The Return of the Classic Films Obituary Thread

[CBHagman]

We've missed a lot of farewells, but it's never too late to pay tribute.

The thread starts with film, television, and stage actress Helen McCrory, 52.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/apr/18/helen-mccrory-obituary

Helen McCrory, who has died of cancer aged 52, was already established among the leading stage actors of her generation when she became known as Cherie Blair in Stephen Frears’s movie The Queen (2006), starring Helen Mirren, and with Michael Sheen as Tony; and as the witch Narcissa Malfoy, mother of Draco, in the last three Harry Potter films.

Her brisk and slinky Cherie Blair was one in a line of suited authority figures and lawyers played by McCrory, culminating in an acidulous, brutally frank but deluded Tory prime minister in David Hare’s television drama Roadkill (2020), refusing to give a “big job” to Hugh Laurie’s shameless MP. In comparison, Narcissa was a “turn,” a Gothic hoot, for all her verve and suffocating evil.

But it was her imperious matriarch Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders (five series, 2013-19), ruling the roost in the inter-war criminal Shelby family in Birmingham, and keeping tabs on the ill-gotten gains, that suggested her roots in complex dramatic performance on the stage.


The retrospective continues at the Guardian website.

[Staph]

1. Thanks for reviving this!

It's been way too many years. We should probably catch up on some of the pandemic losses, as well.


ETA: Our last obituary thread was started in December 2011! And the last entry was the death of actor and AMC host Bob Dorian, in June 2019.

[CBHagman]

2. Thank you for finding that.

Every now and then I would go searching for the obituary thread and eventually lose track of how far back it was.

In the past 12 months, we've lost so many who deserve a profile here: Ian Holm, Cloris Leachman, Christopher Plummer, Joan Micklin Silver.

[CBHagman]

3. From August 2020: actor Chadwick Boseman, 43

Countless people were shocked and heartbroken when the news came that Chadwick Boseman had died. On the day of the Academy Awards ceremony, it seems appropriate to post this tribute.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201214-chadwick-boseman-a-film-icon-who-changed-hollywood

Boseman's characters were often notable for their stoicism but in playing them, he also displayed a keen sense of humour which ensured the Wakandan King, as well as his other roles, were immensely charismatic. "His expressive face invited hilarious sight gags," says Daniels. "Think about how funny Boseman's interactions are with Letitia Wright in Black Panther or his band-room antics in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He could have easily become a great comedic actor on top of being an action star and a dancing-singing-acting triple threat.

It's a testament to his talent and conviction that Boseman was able to do his finest work while his mind and body was going through traumatic treatment and ill-health. That he was able to keep it a secret while finding the energy to play a powerful superhero, a Vietnam soldier and a hot-headed musician shows how much he had in common with the resilient figures that he played. His private life was his own but in public he maintained a presence of positivity and compassion through fan and charitable endeavours as well as the art that he was creating. Above all, Boseman was a man who clearly wanted his work to speak for him rather than his fame.

Find his filmography here:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1569276/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

And for more on his career, see the TCM message boards here:

https://forums.tcm.com/topic/265162-actor-chadwick-boseman-1976-2020/

[CBHagman]

4. From 2020: actress Rhonda Fleming, 97

We have a lot of time to make up, and I'd like to keep this thread accessible, so I hope group members will post articles and tributes, including TCM's wonderful "In Memoriam" videos.

And now for another classic film actor who left us in 2020.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/18/rhonda-fleming-obituary

Rhonda Fleming was a stage name: she was born Marilyn Louis in Los Angeles, the younger of two daughters of Harold Cheverton Louis, an insurance salesman, and his wife, Effie Graham, an actor and model. She grew up in Hollywood, and while attending Beverly Hills high school was spotted by the talent agent Henry Willson, who went on to discover Rock Hudson.

She went straight into films, at first as an extra. Her first substantial supporting parts came in her early 20s in Spellbound and in Robert Siodmak’s Hitchcockian thriller The Spiral Staircase (1946). In Abilene Town (1946), marshal Randolph Scott is torn between Fleming, the grocer’s daughter, and saloon singer Ann Dvorak, predictably settling respectably for the former.

After playing the voluptuous and dangerous lover of hoodlum Kirk Douglas in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Paramount claimed her, and did not allow her to be much more than decorative. Two aristocratic roles came in 1949: the English heroine with whom Bing Crosby falls in love in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, a musical after the novel by Mark Twain – she was a fine singer – and a duchess who fascinates scoutmaster Bob Hope in The Great Lover.

There's more at the link.

Film credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0281766/

[Staph]

5. Another major death from 2020 - Olivia de Havilland

Dame Olivia de Havilland, who has died at 104 in Paris, was one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Her most famous role was that of the virtuous Melanie opposite Vivien Leigh's wayward Scarlett, in the epic Gone with the Wind.

Her relationship with her sister, the actress Joan Fontaine, was a constant source of speculation in the gossip columns.

At the time of her death she was the oldest living performer to have won an Oscar.

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born in Tokyo on 1 July 1916 to Walter, a British patent lawyer and his actress wife Lilian.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-12717233

[CBHagman]

6. Actress and activist Olympia Dukakis, 89

A note on her obituaries: In discussing several of her most notable roles, there are unavoidable spoilers for the films/series themselves.

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/olympia-dukakis-dead-moonstruck-actress-obit-1163911/

Despite her success on the stage, over the first two decades of her career, Dukakis was primarily cast in bit parts in films and television. Stardom, however, arrived seemingly overnight after Dukakis was cast as the Italian-American mother of Cher’s character in the 1987 comedy Moonstruck.

Playing matriarch Rose Castorini in the film, Dukakis earned accolades for her performance, which resulted in Best Supporting Actress wins at both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

[SNIP]

During the 1990s, Dukakis earned three Emmy nominations for her television roles, including for 1992’s Sinatra miniseries (she played Dolly Sinatra) and the 1998 TV movie More Tales of the City. The latter was the second installment in a series of TV movies based on the works of author Armistead Maupin, with Dukakis in the role of the landlord Anna Madrigal. The actress played that character in three TV movies over a decade-long span, as well as reprised the role when Tales of the City was turned into a Netflix miniseries in 2019. She was one of the only actors to appear in all iterations of the saga — alongside Laura Linney and Barbara Garrick.

Here's her IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001156/

[CBHagman]

7. Dancer and arts educator Jacques d'Amboise, 86

Last edited Mon Feb 28, 2022, 11:34 PM - Edit history (1)

TCM fans will have seen him many times as one of the dancing backwoodsmen in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. He was also the subject of an award-winning documentary, He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/jacques-damboise-dead/2021/05/03/a94d8fe4-2254-11e0-8c82-11d7dab8bc4b_story.html

Jacques d’Amboise, an exuberant star of the New York City Ballet for three decades and a favorite of its legendarily exacting choreographer George Balanchine before becoming a champion of arts education, died May 2 at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.

(SNIP)

Mr. d’Amboise originated key roles in works such as the upbeat and patriotic “Stars and Stripes” (1958); the minimalist “Episodes” (1959) and “Movements for Piano and Orchestra” (1963); and “Jewels” (1967), a lavish, three-act work with no plot.

(SNIP)

“What stayed with me was d’Amboise’s matchless delight in moving on a stage,” Dance Magazine editor Allan Ulrich wrote in 2007. “You felt he was put on earth for the sole purpose of giving himself and his audience pleasure through dancing. He could execute the most demanding Balanchine combination with a debonair freedom that banished all thought of exhibitionism.”

In addition to his career with the elite ballet company, Mr. d’Amboise danced on Broadway alongside chanteuse Eartha Kitt in “Shinbone Alley” (1957) and in films including “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” (1954) and the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musical “Carousel” (1956).

His IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0195073/

[CBHagman]

8. "TCM Remembers 2020"

[Staph]

9. Thanks for posting this!

I missed it at the end of 2020. I'm glad that they included Alex Trebek. He wasn't exactly associated with the movies, but he was a very important part of American culture. The good side of American culture!

[CBHagman]

10. Actor, director, and producer Norman Lloyd, 106

Ladies and gentleman — or whoever's out there at this writing — I give you Norman Lloyd, who lived through two world wars and that other pandemic, who worked in every medium, who had a career that stands as proof there aren't even six degrees of separation between Charlie Chaplin and Amy Schumer.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/12/norman-lloyd-obituary

Born Norman Perlmutter in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Max Perlmutter, an accountant who later ran a furniture store, and Sadie (nee Horowitz), a bookkeeper, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He had performed as a child, but began his acting career in earnest, aged 17, as an apprentice with Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory in the city. It was there, in a series of classic plays, that he acquired his sonorous voice and excellent diction. He made an impressive Broadway debut in 1935 as Japhet in André Obey’s Noah, with the great French actor Pierre Fresnay in the title role. After the two Welles productions, he took part in one of the radical Living Newspaper series called Power (1937), a project of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) created by the New Deal.

Following Saboteur, Lloyd began a long association and friendship with “Hitch”. He acted in five films in 1945 for various studios, including Hitchcock’s Spellbound, in which he was a psychiatric patient. Among the others were Lewis Milestone’s second world war drama A Walk In the Sun, in which Lloyd portrayed a cynical private soldier who feels that the war will last for ever with or without him, and Renoir’s The Southerner, in which he played a vindictive neighbour of a farmer.

[CBHagman]

11. Actor Charles Grodin, 86

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/may/19/charles-grodin-obituary

The actor Charles Grodin, who has died aged 86, was never really a star, though he might have been, had he not turned down the lead in The Graduate. He was also too well-defined a presence to slip between roles without bringing his own baggage along. He cultivated a persona through which resentment and superiority were conveyed with calm understatement. Grodin would seem urbane at first, but the joke lay in how quietly rattled and rancorous he would then become. His gaze was flat and pitiless, his mouth a straight horizontal line. When a smile did come, it was impatient or insincere. He never looked impressed.

In his greatest performance, as a man who falls for another woman while on his honeymoon, in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), he was conniving and cruel, turning courtship into a bloodsport. The comic thriller Midnight Run (1988) was a late highlight that came long after Grodin might have been expected to land a leading role. He was 52 at the time and beat Robin Williams to the part of the gentle mafia accountant escorted across the US by a bounty hunter played by Robert De Niro. Their chemistry, and the novelty of seeing Grodin strike tender notes, helped make the film a joy.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was the younger of two sons. His father, Theodore, sold wholesale supplies from his store, which was called the Grodin Company despite having a staff of only two – Grodin’s mother, Lena (nee Singer), also worked there. Grodin studied acting at the University of Miami but left without graduating and won a scholarship at the Pittsburgh Playhouse School. He next moved to New York and enrolled at the Actors Studio while working as a cab driver and security guard. He began to get small parts in theatre and television and became an assistant to the director Gene Saks.

A list of his credits, per IMDB:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001301/

[Staph]

12. Gavin MacLeod (February 28, 1931 - May 29, 2021)

There have been a bunch of threads posted today about the passing of "Happy" Haines of McHale's Navy, Murray on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Captain Stubbing of The Love Boat.

But few of those threads have mentioned his career as a character actor in films. From Variety:

MacLeod was born Allan George See in Mount Kisco, N.Y. His mother worked for Reader’s Digest, while his father was an electrician who was part Chippewa. He grew up in Pleasantville, N.Y., and went to Ithaca College, where he studied acting and graduated in 1952. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he moved to New York City and worked at Radio City Music Hall as an usher and elevator operator while seeking work as an actor. During this time he changed his name.

After a few uncredited film roles, MacLeod made his credited bigscreen debut in the 1958 Susan Hayward vehicle “I Want to Live,” playing a police lieutenant, then played a G.I. in Gregory Peck starrer “Pork Chop Hill” the next year. His supporting role in Blake Edwards’ WWII comedy “Operation Petticoat,” starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis and focusing on the chaotic goings on aboard a submarine, gave the young actor a flavor of what he would be doing a few years later on “McHale’s Navy.” In the meantime he appeared in the 1960 thriller “Twelve Hours to Kill,” which starred future “I Dream of Jeannie” star Barbara Eden; Blake Edwards’ musical comedy “High Time,” starring Bing Crosby and Fabian; and the critically hailed but now forgotten Korean War film “War Hunt.” He also did a boatload of guest appearances on TV before his stint on “McHale’s Navy.”

MacLeod left “McHale’s Navy” in order to be able to appear in a supporting role in the excellent period adventure film “The Sand Pebbles,” starring Steve McQueen, and he appeared in a number of other films throughout the decade: “A Man Called Gannon” and Blake Edwards’ Peter Sellers comedy “The Party” in 1968; “The Thousand Plane Raid,” “The Comic” and “The Intruders” in 1969; and, in 1970, the World War II caper film “Kelly’s Heroes,” in which he played Moriarty, Oddball’s machine-gunner and mechanic.

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/gavin-macleod-dead-dies-love-boat-mary-tyler-moore-show-1234984591/

[CBHagman]

13. Actor-singer Johnny Crawford, 75

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/johnny-crawford-young-star-of-the-rifleman-dies-at-75-4176421/

Crawford was 12 when he appeared for the first time as Mark McCain, son of the widower Lucas McCain, on The Rifleman. The Four Star Television series, set in the New Mexico Territory with storylines crafted by Sam Peckinpah, ran for five seasons, from Sept. 30, 1958, to April 8, 1963, and then for decades in syndication and reruns.

[SNIP]

He had appeared in an uncredited role in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), starring Gregory Peck, then worked on such TV programs as The Lone Ranger, Climax!, Matinee Theatre and The Loretta Young Show before starring in Courage of Black Beauty (1957).

After The Rifleman was canceled, Crawford and Connors worked together again on a 1965 episode of NBC’s Branded, and he appeared opposite John Wayne in El Dorado (1967) and on TV shows including Hawaii Five-O, Little House on the Prairie and Murder, She Wrote.

[CBHagman]

14. Actor Ned Beatty, 83

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/arts/ned-beatty-dead.html

Ned Beatty, who during a prolific acting career that spanned more than four decades earned an Oscar nomination for his role in “Network” and gave a cringe-inducing performance as a weekend outdoorsman assaulted by backwoods brutes in “Deliverance,” died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83.

His death was confirmed by Deborah Miller, Mr. Beatty’s manager, who did not immediately provide details on the cause.

Mr. Beatty appeared in more than 150 movies and television projects over the course of his career, frequently cast in supporting roles. While the beefy actor was not known as a leading man of the screen, he became associated with some of Hollywood’s most enduring films.

His credits include “All the President’s Men” (1976), “Superman” (1978), “Rudy” (1993) and “Back to School” (1986).

His IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000885/

[CBHagman]

15. From 2020: director Joan Micklin Silver, 85

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/14/joan-micklin-silver-obituary-crossing-delancey

A sensitivity to cultural differences, a playful looseness with actors, and a nose for the churn and thrust of interpersonal relationships were among the characteristics of the film-maker Joan Micklin Silver, who has died aged 85 of vascular dementia. She was 40 when she made her debut with Hester Street (1975), the story of a young Russian-Jewish woman arriving in late-19th-century New York only to struggle to match her husband’s aplomb in adapting to their adopted culture.

Shot in black and white and scripted largely in Yiddish with subtitles, the film was self-distributed by her husband, Raphael D Silver, known as Ray, who worked in real estate. He volunteered to produce it after being appalled by the sexist responses his wife received; one studio executive had told her that “women directors are just one more problem we don’t need”. The picture attracted rapturous reviews, recouped its entire $365,000 production costs in five weeks, went on to make nearly $5m and earned an Oscar nomination for its 23-year-old star, Carol Kane.

Silver’s most popular effort was the romantic comedy Crossing Delancey (1988), starring Amy Irving as Izzy, a bookseller whose meddling grandmother, or bubbe, played by the lively Yiddish theatre veteran Reizl Bozyk, hires a matchmaker on her behalf. “Ya look, ya meet, ya try, ya see,” says the blowsy broker (Sylvia Miles), playing Cupid several decades before Tinder. Izzy has her doubts about Sam (Peter Riegert), who runs a stall promising “a joke and a pickle for only a nickel”, but no reasonable viewer would swipe left on the film.

IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0798717/

[CBHagman]

16. Director Richard Donner, 91

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/05/1013205964/richard-donner-dies-directed-the-goonies-superman-and-lethal-weapon

Director Richard Donner, a pioneer of action-adventure movies, has died. He was 91. His death was confirmed by a spokesperson with Warner Bros. No cause has been disclosed.

He is survived by his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner; they met during the making of the 1985 movie Ladyhawke. Together, they founded The Donners Company, whose credits include the X-Men and Free Willy franchises.

Donner gave generations of moviegoers something to love. Baby boomers might know his work directing TV episodes of the original Twilight Zone, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Gilligan's Island — it was Donner who directed the classic Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" starring William Shatner. In 1978, he dazzled audiences with Superman, starring Christopher Reeves as "the man of steel." In the next decade, The Goonies, produced by Steven Spielberg, became a major hit with kids. The bro-cop-action-comedy Lethal Weapon, starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, was such a commercial hit, Donner directed three more. Just last year Donner told The Daily Telegraph that Lethal Weapon 5 was on its way

His credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001149/

[CBHagman]

17. Director and screenwriter Clare Peploe, 79

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/movies/clare-peploe-dead.html

Clare Peploe, a director and screenwriter who liked to merge genres in her films, and who also made significant contributions to some of the movies of her husband, the celebrated filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, died on June 24 in Rome. She was 79.

[SNIP]

As a director, Ms. Peploe made a quick impact with her first effort, a comic short called “Couples and Robbers,” about newlyweds who commit a robbery, which she wrote with Ernie Eban. It was nominated for the short-subject Oscar in 1981.

“In this comedy-thriller she has demonstrated that in her very first film she is a talent to be reckoned with,” Richard Roud wrote in The Guardian Weekly when the film played at the Berlin Film Festival in 1982. “The casting and direction of actors is superb. If someone doesn’t finance a feature film by her, it will be a great shame.”

Ms. Peploe, though, found financing to be a struggle, especially since her films defied easy categorization, and when she did set a project in motion, she worked at a deliberate pace. As a result, her oeuvre was limited. Her first feature, “High Season,” wasn’t released until 1987, and there would be only two others, “Rough Magic” in 1995 and “Triumph of Love” in 2001.

[CBHagman]

18. Pioneering executive producer Marcia Nasatir, 95

https://deadline.com/2021/08/marcia-nasatir-dead-pioneer-female-film-executive-producer-1234808454/

Marcia Nasatir, a film executive producer who shattered barriers as Hollywood’s first VP Production, working on back-to-back Best Picture Oscar winners One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Rocky and many other pics, died Tuesday morning at the Motion Picture & Television Fund hospital in Woodland Hills, CA. She was 95.

No cause of death was reported.

Nasatir was working as a lit agent in the mid-1970s when she joined United Artists as a story editor. She was named VP West Coast Development, working with SVP Production Mike Medavoy. Along with Best Picture winners Rocky and Cuckoo’s Nest, UA also produced such classics of the era as Brian De Palma’s Carrie and Robert Redford’s Three Days of the Condor.

[CBHagman]

19. Actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, 88

From the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/06/jean-paul-belmondo-star-of-breathless-dies-aged-88

Born in 1933 in the well-to-do Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, son of “pied-noir” sculptor Paul Belmondo, Belmondo attended a string of elite private schools but did poorly. He showed more interest in sport, and embarked on a brief amateur boxing career as a teenager. After contracting tuberculosis, he became interested in performing, and applied to the elite National Academy of Dramatic Arts, eventually gaining a place in 1952.

After graduation, Belmondo began acting in the theatre, appearing in plays by Anouilh, Feydeau and George Bernard Shaw. He also secured a string of small film roles: in one of them, Marc Allegret’s 1958 comedy Un Drôle de Dimanche, he was spotted by Godard who was then still a critic at Cahiers du Cinéma. Godard cast him in a 12-minute short, Charlotte and Her Boyfriend – billed as “a homage to Cocteau”, it consists of Belmondo’s character ranting at his girlfriend in a hotel room. (The voice was supplied by Godard himself, after Belmondo was conscripted into the army to serve in Algeria.)

Before Godard could get a feature off the ground, his fellow critic Claude Chabrol cast Belmondo in his 1959 thriller A Double Tour (AKA Web of Passion), playing the murder victim’s boyfriend. The character’s name, Laszlo Kovacs, would recur in Breathless as a sly in-joke. But it was Godard’s film, shot in the late summer of 1959, that secured Belmondo’s ascension as the louche face of the French New Wave. Based on a treatment by François Truffaut and Chabrol, Breathless was inspired by the real-life activities of killer Michel Portail. Much has been written about Breathless’ unorthodox production, with Godard writing new dialogue every day, and shooting without lighting to allow for acting spontaneity; Belmondo responded brilliantly to Godard’s tactics, and the film became a substantial commercial hit on its release in 1960.

[CBHagman]

20. Actor Tommy Kirk, 79.

Tommy Kirk, who gained family movie immortality with his role in Old Yeller, has left us.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/tommy-kirk-dead-old-yeller-shaggy-dog-1235022775/

Kirk first made his mark starring as sleuth Joe Hardy in a pair of Hardy Boys TV serials, “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure” and “The Mystery of the Ghost Farm,” offshoots of ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club that aired in 1956-57.

He also played the middle son, Ernst, in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) — James MacArthur and Kevin Corcoran were his brothers and John Mills and Dorothy McGuire his parents — and starred as college brainiac Merlin Jones opposite Annette Funicello in two more Disney movies.

Kirk brought many a tear to movie audiences’ eyes starring as country kid Travis Coates alongside a heroic Labrador retriever in Old Yeller (1957), then turned into a pooch himself — a sheepdog named Chiffonn — in The Shaggy Dog (1959), the first of four movies he made with Fred MacMurray.

[Staph]

21. Thanks, CB! I missed this one!

Tommy Kirk was one of those adorable Disney boys that I had a crush on, back in the late 1950s and 1960s.

[CBHagman]

22. TCM Remembers 2021

As always, TCM's annual video tribute to recently departed actors, directors, and others is a marvel.

[CBHagman]

23. TCM Remembers Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022)

The director died yesterday at age 82.

[Staph]

24. Sidney Poitier has left us.

I know that it's all over DU, but for completeness' sake, here's the BBC's take on his life.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59907931



This news report from the BBC has a nice retrospective on his films.

[CBHagman]

25. Thank you.

There's been a tremendous outpouring of respect online.

The Washington Post put his obituary on the front page and has followed up with a series of reflections that acknowledging his roles not only as an actor but an agent of change.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/01/07/sidney-poitier-teen-years-army/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/sidney-poitier-appreciation/2022/01/08/a86a5bc0-7090-11ec-b9fc-b394d592a7a6_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/01/07/sidney-poiter-oscars-history/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/07/sidney-poitier-broke-the-hollywood-color-line/

[ificandream]

26. Sidney Poitier RIP

Sidney Poitier, Who Paved the Way for Black Actors in Film, Dies at 94
The first Black performer to win the Academy Award for best actor, for “Lilies of the Field,” he once said he felt “as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made.”

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Jan. 7, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/movies/sidney-poitier-dead.html

[CBHagman]

27. Oscar-winning songwriter Marilyn Bergman, 93

"The Windmills of Your Mind." "In the Heat of the Night." "The Way We Were." "You Don't Bring Me Flowers." If you've heard any of them, you know Marilyn Bergman's work.

And she was politically active, too.

Ms. Bergman is survived by her husband and songwriting partner, Alan. This obituary gets into a few interesting details of her creative process.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jan/12/marilyn-bergman-obituary

Having been one of very few women in the songwriting business early in her career, Bergman was a founding member of the Hollywood women’s political committee, alongside Jane Fonda, Streisand and others. The committee raised money for Democratic political candidates, and in 1993 the Bergmans wrote material for Bill Clinton’s first presidential inauguration. In 1985 Marilyn was the first woman elected to the board of directors of ASCAP, the performance rights organisation, and she served as its president from 1994 until 2009.

[ificandream]

28. Rosa Lee Hawkins, Youngest Member of the Dixie Cups, Dies at 76

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/arts/music/rosa-lee-hawkins-dead.html]


?quality=75&auto=webp]

By Jack Kramer
Jan. 14, 2022
Rosa Lee Hawkins, the youngest member of the musical trio the Dixie Cups, whose hit single “Chapel of Love” reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 in 1964, died on Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. She was 76.

The cause was internal bleeding resulting from complications during surgery at Tampa General Hospital, said her sister Barbara Ann Hawkins, who was also a member of the group, along with Joan Marie Johnson, who died in 2016 at 72.

The Dixie Cups epitomized the harmonizing sound of the 1960s girl group. “Chapel of Love,” their debut single and most well-known song, quickly replaced the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” as No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1964. It was later heard on the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War film, “Full Metal Jacket.”

[CBHagman]

29. Actress Yvette Mimieux, 80.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/yvette-mimieux-dead-time-machine-1235156675/

Actress Yvette Mimieux, who starred in movies including “Where the Boys Are,” “The Time Machine,” “Light in the Piazza,” “Toys in the Attic,” “Dark of the Sun” and “The Picasso Summer,” died Tuesday. She was 80.

The beautiful blonde Mimieux made most of her films in the 1960s, but she was also among the stars of Disney’s 1979 sci-fi film “The Black Hole.”

Among the films Mimieux made in 1960 were MGM’s glossy teen movie “Where the Boys Are,” in which four coeds including Mimieux’s Melanie head to Fort Lauderdale for spring break in search of fun and the “right” boy, and George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” starring Rod Taylor and with Mimieux third billed as Weena, Taylor’s romantic interest, who lives among the Eloi, a peaceful race living in the year 802,701.

[Staph]

30. Visual effect guru Douglas Trumball has passed away.

Visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull, one of the masterminds behind the visual effects on some of the most visually audacious science fiction films of all time, including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” died Monday from complications from mesothelioma. He was 79.

He shared Oscar nominations for best visual effects for “Close Encounters,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Blade Runner.” Trumbull also oversaw the visual effects on “Silent Running,” “The Andromeda Strain” and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and he directed eco-sci-fi film “Silent Running” and Natalie Wood-starring “Brainstorm.”

In addition to doing effects work on the classic sci-fi films for which he’s known, Trumbull also invented and patenting dozens of film tools and techniques, from motion-control photography to miniature compositing.

In 1993 he shared an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award “for concept (Trumbull), the movement design (Williamson), the electronic design (Auguste) and the camera system (DiGuilio) of the CP-65 Showscan Camera System for 65mm motion picture photography, the first modern 65mm camera developed in 25 years.” In 2012 he won the Academy’s Gordon E. Sawyer Award, which is a special Oscar presented to “an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.”

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/douglas-trumbull-dead-visual-effects-1235174814/

[CBHagman]

31. Actress Sally Kellerman, 84

I'd seen her in A Little Romance and of course in M*A*S*H, but there was a lot I didn't know about her.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/27/sally-kellerman-obituary

Kellerman was born in Long Beach, California, to John Helm Kellerman, an oil executive, and Edith, a piano teacher. She was educated at Hollywood high school, where her talent for singing and acting first emerged. At 18, she was offered a contract as a singer with the jazz label Verve Records. She later claimed that stage fright put paid to her hopes of performing, but also that she declined the contract in favour of pursuing her acting career, having recently begun taking classes alongside Jack Nicholson.

It was not until 1972 that she recorded her first album, Roll with the Feelin’. Her second, Sally, was released in 2009.

While working as a waitress, she began to get small parts in film, television and theatre. She had one line of dialogue in Reform School Girl (1957), her screen debut, as well as in the horror movie Hands of a Stranger (1962). She appeared in television series including The Outer Limits, in which a part was specially written for her by Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of Psycho (1960), who had seen her in a play. She wore silver contact lenses as a psychiatrist who develops godlike powers in a 1966 episode of Star Trek. In The Boston Strangler (1968), she narrowly escapes being murdered by the title character, played by Tony Curtis.

Bio, credits, and more:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001419/

[CBHagman]

32. Just bumping to get somewhat caught up...

There have been a number of farewell tributes to offer, and I will post a couple of those presently.

[CBHagman]

33. Director Jean-Luc Godard, 91

From The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/movies/jean-luc-godard-dead.html

When his first feature-length film as a director, “Breathless” (“À Bout de Souffle”), was released in 1960, Mr. Godard joined several of his Cahiers colleagues in a movement that the French press soon labeled la Nouvelle Vague — the New Wave.

For Mr. Godard, as well as for New Wave friends and associates like François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer, the “tradition of quality” represented by the established French cinema was an aesthetic dead end. To them it was strangled by literary influences and empty displays of craftsmanship that had to be vanquished to make room for a new cinema, one that sprang from the personality and predilections of the director.

His IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000419/

And this is interesting: Two more Godard movies may be on the way!

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2023/1/vbb4ipo2mgtyvixutqeitpe1bp9irg

[CBHagman]

34. Actress Virginia Patton, 97

As we've just come off the annual TV airing of It's a Wonderful Life, I wanted to make sure we noted the passing of Virginia Patton (Ruth Dakin Bailey).

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/virginia-patton-dead-wonderful-life-1235203102/

Virginia Ann Patton was born in Cleveland on June 25, 1925. She was raised in Portland, Oregon, where she graduated from Jefferson High School in 1942, then made her way to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.

She signed with Warner Bros., made her movie debut in the musical Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), starring Eddie Cantor and an all-star cast, and appeared in small roles in other films including Janie (1944), Hollywood Canteen (1944) and Jack Benny’s The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945).

A niece of World War II general George Patton, she had starred in a play written by William C. De Mille, brother of Cecil B. De Mille, while she was attending USC, and that put her on the radar of Capra. He was casting It’s a Wonderful Life, the first film he would make for his new Liberty Films production company.

[CBHagman]

35. Actress Gina Lollobrigida, 95

I know I've chosen to highlight the content that emphasizes Ms. Lollobrigida's looks and her projects with Hollywood notables, but there is more to her career than that, as the article linked below notes.

https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-gina-lollobrigida-rome-movies-35ab673787e5ce2c2c6f5fdf96bb0f59

“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making movies in Italy just after the end of World War II, as the country began to promote on the big screen a stereotypical concept of Mediterranean beauty as buxom and brunette.

“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making movies in Italy just after the end of World War II, as the country began to promote on the big screen a stereotypical concept of Mediterranean beauty as buxom and brunette.

Besides “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman” in 1955, career highlights included Golden Globe-winner “Come September,” with Rock Hudson; “Trapeze;” “Beat the Devil,” a 1953 John Huston film starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” which won Lollobrigida Italy’s top movie award, a David di Donatello, as best actress in 1969.

Her IMDB page (film credits and more):

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0518178/

[CBHagman]

37. Actor, director, and writer Douglas McGrath, 64

Even if you don't know the name, you know the work. Douglas McGrath's career extended from the stage to television to the big screen.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/douglas-mcgrath-dead-dies-emma-1235429115/

He began his career at “Saturday Night Live,” which he joined in 1980, working alongside actors including Chevy Chase, Laurie Metcalf and Al Franken.

McGrath garnered credits on shows including “L.A. Law” and “The Steven Banks Show” before turning to feature films. His first feature screenplay credit was for “Born Yesterday,” starring Melanie Griffith, John Goodman and Don Johnson and his second, co-written with Woody Allen, was “Bullets Over Broadway,” which featured John Cusack, Dianne Wiest and Jennifer Tilly. The film earned McGrath and Allen an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

His next project was “Emma,” an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel starring Gwyneth Paltrow in the lead role alongside Toni Collette, Alan Cumming and Ewan McGregor, which he also directed. The film saw McGrath nominated for a USC Scripter Award and a WGA award for best adapted screenplay.

Find out more about his career at the link above and the one below.

His IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0569790/

[CBHagman]

38. Actress Sylvia Syms, 89

Now this is a thought-provoking obituary. Much of it is devoted to exploring the plot and real-life repercussions of 1961 Sylvia Syms film sometimes shown on TCM, Victim, which was one of the earliest movies to deal with the criminalization of homosexuality. But there's also a lot on Sylvia Syms' life experiences and her wide-ranging career. She'd probably fit right in on DU.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/01/28/sylvia-syms-actress-dies/

Sylvia May Laura Syms was born Jan. 6, 1934, in London, where her father was a trade union leader and passed along to her a lifelong loyalty to the Labour Party and the rights of workers.

As a child, Ms. Syms and her siblings were evacuated from London during the German airstrikes in World War II. Her mother stayed behind in the city as an auxiliary nurse and suffered a head injury during a bombing raid. She died in 1946, leaving Ms. Syms emotionally scarred and “near breakdown,” by her own account.

In 1953, Ms. Syms graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with a special award that paved the way for immediate stage and screen work. In her London theater debut, George Bernard Shaw’s “The Apple Cart,” she had a small role in 1954 alongside star Noel Coward. He once asked her to lunch at the Savoy Hotel because, she said, he liked her hat. “It was the first posh restaurant I have ever been to,” Ms. Syms recalled.

IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0843401/

[CBHagman]

39. Actor Treat Williams, 71

His obituary in Variety:

https://variety.com/2023/film/obituaries-people-news/treat-williams-dead-hair-musical-everwood-1235641895/

At the age of 28, Williams received acclaim for his performance in “Hair,” Miloš Forman’s big screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. Williams earned a Golden Globe nomination in the now-defunct category new star of the year (actor). Two years later he was competing again, this time in best actor in a motion picture drama for his performance in Sidney Lumet’s “Prince of the City.”

Among Williams’ other notable film credits are his lead turn alongside Laura Dern in the coming-of-age romance “Smooth Talk,” which released in 1985 and earned Williams an Independent Spirit nomination for best male lead. He also starred in “Deep Rising,” the now cult ’90s aquatic creature feature that centered on Williams’ captain and his crew’s struggle to survive.

Williams landed his most notable TV role with “Everwood,” starring as Dr. Andy Brown, a Manhattan neurosurgeon who relocates his family to rural Colorado after the death of his wife. Williams headlined The WB Network series from producer Greg Berlanti ran four seasons, earning a Screen Actors Guild award nomination for outstanding performance by a male actor in a drama series.

His IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001852/

[CBHagman]

40. Actress and politician Glenda Jackson, 87

A tribute from Michael Billington in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jun/15/glenda-jackson-died-aged-87

Born in Birkenhead, Jackson first came to prominence in 1964, in an experimental Peter Brook Theatre of Cruelty season at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda), during which she was stripped naked, bathed and dressed in a prison uniform to the words of a report on the Christine Keeler case. Jackson went on to join the RSC, playing Charlotte Corday in Brook’s production of Marat/Sade and Ophelia to David Warner’s Hamlet at Stratford. Prophetically, Penelope Gilliatt began her review in the Observer by saying that Jackson was the first Ophelia who should have played Hamlet. “She makes Ophelia,” wrote Gilliatt, “exceptional and electric, with an intelligence that harasses the court and a scornful authority full of Hamlet’s own self-distaste.”

Those qualities were evident in much of Jackson’s later work: a sharp, probing mind and a built-in bullshit detector that allowed her to see through all forms of pretence. I always remember how as Elizabeth I in the 1971 movie, Mary, Queen of Scots, she delivered a blow to the First Earl of Leicester’s solar plexus that would have felled Muhammad Ali. But Jackson could be tender as well as tough: in the same year she did a Fred and Ginger routine on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas show, and in 1974 she won a second Oscar (her first was for Women in Love) playing a dress designer who has a hectic affair with George Segal’s American businessman in A Touch of Class.

If there was one quality that defined Jackson’s career, it was a willingness to take risks. You saw that in two of her finest stage performances. In 1983, she played a woman cut off from her roots in Botho Strauss’s Big and Small and displayed what I called “the frightening ability of a Beckett heroine to stare into the abyss”. A year later she was the lead in Eugene O’Neill’s four-hour-plus Strange Interlude capturing all the inner turbulence of a woman who shows both delight and disgust with the men she variously possesses.

Her IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0413559/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[CBHagman]

41. Actor Helmut Berger, 78

Whoa. This obituary has left me speechless.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/02/helmut-berger-obituary

IMDB page with bio and credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000918/

[CBHagman]

42. Actor Frederic Forrest, 86

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/06/26/frederic-forrest-dead/

Mr. Forrest, an unpretentious Texan who spent his boyhood summers baling hay and picking cotton, appeared in more than 80 movies and television shows, often playing lawmen, killers and psychopathic heavies. He could be coldblooded and threatening, as when he starred as the bandit Blue Duck in “Lonesome Dove” (1989), a miniseries adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, but also showed a more delicate touch in movies like “Valley Girl” (1983), as the proprietor of a health-food restaurant and the hippie father to Deborah Foreman.

Although he was seldom cast in leading roles, Mr. Forrest found critical acclaim as a character actor, including in several films by Coppola.

The two first worked together on “The Conversation” (1974), a contemplative thriller that echoed through the Watergate era with its story of privacy, guilt, paranoia and conspiracy. The film hinged on a cryptic conversation recorded by surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who tracks a young couple (Mr. Forrest and Cindy Williams) as they walk the noisy streets of San Francisco. A bit of sophisticated audio filtering allows Caul to hear Mr. Forrest’s ominous words, “He’d kill us if he got the chance,” shortly before a murder takes place.

His IMDB page, with bio and credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002078/

[CBHagman]

43. Actress and producer Cindy Williams, 75

Yes, this is long overdue. Cindy Williams (of American Graffiti and later Laverne and Shirley) died in January, and I have meant mention her here.

On edit: I also found out, belatedly, that she and Frederic Forrest (see preceding obituary) were both in The Conversation, which I still haven't seen.

On reading Cindy Williams' obituary in the L.A. Times, I realized she had a far more interesting career than I had realized, and she definitely had some interesting Six Degrees of Separation going on in her life.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-01-30/cindy-williams-dies-obituary-laverne-and-shirley


Her IMDB bio and credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0930286/

[ificandream]

49. My wife and I met her at Magic Mountain, of all places.

She was with a couple of younger actors (one male, one female) and she insisted on us learning about them (whose names I can't remember).

[CBHagman]

44. Lyricist Cynthia Weil, 82

You've heard her songs, even if you haven't heard her name, and you've heard those songs everywhere, including at the movies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/06/02/cynthia-weil-lyricist-dead/

Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, married in 1961, were one of popular music’s most successful teams, part of a remarkable ensemble recruited by impresarios Don Kirshner and Al Nevins and based in Manhattan’s Brill Building neighborhood, a few blocks from Times Square. With such hit-making combinations as Carole King and Gerry Goffin and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, the Brill Building song factory turned out many of the biggest singles of the ’60s and beyond.

Ms. Weil and Mann were key collaborators with producer Phil Spector on songs for the Ronettes (“Walking in the Rain”), the Crystals (“He’s Sure the Boy I Love”) and other performers, and also provided hits for performers such as Dolly Parton and Hanson. “Don’t Know Much,” a Linda Ronstadt-Aaron Neville duet they helped write, was a Top 5 hit that won a best pop performance Grammy in 1990.

Their most famous song, a work of history overall, was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” an anthem of “blue-eyed soul” produced by Spector as if scoring a tragedy and sung with desperate fury by the Righteous Brothers. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” topped the charts in 1965 and was covered by other artists.

[CBHagman]

45. Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, 99

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/jun/25/sheldon-harnick-obituary

For 15 years on Broadway, between 1956 and 1970, the lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who has died aged 99, and his composer partner Jerry Bock were at the centre of an interim golden period between the heyday of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the advent of Stephen Sondheim as a fully fledged composer/lyricist.

Their most notable shows, She Loves Me (1963) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964), remain classic examples of the romantic, yet socially observant, beautifully crafted and spiritually impassioned Broadway musical at its best. The first was a quiet success, elevated in recent years to cult status; the second, a schmaltzy, dramatic celebration of displaced Jews in tsarist Russia, and the longest-running show of any kind on Broadway (eight years) at that time.

There's more at the link.

[ificandream]

46. William Friedkin: Director of The Exorcist and The French Connection dies aged 87

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William Friedkin, director of the classic horror film The Exorcist, died on Monday at the age of 87.

His widow Sherry Lansing told the BBC through tears: "He had a wonderful life. He was almost 88 - he has a new movie coming out.

"He was the most wonderful husband in the world. He was the most wonderful father in the world. He had a big wonderful, life. There was no dream unfulfilled."

Friedkin died in Los Angeles on Monday.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66434077

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[ificandream]

47. Mark Margolis, starred in "Breaking Bad", dead at 83.

Mark Margolis, the prolific actor whose simmering air of menace as the fearsome former drug lord Hector Salamanca in “Breaking Bad” transformed the innocent ding of a bellhop bell into a harbinger of doom, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 83.

His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital following a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement on Friday by his son, Morgan Margolis. Mr. Margolis lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Margolis notched more than 160 credits in movies and on television, gaining particular notice with memorable roles in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” (1983), playing opposite Al Pacino as a cocaine-syndicate henchman, and in the Jim Carrey comedy “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” (1994), in which he played Ventura’s aggrieved landlord with delicious malevolence.

He also became a go-to actor for the director Darren Aronofsky, appearing in his films “Pi” (1998), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Fountain” (2006), “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Noah” (2014).

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/arts/television/mark-margolis-dead.html?searchResultPosition=4

[ificandream]

48. Jess Search, a Force in the Documentary Genre, Dies at 54

Published Aug. 4, 2023
Updated Aug. 7, 2023, 3:19 p.m. ET

Jess Search, a producer on dozens of important documentaries and a catalyst on many more as one of the directors of Doc Society, a nonprofit organization she helped found in 2005 that supports documentary filmmakers, died on July 31 in London. She was 54.

Doc Society said in a statement that the death, in a hospital, was caused by brain cancer. Search had announced last month that she was stepping away from the organization because of her illness.

Search had been a central figure in the documentary scene in Britain and beyond for years. She was gender nonconforming (she used the pronouns “she” and “her” but preferred not to use the gendered courtesy title Ms.), and she had a special interest in promoting work by filmmakers from underrepresented populations or that dealt with out-of-the-mainstream subjects.

She was a producer or executive producer on some of those films, like Matthew Barbato’s “Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother” (2007), about a sex reassignment surgery, and Agniia Galdanova’s “Queendom,” which was released earlier this year and is about a queer Russian performance artist.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/movies/jess-search-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1

[CBHagman]

50. Director Terence Davies, 77

Read his story:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/08/terence-davies-obituary#:~:text=Terence%20Davies%2C%20who%20has%20died,alongside%20instances%20of%20lacerating%20pain.

Terence Davies, who has died aged 77 after a short illness, transformed his poor and often brutal working-class upbringing in Liverpool into a series of overwhelmingly evocative films.

Moments of transcendent beauty nestled alongside instances of lacerating pain. There was a similar division in Davies himself. Here was a man given to brooding, despair and self-loathing that could be lightened unexpectedly by outbreaks of exuberance or glimmers of camp, waspish wit.

The shorts that made his name, and became known as The Terence Davies Trilogy, followed one character, Robert Tucker, from the schoolyard to the grave. It was to be the only work of his with a contemporary setting. “Being in the past makes me feel safe because I understand that world,” he said.

His IMDB pages:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0203993/

[ificandream]

51. Richard Roundtree, Star of 'Shaft,' Dies at 81

While indelibly tied to the role that made him famous in 1971, he remained active for more than four decades afterward.

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By Anita Gates
Published Oct. 24, 2023
Updated Oct. 25, 2023, 12:46 p.m. ET

Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African American masculinity in the movies when he played the title role in “Shaft,” one of the first Black action heroes, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.

His manager, Patrick McMinn, said the cause was pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed two months ago.

“Shaft,” which was released in 1971, was among the first of the so-called blaxploitation movies, and it made Mr. Roundtree a star at 29.

The character John Shaft is his own man, a private detective who jaywalks confidently through moving Times Square traffic in a handsome brown leather coat with the collar turned up; sports a robust, dark mustache somewhere between walrus-style and a downturned handlebar; and keeps a pearl-handled revolver in the fridge in his Greenwich Village duplex apartment.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/movies/richard-roundtree-dead.html?searchResultPosition=6

[ificandream]

52. Matthew Perry, Star of 'Friends,' Is Dead at 54

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By Alex Traub and Matt Stevens
Published Oct. 29, 2023

Matthew Perry, who gained sitcom superstardom as Chandler Bing on the show “Friends,” becoming a model of the ability to tease your pals as an expression of love, has died. He was 54.

The death was confirmed by Capt. Scot Williams of the Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide division. He said the cause was not likely to be determined for some time, but there was no indication of foul play.

Several news outlets reported, without a named source, that Mr. Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles. He had publicly struggled with drinking and drug use for decades, leading to hospitalizations for a range of ailments. By his own account, he had spent more than half his life in treatment and rehab facilities.

“Friends” ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004. It chronicled the never-too-dramatic dramas and in-jokes and exploits of a group of six young friends living in New York City. Chandler was the yuppie of the group, with a well-paying white-collar job his friends did not entirely understand. He wore sweater vests but also moodily smoked cigarettes.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/arts/television/matthew-perry-dead.html

[ificandream]

53. Richard Moll, Towering Bailiff on 'Night Court,' Dies at 80

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By Orlando Mayorquin
Published Oct. 27, 2023

Richard Moll, the 6-foot-8 actor who delighted television audiences with a childlike charm in his role as the hulking bailiff on the NBC sitcom “Night Court,” died on Thursday at his home in Big Bear Lake, Calif. He was 80.

His death was announced by a family spokesman, Jeff Sanderson. No cause was given.

In a career of more than four decades, Mr. Moll played a variety of roles on television and in films. But he was best known for portraying the baldheaded, wide-eyed Aristotle Nostradamus Shannon, better known as Bull, on all nine seasons of “Night Court,” which ran from 1984 to 1992.

Bull Shannon’s dimwitted persona lent an air of lighthearted innocence to the hit series, which was set inside a fictional municipal night court in Manhattan and starred Harry Anderson, who died in 2018, as Judge Harry Stone and John Larroquette as the prosecutor Dan Fielding. (A rebooted “Night Court” made its debut on NBC this year, with Mr. Larroquette the only actor returning from the original series.)

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/arts/television/richard-moll-dead.html

[CBHagman]

54. Actress Gayle Hunnicutt, 80

Stage, screen, and television: Gayle Hunnicutt made her career across media and more than one continent.

She was also part of an ensemble cast in The Legend of Hell House, which might deserve a place on your Halloween film roster.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/sep/03/gayle-hunnicutt-obituary

The acting career of Gayle Hunnicutt, who has died aged 80, could be defined in two acts. As an up-and-coming starlet in Hollywood she was often cast for her stunning beauty. Then, after marrying the British actor David Hemmings, she moved to the UK, where she played big parts in two major television series, The Golden Bowl (1972) and Fall of Eagles (1974).

After a divorce she married the journalist and editor Simon Jenkins, and alongside her acting career became a fixture of the British social scene. She may, though, be best remembered for the final three seasons of Dallas, from 1989 to 1991, in which she played Vanessa Beaumont, an English aristocrat whose long-ago affair with JR Ewing produced a son he had never known existed.

Hunnicutt was born in Texas, not far from Dallas in Fort Worth. Her father, Sam, was a colonel in the army; her mother, Mary (nee Dickerson), gave birth to Gayle while her husband was serving in New Caledonia during the second world war. Her parents did not support her desire to go to college, but she won a scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles, and paid for her time there with part-time work while studying English and theatre.

IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0402281/

[CBHagman]

55. Documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski, 78

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/09/05/nancy-buirski-documentary-films-dead/

Nancy Buirski, a prizewinning documentary filmmaker whose wide-ranging works — exploring the stories of civil rights heroes and protagonists in the history of cinema and ballet — offered intimate portrayals of their subjects and their times, died Aug. 29 at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.

[SNIP]

Ms. Buirski devoted her professional life to documenting the world on film, both in still photography and in moving pictures. After beginning her career as an editor at Magnum, the highly regarded photo cooperative, she became a picture editor at the New York Times and later founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C., in 1998.

Ms. Buirski established her own reputation as a filmmaker with the release in 2011 of “The Loving Story,” a documentary about Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple at the center of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia that invalidated state anti-miscegenation laws.

Ms. Buirski's IMDB pages:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1799233/

[CBHagman]

56. Actor Julian Sands, 65

This is terribly belated, but I didn't want to neglect Julian Sands, who more than earned his place in film history with his performance in the wonderful Merchant-Ivory-Prawer Jhabvala adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jun/27/julian-sands-obituary

With his shrewd eyes and his forks of corn-yellow hair, Julian Sands was a natural choice to play the valiant, romantic George Emerson, who snatches a kiss from Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) in a Tuscan poppy field in A Room With a View (1985). “I wanted him to be real, not a two-dimensional minor screen god,” he said. “I liked him in his lighter, sexier moments, less so when he was brooding.”

Sands, who has died aged 65 while hiking in mountains in California, was dashing in that film, but he could also project a dandyish, effete or sinister quality. He was blessed with a mellifluous voice and a lean, youthful, fine-boned face, even if, as a child, his brothers insisted he resembled a horse. (He agreed.) In James Ivory’s film of EM Forster’s novel, he was pure heart-throb material. His participation in the notorious nude bathing scene was no impediment to the picture’s success.

Prior to that, he had played the journalist Jon Swain in The Killing Fields (1984), Roland Joffé’s drama about the bloody rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The picture marked the beginning of his friendship with his co-star John Malkovich. “I’d been cautioned by Roland to keep my distance from John because he was an unstable character,” Sands recalled. “And John had been told by Roland to stay away from me, because I was a refined, sensible person who didn’t want to be distracted. In fact, we bonded instantly.”

For those who want to explore his filmography, here's the IMDB link:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001696/

[ificandream]

57. Peter White, 'Boys in the Band' and 'All My Children' Actor, Dies at 86

By Mike Barnes/The Hollywood Reporter

Peter White, who portrayed Linc Tyler on the ABC soap opera All My Children over four decades and starred in the original stage production and film adaptation of The Boys in the Band, has died. He was 86.

White died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles of melanoma, his All My Children castmate Kathleen Noone (Ellen Shepherd Dalton on the show) told The Hollywood Reporter.

White also played Arthur Cates, the attorney for Sable Colby (Stephanie Beacham), on the first two seasons of the ABC primetime soap The Colbys in 1985-86, and he recurred as the deceased doctor dad of the characters played by Swoosie Kurtz, Sela Ward, Patricia Kalember and Julianne Phillips on the 1991-96 NBC drama Sisters.

White first portrayed Lincoln Tyler, son of stern Pine Valley matriarch Phoebe Tyler (Ruth Warrick), from 1974-80 — he was the third actor in the role, starting with James Karen — then returned for stints in ’81, ’84, ’86, ‘95 and 2005.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/peter-white-famed-children-boys-173705401.html

[ificandream]

58. Robbin Bain, Pageant Winner and 'Today Girl,' Is Dead at 87

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After winning the annual Miss Rheingold beauty contest, in which millions voted, she covered fashion and beauty for the popular morning show.

By Richard Sandomir/New York Times

Robbin Mele Gaudieri, who, as Robbin Bain, embodied traditional women’s roles as the winner of a beauty contest designed to promote beer in 1959 and later as the “Today Girl,” handling fashion and beauty segments on the popular NBC-TV morning show, died on Oct. 21 in Southampton, N.Y. She was 87.

Her daughter Lara McLanahan said the cause was breast cancer.

Robbin Bain was elected Miss Rheingold in 1959, representing what was then the most popular beer in the New York region. (It was also sold in Pennsylvania and throughout New England.) She defeated five other finalists in an election that the brewer said attracted 24 million votes.

As Miss Rheingold, she received $50,000 (about $530,000 in today’s money) and spent a year making appearances in the United States and Europe. She also starred in newspaper ads in which she was seen in a kitchen during a party, outdoors at a barbecue and in front of a Christmas tree, among other places.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/business/media/robbin-bain-dead.html

[ificandream]

59. Lara Parker, a Memorable Witch on 'Dark Shadows,' Dies at 84

Full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/arts/television/lara-parker-dead.html

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Lara Parker, who found small-screen fame in the 1960s and ’70s as a beguiling and vengeful witch on the popular Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows,” died on Oct. 12 at her home in Topanga, Calif. She was 84.

The cause was cancer, said Kathryn Leigh Scott, a friend and fellow “Dark Shadows” actress.

“Dark Shadows,” seen daily on ABC from 1966 to 1971, was a departure from standard soap opera fare, blending romantic intrigue with horror and science fiction. The show chronicled a wealthy and eccentric Maine family dealing with the usual soap melodramas — but also time travel, ghosts, werewolves and vampires.

With her icy beauty and elegant demeanor, Ms. Parker proved coolly seductive in her primary role among several on the show, Angelique, an 18th-century servant girl and witch who puts a curse on a wealthy shipping scion, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) after he spurns her for Ms. Scott’s character, Josette, turning him into a vampire and dooming the two to carry on a tempestuous cycle of passion and revenge as they time-hop through history.

[ificandream]

60. Janet Landgard Dies: 'The Donna Reed Show' Regular Was 75

Read more: https://www.tvinsider.com/1111290/janet-landgard-dead-the-donna-reed-show/

Janet Landgard, who played Karen on The Donna Reed Show, has died. She was 75 years old. Paul Petersen, who costarred with Landgard in the 1960s ABC sitcom, told The Hollywood Reporter that she passed away this week after a brief battle with brain cancer.

“She never told me how gravely ill she was from the cancer that took her life earlier this week,” Petersen wrote on Facebook on Friday. “Typical behavior from the best TV girlfriend my alternate ego, Jeff Stone, ever had on the last three years of The Donna Reed Show. Janet was gorgeous, inside and out… a flawless Scandinavian beauty that literally stunned jaded Hollywood types into silence.”

Landgard was born on December 2, 1947, and raised in Pasadena, California. She was still a high schooler when she started her screen career in 1963, guest-starring as a different character on The Donna Reed Show and popping up in an episode of My Three Sons.

Landgard’s other screen credits include three films, 1968’s The Swimmer — in which she played a young woman whom Burt Lancaster’s character formerly hired as a babysitter — as well as 1969’s Land Raiders and 1972’s Moonchild. She also joined Lloyd Bridges and Janet Leigh in the 1971 TV movie The Deadly Dream.

[ificandream]

61. Elliot Silverstein, Director of 'Cat Ballou' and 'A Man Called Horse,' Dies at 96

Link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/elliot-silverstein-dead-cat-ballou-1235679761/

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By Mike Barnes/The Hollywood Reporter

Elliot Silverstein, who helmed episodes of such acclaimed TV shows as Naked City, The Twilight Zone and Route 66 before guiding Lee Marvin to a best actor Oscar in Cat Ballou, his feature directorial debut, died Friday in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 96.

The Boston native also helmed A Man Called Horse (1970), which starred Richard Harris in the title role as an English aristocrat who eventually becomes the leader of the Native tribe that had captured and tortured him. The action movie spawned a couple of sequels.

Most importantly, Silverman was instrumental in the formation of the milestone Bill of Creative Rights for directors.

It was Silverstein who suggested that Marvin be cast as Kid Shelleen in Columbia Pictures’ Cat Ballou (1965) after Kirk Douglas had turned down the role in the comic Western. He later threatened to quit when a producer wanted to replace Marvin at the start of production with José Ferrer.

[ificandream]

62. Frances Sternhagen, Tony Award-winning actor who was familiar maternal face on TV, dies at 93

Source: AP

By MARK KENNEDY
Updated 2:45 PM CST, November 29, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — Frances Sternhagen, the veteran character actor who won two Tony Awards and became a familiar maternal face to TV viewers later in life in such shows as “Cheers,” “ER,” “Sex and the City” and “The Closer,” has died. She was 93.

Sternhagen died peacefully of natural causes Monday her son, John Carlin, said in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “Fly on, Frannie,” he wrote. “The curtain goes down on a life so richly, passionately, humbly and generously lived.” Sternhagen’s publicist confirmed the death and said it occurred in New Rochelle, New York.

Sternhagen won a Tony for best featured actress in a play in 1974 for her role in Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor” and a second one in 1995 for a revival of “The Heiress.” Her last turn on Broadway was in “Seascape” in 2005.

She was nominated for Tonys four other times, for starring or featured roles in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” “Equus,” “Angel” and “Morning’s at Seven.” In 2013, she played Edie Falco’s mother in the off-Broadway play “The Madrid.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/frances-sternhagen-dies-e920000a85584256ac62f51196826eb0

[CBHagman]

63. Actor Tom Wilkinson, 75

A tremendous loss. What an actor!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/31/tom-wilkinson-obituary

A prolific actor and reluctant star, Tom Wilkinson, who has died aged 75, possessed many of the qualities of a favourite raincoat: he was unflashy, steadfast and could usually be relied upon when conditions were unfavourable.

The director Richard Eyre noted his “moral authority” and a tendency to bring “a sense of gravity and detail and intelligence.” Wilkinson said: “I see myself as a utility player, the one who can do everything. I’ve always felt that actors should have a degree of anonymity about them.” For that reason, celebrity was not his kettle of fish. “I can see it in other actors who love being famous. Me, I don’t care for it at all.”

His IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0929489/

[ificandream]

64. Norman Jewison, acclaimed director of 'In the Heat of the Night' and 'Moonstruck,' dead at 97

BY HILLEL ITALIE
Updated 6:55 PM PST, January 22, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to such social dramas as the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” has died at age 97.

Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died “peacefully” Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details were not immediately available.

Throughout his long career, Jewison combined light entertainment with topical films that appealed to him on a deeply personal level. As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me,” he noted that racism and injustice became his most common themes.

“Every time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “Yet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how ‘the other’ feels.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/norman-jewison-dead-abd93f2b671b416aabdd83829822e14a

Filmography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Jewison#Film

[CBHagman]

65. Oscar-winning screenwriter David Seidler, 86

The BBC's March 18, 2024, obituary for David Seidler, who wrote the screenplay for The King's Speech.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68594124

The London-born screenwriter, who had a stammer, brought the true story of how King George VI overcame his speech impediment to the big screen.
The 2010 film starred Colin Firth, who also won the best actor Bafta and Oscar for his depiction of the king. Seidler was also behind the stage adaptation of the film, which opened in the West End in 2012. He dedicated his 2011 Oscar to "all the stutterers around the world" - and at the time thanked the Queen for "not putting me in the Tower for using the F word".

[ificandream]

66. Richard M. Sherman, Who Fueled Disney Charm In 'Mary Poppins' And More, Dead At 95 (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — Richard M. Sherman, one half of the prolific, award-winning pair of brothers who helped form millions of childhoods by penning the instantly memorable songs for “Mary Poppins,” “The Jungle Book” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” — as well as the most-played tune on Earth, “It’s a Small World (After All)” — has died. He was 95.

Sherman, together with his late brother Robert, won two Academy Awards for Walt Disney’s 1964 smash “Mary Poppins” — best score and best song, “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” They also picked up a Grammy for best movie or TV score. Robert Sherman died in London at age 86 in 2012.

The Walt Disney Co. announced that Sherman died Saturday in a Los Angeles hospital due to age-related illness. “Generations of moviegoers and theme park guests have been introduced to the world of Disney through the Sherman brothers’ magnificent and timeless songs. Even today, the duo’s work remains the quintessential lyrical voice of Walt Disney,” the company said in a remembrance posted on its website.

Their hundreds of credits as joint lyricist and composer also include the films “Winnie the Pooh,” “The Slipper and the Rose,” “Snoopy Come Home,” “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Magic of Lassie.” Their Broadway musicals included 1974?s “Over Here!” and stagings of “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in the mid-2000s.

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[ificandream]

67. Janis Paige, Star of 'Silk Stockings' and Broadway's 'Pajama Game,' Dies at 101 (The Hollywood Reporter)

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Janis Paige, the ebullient redhead who starred in the original Broadway production of The Pajama Game and in such Hollywood musicals as Silk Stockings and Romance on the High Seas, has died. She was 101.

Paige, who was discovered in the 1940s while performing at the legendary Hollywood Canteen, died Sunday (6/2/24) of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, her friend Stuart Lampert announced.

Paige starred on her own network sitcom, playing a widowed nightclub singer struggling to raise her 10-year-old daughter, on the 1955-56 CBS series It’s Always Jan, and she had recurring roles as Dick van Patten’s free-spirited sister on ABC’s Eight Is Enough and as a hospital administrator on CBS’ Trapper John, M.D.

The actress also turned in two memorable guest-starring stints in 1976, playing an attractive diner waitress named Denise who tempts Archie (Carroll O’Connor) to cheat on Edith (Jean Stapleton) on All in the Family and a former flame of Lou’s (Edward Asner) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/janis-paige-dead-silk-stockings-pajama-game-1235914085/

[Auggie]

68. Shelley Duvall, 75

July 11, 2024

US actress Shelley Duvall, known for films like The Shining, Annie Hall and Nashville, has died at the age of 75.

Her partner Dan Gilroy confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter.

"My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley," he said, according to the outlet.

She died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Texas, Gilroy said.

Bio: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy77p22jr5lo

[ificandream]

69. Teri Garr, Comic Actress in Offbeat Roles, Is Dead at 79

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By Anita Gates

Teri Garr, the alternately shy and sassy blond actress whose little-girl voice, deadpan comic timing, expressive eyes and cinematic bravery in the face of seemingly crazy male characters made her a star of 1970s and ’80s movies and earned her an Oscar nomination for her role in “Tootsie,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 79.

Her publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, who said the cause was complications of multiple sclerosis.

Ms. Garr received that diagnosis in 1999, after 16 years of symptoms and medical research, and made her condition public in 2002. In late 2006, she had a ruptured brain aneurysm and was in a coma for several days, but she was able to regain her ability to speak.

Onscreen, Ms. Garr’s outstanding features were her eyes, which could seem simultaneously pained, baffled, sympathetic, vulnerable, intrigued and determined, whether she was registering a grand new discovery or holding back tears. If her best-known roles had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/arts/teri-garr-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V04.ufZ1.yIjZPA7cyLpp&smid=url-share (gift link)

Another version: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/teri-garr-dead-young-frankenstein-tootsie-1236193831/