Tag: Wills of the Rich & Famous

The following is an excerpt from “Wills of the Rich & Famous: A Fascinating Glimpse at the Legacies of Celebrities”  by Herbert E. Nass, Esq.

Yul Brynner
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH
July 11, 1915
Siberia, Russia

DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH
October 10, 1985
New York Hospital
New York, New York

Born on the island of Sakhalin off the coast of Siberia in the Soviet Union to a Rumanian mother and father who was a Mongolian mining engineer, Yul Brynner’s ex­otic background added to the regal aura about him. As the perennial King in the theater and film versions of “The King and I”, Brynner commanded that particular role the way no other actor ever had and has come to be identified with that particular part. It was well stated in a review by the New York Times, “Yul Brynner’s performance in ‘The King and I’… can no longer be regarded as a feat of act­ing or of endurance. After 30-odd years of on-and-off barnstorming, Mr. Brynner is quite simply, The King. Man and role long since merged into a fixed image that is as much a part of our collective consciousness as the Statue of Liberty.” Continue reading “The King Must Die”

The following is an excerpt from “Wills of the Rich & Famous: A Fascinating Glimpse at the Legacies of Celebrities”  by Herbert E. Nass, Esq.

Jim Morrison
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH
December 8, 1943 Melbourne, Florida

DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH
July 3, 1971
Paris, France

When rock superstar Jim Morrison died at the age of twenty-seven in a bathtub in Paris, he left a lyrical legacy that is etched into the consciousness of a genera­tion. As the incendiary lead singer for the sixties rock group The Doors, Morrison helped light the flames and fan the fires of that decade. One of The Doors’ first and best-known songs was “Light My Fire,” which became an anthem for the flower children of the sixties. Another song, performed particularly graphically by Morrison, was “The End,” in which the protagonist in the song has an Oedipal encounter with his mother and ends up murder­ing both of his parents. Strange days, indeed.

Continue reading ““This Is the End, Beautiful Friend””

The following is an excerpt from “Wills of the Rich & Famous: A Fascinating Glimpse at the Legacies of Celebrities”  by Herbert E. Nass, Esq.

Walt Disney
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH
December 5, 1901
Chicago, Illinois

DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH
December 15, 1966
St. Joseph’s Hospital
Los Angeles, California

A Mickey Mouse Operation

Walter Elias Disney was raised on a farm. That might partially explain his fascination with mice, ducks, dogs, deer, crickets, pigs, and just about every other kind of animal real or imagined. In his creations of Mickey and Minnie, Donald and Daffy, Pluto, Bambi, Jiminy, and three little pigs, it has been said that Disney was the first person to give animals a soul and imbue them with dis-tinct personalities. Continue reading “A Mickey Mouse Operation”

The following is an excerpt from “Wills of the Rich & Famous: A Fascinating Glimpse at the Legacies of Celebrities”  by Herbert E. Nass, Esq.

Mark Twain
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH
November 30, 1835
Florida, Missouri

DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH
April 21, 1910
Stormfield
Redding, Connecticut

Named Samuel Langhorne Clemens at his birth in Missouri, he took his nom de plume of “Mark Twain” from the expression used by Mississippi River boatmen to describe a certain depth of the water. With his pen name picked, Twain wrote about life on the Mississippi or on other bodies of water, as in his first famous book, Innocents Abroad, about his adventures on a steamship bound for the Holy Land. Continue reading ““The Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated””