with which he finished his telephone conversations in the last few months; we are confident that he is now at peace having done just that.

For earlier farewells, click here