Margaret Kelly
Dancer; born June 24, 1910, died September 11, 2004.
The Irish-born founder of Paris's famed Bluebell Girls dance troupe, Kelly began her career with a less glamourous ensemble called The Hot Jocks. Known simply as Miss Bluebell, Kelly was responsible for training upwards of 10,000 dancers. Since 1948 the statuesque, long-legged Bluebell girls have been a fixture at the Lido on Paris's Champs-Elysees.
Born in Dublin and orphaned early on, Kelly was encouraged by a doctor to start dancing at a young age to strengthen her legs. She caught the bug, and by her teen years travelled around Europe with an English dance troupe. She met her husband, Marcel Leibovici, a Romanian immigrant pianist, in
France in the 1930s.
She is survived by two sons, a daughter and five grandchildren.
Fred Ebb
Lyricist; born April 8, 1933, died September 11, 2004.
Ebb, who wrote the lyrics to Broadway musical hits including Cabaret and Chicago, also penned the words to the Big Apple anthem, New York, New York. His collaboration with composer John Kander, often tackling dark, offbeat material, spanned nearly 40 years and spawned a dozen shows. Kander and Ebb made their Broadway debut in 1965 with Flora, the Red Menace, starring a 19-year-old Liza Minnelli in a show about young Communists in the 1930s.
A year later the duo struck it big with Cabaret, a show about Berlin decadence amid the rise of the Nazis, which won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It later won eight Oscars, including one for music, in a 1972 film starring Minnelli and directed by Bob Fosse. Fosse later directed Kander and Ebb's 1975 Broadway hit Chicago, with the 2002 film version winning six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. ''He and his partner, John Kander, formed an incredibly rich collaboration,'' said Sam Cohn, Ebb's agent for more than 25 years.
''They were the top of the heap,'' he said, paraphrasing Ebb's lyric in New York, New York, which was written for the 1977 Martin Scorsese film of the same name that starred Minnelli and Robert De Niro.
The song became a hit through a 1980 recording by Frank Sinatra, and then-New York Mayor Edward Koch designated it as the official city song by proclamation in 1985.
Johnny Ramone
Musician; born October 8, 1948, died September 15, 2004.
Lead guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band The Ramones, which influenced a generation of rockers, Ramone has finally lost his five-year battle with prostate cancer.
Ramone, whose birth name is John Cummings, was one of the original members of the Ramones, whose hit songs Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, I Wanna Be Sedated and Blitzkrieg Bop, among others, earned them an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Since their debut album in 1976, the band struggled for commercial success, but they left a formidable imprint on the rock genre. Although they never had a Top-40 song,
the Ramones influenced scores of followers,
including bands such as Green Day and Nirvana.
Even Bruce Springsteen
was moved. After seeing the Ramones in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Springsteen wrote Hungry Heart for
the band. His manager, however, swayed him to keep the song for himself and it became a hit single.
Tommy Ramone, the drummer, is the only surviving member of the original band.
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