The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Davis Knowlton]

Love Story had to be one of the worst movies ever made. Squeaky voiced Ryan and Ali, who couldn't act if her life depended on it. She made Sondra Locke look talented.

[wasabi]

Love Story, how could I forget it when My school teacher ranted in front of the young class that this was a disgusting immoral movie.
They had moved in together , and weren't married.
Not married and having sex. Mrs Bennett told us never to ever watch this movie. Filthy movie .

[BaitongBoy]

^ Mrs Bennett must've "creamed her Levi's" watching it...And then felt remorse...

[Neverna]

Actor and disability campaigner Lord Rix dies after urging for assisted dying to be made legal



At the beginning of the month, Lord Rix made a heartfelt plea for euthanasia to be legalised in order to allow him to "slip away peacefully" as he revealed he was suffering with a terminal condition

The 92-year-old voted against an Assisted Dying Bill which came before the House of Lords in 2006 because he feared that people with learning disabilities might become the unwilling victims of euthanasia.

But he changed his stance after his illness left him feeling "like a beached whale" and in constant discomfort.

As Brian Rix, the crossbench peer was one of Britain's most popular TV and stage actors with his own brand of "Whitehall farce" comedy.

He later became a leading campaigner for people with learning disabilities after his daughter was born with Down's syndrome.

In his letter, he told Speaker of the House of Lords Baroness D'Souza: "My position has changed. As a dying man, who has been dying now for several weeks, I am only too conscious that the laws of this country make it impossible for people like me to be helped on their way, even though the family is supportive of this position and everything that needs to be done has been dealt with.

"Unhappily, my body seems to be constructed in such a way that it keeps me alive in great discomfort when all I want is to be allowed to slip into a sleep, peacefully, legally and without any threat to the medical or nursing profession. I am sure there are many others like me who having finished with life wish their life to finish."

Actor and disability campaigner Lord Rix dies after urging for assisted dying to be made legal

[harrybarracuda]

One of those people who actually did something useful with his fame.

RIP.

Although having said that he must hold some kind of record for dropping his trousers on stage.

[Latindancer]

Figures from the pop music world have paid tribute to Lou Pearlman, the founder of Backstreet Boys and *N Sync, who has died in prison aged 62.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...prison-aged-62

[harrybarracuda]

Can't say I've heard of him but it's a great name, and the cause of death is a hoot:

Toots Thielemans, a jazz harmonica player, guitarist and whistler whose 1961 composition “Bluesette” became a jazz standard, has died, the Associated Press reported Monday. He was 94.

Belgian broadcaster RTL reported that his manager, Veerle Van de Poel, said that "there were no complications. He died of old age, his body was simply worn out."

Fucking hell, I can't see mine not wearing out 'til I'm 94!

[crackerjack101]

He was the master;

[Neverna]

And here he is: Toots Thielemans playing Bluesette.



Edit: Oops. SNAP!

[crackerjack101]

[crackerjack101]

I mess around with the harmonica and Toots was the best. Adler was proficient but toots was the musician. R.I.P.

[crackerjack101]

[crackerjack101]

[bobo746]

Matt Roberts, Original 3 Doors Down Guitarist, Dead at 38

Guitarist and "Kryptonite" co-writer performed with band from 1996 formation until 2012
Matt Roberts, the longtime lead guitarist for rock band 3 Doors Down before he left the band in 2012, died early Saturday morning in a hotel outside Milwaukee. He was 38.
Roberts served as 3 Doors Down's guitarist from their 1996 formation until 2012, when he left the group for health reasons. According to CNN, Roberts had been rehearsing for a Wisconsin fundraising concert for veterans when he and his father went back to the hotel. Hours later, police were called to the hotel for a man "either asleep or passed out in the hallway of his hotel."

"I was wakened at 8:50 this morning by some detectives beating on my door. It's always scary as a parent, they were in suits and that's when they told me. They asked me if Matt Roberts was your son, I said yes, and they said 'we have bad news to tell you, Matt deceased last night,'" Matt's father Darrell Roberts told CNN.
An autopsy will be conducted to determine Roberts' cause of death, but TMZ reports that a drug overdose is suspected. "I know he had prescription drug addiction. He suffered greatly from anxiety," Darrell Roberts said. "I thought he had beaten it all."

Matt Roberts, Original 3 Doors Down Guitarist, Dead at 38 - Rolling Stone

[misskit]

RIP. Thirty eight is way too young to go.

[harrybarracuda]

Steven Hill, D.A. Adam Schiff on ‘Law & Order,’ Dies at 94



Steven Hill, who starred for years as District Attorney Adam Schiff on “Law & Order” and decades earlier played the leader of the Impossible Missions Force before Peter Graves on TV’s “Mission: Impossible,” died Tuesday in Monsey, N.Y., his daughter Sarah Gobioff told The New York Times.

He was also a top character actor in films of the 1980s and early ’90s including “Rich and Famous,” “Yentl,” “Garbo Talks” and Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle “Raw Deal”; “Legal Eagles,” in which he would, as in “Law & Order” a few years later, play the New York district attorney; “Heartburn”; “Brighton Beach Memoirs”; “Running on Empty”; “White Palace”; “Billy Bathgate”; and “The Firm.”


Hill played Schiff from the show’s first season in 1990 until 2000, when Hill resigned; within the show Schiff was said to have accepted a position coordinating commemorations of the Holocaust Project and goes on to work with Simon Wiesenthal. Replacing Schiff as D.A. was Dianne Wiest’s Nora Lewin.


The Schiff character was reportedly based in part on the former real-life, long-serving New York D.A., Robert Morgenthau. Schiff was formerly quite liberal in his youth, mostly replaced now with a political pragmatism that sees him fear angering one political constituency or another and thus frequently suggesting a plea bargain to appease all sides.

While Hill was often said to be the last remaining member of the original cast of “Law & Order” to leave the show, this was not quite true by a technicality, as another actor, Roy Thinnes, had played the D.A. in the very first episode of the series; Hill’s Schiff came on in episode two.

Hill was twice nominated for Emmys for playing Adam Schiff on “Law & Order,” in 1998 and 1999.

In a 1996 profile of the actor, the New York Times said: “Legal vagaries aside, Mr. Hill is a law-and-order man. ‘There’s a certain positive statement in this show,’ he says (of ‘Law & Order’). ‘So much is negative today. The positive must be stated to rescue us form pandemonium. To me it lies in that principle: law and order.’ Personally, Mr. Hill says, he is no plea bargainer. ‘But our stories are about real life, and that’s how life is today,’ he says. ‘We plea bargain all over the place.'”

On the first season of “Mission: Impossible” in 1966, Hill played Dan Briggs, who initially led the IMF force; while most viewers remember fondly the tape that plays at the onset of each episode and begins by saying “Good Morning Mr. Phelps” — the character later played by Peter Graves — and details the assignment that must be accomplished, the device was used from the beginning of the series, only the recording said, “Good morning, Mr. Briggs.”

Steven Hill was an Orthodox Jew whose faith required that he depart the set on Friday by 4 p.m. in order to ensure that he make it home by sundown and the onset of the Sabbath; he was unavailable until the end of the Sabbath at sundown on Saturdays. The producers of “Mission: Impossible” were fully aware of these requirements, which were explicitly spelled out in the actor’s contract, but the pause in the production schedule each week proved unworkable in practice, generating increasing resentment on both sides. Thus, as the first season progressed, the producers simply utilized Hill less and less. This conflict over religious observance was not the only source of tension. After the actor climbed through dirt tunnels and climbed rope ladders for the episode “Snowball in Hell,” Hill balked at performing similar duties in the next episode, and the producers shot around him. Briggs’ presence in the five remaining episodes of the season was kept to a minimum. Line producer Joseph Gantman later told Patrick J. White, author of the 1991 book “The Complete ‘Mission: Impossible’ Dossier,” that he simply had not understood what had been agreed to with regard to Hill’s religious requirements: “If someone understands your problems and says he understands them, you feel better about it. But if he doesn’t care about your problems, then you begin to really resent him. Steven Hill may have felt exactly the same way.”

Without any explanation within the storyline of the series, Hill’s Dan Briggs was replaced by Peter Graves’ Jim Phelps at the beginning of the second season.

Since Adam Schiff had only a couple of scenes in most episodes of “Law & Order,” hewing to Hill’s religious requirements did not pose much of a logistical problem in that series.

Nevertheless in the wake of the conflict that arose over his role on “Mission: Impossible,” Hill left acting from 1967 until 1978. He moved to a Jewish community in Rockland County, New York, writing and working in real estate.

In 1986, at a time when his career was revitalized, Hill told the New York Times: “I don’t think an actor should act every single day. I don’t think it’s good for the so-called creative process. You must have periods when you leave the land fallow, let it revitalize itself.” A decade later, in a profile in the Times, he painted a far less cheerful picture of his past: “‘What we have here is a story of profound instability and impermanence,’ he says of his own career.”

In 1978 he ended the 11-year drought with a role in NBC’s Martin Luther King Jr. miniseries “King,” in which Hill played Stanley Levison, a close friend of King’s who was a leader of the Communist Party.

He returned to features with supporting roles in Claudia Weill’s “It’s My Turn” (1980), starring Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas; Peter Yates’ “Eyewitness” (1981), starring William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Plummer and James Woods; George Cukor’s “Rich and Famous” (1981), starring Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen; Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” (1983), in which he played the rabbi; Arthur Hiller’s “Teachers” (1984); “Garbo Talks,” in which he played the estranged husband of Anne Bancroft’s character; 1986 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle “Raw Deal,” in which he played a Mafia boss for laughs; Ivan Reitman’s 1986 “Legal Eagles,” starring Robert Redford; Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn” (1986), in which he played the father-in-law of Meryl Streep’s character; and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (also 1986).

In 1986 family drama “On Valentine’s Day,” written by Hill’s friend Horton Foote, the actor played “an anguished, deranged man living in a small town in Texas in the early years of the century,” in the words of the New York Times.

In Sidney Lumet’s “Running on Empty” (1988), Hill got lucky: — playing the father of a longtime fugitive portrayed by Christine Lahti, he was in the film’s key scene. Roger Ebert said: “Questioning the very foundations on which they have built their lives… leads to the movie’s emotional high point, when the Lahti character calls up her father (Steven Hill) and arranges to meet him for lunch. Long ago, she broke his heart. She disappeared from his life for years. Now she wants her parents to take Danny, so that he can go to music school. She will lose her son, just as her father lost her. It’s ironic, and it’s very sad, and by the end of the scene we have been through a wringer.”

In its review of 1990’s “White Palace,” starring Susan Sarandon and James Spader as unlikely lovers, the New York Times said: “Steven Hill, once again pressed into service to play an all-purpose patriarch, this time presides over a large Thanksgiving dinner in a prosperous household and makes a speech about the needs of the working class, which presents (Sarandon’s) Nora with her only opportunity for a memorable line. ‘Mister,’ she says, ‘I am the working class.’ “

In Robert Benton’s 1991 E.L. Doctorow adaptation “Billy Bathgate,” Hill memorably played a loyal henchman to Dustin Hoffman’s mobster Dutch Schultz, while in Sydney Pollack’s adaptation of John Grisham’s “The Firm,” he played FBI Director F. Denton Voyles.

Presumably supporting roles allowed both Hill and his respective directors the logistical freedom to work around his Sabbath schedule.

After a 1995 TV movie, Hill did not earn a screen credit for five years, until “Law & Order” came along.

Solomon Krakovsky was born in Seattle, Washington, to Russian Jewish immigrants, but was interested in theater even while young. He served in the Nasal Reserve from 1940-44.

He was a founding member of Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, joining Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Julie Harris among the 50 successful applicants (out of some 700 interviewed) to be accepted, and made his Broadway debut in 1946 in the Ben Hecht play “A Flag Is Born,” which counted Marlon Brando among its stars and advocated for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people in the ancient land of Israel; a few years later he was in the original cast of the enormously successful “Mister Roberts,” starring Henry Fonda, with Hill playing Stefanowski. Also in 1948 he appeared in “Sundown,” staged by Elia Kazan; in 1950 he appeared in Ibsen’s “The Lady From the Sea.” Hill was also in the original cast of Clifford Odets’ “The Country Girl.”

Hill started on television early in the history of the medium, appearing in several segments of the “Actors Studio” episodic anthology series in 1949. He soon appeared on other anthology series, such as “The Magnavox Theatre,” “Schlitz Playhouse,” “Lux Video Theatre,” “Goodyear Playhouse,” “Studio One in Hollywood” and “Playhouse 90.”

Hill received the Sylvania Television Award for dramatic actor of the year in 1954.

A bit later he appeared on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “The Untouchables” and “Dr. Kildare.”

The actor made his movie debut in the 1950 film noir “A Lady Without Passport,” starring Hedy Lamarr and John Hodiak, and appeared in film noir “Storm Fear,” directed by Cornel Wilde and written by Horton Foote; John Cromwell’s “The Actress” (1958), starring Kim Stanley; and “Kiss Her Goodbye” (1959) with Elaine Stritch.

In 1960 he starred in the CBS TV movie “Dillinger” as Melvin Purvis.

Everything changed with Hill’s 1961 starring role on Broadway as the older Sigmund Freud in the Henry Denker play “A Far Country.”

Appearing in the play — in which a patient screams at Freud, “You are a Jew!” — profoundly affected Hill. “In the pause that followed I would think, ‘What about this?’ I slowly became aware that there was something more profound going on in the world than just plays and movies and TV shows. I was provoked to explore my religion,” he told John Sobiski for the online essay “Steven Hill: Hollywood’s Most Talented Curmudgeon.”

A rabbi inspired him to adhere to strict Orthodox Judaism, which included observing the Sabbath without fail. This stricture effectively ended the actor’s stage career, as he would be unavailable for Friday night or Saturday matinee performances, and also made most potential film roles unlikely or impossible, most notably “The Sand Pebbles,” according to Sobiski.

There were some film roles in the years after Hill became observant, including John Cassavetes’ 1963 “A Child Is Waiting,” in which he starred with Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland and Gena Rowlands, and 1965’s Sydney Pollack-directed “The Slender Thread,” starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.

Hill was twice married, the first time to Selma Stern, to whom he was married from 1951 until their divorce in 1964.

He is survived by his second wife, Rachel, whom he married in 1967; five children by her; and four by Stern.

Steven Hill Dead: ?Law & Order?s? Adam Schiff Dies at 94 | Variety

[harrybarracuda]

Sydney Schanberg, New York Times journalist who inspired Killing Fields film, dies aged 82
Updated 28 August 2016, 15:15 AEST
By Jenny Lavelle

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg, whose writings inspired the 1984 film The Killing Fields, dies in New York of a heart attack aged 82.



Sydney Schanberg (L) with his colleague Dith Pran in New York on January 15, 1980. (Credit: AFP)
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg, whose writings inspired the film The Killing Fields, has died in New York of a heart attack aged 82.

The columnist and foreign correspondent for The New York Times was best known for his work covering Cambodia's fall to the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

Schanberg's story of his Cambodian colleague Dith Pran's escape to freedom formed the basis of the 1984 movie.

The film starred Sam Waterston as Schanberg and won an Academy Award for the late Haing Ngor, as Dith Pran.

Schanberg was born in Clinton, Massachusetts, in 1934 to Freda (nee Feinberg) and Louis Schanberg, who owned a grocery store.

He was educated at the local high school and then went on to Harvard, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1955.

Schanberg joined The New York Times four years later as a copy boy and by 1960 had become a staff reporter.

In 1967, he married his first wife, Janice Sakofsky, and the couple went on to have two daughters.

Schanberg spent much of the early 1970s as a correspondent for the newspaper, based in South-East Asia.

He won the George Polk award for excellence in journalism in 1971 and then again in 1974.

Genocide in Cambodia

Schanberg was in Cambodia in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge, led by the brutal Pol Pot, was on the cusp of taking over the country.

He ignored directives from his editors back in New York to evacuate for his own safety.

Most Western diplomats and reporters were fleeing the country, but Schanberg and his fixer, Dith Pran, vowed to stay on in Phnom Penh.

Both men were seized by the Khmer Rouge, who threatened to kill them. They were saved only after Dith Pran's continuous pleas convinced their captors they be released.

The pair managed to find a safe haven in the French Embassy. After a fortnight's refuge, Schanberg was allowed to leave Phnom Penh to the safety of Thailand, but because Dith Pran was a Cambodian national he had to stay behind.

At the time, Shanberg wrote of the "massacres and fires, of streets and roads littered with bodies, of forced marches that turned the city overnight into a graveyard".

The Khmer Rouge takeover was called "Year Zero", a term that implied everything that went before it was purged, and a new society and government would be built from the ground up.

The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), or Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer), ruled from April 1975 until January 1979.

The regime arrested and killed thousands of former soldiers, politicians, professionals, intellectuals, teachers and bureaucrats.

It is estimated between 1.7 million to 2.2 million people were killed under Khmer Rouge rule.

Estimates vary but about 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the Cambodian population lost their lives.

Searching for Dith Pran

The Cambodian genocide is considered one of the worst of the 20th century. Many of the survivors were imprisoned and tortured.

Millions of Cambodians were forced to work on farms in slave-like conditions as part of the regime's "agrarian revolution". Among them was Dith Pran.

Schanberg documented the activities of the "maniacal Khmer Rouge guerrillas".

"I watched many Cambodian friends being herded out of Phnom Penh. Most of them I never saw again. All of us felt like betrayers, like people who were protected and didn't do enough to save our friends. We felt shame. We still do."

It was during this time that Schanberg lost contact with Dith Pran and for years there was no news of his fate.

Schanberg chronicled his search for his captured colleague in his writings.

Dith Pran managed to escape over the Thai border in 1979. Schanberg flew to Thailand to meet him and the two were finally reunited.

In 1980, Dith Pran settled in New York and joined The Times as a staff photographer. Within six years, he and his wife became US citizens.

Dith Pran died in 2008, aged 65, of pancreatic cancer.

"I'm a very lucky man to have had Pran as my reporting partner and even luckier that we came to call each other brother," Schanberg said at his funeral.

"His mission with me in Cambodia was to tell the world what suffering his people were going through in a war that was never necessary. It became my mission too. My reporting could not have been done without him."

It was largely through Schanberg's work that the world heard about the atrocities in Cambodia. An anthology of his reporting, Beyond the Killing Fields, was published in 2010.

Schanberg is survived by his second wife, Jane Freiman, and his daughters, Jessica and Rebecca.

Sydney Schanberg, New York Times journalist who inspired Killing Fields film, dies aged 82 | ABC Radio Australia

[Bower]

Just heard of the passing of Gene Wilder. him in ' The Producers ' with Mostel is one of the funniest films I have ever seen.

[harrybarracuda]

August 29, 2016
‘Willie Wonka’ Star Gene Wilder Dies at 83



Gene Wilder, known for roles in “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” has died. He was 83.

The comedic actor died at his home in Stamford, Conn. His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman told Variety that Wilder’s death was related to complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

The star was nominated for an Oscar for his role in “The Producers,” and again for co-writing “Young Frankenstein” with Mel Brooks.

He won an Emmy for his guest role in “Will and Grace” in 2003.

Wilder rarely worked after 1989 following the death of his wife Gilda Radner, who passed away after a battle with ovarian cancer.

He is survived by his nephew, and fourth wife Karen Boyer. They married in 1991.

?Willie Wonka? Star Gene Wilder Dies at 83 | ExtraTV.com

[Latindancer]

End of an era. RIP Gene.

[Chittychangchang]

US actor Gene Wilder, remembered by many for his lead role in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, has died at the age of 83, his family confirmed.
The comic actor also starred in classic films such as The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.
Mr Wilder frequently collaborated with writer and director Mel Brooks as well as stand-up comedian Richard Pryor.
The two-time Oscar-nominated actor was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1989.
Mr Wilder's nephew confirmed the actor died on Sunday in Stamford, Connecticut, due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.
The star first made waves on Broadway before transitioning to the silver screen for a brief role as a kidnapped undertaker in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

[misskit]

Sad news. Goodbye, Gene Wilder.

[toslti]

[BaitongBoy]

^ Thanks for that, toslti...Remember it well...

[billy the kid]

The scene where the judge gave him and his buddy 125 yrs in the slammer.