Golden Screen Era Actress Maureen O'Hara passes on... Maureen OHara, Actress of Hollywoods Golden Age, Dies at 95 24 Oct.`15 - The actress was known for her fiery red hair and her performances in The Quiet Man and Miracle on 34th Street.
I will always remember her as "Esmeralda" in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." She was a Hollywood legend. I will miss her!
To be buried next to her WWII hero husband... Irish-born actress to be laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery Saturday 7th November, 2015 - Irish-born screen icon Maureen O'Hara is to be buried with her husband Monday in Virginia's Arlington Cemetery.
The Indian acting star who found global fame... Saeed Jaffrey, Indian actor and Bollywood veteran, dies 16 November 2015 - Actor Saeed Jaffrey, a veteran of dozens of Bollywood and international films, has died at the age of 86. Tributes have poured in since Jaffrey suffered a brain haemorrhage in London.
AIDS? "We all have AIDS, it's really a philosophy of who you give it to... You gotta really stop worrying about yourself and worry about my AIDS.."
I remember my mom listening to one of his albums... Kurt Masur, conductor from Iron Curtain to 9/11, dead at 88 19 Dec.`15 - Kurt Masur, the conductor who seized on music's power to ease Germany's reunification and comfort New York after September 11, died Saturday. He was 88.
Wayne Rogers dies at 82... Wayne Rogers, Trapper John on 'M.A.S.H.,' dies at 82 31 Dec.`15 Wayne Rogers, whose Trapper John McIntyre alongside Alan Alda's Hawkeye Pierce brought mischief, martinis and meatball surgery to the masses in the 1970s every week on "M.A.S.H.," has died.
Yeoman Rand passed on in 2015 at 85... 'Star Trek' actress Grace Lee Whitney dies at 85 May 4, 2015 - -- Grace Lee Whitney of Star Trek died Friday at the age of 85 in her home in Coarsegold, Calif.
Tony "Duke" Evers, who trained both Rocky and Apollo Creed passes on... Rocky actor Tony Burton dies aged 78 Fri, 26 Feb 2016 - Tony Burton, who appeared in six Rocky films with Sylvester Stallone, dies at the age of 78.[/i]
Naked Gun star George Kennedy dies... Actor George Kennedy, star of Naked Gun, dies aged 91 Mon, 29 Feb 2016 - US actor George Kennedy, star of Cool Hand Luke and Naked Gun, has died at the age of 91, his grandson announces.
Character actor Joe Santos passes at 84... 'Rockford Files' Actor Joe Santos Dies at 84 18 Mar.`16 - Joe Santos, best known for playing Lt. Dennis Becker, the frustrated L.A. policeman pal of James Garner's private detective on The Rockford Files, died Friday. He was 84.
Uncle Ferd had a big ol' crush on her back inna day... Oscar-winning actress Patty Duke dies at 69 29 Mar.`16 Patty Duke, who as a teen won an Oscar for playing Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker," then maintained a long career while battling personal demons, has died at the age of 69. The actress died early Tuesday morning of sepsis from a ruptured intestine, according to her agent, Mitchell Stubbs. She died in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, where she had lived for the past quarter-century, according to Teri Weigel, the publicist for her son, actor Sean Astin.
Truly, the 1960's were the golden age of TV theme songs: https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/crazy-pair-ever-forget-patty-214306678.html 'What a Crazy Pair!' Who Can Ever Forget the Patty Duke Show Theme Song? staff@people.com (Tom Gliatto),People 7 hours ago Comments Sign in to like Reblog on Tumblr Share Tweet Email Patty Duke may or may not have thought of the theme song from The Patty Duke Show as part of her legacy, but it's one of the best-written, best-remembered minutes of music ever to launch a subsequent 23 minutes of episodic television nonsense. It ranks up there with the earworm classics from Gilliganâs Island and The Brady Bunch. If you're inclined to debate the point, you might also squeeze in Green Acres. But still. Written by Sid Ramin and Bob Wells (lyrics), the song sets up the show's situation – it's about identical cousins Cathy and Patty, the one rather genteel and British, the other just "a girl from Brooklyn Heights†– in a sprightly, very economical 20 lines. The contrasting personalities are deftly captured in the lighter "Cathy" melody and lyrics ("…Cathy adores a minuet/ The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette") versus the more boisterous "Patty" sections ("…Patty loves to rock and roll/ A hot dog makes her lose control"). In a more rarefied time we would say the song perfectly juxtaposes the Apollonion and the Dionysian. But then we would lose our mind.
Awww, Wilbur died... Alan Young, star of 1960s sitcom 'Mr. Ed,' dies at 96 May 20, 2016 Actor-comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom "Mister Ed," has died, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday. He was 96.
Young Chekov dies... Anton Yelchin, Star Trek's Chekov, killed by his own car Sun, 19 Jun 2016 - Anton Yelchin, the Russian-born actor who played Chekov in the new Star Trek films, has been killed by his own car at his home in Los Angeles, police say.
Liked him in the 'Trinity' westerns with Terence Hill... Italian actor Bud Spencer dies aged 86 Tue, 28 Jun 2016 - Italian actor and filmmaker Bud Spencer, who starred in a number of spaghetti westerns, dies aged 86.
Lois Lane! http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/a...on=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below Actually, a very gifted actress.
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/20/48670...=us&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Writer-Director Garry Marshall Dies At 81 July 20, 201612:35 AM ET THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Director Garry Marshall poses in 2014 at New York's Vineyard Theatre, where he was directing the play Billy & Ray, about the making of the classic film Double Indemnity. Marshall, who created TV's Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days, said he was attracted to the play because he's usually associated with light, romantic fare. Mark Kennedy/AP Writer-director Garry Marshall, whose deft touch with comedy and romance led to a string of TV hits that included Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and the box-office successes Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, has died. He was 81. Marshall died Tuesday in at a hospital in Burbank, Calif., of complications from pneumonia after having a stroke, his publicist Michelle Bega said in a statement. The director also had an on-screen presence, using his New York accent and gruff delivery in colorful supporting roles that included a practical-minded casino boss unswayed by Albert Brooks' disastrous luck in Lost in America and a crass network executive in Soapdish. In the neighborhood where we grew up in, the Bronx, you only had a few choices," Marshall said in a 1980s interview. "You were either an athlete or a gangster, or you were funny." Marshall, brother of actress-director Penny Marshall, earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and worked at the New York Daily News. But he found he was better at writing punchlines. He began his entertainment career in the 1960s selling jokes to comedians, then moved to writing sketches for The Tonight Show with Jack Paar in New York. He caught the eye of comic Joey Bishop, who brought him to Los Angeles to write for The Joey Bishop Show. Sitcoms quickly proved to be Marshall's forte. He and then-writing partner Jerry Belson turned out scripts for the most popular comedies of the '60s, including The Lucy Show, The Danny Thomas Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Marshall and Belson detoured into screenwriting in 1967 with How Sweet It Is, starring Debbie Reynolds, and followed it up with The Grasshoppers (1970) with Jacqueline Bisset. But the two men kept their hand in TV. In 1970, they turned Neil Simon's Broadway hit, The Odd Couple, into a sitcom starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall and produced by Marshall. It ran for five seasons and proved the beginning of a TV sitcom empire. In January 1979, Marshall had three of the top five comedies on the air with Happy Days, which ran from 1974-84; Laverne & Shirley (1976-83), which starred sister Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, and Mork and Mindy (1978-82) with newcomer Robin Williams. "Critics have knocked me for targeting society's lowest common denominator," he said in his 1995 autobiography, Wake Me When It's Funny, written with his daughter, Lori Marshall. "I believe that television was, and still is, the only medium that can truly reach society's lowest common denominator and entertain those people who maybe can't afford a movie or a play. So why not reach them and do it well?" he said. Penny Marshall told The New York Times in 2001 that her brother "has a life. He's not into the show business glitterati. If he has a hot movie, that's great. But if he has something that doesn't do great, he's not around those people who won't speak to you or will make you feel terrible." After cranking out what Marshall once estimated to be 1,000 sitcom episodes, he switched his focus to the big screen with 1984's The Flamingo Kid, a coming-of-age story starring Matt Dillon, which Marshall wrote and directed. He concentrated on directing with his later films, including 1986's Nothing in Common, with Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason; Overboard (1987) starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell; Beaches (198 with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey; Pretty Woman (1990) with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and Dear God (1996) with John Denver and George Burns. The Gere-Roberts pairing that helped make Pretty Woman a smash hit did the same for Runaway Bride, which reunited them in 1999. The Princess Diaries in 2001 was another winner, although Marshall suffered a flop with Georgia Rule (2007), starring Jane Fonda and Lindsay Lohan. Marshall and his wife, Barbara, had three children, Lori, Kathleen and Scott. Funeral services will be private, but a memorial is being planned for his birthday on Nov. 13, the statement said.
Awww... Dances with Wolves actor Chief David Bald Eagle dies at 97 Wed, 27 Jul 2016 - Native American Chief David Bald Eagle, who appeared in the Oscar-winning 1990 film Dances With Wolves, has died aged 97.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/arts/music/marni-nixon-singer-soprano-dies-86.html?_r=0 Marni Nixon, the Singing Voice Behind the Screen, Dies at 86 By MARGALIT FOXJULY 25, 2016 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Marni Nixon did the singing for, from left, Deborah Kerr in “The King and I,” Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” Credit From left: 20th Century Fox; United Artists; Warner Bros. Marni Nixon, the American cinema’s most unsung singer, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 86. The cause was breast cancer, said Randy Banner, a student and friend. Ms. Nixon, a California native, had lived in Manhattan, on the Upper West Side, for more than 40 years. Classically trained, Ms. Nixon was throughout the 1950s and ’60s the unseen — and usually uncredited — singing voice of the stars in a spate of celebrated Hollywood films. She dubbed Deborah Kerr in “The King and I,” Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” among many others. Her other covert outings included singing for Jeanne Crain in “Cheaper by the Dozen,” Janet Leigh in “Pepe” and Ida Lupino in “Jennifer.” “The ghostess with the mostest,” the newspapers called her, a description that eventually began to rankle. Before her Hollywood days and long afterward, Ms. Nixon was an acclaimed concert singer, a specialist in contemporary music who appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic; a recitalist at Carnegie, Alice Tully and Town Halls in New York; and a featured singer on one of Leonard Bernstein’s televised young people’s concerts. Her concerts and her many recordings — including works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Webern, Ives, Copland, Gershwin and Kern — drew wide critical praise. Yet as late as 1990, decades after Ms. Nixon had made good on her vow to perform only as herself, she remained, in the words of The Los Angeles Times, “the best known of the ghost singers.” At midcentury, Hollywood was more inclined to cast bankable stars than trained singers in films that called for singing. As a result, generations of Americans have grown accustomed to Ms. Nixon’s voice, if not her face, in standards like “Getting to Know You,” from “The King and I”; “I Feel Pretty,” from “West Side Story”; and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” from “My Fair Lady.” Ms. Kerr was nominated for an Academy Award in 1956 for her role as Anna in “The King and I”; the film’s soundtrack album sold hundreds of thousands of copies. For singing Anna’s part on that album, Ms. Nixon recalled, she received a total of $420. “You always had to sign a contract that nothing would be revealed,” Ms. Nixon told the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2007. “Twentieth Century Fox, when I did ‘The King and I,’ threatened me.” She continued, “They said, if anybody ever knows that you did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we’ll see to it that you don’t work in town again.” Photo Marni Nixon as Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” onstage in 1964. Credit Alix Jeffry Though Ms. Nixon honored the bargain, her work soon became one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets. She became something of a cult figure, appearing as a guest on “To Tell the Truth” and as an answer to clues featured by “Jeopardy!,” Trivial Pursuit and at least one New York Times crossword puzzle. Her increasing renown helped bring her spectral trade into the light and encouraged her to push for official recognition. “The anonymity didn’t bother me until I sang Natalie Wood’s songs in ‘West Side Story,’ ” Ms. Nixon told The Times in 1967. “Then I saw how important my singing was to the picture. I was giving my talent, and somebody else was taking the credit.” Although the studios seldom accorded Ms. Nixon the screen credit and royalties that she began to demand, both became customary for ghost singers. Starting as a teenager in the late 1940s and continuing for the next two decades, Ms. Nixon lent her crystalline soprano to some 50 films, sometimes contributing just a line or two of song — sometimes just a single, seamless note — that the actress could not manage on her own. The voice of an angel heard by Ingrid Bergman in “Joan of Arc”? It was Ms. Nixon’s. The songs of the nightclub singer, played by Ms. Kerr, in “An Affair to Remember”? Also Ms. Nixon. The second line of the couplet “But square-cut or pear-shape/These rocks don’t lose their shape,” with its pinpoint high note on “their,” from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”? That was Ms. Nixon too. (The film’s star Marilyn Monroe sang most of the rest of the number, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” It was a decidedly peculiar calling — and not one on which Ms. Nixon had ever planned — entailing not so much imitating actors as embodying them. “It’s fascinating, getting inside the actresses you’re singing for,” she told The New York Journal-American in 1964. “It’s like cutting off the top of their heads and seeing what’s underneath. You have to know how they feel, as well as how they talk, in order to sing as they would sing — if they could sing.”