Passages: Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright dies at 65
Published 11:32 pm Monday, September 15, 2008
LONDON — Richard Wright, a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died Monday. He was 65.
Pink Floyd spokesman Doug Wright, who is not related to the artist, said Wright died after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain.
Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965.
In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright, along with Barrett, was seen as the group’s dominant musical force.
The band released a series of commercially and critically successful albums including 1973’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” which has sold more than 40 million copies.
But tensions grew between Waters, Wright and fellow band member David Gilmour. During the making of “The Wall,” Waters insisted Wright be fired. As a result, Wright was relegated to the status of session musician on the tour of “The Wall,” and did not perform on Pink Floyd’s 1983 album “The Final Cut.”
Wright formed a new band, Zee, with Dave Harris, from the band Fashion, and released one album, “Identity.”
Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and Wright began recording with Mason and Gilmour again, releasing the albums “The Division Bell” and “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” as Pink Floyd.
Wonderful Smith was groundbreaking comedian
LOS ANGELES — Wonderful Smith, whose boundary-pushing comedy routine in Duke Ellington’s satirical revue “Jump for Joy” — staged in Los Angeles in 1941 — helped the black cast rebel against racial stereotypes in entertainment, has died. He was 97.
Smith died Aug. 28 of natural causes at an assisted-living facility in Northridge, said his niece Lois Johnson.
His “Hello, Mr. President?” monologue lampooned the New Deal and World War II preparations — from which blacks were excluded — and it invariably stopped the show at the Mayan Theatre downtown.
Tame by today’s standards, Smith’s comedy was audacious for its time. The routine was controversial partly because it imagined a phone conversation between the president, then Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a black man, “an unthinkable scenario for the day,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 1999.
“He was courageous for getting out there and doing what he did. His comedy was groundbreaking,” said Jill Watts, a professor of African American history at California State University, San Marcos, who had interviewed Smith.
Frank Mundus was famed shark fisherman
HONOLULU — Frank Mundus, the legendary shark fisherman said to have inspired the Captain Quint character in the movie “Jaws,” has died. He was 82.
Mundus died Wednesday at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu after a heart attack, said his wife, Jeannette Mundus, 46.
Known as the “Monster Man” for the size of the sharks he caught, Mundus forged his reputation as a fearless fisherman in Montauk beginning in 1951, hunting down the world’s biggest sharks.
“I had a lot of close calls,” he once said. “Probably too many close calls.”
In 1964, Mundus used a harpoon to snag a 4,500-pound great white. He later bagged a 17-foot-long, 3,427-pound great white by rod and reel in 1986. He later described the experience to Esquire magazine.
“After you get the fish, you turn around and look at the fish, and you feel sorry for the fish because he’s your opponent,” Mundus recalled. “I always feel good that I won, but I feel sorry for the one who lost.”
On his Web site, Mundus said events from the 1964 catch influenced Peter Benchley, who wrote “Jaws.” But Benchley maintained that Quint was a composite character.
