NYT Mag’s Memoriam issue in a word: Grreeeat

This weekend’s NYT Mag did a lovely job of celebrating the lesser-sung heroes lost in 2005, including Ladies’ Home Journal longtime poetry editor Elizabeth McFarland Hoffman (written by Rwanda-visiter Melanie Thernstrom), Luther Vandross (I don’t know much, but I know that NY1 viewers loved him), Sandra Dee (her story is too sad for even me to quote the obvious lyric), and chicken scion Frank Perdue (I recall commercials for that chicken from my days listening to PLJ. Sounds a lot like “NPR” if you say it really fast).

But for me, the most bittersweet essay was about Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of “Tony the Tiger,” who got me addicted to crunchy sugar cereal at an early age. Ravenscroft also sang the Grinch theme song, which is apparently a little-known fact but which I actually knew because my cousin Michael Sadavoy interviewed him for his radio show a few years ago (we’re a very media-savvy family), and it’s a spirited and lively interview in which Ravenscroft gamely does the Tony voice and sings a few bars of the Grinch song, sounding exactly the same some decades later (and proudly proclaiming “I’ve never had a steady job…but I’ve never been out of work!”). Ravenscroft also worked with Elvis Presley and Rosemary Clooney, and somehow flew from Washington to Gibraltar to meet with Winston Churchill, of whom he said “You knew you were in the presence of greatness – something about him emanated.” He ended the interview saying, “Thank you, Mike, it’s been greeeeeat to talk with you!” Which is pretty great itself.

Update: A reader catches me out on a massive musical error: it was Aaron Neville who sang “I Don’t Know Much, But I Know I Love You” with Linda Ronstadt, not Luther Vandross. I am keeping the line in there, though, because it really was touching how moved the NY1 viewing community was by his life and death.

The Lives They Lived [NYT Mag]
Thurl Ravenscroft, interviewed by Michael Sadavoy [That Radio Guy]

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