Joan Van Ark has plenty of reasons to celebrate as she marks another birthday surrounded by the admiration of longtime friends, former castmates, and devoted fans. Best known for her unforgettable portrayal of Valene Ewing on Knots Landing, the actress remains one of television’s most beloved soap opera stars decades after first appearing on screen. According to Closer Weekly, the special occasion also brought encouraging news for fans who have followed her career over the years. Along with birthday tributes, updates shared by those close to her suggested that the actress remains in good spirits and continues to appreciate the support she receives from audiences around the world. A Television Icon Who Left Her Mark On Prime-Time Drama Joan Van Ark/ImageCollect Van Ark became a household name through her role as Valene Ewing, a character she first portrayed on Dallas before bringing her to the long-running spinoff Knots Landing. Over the course of more than a decade, viewers watched Valene navigate heartbreak, family struggles, and dramatic twists that helped make the series one of television’s most successful prime-time soaps. The actress made soap opera history. / ImageCollectJoan Van Ark walking in the Go Red For Women—The Heart Truth Red Dress Collection 2014 Show at The Theatre at Lincoln Center on February 6, 2014, in New York City. Her performances earned widespread praise and helped establish her as one of the defining television actresses of her generation. Beyond her work on Knots Landing, she also built a successful stage and television career that showcased her versatility as a performer. Through it all, she developed a loyal fan base that continues to celebrate her achievements. Castmates Continue To Support And Celebrate Her KNOTS LANDING, Joan Van Ark, 1979-1993. © CBS /Courtesy Everett Collection The Joan Van Ark birthday celebration drew warm messages from friends and former colleagues who have remained close over the years. Many of her Knots Landing castmates have frequently spoken about the bond they formed while working together and the friendships that continue long after the series ended. LOYAL OPPOSITION, Joan Van Ark/Everett Collection Recent reunions and fan events have demonstrated just how strong those connections remain. Cast members have often described their relationship as a family both on and off screen, and that affection was evident once again as they honored their longtime friend on her special day. The Joan Van Ark birthday milestone serves as a reminder not only of her remarkable career but also of the lasting impact she has had on those who worked alongside her and the audiences who continue to cherish her performances. Next up: Micky Dolenz Reflects On Filming The First Episode Of ‘The Monkees’ 60 Years Ago The post ‘Knots Landing’ Star Joan Van Ark Shares Health Update As She Turns 83 appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Ruth A

William Smithers died May 26, at age 98; no cause of death was reported. Best known for playing oil tycoon Jeremy Wendell, one of J.R. Ewing’s greatest rivals on ‘Dallas.’ Also appeared in ‘Papillon’ and the original ‘Star Trek,’ with a career spanning Broadway, film, and television.   Television and film fans are remembering William Smithers, the veteran actor whose career spanned stage, television, and film over several decades. Best known to many viewers for his role as the ruthless oil executive Jeremy Wendell on Dallas, Smithers died at the age of 98. News of his passing was reported on June 15, though he reportedly died on May 26. According to TVInsider, throughout a career that stretched from Broadway productions to prime-time television dramas, Smithers built a reputation as a dependable character actor capable of bringing authority, intelligence, and complexity to his roles. His performances left a lasting impression on audiences and helped make him a familiar face across multiple generations of entertainment. His Dallas Character Became One Of J.R. Ewing’s Greatest Rivals X For many fans, Smithers will always be remembered as Jeremy Wendell, chairman of WestStar Oil and one of the most formidable adversaries faced by J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Appearing in 50 episodes between 1981 and 1989, he played a powerful businessman whose corporate battles with the Ewing family became a central part of the show’s drama. LegacyTribute/X The character’s storyline eventually came to an end when authorities caught Wendell discussing an illegal scheme, arrested him, and sent him to prison. Off-screen, Smithers later revealed that contract negotiations contributed to his departure from the series. Despite leaving under those circumstances, his portrayal remains one of the most memorable recurring performances in the show’s history. A Career That Extended Far Beyond Prime-Time Television LegacyTribute/X While Dallas introduced him to millions of viewers, Smithers had already established a successful acting career long before joining the hit soap opera. He appeared in the classic prison drama Papillon alongside Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman and portrayed Captain R.M. Merik in the original Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses.” X The William Smithers legacy also includes an impressive stage career. He made his Broadway debut in Romeo and Juliet in 1951 and went on to appear in numerous theatrical productions. Over the years, he accumulated credits across film, television, and theater, demonstrating remarkable versatility and longevity. With his passing, fans are remembering William Smithers not only for his memorable roles but also for a career that reflected nearly a century of dedication to the performing arts. Next up: Gene Shalit, Beloved Today Show Film Critic Known For His Wit And Wordplay, Dies At 100 The post Character Actor William Smithers, Who Played Jeremy Wendell On ‘Dallas,’ Dies At 98 appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Ruth A

The '70s introduced audiences to dads from various backgrounds.

“It was so loud. I never experienced that loudness in my life… It was so loud that the sound hurt my body.” — Makoto Kubota   Les Rallizes Dénudés in 1976, by Shigeo Matsumoto Dig into any fandom community and you’ll find lists of favorite musicians of fan’s favorite musicians. The more obscure and difficult the influences, the more credible a musician’s artistry. One band that appears on such lists, Les Rallizes Dénudés wins top honors for obscurity and difficulty. The band is not French, but Japanese, and the name is largely meaningless. (What are nude rallizes? No one knows.) And they never actually recorded any music. Well, not in a studio, anyway. Rallizes came out of a radical time and place, Kyoto in 1967 or ’68 (the exact year of formation is a matter of dispute, like most of the band’s history). Their first members were aspiring revolutionaries. And yet, according to former bassist Makoto Kubota, the band was no more political than they were commercial. Instead, they were a physical experience. “Rallizes was a live band, not a recording band,” he says. “They were too loud, and uncontrollable.”   Les Rallizes Dénudés in 1976, by Aquilha Mochiduki Kubota replaced former member Moriaki Wakabayashi, who left when he started “getting more serious about the Red Army Stuff,” Kubota explains. The musician hijacked a plane with samurai sword and some comrades, intent on flying to Cuba. They ended up in North Korea, where they remain (not by choice, it seems). Lead singer and guitarist Takashi Mizutani, however, the only mainstay in ever-shifting lineups, avoided political commentary of any kind, cultivating the most opaque of rock mystiques.  Mizutani became paranoid and reclusive after the hijacking, convinced his audiences were full of spies. He may have been right. (When asked about spies in the audience by Far Out’s Tom Taylor, Kubota says, “I mean, probably.”) Hidden behind proto-Joey Ramone-like fringe and sunglasses, Rallizes frontman seemed intent on one thing only: the shrieking “atonal, hypnotic cacophony” of his sound, as Daniel Hess describes it: a feedback-saturated mashup of the Velvet Underground, Haight-Ashbury psych, and British blues.      Despite performing with various lineups for 26 years, Mizutani seemed allergic to success. “After an aborted, reportedly disastrous studio session” Hess writes, he “swore off ever working in a studio environment again.” The absence of official recordings left bootleggers to catalogue the band’s legacy with a slew of unofficial releases of extremely varying quality, even as his legend grew. Talks with Richard Branson and Virgin Records went nowhere. “When he wasn’t performing,” Grayson Haver Currin explains, “Mizutani remained incredibly elusive.” His own bandmates had no idea where he went during the day, or what he did for money.” Kubota ascribes his appearances onstage outfitted in leather, sunglasses, guitars, and amplifiers to “magic,” saying, “he always had the loudest music with the loudest equipment all the time.” He also credits Mizutani with starting the Japanese underground psych rock scene, even if that role has been forgotten, spinning records from America that no one else had during his DJ sets in Kyoto’s clubs.  Over the decades, Rallizes “fandom swelled to international levels, and a roster of musicians waited for mystic calls from Mizutani on high,” Taylor writes. They mostly waited in vain, as did Kubota, who moved on to other international musical projects, but wanted to polish the live recordings for official release, something he finally began doing in 2019 after Mizutani’s death. In tracks like “Carnival” from Jittoku ’76, you’ll hear what one fan describes as their “beefy and noisy sound ahead of its time…. the epiphany of psychedelic noise-rock at its finest.”      As Kubota explains, the band’s mercurial nature derived in part from Mizutani’s desire to keep it fresh, the most honest motivation in rock and roll: “He loves the feeling of the first time. I mean, the meaning of a fresh session. So he didn’t want to repeat anything. It’s more like music theatre. When the band starts repeating, he changed the band.” But most of his shows consisted of the same set, played differently each time, with extended jams and freakouts, and levels of noise that would only be equalled years later by Swans in New York’s downtown No Wave scene.  Attending his first Les Rallizes Dénudés as a fan, Kubota remembered, “It was so fucking loud. I never seen this. I never experienced that loudness in my life…. It was so loud that the sound hurt my body.” The physical effects of such volume cannot be put on record, but Mizutani’s near-Hendrix-level mastery of feedback and distortion are fully evident on the releases Kubota remastered and uploaded to Bandcamp, a project he undertook with Mizutani’s blessing before the frontman’s death in 2019. He describes the process of recovering and remastering live recordings as a labor of love, telling Sunset Sounds, “I’m very grateful that [Mizutani] and his family kept very good care of all the old cassettes, videotapes, and reel-to-reel…but some are a copy of a copy of a copy, so it’s a bit of a mess. It takes [a lot of work] to find which are good.” Mizutani himself “just stopped calling” during their initial conversations about a reunion tour and reissues. “Then, a few months later,” says “Kubota, “his wife contacted me, and said he had passed away.”   A classic Les Ralllizes Dénudés bootleg The advent of streaming means nothing stays hidden for long anymore. While physical copies of Rallizes bootleg releases are rare, you can find them now uploaded to Spotify and Apple Music. This kind of availability was impossible to imagine when Western admirers first began discovering the band. As with all cult phenomena pre-internet, the only way to learn anything about them was to ask around or rely on whoever took the trouble to do so and publish. And yet, Rallizes remained hard to fathom even after Google gave us access to every artist’s personal history.  Julian Cope’s groundbreaking 2007 survey Japrocksampler covered the Japanese postwar rock scene with the obsessive devotion of a true fan. The book contains 14 pages on Les Rallizes Dénudés, and most of them are garbled or incorrect. Writer Grayson Currin tried the story direct from the sources: the musicians and the band’s audiences and critics. His search proved less than fruitful. “Ghosts all around,” was the summation of one contact, John Whitson (now deceased) founder of Portland, Oregon’s Holy Mountain records. Despite Kubota’s willingness to open up about his time with the band and his process of recovering their live recordings, he knows little about the man he calls a musical “brother,” and little about what happened with the band after his departure.  Whitson compared Rallizes discography to “an archeogist’s broken plate” to explain why there’ll never be a perfect record from the band. The metaphor also works in understanding their history. All we have are tantalizing fragments. Just enough for a legend to emerge from the void. As Whitson puts it, “If you just go, ‘ Well the bass player hijacked a plane to North Korea and these guys really rock,’ your mind can fill in the blanks in really interesting ways.” With Mizutani, blanks are almost all we have to work with. “Black and night is his life; it’s his style,” says former bandmate Doronco. No one in Japan’s underground rock scene wore it better. Hear over a dozen recently remastered live Les Rallizes Dénudés records on Bandcamp. Kubota promises more are on the way.      Les Rallizes Dénudés – Night of The Assassins (3rd Sunset Festival, August 3, 1976)     The post Why Les Rallizes Dénudés Are the Coolest Band You’ve Probably Never Heard appeared first on Flashbak.

Zebra Three, come in Zebra Three. Bay City’s got a case for you! We’re looking for a couple of actors, last seen fleeing the set of Starsky and Hutch. Alright, readers have got eyes on them, and we’re bringing them in for a cast rewind. Today, we’ll be undercover checking in on the cast of, the best onscreen duo of the 1970s. Although the Bay City PD was loosely based on the real LAPD, the actual inspiration for these closely bonded, guerrilla-style detectives were based on two Brooklyn boys who began using “decoy work” to fight crime. So, whenever undercover operations commence, they come from some grounded source material — with some changes. But David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser certainly made these characters their own. With exciting drama and slapstick comedy all rolled into a one-hour show, the Starsky and Hutch cast took us on a ride each week, figuratively and literally in that sparkling striped tomato Gran Torino. Is David Soul still alive? David Soul as Starsky and celebrating the new Starsky and Hutch / Everett Collection / ImageCollect Calm, cool, collected, and a health food nut, Detective Ken Hutchinson rolled with the punches after moving from quaint, cold Minnesota to balmy California. There, he was forced to work with a fiery hothead. At least he had his old reliable car, the Ford Galaxie 500…oh, wait, it’s broken again. David Soul now / ImageCollect No one could play a fish-out-of-water better than David Soul, who changed life trajectories faster than flipping a light switch. He might have gone the history and politics route, but the sweet thrum of a guitar was irresistible and so began his music career. He was the masked musician, or, the Covered Man, on the Merv Griffith Show to make sure people just appreciated the music, nothing else. He then made his acting debut with an episode of Flipper in 1967, before landing a series lead alongside teen heartthrob Bobby Sherman in the classic TV Western, Here Come the Brides. In 1973, Soul portrayed a corrupt cop in the Clint Eastwood thriller Magnum Force, and TV execs saw the potential. Soul even directed three episodes of Starsky and Hutch: highlighted by season two’s  “Survival.” He’d direct other hit shows, with the last being an episode of In the Heat of the Night, season four, in 1990. Directly following his Hutch, he wonderfully brought Stephen King’s masterpiece, Salem’s Lot to life, for a two-part miniseries. He also returned to his first love and released number one hit singles, including “Silver Lady” and “Don’t Give Up on Us Baby.” He’d go on tour for years as well. Soul also uses his name for good, funding documentaries about water quality and Native American land rights, honoring his Lutheran minister dad with civic duties. The last time we saw him onscreen, was in 2013 in the James McAvoy-led film, Filth, where David steals the show with a car karaoke performance of his own song, “Silver Lady”. It’s fantastic. Tragically, on January 4, 2024, David died at the age of 80 from the impact of COPD, marking one of several deaths from the main cast of Starsky and Hutch. Is Bernie Hamilton still alive? Bernie Hamilton played a gruff police chief who, underneath it all, cared about Starsky and Hutch very much / Everett Collection / Discogs A good detective force needs a strong leader at the top. Thankfully, Bay City had the no-nonsense and often angered Captain Dobey, a true professional, who knew how to pack a great lunch. But his true nature as a family man always found a way to shine through and extended to his two goofball detectives. Hamilton pursuing a different passion / Wall of Celebrities Being from California himself, Bernie became an unsung powerhouse by never falling into stereotypical roles for African Americans. His film debut was as Ernie in 1950’s The Jackie Robinson Story, which starred Jackie himself, then he broke new ground in One Potato, Two Potato. Filmed in black and white, the harrowing story about racial injustice had Bernie cast with a white wife and preceded the more famous Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The part of Captain Dobey was originally going to be a white actor, but producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg remembered Bernie from a previous police role and, as a result, Bernie didn’t even need a screen test and secured the part. Bernie’s final acting role came from an episode of The Love Boat in 1985 right as he began to switch concentrations. Bernie’s brother was prominent jazz drummer Chico Hamilton, and music appealed to Bernie, too. So, the actor-turned-musician founded the record label Chocolate Snowman and proceeded to produce and sing on the album Capt. Dobey Sings the Blues. He’d continue to produce R&B as well as Gospel albums for decades. After a groundbreaking career, Bernie Hamilton died in 2008 at the age of 80 from cardiac arrest. Is Paul Michael Glaser still alive? Paul Michael Glaser was the first and original Starsky to David Soul’s Hutch / Everett Collection / ImageCollect You cross a line in Bay City, you’d be wise to avoid Detective David Starsky. Combine the training of a U.S. army vet with invaluable street smarts, a Brooklynite upbringing, and absolutely no fuse, and you have one lean, mean, crime-fighting machine. And definitely don’t mess with his Gran Torino or his partner — not necessarily in that order. Glaser today / ImageCollect Paul Michael Glaser is an east-coaster himself, and followed his gut to get into acting from day one. His film debut created some news in 1971 as the student Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof. He then went from show to show as a guest star, including some real classics like Kojak, and The Waltons  (take a trip back to Walton’s Mountain right here!). Starsky and Hutch really let Glaser shine as both a star and a director. It ran for just four seasons, but he’ll be back. Okay, wrong movie, but not far off. Glaser’s second directed film was the 1987 Schwarzenegger action flick The Running Man. He was finally fulfilling his dream and continued directing, even writing the story for 1996’s Kazaam starring the Big Aristotle himself, Shaquille O’Neal. The last time he directed was in 2008 with five episodes of the show Las Vegas. After not acting for more than 15 years, in 2003, he went back to the big-screen, with an all-star cast including Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give. Everything ran smoothly for Glaser’s career, but his personal life contained a lot of tragedy. Glaser married activist Elizabeth Meyer and in 1981, during the birth of their first child, she needed a life-saving blood transfusion. Tragically, the blood was contaminated with HIV and they were unaware of this fatal error until four years later. Ariel Glaser died at seven years of age in 1988 and Elizabeth followed in 1994. Glaser keeps up a strong front, picking up his wife’s work where she left off and served as the chairman for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation until 2002, although he still holds the honorary position. He also cautions fans against letting their fantasies run wild about their idols, and hopes people understand he’s not actually Starsky. But he and Soul did suit up once again for cameos in the 2004 Starsky and Hutch film with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. One of his most recent acting appearances was in 2019 as Leo in Netflix’s Grace and Frankie. An all-around Renaissance man, he also hosted an art exhibit called The Third Act, a reference to this third big stage in his working life. In March 2026, Glaser turned 83 and is one of the only two surviving stars from the main cast of Starsky and Hutch. Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear) Antonio Fargas, aka Huggy Bear / Everett Collection / ImageCollect Hey, Huggy Bear. What tips have you got for us? This ought to be good… The fabulously dressed, morally dubious Huggy Bear was a lot of things, but reliable definitely tops the list. Huggy Bear always had the best clothes and the best lines of the whole show. Antonio Fargas today / ImageCollect Antonio Fargas had early experience making sure he stood out, as one of 11 siblings in his New York City household. He broke into the movie scene with 1969’s Robert Downey Sr. written and directed film, Putney Swope. Then he portrayed Foxy Brown’s brother in that 1974 blaxploitation cult classic. After that, he became Huggy Bear because Barry Shear, who was directing the pilot episode, had previously directed Fargas in the 1972 film, Across 110th Street. Huggy wasn’t supposed to be a recurring character, but Fargas brought the magic that made him a mainstay. He was a milestone in television history, giving audiences a crucial secondary character who was of Puerto Rican descent. Fargas almost got his own show as Huggy, ditching the bar in favor of becoming a private eye. But the premise they introduced, “Huggy Bear and the Turkey,” didn’t quite resonate with viewers, and as a result, it never got off the ground. EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS, Antonio Fargis, ‘Everybody Hates Gambling’, (Season 2, episode 19, aired April 23, 2007), 2005-09, photo: Scott Humbert / © 3 Arts Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection Fargas kept himself busy out of necessity since, as he puts it, “Your acting muscles atrophy when you don’t use them.” His next most memorable work came with 27 episodes of Everybody Hates Chris as the character Doc, about the early life of Chris Rock. The title was a play on Everybody Loves Raymond. Fargas, who will turn 80 in August 2026,  is determined to live life to its fullest because the 1994 earthquake in California left he and his wife both thinking the other had actually died. Neither could see or get to the other until after the disaster ended. Thankfully, that was not the case and he shares frequent updates on Instagram cataloging his latest project, in this case, Mister Mayfair (2021), filmed in Portugal; as well as Until We Meet Again (2022) and One Year Off (2023). He is currently filming Deep. Keep it up, Huggy! Turkey buzzard, this is chicken little, come in. That was a pretty great ride in the Striped Tomato. Now, before we call it a day, we need a tip that even Huggy can’t provide. What was the best moment or episode from Starsky and Hutch? The shock from Hutch’s car exploding was definitely a highlight.  What are your thoughts on the 2004 film remake? Let us know. STARSKY AND HUTCH / Everett Collection Next up: There Is Only One Surviving Member Of The Monkees Left The post The Only ‘Starsky And Hutch’ Major Cast Members Still Alive Today appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Dana Daly