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Leon Spinks remembered
Michael Marley pays tribute to Leon Spinks, the fun-loving champion who conquered ‘The Greatest’
MAKING a mockery, an often meanspirited lampoon of his gap-toothed look and mangled speech and even his hair, was a sort of cottage industry for comedians. From Johnny Carson to the brilliant Richard Pryor and far beyond, it was open season on Leon Spinks.
Even his 1978 shock victory over Muhammad Ali did not stop the jokes. “Leon was upstairs brushing his tooth” was a typical jest. The fact that he survived and thrived first in the hellhole Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis and then served honourably in the Marine Corps and won an Olympic gold medal in 1976 in Montreal was rarely mentioned.
Died: December 12, 2020. ANN Reinking, who has died aged 71, was a dancer and choreographer who lit up the stage with unbridled sensuality. While she will forever be associated with the seminal American choreographer Bob Fosse, she brought her own style and personality to her uninhibited moves. As a choreographer, she won a Tony award for her 1996 revival of Chicago, which she had first appeared in as a dancer almost 20 years earlier. With a nod to the show’s original director, Reinking’s work was described as “in the style of Bob Fosse”, as she picked up the Fosse mantle with a series of updated routines.