The RIP Famous Person Thread

[bobo746]

Veteran West Indies cricket commentator Tony Cozier dies, aged 75

Veteran West Indies cricket commentator Tony Cozier dies, aged 75

Veteran cricket commentator and journalist Tony Cozier has died aged 75 following a short illness.
Born in Bridgetown in 1940, he was the voice of West Indies cricket for more than 50 years and appeared on TV and radio around the world in addition to writing in several international newspapers and magazines and was regarded as one the most respected figures in the game.
He began his career on Australia's 1965 tour of the Caribbean and was awarded life membership of the MCC for services to the sport in 2011.
Cozier died at his home in Barbados having been admitted to hospital earlier this month for tests related to infections in his neck and legs.

"Tony was the master of going between TV and radio ball-by-ball commentary. He was the master of both," wrote BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew in a tribute on the British website.
"He's easily the best I've come across in 25 years at being able to do both disciplines."
"Throughout his career Cozier had to tread the tense tightrope of Caribbean politics, where even the slightest negative observation of a player's performance can provoke a furious nationalistic backlash.
"He withstood this stoically and determinedly, remaining a strong critic of the West Indies Cricket Board's lack of organisation and outlook.

[harrybarracuda]

^RIP Sporting Heroes thread is probably better for that.

This thread is solely for annoying Cujo.

[harrybarracuda]

Madeleine Lebeau dead: Last surviving Casablanca cast member dies aged 92
Lebeau is best known for her emotionally charged final scene where she shouts 'Viva la France!'
Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim 38 minutes ago



Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving cast member of 1942 film Casablanca, has died at the age of 92.

Her stepson, filmmaker Carlo Alberto Pinelli, told The Hollywood Reporter she died on May 1 in Spain after breaking her thigh bone.

Lebeu is best known for her role as Yvonne, the jilted mistress of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine, in the 40s Oscar-winning Warner Bro’s classic Casablanca.

Born in 1923, she fled Nazi-occupied France for Hollywood with her then husband and esteemed actor Marcel Dalio, in 1940. Once in Hollywood, the pair both appeared in Casablanca, with Dalio playing the croupier Emil.

Lebeau is best known for the teary-eared scene where she passionately shouts “Viva la France!” in her final line of the film. Many of the film's cast were refugees from Nazi terror and drew on real emotion and life experience.

She played in two further US films before returning to France after the war. There she appeared in 20 more films, going on to play a temperamental French actress in filmmaker Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning 8 1/2 (1963), which her second husband co-wrote.

Her film career ended by the late 1960s and she remained in Rome after making 8 1/2. In 1988, she married Oscar-nominated Italian screenwriter Tullio Pinelli whom died in 2009.

Lebeau lived in Estepona in Spain at the time of her death.

Madeleine Lebeau dead: Last surviving Casablanca cast member dies aged 92 | People | News | The Independent

[Sumbitch]

David Attenborough is 90 and still going strong, as indicated by his exclusive interview on BBC Earth with President Obama.

[BaitongBoy]

Don't jinx the old fellow...

[Sumbitch]

I was sizing up the thread for inappropriate comments.

[misskit]

'60 Minutes' Morley Safer dead at 84, a week after retiring



Morley Safer, the globe-trotting CBS correspondent who had filed more than 900 reports for the network's TV news magazine 60 Minutes, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan, CBS Corp. confirmed. He was 84.

The network didn't immediately release a cause of death, but said "Safer was in declining health."

The Toronto native was the longest-serving correspondent of the venerable news program, having joined in 1970 and becoming part a formidable team -- with Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley, Dan Rather and Andy Rooney -- that uncovered corruption, confronted public and corporate officials, and set the standard for broadcast magazine journalism.

"He was one of the linchpins for so many years on 60 Minutes," says CBS Chairman-CEO Leslie Moonves. "He was sort of the gentle giant of the group. There was something insightful and humane about him. He was a great journalist; he had all the street cred in the world, but he liked the human interest story."

Safer filed his last 60 Minutes report, a profile of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, in March. With his health deteriorating quickly, CBS announced his retirement May 11 and ran an hour-long program celebrating Safer's career — “Morley Safer: A Reporter’s Life” — after Sunday’s regular edition of 60 Minutes.

Like many broadcasters of his generation, Safer began his career as a print journalist, working for newspapers and wire services in Canada and England before joining Canadian Broadcasting Corp. At Canada's largest broadcasting entity, he toured Europe, North Africa and the Middle East on assignments, including the war for Algerian independence. He was the only Western correspondent in East Berlin the night the Communists began building the Berlin Wall in August 1961, according to his bio on CBS' website.

After joining CBS News in 1964, his experience in reporting from war zones served him and the network well. He opened a Saigon bureau in 1965 for CBS as the Vietnam War raged on. In 1967, he returned to London as CBS News’ bureau chief there, but continued to visit Vietnam to cover the war. He often went beyond press briefings to join the soldiers in war zones to file on-the-scene reports.

His piece showing U.S. Marines burning villagers' huts in Cam Ne in 1965 earned Safer a George Polk award, and the work was cited by New York University as one of the 20th century’s best pieces of American journalism. It "angered President Lyndon Johnson so much, he reportedly called CBS President Frank Stanton and said, 'Your boys shat on the American flag yesterday,'” CBS said. Safer wrote about his experience in Vietnam in a book released in 1990, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam.

He received numerous other awards for his work, including 12 Emmys, three Overseas Press Club Awards, three Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, another George Polk Memorial Award and the Paul White Award from the Radio/Television News Directors Association.

"If you look at his body of work, there isn’t anything like it in the history of journalism. He covered everything imaginable," Fager said.

more '60 Minutes' Morley Safer dead at 84, a week after retiring

[BaitongBoy]

^ Morley was cool...Goodbye and RIP...

[Davis Knowlton]

Indeed. RIP. Bummer to go within days of retiring.

[Sumbitch]

RIP, Morley.

[Cold Pizza]

Beastie boy John Barry dead at 52.

[harrybarracuda]

1960s ‘Mister Ed’ sitcom star Alan Young dies at 96
AP
MAY 21, 2016



LOS ANGELES – Actor and comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed,” has died at age 96, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday.

The English-born, Canadian-educated Young died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the retirement community where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes, she said.

Young was already a well-known radio and TV comedian, having starred in his own Emmy-winning variety show, when “Mister Ed” was being readied at comedian George Burns’ production company. Burns is said to have told his staff: “Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to.”

Mr. Ed was a golden Palomino who spoke only to his owner, Wilbur Post, who was played by Young. Fans enjoyed the horse’s deep, droll voice (“WIL-bur-r-r-r-r”) and the goofy theme song lyrics (“A horse is a horse, of course, of course”). Cowboy star Allan “Rocky” Lane supplied Mr. Ed’s voice.

An eclectic group of celebrities, including Clint Eastwood, Mae West and baseball great Sandy Koufax, made guest appearances on the show.

“Mister Ed” was one of a number of situation comedies during the early to mid-1960s that added elements of fantasy. Others were “My Mother the Car,” in which a man’s dead mother spoke to him through an old car; “My Favorite Martian,” in which a Martian took up residence on Earth disguised as the uncle of an earthling; and “Bewitched,” in which a witch married a mortal.

A loose variation on the “Francis the Talking Mule” movies of the 1950s, “Mister Ed” was one of the few network series to begin in syndication. After six months, it moved to ABC in October 1961 and lasted four seasons.

When the cameras weren’t rolling, the human and four-legged co-stars were friends, according to Young. If Ed was reprimanded by his trainer, Young said, “He would come over to me, like, ‘Look what he said to me.'”

Like many series of its vintage, “Mister Ed” won new fans in later decades through near-constant cable TV syndication and video releases.

Young also appeared in a number of films, including “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes,” “Tom Thumb,” “The Cat from Outer Space” and “The Time Machine” — a 1960 classic in which, speaking in a Scottish brogue, he played time traveler Rod Taylor’s friend. Young had a small role in the 2002 “Time Machine” remake.

In later years, Young found a new career writing for and voicing cartoons. He portrayed Scrooge McDuck in 65 episodes for Disney’s TV series “Duck Tales” and did voice-overs for “The Great Mouse Detective.”

Young’s sly, low-key style first attracted a wide U.S. audience in 1944 with “The Alan Young Show” on ABC radio. He also drew attention from Hollywood, but early films such as “Margie” and “Mr. Belvedere Goes to College” did poorly. In 1950 he turned to the growing new medium of TV and moved “The Alan Young Show” to the small screen, where it offered a contrast to the slapstick and old vaudeville of other variety shows.

His gentle comedy caused TV Guide to hail him as “the Charlie Chaplin of television,” and the fledgling Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Emmys to Young as best actor and to the show as best variety series.

Howard Hughes, who had seen Young on TV, hired him for the lead in a film version of “Androcles and the Lion,” a comedy based on the George Bernard Shaw play. When it opened in theaters, however, nobody laughed, so Hughes withdrew the movie and shot two weeks of new sequences.

“He put in girls with gauze and a real lion, and it became a blood-and-guts film,” Young recalled in 1987.

Angus Young was born on Nov. 19, 1919, of Scottish parents in the north England town of North Shields.

The family moved to Canada when he was a child, and he began entertaining in Vancouver when he was 13. He had his own radio program, “Stag Party,” on the CBC network by the time he graduated from high school. After two years in the Canadian Navy, he moved to New York City.

Young was a Christian Scientist from his teen years. In the early 1970s, he left his career to work for the church in Boston. He spent three years establishing a film and broadcasting center, then toured the country for two years as a Christian Science lecturer. Disillusioned by the church bureaucracy, he returned to Hollywood in 1976.

In 1940, Young married Mary Anne Grime. They had a daughter, Alana, and a son, Alan Jr. The marriage ended in 1947.

In 1948 he married singer Virginia McCurdy. They had a son, Cameron Angus, and a daughter, Wendy.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201...young-dies-96/

[Latindancer]

96 is a pretty good innings. RIP, Wilburrrr

[Cold Pizza]

Do mer Megadeath drummer, Menza dies onstage with his band, Ohm at the Baked Potato in studio city

[Conche]

Er ^ if your going to report peoples deaths its best to get the facts right

Megadeath was his former group he played with , on this occasion he was performing with his current band OHM and he collapsed on stage but died on route to hospital in the ambulance 25 mins later

[harrybarracuda]

Burt Kwouk Dies: Actor Played Cato In Seven ‘Pink Panther’ Movies
by Ali Jaafar
May 24, 2016 8:42am



Burt Kwouk, the veteran actor most closely associated with the role of the long-suffering Cato in The Pink Panther series opposite Peter Sellers, has died at age 85. A statement released by the actor’s family confirmed Kwouk passed away peacefully May 24. Kwouk was born in Warrington in the UK but lived in Shanghai until he was 17. His long career took in seven Pink Panther films, three James Bonds as well as appearances in Doctor Who and The Avengers.

Kwouk’s big break came in 1964 when he was cast as Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Cato in A Shot In The Dark, the second in the Pink Panther series that followed the mishaps of Sellers’ bumbling French police officer. The relationship between Clouseau and Cato — something of a hate-hate dynamic with a healthy sprinkling of kung fu designed to keep the police officer vigilant — soon became a staple of the franchise and popular with audiences. Kwouk continued in the role following Sellers’ death in 1980.

Kwouk played a number of different characters in a trio of Bond films: Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and the 1968 spoof Casino Royale, appearing — somewhat uniquely — opposite Sean Connery, Roger Moore and David Niven as the iconic Brit superspy.

In later life, Kwouk became a regular on British TV, appearing on The Saint, The Kenny Everett Television Show and Last Of The Summer Wine. He also became the face of UK broadcaster Channel 4’s hyperactive gaming show Banzai!



Burt Kwouk Dies: Actor Played Cato In Seven ?Pink Panther? Movies | Deadline

[BaitongBoy]

^ Funny as fook...Goodbye Cato...

[Latindancer]

Fuk....my life is flashing before my eyes.

Goodbye Cato, and thanks heaps for all the laughs.

Here's almost 10 minutes of mayhem. Unfortunately it's in Italian, but really....the action is what it's all about.

[Loy Toy]

That means I lost two friends today.

Thanks for the laughs Cato.

[kmart]

Not now Kato??

RIP. Thanks for the laughs, Burt.

[bobo746]

Never liked Peter Sellers,never saw a Pink Panther movie.

[Davis Knowlton]

^The original Pink Panther was good. Sequels not so much.

[Latindancer]

And don't even think of watching the remake with Steve Martin.

[harrybarracuda]

'Mississippi Burning' judge dies
Jerry Mitchell, The Clarion-Ledger 5:13 p.m. CDT May 26, 2016



Retired Circuit Judge Marcus D. Gordon, who oversaw the 2005 murder trial of Edgar Ray Killen in the FBI’s “Mississippi Burning” case, died Thursday.

He retired in March from the Eighth District Circuit Court of Leake, Neshoba, Newton and Scott counties because of his health. He said then that neuropathy had impaired his ability to walk.

“I thank the people who let me have this office and stay in this office as long as I have,” Gordon said. “They gave me their trust, and I am confident that in no fashion did I ever let that trust be violated.”

A month after retiring, Gordon fell and broke his hip while at his second home in northern Arkansas. He died at 5:30 a.m. Thursday at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson.

At the time of his resignation, Gordon, 84, of Union was the longest-serving trial judge in Mississippi. He served as circuit judge for more than 36 years.

Gordon submitted his resignation on the anniversary of his appointment to the bench.

On March 4, 1977, Gov. Cliff Finch appointed Gordon as circuit judge of the Eighth Circuit District after Judge O.H. Barnett resigned.

Gordon left the bench and returned to private law practice for about three years in the late 1980s, practicing law with his nephew.

He previously served as district attorney for 6½ years in the Eighth Circuit District. He was county prosecutor for Newton County for four years.

Gordon was admitted to the bar in 1959. As a lawyer in private practice, he represented the Newton County Board of Supervisors as well as municipalities, school boards and hospitals.

He attended East Central Junior College in Decatur, now East Central Community College. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Mississippi and a law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law.

He served four years in the Air Force as an airplane mechanic assigned to the Strategic Air Command.

In 2005, Gordon presided over the trial of Killen, accused of orchestrating the killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, on June 21, 1964, in Neshoba County.

The judge had crossed Killen's path in the past. Killen spoke at the funerals of Gordon's parents, and Gordon, as a district attorney in 1976, had prosecuted Killen for a threatening phone call.

In 2005, Gordon drew praise for his handling of the Killen trial, which aired live on Court TV and has since played on C-SPAN.

In a compromise verdict, a jury convicted Killen on three counts of manslaughter, and Gordon sentenced him to the maximum 60 years in prison. Killen is now serving that time in the State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Gordon drew criticism in October when, in an interview with Fault Lines, he said, “People charged with crimes, they are criminals.”

William L. Waller Jr., chief justice for the state Supreme Court, praised Gordon.

“He will be missed by all,” Waller said. “He courageously presided over many very difficult cases, including the prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen.”

Neshoba County Circuit Clerk Patti Duncan Lee called Gordon “one of a kind,” running a firm but fair courtroom.

“By his presence, he commanded respect. He treated everybody the same,” she said. “If he thought you needed to do something different, he sure didn’t mind telling you so.

[harrybarracuda]

Quite remarkable this. The Bismarck had already sunk Britain's flagship, HMS Hood, and if it had been allowed to get to France, repaired and sent out again with the appropriate protection, it could have completely cut Britain off and forced its surrender. Without Britain, the US would have had no bridgehead for the D-Day invasion.

A significant moment in world history.

Jane Fawcett, British codebreaker during World War II, dies at 95
By Matt Schudel
The Washington Post
Published: May 29, 2016



Jane Fawcett, a British codebreaker during World War II who deciphered a key German message that led to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck - one of Britain's greatest naval victories during the war - died May 21 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95.

Her death was first reported by the Telegraph newspaper in Britain. The cause was not disclosed.

Fawcett was still in her teens when she received a letter from a friend in February 1940, in the early months of the war.

"I'm at Bletchley and it's perfectly frightful," her friend wrote. "We're so overworked, so desperately busy. You must come and join us."

Fluent in German and driven by curiosity, Fawcett - then known by her maiden name, Jane Hughes - found work at Britain's top-secret code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, about 50 miles northwest of London. Of the 12,000 people who worked there, about 8,000 were women.

Bletchley Park later became renowned as the place where mathematician Alan Turing and others solved the puzzle of the German military's "Enigma machine," depicted in the 2014 film "The Imitation Game."

Turing worked in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, while Fawcett was assigned to Hut 6. She was part of an all-female team whose job was to monitor messages from the German army and air force. Conditions in the single-story wooden buildings were hardly ideal.

"It was just horrid; there were very leaky windows," Mrs. Fawcett recalled in a 2015 interview with the Telegraph, "so it was very cold with just a frightful old stove in the middle of the room that let out lots of fumes but not much heat, and just one electric bulb hanging on a string, which was quite inadequate. We were always working against time, there was always a crisis, a lot of stress and a lot of excitement."

In May 1941, the British navy was searching for Germany's most formidable battleship, the Bismarck, which had last been seen near Norway. Fawcett was transcribing an intercepted message from the headquarters of the Luftwaffe, or German air force, when she noticed a reference to the French city of Brest.

In a reply to a Luftwaffe general whose son was aboard the Bismarck, a German officer noted that the battleship was headed to Brest for repairs.

Fawcett relayed her discovery to her supervisors, and within a day the Bismarck was spotted by the U.S. Navy in the Atlantic Ocean, about 700 miles off the coast of Brittany. British warplanes and naval vessels descended on the Bismarck, which was sunk on May 27, 1941. More than 2,000 German crew members were killed.

The sinking of the Bismarck marked the first time that British codebreakers had decrypted a message that led directly to a victory in battle. Cheers erupted among the staff at Bletchley Park, but their celebration remained private.

Fawcett's work was not made public for decades. Along with everyone else at Bletchley Park, she agreed to comply with Britain's Official Secrets Act, which imposed a lifetime prohibition on revealing any code-breaking activities. It wasn't until the late 1990s that her role in the sinking of the Bismarck began to come to light.

"My husband had been in the navy and done all these heroic things in every quarter, so of course we all talked about him and those brilliant young adventurers who saved Britain - well, saved the world," Fawcett said last year.

"So when everything we had done, which we knew had been very hard work and incredibly demanding, suddenly showed its head and we were being asked to talk about it, it felt quite overwhelming. I'd never told a soul, not even my husband. My grandchildren were very surprised."

Janet Caroline Hughes was born March 4, 1921, and grew up in London. Her father was a lawyer.

Fawcett, who dropped the final letter in her first name, studied at a school called Miss Ironside's and was a promising ballet dancer until she grew too tall. She then studied German in Switzerland before returning to England.

After working at Bletchley Park for five years,. Fawcett attended the Royal Academy of Music and had a 15-year career as an opera singer and recital soloist. In the 1960s, she began working at the Victorian Society, an organization devoted to preserving architecture from that era.

She was a passionate champion of the sturdy and ornate 19th-century buildings, with a particular interest in train stations slated for demolition by the British rail service. Railway officials dubbed her "the furious Mrs. Fawcett."

Her most significant victory came in 1967, when she successfully led an effort to save London's St. Pancras station and a nearby hotel.

Her husband of 66 years, Edward Fawcett, died in 2013. Survivors include two children and five grandchildren.

In 2014, Fawcett returned to Bletchley Park for the opening of a museum honoring the lives and work of the codebreakers. She took the hand of Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, while describing her work during the war.

"I still feel that what we did at Bletchley," she said in 2015, "was the most significant thing we ever did in our lives."

Jane Fawcett, British codebreaker during World War II, dies at 95 - Europe - Stripes