We have been so busy with the election, other news has been put on the back burner. We have lost two major figures in our culture. Considering I made yesterdays podcast long, I think I’ll shorten this one up.

Rest in peace Sean Connery and Alex Trebek. Let’s go over their lives, their greatest moments and one of the greatest comedy sketches involving the two.

 

There is News

There is some important news out there today.

• William Barr is starting an investigation into votes fraud and irregularities.
• A new vaccine by Pzitzer has been found to eliminate 90% of the COVID virus. Trump is wondering why they waited until a week after the election to announce it. The Democrats are trying to take credit for it.
• Fox News has lost all credibility along with the rest of the mainstream media.
• Finally, something really interesting. Blaze TV’s Louder with Crowder, an Internet news source…sort of…beat CNN, Fox News and MSNBC on election night. Interesting. I think we talked about this the other day.

 

More on all of this tomorrow. But first, real news.

Sean Connery

His Life

Let’s take a look at the life of Sean Connery.

• Was born Thomas Sean Connery on August 25, 1930 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
• His mother Effie was a cleaning woman and his father Joseph was a factory worker and a lorry (truck) driver.
• Connery’s first job was delivering milk.
• At age 16, he joined the Royal Navy. He worked with an anti-aircraft team and was assigned to the HMS Formidable.
• He was discharged at 19 for a medical for having an ulcer.
• Afterwards, he returned to the co-op, then worked as, among other things, a lorry driver, a lifeguard at Portobello swimming baths, a labourer, an artist’s model for the Edinburgh College of Art, and after a suggestion by former Mr. Scotland, Archie Brennan, a coffin polisher.
• Connery was a body builder. Rumors are that he won a tournament in 1953 but the records are sketchy.
• In 1951, Connery started acting at King’s Theatre in a production of South Pacific.
• In 1954, he starred in a few production in the theatre of London.
• In 1957, he starred in his first film role in a movie called No Road Back. 
• In 1962, Sen Connery hit it big. He was selected to play James Bond.
• Between 1962-1971 he played in Bond films: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.
• He left the Bond series but returned for the movie Diamonds are Forever. His final Bond film was Never Say Never Again.
• After Bond, he starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Marnie. Hitchcock wanted Connery for North by Northwest and Notorious but Connery refused because he thought he might be typecast.
• In 1987, Connery won his first and only Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the movie The Untouchables.
• In 2006,he received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. There, he confirmed that he was retiring from acting saying, “Only idiots are now making films in Hollywood.”
• Connery was married twice. His first wife was Diane Cilento (m. 1962; div. 1973) and his second wife Micheline Roquebrune (m. 1975). He has a son, Jason Connery.
• Connery died in his sleep on October 31, 2020 in Nassau, Bahamas.

 

I did not see a lot of Sean Connery’s movies. I was never a James Bond fan. That’s OK, I am also not a Marvel or DC comic book movie fan and people think I’m nuts. But the movies I saw I loved. That includes The Untouchables, Hunt for the Red October and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

He was a first tier actor when he did The Untouchables where he won his one Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (my favorite move). In the movie, Sean Connery plays Jimmy Malone, a policeman who has ethics and morality and will not take payments from the mob but does not have the courage to go after the mob on his own. When Eliot Ness says he wants to go after Al Capone but doesn’t understand how to do it. Malone knows and tells Ness that he is going to have to go beyond the law in order to accomplish his mission. By the end of the movie, Ness gets it and goes way beyond the law.

In a very powerful scene, Malone is shot and dying. When Ness finds him, Malone is not concerned with himself but with getting Ness the information he needs to capture an important Capone accomplice. In his last breath, Malone says, “What are you willing to do?” Malone was willing to go against his caution and give up his life to get Capone. Ness gets it and does what needs to be done, bloodying his hands.

 

 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Connery

 

Alex Trebek

The host of Jeopardy died last week. Let’s talk about his lift. I’m sure it’s going to be shorter than Sean Connery..

• Trebek was born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, on July 22, 1940,
• the son of George Edward Trebek (né Terebeychuk), a chef who had emigrated from Ukraine as a child, and Lucille Lagacé (born April 14, 1921), a Franco-Ontarian.
•  He grew up in a bilingual French-English household. Trebek’s first job was when he was 13; he was a bellhop at the hotel where his father worked as a chef.
• Trebek graduated from the University of Ottawa with a degree in philosophy in 1961.
• While a university student, he was a member of the English Debating Society. At the time, he was interested in a career in broadcast news.
• Before completing his degree, Trebek began his career in 1961 working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. According to Trebek, “I went to school in the mornings and worked at nights; I did everything, at one time replacing every announcer in every possible job.^] He would eventually read the CBC national radio news and cover a wide range of special events for CBC Radio and CBC Television, including curling^] and horse racing.
• Trebek’s first hosting job was on a Canadian music program called Music Hop in 1963.
•  In 1966 he hosted a high school quiz show called Reach for the Top.
• In 1973, Trebek moved to the United States and worked for NBC as host of a new game show, The Wizard of Odds.
• A year later Trebek hosted the popular Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley game show High Rollers, which had two incarnations on NBC (1974–76 and 1978–80) and an accompanying syndicated season (1975–76).
• Trebek hosted the short-lived CBS game show Double Dare
• For Merv Griffin, he shot two pilots for a revival of Jeopardy! when original host Art Fleming (a friend of Trebek’s) declined to return to the role owing to creative differences. This revival sold; Trebek began hosting it in 1984 and remained the host until his death. His final episode hosting Jeopardy! will air on Christmas Day 2020.
• Trebek was married twice and has three children.

He died on November 8, 2020 of stage four pancreatic cancer, which he announced he had on air.

I have been watching Jeopardy since I was a kid. It was a favorite with my family. we actually used to keep our own scores (in our heads, of course). If someone got over $0, we were winners. That game was amazingly hard.

Trebek was a stoic, friendly sort. He came across quiet and reserved. He also came out kind of…arrogant. If someone gave a wrong answer, he could tear that person apart with a quip that seems like nothing but everyone knew was an insult. But his fatherly persona always softened the blow.

In this video clip, we here some of Jeopardy’s best moments. Listen and enjoy:

I know, I could have cut this down by a minute and a half by getting rid of the Final Jeopardy music but I thought it would bring back memories.

The next clip is probably the most touching clip in live television history. Trebek announced that he had stage four pancreatic cancer but he was going to beat it and continue doing the show. The news was devastating to a lot of people. A contestant named Dhruv Gaur had no chance of winning. He gave Alex a special message during his Final Jeopardy answer. Alex became very choked up. Listen:

To this day, I still tear up over this. To be loved so much that someone will state it in the middle of a competition, even if he is going to lose, takes a lot of heart. This will be a moment that is celebrated in television history and it only cost $1995.

 

 

 

 

 

SNL Accidently Honors Two Great

In one of the greatest coincidences, Saturday Night Live offered the greatest honor to two great men that died within a week of each other. In the long running skit, Will Ferrell would play Alex Trebek and an assorted number of actors would play Sean Connery. In the skits, that were so popular SNL included a skit for their 40th Anniversary, Connery and Trebek hated each other. It was hysterical.

One of the things the skits made fun of was how dumb, either purposely of by accident, Sean Connery is. Watching this video from Austin Kellerman on YouTube, in a tribute to both men from the SNL skit.

The next recurring joke on these skits was the fun that Sean Connery made about his sexual escapes with Trebek’s mother. These were great, especially with Will Ferrell’s stoic response to Connery. Here is a montage from Alex Kellerman.

Finally, and probably the most hysterical, is when Connery would rearrange the words in the topics to create rather dirty topics. Trebek would, frustratingly, correct Connery with the actual topic. I have cleared out any disease in my lungs from any disease because I laughed so hard. This is also from Austin Kellerman.

Final Jeopardy was just as funny. I won’t play any of those because, for the most part, they were sight gags. But anytime Celebrity Jeopardy showed up on SNL, I watched. It really was a tribute to both of the cultural icons of our time.

Our culture lost a couple of icons over the last two weeks. We have been so busy with this election this election mess, we ignored this. I decided that we should talk about them.