Ray Bradbury, one of the fathers of American science fiction and the author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, died Tuesday night in Los Angeles. He was 91.
Bradbury also wrote such literary classics as Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Illustrated Man.
He was the author of the Oscar-nominated Format Films animated short Icarus Montgolfier Wright(1962). The surreal film -- in which paintings and drawings dissolved into each other -- told of man's quest for flight from the days of Icarus to space flight done as a sort of dream poem in which an astronaut changes his name in order to embody all aspects of the history of man's attempt to fly.
He won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program for the 1993 animated TV special The Halloween Tree, based on his novella of the same name. A co-production of the Hanna-Barbera Studios and Wilshire Productions, the 70-minute story first aired in Japan and was shown in the United States in syndication.
Bradbury was credited with the "screen concept" for the 1992 Tokyo Movie Shinsha feature film Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland, but appears to have left the production early.
Budet Laskovyj Dozhd', known in English as It's Going To Rain Gently and There Will Come Soft Rains, was released by the Soviet Union's Uzbekfilm studio. The 10-minute 1984 cartoon was based on Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains...," part of his novel The Martian Chronicles. It won the Golden Dove at that year's Leipzig DOK Festival.
And Just Walking, a 1981 student film made at St. Martin's School of Art, was an adaptation of a classic Bradbury short, The Pedestrian.
"Despite my protests re possible litigation, the film was entered into various festivals, such as Zagreb, where it was in competition," director Ravi Narayanswami told the Big Cartoon DataBasein 2004. "I had contacted Mr. Bradbury's agent, Don Congdon, at the time to get clearance, but was told all film rights were with Disney! Having started the film already as a student project, I had to finish it.
"Funnily enough, one of the judges at Zagreb turned out to be another of my heroes, Saul Bass, who was also a close friend of Ray Bradbury's!," Narayanswami added.
Bradbury wrote in "The Machine-Tooled Happyland," an article in the October 1965 issue of the now-defunct Holiday magazine, of his fascination with Disneyland and all things Disney.
"At twelve, I owned one of the first Mickey Mouse buttons in Tucson, Arizona. At nineteen, selling newspapers on a street corner, I lived in terror I might be struck by a car and killed before the premiere of Disney’s film extravaganza, Fantasia.
"In the last thirty years, I have seen Fantasia fifteen times, Snow White twelve times, Pinocchio eight times. In sum, I was, and still am, a Disney nut," he continued.
Bradbury's grandson, Danny Karapetian, said Wednesday: "If I had to make any statement, it would be how much I love and miss him, and I look forward to hearing everyone's memories about him. He influenced so many artists, writers, teachers, scientists, and it's always really touching and comforting to hear their stories. Your stories.
"His legacy lives on in his monumental body of books, film, television and theater, but more importantly, in the minds and hearts of anyone who read him, because to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know."
Karapetian added: "I'm an actor, something he was always been really proud of, and told me once, after getting cast in a play. 'You're living out my life! You're doing everything I wanted to do but couldn't!'
"He was such a driving force in my life, but what always fascinated me were his impact on others. How his stories lifted people up and saved them from lonely summers. Who among us was never buried deep in a Bradbury story, lost in his meticulously yet effortlessly crafted metaphor?"
The third son in his family, Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, the same town where Jack Benny grew up.
He and famed animation director Chuck Jones were close friends for over 50 years.
Ray Bradbury was predeceased in 2003 by Marguerite "Maggie" McClure, his wife since 1947. They had four daughters -- Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra -- and eight grandchildren.
(Thanks again to TammiToon for alerting us to the sad news.)
Re: "Fahrenheit 451" author Ray Bradbury dead at 91
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He and famed animation director Chuck Jones were close friends for over 50 years.
Bradbury also was close friends with another famed animator, stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen. Bradbury's short story The Foghorn was the impetus for Harryhausen's Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, a fave '50's sci-fier that endures as a classic of its kind. The DVD features an interview with the two Rays. RIP Mr. Bradbury. Loved Fahrenheit 451.
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Re: "Fahrenheit 451" author Ray Bradbury dead at 91
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A few years ago I read his 1985 novel "Death is a Lonely Business". Besides being a great Bradbury fantasy tale, with a nod to the detective novels of the 40s, it's background seems to be very autobiographical - in that the central character is a young SF writer living in the decaying Venice, California, of 1949.
In it he describes (to a would-be-writer policeman) how he (Bradbury) worked: typing stream-of-consciouness fashion in the morning, then editing it into proper story form in the afternoon. What he actually says is " 'Nobody knows how the brain works, not writers, no one. All I do is throw up every morning, clean up at noon.' "
There are more insights, in the same vein. It's a good read - I recommend it.
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