The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Loy Toy]

^ I thought he had a bullet through the eye years ago.

Great movie!

[can123]

I go away for a week.....

Alex Rocco, Mobster Moe Greene in 'The Godfather,' Dies at 79

He broke his heart when you went away and you will have to live with this for the rest of your life.

[wasabi]

I hate looking at this thread, it's about dead people right, most I have never heard of.

[Sumbitch]

I hate looking at this thread, it's about dead people right, most I have never heard of.

I'm like you. Why is this?

[Dragonfly94]

Bobbie Just died after six months already dead- only in America

[harrybarracuda]

I go away for a week.....

Alex Rocco, Mobster Moe Greene in 'The Godfather,' Dies at 79

He broke his heart when you went away and you will have to live with this for the rest of your life.

Since he died of cancer I probably will. Although maybe my absence took away his will to live.

[Ronin]

Not a famous person but her daughter sad it was the same way as her mother;

Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of late singer Whitney Houston, has died aged 22, a family representative has said.

Kristen Foster said she passed away on Sunday surrounded by her family and was "finally at peace in the arms of God".

Brown was discovered unresponsive in a bathtub on 31 January and placed in a medically induced coma. She never regained consciousness.

She was moved to a hospice in the city of Duluth, Georgia, a month ago after her condition deteriorated.

Brown was the only daughter of Houston and R&B singer Bobby Brown.

Whitney Houston was found dead in a hotel bath in Los Angeles in 2012.
Bobbi Kristina's mother, Whitney Houston, was found dead in a bathtub in Los Angeles

"Bobbi Kristina Brown passed away July 26 2015, surrounded by her family," Ms Foster said.

"She is finally at peace in the arms of God. We want to again thank everyone for their tremendous amount of love and support during these last few months."

The BBC's Regan Morris in Los Angeles says Brown had dreamed of carrying on her mother's legacy as a singer and actress, and had a few small TV roles - but her career had not yet taken off.

In January, police said Brown was found face down in a bathtub in the suburban Atlanta home she shared with Nick Gordon, the man she called her husband. A police report described the incident as a "drowning".

Mr Gordon said at the time she did not appear to be breathing and lacked a pulse before emergency services arrived.

Brown was placed in a medically-induced coma and has been breathing with the aid of a ventilator.

Whitney Houston daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown dies aged 22 - BBC News

[can123]

Since he died of cancer I probably will. Although maybe my absence took away his will to live.

You certainly inspire me to keep breathing and I will make it my business to outlive you as my own personal tribute to your influence on mortality.

[Bobcock]

"finally at peace in the arms of God".

No she's not....she's dead... live with it.....

Reminds me of the memorial to Pat Tillman where his brother became a star in my eyes.....

[Dragonfly94]

Mr Gordon said at the time she did not appear to be breathing and lacked a pulse before emergency services arrived.
[/url]

Bit of a clue there, probably getting cold as well

[Bobcock]

Mr Gordon said at the time she did not appear to be breathing and lacked a pulse before emergency services arrived.
[/url]

Bit of a clue there, probably getting cold as well

Well it took her 6 months to die so maybe not....

[bobo746]

Clive Rice, South Africa's first post-isolation cricket captain, dies aged 66
Clive Rice, South Africa's first cricket captain of the post-isolation era, has died aged 66 after battling a brain tumour.
Rice had appeared to be in remission after visiting India earlier this year to receive robotic radiation treatment in Bangalore.
Rice's family confirmed his death to South Africa's Eye Witness News, saying he was admitted to hospital on Sunday with severe stomach pains.
The all-rounder captained South Africa at the age of 42 on their historic post-isolation limited overs tour of India in 1991, but was then controversially left out of the squad for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand the following year.
He also briefly represented Scotland before the Proteas' re-admission to international cricket.
"Clive was our first captain and we knew him to be a great fighter all his life," Cricket South Africa (CSA) chief executive Haroon Lorgat said.
"Even during his last few years he put up a typically courageous and inspirational fight against the illness that had threatened him for a lengthy period of time."
Rice was prolific with both bat and ball and considered one of South Africa's greatest all-rounders.

[harrybarracuda]

Had the pleasure of meeting him many times, a real gent.

RIP

Veteran horse racing commentator Sir Peter O'Sullevan dies aged 97
18:03, 29 JULY 2015
BY ROBERT DEX

THE former BBC broadcaster has been described as "an icon in the sport" and the "Voice of Racing".



VETERAN racing commentator Sir Peter O'Sullevan has died at the age of 97, BBC Sport has announced.

He was the broadcaster's main commentator from 1948 to 1997.

BBC Sport described him as "an icon in the sport" and the "Voice of Racing".

The broadcaster, who also worked for the Press Association's racing department, began his BBC career just after the Second World War when radio ruled the airwaves, but came to be a familiar face on television.

He also spent many years writing about racing at the Daily Express, offering its readers regular tips for big race winners.

Sir Peter, who was knighted in 1997, was born in Ireland to an English mother and Irish father but after their divorce lived with his maternal grandparents in their Surrey country house.

He was married to Pat for more than 58 years before she died peacefully on New Year's Eve in 2010 at the age of 89.

His love of racing began as a schoolboy when he put a lucrative sixpence each-way on the 100-1 winner Tipperary Tim in the 1928 Grand National.

Nigel Payne, chief executive of the Sir Peter O'Sullevan Charitable Trust, said: "Sir Peter died earlier this afternoon, very peacefully, at home."Sir Peter was one of the greatest men I've ever known. Only last week he was talking about what he wanted me to do for the trust in the future. He was still very alert. It's a sad day."

Sounds like his eyesight was failing though.

[harrybarracuda]

Rose Garden singer Lynn Anderson dies at 67
Singer best known for "I never priomised you a rose garden" dies of a heart attack, aged 67

By AP8:10AM BST 01 Aug 2015

Lynn Anderson, whose strong, husky voice carried her to the top of the charts with "(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden," has died. She was 67.
A statement from the family said she passed away at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday. Her publicist said the cause of death was cardiac arrest.
Anderson first soaked up the national spotlight as a young singer on "The Lawrence Welk Show" between 1967 and 1969. Although she was signed to an independent label, the exposure helped her nab a deal with Columbia Records in Nashville.
"He was absolutely wholesome," she said of Welk in a 1987 interview with The Associated Press. "He felt country music was coming into its own and deserved to be on national TV. At that time, I was the only one singing country music on national TV every week. He's one of my heroes and always will be."
And it was "Rose Garden" that sealed her country music legacy, earning her a Grammy and Country Music Association's female vocalist of the year award in 1971.
"It was popular because it touched on emotions," she told the AP. "It was perfectly timed. It was out just as we came out of the Vietnam years and a lot of people were trying to recover.
"This song stated that you can make something out of nothing. You take it and go ahead. It fit me well and I'll be proud to be connected to it until I die."
She made television appearances with such stars as Lucille Ball, Bing Crosby, John Wayne and Tom Jones and she performed for presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. She was also in episodes of the TV show "Starsky and Hutch" and in the 1982 TV movie "Country Gold."
Anderson's other hits included, "Rocky Top," "You're My Man," "How Can I Unlove You," "What a Man, My Man Is" and "Top of the World" (also recorded by the Carpenters).
She returned briefly to the country Top 10 with a Gary Morris duet in 1983, "You're Welcome to Tonight."
Country star Reba McEntire lauded her accomplishments Thursday.
"She did so much for the females in country music," McEntire said in a statement. "Always continuing to pave the road for those to follow."
Dolly Parton also said she'd be missed.
"Lynn is blooming on God's Rose Garden now. We will miss her and remember her fondly," Parton said in a statement.
She was born Sept. 26, 1947, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, but raised in Sacramento, California. The daughter of country songwriters Casey and Liz Anderson, she started performing at the age of 6.
Anderson was an award-winning equestrian as a teenager, voted California Horse Show Queen in 1966.
In her later years she lived in Taos, New Mexico, where she faced a number of legal problems. A Taos judge issued a restraining order in 1995 against Anderson after her boyfriend said she had threatened him following the end of their 12-year relationship.
In 2005, Anderson was accused of shoplifting a "Harry Potter" DVD from a Taos supermarket and then punching a police officer as she was being put into a patrol car. She later pleaded no contest to obstructing an officer and was given a conditional discharge, court records show.
The year before, Anderson was arrested on drunken-driving charge in Texas, the same week she was nominated for a Grammy for a bluegrass album.
She is survived by her father, her partner Mentor Williams and her children, Lisa Sutton, Melissa Hempel and Gray Stream.

[harrybarracuda]

Remembering Roddy Piper's rowdy film career
Wrestling great became cult icon in 'They Live'
BY DARREN FRANICH • @DARRENFRANICH



Wrestlers don’t become actors. Wrestlers are actors. Sometimes, Hollywood notices. Hollywood noticed Roddy Piper. Body Slam, 1987: A fish-out-of-water comedy about a music promoter in the world of wrestling, with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as “Quick” Rick Roberts. Hell Comes to Frogtown, also 1987: Piper plays a post-apocalyptic drifter rescuing a tribe of beautiful women kidnapped into sex slavery by mutant frogs. You read all of that right. Piper’s name in the movie? “Sam Hell.”

Piper, who died Thursday at the age of 61, never really stopped acting. His IMDB page overflows with titles you kind of remember, maybe from some long-ago video store, maybe from when they used to print out the TV guide in the newspaper you used to subscribe to. Back in Action and Immortal Combat, No Contest and Jungleground, Terminal Rush and Dead Tides. To be a famous wrestler is to be a cult figure, so there were equal parts gleeful self-satire and raw authenticity when Piper showed up in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, playing a demented wrestler named “Da’Maniac.”

In an interview, Piper said Da’Maniac was a comical riff on Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky’s ode to the squared circle. Maybe Piper’s spoof was so funny because he understood all too well the character’s bleak reality — Aronofsky claimed that Piper showed up to a screening of The Wrestler, loved it, and wound up crying into Mickey Rourke’s arms.

Piper was already a legend long before his untimely death. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say: As a wrestler, he was a legend. And as an actor, he worked a lot — and, once upon a time, he became some kind of legend. They Live, 1988. John Carpenter wanted to make a sci-fi horror action satire, an R-rated blood romp about consumerism and class warfare and media brainwashing and aliens camouflaged as humans. Carpenter went to WrestleMania III, met Piper, knew that he had found his star.

They Live is best described as a brutally serious farce, a Marx Brothers comedy approved by Karl Marx. Piper plays a man who doesn’t quite have a name. (In the end-credits he’s “Nada,” as in “Nothing.”) He’s a drifter living on the fringes, watching the cops destroy a homeless village. He finds some groovy sunglasses, which reveal that there are aliens among us, pummeling humanity into submission with stealth-attack media and totalitarian conformity.

At one point, Piper finds his way into a bank. He’s got a shotgun. He see some aliens. “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass,” he says. “And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

Carpenter always credited Piper with ad-libbing that line, which plays in the moment like both a shining example of ’80s beefcake badassery and a lacerating parody of the same. (A version of that line popped up in Duke Nukem.) And that’s not even Piper’s best moment in the movie. Later, in an alley, he meets up with his pal Keith David. Piper wants David to put on the sunglasses; David refuses. They fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.



There is so much inexplicable wonder in this scene, which took weeks of rehearsal. It’s realistic but cartoony, funny but occasionally genuinely freaky. You can never tell how serious the fighters are, and you start to wonder if they’re just going to kill each other. You have to love Piper repeating the phrase, “I don’t want to fight you, I don’t want to fight you,” right before he spends five minutes fighting him. Or the moment around 4:19, when Piper smashes the back window of a car — and, stunned, tells David he’s sorry, like a kid who didn’t realize his hand was in the cookie jar.

South Park did a shot-for-shot parody of that scene. Last year, Adventure Time did another parody of the fistfight, between fiery despot Flame King and his minion Don John the Flame Lord. This parody was rather more official: Flame King was voiced by Keith David, and Don John was voiced by Roddy Piper. Listen closely at :05, and you can hear Piper mumble, with complete authenticity: “Stamina…failing.” Raspy, wry, over-the-top and completely believable — and that was just the man’s voice!

According to some sources, that scene was only supposed to be a short little scuffle. As is, it’s five and a half minutes long. Aronofsky cited it as an influence on The Wrestler, and thought the scene was intended as an overextended, hyperbolized spoof of fight scenes. I’m not so sure; it’s possible Carpenter just liked watching Piper and David fully commit to punching and kicking the living hell out of each other. Piper was a wrestler and an actor — and for one perfect, mesmerizing scene, he was the best of both.

[harrybarracuda]

Howard Jones, doctor who pioneered in vitro fertilization, dies at 104
By News Services and Staff Reports August 1 at 2:03 PM



Howard Jones, who pioneered in vitro fertilization in the United States at his medical clinic in Virginia, died July 31 at a hospital in Norfolk. He was 104.

The cause was respiratory failure, the Eastern Virginia Medical School said in a statement.

The work of Dr. Jones and his late wife, Dr. Georgeanna Jones, at EVMS led to the nation’s first child born as a result of in vitro fertilization in 1981. Since then, more than 5 million births have stemmed from in vitro fertilization around the world.

The Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at EVMS is named in honor of the Joneses. For several years, families who had children with the institute’s help were invited to join the couple at a Mother’s Day celebration. Photos from the events show the Joneses surrounded by hundreds of families. Since the institute’s creation, about 4,000 babies have been born through in vitro fertilization with the clinic’s assistance.

“The IVF success was an incredible accomplishment, not just for him personally but for our institution and for the profession of medicine,” Richard Homan, president and provost of EVMS and dean of the School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Dr. Howard Jones, right, and his wife, Dr. Georgeanna Jones, left, in 1998. They pioneered in vitro fertilization in the United States in the 1980s. (Bill Tiernan/AP)
Dr. Jones continued to keep office hours at the institute even after he was 100. Over his life, he wrote 12 books, including a memoir about in vitro fertilization that was published last fall, “In Vitro Fertilization Comes to America: Memoir of a Medical Breakthrough.”

Although in vitro fertilization is common today, it was initially met with resistance from some concerned about the ethics of “test tube” babies. EVMS notes that the Vatican reached out to the Joneses to help advise Pope John Paul II about in vitro fertilization after the birth of the first IVF baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, who is now a mother. In November 1982, the cover of LIFE magazine was dedicated to the “test-tube baby boom.”

In 1984, Dr. Jones helped create an ethics committee under the American Fertility Society, which is now the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Howard Wilbur Jones Jr. was born Dec. 30, 1910, in Baltimore. As a child, he went on house calls with his father, who was a physician.

Dr. Jones graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1931 and from Johns Hopkins University medical school in 1935.

He worked at John Hopkins University for three decades and was the physician who treated Henrietta Lacks for cancer at Johns Hopkins. Cell samples from a biopsy of Lacks’s tumor became known as HeLa cells and have been used for research purposes for decades.

Dr. Jones’s role in the controversial Lacks case is recounted in the 2010 book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot.

Dr. Jones left Johns Hopkins after reaching the mandatory retirement age. In 1978, he joined Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, five years after the school opened.

He arrived in Norfolk the same day the world’s first baby was born through in vitro fertilization in England. In his early years at EVMS, he developed a technique to induce the development of multiple eggs in a woman, which was a major breakthrough.

His wife of 64 years died in 2005.

Survivors include three children, Dr. Howard Wilbur Jones III, chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, and Lawrence Massey Jones and Dr. Georgeanna Jones Klingensmith, both of Denver; and seven grandchildren.

Link

[harrybarracuda]

Cilla Black dies, aged 72
Former singer and TV presenter Cilla Black has died, aged 72
By Telegraph reporter12:20PM BST 02 Aug 2015



Cilla Black had died at her Spanish home, Spanish police have confirmed.

She said: “I can confirm the death of British national Priscilla White, aged 72.”
“We are still awaiting autopsy results but everything at this stage is pointing towards her death being the result of natural causes.”

Most of the shutters were down at the entertainer’s house near Marbella this
morning and there was no answer on the door.

However a light outside the property was on, a grey Seat Ibiza car was parked outside and the back patio doors appeared to be open.

A Spaniard who identified himself as a police officer was stood outside the front of the property talking on the phone before driving off in a Seat Alhambra car around midday local time.

The man, who refused at first to say who he was, said when asked if the owner of the property had suffered a health problem, said: “You must be a reporter and the only thing I’d say is that you need to go back to where you came from.

“I’m a national police officer and I’m not going to say what’s happened or hasn’t happened to the people at this property.”

Neighbours were not able to shed any light on what was happening.

The immediate neighbour said: “I don’t really know who lives next door. The wall between my house and theirs is very high and I don’t know anything.”

Police sources said they thought the death had occurred overnight and they believed
Cilla, who suffered from hearing problems and arthritis, had jetted to Spain a few days ago with one of her three sons.

Cilla Black was born Priscilla Maria Veronica White on May 27, 1943.

[Looper]

there was no answer on the door

Try a ouija board.

Seat Ibiza

Seat Alhambra

“I don’t really know who lives next door. The wall between my house and theirs is very high and I don’t know anything.”

Top reporting there by the Telegraph.

[harrybarracuda]

That's the modern way I'm afraid, rush to get *anything* out.

Like Sky saying they've found a "Plane Door" in Reunion, later backtracked to "a piece of metal that fits in a box a foot square".

[patsycat]

That's sad about Cilla.

[nigelandjan]

Surprise surprise !

[mingmong]

R.I.P. Cilla Black

[panama hat]

Did anyone NOT watch this????

[bobo746]

Ha Rowdy Roddy in another B flick.
Havent seen it i might have a look.

[Gerbil]