Well I am free of Jury Duty, how did the trial turn out?? We were dismissed!!! The two culprits took a plea deal, when the defense attorney found out about security video and another witness. If they went forward with the trial, and with that new information that just came forward, they would have been found so Guilty!!
But when I was in the elevator I heard one of the victim's parent say to their own lawyer that to go ahead with the Civil suit, hit the defendants and their families in the wallet, and that new information will be presented.
I am so glad I'm not going to be on that Jury!
So I am now free to enjoy the Summer, even with the on again off again warm weather.
And now my Darklings, Doyle found for me this lovely article which I am going to share with all of you~~~~
22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir
Christopher Lee
If Sir Christopher Lee had just been a movie star, he would
still have been an icon. But the late actor, who passed away last week, had an
amazing life even beyond his incredible body of work. Whether you’re still
lamenting his passing or unsure why his death is such a loss, here’s 22 reasons
why Christopher Lee will always be a legend.
1) He was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records in
2007 for most screen credits, having appeared in 244 film and TV movies by that
point in his career— at which point he made 14 more movies, with a 15th due
later this year (titled Angels in Notting Hill). He also holds the record for
the tallest leading actor — he stood 6’ 5” — but also for starring in the “most
films with a sword fight” with 17.
2) His mother was an Italian contessa, and through her Lee
descended from the Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related
to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.
3) He met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich,
the assassins of the Russian monk Rasputin. He didn’t do this as research for
his later film role as Rasputin (in the 1966 Hammer film Rasputin the Mad
Monk), but just as a child in the 1920s.
4) At age 17, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen
Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by
guillotine.
5) During World War II, Lee joined the Royal Air Force but
wasn’t allowed to fly because of a problem with his optic nerve. So he became
an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the
SAS, Britain’s special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often
having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily,
prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single
year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted.
6) At some point during the war he moved from the LRDP to
Winston Churchill’s even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions
are literally still classified, but involved “conducting espionage, sabotage
and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers.” The SOE was
more informally called — and I can’t believe this somehow hasn’t been made into
a movie yet — The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
7) Lee never said anything specific about his time in the
SOE, but he did say this: “I’ve seen many men die right in front of me - so
many in fact that I’ve become almost hardened to it. Having seen the worst that
human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and
seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you
had to. You had to. Otherwise we would never have won.” By the end of the war
he’d received commendations for bravery from the British, Polish, Czech and
Yugoslavia governments.
8) Speaking both French and Italian, Lee spent his time
after World War II he hunting Nazis with the Central Registry of War Criminals
and Security Suspects until he decided to give acting a try at age 25. Yes, all
of this happened before Lee was 25 years old.
9) While filming a sword-fight with a drunken Errol Flynn
during the filming of The Dark Avengers in 1955, Flynn accidentally cut Lee’s
hand so badly his finger nearly came off, and permanently injured. Later, Lee
cut off Flynn’s wig while Flynn was still wearing it. Flynn stormed off set and
refused to come out of his trailer until Lee claimed it was an accident.
10) While best known for his portrayal of Dracula in
countless films, he’s also starred as the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster. Of
course he’s known as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku in the Star
Wars prequels, but his other villainous roles include Fu Manchu, Rasputin,
Rochefort of The Three Musketeers (whose portrayal was so popular the character
now inevitably appears with an eye patch, although it wasn’t in the book — Lee
introduced it), Lord Summerisle of The Wicker Man, the James Bond villain
Scaramanga, Mephistopheles, and Death himself.
11) Lee was not only related to James Bond creator and
author Ian Fleming — they were step-cousins — but Lee was actually one of
Fleming’s first choices for the role of Bond, not least because of Lee’s World
War II and SOC experiences.
12) He has played Sherlock Holmes, his brother Mycroft
Holmes, and also Sir Henry Baskerville of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
13) Tired of playing Dracula and feeling that the movies had
gotten sub-par, Lee tried to quit Hammer films, but studio executives guilted
him into returning by stressing how many people could be out of work if Lee
stopped churning out hits. Lee agreed to star in 1966 Dracula: Prince of
Darkness, he felt the script was so awful he adamantly refused to say any of
the dialogue. (Hammer decided that it was far more important to have a mute Lee
as star as opposed to anyone else, and thus had Dracula hiss and yell through
the film.
14) In the ‘50s, Lee was engaged to Henriette von Rosen,
daughter of Count Fritz von Rosen. The Count apparently didn’t like Lee,
because after hiring private detectives to investigate the actor and demanding
references, he also refused to allow his daughter to marry him unless Lee got
the blessing of the King of Sweden. Lee got it.
15) Lee was a major Tolkien fan, reading The Hobbit and the
Lord of the Rings trilogy once a year for the majority of his life. He was the
only member of the movie cast to have met Tolkien personally — apparently he
ran into him randomly in a pub — and fanboyed out. Tolkien actually gave him
his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings movie.
16) When Lee heard that Hollywood was going to finally make
the LotR trilogy into movies, he took a role in the terrible 1997 TV series The
New Adventures of Robin Hood as a wizard, specifically so he’d have clear
evidence of his ability to be a wizard. When he heard Peter Jackson would
direct the films, he sent Jackson a personal letter asking to be in the movies
along with a picture of him dressed up as a wizard. Unfortunately, Lee’s
advanced age and his natural ability to play villains made him an even better
choice for Saruman.
17) The story has gone around a lot, but it bears repeating
because it is incredible: During his death scene in Return of the King (only
included in the Extended Edition to Lee’s disapproval), director Peter Jackson
was describing to him what sound people getting stabbed in the back should make.
Lee gravely responded that he had seen people being stabbed in the back, and
knew exactly what sound they made.
18) Lee was quite interested in the history of public
executions, and reportedly knew “the names of every official public executioner
employed by England, dating all the way back to the mid-15th century.”
19) He’s always been a big metal fan, but he released his
first full heavy metal album in 2010 at the age of 88. Titled Charlemagne: By
the Sword and the Cross, which won the “Spirit of Metal” award from the 2010
Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony. He made a metal Christmas album in 2012. He
was the oldest metal performer, and the oldest musician to ever hit the
Billboard music charts.
20) In addition to his impossibly prolific film career, Lee
was a world champion fencer, an opera singer, spoke six languages, and was a
hell of a golfer.
21) He was made a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire in 2009, a Commander of the Venerable Order of
Saint John in 1997, made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the
French government in 2011, earned he British Academy of Film and Television
Arts Fellowship in 2011, received the The Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime
Achievement in 1994, and so many more.
22) Last but not least: Despite everything you’ve heard
about the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Christopher Lee was recognized as being
the most connected actor in the world in 2008, again by Guinness. He connects
to virtually any actor in 2.59 steps, beating Bacon.
[Via Wikipedia, Guinness World Records, Badass of the Week,
Factfiend, The Independent]
In watching a You Tube video of Lee acting as Sauruman, everyone on the set was more interesting in listening to all the various experiences he had with other actors that it got to the point where one of the "Script women" or someone, I know it was a woman, had to get everyone back on point or the movie would run over budget.
Even Doyle said that if Christopher Lee told him to take a "Long Walk off a short pier" in that precise voice that he used in the Johnny Depp version of "Dark Shadows" he would have done it willingly.
He should have be claimed as both a National Treasure as well as an International Treasure, and we are all poorer for losing him.
Later Darklings, I'm going to go and cry some more.
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