John Mahoney, 77 http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/john-mahoney-dead-dies-frasier-1202688144/ Best known for Frasier, but an i teresting career. Didn't start to act until his late 30s, after teaching as an instructor downstate at Western Illinois University, and before long he's working at Steppenwolf with a lot of younger actors like Gary Sinise and Laurie Metcalf (both of whom acted in college at Illinois State with John Malkovic). Got some breaks with movies, landed a sit-com role as Martin Crane. Pretty good second career, I'd say.
John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead Lyricist and Internet Pioneer, Dead at 70 https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...low-grateful-dead-lyricist-dead-at-70-w516487
"he dances the circular track of the plow ever knowing That the work of his day measures more than the planting and growing" (Weather Report Suite) RIP -- there was no one quite like you...
Terrible headline. That's like "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, school math prize winner and President of the United States." Not that I don't like the tunes he collaborated on; but his online roles, such as in co-founding the EFF, are of much greater importance.
In the era of journalism that would have been a terrible headline but now in the era of clickbait it it a good one.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-reg-e-cathey-dead-20180209-story.html Not famous famous, but he was known. Went to my HS (I was not there yet).
He is definitely in the category of "recognizable character actor," the kind of guy you see in a show, you know you've seen him before, but can't figure out right away just where, which is the mark f a good, busy character actor. Though when my wife read that he'd died, she knew he'd played a Klingon on one of the Star Treks.
Legendary Singer Vic Damone Dies At Age 89 - Fox http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/02/12/legendary-singer-vic-damone-dies-at-age-89.html Vic Damone with composer Harold Arlen and Peggy Lee
From the great What's My Line? game show series. You probably need to watch both videos to fully understand the humor. October 1952 November 1952
Marty Allen, Zany Comedian With A Crazy Hairdo, Dies At 95 - Hollywood Reporter https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/marty-allen-dead-zany-comedian-was-95-925520 Feb. 9, 1964: On the Ed Sullivan Show with Steve Rossi and The Beatles
Billy Graham dies at 99 Billy Graham dead at 99 Billy Graham dies at age 99 Billy Graham, renowned TV evangelist, dead at 99 . Evangelist Billy Graham dies at 99
Nanette Fabray, staple of TV gameshows when I was a kid, and a pretty skilled performer on stage and screen, dies at 97 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/...-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well The stage and the small screen turned out to be Ms. Fabray’s métiers, but she started out in film. Her first movie role was as a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth I (Bette Davis) in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” (1939). In that and the two other film dramas she made that year, she was billed as Nanette Fabares. She changed the spelling of her surname after too many public mispronunciations. Ms. Fabray had one notable film success: the Comden and Green musical “The Band Wagon” (1953), directed by Vincente Minnelli. The film included the number “Triplets,” in which she, Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan played infants, with adult-size heads and torsos but short, stubby baby legs. Photo Ms. Fabray with Fred Astaire, left and Jack Buchanan performing “Triplets” in the 1953 movie “The Band Wagon.” CreditFilm Forum/Photofest Having seen thst picture before watching the movie Bandwagon, I exoected it to be seriously cringe-inducing. It was actually pretty damn funny.
Lewis Gilbert, Director of 'Alfie' and Three James Bond Films, Dies at 97 - Hollywood Reporter https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...-alfie-james-bond-director-dies-at-97-1088811 Lewis Gilbert, the Oscar-nominated British film director behind more than 40 films, including Alfie and three James Bond titles, has died. He was 97. Born in London, Gilbert started out as a child actor in the 1920s and 1930s and had an uncredited role alongside Laurence Olivier in 1938's The Divorce of Lady X. But in his late teens he decided to move towards directing, assisting on Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn. After WWII – during which he worked for the Royal Air Force's film unit on documentaries – he made a name for himself as a director on a number of successful war films, including Reach for the Sky, Carve Her Name with Pride and Sink the Bismark. Arguably Gilbert's most famous film came in 1966 with Alfie, starring a rising Michael Caine. The low-budget film about a young womanizer would go on to win the Jury Special Prize in Cannes, and receive five Academy Award nominations, including one for best picture. Shortly after Alfie, Gilbert was persuaded by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli to direct the fifth Bond film, 1967's You Only Live Twice starring Sean Connery. It would be the first of three 007 titles he would helm, returning later for The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. (She must be the only person who thinks You Only Live Twice is the best Bond picture.) with Sean Connery
I thought it was the best for a little while when I was a kid because it had spaceships in it and I was a kid. Then I turned 11.
A few years ago, I went on one of my occasional James Bond kicks and watched Thunderball again Not a favorite among most Bond aficionados, I had always held it in higher regard than they did. But I found it dragged like hell and I went through a bit of a reappraisal. It was the longest Bond film up to that point -- at 2 hours, 10 minutes -- and that didn't help. Then, I moved on to You Only Live Twice, which I had more-or-less disregarded in the past. I enjoyed it more than I ever had. Now I put it above Thunderball in my personal rankings of the Connery era. I think my main beef with it was the depiction of Blofeld. Previously, Blofeld had been off-screen and mysterious, presented as an erudite, controlled mastermind. In You Only Live Twice, we got to see him as Donald Pleasence with a shaved head and a scar running down his face like some deranged Dr. Frankenstein. The look didn't work and has always wrecked the movie for me. (Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast as Blofeld and was replaced after shooting began either due to severe illness or Gilbert and the producers deciding he had been badly miscast -- depending on sources. Perhaps the illness was a cover story.) Anyway, there's no way Twice is in the league of Dr. No, From Russia With Love or Goldfinger. Jan Werich, who died in 1980, as the original Blofeld in You Only Live Twice...
Schmidt (top) with lyricist Tom Jones Harvey Schmidt, Who Co-Created 'The Fantastics', Dies At 88 - N.Y. Times https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/03/01/us/ap-us-obit-harvey-schmidt-.html (AP) - Harvey Schmidt, the composer of The Fantasticks, which made its debut when Dwight D. Eisenhower was still president and became the longest running musical in history, has died. He was 88. For nearly 42 years the show chugged along at the 153-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, finally closing in 2002 after 17,162 performances. A 2006 New York revival of The Fantasticks ran for nearly 11 years. The show was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1992, the only off-Broadway show ever to have won a Tony. "Try to Remember," the best-known song of The Fantasticks, has been recorded by hundreds of artists over the decades including by Ed Ames, Harry Belafonte, Barbra Streisand, Placido Domingo, Andy Williams, Perry Como, Patti Page, the Sandpipers and the Brothers Four, to name just a few. "Soon It's Gonna Rain" and "They Were You" are also among the musical's most recognized songs. The original cast included a young Jerry Orbach, perhaps the actor most closely associated with the musical. Schmidt, a Dallas native, and lyricist, director and storywriter Tom Jones would go on to write other musicals, including 1963’s 110 in the Shade (revived in 2007 on Broadway with Audra McDonald) and 1966’s I Do! I Do!, which starred Mary Martin and Robert Preston. Both men were inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1998.
David Ogden Stiers, Who Played Major Winchester On M*A*S*H, Dead At 75 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...merson-winchester-iii-mash-dies-at-75-1090841 David Ogden Stiers, the actor who famously played Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in M*A*S*H has died. He was 75 years old. Stiers died at his home in Newport, Oregon, and had been battling bladder cancer. In his most famous role as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on CBS's smash-hit sitcom M*A*S*H, filling in for actor Larry Linville after he left the show, Stiers played a blue-blooded surgeon and straightman to the cast's practical jokers. Stiers was nominated for two primetime Emmys for his role as Winchester, in 1981 and 1982. He later won a primetime Emmy for his role as U.S. Olympic Committee founder William Milligan Sloane in the NBC miniseries The First Olympics: Athens 1896 in 1984. Over the years, Stiers made guest appearances in the TV shows Touched by an Angel, Frasier, and Murder, She Wrote. He also starred in several Woody Allen films, including Shadows and Fog and Mighty Aphrodite. Stiers also acted in the ABC series North and South and the 1987 Showtime TV movie J. Edgar Hoover. Aside from his live-action work, Stiers was a prolific voice actor, working in eight Disney animated features including 1991's Beauty and the Beast (in which he played Cogsworth), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Archdeacon), Pocahantas (Governor Ratcliffe) and Lilo & Stitch (Dr. Jumba Jookiba). He also voiced Kamaji in the English-dubbed version of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.
International soccer community loses a good one! Fiorentina captain Davide Astori dies at only 31 years of age! All Serie A games canceled. How sad! RIP! Davide Astori: Fiorentina captain and Italy international dies at the age of 31 Fiorentina captain Davide Astori dies suddenly aged 31 Fiorentina captain Davide Astore dies
I first learned about Hawking when I was a teenager in the 70s. Given the nature of his illness, I never thought he'd make it this long.
Did Stephen Hawking play the greatest surf music ever written? https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/ventures-guitarist-surf-rock-pioneer-nokie-edwards-dies/ Well, did he?