Rant #2,581: Gone, Gone, Gone

As we all get older, we all get older, and that applies to our family members, our friends, and those we know from afar.
 
I thought about that when I learned yesterday that Cloris Leachman died, and died at age 94 yet.
 
She lived a full life, and was extremely successful, even with a name that sounded like some type of disinfectant.
 
Know anyone else with the name of Cloris? Like Buckwheat used to say, “Me neither too, hmmph!”
 
Anyway, Leachman--who began her career as a beauty pageant winner--was an acclaimed actress who most people will remember as Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as well as the short-lived spinoff of that show, “Phyllis,” and she was really primarily a TV actress, with many credits including being a guest star on the famed “Perry Mason” show.
 
But she had at least two big moments on the big screen, winning an Academy Award for her performance in “The Last Picture Show” and becoming one of Mel Brooks’ ensemble of players in “Young Frankenstein,” a role that she should have gotten another Oscar for.
 
I always thought that Leachman was an excellent actress as well as being eye candy for guys like me, teens growing up and just starting to see the world—and women—a bit differently.
 
She had one of the best figures in Hollywood for sure, and with Angie Dickinson, to my generation, were “MILFs” before that term became mainstream.
 
And there were two others from my youth who recently passed that are worthy of mention. They never achieved the fame that Leachman had but they are firmly in my own personal memories.

Since Leachman enjoyed lots of fame during her career, and thus, you can find her obituary and her career highlights just about anywhere, I am going to expound on the next two passings a bit more than on hers.
 
Does anyone remember Hawthorne Wingo, who played with the New York Knicks on their last championship team in the 1973-1974 season?

 
I sure do, and most Knicks fans have at least heard of his name, if nothing else. He died at age 73 the other day.
 
He came to the team with the baggage that such a name carries, and was often the last player off the bench during his career.
 
I can still hear crescendos of “HAW-THORNE WIN-GO!” or just “WIN-GO!” coming from the 400-level seats of Madison Square Garden during blowout games. The fans loved him, loved the name, and he was not the atypical 12th man, he did have some talent.
 
I was at the first game he played with the Knicks. The forward had an unorthodox shot, but his unorthodox name endeared him to Knicks fans.
 
Not much is known about Wingo after the four seasons he played with the Knicks. He did eventually play in Europe, but after his career was over, he settled in Brooklyn, appearing at Knick team reunions, but what he did with the rest of his life after basketball is unknown to me.
 
And the last passing I want to talk about here is of a former Penthouse Pet of the Year who went on to have a fairly interesting career after she appeared in the publication, appearing in a number of Z-level films and TV shows that would make even the recently-passed Tanya Roberts appear to be an Oscar-worthy talent.

 
Julie Strain was a statuesque beauty who was in more than 100 films, often as window dressing but at times as a woman who took charge of whatever situation she was put into … most of the time in a bikini to show off her incredible figure.
 
Like Roberts, Strain’s filmography was peppered with the likes of “Bikini Hotel” and “Savage Beach,” but she also starred for several seasons in the best show the Playboy Channel ever produced, the send-up of TV court shows called “Sex Court.” As Judge Julie, she presided over numerous cases that had an adult bent to them, and the show’s success led to a later film based on the series.
 
And also like Roberts, her demise was shrouded in mystery.
 
Strain had suffered a serious fall from her horse when she was in her 20s, and she had had periods of amnesia throughout the rest of her life based on this horrific accident.
 
The severity of this accident did not stop her career, and she steadily worked through her 30s and 40s and into her early 50s, but she developed dementia when she was in her late 1950s that was said to be directly linked with this accident years before.
 
In fact, her situation was so dire that it was announced a year ago that she had died, but that was untrue. She lived another full year with the dementia until she passed away On January 10. She was just 58 years old.
 
The world still turns, and as long as the world turns, people we know of in one way or the other are getting older, as we all are.
 
Leachman, Wingo and Strain can be added to the long list of people who have left us during the past year or so, and while we would hope that they would be the last of those on that list, we know that that list will expand as the year goes on.
 
But I have great memories of all three of them, as I am sure many of you do too, so their legacies will live on forever.