The Rest In Peace and Remembrance Thread

[David Paleg]

Oscar-nominated actress Jill Clayburgh dead at 66
Nov 6, 4:12 AM (ET)

Jill Clayburgh, the sophisticated Hollywood and Broadway actress known for portrayals of empowered women in a career spanning five decades, highlighted by her Oscar-nominated role of a divorcee exploring life after marriage in the 1978 film "An Unmarried Woman," has died. She was 66.

Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said Clayburgh died Friday surrounded by her family at her home in Lakeville, Conn., after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He said she dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."

She is survived by three children, including actress Lily Rabe, Michael Rabe and stepson Jason Rabe.

There will be no funeral, Rabe said. The family will have a memorial in about six months, though plans have not been finalized.

Full story at Iwon/AP News.

[David Paleg]

Producer Dino De Laurentiis dies at age 91
Nov 11, 11:29 AM (ET)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Dino De Laurentiis, a film impresario and producer of "Serpico,""Barbarella" and "Death Wish," has died. He was 91.

The Academy Award-winning producer's daughter Raffaella De Laurentiis said in a statement that her father was surrounded by family when he died Wednesday night at his home in Beverly Hills. She did not give a cause of death.

De Laurentiis was a legend of Italian New Wave filmmaking. His works also included "Bitter Rice,""La Strada" and "Barbarella."

[Lester]

Report: Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen dead at 84

Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 1:36 am

FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA (BNO NEWS) -- A Canadian radio station on Sunday evening reported that actor Leslie Nielsen has died at a hospital in Florida. He was 84.

Doug Nielsen, his nephew, told CJOB talk radio station in Canada that the actor passed away at a hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The Canadian actor had been hospitalized for nearly two weeks as a result of pneumonia.

"Just in this last 48 hours, the infection has gotten too much and today at 5.30, with his friends and his wife by his side, he just fell asleep and passed away," Doug told the radio station.

[CoolBreeze]

When I was a kid, one movie stayed with me for the rest of my life. It was "Forbidden Planet", starring a very young Leslie Nielsen. At the time, it was one of the most powerful Si Fi movies ever made. Forbidden Planet features the groundbreaking use of an all-electronic music musical score. It also brought to the audience "Robbie The Robot" for the first time. He would later be transformed into the robot in "Lost In Space"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_the_Robot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet

[Lester]

Empire Strikes Back Director Irvin Kershner, Dead at 87

It's being reported by the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) that director Irvin Kershner, best known for directing the Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, has passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 87 after a long bout with illness. Born in Philadelphia in 1923, the filmmaker trained in music and photography before making documentaries and features starting in the late '50s. His breakout came exactly thirty years ago when George Lucas hired him to helm Empire Strikes Back, which many movie fans still consider the best of the beloved series. That was followed by the unauthorized James Bond flick Never Say Never Again, starring Sean Connery, and another sequel, Robocop 2.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=71962

[Dave Allen]

Leslie Nielsen was probably one of the strangest people I ever met (and that takes in a lot of ground). Several years ago he spent a lot of time in West Virginia. He was involved in some promotions with the WV Lottery and with the parent company in the wood products plant and industrial park near Holden on the Logan/Mingo County line. I did a live 30 minute q&a with him and I found I knew more about his movies like "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" that he did. He took part in local homecoming parades then (something for some reason he enjoyed doing). One year the Logan County Chamber of Commerce hired him to be the guest speaker of their annual dinner and he talked and/or rambled on for almost two hours and in the end (they ended up pulling his mic) no one had an idea of what he was talking about. A very odd man, indeed. And now...a very dead one.

[CoolBreeze]

I could expound on that but I wont.

[jag]

Pioneering soprano Helen Boatwright dies at 94

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Soprano soloist Helen Boatwright, who championed the performance of American song and recorded the first full-length album of songs by composer Charles Ives, has died.

Boatwright celebrated her 94th birthday on Nov. 17. Her family said she was still teaching until three weeks before her death Wednesday, and the final piece of music she listened to was the last soprano aria of Handel's "Messiah."

Boatwright was celebrated for singing the music of American composers such as Ives and her husband, Howard Boatwright. In 1954, she became the first person to record a full-length album of Ives' songs, "24 Songs" with pianist John Kirkpatrick. She also studied with composer Normand Lockwood, who helped shape her philosophy that singers had a responsibility to perform and promote contemporary music.

Born Helena Johanna Strassburger in 1916, she was the youngest of six children in a large music-loving German family from Sheboygan, Wis. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music from Oberlin College.

Her operatic debut was as Anna in an English-language production of Otto Nicolai's "Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor" at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. During her career, she worked with luminaries in the world of music, including conductors Leopold Stokowski, Erich Leinsdorf, Seiji Ozawa and Zubin Mehta. She also performed with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood in the early 1940s, sang opposite tenor Mario Lanza in his operatic stage debut, and performed for President John F. Kennedy in the East Room of the White House in 1963.

Boatwright met her future husband, violinist Howard Boatwright, in an elevator in Los Angeles in 1941 when they were to perform in a National Federation of Music Clubs competition. They married two years later and performed together throughout their lives in the United States, Mexico, Europe, and India. Many of her husband's compositions for voice were written for her.

In 1964, Howard Boatwright became the dean of the Syracuse University School of Music, and in 1969 the couple established a university-sponsored summer program, L'Ecole Hindemith in Vevey, Switzerland, where they taught and performed every summer until 1988. He died in 1999.

Helen Boatwright taught at Syracuse University, Connecticut College, was a professor of voice at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester from 1972-79, and served as a guest professor at Cornell University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University.

In 2003, Syracuse University presented Boatwright with an honorary doctor of music degree.

Even in her 90s, Boatwright continued to learn new music. For her 90th birthday in 2006, she celebrated with a solo concert at a local church.

Boatwright is survived by two sons and a daughter. The funeral will be held Dec. 8 at at St. David's Episcopal Church in DeWitt, a Syracuse suburb.

[jag]

Neutron bomb inventor Samuel Cohen dies in LA

LOS ANGELES — Neutron bomb inventor Samuel T. Cohen, who designed the tactical nuclear weapon intended to kill people but do minimal damage to structures, has died, his son said Wednesday.

Cohen died from complications of stomach cancer on Sunday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, his son Paul Cohen told the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Cohen worked for the RAND Corporation and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory when he developed the small neutron bomb in 1958, which used tiny particles that could zip through tanks, walls or buildings with minimal damage but kill humans, usually by attacking their central nervous system. It also minimized long-term nuclear contamination.

Ethicists questioned a weapon designed to destroy only life, but Cohen spent much of his life advocating for its adoption, saying the bomb's limited effects were a more moral alternative to other nuclear weapons.

"It's the most sane and moral weapon ever devised," Cohen told the New York Times in September. "It's the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact."

The Reagan administration worked on developing the weapon in the 1980s, and other nations including France and Russia are believed to have possessed them. But the neutron bomb was never widely embraced as Cohen had hoped.

Paul Cohen couldn't immediatedly be located by The Associated Press and a listed for Samuel T. Cohen's Brentwood home was disconnected.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Cohen went to college at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1943 and joining the army.

The army trained him in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and assigned him to work on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. He worked on the calculations for Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

After the war in a 1951 trip to Seoul, South Korea for the RAND Corporation, he saw a city largely destroyed by the Korean War, and later said in his memoirs that it provided the inspiration for the small-scale neutron bomb.

"If we are going to go on fighting these damned fool wars in the future, shelling and bombing cities to smithereens and wrecking the lives of their inhabitants," he wrote, "might there be some kind of nuclear weapon that could avoid all this?"

Cohen is survived by his wife Margaret, sons Paul and Thomas of Los Angeles and daughter Carla Nagler of New Mexico.

[David Paleg]

Alfred Masini dies at 80; creator of 'Entertainment Tonight'
The television producer also created 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,' 'Star Search,' 'Solid Gold' and numerous other syndicated shows.

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2010

Alfred Masini, a pioneer of first-run syndication who created such hit television shows as "Entertainment Tonight" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," has died. He was 80.

Masini died Monday in Honolulu from complications of melanoma, said Kristin Jackson, his publicist.

"He was one of the creative forces in the development of non-network programming and a key force in helping to move the industry away from a three-network environment," Rich Frank, a former president of Disney Studios, said in a statement that called Masini "an early mentor."

When Masini had several popular syndicated TV shows on the air in 1984, he downplayed his creativity, telling the Washington Post: "I work on the premise that there are no new, unique ideas."

From television's golden age, Masini mined "The Original Amateur Hour" with Ted Mack to come up with "Star Search," a talent contest that ran from 1983 to 1995. "Your Hit Parade" had been off the radio and television airwaves for most of two decades when he conceived "Solid Gold," a 1980s weekly countdown of musical hits.

"All of my ideas come from studying what's not on the air," Masini said in 1986 in the New York Times. "My attitude has always been to look for what's missing."

"Entertainment Tonight" — the breezy celebrity news show that turned 30 this year — was inspired by the success of People Magazine and TV Guide when there was nothing like those publications on television, Masini said in the Washington Post interview.

To ensure that "Entertainment Tonight" would be timely, Masini pioneered the use of satellites to transmit the syndicated program, according to the 1986 New York Times article.

The over-the-top "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," hosted by Robin Leach, aired from 1984 to 1996 —and tapped into society's burgeoning fascination with celebrity.

" 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' struck a piece of the American soul that was about to start flowering in so many ways," said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University.

By expanding programming in what was then a new era of first-run syndication, Masini helped television move away from the network model before the cable era took hold, Thompson said.

The accomplishment included Operation Prime Time, another pioneering effort that sought to produce quality television films for independent stations around the country between 1976 and 1987. Shows included the miniseries "A Woman Called Golda" (1982) with Ingrid Bergman and "Sadat" (1983), starring Louis Gossett Jr.

"He was a syndication genius," said Vin Di Bona, who produced "Entertainment Tonight" in its infancy. "They stopped making executives like him who had the wherewithal and presence to get things done. He had an idea; he got it done."

Alfred Michael Masini was born Jan. 5, 1930, in Jersey City, N.J. The second of two children, he was raised by a widowed mother.

After earning a bachelor's degree at Fordham University in 1952, Masini served in the Air Force during the Korean War.

In 1954, he joined the CBS-TV library in New York as a film editor and left two years later to work for an advertising firm.

With future Disney executive Frank and others, Masini started TeleRep in New York City in 1968 to sell advertisements for client television stations. The firm grew to represent hundreds of stations, according to his publicist, and eventually entered the TV programming business.

A year after retiring from TeleRep in 1993, Masini moved to Hawaii and built a mountaintop home with a view of Diamond Head.

At 71, he married his fourth wife, Charlyn Honda Masini, 29, in a celebrity-studded spectacle worthy of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." The 2001 wedding and reception followed a 40-page script and began precisely on time, a Masini trademark.

He is survived by his wife and his sister, Melba Marvinny.

[genlock]

Don Meredith, Cowboys QB and MNF host, dead at 72

SANTA FE, N.M. -- Don Meredith, one of the most recognizable figures of the early Dallas Cowboys and an original member of ABC's "Monday Night Football" broadcast team, died Sunday. He was 72.

Meredith's wife, Susan, told The Associated Press on Monday her husband died in Santa Fe after suffering a brain hemorrhage and lapsing into a coma. She says a private graveside ceremony is being planned and that family members were traveling to Santa Fe.

"He was the best there was," she said, describing him as kind, warm and funny. "We lost a good one."

Meredith played for the Cowboys from 1960-1968, becoming the starting quarterback in 1965. While he never led the Cowboys to the Super Bowl, Meredith was one of the franchise's first stars.

Over his nine-year career, Meredith threw for 17,199 yards and 111 touchdowns. He retired unexpectedly before the 1969 season.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2010/12/0 ... z17LdgPIqS

[EZ103.3FM]

Don Meredith, Cowboys QB and MNF host, dead at 72

Turn out the lights....the party's over....

[jag]

"Affair to Remember" actress Neva Patterson dies

LOS ANGELES — Neva Patterson, who played Cary Grant's fiancee in the 1957 classic "An Affair to Remember," has died. She was 90.

Her daughter, Megan Lee, tells the Los Angeles Times that Patterson died Tuesday at her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. She suffered complications from a broken hip.

Patterson already was a Broadway veteran when she was cast to play Lois for the Cary Grant movie. She originated the role of Helen Sherman in the 1952 Broadway play "The Seven Year Itch."

Her career in movies and TV ran from the 1940s to the 1990s and included more than 100 appearances. Her roles in the 1980s mini-series "V" and "V: The Final Battle" won her a continuing fan base.

[Scott Reppert]

Director Blake Edwards Dies In Southern California

LOS ANGELES – Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "10" and the "Pink Panther" farces, is dead at age 88.

Edwards died from complications of pneumonia at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake's wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.

Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.

At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the "Pink Panther" movies. The other, "Big Rosemary," was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.

"His heart was as big as his talent. He was an Academy Award winner in all respects," said Schwam, who knew him for 40 years.

A third-generation filmmaker, Edwards was praised for evoking classic performances from Jack Lemmon, Audrey Hepburn, Peter Sellers, Dudley Moore, Lee Remick and Andrews, his wife of nearly half a century.

He directed and often wrote a wide variety of movies including "Days of Wine and Roses," a harrowing story of alcoholism; "The Great Race," a comedy-adventure that starred Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood; and "Victor/Victoria," his gender-bender musical comedy with Andrews.

He was also known for an independent spirit that brought clashes with studio bosses. He vented his disdain for the Hollywood system in his 1981 black comedy, "S.O.B."

"I was certainly getting back at some of the producers of my life," he once remarked, "although I was a good deal less scathing than I could have been. The only way I got to make it was because of the huge success of `10,' and even then they tried to sabotage it."

Because many of his films were studded with farcical situations, reviewers often criticized his work. "In Mr. Edward's comic world, noses are to be stung, heads to have hangovers, and beautiful women to be pursued at any cost," wrote The New York Times' Vincent Canby in a review of "10." Gary Arnold of the Washington Post added: "Edwards seems to take two dumb steps for every smart one. ... He can't seem to resist the most miserable sight gags that occur to him."

However, Richard Schickel wrote in Time magazine: "When director Edwards is at his best, there is something bracing, and in these days, unique about his comedy. ... He really wants to save the world by showing how stupid some of its creatures can be."

Although many of Edwards' films were solid hits, he was nominated for Academy Awards only twice, in 1982 for writing the adapted screenplay of "Victor/Victoria" and in 1983 for co-writing "The Man Who Loved Women." Lemmon and Remick won Oscar nominations in 1962 for "Days of Wine and Roses," and Hepburn was nominated for "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961.

The motion picture academy selected Edwards to receive a lifetime achievement award in 2004 for "his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen."

When he collected the award, he jokingly referred to his wife: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, and the beautiful English broad with the incomparable soprano and promiscuous vocabulary thanks you."

Edwards had entered television in 1958, creating "Peter Gunn," which established a new style of hard-edged detective series. The tone was set by Henry Mancini's pulsating theme music. Starring Craig Stevens, the series ran until 1961 and resulted in a 1967 feature movie "Gunn."

"Peter Gunn" marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Edwards and Mancini, who composed melodic scores and songs for most of Edwards' films. Mancini won Academy Awards for the score of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and the song "Moon River," the title song of "Days of Wine and Roses" and the score of "Victor/Victoria."

The Edwards family history extended virtually the entire length of American motion pictures. J. Gordon Edwards was a pioneering director of silent films, including more than 20 with the exotic vamp Theda Bara. His son, Jack McEdwards (the family name), became a top assistant director and production manager in Hollywood.

William Blake McEdwards was born July 26, 1922, in Tulsa, Okla. The family moved to Hollywood three years later, and the boy grew up on his father's movie sets.

Edwards began in films as an actor, playing small roles in such movies as "A Guy Named Joe" and "Ten Gentlemen From West Point." After 18 months in the Coast Guard in World War II, he returned to acting but soon realized he lacked the talent. With John Champion, he wrote a Western, "Panhandle," which he produced and acted in for the quickie studio, Monogram. He followed with "Stampede."

In 1947, Edwards turned to radio and created the hard-boiled "Richard Diamond, Private Detective" for Dick Powell; it was converted to television in 1957, starring Powell with Mary Tyler Moore as his secretary, whose face is never seen on-screen.

Tiring of the TV grind, Edwards returned to films and directed his first feature, "Bring Your Smile Along." After a few more B movies which he usually co-wrote, he made the big time in 1958 with "The Perfect Furlough," starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and "Operation Petticoat" with Cary Grant and Curtis.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961 established Edwards as a stylish director who could combine comedy with bittersweet romance. His next two films proved his versatility: the suspenseful "Experiment in Terror" (1962) and "Days of Wine and Roses" (1963), the story of a couple's alcoholism, with Lemmon in his first dramatic role.

"The Great Race," about an auto race in the early 1900s, marked Edwards' first attempt at a big-budget spectacle. He spent Warner Bros.' money lavishly, raising the ire of studio boss Jack Warner. The 1965 release proved a modest success.

Edwards' disdain for the studios reached a peak in the 1970 "Darling Lili," a World War I romance starring his new wife, Andrews, and Rock Hudson. The long, expensive Paris location infuriated the Paramount bosses. The movie flopped, continuing Andrews' decline from her position as Hollywood's No. 1 star.

For a decade, Edwards' only hits were "Pink Panther" sequels. Then came "10," which he also produced and wrote. The sex comedy became a box-office winner, creating a new star in Bo Derek and restoring the director's reputation. He scored again in 1982 with "Victor/Victoria," with Andrews playing a woman who poses as a (male) female impersonator. His later films became more personal, particularly the 1986 "That's Life," which he wrote with his psychiatrist.

After Sellers' death in 1980, Edwards attempted to keep the "Pink Panther" franchise alive. He wrote and directed "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983 and "Son of the Pink Panther" in 1993 but both were failed efforts.

A 2006 remake of the original with Steve Martin as Clouseau was modestly successful; its 2009 follow up was less so. Both had new directors, with Edwards credited as a writer.

He continued to supervise Andrews' career, which included a short-lived television series and her 1996 return to Broadway in a $8.5 million version of "Victor/Victoria." Edwards directed the show, which drew mixed reviews. When Andrews was the only one connected with the musical to be nominated for a Tony, she announced to a matinee audience that she was declining the nomination because her co-workers had been snubbed.

Andrews and Edwards married in 1968. She had a daughter, Emma, from her marriage to Broadway designer Tony Walton. Edwards had a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, Geoffrey, from his marriage to Patricia Edwards. He and Andrews adopted two Vietnamese children, Amy and Jo.

A longtime painter, Edwards began sculpting in mid-life, and his bronze works in the style of Henry Moore drew critical praise in shows in Los Angeles and Bucks County, Pa.

[David Paleg]

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, dead at 69
Dec 17, 8:09 PM (ET)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Musician and artist Don Van Vliet, who performed a complex brand of experimental rock under the name Captain Beefheart, has died. He was 69.

The Michael Werner Gallery in New York confirmed Van Vliet's death Friday in California due to complications stemming from multiple sclerosis. The gallery exhibits his paintings.

Van Vliet was probably best known for the album "Trout Mask Replica," which was released in 1969 by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

The album's angular, dissonant take on blues rock and its surreal lyrics put Van Vliet outside the mainstream, but staked his place in rock history.

In the 1980s, Van Vliet turned full-time to drawing and painting. He is survived by his wife of more than 40 years.

[Scott Reppert]

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, dead at 69

Now this one hits home for me. We used to play Beefheart ALL the time on TCS...especially on "Saturday Night At The T". "Trout Mask Replica" is a masterpiece and selected other CB songs ("Sue Egypt", "Telephone", "New Electric Ride") were totally tremendous.







And, of course, his finest one minute and fifty five seconds on record. Yes, it is supposed to sound like that...

[just saying]

Steve Landesberg dies
Steve Landesberg, a comic actor who played the intellectual Det. Arthur Dietrich in the long-running ABC sitcom "Barney Miller," has died. He was believed to be 74.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/ ... 5609.story

[CoolBreeze]

Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, dead at 69

Good riddance. He was a no talent bum back then, and I still wonder how he managed to sucker anyone into buying that crap.

[amayo]

Really sorry to hear about Steve Landesburg. I met Steve in the early 80's when I worked in Marietta, and he came to entertain at a Marietta College function. Very nice guy, and very down to earth. If you can ever find his standup routine on the differences between American Bbaseball and Japanese baseball.

[jag]

Fred Foy, famous for Lone Ranger intro, dies at 89

BOSTON — Fred Foy, the announcer best known for his passionate lead-in to "The Lone Ranger," has died at his Massachusetts home.

His daughter says he died Wednesday of natural causes. He was 89.

Nancy Foy says her father landed the job as the announcer on "The Lone Ranger" radio program in 1948. Radio historian Jim Harmon says Foy's introduction and narration was so good it "made many people forget there were others before him."

Foy's son, Fritz, says the signature opening, "Hi-Yo, Silver!" was done by an actor for the radio, but his father boomed it out for the TV series along with the rest of the famous introduction.

Nancy Foy says that to the end of his life, her father never tired of repeating the intro to anyone who would ask.

Fred Foy is survived by his wife of 63 years, Frances, and their three children.