Margaret Thatcher, Britain's 'Iron Lady' Prime Minister, Dead at 87
Annette Funicello, Mouseketeer and film star, dies
Susan
Margaret Thatcher, the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of Great Britain and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century has died at age 87.
"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning," Lord Timothy Bell said today. "A further statement will be made later."
Thatcher had significant health problems in her later years, suffering several small strokes and, according to her daughter, struggling with dementia.
In Dec. 2012, she was underwent an operation to remove a bladder growth, longtime adviser Tim Bell told The Associated Press.
But during her long career on the political stage, Thatcher was known as the Iron Lady. She led Great Britain as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, a champion of free-market policies and adversary of the Soviet Union.
Many considered her Britain's Ronald Reagan. In fact, Reagan and Thatcher were political soul mates. Reagan called her the "best man in England" and she called him "the second most important man in my life." The two shared a hatred of communism and a passion for small government. What America knew as "Reaganomics" is still called "Thatcherism" in Britain.
Like Reagan, Thatcher was an outsider in the old boys' club. Just as it was unlikely for an actor to lead the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, it was unthinkable that a grocer's daughter could lead the Conservatives, the party of Churchill and William Pitt -- that is, until Thatcher. She led the Conservatives from 1975 to 1990, the only woman ever to do so.
Personal Life
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on Oct. 13, 1925 in Grantham, England. She attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry, and later, in 1953, qualified as a barrister, specializing in tax issues.
She married Denis Thatcher on Dec. 13, 1951, and their marriage lasted for nearly 52 years until his death in June 2003. The couple had twins, Mark and Carol, in 1953.
When Thatcher was elected to Britain's House of Commons in 1959, she was its youngest female member. In 1970, when the Conservatives took power, she was made Britain's secretary of state for education and science. In 1975, she was chosen to lead the Conservatives, and she became the prime minister in 1979.
Her policies were controversial. She took on the nation's labor unions, forcing coal miners to return to work after a year on strike.
"We should back the workers and not the shirkers," she said in May 1978.
She pushed for privatization, lower taxes, and deregulation. And she sought to keep Britain from surrendering any of its sovereignty to the European Union.
Thatcher's admirers say she rejuvenated Britain's faltering economy. Her critics say the rich got richer and the poor were left behind.
In the inner cities, Thatcherism brought a violent backlash. There were calls from her own party to change course. But Thatcher resisted.
"You turn if you want to," she said in October 1980. "The lady's not for turning."
She had courage in abundance. In 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, she took Britain to war -- and won.
In 1984, she narrowly escaped being killed when the IRA bombed her hotel during a party conference. The morning after, she convened the conference on schedule -- undaunted.
She recognized Mikhail Gorbachev as a man who could help to end the Cold War, commenting famously, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together."
Ronald Reagan thought so, too. Together, Thatcher and Reagan savored victory in the Cold War as their proudest achievement. But while Alzheimer's forced Reagan to retire from public life, Thatcher kept on long after leaving Downing Street.
She became Baroness Thatcher, a symbolic leader for a party that struggled to find a worthy successor.
By the time of President Reagan's funeral in 2004, Lady Thatcher had already suffered several strokes. She was a silent witness at her friend's farewell, but she had the foresight to record a eulogy for Reagan several months earlier.
"As the last journey of this faithful pilgrim took him beyond the sunset, and as heaven's morning broke, I like to think -- in the words of Bunyan -- that 'all the trumpets sounded on the other side," she said.
Annette Funicello, Mouseketeer and film star, dies
NEW YORK (AP) — Annette Funicello, the most popular Mouseketeer on "The Mickey Mouse Club," who matured to a successful career in records and '60s beach party movies but struggled with illness in middle age and after, died Monday, The Walt Disney Co. said. She was 70.
She died peacefully at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield, Calif., of complications from multiple sclerosis, the company said.
Funicello stunned fans and friends in 1992 with the announcement about her ailment. Yet she was cheerful and upbeat, grappling with the disease with a courage that contrasted with her lightweight teen image of old.
The pretty, dark-haired Funicello was just 13 when she gained fame on Walt Disney's television kiddie "club," an amalgam of stories, songs and dance routines that ran from 1955 to 1959.
Cast after Disney saw her at a dance recital, she soon began receiving 8,000 fan letters a month, 10 times more than any of the 23 other young performers.
Her devotion to Walt Disney remained throughout her life. "He was the dearest, kindest person, and truly was like a second father to me," she remarked. "He was a kid at heart."
When "The Mickey Mouse Club" ended, Annette (as she was often billed) was the only club member to remain under contract to the studio. She appeared in such Disney movies as "Johnny Tremain," ''The Shaggy Dog," ''The Horsemasters," ''Babes in Toyland," ''The Misadventures of Merlin Jones" and "The Monkey's Uncle."
She also became a recording star, singing on 15 albums and hit singles such as "Tall Paul" and "Pineapple Princess."
Outgrowing the kid roles by the early '60s, Annette teamed with Frankie Avalon in a series of movies for American-International, the first film company to exploit the burgeoning teen market.
The filmmakers weren't aiming for art, and they didn't achieve it. As Halliwell's Film Guide says of "Beach Party": "Quite tolerable in itself, it started an excruciating trend."
But the films had songs, cameos by older stars and a few laughs and, as a bonus to latter-day viewers, a look back at a more innocent time. The 1965 "Beach Blanket Bingo," for example, featured subplots involving a mermaid, a motorcycle gang and a skydiving school run by Don Rickles, and comic touches by silent film star Buster Keaton.
Among the other titles: "Muscle Beach Party," ''Bikini Beach," ''Beach Blanket Bingo," ''How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" and "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine."
The shift in teen tastes begun by the Beatles in 1964 and Funicello's first marriage the following year pretty much killed off the genre.
But she was somehow never forgotten though mostly out of the public eye for years. She and Avalon staged a reunion in 1987 with "Back to the Beach." It was during the filming that she noticed she had trouble walking — the first insidious sign of MS.
When it was finally diagnosed, she later recalled, "I knew nothing about (MS), and you are always afraid of the unknown. I plowed into books."
Her symptoms were relatively mild at first, but gradually she lost control of her legs, and she feared people might think she was drunk. So she went public with her ordeal in 1992.
She wrote of her triumphs and struggles in her 1994 autobiography, "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" — the title taken from a Disney song. In 1995, she appeared briefly in a television docudrama based on her book. And she spoke openly about the degenerative effects of MS.
"My equilibrium is no more; it's just progressively getting worse," she said. "But I thank God I just didn't wake up one morning and not be able to walk. You learn to live with it. You learn to live with anything, you really do."
"I've always been religious. This just makes me appreciate the Lord even more because things could always be worse. I know he will see me through this."
Funicello was born Oct. 22, 1942, in Utica, N.Y., and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 4. She began taking dance lessons the following year and won a beauty contest at 9. Then came the discovery by Disney in 1955.
"I have been blessed to have a mentor like Walt Disney," she said 40 years later. "Those years were the happiest of my life. I felt that back then. I feel the same today."
Asked about the revisionist biographies that have portrayed Disney in a negative light, she said, "I don't know what went on in the conference rooms. I know what I saw. And he was wonderful."
In 1965, Funicello married her agent, Jack Gilardi, and they had three children, Gina, Jack and Jason. The couple divorced 18 years later, and in 1986 she married Glen Holt, a harness racehorse trainer. After her film career ended, she devoted herself to her family. Her children sometimes appeared on the TV commercials she made for peanut butter.
The beach films featured ample youthful skin. But not Funicello's.
She remembered in 1987: "Mr. Disney said to me one day, 'Annette, I have a favor to ask of you. I know all the girls are wearing bikinis, but you have an image to uphold. I would appreciate it if you would wear a one-piece suit.' I did, and I never regretted it."
Susan
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