My dear readers this is a very sad morning for me. I remember Patrick Swayze best for a movie I saw in Cape Town in 1991, Point Break. It had the most incredible surfing and sky diving scenes. I was amazed to see that Patrick Swayze did his own stunts in this incredible film. Like me, Patrick came from Houston. He graduated from Waltrip High School. His mother Patsy was a choreographer of great competence. She infected him with a love for show business. Patrick was a great dancer,actor and athlete. He was also a wonderful family man without all of the scandals one normally sees in Hollywood. He stayed married to his wife Lisa for 34 years. At least he gave us all of those wonderful years before he died so unfairly much too young.
Anna Le came from Placerville,California. It is a charming town in the Sierra mountains. She made her way to the top at Yale Medical School. She was on her way to a brilliant career. Who knows what scientific advances she could have discovered. She was to have been married last Sunday. Ironically my wife's dear friend of some thirty years also works at Yale Medical School.
John F. Kennedy always commented on how unfair life is. He was so right. It is a sad day for me and all of us.
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Patrick Swayze, whose hunky good looks and sympathetic performances in such films as "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost" made him a romantic idol to millions, died Monday. He was 57.
Patrick Swayze's doctor said in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from pancreatic cancer.
Swayze died of pancreatic cancer, his publicist, Annett Wolf, told CNN.
"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," Wolf said in a statement Monday.
Swayze's doctor, Dr. George Fisher, revealed in early March 2008 that Swayze was fighting the disease.
Most recently, Swayze starred in A&E network's "The Beast," which debuted in January. He agreed to take the starring role of an undercover FBI agent before his diagnosis. The network agreed to shoot an entire season of the show after Swayze responded well to cancer treatment. 
In an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters in January, Swayze said his work on that show was exhausting, requiring 12-hour workdays in Chicago, Illinois, doing his own stunts. But he said the show's character "just felt right for my soul." iReport.com: Send us your memories of Swayze
"If I leave this Earth, I want to leave this Earth just knowing I've tried to give something back and tried to do something worthwhile with myself," Swayze told Walters, when asked why he decided to do the show. "And that keeps me going, that gets me up in the morning. My work ... is my legacy."
"The Beast" was canceled in June because of Swayze's illness, after doctors told him the cancer had spread to his liver.
Don't Miss
"We are saddened by the loss of one of our generation's greatest talents and a member of the A&E family," a statement from the network said. "Patrick's work on 'The Beast' was an inspiration to us all. He will be greatly missed and our thoughts are with his wife, Lisa, and his entire family during this difficult time."
Swayze was mostly known for a handful of supporting roles when he broke through with his performance as dance instructor Johnny Castle in 1987's "Dirty Dancing."
Co-star Jennifer Grey, who played his young lover, "Baby" Houseman, in the film, described Swayze as "gorgeous and strong."
"Patrick was a rare and beautiful combination of raw masculinity and amazing grace. ... He was a real cowboy with a tender heart. He was fearless and insisted on always doing his own stunts, so it was not surprising to me that the war he waged on his cancer was so courageous and dignified," Grey said in a statement.
"When I think of him, I think of being in his arms when we were kids, dancing, practicing the lift in the freezing lake, having a blast doing this tiny little movie we thought no one would ever see. My heart goes out to his wife and childhood sweetheart, Lisa Niemi, to his mom, Patsy, and to the rest of their family."
Three years later, he became an even bigger star with the movie "Ghost," in which he played investment banker Sam Wheat, who dies and learns to tap into his unspoken feelings for his partner, Molly Jensen, played by Demi Moore.
"Patrick you are loved by so many and your light will forever shine in all of our lives," Moore said in a statement.
"In the words of Sam to Molly. 'It's amazing Molly. The love inside, you take it with you.' I will miss you."
"Ghost" won Whoopi Goldberg an Oscar and helped make him People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991.
"Patrick was a really good man, a funny man and one to whom I owe much that I can't ever repay," Goldberg said in a statement. "I believe in 'Ghost's message, so he'll always be near."
Swayze told Entertainment Weekly in 1990 that, "The movies that have had the most powerful effects on my life have been about romantic characters."
He expanded on the effort he put into love scenes for People in 1991.
"It's possibly the scariest thing I do," he said, "doing something so personal and giving people out there the opportunity to see if you're a good kisser or not."
Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on August 18, 1952, in Houston, Texas. His father was an engineering draftsman; his mother was a ballet dancer and later the director of the Houston Ballet Dance Company.
She led her son into the dancing world, which wasn't always easy for a Texas male. The young Swayze played football, practiced martial arts and was an accomplished diver and track star while growing up, though he was good enough at dance to earn a college scholarship.
After playing Prince Charming in an early 1970s version of "Disney on Ice," Swayze returned to Houston, where he met Lisa Niemi, a student of his mother's. The two married in 1975 and moved to New York to pursue their careers.
Swayze seemed set on a dance career: He studied with the prestigious Joffrey Ballet and joined another company, the Eliot Feld Ballet Company. But surgery for an old football injury ended his ballet career and he turned to acting, nabbing the lead role of Danny Zuko in the long-running Broadway production of "Grease" in 1978, about the time the movie starring John Travolta was hitting theaters. "Grease" earned Swayze some Hollywood attention, and he and Niemi moved West.
After a couple of bit parts, including one in a 1981 episode of "M*A*S*H," Swayze picked up the role of Darrel Curtis in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film "The Outsiders."
The movie included future stars Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise.
Swayze also was one of the leads in 1984's "Red Dawn," about teenagers defending their town from a Soviet attack on America.
"Not only did we lose a fine actor today, I lost my older 'Outsiders' brother," actor C. Thomas Howell, who starred with Swayze in "Red Dawn" and "Grandview, U.S.A."
But it was with "Dirty Dancing" that Swayze hit it big. The film about a girl's coming of age at a Catskills, New York, resort in the early '60s was intended for a limited release but became one of the decade's biggest sleeper hits and made Swayze and Grey household names.
The film gave birth to a catchphrase -- "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," spoken by Swayze's character to Grey's domineering father -- and led to a follow-up, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights."
Swayze even sang a Top 10 hit, "She's Like the Wind," on the film's soundtrack.
Swayze, known as a down-to-earth, nice-guy actor, was determined not to follow a predictable career path. He followed "Dirty Dancing" with "Road House" (1989), in which he played a manager of a rough-and-tumble bar (the film was particularly popular on late-night cable).
He succeeded "Ghost" with "Point Break" (1991), about a group of thieves; "City of Joy" (1992), in which he played a doctor in a poverty-stricken Indian village; and "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" (1995), in which he starred as a drag queen. 
"I don't want to be Mr. Romantic Leading Man. I don't want to be the Dance Dude. I don't want to be the Action Guy. If I had to do any one of those all my life, it'd drive me crazy," he told Entertainment Weekly in a 1990 interview.
Swayze's career diminished in the late '90s. He broke both legs in 1997 while making the film "Letters From a Killer," and went into rehab for a drinking problem.
In 2000, he was flying in his twin-engine plane when it depressurized; Swayze landed in a housing development in Arizona. Though some witnesses said he appeared intoxicated, he was later revealed to have been suffering from hypoxia, related to the depressurization and his three-pack-a-day cigarette habit.
Swayze re-established his knack for picking sleepers with "Donnie Darko" (2001), a dark film about a troubled student that became a sensation on video. Swayze played a creepy motivational speaker and won raves.
Swayze's more recent work included a TV version of "King Solomon's Mines" and 2007's "Christmas in Wonderland."
Though he still made hearts flutter -- 22-year-old Scarlett Johansson, on receiving Harvard's Hasty Pudding Award in February 2007, said her dream date was "probably Patrick Swayze, my dream come true" -- Swayze wasn't too impressed with himself.
"Good-looking people turn me off," he once said. "Myself included."
Swayze is survived by his wife of more than 30 years, Lisa, and his mother, Patsy.
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (CNN) -- The killing of Yale student Annie Le was not random and could only have been committed by one of a small number of people with access to the building where her body was found, authorities said. Students at Yale attend a candlelight vigil for Annie Le Monday night. Le's body was found hidden in a wall in the basement of a Yale medical research building Sunday, the day she was supposed to be married. The 24-year-old graduate student had been missing for almost a week. Bloody clothes were found hidden above tiles in a drop ceiling elsewhere in the building, investigators said. Her killing was not a random act, New Haven Police spokesman Joe Avery said. He would not elaborate. Yale University President Richard Levin told students Monday: "We know everyone that was in the basement. There were limited number of people in the basement and we passed that on to police. There is an abundance of evidence." Yale professor Gary Rudnick, who interviewed Le when she applied for admission to the graduate program in pharmacology, told CNN that the building where Le's body was found had good security, and only certain people could enter, let alone access specific areas. He said the circumstances suggested there could be a "murderer among us." Thomas Kaplan, editor in chief of the Yale Daily News, said Le's killing had left Yale students shocked and wary. "Only Yalies had access to that basement, and that seems to point to someone in our community being involved in this," Kaplan said. "That's what is so frightening." No suspects were in custody, but investigators were questioning several people in the case, police said. Authorities have not described the clothes that were found, nor said to whom they might have belonged. Teams of investigators at a Connecticut State Police lab worked through the weekend processing and examining the bloodstained clothes. Kaplan said a Yale police official told the paper that the clothes were not what Le was wearing when she entered the building. Security cameras captured video of Le as she entered the four-story lab building at 10 Amistad Street, about 10 blocks from the main campus, on September 8. After poring over hours of surveillance tapes, authorities said they had not found images of her leaving the building. Le was to be married Sunday on New York's Long Island to Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student at Columbia University. Her friend Vanessa Flores said Le was overjoyed about getting married. "She was just so excited about this wedding and everything from, you know, her flowers to her wedding dress and just certain details about it," Flores told HLN's Nancy Grace. "We talked about this back in 2008. She was already thinking about the weather, whether June, July was going to be too hot, August, so September, would it be nice?" Le was from Placerville, California, and seemed to have been well aware of the risks of crime in a university town. In February, she compared crime and safety at Yale with other Ivy League schools for a piece for B magazine, published by the medical school. Among the tips she offered: Keep a minimum amount on your person. When she walked over to the research building on Tuesday, she left her purse, credit cards and cell phone in her office. On Monday night at Yale, several hundred people turned out for a vigil for Le. Her roommate, Natalie Powers, said Le "was as good a human being as you'd ever hope to meet." "She was also really tenacious and had a sense of humor that was never far away, and she was tougher than you'd think by just looking at her," Powers said. "That this horrible tragedy happened at all is incomprehensible, but that it happened to her, I think, is infinitely more so. It seems completely senseless." Yale student's killing wasn't random, police say
Don't Miss
No comments:
Post a Comment