Deaths: April 9
List activity
500 views
• 2 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
48 people
- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Richard Ng was born on 17 December 1939 in Guangdong, China. He was an actor and writer, known for Winners & Sinners (1983), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003) and Pom Pom (1984). He was married to Susan Ng. He died on 9 April 2023 in Hong Kong.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Handsome, leanly built African-American actor who notched up guest appearances in dozens of popular US TV shows, including Mannix (1967), McCloud (1970), Emergency! (1972) and Magnum, P.I. (1980). However, he's better known to cult films fans for his portrayal of character "Matthew Johnson" in the successful blaxploitation films Cleopatra Jones (1973) and the sequel Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975).
Popwell additionally co-starred alongside screen icon Clint Eastwood in five films, starting off as "Wonderful Digby" in Coogan's Bluff (1968). The next four occasions were entries in the highly popular "Dirty Harry" films, firstly as the wounded bank robber at the receiving end of Eastwood's now legendary, "Do you feel lucky, punk?" speech in the opening minutes of Dirty Harry (1971). He was back as a sadistic pimp who murders a greedy call girl with a can of drain cleaner and is later executed by a vigilante motorcycle cop in Magnum Force (1973), and he was still on the wrong side of the law as a "Black Power" activist named "Big Ed" Mustapha in The Enforcer (1976). For his final appearance alongside Eastwood, Popwell was on the right side of Clint for once as a fellow detective in Sudden Impact (1983).
Popwell passed away on April 9, 1999, from complications arising after major surgery.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Arthur Anderson was born on 29 August 1922 in Staten Island, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Midnight Cowboy (1969), Courage the Cowardly Dog (1999) and Cartoon Network Racing (2006). He was married to Alice Anderson. He died on 9 April 2016 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Arthur Cox was born on 7 April 1934 in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland, UK. He was an actor, known for Sweeney 2 (1978), Poirot (1989) and A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery (1987). He died on 9 April 2021 in the UK.
- Barry Cahill was born on 28 May 1921 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was an actor, known for Hang 'Em High (1968), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) and Tick, Tick, Tick (1970). He was married to Rachel Ames. He died on 9 April 2012 in Ventura, California, USA.
- Bob Wootton was born on 4 March 1942 in Paris, Arkansas, USA. He was an actor, known for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James (1986) and Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music (1969). He was married to Vicky Wootton and Anita Carter. He died on 9 April 2017 in Gallatin, Tennessee, USA.
- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Singer/songwriter Brook Benton was born Benjamin Franklin Peay on September 19, 1931, in Camden, South Carolina. He became a gospel singer at a young age and was a member of the Camden Jubilee Singers. Benton moved to New York City at age 17 in 1948 to try his luck as a songwriter. When he first arrived in New York he sang with such gospel groups as Bill Langford's Spiritual Singers, The Langfordaires, The Golden Gate Quartet, and The Jerusalem Stars. He eventually went back to South Carolina, drove a truck for a while and joined the R&B singing group The Sandmen prior to returning to New York again in search of a big break. This time Benton found a successful career co-producing albums and writing songs for such artists as Nat 'King' Cole, Clyde McPhatter (he penned the hit song "A Lover's Question" for McPhatter), and Roy Hamilton.
Benton enjoyed his first minor hit with "A Million Miles from Nowhere." He then switched to Mercury Records and achieved his greatest commercial success recording a steady string of hit songs with that label (he frequently collaborated with producer/songwriter Clyde Otis while at Mercury). In 1959 Brook scored two major breakthrough successes: "It's Just A Matter of Time" peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts and "Endlessly" went all the way to #12 on the charts. Benton sustained this winning streak with such equally excellent tunes as "Thank You Pretty Baby," "So Many Ways," "Hotel Happiness," "The Boll Weevil Song," and "Kiddio." "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)" and "A Rockin' Good Way (To Mess Around and Fall in Love)," his two delightful duets with Dinah Washington, were both Top 10 hits in 1960. Brook cracked the Top 10 one last time in 1970 with a beautifully moving rendition of Tony Joe White's lovely ballad "Rainy Night in Georgia." He remained a popular concert performer throughout the 1980s.
Benton died at the tragically young age of 56 from spinal meningitis in New York City on April 9, 1988. He was survived by his wife Mary and four children.- Charles Lincoln Van Doren came from a family of intellectual achievers. His father was the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren (1894-1973). His mother, Dorothy Graffe Van Doren, was a novelist and writer, and his uncle, Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885-1950), was a noted historian and author. Van Doren himself earned his B.A. at St. John's College, an M.A. in astrophysics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English.
After studying at the Sorbonne, Van Doren became a professor of English at Columbia, earning an annual salary of $4,400. After learning of the money to be made from quiz shows, Van Doren applied to the show "Twenty-One," where producers were looking for ways to bolster faltering ratings. In Van Doren, a 30-year-old charming academic with name recognition, producers saw an attractive winner who could popularize the show. Producers scripted the program, fed contestants with answers and coached them on how to act during the show, so that contestants would have a string of ties to build the drama for one eventual victory. The clean-cut Van Doren, playing his part, became the new champion of "Twenty-One." Ratings for the show began to rise and the bookish champ became an unlikely national hero. After 14 weeks, Van Doren eventually earned a staggering $138,000. By the end of the streak, Van Doren was a celebrity. "Time" magazine pictured him on their cover and he received 500 letters a week. Van Doren signed a $150,000 three-year contract with NBC for appearances as a guest on Steve Allen's show, a guest host on the "Today Show," and a panelist on NBC radio's "Conversations."
When the quiz show scandals broke, Van Doren asserted his innocence, but eventually confessed in November 1959. Though many other contestants had complied with the network's rigging, Van Doren drew the most attention because of his prominent family. NBC ended its contract with Van Doren, and he resigned from Columbia. Van Doren slipped into obscurity, writing books under a pseudonym and becoming an editor for Encyclopedia Britannica. - American juvenile leading man. A native of Texas, Martin entered the theatre in 1946 and within three years was tapped to play one of the young toughs in Knock on Any Door (1949). After minor roles in several minor films, he was given a larger role in The Thing from Another World (1951) by producer Howard Hawks. Hawks followed this with one of the two lead roles in his great Western The Big Sky (1952). Despite this and a few other prominent parts in big pictures, Martin's appearances became more and more infrequent and less and less stellar. He did, however, become a familiar face on television into the 1970s. He was married to singer Peggy Lee in the late 50s.
- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Diana Hale was born on 31 December 1929 in the USA. She was an actress and producer, known for When the Train Stops (2019), The Glove (1979) and Get Smart (1965). She was married to Michael Forest. She died on 9 April 2022 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Dmitri Smirnov was born on 13 February 1952. He was a composer, known for Belaya noch, nezhnaya noch (2008), Fartovyy (2006) and Ne nado pechalitsya (2010). He died on 9 April 2020 in London, England, UK.
- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Earl Simmons (December 18, 1970 - April 9, 2021), known by his stage name DMX ("Dark Man X"), was an American rapper and actor. He began rapping in the early 1990s and released his debut album It's Dark and Hell Is Hot in 1998, to both critical acclaim and commercial success, selling 251,000 copies within its first week of release. DMX released his best-selling album, ... And Then There Was X, in 1999, which included the hit single "Party Up (Up in Here)". His 2003 singles "Where the Hood At?" and "X Gon' Give It to Ya" were also commercially successful. He was the first artist to debut an album at No. 1 five times in a row on the Billboard 200 charts. Overall, DMX sold over 74 million records worldwide.- Actress
- Sound Department
Elena Shulman was born on 10 April 1969 in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Ukraine]. She was an actress, known for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), How Not to Rescue a Princess (2010) and Three heroes and the King of the Sea (2017). She died on 9 April 2023 in St. Petersburg, Russia.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Emilio Pericoli was an Italian pop singer, guitarist and pianist, popular in the early 1960's. In his youth, he was briefly engaged as a vocalist in a dance band. He also harboured aspirations to become a dramatic actor and appeared on stage with Isa Barzizza's company in the love story "Valentina". He also appeared in a few small film roles, but this did not lead to a full-time acting career. Instead, in 1959, Pericoli was signed by Ricordi Records for a compilation of classic Italian/Neapolitan songs, including "Anema e core". His biggest hit, however, turned out to be a cover version of the Betty Curtis/Luciano Tajoli number "Al Di La", 1961 winner at the San Remo Festival. "Al Di La" was subsequently used by Hollywood as the leitmotif for the Warner Brothers movie Rome Adventure (1962), starring Suzanne Pleshette and Troy Donahue. Pericoli performed the song with a small combo in a suitably romantic nightclub setting. Resulting airplay in the U.S. moved the song up to sixth in the Billboards pop charts.
In 1962, Pericoli entered the San Remo Festival in collaboration with songwriter Tony Renis and achieved additional fame with his rendition of "Quando, Quando, Quando". The following year, he made up for not winning this event with a bona fide number one entry, "Uno Per Tutte", also written by Renis. After his singing career petered out in the mid-1960's, Pericoli briefly returned to acting and then faded from the scene.- Ernst-Georg Schwill was born on 30 March 1939 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor, known for Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Tatort (1970) and Maibowle (1959). He was married to Anke. He died on 9 April 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America's most famous architects who introduced his concept of "Organic architecture" and designed such landmarks as the Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum of Art.
He was born Frank Lincoln Wright on June 8, 1867, in Richland Center, Wisconsin, USA, into a family of Welsh descent. (Wright changed his middle name when he became an adult.) His father, William Cary Wright, was a music teacher and a Baptist minister. His mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones Wright, was a teacher. His father played the music of Johann Sebastian Bach which Wright later credit as a source of his sense of harmony in music and architecture. His mother involved him in playing with Froebel's geometric blocks, which formed his 3D vision, and later helped him develop architectural style marked with geometrical clarity. Wright studied engineering at University of Wisconsin for two years, but dropped out without graduating. He moved to Chicago and worked for several architecture firms, including his six years working directly with the "father of modernism" and leader of the Chicago School, Louis Henry Sullivan, who was Wright's mentor from 1888-1893.
In 1889 he married his first of three wives, Catherine Lee Clark Tobin. He and Catherine raised six children together. He also borrowed $5,000 from his then employer, Louis Sullivan, to buy a lot in Oak Park, Illinois and build his first house. That same house he used also as an architectural laboratory by making many changes and additions while developing his original design for the Prarie style of architecture. In 1893 Wright was fired by Sullivan himself, amidst the dispute over Wright's acceptance of a growing number of independent commissions. Then he established his own office in Oak Parc. During the 1890s he originated the style of "Prarie Houses" and designed many private homes in the Prarie School style across the Midwestern United States. At the same time he was commissioned to design several corporate and public buildings in communities in and around Chicago and Buffalo. He had his offices established in the Steinway Piano Building, then later had his office in Orchestra Hall in Chicago.
In 1904 Wright fell in love with Martha(Mamah)Borthwick Cheney, the wife of one of his clients. However, neither of them could get divorced from their marriages, so they eloped to Europe in 1909. In 1910, in Berlin, Wright published his first collection of architectural designs, known as the "Wasmouth Portfolio" and created the first exposure of his work in Europe, which later had influenced such movements as Bauhaus and Constructivism. During his two years in Europe, Wright lived mainly in Italy and became influenced by the Mediterranean architecture. In 1911, back in the USA, he settled with Mamah and her two children in his new home named Taliesin, which means "shining brow" in Welsh, the language of his ancestors. He wanted to marry Mamah, but his first wife was still not giving him a divorce. In August 1914, one of his male servants set fire in the house and murdered Mamah and her two children, as well as several other servants. Wright, was on a business trip and survived the disaster, was devastated and buried himself in work. At that time he was approached by a self-proclaimed sculptor, named Miriam Noel, who offered her condolences and claimed that she could understand him. Soon Wright asked her to move into Taliesin with him, although he was still married to his first wife, Catherine. From 1916 - 1922 Wright worked in Tokyo, Japan where he completed Tokyo's Imperial Hotel, which survived the earthquake of 1923 and found praise after the majority of Tolyo was left in rubble. In 1922 his first wife gave him a divorce that he had been waiting for since 1909. In 1923 he married Miriam Noel, but they separated in less that a year because of her drug addiction, albeit she did not give him a divorce until their legal battle ended in 1927.
In 1924 he met Olga (Olgivanna) Milanoff Hinzenburg, a ballerina with Russian Ballet in Chicago. Olgivanna was a daughter of Montenegro's Chief Justice and a granddaughter of Duke Marko Milanoff. In 1925 Wright invited Olgivanna and Svetlana, her daughter from her previous marriage, to move into his home, Taliesin. In December of 1925, daughter Ivanna was born to Wright and Olgivanna. In 1926 Olgivanna's ex-husband, Valdemar Hinzenburg, sought custody of Olga's daughter, and tried to have them arrested, but the charges were dropped in 1926. Olgivanna and Wright married in 1928. As his personal life had finally came to harmony, Wright's creativity evolved to the new level. In 1932 he and his wife, Olgivanna, established the Taliesin Fellowship School for architects which became a great success with 30 students, and a waiting list of 27 more. In 1934 Wright and Olgivanna were visited by Mr. and Mrs. Kaufmann Sr., the owner of Kaufmann Department Store, beginning one of history's great patron - artist relationships. For the Kaufmanns Wright created his masterpiece, the Fallingwater. It was organically designed above a waterfall to preserve a living harmony with nature, where house and a stream created an interplay through the confluence of falling water and geometrical clarity of architecture. Completed between 1935 and 1937, the Fallingwater became a landmark and one of the most famous private residences in the world. It was used as a family home from 1937 - 1963, then was restored and opened for the public as a museum.
Kaufmann also gave substantial financial backing to other projects by Wright, such as Broadacre City, which was later showcased in Kaufmann's store. Wright also created architectural design for middle class family homes known as Usonian Style, which was caused by the shift of society and answered to the growing demand. In 1937 he designed his third home, Taliesin West, which he completed after purchase of 800 acres of land in Scottsdale, Arizona. There he lived and worked for the rest of his life, he taught a Taliesin Fellowship School of architecture and designed many of his most famous buildings, such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and many other buildings. From 1943 until 1959 Wright worked on the design and construction of the Guggenheim Museum, "I want a temple of spirit, a monument!" requested Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim. Wright created an outstanding design in a shape of an inverted ziggurat, a winding pyramidal temple, or an ascending spiral alluding to such organic form as a nautilus shell. "It was to make the building and the painting an uninterrupted, beautiful symphony such as never existed in the World of Art before," wrote Wright. He created a temple of art, albeit he did not live to see the completion of the Guggenheim Museum, it stands today as a testimony to Wright's architectural genius.
Frank Lloyd Wright died five days after having an intestinal surgery, on April 9, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona, and was laid to rest near his mother and Mamah Borthwick Cheney in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Then his Fellowship was managed by his widow, Olgivanna until her death in 1985. According to her dying wish in 1985, the ashes of her and her husband were laid to rest in memorial garden of their Taliesin West home in Scottsdale, Arizona.- Ida Schuster was born on 28 September 1918 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She was an actress, known for Death Watch (1980), The Revenue Men (1967) and Living Apart Together (1982). She was married to Allan Berkeley. She died on 8 April 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
- Jacques Calvet was born on 19 September 1931 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was married to Françoise. He died on 9 April 2020 in Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, France.
- Writer
- Art Department
- Producer
James D. Hudnall was born on 10 April 1957 in Santa Rosa, California, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Harsh Realm (1999), The Psycho and Age of Heroes. He died on 9 April 2019 in the USA.- This prolific character actor of Scottish ancestry was born in Liverpool as John H. Young. He made his theatrical debut in Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1959 and in later years worked as a stage director at the Court Theatre Training Company and at the King's Head Theatre in London. Young made numerous television appearances between the years 1959 and 2003. He was the last surviving cast member of the very first episode of Doctor Who (1963) (An Unearthly Child, 1963), playing a caveman. Among Young's more prominent credits were leading roles in Deadline Midnight (1960) (a drama series revolving around a Fleet Street newspaper, The Daily Globe) and The Three Musketeers (1966) (as Athos). Numerous guest spots (most often as authority figures) included The Avengers (1961), Softly Softly (1966), The Saint (1962), Department S (1969), Space: 1999 (1975) and The Onedin Line (1971). Young also acted in popular soaps like Coronation Street (1960) (as betting shop owner Benny Lewis) and EastEnders (1985) (prison officer Stone).
Jeremy Young was twice married and divorced, respectively from actresses Coral Atkins and Kate O'Mara. He died on April 9 2022 at the age of 88. - John Shearin was born on 27 September 1944 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Hunter (1984), Eating Raoul (1982) and American Gothic (1995). He was married to Jennifer Wilson. He died on 9 April 2017 in Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
José Guardiola was born on 22 October 1930 in Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He was an actor, known for Cuéntame cómo pasó (2001), Doomed Fort (1964) and El E.T.E. y el Oto (1983). He died on 9 April 2012 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.- Actor
- Editor
- Director
Julian Figueroa was born in 1995 in Toronto, Ontario. He was raised around the Western B.C. and is currently studying Film Production at the University of British Columbia. In 2012, at the age of 16, Julian started writing his first feature film, "Roaming Hungry", a comedy containing 3 interwoven stories of characters surviving in a fictional zombie apocalypse. In 2013, at age 18, he released his film to a limited audience at a movie theatre in Sechelt, B.C. It has gained an increased viewership through online distributing since. Julian Figueroa has since been working on a series of short films for the duration of his undergraduate degree at UBC.