PASSINGS: Clarence ‘Ace’ Parker, Editta Sherman

Clarence ‘Ace’ Parker

Oldest living Football

Hall of Fame member

Clarence “Ace” Parker, 101, a star of New York City football in the 1940s who was the oldest member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died Wednesday, the Canton, Ohio-based Hall of Fame announced. He had been hospitalized with a pulmonary condition since late last month, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported.

Born May 17, 1912, in Portsmouth, Va., Parker was an all-around athlete who played football, basketball and baseball at Duke University, earning All-America honors as a tailback in football.

Listed at 5-feet-10 and 178 pounds, he starred with the NFL’s Brooklyn Dodgers from 1937-41. He won the league’s most valuable player award in 1940 for his exploits as a quarterback, defensive back and punter. That season, he threw 10 touchdown passes, ran for 306 yards and two touchdowns, caught two touchdown passes, kicked 19 extra points and shared the league lead with six interceptions on defense. He also punted for the Dodgers, averaging 38 yards per kick.

In a Dodgers win over the Cleveland Rams on Nov. 17, 1940, Parker had a hand in all 29 of his team’s points. He ran back an interception for a touchdown, threw two touchdown passes, served as holder for a successful field goal, set up a touchdown with a second interception and kicked two extra points.

For two seasons, 1937 and 1938, he played football with the Dodgers and baseball with the Philadelphia Athletics. A shortstop, Parker hit a home run in his first big-league at-bat, but finished with a batting average under .200.

He left football in 1942 to serve in World War II, then returned to football with the Boston Yanks in 1945. He finished his career the next season in the rival American Football Conference, playing quarterback for the New York Yankees.

He went on to play minor league baseball and returned to Duke as baseball coach and assistant football coach. Among the football players he coached was quarterback Sonny Jurgensen, who had a Hall of Fame career with Philadelphia and Washington.

Parker, who also worked as an NFL scout for the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972.

Editta Sherman

Photographer known as

‘Duchess of Carnegie Hall’

Editta Sherman, 101, a photographer dubbed the “Duchess of Carnegie Hall” while living in a studio over the famed auditorium for six decades, died in New York on Friday in her sleep, said a friend, Billy Lyons.

In 2010, Sherman was among a group of artist tenants who were evicted from century-old studios above Carnegie Hall. Carnegie officials argued that they needed the space for educational purposes and found new apartments for the renters.

The “Duchess” never quite got over having to leave “the great, brilliant interaction of artists in the studios, hanging out together, inspiring each other,” said another resident photographer, Josef Astor.

A muse of Andy Warhol, Sherman was known for her portraits of musicians, actors, sports stars, dancers and writers taken with an 8-inch by 10-inch camera in the cavernous, light-flooded space where she partly raised her five children — in one of two towers 19th century industrialist Andrew Carnegie had built above the hall as an affordable artist enclave.

Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Robert Redford studied acting there, Lucille Ball had voice coaching, and Leonard Bernstein wrote music.

The photographer, born in Philadelphia to Italian immigrants in 1912, was married to Harold Sherman, who was a sound engineer as well as her business partner. He died in 1954, blind and diabetic, leaving her with their young children.

Astor worked with her recently on a book of her portraits, titled “Studio 1208: Camera Studies by Editta Sherman.”

The number of her penthouse studio was 1208, and her clients included Elvis Presley, Joe DiMaggio and Tilda Swinton.

Times staff and wire reports news

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