Notable Showbiz Deaths of 2020
A list of entertainment industry figures who passed away in 2020
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- Nick Gordon was born on 5 May 1990 in Roswell, Georgia, USA. He died on 1 January 2020 in Altamonte Springs, Florida, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
Andrew Burkle was born on 27 October 1993 in the USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Airplane Mode (2019) and Breakfast with Einstein (1998). He died on 6 January 2020 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Actor
- Music Department
- Producer
Harry Hains was born on 4 December 1992 in Melbourne, Australia. He was an actor and producer, known for Lulu (2018), Groupies (2018) and The Surface (2015). He died on 7 January 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Hains' actress-mother, Jane Badler, is known to sci-fi fans as lovely-but-evil alien dictator (and would-be-world-conqueror) "Diana" from the hit series V.- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Silvio Horta was born on 14 August 1974 in Miami, Florida, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Ugly Betty (2006), Urban Legend (1998) and The Chronicle (2001). He died on 7 January 2020 in Miami, Florida, USA.- Actor
- Composer
- Writer
Neil Peart was one of the most universally respected rock drummers, and was best known for his nearly superhuman, pyrotechnic drum playing, and for providing intellectual lyrics for his band's songs. Neil served as both drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush since 1974, joining bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson. (Rush's lineup remained unchanged since Neil's arrival in 1974.) Rush is the most successful Canadian music group in history, and is the third most prolific seller of consecutive (American) Gold and Platinum Records and videos, behind only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Beginning on August 10, 1997, immediately following Rush's "Test For Echo" tour, Neil endured concurrent, seemingly unendurable tragedies when his daughter (and only child) died in a car accident, and then his wife died from cancer 10 months later. This put Rush on indefinite hiatus for the first time, and prompted Neil to write "Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road", his second book. In September 2000, Neil married Los Angeles photographer Carrie Nuttall. They had a daughter, Oliva, in 2009.
Neil rejoined Rush in the studio for 2002's "Vapor Trails," their 17th studio album, which was met with high praise and considered a stellar "comeback" both for Peart and the band. A highly successful 2002 tour brought about the band's long-awaited return to the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The tour ended with Rush's first-ever shows in Brazil, where they played to 125,000 fans in three nights. The final performance of the 2002 tour was captured on DVD as Rush in Rio (2003), which was certified double-platinum within weeks of its release.
After the Vapor Trails album and tour, Neil's writing became more personal. His subsequent live performances, including his trademark percussion solos which showcased his superlative adroitness as a drummer, were regarded as his best to date. His final tour with Rush was 2015's R40 tour, which marked forty years since Neil joined the band. At the end of the tour, Neil announced he was retiring due to arthritis and tendinitis.
Not long after his retirement, Neil was diagnosed with brain cancer. He fought it privately for three and a half years, keeping it secret until he passed from it on January 7, 2020.- Elizabeth Wurtzel was born on 31 July 1967 in New York City, New York, USA. She was a writer, known for Prozac Nation (2001), When the Brass Band Plays (2020) and Intimate Portrait (1990). She was married to James Freed Jr.. She died on 7 January 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Edd Byrnes was born Edward Byrne Breitenberger on July 30, 1932 in New York City, the son of Mary (Byrne) and Augustus "Gus" Breitenberger. Edd shared an impoverished and unhappy childhood with brother Vincent and sister Jo-Ann. Their mother worked hard at various jobs to keep the family together because her alcoholic husband was often absent from the scene.
When Edd was fifteen, his father was found dead in a basement. Edd then dropped his surname (Breitenberger) in favor of "Byrnes", based on the name of his maternal grandfather, Edward Byrne, a New York City fireman. He found escape from family problems at the movies and at the gym, where he developed an athletic body. At age 17 he was approached by a man who offered to take free "physique" photos of him. According to his 1996 autobiography, "Kookie No More", this led to a few years of "hustling" older, well-to-do men, despite the fact that Edd was heterosexual. One of these men acted as Edd's mentor, introducing him to fashion and culture and encouraging his hopes for an acting career.
After doing some summer-stock work and a few bit parts on TV, Edd drove to California in 1955, arriving in Los Angeles on the day James Dean died in a car crash. He managed to get a few minor parts in films and then won a role in a new TV series, 77 Sunset Strip (1958), which premiered in September 1958. Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Roger Smith starred as private eyes but Edd, playing a hip-talking parking-lot attendant named "Kookie", won the most attention. Viewers quoted his dialog, ("Baby, you're the ginchiest!"), and young males imitated the way he wielded his ever-present comb. His fan mail soon reached an astonishing 15,000 letters a week and his single with Connie Stevens, "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb", became a top-5 hit. Edd chafed, however, at the restrictions in his Warner Brothers contract, which forced him to turn down roles in Ocean's Eleven (1960), North to Alaska (1960) and Rio Bravo (1959).
He walked off the "77 Sunset Strip" set and in the ensuing months began to drink heavily and visit a psychiatrist, who administered drugs to him. His contract dispute was eventually settled, though not much to his advantage, and when he returned to "77 Sunset Strip" his role was upgraded from "sidekick" to "partner" and he wore a suit and tie. Audience reaction was not good, ratings dropped, and the show was canceled. The hip-talking, hair-combing image clung to him, however, and Edd felt he lost the lead in PT 109 (1963) because President John F. Kennedy didn't want to be played by "Kookie". A few more movies and TV appearances followed, but his career had passed its peak before he turned 30.
In 1962, he married long-time girlfriend Asa Maynor. Their son, Logan, was born on September 13, 1965. Edd and Asa's marriage ended in divorce in 1971, partially due to his substance abuse. In 1982, he succeeded in going "clean and sober" but never remarried. Byrnes died on January 8, 2020, aged 87, in Santa Monica, California.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Prolific, multi-talented comedy writer, story editor, actor and director. His father was an Air Force general (Paul Steinberg Zuckerman) turned stockbroker and his mother was silent screen star Ruth Taylor, formerly a member of Mack Sennett's bathing beauties. Buck Henry's first fling with comedy was as a contributor to the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern magazine (known as 'Jacko') while he was still at college. His fellow writers there included such luminaries as Dr. Seuss, novelist Budd Schulberg and the playwright Frank D. Gilroy. Henry attended Harvard Military Academy for a short time before developing an interest in acting which led to a few small roles on Broadway. His budding career was interrupted by military service during the Korean War. In 1961, Henry joined a small improvisational off-Broadway theatre troupe called The Premise for a year before moving to Hollywood. He was to find his greatest popularity in the 60s as one of the principal hosts of Saturday Night Live (1975), writer for The Garry Moore Show (1958) and co-creator/writer (with Mel Brooks) of Get Smart (1965), for which he won an Emmy in 1967. Prior to that, he had already achieved a certain amount of notoriety as co-perpetrator (with Alan Abel) of a hoax which had Henry masquerading as G. Clifford Prout, Jr., president of the bogus Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, making public appearances on network television and other media, demanding that all zoos and wildlife parks be closed until all animals were "properly dressed". At one time he tried to put huge boxer shorts on a baby elephant at San Francisco Zoo. The hoax was eventually exposed after Henry was spotted as an actor by a fellow CBS employee during a Walter Cronkite interview.
One of a new wave of satirists (others including Woody Allen and Alan Arkin) Henry brought an edgier, smarter, more anarchic and at times abrasive style to his writing. Some of his quotable one-liners (in particular for Get Smart) are - and will continue to be - idiomatic. While he was original, clever and invariably funny, not all of Henry's endeavours panned out. Two of his TV parodies proved to be conspicuous failures: Captain Nice (1967) (a send-up of Batman) and Quark (1977) (a Star Trek parody about interstellar garbage collectors). On the plus side, Henry was Oscar-nominated twice: the first time for his screenplay of The Graduate (1967), the second for co-directing (with star Warren Beatty ) the re-make of Heaven Can Wait (1978). Following The Graduate, a New York Times reviewer described him as a cross between Jack Lemmon and Wally Cox , "a terrifying practical joker and a compulsive reader of 200 periodicals a month". He was much in demand as a guest on talk shows (including Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Dick Cavett) and appeared as a self-deprecating actor in most of the films he wrote: as a hotel desk clerk in The Graduate, the cynical Colonel Korn in Catch-22 (1970), a lunatic in Candy (1968), a priest and a TV anchorman in First Family (1980), and so on. In Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) he also had a rare co-starring role as a father looking for his runaway daughter. Buck Henry passed away at the age of 89 in Los Angeles on January 8 2020.One of Henry's achievements was co-creating (with Mel Brooks) the spy spoof GET SMART.- Alexis Eddy was born on 28 March 1996 in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. She died on 9 January 2020 in Mannington, West Virginia, USA.
- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Ivan Passer was one of the key authors of the "new wave" of Czech cinema, a group of young people who forged an energetic and transgressive film movement in the 1960s, breaking away from the precepts of hard socialist realism. Passer was not only the author of the scenarios of his own films, but he also worked on the scripts of the first four motion pictures made by his countryman, friend and colleague Milos Forman: "Konkurs" (1963), "Black Petr" ( 1964), "Loves of a Blonde" (1965) and "The Firemen's Ball" (1967).
Passer was born in Prague, the son of Marianna (Mandelíková) and Alois Passer. He was the grandson of a silent movie screenwriter. Ivan's parents were persecuted by the Nazis for their Jewish heritage. Ivan was a rebel boy, sent to a boarding school where he became friends with Milos. Together they went to study cinema at the FAMU film school in Prague, but young Ivan was eventually expelled from the academy. By then he had acquired skills in movie-making, some experience and had key friends, such as cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek. With Forman and other friends, they made their first movies.
In 1965 Passer made a remarkable first feature, the beautiful "Intimate Lighting", a film of impressionist inspiration that immediately established his name as a promising new director. But the social pressures and political unrest in Czechoslovakia, which culminated in 1968 with the Soviet invasion, led him into exile the following year. However, in the United States he did not achieve the notoriety of Forman, who received the best proposals, while he rejected offers that did not convince him: for example, he refused to make "Yentl" for a number of reasons, including his conviction that Barbra Streisand was too old and famous for the role, in opposition to other key performers as Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving. Likewise, he refused to make films with elements of violence, which he always opposed. During World War II he had been directly exposed to violence, and he believed that it was dangerous to represent it in films: violence, he said, affects "some people who are not able to realize the difference between reality and fantasy."
However, he made some worthy movies, such as his American debut "Born to Win" (1971), a complex portrait of a heroin-addict hairdresser; his satire on civil surveillance, "Law and Disorder" (1974); the comedy about money-laundering bankers "Silver Bears" (1977), and the cult film "Cutter's Way" (1981), in which a war veteran investigates a crime, despite he only has one eye, one arm and one leg. For television he directed the biopic "Stalin" in 1992.
Passer taught film at the University of Southern California, and lectured students in foreign film academies. He died in Reno, Nevada, on January 9, 2020.- Producer
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Born in Columbus, Ohio as Carolyn Louise Kramer to Warren A. and Ann (nee Caldwell) Kramer, when she was 18 months old her mother died unexpectedly. She was raised by her grandparents, Frank and Louise (nee Orton) Caldwell of Columbus.
She attended the Ohio State University Laboratory School in Columbus and was graduated from MacDuffie School in Springfield, Massachusetts. As a freshman at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, she met Rod Serling, a returning World War II veteran attending the college. They wed two years later, on July 31, 1948, and graduated in 1950 before moving to Cincinnati, where Rod worked for a local radio station.- Cathy Crawford was born on 13 January 1947 in Dyersburg, Tennessee, USA. She was an actress, known for Roller Boogie (1979), What's My Line? (1950) and The Mike Douglas Show (1961). She died on 10 January 2020 in Pennsylvania, USA.She and her twin sister, the late Cindy Crawford, were adopted daughters of Joan Crawford.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Casting Director
Stan Kirsch was an American actor and acting coach from New York City. He appeared in television commercials as a child. His most notable acting role was that of young immortal Richie Ryan in the fantasy television series "Highlander: The Series" (1992-1998). His character was introduced as a student and surrogate son for the protagonist Duncan MacLeod (played by Adrian Paul). Richie remained as one of the series' main characters until his death in the finale of the 5th season. Kirsch also depicted an alternate-reality version of Richie in the two-part finale of the 6th season.
In 1972, he appeared in television commercials for Campbell's soup. He would continue to appear in commercials during his early career. He decided to pursue an acting career. His earliest credited role in television was a guest star role in the short-lived western series "Riders in the Sky" (1991). In 1992, Kirsch made a few appearances in the soap opera "General Hospital" (1992-).
Kirsch had his first recurring role as Richie Ryan "Highlander: The Series" . Richie was initially depicted as an orphaned thief, who became a surrogate son for the centuries-old immortal Duncan MacLeod. He was a wisecracking teenager, who felt bewildered when surrounded by immortals with lifelong obsessions and hidden agendas. By the 2nd season, Richie realized that he was also immortal. He started becoming a more cynical character, with lethal conflicts of his own. He also displayed a ruthless streak. The screenwriters eventually decided to write him out. In his final regular episode, the demon Ahriman manipulates Duncan into killing Richie. The event shatters Duncan's self-confidence. Richie's episode turned out to be one the most controversial episodes in the series, as Richie was a fan-favorite character.
In 1995, Kirsch had a memorable guest-star role in the sitcom "Friends" (1994-2004). He played Ethan, the new boyfriend of regular character Monica Geller (played by Courteney Cox). Monica has been told that Ethan is a college student, and she is initially thrilled to date a younger man. Until Ethan confesses that he is a high school student and still underage. Monica breaks up with him in disgust.
Kirsch played two different roles in the legal drama television series "JAG" (1995-2005). He first appeared as a young ensign in 1996, and then as a lieutenant in 2001. He appeared frequently as a guest in other series of this period, such as "Love Boat: The Next Wave" and "Family Law".
Kirsch had a rare role in a theatrical film, when playing deputy sheriff Stuart Dempsey in the horror film "Shallow Ground" (2004). In the film, local police officers arrest an adolescent boy who is covered in blood. The boy becomes the main suspects in several unsolved disappearances in the area. The boy somehow has access to the memories of the dead, and Stuart and several other characters are revealed to have skeletons in their closet. The film debuted at the "Dead by Dawn Edinburgh Horror Film Festival".
Kirsch's acting roles became fewer in the late 2000s, but he had a change in his career path. In 2008, he founded the acting studio "Stan Kirsch Studios.". He primarily worked as an acting coach for the rest of his life. He reportedly had many students, and he was regarded as very good at his job.
Kirsch committed suicide by hanging on January 11, 2020, at the age of 51. The causes for his suicide were unknown. He was survived by his wife and business partner Kristyn Green. The official "Highlander" Facebook page posted an obituary for him, and the press reported grieving reactions by Kirsch's former students. Despite a rather brief career, Kirsch is fondly remembered for his acting roles.- Norma Michaels was born on 13 March 1924 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Easy A (2010), Wedding Crashers (2005) and You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008). She died on 11 January 2020 in Palm Springs, California, USA.
- William Bogert was born on 25 January 1936 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for WarGames (1983), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and A Perfect Murder (1998). He was married to Eren Ozker. He died on 12 January 2020 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Jack Kehoe was born on 21 November 1934 in Queens, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Serpico (1973), The Sting (1973) and Midnight Run (1988). He died on 14 January 2020 in Hollywood Hills, California, USA.
- Rocky Johnson was born on 24 August 1944 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. He was an actor, known for WWF Championship Wrestling (1972), Spectrum Wrestling (1977) and Wrestling at the Chase (1959). He was married to Ata Johnson, Una Sparks and Sheila. He died on 15 January 2020 in Lutz, Florida, USA.Rocky's son is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
- Christopher Tolkien is the third son of the author J. R. R. Tolkien, and the editor of much of his father's posthumously published work. He drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings, which he signed C. J. R. T.
After his father's death, Christopher Tolkien, whom his father had once called his "chief critic and collaborator", embarked on organizing his father's unpublished writings, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-century earlier. He worked on the manuscripts and was able to produce an edition of The Silmarillion for publication in 1977.
The Silmarillion was followed by Unfinished Tales in 1980 and The History of Middle-earth in twelve volumes between 1983 and 1996.
In 2007 he published The Children of Húrin, another history that J.R.R. Tolkien didn't complete during his lifetime. - Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Terry Jones was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the son of Dilys Louisa (Newnes), a homemaker, and Alick George Parry Jones, a bank clerk. His older brother is production designer Nigel Jones. His grandparents were involved in the entertainment business, having managed the local Amateur Operatic Society and staged Gilbert and Sullivan concerts. Jones studied at St. Edmund Hall College, Oxford University, read English but graduated with a degree in History. He was variously captain of boxing, captain of the Rugby Team and School Captain. At about this time, he befriended Michael Palin. Both performed comedy together as part of the Oxford Revue. In 1965, he again partnered Palin in The Late Show (1966) and worked in the dual capacity of writer/actor on Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) with Palin, Eric Idle and David Jason. Another noteworthy television credit was Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969) (again with Palin) in which fun was poked at famous historical personae, Jones essaying Oliver Cromwell, Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry VIII (among others).
Needless to say that Jones found his greatest success as a founding member of the anarchic and irreverent Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), along with Palin, Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. Jones not only provided much of the written comic input, but also portrayed many of the classic characters: the implausibly obese Mr. Creosote in The Meaning of Life (1983) (who explodes after one more little wafer), the inept Detective Superintendent Harry "Snapper" Organs in the Piranha Brothers sketch (a take on the Kray Twins), the tobacconist in the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch and numerous assorted shrill-voiced, slovenly 'rat-bag women' (Mrs. Equator comes to mind).
The Pythons were unconventional, controversial, certainly groundbreaking and invariably inspired, at their best in their unrelenting satirical attacks on established British institutions, ruling hierarchies and the class structure. Jones later said "The thing is we never thought Python was a success when it was actually happening, it was only with the benefit of hindsight". In addition to writing and acting, Jones also co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) (with Terry Gilliam) and took solo directing credit for Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life. Post-Python, he rejoined Palin as co-writer for some of the very best episodes of Ripping Yarns (1976), including Whinfrey's Last Case, Tompkinson's Schooldays, Murder at Moorstone Manor, The Curse of the Claw and The Testing of Eric Oldthwaite. Jones later scripted Labyrinth (1986) from a story by Jim Henson and Dennis Lee and wrote, as well as directed, Erik the Viking (1989) and Absolutely Anything (2015), a science fiction comedy with Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale.
On a more serious note, Jones sidelined as a newspaper columnist and was an outspoken social and political commentator (a staunch critic of the Iraq War). His lifelong fascination with medieval and ancient history (and Geoffrey Chaucer in particular) led to presenting a series of television documentaries (Medieval Lives (2004) and Barbarians (2006))) as well as publishing several well researched, if sometimes controversial, books including Chaucer's Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary and Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery.
Jones died at the age of 77 on 21 January 2020 from complications of dementia, at his home in Highgate, North London.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John Karlen was born on 28 May 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Cagney & Lacey (1981), Dark Shadows (1966) and House of Dark Shadows (1970). He was married to Betty Karlen. He died on 22 January 2020 in Burbank, California, USA.- Tyler Gwozdz was born on 18 June 1990 in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA. He died on 23 January 2020 in Palm Beach County, Florida, USA.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Marsha Kramer was born on 19 June 1945 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Jumper (2008), Double Jeopardy (1999) and Red Riding Hood (2011). She was married to Jim Keller. She died on 23 January 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Kobe Bean Bryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Bryant won five NBA championships, was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth in league all-time regular season and postseason scoring. He was posthumously voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020 and named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team in 2021.
Born in Philadelphia and partly raised in Italy, Bryant was recognized as the top American high-school basketball player while at Lower Merion. The son of former NBA player Joe Bryant, he declared for the 1996 NBA draft and was selected by the Charlotte Hornets with the 13th overall pick; he was then traded to the Lakers. As a rookie, Bryant earned a reputation as a high-flyer by winning the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest, and was named an All-Star by his second season. Despite a feud with teammate Shaquille O'Neal, the pair led the Lakers to three consecutive NBA championships from 2000 to 2002.
In 2003, Bryant was charged with sexual assault;with the alleged victim being a 19 year old hotel employee. Criminal charges were later dropped after the accuser failed to testify, and a lawsuit was settled out of court, with Bryant issuing a public apology and admitting to a sexual encounter while maintaining the interaction was consensual. The accusation briefly tarnished Bryant's reputation, resulting in the loss of several of his endorsement contracts.
After the Lakers lost the 2004 NBA Finals, O'Neal was traded and Bryant became the cornerstone of the Lakers. He led the NBA in scoring in the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons. On January 22, 2006, he scored a career-high 81 points; the second most points scored in a single NBA game, behind Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game. Bryant led the team to consecutive championships in 2009 and 2010, both times being named NBA Finals MVP. He continued to be among the top players in the league through the 2012-13 season, when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon at age 34. His next two seasons were cut short by injuries to his knee and shoulder, respectively. Citing physical decline, Bryant retired after the 2015-16 season. In 2017, the Lakers retired both his #8 and #24 jerseys, making him the only player in NBA history to have multiple jerseys retired by the same franchise.
The all-time leading scorer in Lakers history, Bryant was the first guard in NBA history to play 20 seasons. His 18 All-Star designations are the second most all time, and he has the most consecutive appearances as a starter. Bryant's four NBA All-Star Game MVP Awards are tied with Bob Pettit for the most in NBA history. He gave himself the nickname "Black Mamba" in the mid-2000s, and the epithet became widely adopted by the general public. He won gold medals on the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic teams. In 2018, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for the film Dear Basketball (2017).
Bryant died, along with his daughter Gianna and seven others, in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, in 2020. A number of tributes and memorials were subsequently issued, including renaming the All-Star MVP Award in his honor.
He was. 5× NBA champion (2000-2002, 2009, 2010); 2× NBA Finals MVP (2009, 2010); NBA Most Valuable Player (2008); 18× NBA All-Star (1998, 2000-2016); 4× NBA All-Star Game MVP (2002, 2007, 2009, 2011); 11× All-NBA First Team (2002-2004, 2006-2013); 2× All-NBA Second Team (2000, 2001); 2× All-NBA Third Team (1999, 2005); 9× NBA All-Defensive First Team (2000, 2003, 2004, 2006-2011); 3× NBA All-Defensive Second Team (2001, 2002, 2012)- Nina Griscom was born on 8 May 1954 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for At First Sight (1999) and Iron Chef America: The Series (2004). She was married to Leonel Alfredo Piraino, Dr. Daniel Clufton Baker III, Lloyd Preston Griscom Jr. and Joseph Nicholas Pantano. She died on 25 January 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
- John Andretti was born on 12 March 1963 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. He was married to Nancy Summers. He died on 30 January 2020 in Mooresville, North Carolina, USA.
- Producer
- Writer
- Executive
Fred Silverman was born in 1937, and quickly grew up into the television business. After starting out in the mail-room of ABC-TV in the late 1950s, he rose to director of program development at WGN-TV, Chicago in the early '60s. One day, he abandoned his car during a snowstorm and boarded a plane for New York, where he gained a position as head of Daytime Programming at CBS-TV. In 1970, he became the programming head of CBS, where he programmed such hits as The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), All in the Family (1971), M*A*S*H (1972), The Jeffersons (1975), Kojak (1973) and The Sonny and Cher Show (1976). In 1975, he left for ABC-TV, where he worked closely with Michael Eisner and Brandon Tartikoff. He developed such new hits as Laverne & Shirley (1976), The Love Boat (1977), Donny and Marie (1975) and Soap (1977). By the end of the 1977-8 season, ABC was number one, Daytime and Nigttime. In 1978, he joined NBC as President and CEO. His presence helped stem the audience erosion of the prior 5 years with new programs such as Diff'rent Strokes (1978), Real People (1979) and Hill Street Blues (1981). During his tenure, he made program commitments that led to St. Elsewhere (1982) and Cheers (1982), promoted Brandon Tartikoff to President of Entertainment and laid the groundwork for NBC's turnaround in the 80s. Management changes at parent RCA led to Silverman's departure in June, 1981 and his replacement by Grant Tinker. Silverman formed "The Fred Silverman Company" and became an independent producer. Among his successes were "Perry Mason Movies", Matlock (1986), In the Heat of the Night (1988), Jake and the Fatman (1987) and Diagnosis Murder (1993). Silverman remains in the independent production business and also does program consulting.Silverman produced a formidable number - and variety - of TV series throughout his career, including MATLOCK...and the occasional flop, notably SUPERTRAIN and THE BRADY BUNCH VARIETY HOUR.- Writer
- Actress
- Producer
In 2002 Mary Higgins Clark published her memoir "Kitchen Privileges". The book describes her upbringing, first marriage and how she became such a famous author. Meanwhile 36 movies have been made that are based on Mary Higgins Clark's thrillers. For a while Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter published their own magazine.Among others, Clark's novels include A STRANGER IS WATCHING; this was adapted for the big screen, in the early 1980s, by the creative teams who - between themselves - also gave us FRIDAY THE 13TH and THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI.- Actor
- Director
Kevin Conway was born on 29 May 1942 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Gettysburg (1993), Thirteen Days (2000) and Invincible (2006). He was married to Mila Burnette. He died on 5 February 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.Conway's output includes 1981's THE FUNHOUSE (in three roles, including that of murderous carnival-impresario Conrad Straker)...and, on stage, OF MICE AND MEN (playing George to James Earl Jones's Lennie).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. His parents, Bryna (Sanglel) and Herschel Danielovitch, were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mahilyow Voblast (now in Belarus). Although growing up in a poor ghetto, Douglas was a fine student and a keen athlete and wrestled competitively during his time at St. Lawrence University. Professional wrestling helped pay for his studies as did working on the side as a waiter and a bellboy. However, he soon identified an acting scholarship as a way out of his meager existence, and was sufficiently talented to gain entry into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in "Spring Again" before his career was interrupted by World War II. He joining the United States Navy in 1941, and then after the end of hostilities in 1945, returned to the theater and some radio work. On the insistence of ex-classmate Lauren Bacall, movie producer Hal B. Wallis screen-tested Douglas and cast him in the lead role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). His performance received rave reviews and further work quickly followed, including an appearance in the low-key drama I Walk Alone (1947), the first time he worked alongside fellow future screen legend Burt Lancaster. Such was the strong chemistry between the two that they appeared in seven films together, including the dynamic western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), the John Frankenheimer political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and their final pairing in the gangster comedy Tough Guys (1986). Douglas once said about his good friend: "I've finally gotten away from Burt Lancaster. My luck has changed for the better. I've got nice-looking girls in my films now."
After appearing in "I Walk Alone," Douglas scored his first Oscar nomination playing the untrustworthy and opportunistic boxer Midge Kelly in the gripping Champion (1949). The quality of his work continued to garner the attention of critics and he was again nominated for Oscars for his role as a film producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and as tortured painter Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), both directed by Vincente Minnelli. In 1955, Douglas launched his own production company, Bryna Productions, the company behind two pivotal film roles in his career. The first was as French army officer Col. Dax in director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant anti-war epic Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas reunited with Kubrick for yet another epic, the magnificent Spartacus (1960). The film also marked a key turning point in the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. At Douglas' insistence, Trumbo was given on-screen credit for his contributions, which began the dissolution of the infamous blacklisting policies begun almost a decade previously that had destroyed so many careers and lives.
Douglas remained busy throughout the 1960s, starring in many films. He played a rebellious modern-day cowboy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), acted alongside John Wayne in the World War II story In Harm's Way (1965), again with The Duke in a drama about the Israeli fight for independence, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and once more with Wayne in the tongue-in-cheek western The War Wagon (1967). Additionally in 1963, he starred in an onstage production of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but despite his keen interest, no Hollywood studio could be convinced to bring the story to the screen. However, the rights remained with the Douglas clan, and Kirk's talented son Michael Douglas finally filmed the tale in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson. Into the 1970s, Douglas wasn't as busy as previous years; however, he starred in some unusual vehicles, including alongside a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the loopy western comedy The Villain (1979), then with Farrah Fawcett in the sci-fi thriller Saturn 3 (1980) and then he traveled to Australia for the horse opera/drama The Man from Snowy River (1982).
Unknown to many, Kirk has long been involved in humanitarian causes and has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department since 1963. His efforts were rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1981), and with the Jefferson Award (1983). Furthermore, the French honored him with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. More recognition followed for his work with the American Cinema Award (1987), the German Golden Kamera Award (1987), The National Board of Reviews Career Achievement Award (1989), an honorary Academy Award (1995), Recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999) and the UCLA Medal of Honor (2002). Despite a helicopter crash and a stroke suffered in the 1990s, he remained active and continued to appear in front of the camera. Until his passing on February 5 2020 at the age of 103, he and Olivia de Havilland were the last surviving major stars from the Golden Years of Hollywood.- Writer
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- Actor
F.X. Feeney was born on 1 September 1953 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Big Brass Ring (1999), Masters of Disaster and Harris Kubrick. He died on 5 February 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Raphaël Coleman was born on 30 September 1994 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Nanny McPhee (2005), The Fourth Kind (2009) and It's Alive (2009). He died on 6 February 2020 in England, UK.
- Actor
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Orson Bean, the American actor, television personality and author, was born Dallas Frederick Burrows on July 22, 1928 in Burlington, Vermont to George Frederick Burrows, a policeman who later went on to become the chief of campus police at Harvard University, and the former Marion Ainsworth Pollard. He was of Irish, Scottish, and English descent. Through the latter, the newborn Dallas Burrows was a first cousin, twice removed, to Calvin Coolidge, who was President of the United States at the time of his birth. The young Dallas, an amateur magician with a taste for the limelight, graduated from Boston's prestigious Latin School in 1946. Too young to see military service during World War II, the future Orson Bean did a hitch in the U.S. Army (1946-47) in occupied Japan.
After the war, he launched himself onto the nightclub circuit with his new moniker, the "Orson" borrowed from reigning enfant terrible Orson Welles. His comedy act premiered at New York City's Blue Angel nightclub, and the momentum from his act launched him into the orbit of the legitimate theater. He made his Broadway debut on April 30, 1954 in Stalag 17 (1953) producer Richard Condon's only Broadway production as a playwright, "Men of Distinction", along with Robert Preston and Martin Ritt. The play flopped and ran only four appearances.
The following year was to prove kinder: he hosted a summer-replacement television series produced at the Blue Angel, and won a Theatre World Award for his work in the 1954 music revue "John Murray Anderson's Almanac", which co-starred Harry Belafonte, Polly Bergen, Hermione Gingold and Carleton Carpenter. It was a hit that ran for 229 performances. He followed this up with an even bigger hit, the leading role in "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter". Next up was a succès d'estime as the leading man in Herman Wouk's comic play "Nature's Way", which co-starred Bea Arthur, Sorrell Booke and Godfrey Cambridge. Though the play lasted but 67 performances, Orson Bean had established himself on the Broadway stage.
He enjoyed his greatest personal success on Broadway in the 1961-62 season, in the Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical "Subways are for Sleeping", which was directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd and featured music by Jule Styne. Bean received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (his co-star Phyllis Newman won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical). The following season, he was in a bigger hit, the comedy "Never Too Late", which would go on to play for 1,007 performances. After appearing in the flop comedy "I Was Dancing" in November 1964, Bean made his last Broadway appearance in the musical "Illya Darling" in 1967 with Melina Mercouri, directed by fellow blacklister Jules Dassin; it played 320 performances. He also toured in the Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach musical "Promises, Promises".
Bean made an impression as the Army psychiatrist in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959). But it was as a television personality that he made his biggest inroads into the popular consciousness, as well as the popular culture. He appeared in numerous quiz and talk shows, becoming a familiar face in homes as a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth (1956). He also appeared on Norman Lear's cult favorite Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) and its sequel, Forever Fernwood (1977), as "Reverend Brim", and as store owner "Loren Bray" on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993). Much of his role as 105-year-old "Dr. Lester" in the cult film Being John Malkovich (1999) wound up the cutting room floor, but audiences and critics welcomed back his familiar presence.Bean's more-famous roles include the title character in Rod Serling's "Mr. Bevis" on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Bean also lent his voice to "Bilbo Baggins" for the 1977 animated epic THE HOBBIT, and to "Billy the Rabbit" for GARFIELD IN THE ROUGH.- Actor
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Robert Conrad was a graduate of Northwestern University, spending his first few years out of school supporting himself and his family by driving a milk truck and singing in a Chicago cabaret. Conrad befriended up-and-coming actor Nick Adams during this period, and it was Adams who helped Conrad get his first Hollywood work in 1957. A few movie bit parts later, Conrad was signed for a comparative pittance by Warner Bros. studios, and in 1959 was cast as detective Tom Lopaka on the weekly adventure series Hawaiian Eye. Upon the 1963 cancellation of this series, Conrad made a handful of Spanish and American films and toured with a nightclub act in Australia and Mexico City. Cast as frontier secret agent James West in The Wild Wild West (1965) in 1965, Conrad brought home $5000 a week during the series' first season and enjoyed increasing remunerations as West remained on the air until 1969. There are those who insist that Wild Wild West would have been colorless without the co-starring presence of Ross Martin, an opinion with which Conrad has always agreed. The actor's bid to star in a 1970 series based on the venerable Nick Carter pulp stories got no further than a pilot episode, while the Jack Webb-produced 1971 Robert Conrad series The D.A. was canceled after 13 episodes. When Roy Scheider pulled out of the 1972 adventure weekly Assignment: Vienna, Conrad stepped in--and was out, along with the rest of Assignment: Vienna, by June of 1973. Conrad had better luck with 1976's Baa Baa Black Sheep, aka Black Sheep Squadron, a popular series based on the World War II exploits of Major "Pappy" Boyington. Cast as a nurse on this series was Conrad's daughter Nancy, setting a precedent for nepotism that the actor practiced as late as his tenth TV series, 1989's Jesse Hawkes, wherein Conrad co-starred with his sons Christian and Shane.
Though few of his series have survived past season one, Conrad has enjoyed success as a commercial spokesman and in the role of G. Gordon Liddy (whom the actor admired) in the 1982 TV movie Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy (1982). As can be gathered from the Liddy assignment, Conrad's politics veered towards conservatism; in 1981, he and Charlton Heston were instrumental in toppling Ed Asner and his liberal contingent from power in the Screen Actors Guild.
As virile and athletic as ever in the 1990s, Robert Conrad continued to appear in action roles both on TV and in films; he also maintained strong ties with his hometown of Chicago, and could be counted on to show up at a moment's notice as a guest on the various all-night programs of Chicago radio personality Eddie Schwartz.Conrad starred with two of his sons, Chris and Shane, in the short-lived HIGH MOUNTAIN RANGERS...which was produced by his daughter Joan, and which co-starred Joan's husband Tim Erwin.- Actress
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Tall, graceful, supremely accomplished American actress, singer, dancer and choreographer Paula Kelly was born in Jacksonville, Florida, one of three daughters, to Ruth and Lehman Kelly. The family moved to Harlem in New York when she was six years old. Unlike her siblings, she had strong musical inclinations which were recognised early on by her father (himself a jazz musician), who enrolled her in the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music & Art. Paula excelled as a star pupil. This opened doors to an audition at the prestigious Juilliard School and led to a four-year scholarship. Having trained under the academy's first director of dance, Martha Hill, she graduated in 1964 and that same year made her debut on Broadway. During much of the 1960s, specialising in modern dance, she performed with such luminaries as Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey and went on tour as a dancer with Harry Belafonte.
The inevitable breakthrough to popular success came when she was cast as Helene (taxi dancer at the Fandango Ballroom) in London's West End production of "Sweet Charity" (1967), directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. Paula ended up winning the London Variety Award for Best Supporting Actress. The play itself enjoyed a healthy run but was ultimately eclipsed by the motion picture Sweet Charity (1969), for which Paula was able to recreate her stage role. Now firmly established on the screen, she went on to sing and dance in a number of musical television specials and/or variety shows headlining Gene Kelly (with whom she performed a duet), Dean Martin, Quincy Jones, Richard Pryor and former Sweet Charity co-star Sammy Davis Jr.. She also appeared as Tiger Lily, teaming up with Danny Kaye and Mia Farrow for the BBC production of Peter Pan (1976), as well as taking on the dual role of co-choreographer. In 1971, she starred in a Los Angeles stage production of the all-singing, all-dancing musical revue "Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope", for which she won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.
Since the popularity of musicals had waned by the early 1970s, Paula had little choice but to take on straight dramatic acting roles. On several occasions she provided the female interest in a series of fashionable, sassy, tough blaxploitation films, playing cool, happening chicks opposite action men like Robert Hooks, Paul Winfield and Thalmus Rasulala (and often rising above the routine dramatic material afforded her). She was Leggy Peggy in the cult comedy Uptown Saturday Night (1974) with Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor and had featured roles in the sci-fi classics The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). She also appeared in many television guest spots, with notable recurring roles in The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Police Woman (1974) and the sitcom Night Court (1984), for which she received the first of two Emmy Award nominations. She retired from acting in 1999. Her husband was the British film and television director Don Chaffey, who predeceased her in 1990.
Paula Kelly died of heart failure on February 9, 2020 at age 77.- Marge Redmond was born on 14 December 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), The Flying Nun (1967) and Family Plot (1976). She was married to Jack Weston (I). She died on 10 February 2020 in the USA.
- Cinematographer
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Joseph Vilsmaier was born on 24 January 1939 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Stalingrad (1993), The Harmonists (1997) and Brother of Sleep (1995). He was married to Dana Vávrová and Hanna Vilsmaier. He died on 11 February 2020 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actress
Lynn Cohen was born on 10 August 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for Munich (2005), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) and The Cobbler (2014). She was married to Ronald Theodore Cohen and Gilbert Laman Frazen. She died on 14 February 2020 in New York City, New York, USA.- Daniel Lee Martin was born on 16 March 1965 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. He was an actor, known for Cherry Malicious (2016) and The Outdoor Experience (2017). He died on 14 February 2020 in New Port Richey, Florida, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Esther Scott was born on 13 April 1953 in Queens, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Transformers (2007), Dreamgirls (2006) and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). She died on 14 February 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- John Shrapnel was born in Birmingham, the son of Norman and Myfanwy Shrapnel. He was brought up in Stockport and south London, attending City of London School and Cambridge University. He was an original member of the National Youth Theatre and had worked extensively in theatre, particularly the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He lived in Suffolk and London.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Caroline Flack was born on 9 November 1979 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Bo' Selecta! (2002), Love Advent (2011) and Bo Selecta: Proper Crimbo (2003). She died on 15 February 2020 in London, England, UK.- Actress
- Producer
Amie Harwick was born on 20 May 1981 in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for The Devil's Muse (2007), Midnight 2020 (2016) and Blabber Box (2011). She died on 15 February 2020 in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Nikita Waligwa was born in 2004 in Uganda. She was an actress, known for Queen of Katwe (2016). She died on 15 February 2020 in Naalya, Kampala, Uganda.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jason Davis was born on 14 October 1984 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Rush Hour (1998), Beverly Hills Ninja (1997) and Recess (1997). He died on 16 February 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Kellye Nakahara was born on 16 January 1948 in Oahu, Hawaii, USA. She was an actress, known for Clue (1985), M*A*S*H (1972) and Doctor Dolittle (1998). She was married to David Wallett. She died on 16 February 2020 in Pasadena, California, USA.- Actress
- Music Department
- Executive
Ja'Net DuBois was a multi-talented and diverse performer. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York and began her career on Broadway. She has appeared in various plays, including "Golden Boy" with Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Gossett Jr., and "A Raisin in the Sun". She moved onto TV roles, receiving a Peabody Award for a 1969 CBS children's movie J.T. (1969). She then appeared in a daytime serial, Love of Life (1951); she is the first African American actress to have a regular serial role.
She was best known for her role as the sexy, confident, gossipy "Willona Woods" on Good Times (1974). She composed and sang the theme song, "Movin' On Up", for another Norman Lear series, The Jeffersons (1975). She appeared in many films, including the blaxploitation parody, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), as a tough and loving mother. She also did voice-over work, for which she received two Emmys.
She co-founded the "Pan African Film & Arts Festival", which showcases global films about people of African descent and fine arts. She is a community activist whose DuBois Care Foundation's mission is to empower youth by supporting after-school programs. She was also a painter who regularly exhibited her work. She released a CD in 2008, "Hidden Treasures", which includes the well-known TV theme song, "Movin' On Up".- Music Artist
- Actor
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Bashar Barakah Jackson (July 20, 1999 - February 19, 2020), known professionally as Pop Smoke, was an American rapper. He is considered by many to be the face of Brooklyn drill. Born and raised in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Pop Smoke began his musical career in late 2018 with his debut single "MPR (Panic Part 3 Remix)". Pop Smoke rose to fame with the release of his breakout singles "Welcome to the Party" and "Dior" in 2019. He often collaborated with UK drill artists and producers, who employed more minimal and aggressive instrumentation than drill artists from Chicago.- Actress
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Red-haired actress Claudette Nevins was raised in Brooklyn, the daughter of fur salesman Joseph Weintraub and his wife Anna (Lander) who worked in the garment industry. She attended the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan and later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from New York University. Claudette made her first appearance on stage in a 1958 production of Waltz of the Toreadors at the Woodstock Playhouse. Two years later she debuted on Broadway in The Wall, opposite George C. Scott. In the course of the next four decades she went on to act in numerous plays in New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles. A seasoned and versatile character actress, Claudette's work encompassed roles in many notable plays, including The Iceman Cometh, Wait until Dark, Plaza Suite (again on Broadway and starring George C. Scott), Twelfth Night, The Little Foxes, Blithe Spirit, The Great White Hope and The Philadelphia Story. From 1994, Claudette was a regular member of the Los Angeles Matrix Theatre Company. Her equally prolific screen career began with a leading role in the cult horror flic The Mask (1961) and was followed by guest spots on numerous TV shows, her parts ranging from a cop's wife in episodes of the crime anthology Police Story (1973) to a villainous night club proprietress in the spoof series Police Squad! (1982); from a Red Cross nurse 'mock marrying' Charles Emerson Winchester III in M*A*S*H (1972) to an alien officer in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998). She was also an accomplished voice-over actress, her credits including dual roles in the animated science fiction series Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975).
Claudette retired from acting in 2005. She had two daughters by her second husband, real estate investor Benjamin L. Pick, who predeceased her in 2017.- Writer
- Actor
Probably one of the greatest adventure novelists of our time. When his novel "Raise the Titanic" was bought for $840,000 by Viking Publishing in 1976, it put him on the map after 11 years of hard work. Before his success with RTT, he previously had written "Pacific Vortex", which wasn't published until after his successes, "The Mediterranean Caper" and "Iceberg". Originally in advertising, first as an award-winning copy writer, and then as creative director for two of the nation's largest agencies. He started his writing career when his wife, Barbara, got a night job for the local police station as a clerk. At night after putting his kids to bed, he had hardly anything to do and no one to talk to. So out of solitude he decided to write a book. After a few nights of thinking of an idea on what to write about he thought it would be fun to produce a little paperback series. The thought of a best-seller never crossed his mind. Thanks to his marketing experience, he began researching and analyzing all the series heroes, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dumas. Next came Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and all the other fiction detectives and spies. Like the likes of Bulldog Drummond, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Matt Helm, James Bond. Whatever he could find, he studied them all. With his experience in creative advertising under his belt, he started to wonder what he could conceive that was totally different. He didn't want to compete with already-famous authors. He was determined not to write about a detective, secret agent or undercover investigator or deal in murder mysteries. He then decided his hero's adventure would be based on and under water. And thus, the basic concept for Dirk Pitt the marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) was born. He found it interesting that almost no authors were writing pure, old-fashioned adventure. It seemed to him, a lost genre. After taking a refresher course in English, he launched his first book that introduced Pitt and most all of his characters who appeared in the upcoming novels to follow afterwards. The first book was named "Pacific Vortex". Dr. Cussler, leaned heavily on Alistair McLean on his first two books and was quite flattered when critics told him they were quite similar. But by his third book, he began to drift into his own style with a myriad of sub-plots. And because of that, "Iceberg", to this day, has and always will be a sentimental favorite of his because it never ended where it began. After completing "Pacific Vortex", he was about to launch a second book when he was offered a position at a large advertising agency. It would have been a wonderful opportunity with a well-paid salary, but his wife challenged him. She knew that if he wanted to write sea stories, why didn't he take a job as a clerk at the local dive shop who at the time was hiring. He wasted little time and in 1968 he started working for the Aquatic Center Dive ship in Newport Beach as a behind-the-counter-salesman. Never being a certified diver, it took him just a few weeks. Once he was certified, Dr. Cussler started bringing in his typewriter in the morning and wrote at a card table behind the counter when business was slow which was usually in the afternoons. A little over a year later, Dr. Cussler finished his second novel, "Mediterranean Caper". That's when he decided to leave the shop and return to advertising. With constant rejection letters on his first novel, Pacific Vortex, Dr. Cussler had decided that it would be a smart decision to find himself a literary agent. With a little cunning and ingenuity, he soon met Peter Lampack, who was with the William Morris Agency in Manhattan. With Peter liking his second novel, "Mediterranean Caper", Dr. Cussler now had a contract. With the contract promptly signed and mailed, he started working on his third novel, "Iceberg". Now that he had an agent and with renewed inspiration, Dr. Cussler left the advertising agency, and decided to write full time. Fed up with Southern California and wanting to change his family's lifestyle, he sold his boat, house and car. He bought a new family sedan and a tent trailer. After a wonderful summer, he and his family relocated to Estes Park, Colorado. Once settled in, he started to work on his third novel, Iceberg. After a year he finished Iceberg and with his agent having no success finding an editor to take "Mediterranean Caper" and now, "Iceberg" and with his savings about depleted, Dr. Cussler went back to advertising. Once he got himself a job with a very small agency and started to prove to them his value, Dr. Cussler moved his family to the suburb of Arvada just outside of Denver. It wouldn't be long before he was given the pink slip again. Taking a once broken down and small firm and making it into multi-million company, Dr. Cussler vowed to never work in the advertising agency again. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because that's when he started to work on "Raise The Titanic!" in one corner of his unfinished basement. By then his agent, Peter Lampack, had found a small publisher to take Mediterranean Caper. Printing fifty-thousand copies and selling thirty-two thousand, Pyramid Publishing paid him five thousand dollars and sold the novel for seventy-five cents a piece. Less then a year later, Dr. Cussler sold his novel, Iceberg to Dodd Mead Publishing for five-thousand dollars. The novel sold thirty-two thousand copies with an initial intent of only printing five thousand. Once he finished Raise The Titanic, Dr. Cussler sent it off to his agent. Once approved, it was relayed to Dodd Mead. It was rejected within ten days. His agent decided to sent the renounced manuscript to Putnam but they wanted a massive rewrite which Dr. Cussler refused to do. And what Dr. Cussler would later say, "Out of the blue, Viking Press bought it, asked for very few changes and paid me seventy-five hundred dollars." And that's when "strange forces" went to work. A London editor from Macmillan Publishing was visiting a friend at Viking and heard about the Dr. Cussler manuscript. Since the Titanic was a British ship, he asked for a copy of the manuscript to read on his plane back to England. He ended up wanting to buy it. But his agent had already sold "Iceberg" to Sphere Publishing, a small publishing house in London, for four hundred dollars. Since Sphere had the first option, they put in a bid for the manuscript that was promptly topped by Macmillan. Once the dust settled from the bidding war, Sphere owned the book, paying twenty-two thousand dollars, a high price for England in those days. Getting the feeling that things were suddenly falling into place, Dr. Cussler called his agent and got his rights back for Mediterranean Caper. At the same time, Dodd Mead Publishing notified his agent that Playboy Publications had offered four thousand dollars for the paperback right to Iceberg. Still with that "gut" feeling, Dr. Cussler told his agent that he would buy back Mediterranean Caper from Dodd Mead Publishing for five thousand dollars. The deal was done two weeks later. With the buzz and interest about Raise The Titanic over in Britain, it didn't take long for American paperback publishers to take notice. It soon went to auction with Viking Press winning the rights for $840,000. Once the auction was over and finding out that "Raise The Titanic" was the third Dirk Pitt novel, Viking Press bought them both for forty thousand dollar a piece. "Raise The Titanic" was Cussler's first novel to have several plots going on at the same time and to have them all converge at the end. Since then, Dr. Cussler has sold over 100 million copies of his Dirk Pitt Adventures. He continues to write Dirk Pitt adventures while living a life that nearly parallels that of his action hero. Like Pitt, Dr. Cussler enjoys discovering and collecting things of historical significance. With NUMA (National Underwater & Marine Agency, a non profit group begun by Cussler) he has had an amazing record of finding over 60 shipwrecks, one of which was the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley. And recently discovered the rescue ship Carpathia who picked up the Titanic survivors. Dr. Cussler also has a renowned and extensive classic car collection, which features over 80 examples of custom coachwork. Along with being Chairman of NUMA, he is also a fellow of the Explorers Club (which honored him with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration), the Royal Geographical Society and the American Society of Oceanographers. Married to Barbara Knight for 40 years, with three children and two grandchildren, he divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona. He is represented by the Bartholomeaux Agency."Raise the Titanic" was made even more famous by Lord Lew Grade...for all the wrong reasons. Grade adapted Cussler's masterpiece into a box-office flop which (along with "Saturn 3" and "Legend of the Lone Ranger") bankrupted ITC.- Balding, often moustachioed Brooklyn-born Eugene Dynarski was a prolific character actor of Polish ancestry. He moved to California in 1957 after serving in the U.S. Navy and learned his craft at Los Angeles City College, Harbor College and UCLA. Obtaining acting work via renowned casting director Lynn Stalmaster, he first appeared on the screen in 1963, frequently personifying characters of Slavic background with names like Pollick, Barmak, Krodak or Kowalski. He had a particularly good line in villains which he made all the more menacing with his outwardly calm but intense manner. He portrayed Stalin to critical acclaim on the stage in a 1987 production of David Pownall's "Master Class" (as well as providing the dictator's voice for Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)). Dynarski made appearances in both Star Trek (1966) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), the latter featuring him as a starbase commander. Very much a regular contributor to the science fiction genre, he also played Egghead's henchman Benedict in Batman (1966), donned one of Paul Zastupnevich's monster heads as a sea centaur in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964), played a malevolent prison warden in Land of the Giants (1968) and an ill-fated hunter in The X-Files (1993) who falls victim to a bat-human hybrid monster. Dynarski also had small parts in the Steven Spielberg productions Duel (1971) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). In 1979, he established the Gene Dynarski Theater near Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles which remained in operation until the 1990s. Dynarski retired from screen acting in 2003.
- Dieter Laser is a German actor. He is known to English-speaking audiences for his roles: Mantrid in Lexx, Prof. Otto Blaettchen in The Ogre and Dr. Joseph Heiter in The Human Centipede (First Sequence), for which he won Best Actor at the Austin Fantastic Fest. In 1975, he was awarded the German Film Award in Gold in the category of Best Actor for his title role in John Glueckstadt.
He was born in Kiel. On a cold winter afternoon at the age of sixteen, Dieter Laser went to the stage door of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg at that time the most famous theatre in Germany and he asked the doorman how to become an actor. There was an extra missing for the Christmas fairy tale afternoon-performance for children and 30 minutes later he stood on stage among a bunch of "sailors". That was the beginning of his career as an extra. - He had grown up in a fundamentalist Christian sect where the Theatre was regarded as devil's work. As a brainwashed believer he had to hazard the consequences. Therefore he made a deal with the devil: 'I will become an actor and I'll pay later on - in hell!' - Watching as an extra the famous actors "The Gods" by doing their marvelous work during rehearsals and performances became his "drama school". Gradually he got a word to speak in a play - then two words - even a sentence - a tiny part - another little part - and one day he suddenly got a contract and overnight his dream had come true: he now was a real actor with whom the "Gods" shook hands. - After 14 passionate years on stage and as a co-founder and member of the board of the meanwhile most famous German theatre, the Schaubuehne in Berlin, he decided to become a freelancer and got his first work for the cinema: the title role in John Glueckstadt. For this performance he won the German Film Award in Gold. Since then, and besides countless guest appearances on the most important stages of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxemburg, with parts like Don Juan, Valmont, Peer Gynt, Macbeth, Captain Ahab etc. Dieter Laser played in about 65 films, at times co-starring with "Gods" like Burt Lancaster, Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Glenn Close, John Malkovich etc.. - Roscoe Born was born on 24 November 1950 in Topeka, Kansas, USA. He was an actor, known for Powwow Highway (1988), All My Children (1970) and Ryan's Hope (1975). He was married to Roberta Weiss, Randall Edwards and Adrienne Hampton. He died on 3 March 2020 in the USA.
- Writer
- Producer
- Music Department
James Lipton was an actor, academic, author, choreographer, interviewer, scriptwriter, and producer for stage and television projects. He was known for creating and hosting the noted and popular TV series Inside the Actors Studio (1994), where successful and prominent actors discussed their craft for the benefit of acting students.
James Lipton was born Louis James Lipton in Detroit, Michigan, to Betty (Weinberg), a teacher and librarian, and Lawrence Lipton (originally Israel Lipschitz), a writer and beatnik poet. His father was a Polish Jewish emigrant, from Lodz, and his maternal grandparents were Russian Jews. Lipton's parents divorced when he was quite young. As a reaction against his beatnik father's anarchic and chaotic lifestyle, Lipton at first chose to pursue a stable and staid career as a lawyer. He originally took up acting as a sideline to finance his law studies but eventually he shifted the focus of his career to acting.
Lipton moved to New York City and undertook twelve years of intensive studies in the performing arts. He studied acting and directing under Stella Adler, widely regarded as the most respected acting teacher in the history of American dramatic arts. Adler's other students at various times have included Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel. Lipton also studied with Harold Clurman and Robert Lewis. He studied movie/TV production and directing at New York University and at The New School. He also studied voice, modern dance, classical ballet, and jazz technique.
Lipton performed in the play "The Autumn Garden" on Broadway in 1951. He became active in several TV soap operas, joining the cast of Guiding Light (1952) where he acted and wrote scripts for several years and later became head writer, all while undertaking his formal acting studies. He was a scriptwriter for The Edge of Night (1956) and he became head writer for Another World (1964), The Best of Everything (1970), Return to Peyton Place (1972) and Capitol (1982).
Lipton wrote the book and the lyrics for the Broadway flop "Nowhere to Go But Up" (1962), and he did the same for "Sherry!" which was produced on stage in 1967 and released as an audio CD in 2004. Also for Broadway, he produced "The Mighty Gents" (1978), "Monteith & Rand" (1979) and co-produced the Tony award-winning "Ain't Misbehavin'" (1978). He choreographed "Charlot" for ballet theater, and for Moliere's play "The Doctor In Spite of Himself" he translated from the original French, adapted it as a musical version, wrote the lyrics, directed and choreographed.
A lover of words, Lipton has made a study of group terms, sometimes called nouns of multitude (examples: a gaggle of geese, a host of angels, etc.). He has published the definitive work on the subject in a best-selling book titled "An Exaltation of Larks". It has been in print continuously since its first edition in 1968. The latest edition, now expanded, contains over 1,100 such phrases. In the book Lipton himself jumps into the lexical fray by offering many new terms of his own invention, including: a score of bachelors, an unction of undertakers, a shrivel of critics, and a queue of actors. Other writings of his have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine and The Paris Review.
In 1983 Lipton published his novel "Mirrors" which is about the lives of dancers. He later wrote and produced it as a TV movie. In television, Lipton has produced some two dozen specials including: twelve Bob Hope Birthday Specials; Bob Hope on the Road to China (1979) , an NBC entertainment special produced in China; and the first time ever televised presidential inaugural gala, for Jimmy Carter.
In the mid-1990s Lipton sought to create a three year educational program for actors that would be a distillation of what he had learned in the twelve years of his own intensive studies. In 1994 he arranged for the Actors Studio -- the home base of "method acting" in the USA for some sixty years now -- to join with New York City's New School University, to form the Actors Studio Drama School, a formal degree-granting program at the graduate level.
At the same time, Lipton created a sub-project within the drama school: a non-credit class called Inside the Actors Studio (1994) where successful and accomplished actors, directors and writers would be interviewed and would answer questions from acting students. These sessions were also taped and broadcast on television for the general public to see. Lipton himself hosts the show and conducts the main interview.
The TV show Inside the Actors Studio (1994) has become a substantial success. In the more than 12 years that it has been on the air, the craft of acting has been discussed by the show's over 200 guests who have included Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Kate Winslet, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Charlize Theron, Robin Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Al Pacino, Cate Blanchett, Martin Scorsese and Dustin Hoffman. The show is viewed in 80 million homes in the USA on the Bravo cable channel and is seen in 125 countries. It has been nominated for 12 Emmy awards. The Actors Studio Drama School performed very well also. During Lipton's term as dean, the school became the largest graduate-level drama school in the United States.
Important changes began in 2004 for both the TV show and the drama school. The New School underwent a major reorganization and seriously cut back its support for drama education. The Actors Studio's collaboration with the New School came to an end and a new drama school as well as a new venue for the TV show were both set up at Pace University, also in New York City.
Lipton's TV show made him so famous that he was frequently parodied on Saturday Night Live (1975) by comic Will Ferrell. Lipton continued to host and produce Inside the Actors Studio (1994), and served as a vice president of the Actors Studio. He held the lifelong title of Dean Emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama Program. In 2007, he wrote a book about the TV show and his life, which was titled "Inside Inside."
The last episode of Inside he hosted aired on January 11, 2018, with Ted Danson as guest. The show began rotating hosts in its 2019 season. James Lipton died on March 2, 2020, in Manhattan. He was survived by wife Kedaki Turner.- Actor
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Max von Sydow was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929 in Lund, Skåne, Sweden, to a middle-class family. He was the son of Baroness Maria Margareta (Rappe), a teacher, and Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, an ethnologist and folklore professor. His surname traces back to his partial German ancestry.
When he was in high school, he and a few fellow students, including Yvonne Lombard, started a theatre club which encouraged his interest in acting. After conscription, he began to study at the Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school (1948-1951), together with Lars Ekborg, Margaretha Krook and Ingrid Thulin. His first role was as Nils the crofter in Alf Sjöberg's Only a Mother (1949). After graduation, he worked at the city theatres in Norrköping and Malmö.
His work in the movies by Ingmar Bergman (especially The Seventh Seal (1957), including the iconic scenes in which he plays chess with Death) made him well-known internationally, and he started to get offers from abroad. His career abroad began with him playing Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); Hawaii (1966) and The Quiller Memorandum (1966). Since then, his career includes very different kind of characters, like Karl Oskar Nilsson in The Emigrants (1971); Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist (1973); Joubert the assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980); the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Never Say Never Again (1983); Liet-Kynes in Dune (1984) the artist Frederick in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Lassefar in Pelle the Conqueror (1987), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination; Dr. Peter Ingham in Awakenings (1990); Lamar Burgess in Minority Report (2002) and The Renter in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), which earned him his second Academy Award nomination.
He became one of Sweden's most admired and professional actors, and is the only male Swedish actor to receive an Oscar nomination. He was nominated twice: for Pelle the Conqueror (1987) in 1988 and for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) in 2012. He received the Guldbagge Award for Best Director in his directing debut, the drama film Ved vejen (1988). In 2016, he joined the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) as the Three-eyed Raven, which earned him his Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Max von Sydow died on March 8, 2020, in Provence, France, and was survived by his wife Catherine Brelet and four children. He was 90.Von Sydow's other roles include: "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (portraying Jesus Christ to Donald Pleasance's Satan, Telly Savalas's Pilate, David McCallum's Judas Iscariot, and Charlton Heston's John the Baptist); "Victory" (as a German soccer champ-turned-Nazi commandant who pits his own handpicked players against a team of Allied POWs, the latter including Sylvester Stallone and Pele); and "The Exorcist" (as Father Lancaster Merrin, seen walking toward Ellen Burstyn's fog-shrouded Georgetown residence in the picture's most famous shot).- Actor
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Johnny Yune was born on 22 October 1936 in Eumseong County, North Chungcheong Province, South Korea. He was an actor and writer, known for They Call Me Bruce (1982), They Still Call Me Bruce (1987) and The Cannonball Run (1981). He was married to Julia Yune. He died on 8 March 2020 in Alhambra, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Lorenzo Brino was born on 21 September 1998 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for 7th Heaven (1996). He died on 9 March 2020 in Yucaipa, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
The television heartthrob from the 1960s and 1970s was the proverbial tall, dark and classically handsome actor. Completing the solid package was a great, muscular build, smooth charm, and an almost perfect set of teeth. Born in 1935 in Kansas City, Kansas, and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he certainly paid his dues before landing his breakthrough as the suave announcer on The Carol Burnett Show (1967) in the late 1960s. The one-time door-to-door encyclopedia peddler, prior to his prime TV job, appeared in poorly-made sci-fi and beach party flicks with such dubious titles as Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966), Swamp Country (1966), Journey to the Center of Time (1967) and Catalina Caper (1967). In time, he was more than just a gorgeous hunk with a resonant voice, and they began to incorporate Waggoner into the show as a comedy sketch partner along with Vicki Lawrence and Harvey Korman. His better scenes typically had him essaying the superficial cad or gleamy-toothed, self-important star. After seven seasons on the knockabout variety show, however, Waggoner felt like a "third banana" and yearned to take a chance on solo stardom. During his off-times, he had prepared himself by appearing in summer stock and/or dinner theater in such breezy assignments as "Boeing, Boeing", "Send Me No Flowers", and "Once More, with Feeling". He also hosted the syndicated quiz show It's Your Bet (1969), and earned added "exposure" as Playgirl Magazine's first semi-nude centerfold in 1973.
Not long after his departure from the Burnett show, he landed the role of Major Steve Trevor on the popular comic strip-based series Wonder Woman (1975), playing the dashing, no-nonsense boss to Diana Prince. Again, the challenge was not there and he remained on the periphery for three seasons. In later years, Waggoner became more personality than performer and only sporadically appeared in glossy mini-movies and TV episodes, occasionally as himself. He appeared in a few feature films (including Love Me Deadly (1972), Surf II (1983) and Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991)). Perhaps surmising he was undone by being too perfect a specimen, he wisely looked into business ventures. In 1979, he successfully started up "Star Waggons", which served film/TV companies with rental trailers. His charming, vainglorious romancer act was for the cameras only. He married only once, to Sharon Kennedy, an actress, financial consultant and realtor. They were married for 59 years and had two sons.- Composer
- Actor
- Director
Genesis P-Orridge was born on 22 February 1950 in Manchester, England, UK. He was a composer and actor, known for The Raspberry Reich (2004), Ghost at No. 9 (2005) and Desire Will Set You Free (2015). He was married to Lady Jaye Breyer P'Orridge and Paula P-Orridge. He died on 14 March 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Writer
Born in Houston, Texas on August 21, 1938, Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, actor, record producer and entrepreneur Kenneth Ray Rogers was the fourth of eight children born to a carpenter father who worked in a shipyard and a mother who was a hospital nurse's assistant. Of humble Irish and Native American heritage, the boy grew up in the poorer section of Houston, but would become the first member of his family to graduate from high school.
Kenny took an early interest in singing and, as a teenager, joined a doo-wop recording group called "The Scholars". The group recorded the song "Poor Little Doggie," and Kenny, age 19, recorded his first solo song, "That Crazy Feeling," for a small Houston label, Carlton Records, and his career was off and running. He subsequently joined the "New Christy Minstrels" 1966 as a singer and double bass/bass guitar player, then splintered off with others from the popular folk music group a year later to form the rock group "The First Edition," an eclectic-styled rock band whose repertoire included rock and roll, R&B, folk and country.
The First Edition's first Billboard hit, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" (1968) was a psychedelic rock song which peaked at #5, and was followed by the more popular soft-rock hit "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (1969) which hit #6 on the US charts and made them a star attraction. Other successes would include "Reuben James" (1969, #26), "Something's Burning" (1970, #11) and "Tell It All Brother" (1970, #17). By this time, the dark-haired, husky-framed, ear-pierced singer's ingratiating personality and sensual gravel tones, affectionately dubbed "Hippie Kenny," had taken center stage and the group changed their name to "Kenny Rogers and the First Edition" in 1969. The First Edition enjoyed worldwide success, appeared on such popular shows as "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," had featured roles in the TV movie The Dream Makers (1975) and went on to host the syndicated TV variety series Rollin' on the River (1971).
Sadly, the pressures of taping a weekly show caused extreme friction within the group and eventually took its toll. After a couple more years of producing songs that couldn't reach the "Top 20," the group decided to disband in 1976 and, inevitable as it was, Kenny went solo. It didn't take long before he started chalking up a string of country-tinged 'Top 20' pop hits with "Lucille" (#5), "Don't Fall in Love With a Dreamer" (#4, with Kim Carnes), "Through the Years" (#13), "We've Got Tonight" (#6, with Sheena Easton) and his two #1 hit sellers "Islands in the Stream" (with Dolly Parton) and "Lady." By the late 1970s, the (now) silver fox had sold over $100 million worth of records. He also made popular hit duets with both country female stars (Parton and Dottie West) as well as the distaff pop elite (Kim Carnes and Sheena Easton).
Into the 1980's Kenny began to feel a downswing in his singing career. After charting lower and lower, he wisely branched off into other successful areas. In 1980, he touched off a modest, lightweight, but highly appealing acting career starting with the Southern-styled TV-movie The Gambler (1980), based on his #1 1979 Grammy-winning song hit. The feature had Kenny starring as poker-playing card shark Brady Hawkes, who attempts to unite with a son he never knew. This led to four equally popular sequels -- Kenny Rogers as The Gambler: The Adventure Continues (1983), Kenny Rogers as The Gambler, Part III: The Legend Continues (1987), The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and Gambler V: Playing for Keeps (1994). Two other old-fashioned western TV movies followed. The first was also based on a hit Kenny Rogers song, Coward of the County (1981), (Country, #3) in which he played a town preacher who tries to mentor his young "cowardly" nephew. The second, Wild Horses (1985), had him starring as a has-been rodeo champion looking for personal fulfillment herding wild mustangs.
Kenny also tried to parlay his popularity as a major country singer into a conservative film career. There would only be one starring role. In Six Pack (1982), Kenny stars as a race car driver who tangles with six roughhouse orphans. Instead, he was back to TV-movies where he went on to appear as himself in two TV country-flavored biopics -- Big Dreams & Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story (1995) and Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story (1997). He also put out the folksy yuletide offering Christmas in America (1990) which had his real-life son Kenneth Rogers co-starring in a father-son strained relationship; and the western Rio Diablo (1993) in which he he essays the role of a nice-guy bounty hunter assisting a revengeful groom country singer Travis Tritt in a search for of kidnapped bride. Another then-reigning country star, Naomi Judd, was featured as a colorful madam.
In addition to a few acting appearances on TV with "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," "Touched by an Angel" and "How I Met Your Mother," Kenny also became a perennial star or guest of TV specials and seasonal events over the years, including Kenny Rogers and the First Edition: Rollin' on the River (1971), A Christmas Special... With Love, Mac Davis (1979), Kenny Rogers Live in Concert (1983), Kenny & Dolly: A Christmas to Remember (1984), Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton Together (1985), Kenny, Dolly and Willie: Something Inside So Strong (1989), Kenny Rogers Going Home (1995), Live by Request: Kenny Rogers (1999) and Consequence (2007). He also hosted two TV documentary series: The Real West (1992) and High Point Casinos of the World (2003).
In addition, Kenny published several books on photography and opened a rotisserie-chicken fast-food franchise (Kenny Rogers Roasters). Less and less visible in the ensuing years, Kenny produced the 1999 album "She Rides Wild Horses", which peaked at #6 on the country charts, his highest in 15 years, and included the #1 single "Buy Me a Rose."
Spending much of his free time over the years breeding Arabian horses and cattle on a 1,200-acre Georgia farm, Kenny's seemed to settle with his fifth wife Wanda Miller, whom he married in 1997. He had five children altogether and his namesake, son, Kenneth Rogers, left acting and briefly launched his own singing career in 1989 with "Take Another Step Closer". He now is on the business end of entertainment providing music for TV and movies.
Kenny made one last concert tour, "The Gambler's Last Deal," in 2015 and it was running worldwide, with visits including Australia, Scotland, Ireland, England, The Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as the U.S., until his health, plagued by bouts of bladder cancer and hepatitis C, failed him and he was forced to retire in 2018. The 81-year-old legend died on March 20, 2020, under hospice care at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia.- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Eric Weissberg was born on 16 August 1939 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for Deliverance (1972), American Playhouse (1980) and The Beverly Hillbillies (1993). He was married to Juliet Savage. He died on 22 March 2020 in New York, New York, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lucia Bosè was born on 28 January 1931 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy. She was an actress, known for The Lady Without Camelias (1953), Death of a Cyclist (1955) and Story of a Love Affair (1950). She was married to Luis Miguel Dominguín. She died on 23 March 2020 in Segovia, Segovia, Castilla y León, Spain.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Manu Dibango was born on 12 December 1933 in Douala, Cameroon. He was a composer and actor, known for Colors (1988), Ride Along (2014) and Parole de flic (1985). He died on 24 March 2020 in Melun, Seine-et-Marne, France.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Stuart Gordon started his film directing career in 1985. After graduating from Lane Technical High School, Gordon worked as a commercial artist apprentice prior to enrolling at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Unable to get into the film classes, he enrolled in an acting class and ended up majoring in theater. In 1968, he directed a psychedelic adaptation of Peter Pan as a political satire. He was arrested on obscenity charges and Gordon dropped out of the university. He and his wife Carolyn formed the Organic Theater and moved the group to Chicago.
The Organic performed their work on and off-Broadway, in Los Angeles, and toured Europe. Among their productions were the world premiere of David Mamet's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," which launched Mamet's playwriting career, the improv-based comedy "Bleacher Bums," which ran for over ten years in Los Angeles, and the hospital comedy E/R (1984), which became a TV series produced by Norman Lear.
He joined with Brian Yuzna and Charles Band's Empire Pictures to create the company's first major hit, Re-Animator (1985), based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft, which won a Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Gordon then helmed another Lovecraft adaptation From Beyond (1986) and tackled the murderous Dolls (1986) followed by Robot Jox (1989). Gordon co-created the story for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) a major hit for Disney. The same year, he directed the remake and more graphic version of The Pit and the Pendulum (1991). Other works include Fortress (1992), and the screenplay for The Dentist (1996) and Body Snatchers (1993), which he co-wrote with long-time writing partner Dennis Paoli.
In 2001, Gordon returned to the H.P. Lovecraft territory with Dagon (2001), and in 2003, directed King of the Ants (2003) about a housepainter-turned-hit man, and brought the David Mamet play Edmond (2005) to the screen.
He contributed to the horror anthology series Masters of Horror (2005) with the episode Dreams in the Witch-House (2005), based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. He returned to the series in 2007 with the episode The Black Cat (2007), based on Edgar Allan Poe's story. And in 2008, he directed Eater (2008) for the NBC series Fear Itself (2008).
He is also known for frequently murdering his wife, actress Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, in many of his films.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Actor
Terrence McNally was born on 3 November 1938 in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for American Playhouse (1980), Frankie and Johnny (1991) and The Ritz (1976). He was married to Thomas Kirdahy. He died on 24 March 2020 in Sarasota, Florida, USA.- Writer
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- Actor
Albert Uderzo is a French comic book writer and artist, of Italian descent. Albert was born in 1927 in the town of Fismes, in the Marne department of north-eastern France. Marne was created from the remains of the older province of Champagne, and the local capital is Chalons-en-Champagne.
Alnert's parents were Silvio Uderzo (1888-1985) and Iria Crestini. They had met in 1915, during World War I. Silvio was at the time serving in the Royal Italian Army, and Iria was working at the arsenal of La Spezia, Liguria, where she was maintaining and repairing weapons and ammunition. Silvio was discharged from military service in 1919, and the couple married in 1920. Silvio returned to his civilian job as a carpenter, and the Uderzo family soon migrated to the French Third Republic, where there were more job opportunities.
Albert was named after his older brother Albert Uderzo, who had been born in 1925 . The older Albert had died of pneumonia when he was only 8-months-old, and the grieving parents wanted a replacement. The official name of the younger Albert at the birth registry was Alberto Aleandro Uderzo, due to a misunderstanding between Silvio and the employee at the registry. The family rarely used this "official" name.
Albert was born an Italian citizen, and officially gained French citizenship 1934. He experienced racism against Italian immigrants as a child, though he was both born and raised in France. He recalled people blaming him for Benito Mussolini's policies and spitting at him.
In the 1930s, Albert developed a fascination for American comic and animated cartoons, and was particularly impressed with the works of Walt Disney. He was a poor student at school, but received good grades in sketching and art-related lessons. He had been practicing drawing as a hobby since he was in kindergarten, and he was good at it. When he was 11 or 12 years old, his parents realized that Albert was color-blind. It had not affected his sketches, because most of them were black-and-white.
During World War II, Albert was too young to serve in the conflict, but his older brother Bruno was conscripted and fought in the Battle of France (1940). By the 1950s, Albert had become a professional artist, and he met his partner René Goscinny in 1951. During the 1950s, Uderzo provided the artwork for moderately successful series such as the historical fiction series "Oumpah-pah" and "Jehan Pistolet" (both written by Goscinny) and the aviation comic series "Tanguy et Laverdure" (written by Jean-Michel Charlier).
Uderzo and Goscinny created the historical fiction series "Asterix" in 1959, featuring heroic Gauls fighting in the historical Gallic Wars (58-50 BC). It became one of the most successful European comic book series, with Uderzo serving as its main artist from 1959 to 2004. When Goscinny died in 1977, Uderzo decided to take over the writing duties as well. While writing several successful stories of his own, Uderzo is mostly considered an inferior writer to Goscinny. There was a perceived decline in the writing quality of the series over the decades.
In 2005, Uderzo released "Asterix and the Falling Sky", the only science-fiction entry in this historic fantasy series, and intended to serve as a parody of then-popular anime and manga series. The story was widely mocked for its dated humor, and the use of anti-Japanese stereotypes dating back to World War II. It was the last Asterix story written by Uderzo.
In 2007, Uderzo sold his shares of the company "Editions Albert René" (which owns the rights to Asterix) to the publishing company Hachette. He had a public falling out with his daughter Sylvie Uderzo who also owned shares of the original company and disagreed with her father's decision. After a few years of mostly working on short-stories and comic strips, Uderzo announced his retirement in 2011. He died in 2020.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, Uderzo was the 10th most often translated French-language author, with Goscinny being the 4th one. He was the third most often translated French-language comics author behind René Goscinny and Hergé.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
Bill Rieflin was born on 30 September 1960 in Seattle, Washington, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Natural Born Killers (1994), Rango (2011) and Exit to Eden (1994). He was married to Francesca Sundsten. He died on 24 March 2020 in Seattle, Washington, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Mark Blum was born on 14 May 1950 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Crocodile Dundee (1986) and The Sopranos (1999). He was married to Janet Zarish. He died on 26 March 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Curley Neal was born on 19 May 1942 in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for FIREFLY: The Tay Fisher Story (2022), Superboy (1988) and The White Shadow (1978). He was married to Rose. He died on 26 March 2020 in Houston, Texas, USA.
- Jimmy Wynn was born on 12 March 1942 in Hamilton, Ohio, USA. He was married to Rose Marie, Joanne and Ruth Mixon. He died on 26 March 2020 in Houston, Texas, USA.
- John Callahan was born on 23 December 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for All My Children (1970), eCupid (2011) and Dinocroc vs. Supergator (2010). He was married to Eva LaRue and Linda Freeman. He died on 28 March 2020 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.
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Krzysztof Penderecki was a Polish composer and conductor, whose music was often used in film. He seldom composed original film scores. Among the most notable films to use Penderecki's music are "The Exorcist" (1973), "The Shining" (1980), "Wild at Heart" (1990), "Fearless" (1993), "Inland Empire" (2006), "Children of Men" (2006), and "Shutter Island" (2010),
Penderecki was born in the town of Debica, in the historic province of Lesser Poland. His parents were the lawyer Tadeusz Penderecki and his wife Zofia. Tadeusz was an amateur violinist and pianist. Penderecki was a grandson of bank director Robert Berger, who had a side-career as a painter. Robert's father was Johann Berger, a German Protestant from Breslau (modern Wroclaw), who converted to Catholicism in order to marry a Catholic girl. Penderecki's grandmother Stefania was an Armenian from the town of Stanislau in Austria-Hungary (modern Ivano-Frankivsk in Western Ukraine).
Penderecki was 6-years-old when World War II begun. The Penderecki family had to move out of their apartment, as it was confiscated for use by the Ministry of Food. Penderecki's education was disrupted by the War. He started attending grammar school in 1946, at the age of 13. He graduated in 1951.
Penderecki started studying violin during his school years. His first teacher was military bandmaster Stanislaw Darlak, who also led a local orchestra in Debica. In 1951, Penderecki enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he continued his music studies. Stanislaw Tawroszewicz trained him as a violinist, while Franciszek Skolyszewski taught him music theory.
In 1954, Penderecki enrolled at the Academy of Music in Kraków. Having mostly completed his violin lessons, his education was focused entirely on the composition of new music. His original mentor was composer Artur Malawski, who was primarily known for choral and orchestral works. Malawski died in 1957, before Penderecki completed his lessons. His new mentor was composer Stanislaw Wiechowicz (1893-1963), who often drew inspiration from Polish folk music.
Penderecki graduated from the Academy of Music in 1958, and was immediately offered a teaching position there. He took the offer. He started publishing his original compositions, which were mostly influenced by the works of Pierre Boulez, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. His works "Strophen", "Psalms of David", and "Emanations" premiered in 1959, and were critically well-received.
His first work to actually receive international recognition was "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" (1960), written for 52 string instruments. His next notable work was the controversial "Fluorescences" (1962) written for the Donaueschingen Festival in Germany. He experimented with using percussion instruments which were unusual for classical music, such as "a Mexican güiro", typewriters, and gongs.
His experimental phase lasted through the 1960s, and he was seen as part of the avant-garde scene. By the early 1970s, Penderecki started incorporating more influences from the music of post-Romanticism, and his works were seen as more traditional. Meanwhile he had become one of Poland's most notable composers, He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1964, and the Commander's Cross of the Order in 1974.
In the mid-1970s Penderecki became a professor at the Yale School of Music. His music became more melodic. His "Symphony No. 2, Christmas" (1980) was "harmonically and melodically quite straightforward", and made frequent uses of the tune used in an older Christmas carol, "Silent Night" (1818) by Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863). He explained his renunciation of the avant-garde, as he viewed the novelty of the music as "more destructive than constructive".
In 1980, the Polish trade union "Solidarity" commissioned to compose music commemorating those killed in anti-government riots at the Gdansk shipyards. Penderecki initially composed "Lacrimosa" for the occasion. He was inspired enough to expand the work to one of his most famous compositions, "Polish Requiem". He revised it several times between 1980 and 2005.
By the 2000s, Penderecki won many international awards and his fame was well-established. He started working on a number of compositions which were never finished, in part due to poor health. His plans included an opera version of the French tragedy play "Phèdre" (1677) by Jean Racine (1639-1699), and a composition commemorating the Armenian Genocide's centennial.
In March 2020, Penderecki died in his home in Kraków, Poland, following a long illness. He was 86-years-old, and several of his compositions were regarded among the famous film music of the 20th century.- A Kentucky native, Schramm attended Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky and majored in English while also becoming intensely involved in theater. At the urging of his college acting teacher, he applied for and won a four-year graduate scholarship to Juilliard's newly formed drama school in New York.
During the summer of 1988, Schramm traveled to California to co-star with Rebecca De Mornay in "Born Yesterday" at the Pasadena Playhouse. This highly acclaimed and popular production brought Schramm to the attention of Hollywood, and he has worked steadily in television and film ever since.
Schramm has guest-starred on numerous television series, including Jake and the Fatman (1987), Wiseguy (1987), The Equalizer (1985), Miami Vice (1984) and Spenser: For Hire (1985). He also provided the voice for one of the characters in the Disney animated series Hercules (1998). In addition, he has had leading roles in The Time of Your Life (1976) and the musical Cradle Will Rock (1999), both for PBS. - Actor
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Joe Diffie was born on 28 December 1958 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for Twister (1996), All My Friends Are Cowboys (1998) and The Beverly Hillbillies (1993). He was married to Tara Terpening Diffie, Theresa Crump, Debbie Jones and Janise Parker. He died on 29 March 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.- Actor
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Alan Merrill was the singer and songwriter of the original version of the 1975 Arrows version of the classic song "I love rock n roll." The song has since been covered by Joan Jett and Britney Spears. Alan Merrill started his career as a foreign domestic pop-star in the Japanese market, and was based in Tokyo. He was the first foreign artist to break into the Japan rock scene successfully, having hit records both solo, and with his bands Vodka Collins, and The Lead. He worked in Japan from 1968 until 1973, when he left Tokyo to try for a shot at stardom in the UK. He formed a hit band (The Arrows) in England and was in the BBC top ten charts within six months of arriving there. Alan Merrill's band The Arrows had a popular weekly television series in the UK, 1976-77 on the Granada-ITV network. He also had several hit singles with the band and was the lead singer. Merrill has written songs for artists such as Lou Rawls, Rick Derringer, Freddie Scott, Joan Jett, Britney Spears, Runner, 5ive, and of course, The Arrows. The acting came about when Merrill was asked to write a theme song for the pilot film of Encyclopedia Brown, which he did. A song called "Who Done It?". The producer was so impressed with him that he asked Merrill to act in the pilot feature length film "Encycopedia Brown (Case of the missing time capsule)" and he agreed. The pilot aired on HBO almost 200 times, and was a success, launching the series. The People magazine review said that Merrill was one of the best actors in the production. Alan Merrill continued to make fun, energetic rock 'n roll records.- Actress
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British 60s leading lady and latterly producer, born Hilary Dwyer in Liverpool, the daughter of an orthopaedic surgeon. She studied ballet and piano as a child and in her teens embarked on an acting career on the repertory stage. On screen from 1965, she became best known for three horror films made for American International Pictures, all starring Vincent Price: Witchfinder General (1968) (as Price's mistress), The Oblong Box (1969) (as his fiancée) and Cry of the Banshee (1970) (as his daughter). In the course of their work together, Price and Dwyer formed a close personal friendship. Arguably the best of the trio was Witchfinder General, an early example of grindhouse. Though controversial at the time because of its excessive onscreen elements of torture and sadism, it pulled $ 1.5 million at the box office and over the years became a cult classic. Peter Hutchings, in his book Hammer and Beyond, described Dwyer's performance as "articulate and sensitive".
Dwyer also appeared opposite George Sanders in a little-known science fiction release, The Body Stealers (1969) (an inferior attempt at reworking Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)) and in an unsuccessful remake of Wuthering Heights (1970) (again for AIP), as Isabella Linton. On the small screen, she was glimpsed as an ill-fated fellow resident of 'the village' in an episode of The Prisoner (1967), portrayed a thief purloining secret documents in Special Branch (1969) and expired at the hands of a murderous spectre in Space: 1999 (1975) (her screen acting swansong). She also had a leading role in the TV series Hadleigh (1969) as the independently wealthy middle-class wife of a suave Yorkshire country squire. On the stage, she acted at the Theatre Royal in Bath and (in The Importance of Being Earnest) at the Bristol Old Vic.
In 1973, she married the talent agent Duncan Heath. The following year they set up Duncan Heath Associates Agency, eventually sold to ICM Partners in 1984. Abandoning her acting career in 1976, Hilary Heath became an executive producer, primarily of episodic TV as well as adaptations of literary classics by Daphne Du Maurier (Frenchman's Creek (1998), Jamaica Inn (2014)) and Tennessee Williams (The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003)). Fast forward to 2004 and Hilary attracted unhappier news headlines after being confronted by a knife-wielding assailant at her Barbados home and forced to jump from a second storey bedroom window onto rocks, sustaining injuries hospitalising her for nine days. She retired from screen work in 2014 and passed away on April 10 2020 at the age of 74 as a result of complications from coronavirus .- Music Artist
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Singer, songwriter and guitarist Bill Withers was born on July 4, 1938 in the small coal-mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia and was raised in the nearby town of Beckley. He was the youngest of six children of Mattie (Galloway), a maid, and William Withers, a miner. His father died when Withers was thirteen. Bill worked a series of odd jobs to help his mother out. At age seventeen he joined the US Navy and first became interested in both singing and songwriting during his tour of duty in the armed forces. After being discharged from the Navy in 1965, Bill moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue a music career. Withers worked a full time job making toilet seats at the Boeing aircraft company and recorded demos on the side at night for several years prior to being signed to the Sussex Records label in 1970. In 1971 Bill released his debut album "Just As I Am." The song "Ain't No Sunshine" was a #3 R&B radio hit and won the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Song. Withers scored a massive smash in 1972 with the marvelously inspirational "Lean on Me," which reached #1 on the Billboard pop charts on July 8. "Use Me" was likewise successful; it peaked at #2 on the Billboard pop charts. In the summer of 1974 Bill performed in concert along with James Brown, Etta James and BB King at the historic Ali/Frasier fight in Zaire (footage of Withers in concert can be seen in the acclaimed documentary "When We Were Kings"). After parting with Sussex Records, Withers hooked up with Columbia Records in 1975. "Lovely Day" was a Top 30 Billboard pop hit in 1978. "Just the Two of Us," Bill's terrific duet with Grover Washington, Jr., was a #2 Billboard pop hit in 1981 and won the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Song. His songs have been covered by a diverse array of artists that include Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Mick Jagger, Grace Jones, Diana Ross, Club Nouveau (their 1987 cover of "Lean on Me" won the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Song in 1988), Morrisey, Paul McCartney, Michael Bolton, Fiona Apple, Sting, Kenny Rogers, and Johnny Mathis.
Withers was the recipient of the ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Heritage Award in 2006. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2007. Bill's songs have been featured on the soundtracks to such movies as "Hoot," "Roll Bounce," "Starsky & Hutch," "Bandits," "Exit Wounds," "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," "American Beauty," "Notting Hill," "The Bodyguard," "American Me," "Lean on Me," and "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," plus episodes of the TV shows "Entourage," "LAX," "Cold Case," "Keen Eddie," "Six Feet Under," "The Wire," "CSI: Crime Scene Investigations," and "The Simpsons."- Additional Crew
- Actor
Andrew Jack was born on 28 January 1944 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and Kate & Leopold (2001). He was married to Gabrielle Rogers, Paula Jack and Felicity Hutchinson. He died on 31 March 2020 in Chertsey, Surrey, England, UK.- Actress
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Patricia Bosworth was born on 24 April 1933 in Oakland, California, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006), Kraft Theatre (1947) and The Nun's Story (1959). She was married to Tom Palumbo and Mel Arrighi. She died on 2 April 2020 in New York City, New York, USA.- Music Department
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Adam Schlesinger was born on 31 October 1967 in Manhattan, New York, New York, USA. He was a composer and writer, known for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015), That Thing You Do! (1996) and Music and Lyrics (2007). He was married to Katherine Michel. He died on 1 April 2020 in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA.- Logan Kari Williams was born on April 9, 2003, in Vancouver, British Columbia to Marlyse, a Swiss mother, and Clive, a South African father. He landed his very first audition when he was ten years old playing the part of Jack Spehn in the Hallmark movie The Color of Rain (2014). He later starred on The Flash (2014) as the young Barry Allen. Logan attended a private school but mostly enjoyed hanging out with his friends, skateboarding, soccer and music. He died tragically in 2020, one week before his 17th birthday following a three-year battle with opioid addiction. Marlyse Williams has said she hopes her son's story will help raise awareness of addiction and prevent some other mother from experiencing the same kind of pain.
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- Casting Department
Jay Benedict was born on 11 April 1951 in Burbank, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Double Team (1997) and The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2013). He was married to Phoebe Scholfield and Vanessa Pereira. He died on 4 April 2020 in London, England, UK.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Timothy Brown was born on 24 May 1937 in Knightstown, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for M*A*S*H (1970), Nashville (1975) and Frequency (2000). He died on 4 April 2020 in California, USA.- Actress
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One of four children, Blackman was born in London's East End, to Edith Eliza (Stokes), a homemaker, and Frederick Thomas Blackman, a statistician employed with the Civil Service. She received elocution lessons for her 16th birthday (at her own request), and later attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which she paid for by working as a clerical assistant in the Civil Service. She was also a dispatch rider for the Home Office during World War II, playing an important role in the war effort.
Blackman received her first acting work on stage in London's West End as an understudy in "The Guinea Pig". She continued with roles in "The Gleam" (1946) and "The Blind Goddess" (1947), before moving into film. She debuted with Fame Is the Spur (1947), starring Michael Redgrave.
Blackman suffered a nervous breakdown following her divorce from Bill Sankey, a man 12 years her senior, who's jealousy, fraudulent business practices, and emptying of her bank accounts took it's toll. After hospitalisation Blackman began counselling, which would last for years, and began rebuilding her career.
TV series work also came her way again, most notably the highly popular The Avengers (1961), co-starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed. As the leather-clad "Catherine Gale", Blackman showcased her incredible beauty, self-confidence, and athletic abilities. Her admirable qualities made her not only a catch for the men, but also an inspirational figure for the 1960s feminist movement.
Blackman took on the role of Greek goddess Hera in popular movie adventure Jason and the Argonauts (1963) with Ray Harryhausen and melodrama Life at the Top (1965) with Laurence Harvey. She then played "Pussy Galore" in the classic James Bond film Goldfinger (1964). Blackman went toe to toe with Sean Connery's womanizing "007" and created major sparks on screen.
Blackman continued to work consistently in films and tv, while also appearing on stage where she earned rave reviews as the blind heroine of the thriller "Wait Until Dark" as well as for her dual roles in "Mr. and Mrs.", a production based on two of Noël Coward's plays. She also enjoyed working with her second husband, actor Maurice Kaufmann, in the play "Move Over, Mrs. Markham" and the film thriller Fright (1971). She proved a sultry-voiced sensation in various musicals productions such as "A Little Night Music", "The Sound of Music", "On Your Toes", and "Nunsense."
In the new millennium, Honor was seen in such films as Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Color Me Kubrick (2005), Reuniting the Rubins (2010), I, Anna (2012) and Cockneys vs Zombies (2012), as well as the British TV serieses Water, Water, Everywhere (1920) The Royal (2003) Coronation Street (1960), long running series Casualty (1986) and finally You, Me & Them (2013), her last role after her retirement several years earlier.
Divorced from Kaufmann in 1975 (although they remained friends until his death, Blackman even cared for him during his 13 year battle with cancer), Blackman never remarried, revealing in an interview that she simply preferred single life, "Basically I'm a shy person and I like my own company". Unable to conceive, the couple adopted two children, Lottie and Barnaby, in '67 and '68 respectively.
The ever-lovely and eternally glamorous star continued to find regular work into her 90s, including co-starring in the long-running English hit comedy series The Upper Hand (1990) and performing her one-woman stage show, "Wayward Women"
Honor Blackman died on April 5, 2020, in Lewes, Sussex. She was 94.- Actress
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- Soundtrack
Shirley Douglas was born on 2 April 1934 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was an actress, known for Dead Ringers (1988), Wind at My Back (1996) and Lolita (1962). She was married to Donald Sutherland and Timothy Emil Sicks. She died on 5 April 2020 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.- Actress
Lee Fierro was born on 13 February 1929 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Jaws (1975), Jaws: The Revenge (1987) and The Mistover Tale (2016). She was married to Marvin Stephens and Bernard Fierro. She died on 5 April 2020 in Aurora, Ohio, USA.- Producer
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Thomas L. Miller was born on 31 August 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Silver Streak (1976), Family Matters (1989) and Petrocelli (1974). He died on 5 April 2020 in Salisbury, Connecticut, USA.- Actor
- Writer
Laconic, dark and handsome were the essential attributes for Hollywood western leading men in the 50s and 60s. James Drury fit the bill, keeping in mind that his most famous screen persona - that of the stalwart Shiloh estate ranch foreman known only as 'the Virginian' - took a while to properly develop. In the original 30-minute pilot way back in 1958, the Virginian appeared rather more like a genteel dandy than a tough cowboy. Four years later, the NBC network approved a revamped version of the series and Drury, now looking the part, was on his way to popular success. Though his career may have fallen short of outright stardom, he endeared himself with TV audiences for almost a decade and went on to enjoy a fair cult status beyond the final episode of The Virginian (1962) in March 1971.
James Child Drury was born not in the American West, but in New York, the son of Beatrice (Crawford) and James Child Drury. His father, from an Irish family, was a professor who lectured in marketing and advertising at New York University. Young James spent some of his formative years on a family ranch in Salem, Oregon, where he learned to become an expert rider. His maternal grandfather, John Hezekiah Crawford, of Kentucky, educated him in the ways of the woodsman and taught him marksmanship. James began to act in school plays, toured with a theatrical company by the age of twelve and then studied drama at his father's university. Curiously, he completed his senior year at UCLA studying not acting but horticulture and animal husbandry. Upon graduation, he was signed to a contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and made his first screen appearance a year later in 1955. Aside from playing junior army officers and assorted teenagers in films for 20th Century Fox and Disney, Drury quickly found a comfortable niche in TV westerns (which, no doubt, had much to do with his expertise in horsemanship). He had guest appearances in just about all the famous ones: The Texan (1958), Bronco (1958), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Lawman (1958), Cheyenne (1955), Gunsmoke (1955), Rawhide (1959) and Wagon Train (1957). He also made the little seen, yet unsold pilot for The Virginian. A strong performance as one of a quartet of villainous brothers in Sam Peckinpah's seminal western Ride the High Country (1962) led to a seven-year contract with Universal. He (along with Doug McClure) auditioned for their respective roles in The Virginian soon after, finding out that the parts were indeed theirs just two days prior to shooting. In 1966, Drury fronted a band, the Wilshire Buffalo Hunters, touring Vietnam for three weeks as part of the USO.
Despondent after The Virginian ended its run, Drury played a sheriff in the pilot for the comedy western series Alias Smith and Jones (1971) and then starred in Firehouse (1974), a short-lived ABC adventure drama set at a Los Angeles fire station. After the cancellation of Firehouse, Drury seemed to become even more disheartened and made only a few more sporadic TV appearances thereafter. However, he managed to reinvent himself as a successful businessman, first as co-owner of a ranch raising Appaloosa horses (his steed in The Virginian had been a white Appaloosa named Joe D), then as proprietor of a company recycling asphalt, and latterly, having moved to Texas, in the oil and natural gas business. He was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in 1991.
James Drury died from natural causes on April 6, 2020, in Houston, Texas. He was 85.Drury's work includes the recurring role of "Captain Tom Price" on WALKER, TEXAS RANGER.- 15-time All-Star Al Kaline of the Detroit Tigers was one of the premier baseball players of his generation, slugging 399 home-runs and amassing 3,007 hits in those less-statistics crazy times. (In this era, Kaline -- who announced his retirement before his final season of 1974 and stuck to it -- would have come back for another season to hit homer #400, one of the great benchmarks of that time, before steroids and human growth hormone made nonsense to the baseball power-hitting records in the late 1990s.) The winner of 10-gold gloves for fielding excellence, Kaline was greatly respected as an all-around star player with all the tools, like his contemporary Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox, who became the first American League Player to hit 400 dingers and 3,000 hits in 1979.
Kaline, who had the desire to excel at baseball, did not have the desire to upstage Yaz by pointing out that it was something he easily could have done, and was gracious when the Red Sox left fielder set the milestones in 1979. Perhaps Kaline could afford to be generous, for unlike Yaz, who was perpetually a bridesmaid and never a bride when it came to the post-season (Yaz's BoSox even lost the A.L. East pennant to Kaline and Billy Martin's Tigers by Tigers won the 1968 World's Championship. Distinct underdogs to the the same St. Louis Cardinals team, and post-season marvel Bob Gibson, who had beaten Yaz's "Impssible Dream" BoSox the year before and had whipped the last team of the great Yankees Dynasty, the '64 Bronx Bombers of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard and Whitey Ford, the Tigers made history by staging one of the great upsets in World Series history. The '68 battle royal for the World's Championship was almost as good, and legendary, as the '67 Series, and like the previous match-up of the Cards and the American League contender, it had gone done to the seventh and deciding game. Though the Cardinals were mighty, it was the Tigers behind the pitching of donut-maven Mickey Lolich who prevailed. Al hit .379 with two homers and eight runs batted in during the Series, further establishing his credentials as a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Al Kaline had been signed as a "Bonus Baby" by the Tigers in 1953, and under the extant rules of Major League Baseball, had gone straight to the major league team, bypassing the minor leagues. (To justify the bonus, or rather, to limit the payout of large bonuses, MLB required teams signing young players to large bonuses to keep them on the major league roster for part of the year, every year, or lose them.) The 18-year old Kaline came up for a cup of coffee with the Tigers in 1953, and then played a total of 22 seasons for them, a record only surpassed by Yaz for the Red Sox and Brooks Robinson for the Baltimore Orioles, who in those pre-free-agent times, played a total of 23 years for the same team. Kaline blossomed early, winning his first and only batting title in 1955, at the tender age of 20, leading both leagues with a .340 average. Kaline became the youngest player ever to win a batting title, establishing that record by nosing out fellow Tiger Ty Cobb by one day.
Although he never won a Most Valuable Player Award, Kaline ranked in the Top 10 in M.V.P. votes nine times between 1955 and 1967, coming in second in '55 and '63 and third in '56. Never a true power hitter, he was remarkably consistent and steady in his production, hitting a minimum of 25 homers seven times and hitting over .300 nine times, playing primarily in what is becoming known as baseball's second "Dead Ball Era". His superb fielding was a marvel, and he once went 242 consecutive games in the field without committing an error. Kaline was the type of player a general manager dreams of building a franchise around.
Fittingly, Al Kaline was known as "Mr. Tiger" when he retired after the 1974 season. Kaline was the most popular player in the Detroit franchise's history (the dyspeptic Cobb was a greater player and highly respected by Tigers fans, but not particularly beloved). After his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York in his first year of eligibility, his number 6 was the first number ever to be retired by the Tigers. - Music Department
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Renowned for his eclectic approach, Hal Willner is a Music Producer based in New York, associated with the performance venue The Knitting Factory. He has a wide ranging interest in Film and Theatre Music, Jazz, Rock and Comtemporary Classical.- Actor
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New Jersey-born Allen Garfield was trained at the Actors Studio in New York City. He had a prolific career on the stage before making his film debut in 1968. His stocky build and nervous, jumpy mannerisms fit well with the weaselly criminals, lecherous villains and corrupt businessmen and politicians he excels in playing - a perfect example of which is the Beverly Hills police chief in 1987's Beverly Hills Cop II (1987). Midway through his career he reverted to his real name of Allan Goorwitz, but not long afterwards decided to stay with his stage name, and went back to Allen Garfield. In the early 2000s, Garfield suffered from a series of strokes that prevented him from acting again.- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Actor
Exceptionally talented singer/songwriter John Prine enjoyed a 40 plus year career that encompassed such diverse music genres as folk, rock, country, and rockabilly. With his wry sense of humor, sharp, incisive songwriting, and endearingly offbeat perspective, John distinguished himself as a true original with a well-deserved loyal cult following.
Prine was born on October 10, 1946 in Maywood, Illinois, the son of Verna Valentine (Hamm) and William Mason Prine, a tool-and-die maker. He was taught by his brother how to play guitar at age fourteen. John worked as a postman for five years and did a two-year stint in the Army prior to beginning his musical career as part of the folk music scene in Chicago. Prine garnered a lot of accolades from critics for his outstanding self-titled 1971 debut album. The follow-up albums, "Diamonds in the Rough" and "Sweet Revenge", were likewise well-received by critics but, alas, none of these albums were big commercial successes.
In the mid '70s, John began to vary his basic melodic folk/country sound: The 1975 album, "Common Sense", leaned more towards tough rock and the 1979 album, "Pink Cadillac", was a straight-up raucous rockabilly outing. He continued to record albums throughout the 80s. His terrific 1991 album, "The Missing Years", won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. His songs have been covered by such artists as The Everly Brothers ("Paradise"), Bette Midler ("Hello in There"), Joan Baez ("Hello in There") and Laura Cantrell ("Sam Stone"). John has sizable co-starring roles in the movies, Falling from Grace (1992) and Daddy and Them (2001). Among the films that feature Prine's songs on the soundtrack are Into the Wild (2007), Grass (1999), Fire Down Below (1997), UFOria (1984) and The Pride of Jesse Hallam (1981). In 1998, John was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the neck, underwent surgery and radiation treatment and, subsequently, made a full recovery in 1999. Prine was the recipient of the Artist of the Year Award at the Americana Music Awards on September 9, 2005. Subsequently, he released critically acclaimed album "Standard Songs for Average People."
In 2005 Fair & Square was his 15th studio album, released on Oh Boy Records. It was released on a standard CD, an Extended Play (EP) CD with four bonus tracks, and a vinyl version with the same four bonus tracks.At the 48th Grammy Awards, Fair & Square won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. In late 2014 Prine was again diagnosed with a cancer, received surgery and treatment and was back out touring on the road in 2015. He died in 2020, of COVID-19.- Producer
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Saul Turteltaub was born on 15 May 1932 in Teaneck, New Jersey, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for That Girl (1966), One of the Boys (1982) and The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971). He was married to Shirley Steinberg. He died on 9 April 2020 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Director
- Editor
- Writer
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi was born on 9 January 1938 in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. He was a director and editor, known for House (1977), Turning Point (1994) and The Discarnates (1988). He was married to Kyôko Ôbayashi. He died on 10 April 2020 in Tokyo, Japan.- Actor
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- Editorial Department
Tim Brooke-Taylor was born on 17 July 1940 in Buxton, Derbyshire, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for The Goodies (1970), At Last the 1948 Show (1967) and Engelbert with the Young Generation (1972). He was married to Christine Wheadon. He died on 12 April 2020 in Cookham, Berkshire, England, UK.- Actor
- Casting Director
- Casting Department
Danny Goldman was born on 30 October 1939 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and casting director, known for Young Frankenstein (1974), M*A*S*H (1970) and The Smurfs (1981). He was married to Mary Gillis. He died on 12 April 2020 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Goldman was well-known to the Saturday-morning crowd as the voice of "Brainy Smurf".- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Imposing, barrel-chested and often silver-haired Brian Dennehy was a prolific US actor, well respected on both screen and stage over many decades. He was born in July 1938 in Bridgeport, CT, and attended Columbia University in New York City on a football scholarship. Brian majored in history, before moving on to Yale to study dramatic arts. He first appeared in minor screen roles in such fare as Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Semi-Tough (1977) and Foul Play (1978) and proved popular with casting directors, leading to regular work. However, he really got himself noticed by movie audiences in the box-office hit First Blood (1982) as the bigoted sheriff determined to run Vietnam veteran "John Rambo" (played by Sylvester Stallone) out of his town. Dennehy quickly escalated to stronger supporting or co-starring roles in films including the Cold War thriller Gorky Park (1983), as a benevolent alien in Cocoon (1985), a corrupt sheriff in the western Silverado (1985), a tough but smart cop in F/X (1986) and a cop-turned-writer alongside hit man James Woods in Best Seller (1987). In 1987, Dennehy turned in one of his finest performances as cancer-ridden architect "Stourley Kracklite" in Peter Greenaway's superb The Belly of an Architect (1987), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the 1987 Chicago Film Festival. More strong performances followed. He reprised prior roles for Cocoon: The Return (1988) and F/X2 (1991), and turned in gripping performances in three made-for-TV films: a sadistic small-town bully who gets his grisly comeuppance in In Broad Daylight (1991), real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the chilling To Catch a Killer (1992) and a corrupt union boss in Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992). In 1993, Dennehy appeared in the role of police "Sgt. Jack Reed" in the telemovie Jack Reed: Badge of Honor (1993), and reprised the role in four sequels, which saw him for the first time become involved in co-producing, directing and writing screen productions! Demand for his services showed no signs of abating, and he put in further memorable performances in Romeo + Juliet (1996), as bad-luck-ridden "Willy Loman" in Death of a Salesman (2000) (which earned him a Golden Globe Award), he popped up in the uneven Spike Lee film She Hate Me (2004) and appears in the remake Assault on Precinct 13 (2005). The multi-talented Dennehy also had a rich theatrical career and appeared both in the United States and internationally in dynamic stage productions including "Death of a Salesman" (for which he picked up the 1999 Best Actor Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award), "A Touch of the Poet", "Long Day's Journey into Night" (for which he picked up another Tony Award in 2003) and in Eugene O'Neill's heart-wrenching "The Iceman Cometh."Among much else, Dennehy starred on the short-lived TV series BIRDLAND as a doctor who thought nothing of bending the rules if it helped his patient(s).
Dennehy's daughter Elizabeth is also an actress; she co-starred as "First Officer/Commander Paula Shelby" on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION; and also "Mrs. Gelbwaks" in C'MON, GET HAPPY: THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY STORY.- Additional Crew
- Actor
- Cinematographer
Born in 1938 in New York City and raised in New York City, Alabama and Islip, Long Island, Peter Beard began keeping diaries at an early age. He took his first pictures at the age of twelve and photography quickly evolved into an extension of his diaries, as a way to preserve and remember favorite things. In 1957 he entered Yale University as a pre-med undergraduate, but soon switched his major to art history, studying under Vincent Scully, Joseph Albers and Richard Linder.
Trips to Africa in 1955 and 1960 piqued his interests and, after graduating from Yale, he returned to Africa. In the early '60s he worked at Kenya's Tsavo National Park where he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants, which later became the subject of his first book "The End of the Game" (1965). During the same period he acquired Hog Ranch, the property adjacent to Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen), whom he had met through his cousin Jerome Hill. Hog Ranch, located near the Ngong Hills, became his home base in East Africa. Beard has written further books on his African experience: "Eyelids of Morning" (1973), "Longing for Darkness" (1975) and "Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa" (2004), written for his daughter.
Beard's first exhibit was at the Blum Helman Gallery in New York in 1975. This was quickly followed by his landmark installation at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1977. This show exhibited his photographs, elephant carcasses, burned diaries, taxidermy, African artifacts, books and personal memorabilia.
In addition to creating original artwork, Beard has befriended and collaborated on projects with many legendary artists including Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Richard Linder, Terry Southern, Truman Capote and Francis Bacon.
In 1996, shortly after he was trampled by an elephant, his first major retrospective opened at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, followed by other exhibits in Berlin, London, Toronoto, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo and Vienna.
Beard currently splits his time between New York City, Montauk Point and Kenya, living with his wife and agent Nejma and their daughter Zara.- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Director
Roger Beatty was born on 24 January 1933 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a writer and assistant director, known for The Carol Burnett Show (1967), Carol Burnett & Company (1979) and Mama's Family (1983). He died on 6 April 2020 in Palm Desert, California, USA.- Additional Crew
Herb Stempel was born on 19 December 1926 in Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He is known for Quiz Show (1994), Twenty-One (1956) and The Interviews: An Oral History of Television (1997). He was married to Tobie Mantell and Ethel Feinblum. He died on 7 April 2020 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Born in Jackson, Mississippi, Lester was brought up on his grandfather's farm, shucking corn, fishing, hunting, and picking cotton. He graduated from the University of Mississippi, majoring in Chemistry. He taught science and biology at a school in Purcell, Oklahoma, before moving to California. He divided his time between Southern California and Laurel, Mississippi. He spoke to youth groups and at religious gatherings about his faith, and shared the stage three times with Billy Graham. Lester died in 2020, aged 81. He was survived by his wife, his brother, two great-nieces, one great-great niece, and one great-great-nephew.