PASSINGS: Uan Rasey, Hanan Porat
Uan Rasey
Trumpet player in ‘Chinatown’ and other films
Uan Rasey, 90, a first-call trumpet player for MGM and other studio orchestras best known for his evocative solo in Roman Polanski’s 1974 film “Chinatown,” died Sept. 26 at Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center, said his grandson Tristan Verstraeten. The Studio City resident hadheart problems.
Besides soloing in composerJerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-nominated score for “Chinatown,” Rasey played trumpet for many other film soundtracks, including “An American in Paris,” “Ben-Hur,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Cleopatra,” “Gigi,” “How the West Was Won,” “My Fair Lady,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Spartacus” and “West Side Story.”
He also played on scores for television and radio and in live orchestras throughout Los Angeles.
Uan (pronounced You-on) Rasey was born in Glasgow, Mont., in 1921 and taught himself to play the trumpet as a child. He moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1937. Rasey contracted polio as a child and spent his career playing trumpet while using crutches.
In recent years, he had instructed high-profile horn players Arturo Sandoval, Jack Sheldon and others.
Hanan Porat
Advocate of Israel’s West Bank settler movement
Hanan Porat, 67, a driving force behind Israel’s settlement of the West Bank, died of cancer Tuesday, it was announced in Jerusalem.
Porat was a founder of the now-defunct movement Gush Emunim — Hebrew for “the bloc of the faithful” — a messianic movement committed to settling land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Followers believe God promised the West Bank to the Jewish people, and they set out to cement Israeli sovereignty there by creating a large-scale civilian presence.
But even before Gush Emunim was founded in 1974, Porat was a leading figure in the settlement movement launched after Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967. He helped establish the first settlement in the West Bank, Kfar Etzion, on the site of a kibbutz that had been captured by the Jordanian army in 1948.
He later helped create the Jewish enclave in the biblical city of Hebron, which is currently one of the most radical settlements. Hebron’s ancient Jewish community was driven out after an Arab massacre in 1929.
Porat later turned to politics, and was elected to Israel’s parliament in 1981, serving, except for a four-year hiatus, through 1999.
Born in Palestine in 1943, Porat was reared on a kibbutz near Bethlehem on the West Bank. He was trained as a rabbi.
Today, about half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 — a move Porat strongly opposed.
Israeli settlements, built on land the Palestinians claim for a future state, are widely denounced internationally. Continued construction has been the latest wedge in relations with the Palestinians, who refuse to negotiate peace until the building stops.
—Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports
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