Archive for April, 2024

Chita Rivera

Posted in Saint Anthony's Catholic Cemetery with tags , , , , on April 29, 2024 by Cade

January 23, 1933 – January 30, 2024

Broadway legends aren’t super rare, but Broadway icons are much more precious and exceptional. And friends, Chita Rivera was an ICON.

Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington D.C., the dancer, actress and singer who would eventually become “Chita Rivera” took dance lessons as a teenager and found her way to New York by way of her growing reputation. By the time she was 18, she was already getting dancing roles in hit Broadway musicals like Guys and Dolls and Can-Can. Then, in 1957, Rivera landed her first featured role: Anita in a new musical called West Side Story.

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Bessie Smith

Posted in Mount Lawn Cemetery with tags , on April 22, 2024 by Cade

bsmith3April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937

Combining deep-seated poverty, a troubled childhood and one of the most powerful singing voices ever known is enough to lead anyone to take up residence in the music genre known as “the blues.” But, once in a lifetime – perhaps, in SEVERAL lifetimes – it leads to someone making an entire empire out of it.

Columbia records dubbed Bessie Smith the “Queen of the Blues.” The moniker didn’t last long. By the time her career was in full swing in the late 1920’s, Smith had taken her rightful place at the top of the music world with the more apt title “EMPRESS of the Blues.”

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Conrad Veidt

Posted in Golders Green Crematorium with tags , , on April 15, 2024 by Cade

January 22, 1893 – April 03, 1943

Conrad “Conny” Veidt was a German-British actor whose largest impact on the film industry was arguably his performances in classic German Expressionism silent films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and The Man Who Laughs (1928). He appeared in more than 70 early films in his native Germany, many of which have been lost. He learned to speak English and French and continued to work his way across the globe, eventually making it to Hollywood, where he played perhaps his most recognizable role: Major Strasser opposite Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 classic, Casablanca. It would be the last movie released in Veidt’s lifetime.

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Isaac Newton

Posted in Westminster Abbey with tags , on April 8, 2024 by Cade

December 25, 1642 – March 20, 1726

It would be easy to just say that Sir Isaac Newton invented gravity, the tides, comets and colored light. It would be wrong…but it would be easy.

Newton is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific minds in human history and one of the principle minds behind what would become the Enlightenment. A genius, he used mathematics to explain everything from philosophy to the movement of the planets. He created the first reflecting telescope to study the movement of comets and other celestial objects. He determined, via prism, that the light spectrum contained an array of colors that were intrinsic to the white light itself. Love it or hate it, he invented Calculus.

And, as legend has it, he used observations of an apple tree in his garden to formulate his theory of gravitation.

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Jim Croce

Posted in Haym Salomon Memorial Park with tags , , on April 1, 2024 by Cade

January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973

Jim Croce was a singer-songwriter whose instantly recognizable songs were popular in the early 1970s. His legend and impact only grew in the wake of his untimely death at the age of just 30.

Hits like “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” and “Time in a Bottle” remain well-loved to this day.

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