The Rest In Peace and Remembrance Thread

[genlock]

Favorite Tony Curtis movie quote:
From Operation Petticoat (1959)
"in confusion there is profit."

I have used that bit of wisdom often.

[jag]

Producer of 'The A-Team,' other shows dies

By FRAZIER MOORE - AP Television Writer

Stephen J. Cannell, the voracious writer-producer of dozens of series that included TV favorites "The Rockford Files," "The A-Team" and "The Commish," has died at age 69.

Cannell passed away at his home in Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night from complications associated with melanoma, his family said in a statement on Friday.

During three decades as an independent producer, he distinguished himself as a rangy, outgoing chap with a trim beard who was generally identified with action dramas full of squealing tires and tough guys trading punches.

But his range was greater than for which he was given credit. "Tenspeed and Brown Shoe" was a clever detective drama starring Ben Vereen and a then-unknown Jeff Goldblum in 1980. "Profit" was a shocking saga of a psycho businessman that was unforgettable to the few viewers who saw it: Fox pulled the plug after just four episodes in 1996. With "Wiseguy" (1987-90), Cannell chilled viewers with a film-noir descent into the underworld that predated "The Sopranos" by more than a decade.

"The Rockford Files," of course, became an Emmy-winning TV classic following the misadventures of its hapless ex-con private eye played by James Garner.

"People say, 'How can the guy who did "Wiseguy" do "The A-Team"?' I don't know," said Cannell in an interview with The Associated Press in 1993. "But I do know it's easier to think of me simply as the guy who wrote 'The A-Team.' So they do."

During his TV heyday, Cannell became familiar to viewers from the ID that followed each of his shows: He was seen in his office typing on his Selectric before blithely ripping a sheet of paper from the typewriter carriage, whereupon it morphed into the C-shaped logo of Cannell Entertainment Inc.

That was all the idea of his wife, Marcia, he said, and it "appealed to my sense of hooey. ... I'm a ham."

He was also an occasional actor, most recently with a recurring role on ABC-TV's series, "Castle."

A third-generation Californian, Cannell (rhymes with "channel") got into television writing scripts for "It Takes a Thief," "Ironside" and "Adam 12." It was a remarkable career choice for someone who had suffered since childhood from severe dyslexia (he became an advocate for children and adults with learning disabilities).

Cannell in recent years had focused his attention on writing books. His 16th novel, "The Prostitute's Ball," will be released this month.

"I never thought of myself as being a brilliant writer, and still don't," he said in the AP interview. "I'm a populist. With 'Rockford,' we were never trying to be important. And as thoroughly hated as it was by critics, I loved 'The A-Team.' I thought it was really cool."

He was a producer of the feature film updating "The A-Team," released earlier this year.

Cannell is survived by Marcia, his wife of 46 years, their three children, and three grandchildren.

[Scott Reppert]

Stephen J. Cannell, the voracious writer-producer of dozens of series that included TV favorites "The Rockford Files," "The A-Team" and "The Commish," has died at age 69.


Just heard him on with John Boy & Billy on Sept. 18...presumably a "Best Of", since it was a Saturday. He sounded like a nice guy that had done a lot of great work...

[genlock]

* 21 Jump Street
* Adam-12
* The A-Team
* Baa Baa Black Sheep
* Baretta
* Booker
* Broken Badges
* Castle (as himself)
* Chase
* Cobra
* The Commish
* The D.A.
* Diagnosis Murder (acting)
* The Duke
* The Greatest American Hero
* Hardcastle and McCormick
* The Hat Squad
* Hawkeye
* Hunter
* J.J. Starbuck
* The Last Precinct
* Magnum, P.I. (acting)



* The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage
* Pacific Blue (acting)
* Palace Guard
* Profit
* The Quest
* Renegade (acting)
* Richie Brockelman, Private Eye
* Riptide
* Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (acting)
* The Rockford Files
* The Rousters
* Santa Barbara (soap opera) (acting)
* Silk Stalkings (acting)
* Sonny Spoon
* Stingray
* Stone
* Street Justice
* Tenspeed and Brown Shoe
* Toma
* Top of the Hill
* Unsub
* Wise

[just saying]

the brady bunch
the andy griffith show
sanford & sun
the jeffersons
welcome back kotter
barney miller
this could go on forever ..............................

[Bob Campbell]

I believe he also wrote dozens of novels. Truly a prolific talent.

[jag]

Just wondering, Scott...was there something wrong with the way I posted Cannel's death?

[Scott Reppert]

Nooo.

Wonderful job.

Carry on...

[David Paleg]

Miss USA winner who had title stripped dies in LA
Oct 9, 6:36 PM (ET)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Leona Gage, who in 1957 was named Miss USA but had the title stripped the next day when pageant officials learned she was married and a mother of two, has died in Los Angeles at 71.

Her son, Robert Kaminer, said Saturday that Gage died of heart failure at a Sherman Oaks hospital Tuesday.

Like Vanessa Williams and Carrie Prejean decades later, Gage's pageant scandal brought her bigger stardom than keeping the crown.

The 18-year-old Gage also lied about her age - telling pageant officials she was 21.

She had been married twice starting at age 14 and had her second child at 16, all forbidden for a pageant contestant.

The lost tiara led to many television appearances, including a famous one on the Ed Sullivan Show.

[David Paleg]

Solomon Burke dies at Amsterdam airport at 70
Oct 10, 8:54 AM (ET)
By TOBY STERLING

AMSTERDAM (AP) - Solomon Burke, the larger-than-life "King of Rock and Soul," whose songs blended soul, gospel, country and R&B, died early Sunday at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at age 70.

Born to the sound of music in an upstairs room of a Philadelphia church, Burke was acknowledged as one of the greatest soul singers of the 1960s, but his popularity never matched that of contemporaries like James Brown or Marvin Gaye.

Even so, legendary Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler once called Burke, "the best soul singer of all time."

Burke, a giant man with a powerful soulful voice to match, joined Atlantic in 1960 and went on to record a string of hits in a decade with the label.

Two of his best-known songs were boosted by featuring on the soundtracks of popular movies.

He wrote "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" in 1964 and it was later featured in the Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi movie "The Blues Brothers." The Rolling Stones and Wilson Pickett also recorded it.

His song "Cry To Me" featured in the background as a bare-chested Patrick Swayze danced seductively with Jennifer Grey in one of the most memorable scenes from the movie "Dirty Dancing."

According to his website, Burke was born March 21, 1940, "to the sounds of horns and bass drums" at the United Praying Band The House of God for All People in West Philly.

"From day one, literally God and gospel were the driving forces behind the man and his music," his website said.

He remained closely linked to the church as a preacher. In 2000, he played for then-Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

Schiphol Airport police spokesman Robert van Kapel confirmed that Burke died on a plane at Schiphol. He arrived early Sunday on a flight from Los Angeles and had been scheduled to perform a sellout show on Tuesday in a church converted into a concert hall in Amsterdam with local band De Dijk.

Burke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 and won a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy a year later for "Don't Give Up On Me."

Those honors sparked a renewed interest in the singer and he toured extensively around the world in recent years.

Burke and his band would play without set lists, instead performing whatever the audience wanted to hear.

"It's like turning back the hands of time instantly," he said on his website. "We can be in the middle of singing something from my recent 'Like A Fire' album, and they'll call out 'Stupidity' from 1957 and we're back 50 years!"

Burke combined his singing with the role of preacher and patriarch of a huge family of 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren.

"Loving people," he said at a recent performance in London, "is what I do."

[amayo]

Solomon also had a country hit with a great song called (just out of reach of my two) "Empty Arms". Great song and a wonderful performer. Had the chance to see him live a few years back here in Louisville. He did 90 minutes, and four encores. Could've sung all night if he'd been up to it! I never heard an audience love anyone like they loved him that night!

[jag]

Soprano Joan Sutherland has died, age 83
By FRANK JORDANS - Associated Press Writer


Soprano Joan Sutherland, whose purity of tone and brilliant vocal display made her one of the most celebrated opera singers of all time, has died at 83 after a four-decade career that won her praise as the successor to legend Maria Callas.

Her family said she died Sunday at her home near Geneva after a long illness.

Called "La Stupenda" by her Italian fans, Sutherland was acclaimed from her native Australia to North America and Europe for her wide range of roles. But she was particularly praised for her singing of operas by Handel and 19th-century Italian composers.

Tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who joined with Marilyn Horne in Sutherland's farewell gala recital at Covent Garden on Dec. 31, 1990, called her "the greatest coloratura soprano of all time."

The term, derived from "color," refers to a soprano with a high range and the vocal agility to sing brilliant trills and rapid passages.

Sutherland's skills made her pre-eminent in the revival of Italian "bel canto" operas, and she was seen by many as having taken on the mantle of Callas.

Sutherland started singing as a small child, crouching under the piano and copying her mother, Muriel Alston Sutherland, "a talented singer with a glorious mezzo-soprano voice," according to Sutherland's biographer Norma Major, wife of former British Prime Minister John Major.

"I was able from the age of 3 to imitate her scales and exercises," she wrote in her autobiography. "As she was a mezzo-soprano, I worked very much in the middle area of my voice, learning the scales and arpeggios and even the dreaded trill without thinking about it. The birds could trill, so why not I?

"I even picked up her songs and arias and sang them by ear, later singing duets with her _ Manrico to her Azucena. I always had a voice."

When she began performing in Australia, Sutherland thought she was a mezzo-soprano like her mother, and it took the insight of subsequent coaches to make her realize that she should develop her higher range.

The family statement said Sutherland is survived by her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, their son, Adam, daughter-in-law Helen, and two grandchildren.

According to the statement Sutherland, who broke both legs during a fall at her home in 2008, requested a very small and private funeral.

___

[Lester]

“Pay to the Piper” Singer General Johnson Dies at 67
Just a day after celebrating Sam Moore‘s 75th birthday, and a few days after the passing of Solomon Burke, General Johnson has died.

http://www.showbiz411.com/2010/10/14/pa ... dies-at-67

[CoolBreeze]

Ward... you were really hard on the Beaver last night...

Barbara Billingsley, who wore a classy pearl necklace and dispensed pearls of wisdom as America's quintessential mom on "Leave it to Beaver," has died at age 94, a family spokeswoman said Saturday.

The actress passed away at 2 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) Saturday at her home in Santa Monica, California, after a long illness, spokeswoman Judy Twersky said. A private memorial is being planned.

[just saying]

RIP Mrs. beave this is sad.

[David Paleg]

Actor Simon MacCorkindale ("Manimal") dies of cancer at 58
Oct 16, 6:52 AM (ET)

LONDON (AP) - British actor Simon MacCorkindale, who starred on British television in "Casualty" and in the United States in "Falcon Crest," has died at age 58.

MacCorkindale died Thursday of bowel cancer in a London clinic, publicist Max Clifford said.

Once talked up as a potential James Bond, MacCorkindale's career proved more modest. He won the starring role in "Manimal" as a crime-fighting college professor capable of metamorphosing into any animal, but it survived for just eight episodes on the U.S. network NBC in 1983.

He had better luck on CBS'"Falcon Crest," appearing in 59 episodes from 1984 to 1986 as womanizing lawyer Greg Reardon.

Back in his native England, MacCorkindale had a six-year run on the long-running BBC hospital series "Casualty" as consultant Harry Harper.

"One of the reasons so many people have loved working with him on 'Casualty' is because of the tone he established on the shop floor, always welcoming, always disciplined, always quietly the leader," said John Yorke, controller of BBC drama production.

MacCorkindale made his London stage debut in 1974 as a sarcastic bystander in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion." He tackled the title role in "Macbeth" at the Ludlow Festival in 1980, and played Capt. Georg von Trapp in the London revival of "The Sound of Music" in 2008-2009.

In the BBC miniseries "I, Claudius" in 1976 he took the role of Lucius.

Film roles include the murderer Simon Doyle in "Death on the Nile" in 1977 and as Philip FitzRoyce in "Jaws 3-D" ("Jaws III").

His first marriage to Fiona Fullerton ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife and fellow actor, Susan George. He had no children.

[genlock]

'Fractal' mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot dies aged 85
Benoit Mandelbrot Mandelbrot saw that apparently random shapes followed patterns

Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered mathematical shapes known as fractals, has died of cancer at the age of 85.

Mandelbrot, who had joint French and US nationality, developed fractals as a mathematical way of understanding the infinite complexity of nature.

The concept has been used to measure coastlines, clouds and other natural phenomena and had far-reaching effects in physics, biology and astronomy.

Mandelbrot's family said he had died in a hospice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The visionary mathematician was born into a Jewish family in Poland but moved to Paris at the age of 11 to escape the Nazis.

He spent most of his life in the US, working for IBM computers and eventually became a professor of mathematical science at Yale University.




His seminal work, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, was published in 1982. In it, he argued that seemingly random mathematical shapes in fact followed a pattern if broken down into a single repeating shape.

The concept enabled scientists to measure previously immeasurable objects, including the coastline of the British Isles, the geometry of a lung or a cauliflower.

"If you cut one of the florets of a cauliflower, you see the whole cauliflower but smaller," he explained at the influential Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference earlier this year.

"Then you cut again, again, again, and you still get small cauliflowers. So there are some shapes which have this peculiar property, where each part is like the whole, but smaller."
'Powerful mind'

Fractal mathematics also led to technological developments in the fields of digital music and image compression.

It has also been influential in pop culture, with the patterns being used to create beautiful and intricate pieces of art. One such design is named in his honour.

Mandelbrot was also highly critical of the world banking system, arguing the economic model it used was unable to cope with its own complexity.

In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Mandelbrot for his "powerful, original mind that never shied away from innovation and battering preconceived ideas".

"His work, which was entirely developed outside the main research channels, led to a modern information theory," he said.

[Scott Reppert]

Barbara Billingsley, who wore a classy pearl necklace and dispensed pearls of wisdom as America's quintessential mom on "Leave it to Beaver," has died at age 94, a family spokeswoman said Saturday.

If Jerry Mathers were a Major League Baseball player he would placed on the Beavereavment List...

[Bob Campbell]

'Fractal' mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot dies aged 85
Benoit Mandelbrot Mandelbrot saw that apparently random shapes followed patterns

Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered mathematical shapes known as fractals, has died of cancer at the age of 85.

Mandelbrot, who had joint French and US nationality, developed fractals as a mathematical way of understanding the infinite complexity of nature.

The concept has been used to measure coastlines, clouds and other natural phenomena and had far-reaching effects in physics, biology and astronomy.

Mandelbrot's family said he had died in a hospice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The visionary mathematician was born into a Jewish family in Poland but moved to Paris at the age of 11 to escape the Nazis.

He spent most of his life in the US, working for IBM computers and eventually became a professor of mathematical science at Yale University.




His seminal work, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, was published in 1982. In it, he argued that seemingly random mathematical shapes in fact followed a pattern if broken down into a single repeating shape.

The concept enabled scientists to measure previously immeasurable objects, including the coastline of the British Isles, the geometry of a lung or a cauliflower.

"If you cut one of the florets of a cauliflower, you see the whole cauliflower but smaller," he explained at the influential Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference earlier this year.

"Then you cut again, again, again, and you still get small cauliflowers. So there are some shapes which have this peculiar property, where each part is like the whole, but smaller."
'Powerful mind'

Fractal mathematics also led to technological developments in the fields of digital music and image compression.

It has also been influential in pop culture, with the patterns being used to create beautiful and intricate pieces of art. One such design is named in his honour.

Mandelbrot was also highly critical of the world banking system, arguing the economic model it used was unable to cope with its own complexity.

In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Mandelbrot for his "powerful, original mind that never shied away from innovation and battering preconceived ideas".

"His work, which was entirely developed outside the main research channels, led to a modern information theory," he said.

And of course there was that great kids' television show; "Fractal Rock".

[amayo]

TOM BOSLEY DIES

Celebrity website TMZ.com and Access Hollywood are reporting that actor Tom Bosley has died at 83.

Bosley famously starred on the television series "Happy Days."

TMZ reports that family members said Bosley had been battling a staph infection.

"I saw him before I ever got to Hollywood on Broadway, and he was great," former "Happy Days" co-star Henry Winkler told TMZ. "And then I got to act with him for 10 years and he was great. Tom Bosley was our mentor. He was a true artist."

Scott Baio told TMZ: "He was a good man who taught me a lot about the business and business itself. He was a professional guy ... I'm sad."

In addition to playing Howard Cunningham on the long-running "Happy Days," Bosley won a Tony Award in 1959 for his performance as Fiorello La Guardia in "Fiorello!"

He also appeared as Sheriff Amos Tupper on the drama "Murder, She Wrote" and as Father Frank Dowling on "Father Dowling Mysteries."