Ed Asner RIP

[Jim Eshelman]

Ed Asner has died at 91. According to his birth records, he was born November 15, 1929, 6:00 AM CST, in Kansas City, MO. Her died today at home in Tarzana, CA.

Living around Hollywood, I met him several times in passing. For example, he first introduced me to Dennis Kucinich at a small gathering near my house when he was boosting Dennis for U.S. president. We'd overlap at other events here and there. The last time I saw him was (guessing) four years ago at a friend's show, and I thought he wasn't looking so good - a little trouble concentrating, not the keenly-present person I'd encountered in the past, a little disoriented. (Then, soon after, I saw him in some new performance where he was sharp as a sword.)

Knowing that he was, indeed, a skilled actor, I was always newly surprised that in person he was a lot like his best known characters, having one of the widest smiles I'd ever seen, seamlessly interwoven with acting like a grouch.

His work has enchanted so many of us for so long, well beyond the Mary Tyler Moore show and its spinoff. As a measure of the work we''ll never see, IMDB shows him announced for four movies and a TV show he'll now never be in. Six others (four movies, two TV shows) are in pre-production, so he surely was never filmed for them. One movie is currently filming, five are in post, two are completed and unreleased.

Digging back a little, I see that, as a child, I probably first saw him on something like Naked City and surely on his many episodes (always as a different character) of Route 66 and The Untouchables. He did a little bit of everything in the early '60s, from Ben Casey to Dr. Kildaire, from The Outer Limits to Gene Roddenberry's early show The Lieutenant, from The Defenders to Burke's Law and Judd for the Defense, from The Virginian to Gunsmoke (and lots more). So I'd probably already watched him 40 or 50 times before The Mary Tyler Moore Show appeared. (I wasn't watching TV during the era of Lou Grant.) I enjoyed him repeatedly on Sharon Gless' post C&L show, The Trials of Rosie O'Neill. And he just kept going, one successful series (and a few predictably less successful) after another, and then as a walk-on character of one series after another where he would own the show in the briefest of appearances. (Example: The regrettably short run of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip.) Probably the last thing I saw him on was Cobra Kai.

So yeah, I loved the guy, any performance he turned in. These were always enhanced by knowing him in person just a bit. That won't be happening anymore. I'll need to settle for occasionally revisiting one of the MORE THAN 400 ROLES he left behind.

Bon voyage, Mr. Asner.

[Jim Eshelman]

The even-hour birth is probably very close to exact, since today transiting Pluto is 0°19' from his local IC for Tarzana. (FWIW Pluto squares Eris 0°01' today.)

His final Solar Return (11/15/20) has his natal Mars at MC. Not what I'd call a bad chart, though some planets start working differently with age. Moon is three and a half degrees from conjunct his Mars, separating.

His SLR two days ago was more to the point with Uranus exactly (0°10') on MC and Saturn just over 1° from Westpoint. A little Jupiter with it. Natal Mercury on IC (which, unless he died of bronchial issues, is probably just all the publicity he's getting today). I haven't looked closely, but the moderately foreground transiting Jupiter is probably in mundane square with either his Mercury or Sun. In the middleground, transiting Sun conjoined his Neptune 0°17'.

His SNQ for today brought his natal Moon-Venus opposition to the horizon. I assume this is related to dying at home, presumably (from the way the announcements were made) with his family and, one would hope and expect, peacefully. But also, transiting Saturn was on SNQ IC (partile conjunct progressed Mars which, for the given birth time, is not quite angular).

His SQ had natal Mars exactly on Asc. SQ Moon opposed natal Jupiter, 0°36', not uncommon for non-violent deaths, especially when the individual gets significant public praise with the event. (We don't know cause of death, though one would presume some version of "natural causes.")

His PSSR brought transiting Saturn exactly to Asc. - This chart is really well timed!