Famed actress Paula Kelly dies at 76.
(Photo: Google Images)
The blogosphere is reporting famed actress, singer and dancer Paula Kelly has died. Kelly was a staple in television and film during the 1970s and 1980s. The celebrated actress starred as Dahomey Queen in Ivan Dixon’s seminal 1973 film The Spook Who Sat by the Door. In the film, Kelly played a prostitute with a conscious who works with Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) to help topple the United States government.
Famed actress Paula Kelly dies at 76. (Photo: Google Images)
The Juilliard trained actress’ other films included Trouble Man (1972), Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored (1995) and The Drop Squad (1994) among others. Kelly also had a robust television career appearing on Good Times,The Streets of San Francisco, the Carol Burnett Show, The Women of Brewster Place and The Richard Pryor Show. Kelly had a recurring role on the popular soap opera Santa Barbara.
The Jacksonville, FL born actress, was raised in Harlem and attended the world famous LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts. Kelly had a stellar careeer on Broadway where she starred in Sophisticated Ladies with Gregory Hines and Phyllis Hyman and Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity on the London stage. A trained dancer, she also starred in the film version of Sweet Charity (1969) and performed as a dancer at the 41st Academy Awards to the score of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).
According to Heavy.com, Kelly was married briefly to Don Chaffey, and is survived by a daughter from that union. Kelly was 76.
Kobe Bryant at his last game in the Staples Center. (Google Images)
UPDATE: It is now being reported that five people died in the helicopter crash that claimed NBA legend Kobe Bryant’s life. One of the victims is his 13-year-old daughter Gianna a.k.a. Gigi Bryant.
TMZand Variety are reporting NBA legend Kobe Bryant has died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, CA Sunday. He was 41. Bryant owned a helicopter and would often take the helicopter to games from his Newport Beach, CA home to the Staples Center. Three other people also died in the helicopter crash. Their bodies have not yet been identified.
Bryant’s last tweet was a celebratory tweet to LeBron James.
Kobe Bryant’s last tweet on January 25, 2020.
Bryant played 20 seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers. His career averages were 25.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.7 assists in 1,346 regular season games. Bryant won 1 MVP Award and was selected to play in 18 All-Star Games.
In 2018, Kobe Bryant won an Academy Award for best animated short for his film Dear Basketball. Watch the film below:
Bryant was a first round draft pick in 1996. In 2016, Bryant scored 60 points against the Utah Jazz in a 101-96 win at Staples Center at his final game.
He is married to Vanessa Bryant with whom he shares four children. This story is developing.
Still from My Friend Fela (l-r)Carlos Moore with Fela Kuti--Photo Courtesy of Wide House
Season 12 of the critically-acclaimed television series AfroPop premiered Monday, January 20th on The WORLD CHANNEL, exploring the legacies of Afrobeat creators Fela Kuti and Tony Allen.
The AfroPoP season opener featured Joel Zito Araújo’s documentary film My Friend Fela about the African musical icon followed by Birth of Afrobeat, a short film from director Opiyo Okeyo telling the story of drummer Tony Allen. Produced by Black Public Media (BPM) and co-presented by distributor American Public Television (APT), AfroPoP has brought real stories of life, art and culture in the modern African Diaspora to public television audiences for more than a decade.
Still from My Friend Fela (l-r)Carlos Moore with Fela Kuti–Photo Courtesy of Wide House
In My Friend Fela, director Joel Zito Araújo follows Carlos Moore as he explores the many unknown aspects of the legendary musician’s life. A close friend and the official biographer of Fela and friend to major, international black figures like Malcolm X and Maya Angelou, Araújo sets out to counter the popular narrative of Fela as the “eccentric African pop idol of the ghetto,” with photos, archival interviews and Moore’s own personal conversations with Fela’s wives, family and bandmates. My Friend Fela brings viewers a seldom seen side of the revolutionary artist’s life and music. As Moore delves into the Nigerian political strife during Fela’s life and the Pan-African theories which shaped his beliefs and bled into his music, a nuanced profile of a musical revolutionary and champion of the people emerges.
Tony Allen as seen in Birth of Afrobeat, photo courtesy of Opiyo Okeyo_restinbeats.com
The premiere episode concluded with the short film Birth of Afrobeat. The live-action and animation hybrid captures the story of iconic drummer Tony Allen as he records the album What Goes Up with the American band Chicago Afrobeat Project in 2017 and discusses how he and Fela pioneered the Afrobeat genre.
“Season 12 launches with two films that pay tribute to the enduring legacy of two cultural trailblazers and the music they created which has done so much to unite people around the world around political struggles and shared realities,” said Black Public Media Executive Director and Leslie Fields-Cruz.
Check out the trailer below:
Other episodes in season 12 of AfroPoP include Aminaby Kivilcim Akay (January 27), a moving look at the life of a Senegalese immigrant living in Turkey and trying to pursue her dreams in the face of growing obstacles; Daddy and the Warlordby Shamira Raphaëla and Clarice Gargard (February 3), which follows Gargard on a trip to postwar Liberia to uncover the truth about her father’s involvement with the infamous war criminal Charles Taylor; Gilda Brasileiro: Against Oblivion from Viola Scheuerer and Roberto Manhães Reis (February 10), a profile of one woman’s quest to challenge a culture wishing to ignore its ties to slavery after she discovers documents exposing an illegal 19th century slave-trading post in the Brazilian rainforest.
The season finale episode (February 17) includes Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela,director Thomas Allen Harris’s personal documentary profiling his stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng (“Lee”) and his fight against apartheid as a foot solider in the African National Congress, paired with Spit on the Broomby Madeleine Hunt-Erlich, an experimental short film on the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization of Black American women organized in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad.
Each episode of season 12 of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange airs at 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. on the original air date. The programming will also be available for streaming on worldchannel.org beginning on the day of its broadcast premiere.
AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange is co-executive produced by Leslie Fields-Cruz and Angela Tucker. The program is produced and directed by Duana C. Butler with the generous support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Author E.R. Braithwaite dies at age 104.
(Photo: Google Images)
Author E.R. Braithwaite dies at age 104. (Photo: Google Images)
The New York Times reported E. R. Braithwaite, a Guyanese author, diplomat and former Royal Air Force pilot whose book “To Sir, With Love,” a memoir of teaching in London’s deprived East End, was adapted into a hit 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier, passed away last month in Rockville, Md.
Sewell Chan writes:
“Mr. Braithwaite, who became a diplomat and represented Guyana at the United Nations and in Venezuela, wrote several books, many about racism in countries like South Africa and the United States, where he lived much of his life. But he is best known for “To Sir, With Love” (1959).
The book chronicled his efforts — as a courtly, Cambridge-educated military veteran who had been denied employment as an engineer because he was black — to motivate a group of unruly adolescents raised in a slum in early-1950s Britain, which was still slowly recovering from the austerity of the war years.”
Braithwaite wrote of America: “There, when prejudice is felt, it is open, obvious, blatant; the white man makes his position very clear, and the black man fights those prejudices with equal openness and fervor, using every constitutional device available to him.”
He added: “The rest of the world in general and Britain in particular are prone to point an angrily critical finger at American intolerance, forgetting that in its short history as a nation it has granted to its Negro citizens more opportunities for advancement and betterment, per capita, than any other nation in the world with an indigent Negro population.”
In the 1960s, Braithwaite served as a human-rights officer at the World Veterans Federation and UNESCO lecturer and consultant in Paris. From 1967 to 1969, he also served as the first permanent representative of Guyana to the United Nations. He was later the country’s ambassador to Venezuela.
In addition to his work as a writer, Braithwaite taught at Howard University, New York University and Florida State University.
OWN‘s hit reality television shows Family or Fiancé, hosted by relationship expert Tracy McMillan returns to television Saturday, Jan. 11 at 9/8c on the OWN television network. The hit television show follows engaged couples who bring their disapproving families together for three days under one roof.
In this high-stakes social experiment, the couples and extended families participate in activities designed to strengthen their bond, unpack their differences, and show some very complicated relationships in a whole new light. In the end, the families‘ concerns might leave the couples to reconsider their unions, or revelations might cause any concerns to fall away. Tracy McMillan returns as the voice of reason to work with the couples on ways to deal with their relationship problems and family issues head on in order to help resolve the conflicts that could undermine their future together.
Relationship expert and “Family or Fiancé” host Tracy McMillan talks relationships with Atlanta press. (Photo: The Burton Wire)
“In normal everyday life, people suppress their issues,” says the relationship expert. The purpose of the show is to have those issues come up so couples can deal with them,” adds the television writer.
Check out the official trailer below:
McMillan offers, “When you confront issues, you get free.”
Family or Fiancé airs at 9/8c on OWN.
This post was written by Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., founder & editor-in-chief of The Burton Wire. Follow The Burton Wire on Instagram or Twitter @The Burton Wire.
Irving Burgie wrote Day-O and the Barbados National Anthem. (photo: Google Images)
Irving Burgie, Songwriter who helped bring Calypso to America has died. Burgie wrote the calypso song “Day-O” (“The Banana Boat Song”) which became a huge hit for singer/actor Harry Belafonte in 1956. Burgie, who went by the name Lord Burgess, co-wrote the song with William Attaway, based on a traditional Jamaican folk song. “Day-O” spent 31 weeks at number one on the Billboard chart and later was featured in a popular scene in the movie “Beetlejuice.” He wrote many more calypso songs for Belafonte including “Island in the Sun.” Burgie was a member of an all-black unit in the Army during World War II. After the war, he worked the folk music circuit in Greenwich Village and then began writing for Belafonte. His mother was a native of Barbados and Burgie wrote the country’s national anthem. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007. Burgie was 95.
Check out a feature on Burgie by Jon Kalish for NPR News.
Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi.
Photo: Screen shot
Miss South Africa 2019 and Miss Universe 2019 Zozibini Tunzi. (Photo: Google Images)
Zozibini Tunzi was crowned Miss Universe Sunday making it the first time Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe are all black women. In her closing statement, Tunzi stated, “I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me with my color skin and my kind of hair is not considered beautiful. That stops today. I want children to look at my face and see their own looking back at them.” Che
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Burton WireTap™, The Burton Wire’s podcast which discusses topics and issues at the intersection of black culture and society. Hosted by The Burton Wire‘s founder & editor-in-chief Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., this first episode explores a number of topics with inaugural guest Dr. Pellom McDaniels III, Curator for the African-American Collection of the Rose Library at Woodruff Library at Emory University. In this episode they discuss the NCAA’s decision to pay athletes, the loss of political lions the honorable Elijah Cummings and John Conyers, the importance of Black Jockeys and what the Rose Library’s collections offer. Sit back and relax and check out where black culture lives. Tune in December 1, 2019 for the next podcast where we’ll be discussing Black Star Power, Holiday traditions and the 2020 election. Let us know what you think about The Burton WireTap™ on Twitter@TheBurtonWire.
The Twitterverse is in an uproar over the disqualification of Nigerian film ‘Lionheart’ from Oscar consideration because it is in English, which is the official language of Nigeria. Nigeria submitted its first-ever Oscar entry, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says the film does not qualify for the international category because the film is in English.
NPR reports:
Filmmakers like Ava DuVernay weighed in on social media.
Screenshot/Twitter
Observations were made regarding the irony of a film being punished by the United States for using the English language, which is the result of colonization.
Reuters Africa is reporting at least 22 people have been killed and dozens more are missing following a landslide caused by heavy rainfall in Douala.
Rescue teams in Cameroon were scouring the rubble of destroyed houses for survivors on Tuesday after a landslide caused by heavy rainfall killed at least 22 people, state television reported.
The police were searching for dozens more people reported as missing in the town of Bafoussam in the western highlands, some 200 km (120 miles) north of Cameroon’s main port city of Douala. Residents are being asked to evacuate to prevent further casualties due to the continued heavy rains.
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said last week that heavy rain in South Sudan had also destroyed health centers and roads and made access to food and water more difficult for nearly 1 million people.
