The RIP Famous Person Thread

[BaitongBoy]

"The comedian became known for being the funny guy beside straight-laced Martin in their nightclub routine and later a radio program. When the two began to appear on television, such as "Toast of the Town," which was later renamed to "The Ed Sullivan Show," in 1948, they received national prominence."

Hmm...Didn't know that...Ed Sullivan sure had a fair share of superstars...Fooking still hear the young ladies screaming and creaming when the Beatles came on...


"At 8 o'clock on February 9th 1964, America tuned in to CBS and The Ed Sullivan Show. But this night was different. 73 million people gathered in front their TV sets to see The Beatles' first live performance on U.S. soil."

[VocalNeal]

[harrybarracuda]

The Nutty Professor was written and directed by Jerry Lewis and remains my favourite comedy movie.

RIP.

He was superb in the "King Of Comedy" with DeNiro. Otherwise, was never much of a fan, tbh.

In fairness, his humour was aimed at 50's and 60's wholesome, picket fence Americans, so was never going to be my cup of tea.

That's why it was such a stroke of genius when Scorsese talked him into the role of Jerry Langford.

[SKkin]

Dick Gregory has died. Age 84.

https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_Ne...8901503240959/

[harrybarracuda]

Science fiction author Brian Aldiss, who inspired Spielberg's AI film, dies aged 92



Science fiction author, artist and poet Brian Aldiss OBE, whose story inspired Steven Spielberg’s A.I. film, has died aged 92.

Mr Aldiss, a former literary editor of the Oxford Mail and author of a string of British science fiction classics died in the early hours of Saturday in his home in Oxford.

His ‘Supertoys’ short stories were adapted for the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence on which he collaborated with Stanley Kubrick for over a decade before its completion by Spielberg in 2001.

His novel Frankenstein Unbound was also made for screen by Roger Corman.

He was born in Norfolk on August 18, 1925 and died shortly after celebrating his 92nd birthday at the weekend.

Having moved to Oxford shortly after the Second World War as a bookseller he became the literary editor of the Oxford Mail from 1958 to 1969.

Around that time he also won the Observer prize for a short story set in 2500.

A friend and drinking companion of Kingsley Amis and correspondent with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldiss was a founding member of the Groucho Club in London and a judge on the 1981 Booker Prize.

Awarded the Hugo Award for Science Fiction in 1962 and the Nebula Award in 1965, Aldiss's writings were well received by the critics and earned a strong following in the United States and in Britain as well as being widely translated into foreign languages.

In 2000 Mr Aldiss was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Reading University and was given the title of ‘Grandmaster’ from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

He was made an OBE by the Queen in 2005 for services to literature.

Science fiction author Brian Aldiss, who inspired Spielberg's AI film, dies aged 92 (From Oxford Mail)

[harrybarracuda]

'Annie,' 'The Producers' writer Thomas Meehan dies at 88
3:23 PM CDT Aug 22, 2017




Tony Award-winning author Thomas Meehan, known for popular Broadway musical "Annie," has died. He was 88.

His death was confirmed by lyricist Martin Charnin.

"Annie" ran for more than 2,300 shows. It earned Meehan his first Tony Award.

He also wrote "Ain't Broadway Grand," "Bombay Dreams," "Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge" and "The Producers."

Meehan wrote books for musicals "Young Frankenstein" and "Cry-Baby." he co-wrote the book for "Elf the Musical" and "Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin." He also wrote the book for the musical adaptation of the original "Rocky" film.

'She had no idea': Man pops the question during solar eclipse

[harrybarracuda]

Comic actor Jay Thomas dies aged 69



YEREVAN, AUGUST 25, ARMENPRESS. American comic actor Jay Thomas, who starred on the sitcoms Murphy Brown and Cheers, has died at the age of 69, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

He died after a long battle with cancer.

Thomas played the obnoxious TV talk-show host Jerry Gold (and Candice Bergen's on-again, off-again boyfriend) on CBS' Murphy Brown from 1989-98 — winning a pair of Emmys — after his stint as Rhea Perlman’s husband Eddie LeBec, a French-Canadian goalie with the Boston Bruins, on NBC's Cheers. On the latter, his character winds up appearing in an ice show and gets killed by a Zamboni.

Thomas also starred on his own sitcom, playing an egotistical sportswriter opposite Susan Dey and then Annie Potts on CBS' Love and War, a 1992-95 series created by Murphy Brown's Diane English.


https://armenpress.am/eng/news/90302...s-aged-69.html

[Cold Pizza]

It's from the BBC.

It's official.

Rich Piana has passed.

RIP.

Celebrity US bodybuilder Rich Piana dies aged 46 after collapsing two weeks ago - BBC Newsbeat

[Ukan Kizmiaz]

drew morphett rip

[harrybarracuda]

Tobe Hooper, Director Of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dies at 74
By Paul Heath - Aug 27, 2017



Tobe Hooper, the legendary filmmaker of such horror classics as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, has sadly passed away at the age of 74.

Hooper passed away on Saturday 26th August in Sherman Oaks, California, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner, though the circumstances of his death were not known.

Hooper directed the classic ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ back in 1974 for less than $300,000. It went to gross over $30 million, despite being banned in many global territories for many years, including the UK. He went on to direct the Steven Spielberg-produced Poltergeist in 1982. Both films had remakes made in the past few years.

Hooper also had the likes of Salem’s Lot, The Mangler, and Night Terrors on his resume throughout his multi-decade career.

Tobe Hooper, Director Of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Dies at 74

Perhaps it was Wes Craven who offered the definitive comment on Tobe Hooper’s macabre masterpiece from 1975, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Craven called it “Mansonite” and in a spirit of dark humour he applied the adjective as much to the film’s creator as the thing itself. The director had invaded our minds with this diabolically horrible film and very much moved the furniture around in our skulls.

This was the nightmarish story of a man called Leatherface who wears a gruesome mask and kills people with a variety of implements including a chainsaw. Like Norman Bates before, and Dr Hannibal Lecter afterwards, the grisly, skin-crawling, skin-flaying Leatherface had been taken from the real-life story of Ed Gein, the 50s serial killer who made trophies out of human remains.

But it is not merely that Leatherface is an implacable, irrational and essentially motiveless killer: he is part of a secret family or cult within whose enclosed society these horrendous acts have become normalised as part of an evolved ritual. The point is that the “family”, so readily evoked as the benchmark of wholesome American normality, can be anything but. Families are private; families keep their own secrets; families mind their own business. In the wilderness, where outsiders are rare, where neighbours are 30 minutes’ drive away, and the uniformed forces of law and order further still, this can mean a great many things.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre became a locus classicus of the censorship and screen violence debates here when it was refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification upon its first release in 1975, and then in the 1980s, as the era of VCR and video rental dawned, had its brief video release cancelled along with many other ultraviolent provocations such as Hooper’s next film Eaten Alive (1977), Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Wes Craven’s Last House On The Left (1972) — notably inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s Virgin Spring — and Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave (1980).

These became the much-feared, much-gloated-over “video nasties” and were refused certificates for two decades after this. But then, inevitably, the rules were relaxed and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre progressed to being a cult classic, a movie revered by new generations of directors. The masked figure became a staple of horror and of course The Texas Chainsaw Massacre featured that strangely persistent trope: the final girl, the young woman who achieves a queasy, Pyrrhic victory of survival, balanced against the monster’s own survival, an undiminished threat which, quite unlike any other movie genre, flavours the closing credits with that sense of non-ending, and open-ended fear and possible sequel.

Tobe Hooper learned — or rather taught — a lesson which had been imbibed by other film-makers like George A. Romero and belatedly by Hitchcock himself. Pure low-budget horror can be a liberating challenge, and for a technically gifted director it offers the chance to unleash electrifyingly powerful forces within an audience. Another kind of film might hope, with a cleverly composed series of shots, to make its audience sigh, or laugh, or cheer or choke up with tears. A horror director, with approximately the same skillset, can get a colossally bigger payoff: a scream of horror, a yelp of fear that you will remember for the rest of your life. And a brilliant low-budget horror picture can turn huge profits, despite or because of the restrictions on distribution. The economics of horror, particularly in that era, created masterminds of genre cinema — like Tobe Hooper.

As for censorship and violent movies, it has been many years since this was a hot-button issue, long since replaced by cyberbullying and grooming on social media. The most strident newspapers in the UK prefer now to pursue winnable campaigns and it has dawned us that these films are now readily available and civilisation as we know it has not come to an end. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for all its guignol gore, actually showed less explicit horror than people imagined.

Many people have ineradicable memories of first having seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as teenagers. I in fact saw it much later, as a student, so had maybe become a bit hardened — or liked to think so. The Tobe Hooper films which really did cause the evacuation of my living daylights were The Funhouse (1981) and Poltergeist (1982). Poltergeist is a brilliant, but atypical Tobe Hooper film about the ghosts in a brand new house belonging to a real estate developer. But the auteur-ist bragging rights arguably belong to Steven Spielberg who wrote and produced, and was himself in touch with the forces of B-movie darkness.

The authentic slash of Hooper nastiness belongs to The Funhouse which I saw on video, and creeped me out most royally. Four attractive teens get trapped in a carnival, pursued by a horribly deformed killer. The scene in the ghost train in which one of them takes an axe to what they think is their pursuer is one of the most purely horrible, perhaps even evil things I have ever seen in a film. My callous friends all laughed heartily at it. I pretended to do the same. Perhaps I was not a natural audience for Hooper’s genius. But it has only just occurred to me that my friends were pretending too.

Tobe Hooper was an inheritor of that potent streak of madness that has been with us since Titus Andronicus and then the Jacobean nightmares of the English stage; he was a horror director of pure dark inspiration.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...merican-family

[Loy Toy]

Two of the worst films I have ever taken the time to watch.

Whatever...........RIP.

[Eliminator]

I never watched them, sick people to even think of it.

[kmart]

Fucking brilliant films.

"Granpappy makes the best head cheese"

RIP Tobe.

[BaitongBoy]

Upon its October 1974 release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was banned outright in several countries, and numerous theaters later stopped showing the film in response to complaints about its violence.

While it initially drew a mixed reception from critics, it was enormously profitable, grossing over $30 million at the domestic box office. It has since received a positive reappraisal and gained a reputation as one of the best and most influential horror films in cinema history.

It is credited with originating several elements common in the slasher genre, including the use of power tools as murder weapons and the characterization of the killer as a large, hulking, faceless figure. The popularity of the film led to a franchise that continued the story of Leatherface and his family through sequels, remakes, one prequel, comic books and video games.

[harrybarracuda]

His Most Famous Work Fascinated Theater Audiences and Movie Goers Worldwide: ‘Elephant Man’ Author Bernard Pomerance Dies at 76
Aug 29, 2017



A writer whose most famous work became a Tony Award-winning play and an acclaimed film that earned eight Oscar nominations has died. USA Today reports that Bernard Pomerance, best known for writing “The Elephant Man,” died Saturday of complications from cancer at his home in Galisteo, N.M. He was 76.

“The Elephant Man’s” title role was played by some of Hollywood’s top stars, including Bradley Cooper and John Hurt.

“‘The Elephant Man’ was based on a true story and has been frequently revived since its 1979 New York debut. It examines the life of John Merrick, an extremely disfigured but indomitable man who becomes a celebrity in Victorian London,” USA Today reports. “On Broadway, such diverse performers as David Bowie and Mark Hamill eventually followed the mesmerizing Philip Anglim in the title role. Billy Crudup starred in a 2002 revival, and Cooper led one in 2014 that earned four Tony nominations.”

David Lynch’s 1980 film adaptation, which starred Hurt, earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Hurt and Best Director for Lynch.

“Pomerance’s tale showcases the triumph of a very human spirit, personified by the sensitive, almost saintly Merrick,” the report notes. “He is a man who finds safe haven in a London hospital after spending much of his life in second-rate carnivals as a freak attraction — and then blossoms into the confidante of celebrated actresses, statesmen and even royalty.”



His Most Famous Work Fascinated Theater Audiences and Movie Goers Worldwide: ?Elephant Man? Author Bernard Pomerance Dies at 76 | TVWeek

[bobo746]

Walter Becker, Steely Dan Co-Founder, Dead at 67

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted bassist-guitarist's partnership with Donald Fagen yielded classic LPs like 'Aja,' 'Katy Lied' and 'Pretzel Logic'
Walter Becker, guitarist, bassist and co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted band Steely Dan, died Sunday at the age of 67.

Becker's official site announced the death; no cause of death or other details were provided.
"Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967," Donald Fagen wrote in a tribute to Becker. "He was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny."
Becker missed Steely Dan's Classic East and West concerts in July as he recovered from an unspecified ailment. "Walter's recovering from a procedure and hopefully he'll be fine very soon," Fagen told Billboard at the time. Becker's doctor advised the guitarist not to leave his Maui home for the performances.

Becker and Fagen first became collaborators when they were both students at New York's Bard College. After working as songwriters (Barbra Streisand's "I Mean to Shine") and members of Jay and the Americans' backing band, the duo moved to California in the early Seventies to form Steely Dan – named after a sex toy in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch – alongside guitarists Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias, drummer Jim Hodder and singer David Palmer.
Following the release of their debut 1972 LP Can't Buy a Thrill, the lineup would change again with Palmer's exit; while Steely Dan would routinely rotate musicians, Becker and Fagen remained the group's core members. Despite the ever-changing lineup, Steely Dan made their stamp on music with a string of pristine, sophisticated albums with "calculated and literary lyrics" that blurred the lines of jazz, pop, rock and soul.
"I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion," Becker told Rolling Stone in 1974. "That kind of marriage has so far only come up with ponderous results. We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz."
He added, "I learned music from a book on piano theory. I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, I learned everything I wanted to know."



Walter Becker, Steely Dan Co-Founder, Dead at 67 - Rolling Stone

[bobo746]

Loved these bloke's back in the day.

[Norton]

Read Rickie Lee Jones' Poignant Tribute to Steely Dan's Walter Becker

Read Rickie Lee Jones' Poignant Tribute to Walter Becker - Rolling Stone

[harrybarracuda]

It's a Country and Western double header!

Country Music Legend, Don Williams, Dies at 78
September 9, 2017



Don Williams, the American Country Music Hall of Fame member whose imposing height and warm, reassuring voice earned him the nickname “Gentle Giant,” died yesterday after a short illness.
An internationally popular country star, Williams recorded dozens of hit songs, including “Tulsa Time,” “Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good” and “It Must Be Love.” He was 78.

“In giving voice to songs like ‘Good Ole Boys Like Me,’ ‘Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good,’ and ‘Amanda,’ Don Williams offered calm, beauty, and a sense of wistful peace that is in short supply these days. His music will forever be a balm in troublesome times. Everyone who makes country music with grace, intelligence, and ageless intent will do so while standing on the shoulders of this gentle giant,” Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young said in a statement yesterday.

Born in Floydada, Texas, on May 27th, 1939, Williams was raised in Portland, Texas, where he learned guitar from his mother. Initially performing in Corpus Christi in a duo called Strangers Two with singer Lofton Kline, Williams and his partner met singer Susan Taylor and formed the folk-pop trio that would be called the Pozo-Seco Singers. Based in Nashville, the trio earned two Top 40 tunes, “I Can Make It With You,” and “Look What You’ve Done,” in late 1966.
After the group disbanded, Williams returned to Texas to sell furniture in his father’s store before returning to Music City to embark on a solo career. “Cowboy” Jack Clement signed Williams as a songwriter to his Jack Music publishing company, where he recorded demos for songwriter-producer Allen Reynolds, who later went on to helm projects for Crystal Gayle and Garth Brooks, among many others.

When other artistes proved reluctant to record Williams’ songs, Clement signed him as an artiste to his JMI Records, releasing his first country single, “Don’t You Believe,” in 1972. In 1974, the label issued “We Should Be Together,” which became the singer’s first Top Five hit. Later that year, he scored the first of 17 Number One singles with the romantic “I Wouldn’t Want to Live If You Didn’t Love Me.” The visionary Clement also shot some of the industry’s first-ever music videos for Williams’ early hits.
In 1980, Williams, who had quickly gained an overseas following, was named Artiste of the Decade by the readers of the London-based magazine, Country Music People. That same year, he reached the pop Top Forty with the tender “I Believe in You,” Between 1974 and 1991, of the nearly 50 singles he released, first on Dot, then ABC/Dot – which would become MCA – then Capitol and finally RCA, all but three reached the Top Ten.

In 1976, Williams became an Opry member, and was crowned CMA Male Vocalist of the Year in 1978, with his version of Danny Flowers’ “Tulsa Time” earning CMA Single of the Year. In 1981, he joined Emmylou Harris on “If I Needed You,” a Top Five duet that would introduce the masses to the work of songwriter Townes Van Zandt. In the late Eighties, Williams quit touring after suffering back problems but soon picked up, with several hits for RCA until 1991’s “Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy” ended his streak. Williams was consistently an international ambassador of country music, earning a massive following in Europe, especially in the U.K. and Ireland, as well as Australia and Africa.
In addition to his recording career, Williams appeared in the 1975 Burt Reynolds films W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings and 1980’s Smokey and the Bandit II. He later name-checked Reynolds in the 1982 Bob McDill-penned hit, “If Hollywood Don’t Need You (Honey, I Still Do),” which was one of the many singles co-produced by Williams with longtime collaborator Garth Fundis.

In 2004, he released his My Heart to You LP for Sugar Hill Records; although he staged a 2006 farewell tour, he came out of retirement in October 2010, the same month he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. By that time, he had released more than 35 albums. His most recent studio album, Reflections, was released in 2014. He retired from touring for good two years later.

Williams’ songs have been recorded by country superstars Alan Jackson and Lee Ann Womack, as well as rock legends Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton. Just one day before he turned 78, last May, tribute album Gentle Giants: The Songs of Don Williams was issued. A testament to his widespread and long-lasting influence, the LP featured performances of beloved Williams hits by Alison Krauss, Chris Stapleton, Pistol Annies, Brandy Clark, Keb’ Mo’, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks, Lady Antebellum, songwriter Roger Cook, Dierks Bentley, John Prine and Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires. A special tribute to the longtime Grand Ole Opry member was also performed on the Opry stage just days after that album was released. That same month, the concert CD/DVD package, Don Williams in Ireland: The Gentle Giant in Concert, was released, featuring an onstage performance from the Emerald Isle.

Country Music Legend, Don Williams, Dies at 78 | THISDAYLIVE

Troy Gentry of Montgomery Gentry Dies at 50



Troy Gentry of the country duo Montgomery Gentry died in a helicopter crash on Friday (Sept. 8) at the Flying W Airport in Medford, New Jersey, where his was scheduled to perform later the day. He was 50.

Both Gentry and one other aboard the flight perished. Gentry's bandmate, Eddie Montgomery, was not on the helicopter.

The band's Twitter account confirmed the news of Gentry's death, noting the crash took place around 1 p.m. local time.

Montgomery Gentry has sold 5.2 million albums in the U.S. through Aug. 31, 2017, according to Nielsen Music. The duo’s best-selling album is 2002’s My Town, which sold has sold 1 million.

The pair has moved 6.4 million song downloads and collected 163.1 million on-demand streams in the U.S. as well.

Troy Gentry of Montgomery Gentry Dies at 50 | Billboard

[harrybarracuda]

Sir Peter Hall: Theatre giant dies aged 86
12 September 2017



Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company and former National Theatre director Sir Peter Hall has died at the age of 86.
He died on Monday at University College hospital in London, surrounded by his family, the National Theatre said.
During his career he staged the English language premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and the world premiere of Harold Pinter's Homecoming.
Sir Peter had been diagnosed with dementia in 2011.
There will be a private family funeral, with details of a memorial service to be announced at a later date.

Sir Peter became director of the National in 1973 and was responsible for the theatre's move from the Old Vic to the purpose-built complex on the South Bank.
He founded the RSC at the age of just 29 in 1960 and then led the company until 1968.
Rufus Norris, current director of the National Theatre, said: 'We all stand on the shoulders of giants and Peter Hall's shoulders supported the entirety of British theatre as we know it.
"All of us, including those in the new generation of theatre-makers not immediately touched by his influence, are in his debt. His legendary tenacity and vision created an extraordinary and lasting legacy for us all."
'Godfather of British theatre'
Other former National Theatre directors lined up to pay tribute.
Sir Nicholas Hytner said: "Peter Hall was one of the great figures in British theatrical history, up there in a line of impresarios that stretches back to Burbage.
"He was the great theatrical buccaneer of the 20th century and has left a permanent mark on our culture," he added.
Sir Trevor Nunn described Sir Peter as "not only a thrilling and penetrating director, he was also the great impresario of the age".
And Sir Richard Eyre said Sir Peter "was - and is - the godfather (in both senses) of British theatre".

After leaving the National Theatre in 1988, he formed the Peter Hall Company (1988 - 2011) and in 2003 became the founding director of the Rose Theatre Kingston.
Throughout his career, Sir Peter was also a champion of public funding for the arts.
His other works included the London and Broadway premieres of Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce (1977) and the 1987 production of Antony and Cleopatra, starring Dame Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins.
He also directed his daughter, the actress Rebecca Hall, in a 2003 production of Shakespeare's As You Like It.
Sir Peter's last production at the National Theatre was Twelfth Night in 2011.
He was also a renowned opera director and was the artistic director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera between 1994 and 1990).
In 1983, he staged Wagner's Ring Cycle to honour the 100th anniversary of the composer's death.
Sir Peter is survived by his wife, Nicki, children Christopher, Jennifer, Edward, Lucy, Rebecca and Emma and nine grandchildren.
His former wives, Leslie Caron, Jacqueline Taylor and Maria Ewing also survive him.

Sir Peter Hall: Theatre giant dies aged 86 - BBC News

[harrybarracuda]

Edith Windsor, who won a Supreme Court fight for same-sex marriage in the US, dies at 88



Gay rights activist Edith Windsor died in New York on Tuesday, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan said. Although the cause of death was not specified, the 88-year-old had suffered from heart ailments for years.

Windsor was an LGBT rights pioneer. It was her case from 2009 in the United States Supreme Court that helped repeal parts of a federal law against gay marriage and paved the way for marriage equality in the country. In 2015, the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case gave same-sex couples the right to marry across the US.

“Few were as small in stature as Edie Windsor – and few made as big a difference to America,” former President Barack Obama said in a statement, calling her one of the “quiet heroes” whose efforts fueled the cause of equality.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Windsor “showed the world that love can be a powerful force for change”.

https://scroll.in/latest/850477/edit...-us-dies-at-88

[bobo746]

The Sopranos actor Frank Vincent dies aged 78

Frank Vincent, who played the cruel mob boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, has reportedly died. He was 78.
Vincent died of complications from heart surgery in New Jersey, TMZ reported.
Appearing alongside the late James Gandolfini in the critically acclaimed HBO crime drama, Vincent began acting in 1976 when he co-starred in the low-budget crime film The Death Collector alongside Joe Pesci.



The Sopranos actor Frank Vincent dies aged 78 - 9News

[harrybarracuda]

Author J.P. Donleavy, who met scorn and then celebration with 'The Ginger Man,' dies at 91




J.P. Donleavy, the incorrigible Irish American author and playwright whose ribald debut novel "The Ginger Man" met scorn, censorship and eventually celebration as a groundbreaking classic, has died at age 91.
Donleavy, a native New Yorker who lived his final years on an estate west of Dublin, died Monday in Ireland. His death was confirmed by personal assistant Deborah Goss.
The author of more than a dozen books, he sometimes was compared to James Joyce as a prose stylist, but also was admired for his sense of humor. "The Ginger Man," first published in 1955, sold more than 45 million copies and placed No. 99 on a Modern Library list of the greatest English language fiction of the 20th century.
"The Ginger Man' has undoubtedly launched thousands of benders, but it has also inspired scores of writers with its vivid and visceral narrative voice and the sheer poetry of its prose," American novelist Jay McInerney wrote in the introduction for a 2010 reissue.

When the novel was published, authorities targeted its profanity and graphic sexual content. It was banned in Ireland and the United States. Several publishers rejected the book before it was acquired by Paris-based Olympia Press, which specialized in explicit and avant-garde materials. To Donleavy's fury, Olympia released the book through an imprint dedicated to pornography.
"The Ginger Man" is an ambling, picaresque tale about the adventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, an American in Dublin after World War II who neglects and abuses his wife and child, mooches off his friends, bilks his landlords, drinks wherever he can run up a tab and rarely lets a woman's appearance go unnoticed.

"I have discovered one of the great ailments of Ireland, 67 percent of the population has never been completely naked in their lives," Sebastian observes. "I am bound to say that this must cause a great deal of the passive agony one sees in the street."
Often cited as prophetic of the cultural revolution of the 1960s, "The Ginger Man" sold so well that it enabled Donleavy to buy Olympia after he and the publisher spent years suing each other over rights to the book.

The author initially had less success adapting "The Ginger Man" for the stage. The play opened in London in 1959 with Richard Harris as Dangerfield, but closed within days in part because of objections from the Roman Catholic Church. A New York production starred Patrick O'Neal, who later opened a Manhattan restaurant and named it after Donleavy's book.

"The Ginger Man" is also among the most prominent novels never to have been made into a feature film, although those trying included Robert Redford, Mike Nichols and Johnny Depp.
Donleavy, a bearded, green-eyed man who spoke with an Anglicized accent, never lost his affinity for odd and provocative behavior. Cornelius Christian, the protagonist of "A Fairy Tale in New York," arrives at U.S. Customs with his wife's body in a box. In "A Singular Man," the wealthy George Smith composes a will that calls for his estate to be auctioned off and the proceeds "converted to banknotes of small denominations and placed in a steel receptacle six feet high and one foot in diameter."

Reviewing "A Singular Man" in 1963 for the National Observer, a little known Hunter S. Thompson praised Donleavy as a "humorist in the only sense of the word that has any dignity," one "forever at war with despair."
Sebastian Dangerfield was based on a classmate at Trinity College, but Donleavy seemed to share many of his vices, telling the Associated Press in 1992 that at school "I took my degree in drinking and harlotry in the finer pubs of Dublin."
He was married (and divorced) twice and was nonchalant when interviewers noted that his second wife twice conceived children with other men. He became an Irish citizen in middle age after the government granted artists tax-exempt status.

"Money, above all things," Donleavy responded when asked by the Paris Review in 1975 about his motivations. "Fame goes, but money never does. It's got its own beauty. It's never gone to ashes in my mouth. I've always exquisitely enjoyed it. And maybe a little bit of revenge."
The son of Irish immigrants, James Patrick Donleavy was born in New York City, wrote poetry as a child and had some early success as a painter before turning to fiction in his early 20s. As he explained to the Paris Review, he thought the novel was his quickest path to fame and set out to write a book that would "shake the world."

Donleavy served in the Navy during World War II, attended Trinity in the late 1940s and began working on "The Ginger Man" soon after. The author would endure a wave of rejections and recalled a visit to the Boston offices of Little, Brown and Company, which had recently published of J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher In the Rye."

"The editor called me around there on a hot, sweaty afternoon," he told the Paris Review. "He sat me a good distance away from his desk, and the manuscript was in a shadowy corner of the room. He leaned back in his chair very nervously and pointed at the manuscript, with his hand trembling, and said, 'There's obscene libel in that book!' So that was the end of Little, Brown."

Donleavy lived long enough in Ireland to absorb his adopted country's dark humor about mortality. "When I die," he once wrote, "I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin." Another time, he composed an epitaph in rhyme:
"When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read."

Author J.P. Donleavy, who met scorn and then celebration with 'The Ginger Man,' dies at 91 - LA Times

[Looper]

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton, whose scruffy looks and off-beat demeanour made him a favourite of directors seeking a character actor to add eccentricity or melancholy to the screen, has died from natural causes, his agent said. He was 91.



Stanton, who appeared in some 70 movies and many television shows including Repo Man, Paris, Texas and most recently David Lynch's reboot of television's Twin Peaks, died peacefully at Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, his agent John Kelly said in a statement.

Stanton's final on-screen role can be seen in the upcoming film Lucky.
YouTube: Harry Dean Stanton appears in the upcoming Indie film, Lucky.

In a career spanning 60 years, Stanton's roles were not always big but were meaningful and could add a special quirk or flavour to a film.

Sometimes he said very little in his roles, but with a long, craggy face highlighted by unkempt hair and sad, droopy eyes, Stanton had a strong physical presence and made a point of not over-acting.

"He's one of those actors who knows that his face is the story," his friend Sam Shepard, the playwright and actor, said in the 2012 documentary Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction.
YouTube: Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction trailer.

Shepard himself passed away in July this year at the age of 73.

Stanton credited Jack Nicholson with giving him vital professional advice. Nicholson had written a part for Stanton in the Western Ride the Whirlwind and told him, "Let the wardrobe do the acting and just play yourself."

"After Jack said that, my whole approach to acting opened up," Stanton told Entertainment Weekly.
Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton arrive at a premiere in 2002.
Photo: Jack Nicholson (L) and Harry Dean Stanton (R) arrive at a film premiere in 2002. (Reuters: Adrees Latif)

Stanton's eclectic body of work

Stanton worked with many of Hollywood's most notable directors, including Frances Ford Coppola (The Godfather Part Two and One From the Heart), Sam Peckinpah (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), Martin Scorsese (The Last Temptation of Christ), Ridley Scott (Alien), and Lynch (Wild at Heart, The Straight Story, and Inland Empire).

Stanton could be taciturn to the point of mystery. In Partly Fiction, when Lynch asked him how he would like to be remembered, Stanton replied: "It doesn't matter."

Two 1984 films cemented his reputation in Hollywood: Repo Man and Paris, Texas.

Repo Man became an independent cult film favourite with Stanton as a comically grizzled and paranoid car repossession expert trying to pass on his dubious code of ethics to his apprentice.

In Paris, Texas, written by Shepard and directed by Wim Wenders, he played an emotionally broken, nearly silent man trying to put his life and family back together — a portrayal that many in Hollywood thought should have at least earned Stanton an Oscar nomination.
Harry Dean Stanton lokos at a young kid in Paris Texas
Photo: One of Harry Dean Stanton's most prolific roles was in Paris, Texas. Here he appears alongside Hunter Carson. (Imdb: Road Movies Film Production)

Other notable Stanton movies were Pretty in Pink, The Missouri Breaks, Red Dawn, Escape From New York, The Green Mile and Cool Hand Luke."

In the 1960s, Stanton was frequently seen on US television in classic cowboy shows such as Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Bonanza and Have Gun, Will Travel.

In 2008-2009 he played a manipulative polygamist on the HBO series "Big Love."
Stanton portrayed a polygamist in HBO's Big Love.
Photo: Stanton portrayed a polygamist in HBO's Big Love. (Imdb: Big Love)

Stanton was born July 14, 1926, in West Irvine, Kentucky, to a tobacco farmer father and hairdresser mother who divorced when he was a teenager.

Stanton, who was a cook at the battle of Okinawa during his US Navy service in World War Two, became interested in acting while attending the University of Kentucky and pursued acting at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse in California.

In the 1960s, Stanton and Nicholson were was part of a clique of hard-living Hollywood rebels who also included Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and various rock stars.

Stanton told an interviewer that he and Hopper had a running joke that some of Hopper's best work — in "Blue Velvet" and an Oscar-nominated part in "Hoosiers" — came in roles that Stanton had turned down.

Stanton made a second career of music, playing regularly in Los Angeles and sometimes touring with the Harry Dean Stanton Band, in which he sang and played guitar and harmonica.

Stanton never married but once told an interviewer he had "one, maybe two" sons.

Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man, Twin Peaks Star, dies aged 91 - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[Davis Knowlton]

The Sopranos actor Frank Vincent dies aged 78


Frank Vincent, who played the cruel mob boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, has reportedly died. He was 78.
Vincent died of complications from heart surgery in New Jersey, TMZ reported.
Appearing alongside the late James Gandolfini in the critically acclaimed HBO crime drama, Vincent began acting in 1976 when he co-starred in the low-budget crime film The Death Collector alongside Joe Pesci.



The Sopranos actor Frank Vincent dies aged 78 - 9News

ne of the really great Mafia characters!
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