The aspiring singer and actress who was convicted of negligent homicide in the death of Olympic skier Spider Sabich has died.
She was the only reason I watched Andy Williams.
The only association I have with her name is the SNL sketch about the Claudine Longet Ski Invitational, where downhill skiers have to avoid “accidental” sniper fire.
That and the cookie bear.
This sounds like a very interesting story. Can someone provide some more details?
What a hot topic that was for a New York minute. And now I’ve learned that the Rolling Stones recorded and then suppressed (for a while) a terrific song about her.
Her biggest hit in the U.S. was the song “L’amour est bleu” (“Love Is Blue”), which made it to #28 on the Adult Contemporary charts. The original version of the song was by Vicki Leandros, and the best-known version in the U.S. was an instrumental by Paul Mauriat.
Huh, I didn’t know that whole history. The Marty Robbins (1972) version is the one I’m more familiar with, apparently resurrected on Umbrella Academy.
I remember all of this happening; I was 11 years old, and updates on the story and the trial were a fixture on the network TV newscasts.
As per Wikipedia (the “Williams” named in it is Andy Williams):
A woman who killed her previous boyfriend would have to very special for me to marry her. I might sleep with one eye open.
Definitely. And, as the Wikipedia summary of her trial indicates, had the police followed proper procedures during their investigation, Longet likely would spent years in prison, rather that the unbelievably light sentence which she received.
She was basically a Las Vegas showgirl who attached herself to men who would take care of her. Andy Williams financed her music “career”, which consisted of whispering song lyrics that were more annoying than anything else. I remember the whole Spider Sabich debacle and the outrage over how she got away with it. Yeah, I know: ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’.
I had no idea there were lyrics to that song. I’m more familiar with the Paul Mauriat instrumental from the late 1960s, but only because it featured heavily in an episode of Millennium from the 1990s. A serial killer kept his victims trapped underground with Love is Blue playing on a continuous loop.
Can you expand on that? She seems to have had a pretty good early career.
She enjoyed some chart success. Her 1967 debut album, Claudine , peaked at number 11 on the Billboard pop albums chart in the United States. Claudine became a RIAA-certified gold album, selling more than 500,000 copies. Subsequent Longet albums The Look of Love peaked at number 33 in 1967 and Love Is Blue peaked at number 29 in 1968 on the Billboard pop albums chart in the U.S.
She did, though it appears that it was, in no small part, due to the influence of Williams (who regularly featured his then-wife on his TV specials) and Herb Alpert (who signed her to a record contract).
I don’t see how this is different from any other musical artist. People must have liked the music, they certainly bought it.
There are also people who think Yoko Ono is a talented musician. I can’t explain it; it just. . .is. For her to be that popular in the mid-to-late 60s, when rock music was hitting its stride, is certainly curious to me. I guess there were still enough people clinging to crooners and the like to explain her popularity.
Perhaps so. Contemporary articles on her indicate that a big part of her success was due to a very charming personality, but that may or may not be revisionist history after the murder.
She had a very breathy, whispery singing style, and combined with her accent, it likely came across as very sexy.
Ehhh, that’s different, I think. Ono was, first and foremost, an avant-garde performance artist, and her singing was almost undoubtedly not meant to be appealing or melodic in a traditional sense.
Nine-year-old me had a huge crush on Claudine after seeing her in McHale’s Navy (both the TV series and the movie, I think), where she was Ensign Parker’s (Tim Conway’s) wanna-be girlfriend.
Claudine Longet and Yoko Ono were both women who were married to musicians/singers more popular than them, and both were associated with someone who was killed. The resemblance ends there. Longet was a conventional singer. Ono was (is?) an avant garde artist who wrote and performed some very bizarre music, often featuring her screeching and making animal noises.
Rock may have been hitting its stride in 1968, but a lot of other music was very popular at the time. Some songs from the 1968 Billboard Hot 100:
“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro
“This Guy’s in Love with You” by Herb Alpert
“Grazing in the Grass” by Hugh Masakela
“Those Were the Days” by Mary Hopkin
“The Look of Love” by Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66
“(Theme from) The Valley of the Dolls” by Dionne Warwick
“Classical Gas” by Mason Williams
“MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris
“Delilah” by Tom Jones
“The Unicorn” by The Irish Rovers
“Cab Driver” by The Mills Brothers
“Do You Know the Way to San Jose” by Dionne Warwick