Five stories that have North Texas talking: It's getting cold out there, UT-Austin battles Ryan O'Neal over a Farrah Fawcett portrait, one man says that Lee Harvey Oswald was his friend, and more:
Old Man Winter is returning to North Texas. A strong cold front is on its way. Tonight and Wednesday morning will be bitterly cold across North Texas. The National Weather Service is forecasting a low of 27 degrees overnight in Dallas/Fort Worth – and as low as 22 degrees in Denton. It’s our first freeze of the season and North Texas is under a freeze warning until 10 a.m. Wednesday. The average date of the first freeze for North Texas is Nov. 22. The weather service advises folks to protect pipes, plants and pets. Expect highs on Tuesday and Wednesday in the upper 40s.
- A valuable Andy Warhol portrait of sultry actress Farrah Fawcett is missing – and the University of Texas at Austin wants it back. UT’s Board of Regents has sued Fawcett’s partner, Ryan O’Neal, and the court battle starts Wednesday in California. O'Neal says it belongs to him; UT disagrees. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram says that the witness list features an all-star cast, including O’Neal; his son with Fawcett, Redmond O’Neal; celebrity Alana Stewart; and Fawcett’s fellow “Charlie’s Angel,” Jaclyn Smith on the witness list. Fawcett died of cancer in 2009. Fawcett left her artwork in her living trust to UT-Austin, where she studied before heading to Hollywood in the late ‘60s to become a model and actress. O’Neal has a celebrity attorney, Martin Singer, described by The New York Times as “guard dog to the stars.”
- Lee Harvey Oswald was my friend: Paul Gregory, a University of Houston professor, wrote a piece over the weekend for The New York Times about his family’s connection to Oswald. His father, a successful petroleum engineer who had fled Siberia, had helped Oswald and his young family settle in North Texas. “Hours after the Kennedy assassination, my parents and I experienced the shared horror of realizing that the Lee Oswald we knew, the one who had been in our house and sat at our dinner table, was the same man who had just been accused of killing the president,” Gregory wrote.
- There have been countless documentaries, TV shows, books and stories about JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. But how about a play? “Oswald: The Actual Interrogation” runs through Sunday at Casa Manana in Fort Worth. Producers say the play “delves into the history and controversy surrounding the 48 hours Lee Harvey Oswald was in the custody of the Dallas Police Department” after Kennedy’s assassination. It’s based on notes from Oswald’s interrogation by Will Fritz, a police captain.
- Tonight’s Dallas Architecture Forum lecture features Wilfried Wang, the founder of the Berlin-based Hoidn Wang Partners and an architecture professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The lecture starts at 7:30 p.m. at The Magnolia in Dallas’ West Village. A reception for lecture attendees begins at 6:45 p.m. Tickets are $20 for general admission and $5 for students with ID. Tickets can be purchased at the door before the lecture. No reservations are needed. Prior to Wang’s lecture, there will be a discussion at 6 p.m. about the impact of the John F. Kennedy assassination on Dallas architecture.
