This week: NASA's first female candidate for space, a star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and a manga artist
THE pilot Jerrie Cobb, who has died aged 88, was NASA's first female astronaut candidate. In 1961, she became the first woman to pass astronaut testing. Altogether, 13 women passed the arduous physical testing and became known as the Mercury 13.
However, NASA already had its Mercury 7 astronauts, all test pilots and men, and none of the Mercury 13 ever reached space.
Cobb served for decades as a humanitarian aid pilot in the Amazon jungle. She emerged in 1998 to make another pitch for space, as NASA prepared to launch John Glenn on shuttle Discovery at age 77. Cobb argued unsuccessfully that the research should include an older woman. Cobb died in Florida.
THE actress Georgia Engel, who has died aged 70, was a star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, playing the charmingly innocent Georgette who was improbably destined to marry pompous anchorman Ted Baxter, played by Ted Knight. She also had recurring roles on Everybody Loves Raymond and Hot in Cleveland. She was a five-time Emmy nominee, receiving two nods for the late Moore’s show and three for Everybody Loves Raymond.
Georgia Bright Engel was born in July 1948 in Washington DC to parents Benjamin, a coast guard officer, and Ruth Engel. She studied theatre at the University of Hawaii.
Her prolific career included guest appearances on a variety of series, including The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Two and a Half Men. Her Hot in Cleveland role reunited her with Betty White, her co-star in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1972-77) and The Betty White Show (1977-78).
Engel could be as upbeat as the fictional Georgette, as was demonstrated during a panel discussion last year promoting the 2018 PBS special, Betty White: First Lady of Television. She recalled that a possible Everybody Loves Raymond spinoff set to include her and Fred Willard never came to fruition, which she called a great disappointment.
Engel’s final credited television appearance came last year in the Netflix series One Day at a Time.
THE cartoonist Monkey Punch, who has died aged 81, was best known as the creator of the Japanese megahit comic series Lupin III.
The story of master thief Lupin’s adventures with his gang — gunman Daisuke Jigen, sword master Goemon Ishikawa and sexy beauty Fujiko Mine, as well as a detective, Zenigata — started in 1967. The cartoon also was adapted for TV animation and movies, some directed by renowned animators including Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.
Monkey Punch - whose real name was Kazuhiko Kato - himself directed the 1996 animated film Lupin III: Dead or Alive. Miyazaki, who directed a 1971 Lupin animation for TV, made his feature-length film debut with Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro”in 1997.
The hard-boiled, yet comical story quickly won adult comic fans and became a longtime best-seller. Kato’s intended readership was adults.
The main character in his trademark red jacket is a grandson of famous Arsene Lupin in a Maurice Leblanc detective story.
The son of a fisherman in Hokkaido, in northern Japan, Kato started out as a professional cartoonist in 1965 while working part time in a book shop, and started using his pen name Monkey Punch soon after the Lupin series started in the Weekly Manga Action magazine.
Despite his age, he quickly adapted to digital animation and studied animation on multimedia formats at a technical graduate school in Tokyo in the 2000s. He also taught animation at a university in Nishinomiya in western Japan.
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