The RIP Famous Person Thread

[david44]

Fats sais

"Clean living keeps me in shape. Righteous thoughts are my secret...And New Orleans home cooking"

<span style="color:#fff0f5;"><span style="font-family: Helmet, Freesans, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17.5px; background-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">

[David48atTD]

Robert Guillaume, TV's 'Benson,' Dead at 89


Robert Guillaume, who played the quick-witted and sarcastic Benson DuBois on Soap and the spinoff Benson, has died. His widow, Donna Brown Guillaume, told The Associated Press that he died at home in Los Angeles where he was battling prostate cancer. He was 89.
In 1977, Guillaume took on the role of DuBois, a butler to the wealthy Tate family, on ABC's soap-opera parody sitcom Soap. The role was such a hit with viewers that the network created Benson in 1979, where it remained on the air through 1986. On the spinoff, DuBois was promoted to managing the governor's mansion, eventually running for political office himself. In 2015, the show ranked among Rolling Stone's 20 Best TV Spin-offs. "To me, Benson was the revenge for all those stereotyped guys who looked like Benson in the Forties and Fifties [movies] and had to keep their mouths shut," Guillaume said in 2001, according to the AP
Robert Guillaume, TV's 'Benson,' Dead at 89 - Rolling Stone

and ...

If you have young children, you might know his voice from this popular cartoon series.

His voice was that of Rafiki, the Mandrill (wise monkey), a seer and guiding influence of the Lion Guard / Lion King.



I like the character and voice of Rafiki ... he stood apart.


RIP in Peace Robert Peter Williams AKA Robert Guillaume

[harrybarracuda]

I wonder how many millions of people around the world know his voice from BBC World Service. End of an era.

Tim Gudgin, who read the classified football results on BBC television for more than 15 years, has died aged 87.
Gudgin's family told the BBC he died peacefully at home on Nov. 8.
He retired in 2011, having taken over the job of fronting the results service in 1995 following the death of Len Martin.
After finishing National Service in 1950, Gudgin joined BFN Radio in Germany as a newsreader and occasional sports reviewer before becoming a studio manager for the BBC European Service when he returned to the UK.
He also had a stint as public relations consultant in the Isle of Man before, in 1976, joining BBC's Grandstand sports show, where he read out the horse racing and rugby results during the "Final Score" programme.
Gudgin's distinctive tones made his voice instantly recognisable to a generation of viewers.
A week before his 82nd birthday, he read his final set of classified results for the BBC and said: "It is a triple reason why I am going: age, distance -- I am down on the south coast and the team is going to be up in Salford -- and my granddaughter's wedding in Australia, which I have to be there for."
Gudgin's funeral will be held at Chichester Crematorium on Nov. 20.



BBC TV football results reader Tim Gudgin dies at the age of 87

[harrybarracuda]

Thomas Hudner, War Hero in a Civil Rights Milestone, Dies at 93

By DAVID MARGOLICKNOV. 13, 2017





On the afternoon of Dec. 4, 1950, shortly after China had entered the Korean War, Thomas J. Hudner Jr., a lieutenant junior grade, was piloting one of six Navy Corsairs on a three-hour “roadrunner” mission near the Chosin Reservoir, in Korea’s northeast.

After 45 minutes aloft, at roughly 6,000 feet and five miles behind enemy lines, Lieutenant Hudner watched in horror as a plane operated by a squadron mate, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, was hit by small-arms fire. Losing pressure quickly and too low to bail out, Ensign Brown needed to land. Lieutenant Hudner, among others, directed him by radio to a clearing on a snow-covered mountainside, where his colleague crash-landed belly in.

Others in his formation were sure that Ensign Brown had been killed on impact; the mission leader summoned a helicopter to collect his body. But when Lieutenant Hudner lowered his altitude to make sure, he was amazed at what he spotted.

“I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I wasn’t seeing things,” he told Flight Journal in 2005. “The canopy slowly rolled back, and Jesse waved at us!”

The Marine rescue helicopter would not reach the scene for a half-hour. In the meantime, Lieutenant Hudner, 26, saw that smoke was rising from under the cowling, or engine casing, of the downed plane, and that Ensign Brown, 24, appeared stuck inside. If the fire didn’t kill him, he feared, the cold would. He resolved instantly to go in to fetch him.

“I was not going to leave him down there for the Chinese,” he later said.

For what followed — he crash-landed his own plane, then tried unsuccessfully to pry his dying squadron mate out from under his battered fuselage in subzero temperatures while Chinese troops hovered — Lieutenant Hudner collected the first Medal of Honor awarded during the Korean War.

But his feat was not purely a military one. It doubled as a civil-rights milestone: Ensign Brown was the Navy’s first black aviator, and in going to rescue him, Lieutenant Hudner, who died on Monday at 93, defied the expectations of some and defeated a different sort of foe.

When President Harry S. Truman integrated the armed forces two and a half years earlier, some expressed doubts that white and black soldiers would stand by one another in the heat of battle. But Ensign Brown’s race was immaterial to Lieutenant Hudner, and that was precisely the point.

“A lesson in the brotherhood of man,” a leading black weekly, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, wrote. One letter among many by black admirers said of Lieutenant Hudner — who had had no black classmates at the Naval Academy — “I never thought a white man would help out a black man like that.”

Only later, after he had returned home, did Lieutenant Hudner learn that what he did that day in Korea could have gotten him court-martialed.

“The fact that it happened was not met with great joy by a lot of people,” he recalled in a 2013 interview with the filmmaker Charles Stuart. “Apparently our squadron captain, commander, said, ‘Now if anybody goes down, I don’t want to have any heroes here trying to crash-land this airplane.’ The very thing that I did later on, I didn’t know that was a direct violation of orders.”

Mr. Hudner’s death, at his home in Concord, Mass., was announced by the Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services.

Thomas Jerome Hudner Jr. was born on Aug. 31, 1924, in Fall River, Mass. His family owned a chain of meat and grocery stores. After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., he was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1943 by Representative Joseph W. Martin Jr., then the House minority leader. He graduated in 1946 and earned his wings in 1949.

Ensign Brown, of Hattiesburg, Miss., came up through the naval aviation cadet program, overcoming racial bias along the way, and had earned his wings the year before.

Assigned to the same 15-man squadron, the two first met in the fall of 1949 while changing into their flight gear in a locker room at the naval air station at Quonset Point, R.I. As Mr. Hudner recalled it, Ensign Brown did not extend his hand for fear of embarrassing him if he did not want to shake it. So Lieutenant Hudner walked across the room and extended his.


War broke out in Korea in June 1950, and that August the aircraft carrier on which their squadron, VF-32, was based, the U.S.S. Leyte, was deployed there. On Sept. 15, United Nations forces landed at Inchon, and when tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers crossed into Korea in October, the squadron’s mission suddenly changed from offense to defense — to slowing the Chinese advance and protecting the outnumbered United Nations forces on the ground.

Though technically junior to Lieutenant Hudner, Ensign Brown had logged more air time, and was therefore section leader; Lieutenant Hudner was his “tail end Charlie,” flying at his rear that day, Dec. 4.

On seeing that Ensign Brown was alive after his crash landing, Lieutenant Hudner tightened his harness, jettisoned all excess weight, and landed, wheels up, within 100 yards of the wreck in two feet of snow. He found Ensign Brown conscious and calm, bareheaded, his fingers frozen, unable to reach his fallen gloves and helmet.

“We’ve got to figure out how to get out of here,” Ensign Brown told him.

Lieutenant Hudner removed the woolen watch cap he had carried in his flight suit, placed it over Ensign Brown’s head and wrapped Ensign Brown’s hands in an extra scarf. Then he looked into the cockpit. The ensign’s right knee was crushed and jammed between the fuselage and the control panel.

With only one hand available — he needed the other to hold on to the plane — Lieutenant Hudner could not extricate him. He radioed the incoming helicopter to bring an ax and a fire extinguisher. The trapped man, he later recalled, “was very stoic.”

“He was motionless and slowly dying,” he said.

Lieutenant Hudner packed snow around the smoking canopy to keep any flames away. But the hatchet the helicopter pilot brought just bounced off the unyielding metal, and amputation was not an option: The rescuers could not get deep enough inside the cockpit.

“If anything happens, tell Daisy I love her,” Ensign Brown told Lieutenant Hudner, referring to his wife. With nightfall rapidly approaching, the helicopter had to leave. Lieutenant Hudner promised Ensign Brown that he would return soon with better equipment.

“It was a baldfaced lie,” he said later; he knew he could never get back in time. By the time Lieutenant Hudner had left him, in fact, Ensign Brown might have already died.

Ensign Brown’s squadron mates later returned to the site, drenched the body with napalm and set it ablaze to prevent it from being desecrated.

Ensign Brown posthumously received a Distinguished Flying Cross.

About four months later, with Ensign Brown’s widow sobbing behind him, Lieutenant Hudner was in the Rose Garden at the White House receiving the Medal of Honorfrom President Truman. Two days earlier, Truman had relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command in Korea. Away from the microphones, Truman told the young lieutenant, “At this moment, I’d much rather have received this medal than be elected the president.”

Lieutenant Hudner later recounted that his in-laws, whose name was also Brown, had arrived in Washington for the ceremony seeking accommodations, only to be told by a hotel that no rooms were available. When the hotel learned that these Browns were white, they were given rooms.

After his return home, Lieutenant Hudner met with the track star Jesse Owens, who had overturned the white-supremacist expectations of his Nazi hosts at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin by winning four gold medals.
Mr. Hudner retired from the Navy as a captain in 1973. Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts later named him state commissioner of veterans affairs.

For the rest of his life, Mr. Hudner told one interviewer, the medal left him “highly spoiled” and tiresomely honored, enduring endless rounds of recognition. He put up with it, he said, to honor Americans in the armed forces.

In 2013, he returned to North Korea in an unsuccessful attempt to locate Ensign Brown’s remains.

He is survived by his wife, the former Georgea Farmer; a son, Thomas III; a stepson, Stan Smith; two stepdaughters, Kelly Fernandez and Shannon Gustafson; a sister, Mary Hammer; a brother, Philip; 12 grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

In 1973, Mr. Hudner was present in Boston Navy Yard when the destroyer escort Jesse L. Brown was commissioned. In 2013, Ensign Brown’s daughter and granddaughter were on hand at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath for a ceremony commemorating the beginning of construction of the guided-missile destroyer Thomas J. Hudner. The ship is scheduled to be commissioned in 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/o...or-winner.html

[Davis Knowlton]

^Amazing story. Lot of balls. Too bad he couldn't free his buddy.

[harrybarracuda]

^Amazing story. Lot of balls. Too bad he couldn't free his buddy.

And he never gave up trying to bring him home.

That kind of loyalty is hard to find these days.

[bobo746]

Good story,Great bloke.

[harrybarracuda]

Malcolm Young dead – AC/DC guitarist and co-founder dies aged 64 after dementia battle



ROCK legend Malcolm Young has died following a three year battle with dementia.
Young, the co-founder and creator of AC/DC, was aged 64 when he died earlier this morning.


Malcolm wrote the band's material which helped them to become one of the biggest rock groups in history.
With his talent, the band produced a string of hits including Highway to Hell, Back in Black, Thunderstruck and Hells Bells.
Paying tribute to the guitarist on Facebook, his younger brother Angus described him as the "driving force behind the band".
He added: "With enormous dedication and commitment he was the driving force behind the band.
"As a guitarist, songwriter and visionary he was a perfectionist and a unique man.


"He always stuck to his guns and did and said exactly what he wanted. He took great pride in all that he endeavoured. His loyalty to the fans was unsurpassed."
The Young family had just lost George, AC/DC's longtime producer at the age of 70.
Malcolm, who had three kids with his wife Linda, died with his family at his bedside, it was confirmed.
The news was first released on AC/DC's Facebook page.
The grief-stricken band said: "It is with deepest sorrow that we inform you of the death of Malcolm Young, beloved husband, father, grandfather and brother.


"While thanking all for their overwhelming support and heartfelt condolences, the family ask that you respect their privacy during this time of heartbreak and grief."
Young retired from the band in 2014 due to the nature of his condition.
The band used their heartache to fuel their next and final album Rock or Bust.
Malcolm formed the band with his brother back in 1973 Australia, and named after their older sister Margaret saw the initials AC/DC on a sewing machine - which stands for "alternating current/direct current".


Young will be remembered for his "musical prowess" and his "visionary" mindset which inspired many.
The family have asked for donations to be sent to The Salvation Army, instead of flowers.
Fellow rocker Damon Johnson from Black Star Riders and Thin Lizzy led tributes on Twitter.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/494258...acdc-dementia/
View image on Twitter

[David48atTD]

Malcolm Young dead – AC/DC guitarist and co-founder dies aged 64 after dementia battle

Put 10 kgs on him, some wacky, unkept teeth and a few arthritis bumps and that is the spitting image of my neighbour ... uncanny!

[BaitongBoy]

At a glance, it's partly Neil Young, too...

[yortyiam]

The family have asked for donations to be sent to The Salvation Army, instead of flowers.

Bad boys with good souls.

RIP Malcolm

[bobo746]

Great rhythm guitarist.Two Young brothers in three weeks.Angus must be nervous.

[harrybarracuda]

Cult leader Charles Manson dies at 83 after prolonged illness


Published: Nov 20, 2017 1:25 a.m. ET




Charles Manson, the ’60s cult leader behind one of the most notorious killings in American history, died Sunday in California after a prolonged illness, officials said. He was 83.
Manson – housed at Corcoran State Prison since 1989 – died at 8:13 p.m. local time at Kern County Hospital, the California Department of Corrections said in a press release early Monday.
He’d been in failing health for months and was first hospitalized back in January, reportedly with serious gastrointestinal problems.
Manson — who infamously wore a swastika tattoo between his eyebrows — had spent more than 45 years in prison after being convicted of directing his “Manson Family” clan of troubled, mostly female, followers to kill seven people in California in the summer of 1969. The dead included actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski, who was stabbed 16 times.
“I am crime,” Manson proudly proclaimed during a collect call to The Post from prison in the mid-2000s.
Born on Nov. 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a prostitute named Kathleen Maddox, Manson was officially dubbed “no name Maddox” at birth and apparently never knew his biological father.

From a very young age, Manson was a self-styled “outlaw” who took pride in being a criminal and reveled in all the mayhem he caused.
Manson committed his first crimes at around 13 years old, robbing liquor stores to scrounge together enough money to eat and rent motel rooms.
During his teenage years, Manson was in-and-out of juvenile halls and was placed in the Indiana Boys School, where he was sexually assaulted before he escaped in 1951, according to a book, “Manson In His Words,” by Nuel Emmons.
Between 1951 and 1955, Manson was repeatedly arrested for a variety of federal and state offenses, including stealing cars and robbing gas stations.
He was sent to reformatories, but none of them could wean him off his appetite for trouble.
By 1957, Manson was doing hard time in the federal prison at Terminal Island in Los Angeles for violating his probation after he was caught stealing a car and driving it over state lines.
He was eventually paroled, but started a career as a pimp and tried to cash forged US Treasury checks.
Manson found himself back at Terminal Island, where, on March 21, 1967 – the day of his release – he pleaded with prison officials to keep him there because he had been institutionalized for most of his life up to that point.
The wild-eyed, gnome-like figure ended up staying in Los Angeles, where he wrote and played music with a guitar – and began a hippie cult that drew tough men and disaffected suburban young women.
But Manson’s inability to build a musical career led him to an even darker path.
Manson hung out with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson and the band’s record producer, Terry Melcher, but the latter refused to give him a record deal.
Furious, Manson put together a plan to exact his revenge, ordering several of his drug-addled, brainwashed followers to kill everyone inside Melcher’s former residence.
Despite knowing that Melcher no longer lived there, Manson specifically chose that location because it represented the music industry that had snubbed him.
Just as importantly, Manson, who harbored bizarre racist theories and philosophies, wanted to start a race war – something he called “Helter Skelter,” named after the Beatles song by the same name.
On Aug. 9, 1969, Manson’s disciples, Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel, descended on Melcher’s former compound in Benedict Canyon, where pregnant actress Sharon Tate was now living with filmmaker Roman Polanski.
Polanski was overseas shooting a movie at the time, but Tate was hosting a low-key party with friends, including hair stylist Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her boyfriend, Wojciech Frykowski.
First, the killers fatally shot Steven Parent, who had been visiting a caretaker on the property. They then butchered to death Tate, Sebring, Folger and Frykowski.
The next night, Manson directed Watson, Krenwinkel, Atkins and another follower, Leslie Van Houten, to murder supermarket magnate Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary LaBianca, in their Los Feliz home.
In the decades since the murders, Manson has become an icon for troubled youth and a fixture in pop culture.
There have been numerous books written about the “Manson Murders,” as well as movies and documentaries detailing the case.
Manson himself reached almost mythical status through his strange and colorful prison interviews with notable media types, including Charlie Rose, Diane Sawyer and Geraldo Rivera.
In his final years in prison, Manson almost got married Afton “Star” Burton, who moved from Mississippi to Corcoran just to be with him.
Although they filed for a marriage license, Manson never got hitched to the woman who is more than 50 years his junior.
No one who carried out murders at Manson’s behest has has ever been released from prison.
Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten remained locked up in California while Atkins died in prison in 1989.
A board granted Van Houten – who at 19 was the youngest of the killers – parole in September.
But the ruling is still under review and California Gov. Jerry Brown will get to uphold, reject or modify the finding of parole early next year.
— Additional reporting by David K. Li

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cu...ess-2017-11-20

[kmart]

^Utter fucking Nutcase, but seemed to have charisma to burn.
(^^Just seen that. RIP one of rock's best ever rhythm guitarists).
One of Charlies' best tunes:

[Maanaam]

Born on Nov. 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a prostitute named Kathleen Maddox, Manson was officially dubbed “no name Maddox” at birth and apparently never knew his biological father.

It would have been interesting to have DNA evidence of who his father was if his father was an important person. Make a great movie; Charles Manson, half brother to Donald Trump

[SKkin]

“He was great, he was unreal – really, really good.” “He had this kind of music that nobody else was doing. I thought he really had something crazy, something great. He was like a living poet.”

Attributed to Neil Young who was speaking of Charles Manson...

[BaitongBoy]

...Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil...

[harrybarracuda]

It seems lots of people are sad over his death.... because they're confusing him with Marilyn Manson.



(Not that I'd be sad if that irritating twat popped his clogs).

[harrybarracuda]

Former Likely Lads star Rodney Bewes dies aged 79

The actor - best known for his role as Bob Ferris in the BBC sitcom - died on Tuesday morning, a representative told the Press Association



The Likely Lads star Rodney Bewes has died aged 79, his agent confirmed.

In a statement on Twitter, his agent Michelle Braidman described him as a “true one off”.

She added: “It is with great sadness that we confirm that our dear client, the much loved actor Rodney Bewes, passed away this morning.

“We will miss his charm and ready wit.”

Bewes would have turned 80 next week, his agent said.

He went on to star in the sequel to the sitcom, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, alongside James Bolam, Brigit Forsyth and Sheila Fearn.

Bewes was born in Bingley, West Yorkshire, and his family moved to Luton in his teens.


At 14 he attended RADA’s prepatory school in London where he returned after two years of national service in the RAF, Bewes attended RADA full time.

At nights he was working in hotels, doing the washing up, to finance his studies at RADA during the day, and hence was frequently to be found asleep in class. He was expelled during his final year.

Former Likely Lads star Rodney Bewes dies aged 79 - Chronicle Live

[DJ Pat]

The Likely Lads, classic UK tv comedy. One of my favourites as it's set in Newcastle.
The episodes made in the 1970s were better.

[bobo746]

David Cassidy, ‘Partridge Family’ Star, Dies at 67

David Cassidy, who came to fame as a '70s teen heartthrob and lead singer on "The Partridge Family," has died, according to his publicist Jo-Ann Geffen. He was 67.The singer-actor had recently been admitted to the intensive care unit of a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area hospital. Cassidy was in critical condition and suffering from organ failure before his death Tuesday, Geffen said.
"David died surrounded by those he loved, with joy in his heart and free from the pain that had gripped him for so long. Thank you for the abundance and support you have shown him these many years," she said.
Cassidy was born into the entertainment industry that made him a star.
His father was famed actor and singer Jack Cassidy, and his mother was actress Evelyn Ward.



David Cassidy, '70s teen heartthrob, dies at age 67 - CNN

[david44]

The Likely Lads, classic UK tv comedy. One of my favourites as it's set in Newcastle.
The episodes made in the 1970s were better.

Met him with the gig rowers on the Lizard a very unassuming bloke you'd hardly notice in a crowd .He did a one man show at the Acorn where many of the cast of Cornish detective Wycliffe appeared.The Lads is a great tragi comic view of transition well worth a look.

Likely Lads comedy star Rodney Bewes, who lived in Cornwall, dies aged 79 - Cornwall Live

While whatever happened to here

[DJ Pat]

^The one off feature film they made is an absolute classic.

The series also showed the transition the city was making at the time, from slum clearances to new builds.

[Davis Knowlton]

Gomer Pyle is dead. Singer, actor, and star of a long-running TV series. RIP Gomer.

[misskit]

Gaaalee

Jim Nabors, TV’s Gomer Pyle and Singer, Dies at 87




Jim Nabors, whose name is synonymous with the genial bumpkin Gomer Pyle, whom he played on TV, has died. He was 87.


His husband, Stan Cadwallader, told the Associated Press that Nabors died on Thursday at their home in Hawaii.


He brought the words “golly” and “shazam” into the vernacular as the naive, well-intentioned Pyle, a regular character on “The Andy Griffith Show” that was later the focus of spinoff “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” Pyle was a loving caricature of a Southern rube, completely out of step with the ’60s and all the more lovable for it. The series ran for four seasons, and Nabors’ 20% cut of the syndication revenue for the popular series made him financially secure thereafter and able to pursue broader interests as a singer and comic raconteur.


Later attempts at a variety show did not last long, however, either on network TV or in firstrun syndication, though Nabors was a popular headliner on the Vegas-Reno nightclub circuit.

Nabors was discovered singing at the Horn cabaret in Santa Monica by writer-comedian Bill Dana, who booked Nabors for occasional stints on “The Steve Allen Show.”


In the early ’60s, he began to appear regularly on “The Andy Griffith Show” as the ingenuous gas station attendant Gomer Pyle, which led to his own CBS series, produced by Griffith, about Pyle’s misadventures after joining the Marines, about which the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Nabors conveys a particular mood of attractive awkwardness, and naivete, a contagious quality of special poignancy rooted in laughter.”


The program shot into the top 10 in the Nielsen ratings, where it stayed for its entire four seasons.


During that time, Nabors starred in a number of variety specials for CBS including “Friends and Nabors,” which attracted an audience of 33.9 million, and guested on shows for Danny Thomas and the Smothers Brothers. He entertained onstage in Vegas, Reno and Tahoe, and his first album, “Jim Nabors Sings,” sold a million copies. By 1967 he was earning $500,000 annually.


Although it was too late to ever completely dissociate himself from Gomer Pyle, Nabors decided to end the series in 1969, while it was still rated in the top five. He hosted variety program “The Jim Nabors Hour” for two seasons on CBS and, in the late ’70s, tried it again in syndication, though “The Jim Nabors Show” was more of a combination comedy/talk program.


During this period he toured almost year round, reaping the benefits of his natural baritone voice, his disarming Southern-boy personality and his high name recognition from television. For a time he lived in Honolulu near his close friend Carol Burnett and starred in “The Jim Nabors Polynesian Extravaganza” at the Hilton Hawaiian Village for two years.


Film roles were few, mostly cameo and supporting appearances in three Burt Reynolds vehicles, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” “Stroker Ace” and “Cannonball Run II.”


Nabors recorded more than two dozen albums. At least four were certified gold by the RIAA, the most recent of which was “Jim Nabors Christmas Album” in 1990.


James Thurston Nabors was born in Sylacauga, Ala. Chronic asthma resulted in a childhood of forced seclusion, and after graduation from the U. of Alabama, he lived for a time in New York, working as a typist at the United Nations. The recurring asthma problems forced him to return home, where he worked as an assistant film editor for a television station in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also sang occasionally on the station’s daytime shows.


After moving to Los Angeles, he continued to work as an editor and entertained for free in the evenings — performing operatic arias interspersed with monologues — until his discovery and subsequent work in television.


Nabors converted to Catholicism in the mid-’60s.


He married his partner of 38 years, Stan Cadwallader, in Washington in 2013 a month after gay marriage became legal in that state.


In addition to Cadwallader, he is survived by two sisters, Freddie and Ruth.

Jim Nabors Dead: ?Gomer Pyle? Star Dies at 87 ? Variety