7/26/14

Bel Kaufman, Who Told What School Was Really Like, Dies at 103

The writer Bel Kaufman with Sandy Dennis, who starred in the 1967 movie “Up the Down Staircase.”

By MARGALIT FOX

JULY 25, 2014

Bel Kaufman, a former New York City schoolteacher whose classic first novel, “Up the Down Staircase” — shot through with despair and hopefulness, violence and levity, bureaucratic inanity and a blizzard of official memorandums so mind-bendingly illogical as to seem almost Kafkaesque — was hailed as a stunningly accurate portrait of life in an urban school when it was published in 1965, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 103.

Her daughter, Thea Goldstine, confirmed the death.

First published by Prentice Hall, “Up the Down Staircase” spent more than a year on the New York Times best-seller list. It has sold more than six million copies and been translated into at least 16 languages. So fully has the novel entered the collective consciousness that its title is still used as a catchphrase to describe absurd or impossible situations.

“Up the Down Staircase” was made into a popular movie of the same name, released in 1967. Directed by Robert Mulligan, it starred Sandy Dennis as Ms. Kaufman’s idealistic young teacher protagonist, Sylvia Barrett.

"SHALOMAR" & EDDIE MURPHY

Ken Atison Seiuli
July 8, 1976 - April 22, 1998
"AKA Shalomar."

Eddie Murphy's divorce became final yesterday, so I thought we would take a little trip back down memory lane.

Movies like Pretty Woman falsely perpetuate the myth that we have hookers on Hollywood Boulevard, when everyone who lives here knows they are on Sunset. That's where the women are. The men are on Santa Monica Blvd, East of El Centro. The "shims" are West of El Centro, usually perched on a stool at Bentios taco stand

or having a catfight in front of Shakey's Pizza,

or in Shalomar's case, at Formosa ave.
At 4:45am Friday, May 2, 1997 - Eddie Murphy picked up 20-year-old Atisone "Shalomar" Seiuli, a Samoan born transvestite prostitute, as he left the hotspot JONES.

Cops on hooker watch - observed as she hopped in Eddie's Land Cruiser and they drove off. Two miles later, they were pulled over, but since they were not engaged in any illegal behavior, Eddie was let go. However, Shalomar was detained for an outstanding prostitution warrant, and then bailed.

When word got out, Eddie released the statement, "It's not the first hooker that I've helped out, I've seen hookers on corners and I'll pull over and they'll go, 'Oh, you're Eddie Murphy, Oh my God!' and I'll empty my wallet out to help," Murphy told Entertainment Tonight. "I'm just being a nice guy."

According to Shalomar, while in the car - Eddie placed 200 smackers on her thigh, and asked her to model lingerie for him.

After the Murphy incident, Shalomar became quite a popular showgirl at the 7969 Club.

Now, as the autopsy report states: on the morning of April 22, 1998, Shalomar had again left her keys on the TV set in her apartment. She lived on the 5th floor of this building.

She probably went out on the roof to smoke a cigarette. Apparently this wasn't unusual - the smoking or the keys thing - because she tied a white bath towel to the railing on the roof of the building, climbed the fire escape to the top, grabbed the towel and propelled herself into her window.

At approximately 5:15a.m., someone heard a scream. At 6:30a.m. another neighbor walked out of the building to walk his pooch.

and literally stumbled upon Shalomar laying face down on the sidewalk,

still clad in her Fredericks of Hollywood black bra and black thong panties with silicon pouches velcroed into her bra.

She was 21 years old.

She scraped her face on the building on the way down, and this was key to ruling her death an accident. A jumper would launch themselves far from the building. She hit the pavement, and hard. Broken right arm, left shoulder, right knee, right ankle and left calf. Fractured teeth and jaw, and the "racooning of the eyes." Fractured nasal bones driven through orbital plates into the frontal lobes of the brain.
Her last meal was beans, and when she fell she was completely sober.

Shalomar body was shipped back home to Samoa, where she is buried in the Seiuli family plot in Mesepa.

After Shalomar was busted, one of the tabloids got a hold of several other tranny hookers, and together they sold a story about Eddie's exploits. According to them, Eddie loved suckin him some drag queen toes. Eddie hires a guy - Paul Barresi, (john travolta's ex) - for damage control. He goes to each and every one of those hookers - and pays them to recant their story. Every one of them does, except for Shalomar, and she ends up falling off a building less than a year later. Read this article, these guys did a bang up job with it.

According to Shalomar, she never drank or smoked, but claimed chocolates and sweets were the secret behind her healthy good looks, amazing body and stunning legs.

I realize the discrepancy with the smoking, and I cannot explain any other reason for her being on the roof at that time, and the fact that there were several cigarette butts on the roof already.

Shalomar was the highlight of author Candace Watkin's book "In The Closet With Eddie" which features interviews from transsexuals who claimed to have bedded the actor.