Mervyn Edward Griffin Jr. (1925–2007) was an American television show host and media mogul.  He began his career as a radio and big band singer, later appearing in film and on Broadway.  From 1962 to 1986, Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show.  Griffin also created the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune through his own production companies, Merv Griffin Enterprises and Merv Griffin Entertainment.  As a child, Griffin used to play Hangman games with his sister during family road trips.  It was these games which inspired him to create the game show Wheel of Fortune in 1975.  Griffin started singing in his church choir as a boy, and by his teens was earning extra money as a church organist.  By 1945, Griffin had earned enough money to form his own record label, Panda Records, which produced Songs by Merv Griffin, the first U.S. album ever recorded on magnetic tape.  In 1947, Griffin had a 15-minute weekday singing program on KFRC in San Francisco.  Griffin became increasingly popular with nightclub audiences, and his fame soared among the general public with his 1950 hit "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts".  The song reached the #1 spot on the Hit Parade and sold three million copies.  The show, originally titled What's the Question, premiered on NBC on March 30, 1964, hosted by Art Fleming, and ran for 11 years.  Griffin wrote the 30-second piece of music heard during the show's Final Jeopardy! Round, which became the iconic melody of the theme for the syndicated version of the show hosted by Alex Trebek in 1984.  Griffin produced the show's successor, Wheel of Fortune, which premiered January 6, 1975, with host Chuck Woolery and hostess Susan Stafford and had high ratings throughout its network run.  From December 1975 to January 1976, it was expanded to an hour, in response to the successful 60-minute version of The Price Is Right on CBS.  The show became a phenomenon when, on September 19, 1983, a nighttime version hit the syndication market with Pat Sajak and Vanna White as host and hostess.  Around that time, Griffin composed the show's best-known theme song, "Changing Keys", which was used in several variants of the show until 2000.  The theme returned to the show in 2021 at the start of season 39.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv_Griffin  Ryan Seacrest joined the show as host in 2024.    

A hurricane's strength is normally described as being in one of five categories.  These categories have been extracted from the SAFFIR-SIMPSON Hurricane Scale and are listed below along with the wind strengths and potential damage to be experienced.  Find descriptions of the categories at https://cnrse.cnic.navy.mil/Installations/NS-Mayport/About/Hurricane-Information/Terms/Hurricane-Categories/https://cnrse.cnic.navy.mil/Installations/NS-Mayport/About/Hurricane-Information/Terms/Hurricane-Categories/

Maggie Smith (1934-September 27, 2024) was born in Ilford, then a middle-class east London suburb.  Shortly before the start of World War II the family moved to Oxford, where her father worked as a pathologist at Oxford University.  On graduating from high school, Smith attended the Oxford Playhouse School from 1951 to 1953, making her stage debut in an Oxford University Dramatic Society production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”  She went on to appear on Broadway in “New Faces of 1956,” and then held the lead comedian role in the London revue “Share My Lettuce,” between 1957 and 1958.  She soon began appearing regularly in plays at The Old Vic Theater in London.  The closest Ms. Smith had come to such visibility was with the Harry Potter movies.  She was Minerva McGonagall, the Hogwarts School’s stern but fearless transfiguration teacher, in seven of the eight films, from “Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001) to “Harry Potter:  The Deathly Hallows Part 2” (2011).  McGonagall, wearing high-necked Victorian-style gowns, a distinctive Scottish brooch, and upswept hair beneath a tall, black witch’s hat, was a striking onscreen presence.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/arts/maggie-smith-dead.html    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2858  September 27, 2024