The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

Alexei Leonov: First person to walk in space dies aged 85




Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who became the first person in history to spacewalk in 1965, has died aged 85.


Tethered to a spaceship by a 14.8m (16ft) cable, the Russian floated above Earth for 12 minutes.

"You just can't comprehend it. Only out there can you feel the greatness - the huge size of all that surrounds us," Leonov told the BBC in 2014.

But the outing nearly ended in disaster as his spacesuit inflated and he struggled to get back in the spaceship.

At a time when the US and the USSR were jostling for space supremacy, Leonov's mission was lauded as a triumph at home.

But Leonov's ambitions did not stop at his spacewalk. He went on to become the commander of Soyuz-Apollo, the first ever joint US-Soviet mission in 1975.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50017409

[Neverna]

Tethered to a spaceship by a 14.8m (16ft) cable

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50017409

The BBC. FFS.

[Troy]

The link looks to have been updated to state 4.8m.

That's not very long, which is just as well considering the suit malfunctioned....

[misskit]

Robert Forster, Oscar nominee for 'Jackie Brown,' dies at 78



The 'Medium Cool' actor also starred for David Lynch in 'Mulholland Drive' and 'Twin Peaks' after Tarantino resuscitated his career.

Robert Forster, the stalwart leading man whose Oscar-nominated performance as a nefarious bail bondsman in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown made for one of Hollywood's most heartwarming comeback stories, has died. He was 78.


Forster died Friday at his Los Angeles home of brain cancer, his publicist told The Hollywood Reporter.

With his chiseled good looks, steely chin and earnest gaze, Forster exuded a raw truthfulness. He made his film debut opposite Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), then sparkled as an ethically challenged cameraman in Haskell Wexler's ultra-realistic Medium Cool (1969).

MORE https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...was-78-1218184

[misskit]

After all these years, I’m still heartbroken Max Cherry didn’t run away to Spain with Jackie Brown.

[misskit]

Rep. Elijah Cummings, powerful Democratic chairman and Trump target, dies at 68




Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland died early Tuesday due to complications stemming from longtime health issues, the Democratic leader’s office announced. He was 68. Cummings, who has played a high-profile role in a myriad of investigations into President Donald Trump as the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, underwent a medical procedure last month but had not yet returned to his office this week when the House was back in session.

“A sharecropper’s son, Cummings became the powerful chairman of a U.S. House committee that investigated President Donald Trump, and was a formidable orator who passionately advocated for the poor in his black-majority district, which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore as well as more well-to-do suburbs,” the Associated Press notes. “Cummings’ long career spanned decades in Maryland politics. He rose through the ranks of the Maryland House of Delegates before winning his congressional seat in a special election in 1996 to replace former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who left the seat to lead the NAACP.”


Cummings, whose district includes parts of Baltimore and Howard counties, was a frequent recipient of Trump’s tirades, as he had played a prominent role in the impeachment inquiry and other investigations into the administration.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...yland-dies.amp

[prawnograph]

Ivan Milat: Australia's 'backpacker killer' dies aged 74
27 October 2019
Ivan Milat, a notorious Australian serial killer who kidnapped and murdered hitchhikers, has died aged 74.
Milat had been serving a life sentence for killing seven backpackers between 1989 and 1992 and dumping their bodies in a New South Wales forest.
He died of cancer in a Sydney hospital early on Sunday local time.
Police said Milat's lifelong refusal to admit his crimes had hampered further investigations into the killings and other unsolved cases.
His murder victims were three Germans, two Britons and two Australians. All were aged between 19 and 22.
Milat was arrested after targeting another backpacker, British man Paul Onions, who escaped and alerted police.
A subsequent trial heard that Milat had searched for hitchhikers to abduct from a major highway between Sydney and Melbourne.
The bodies of his victims were found buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 120km (75 miles) south-west of Sydney, in 1992 and 1993.

Ivan Milat dead at 74: killer’s death leaves families in limbo
Australia’s most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat, has died under suspicion of committing many more murders than the seven he was convicted for.
Milat showed no remorse for his killing spree before his death at the age of 74 from cancer, 25 years after police arrested him at his Sydney home and found a treasure trove of evidence including mementos of his crimes.

Former detective Bob Godden, a senior member of the backpacker murders taskforce, said Milat’s death would leave victims’ families in limbo.
"They say you shouldn’t speak evil of the dead. In Milat’s case, we make an exception. He was an evil man.
“I never met anybody more evil than Ivan Milat. I’ve got no sympathy, no sorrow and no regret.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s goodbye and good riddance. I think the families would say exactly the same thing.”

"He is still without peer as Australia’s worst serial killer,” said former detective Stuart Wilkins.
Mr Wilkins said there was “absolutely no doubt” Milat had killed others. He said there could be any number of bodies that had not been found.
“Unfortunately we’ll never know,” Mr Wilkins said.
He said Milat rated himself “the smartest serial killer in the word”, denying his crimes despite the mountain of evidence against him.
“He loved the publicity and he loved the attention, all to gratify his own massive ego. The world is a better place without him.”

[harrybarracuda]

According to Variety, Robert Evans has died. The legendary producer behind many of your favorite ’70s and ’80s movies, and a key Paramount Pictures executive during the “New Hollywood” era, was 89 years old. No cause of death was given.

Evans’ outsized persona eventually made him almost as famous, at least among movie lovers, as the films he produced. His extensive ups and downs in and out of the business — including seven marriages and seven divorces and a conviction for cocaine trafficking — were chronicled in the popular 2002 documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture, based on Evans’ 1994 autobiography. Evans narrated the film of his own life, which was compiled out of extensive archival photographs and videos.

The success of The Kid Stays in the Picture renewed Evans’ profile, which he used to produce more stuff, and even star in his own short-lived animated series, Kid Notorious. Born in 1930, the handsome Evans got his start in Hollywood as an actor, but eventually grew frustrated with his career and moved into producing. As the head of production at Paramount Pictures in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he held turned the studio into a powerhouse. Under his tenure, Paramount released such classics as The Odd Couple, Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, The Conversation, and The Godfather.

Eventually, Evans set out on his own as an independent producer, and rattled off a string of memorable films through the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s like Chinatown, Marathon Man, and Robert Altman’s Popeye. Although his career never quite matched those heights again, Evans remained active in the industry for decades; his later productions included Sliver, The Saint, and the rom-com hit How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. His singular voice and mannerisms also made him a frequent topic of parody. Dustin Hoffman, for example, modeled his spin doctor character from Wag the Dog on Evans, who he knew from Marathon Man and other films.

The Kid Stays in the Picture is a pretty wonderful documentary, and makes excellent use of Evans’ voice and personal charisma. Still, Evans’ legacy as a producer and a studio executive is far more important than his public persona. Those movies he made are what he will be remembered for. And those movies will be remembered.

Read More: Robert Evans, Studio Executive Behind ‘The Godfather,’ Dies at 89 | https://screencrush.com/robert-evans...edium=referral

[harrybarracuda]

Werner Doehner, last survivor of the Hindenburg disaster, dies at 90





The last remaining survivor of the Hindenburg disaster, Werner Gustav Doehner, has died at age 90.

Doehner, who died Nov. 8 at a hospital in Laconia, N.H., was the only person left of the 62 passengers and crew who survived the May 6, 1937, fire that killed his father, sister and 34 others. He was 8 at the time.

“He did not talk about it,” said his son Bernie Doehner. “It was definitely a repressed memory. He lost his sister, he lost his dad.”

Bernie Doehner said his father took him to visit the naval station years later but not the Hindenburg memorial itself.

As the 80th anniversary approached in 2017, Werner Doehner said that he and his parents, older brother and sister were returning from a vacation in Germany on the 804-foot-long zeppelin to Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. His father headed to his cabin after using his movie camera to shoot some scenes of the station from the airship’s dining room. That was the last time Doehner saw him.

As the Hindenburg arrived, flames began to flicker on top of the airship. Hydrogen, exposed to air, fueled an inferno.

“Suddenly, the air was on fire,” Werner Doehner recalled.

He said his mother threw him and his brother out of the ship before she left too.

They suffered burns. He would remain in the hospital for three months before going to a hospital in New York City in August for skin grafts.

The U.S. Commerce Department determined the accident was caused by a leak of the hydrogen that kept the airship aloft. It mixed with air, causing a fire. “The theory that a brush discharge ignited such mixture appears most probable,” the department’s report said.

Werner Doehner and his family were on their way back to Mexico City, where his father was a pharmaceutical executive. Funerals were held for his father and sister there.

Werner Doehner was born in Darmstadt, Germany, and grew up in Mexico City. In 1984, he moved to the United States to work for General Electric as an electrical engineer, according to his obituary. He also worked in Ecuador and Mexico. He retired from New England Electric System in Westborough, Mass. in 1999.



https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2019-11-15/werner-doehner-last-survivor-hindenburg-dead

[harrybarracuda]

An unparalleled character in British thespian arts. Obit below the report.

Jonathan Miller, director and humorist, dies at 85




Sir Jonathan Miller, the distinguished theatre and opera director who famously starred in the Beyond the Fringe comedy revue, has died at the age of 85.

A man of many parts, Miller was also an author, a photographer, a sculptor, a broadcaster and a qualified doctor.

Born in London in 1934, Miller studied medicine at Cambridge before embarking on a career in the arts.

The catalyst was Beyond the Fringe, in which he appeared with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.

The groundbreaking revue premiered at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival before transferring to the West End and Broadway.

Its success led to Miller becoming editor and presenter of BBC arts programme Monitor and a director of plays at the National Theatre.

His productions included a modern-dress staging of The Merchant of Venice, with Laurence Olivier as Shylock.

He went on to direct six of the BBC's 1980s Shakespeare productions, among them The Taming of the Shrew with John Cleese and Othello with Anthony Hopkins.

Despite being unable to read music, he also directed operas for the ENO, Glyndebourne and the Met in New York.

Miller, who was knighted in 2002 for services to music and the arts, was witty and erudite but could be cantankerous.

"I've got this, I think, unjustified reputation for being grumpy," he once said, insisting he only objected to "people who are 30 years younger than I am and know 100% less than I do".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-50574472

Jonathan Miller's talents were manifold, his natural gifts bewildering in their profusion.

He was a humorist, an author, a director of films, TV, plays and operas. He was a photographer, a sculptor, an all-purpose intellectual and accomplished broadcaster.

He could be witty, charming and life-enhancing, especially when he was the centre of attention, as he usually was.

Yet Sir Jonathan - as he became - was also famously cantankerous and grumpy, and on occasions devastatingly rude.

He claimed his chronic dissatisfaction stemmed from an early decision to make his career in the world of the arts and entertainment, rather than science and medicine.

Others thought it had something to do with attention-seeking on the part of a very clever person deprived of affection during his childhood.

Jonathan Miller was born in London in July 1934. His father Emanuel was a distinguished child psychiatrist; his mother Betty was a novelist and biographer.

But neither, by Miller's own account, was especially warm or affectionate.

He was educated at St Paul's School - where he was reputedly talkative and entertaining - and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he read medicine.

He might have become a leading neurologist were it not for the extraordinary success of the groundbreaking satirical revue, Beyond the Fringe.

It premiered at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, and brought a kind of clever undergraduate humour to a much wider audience. It transferred to the West End and then to Broadway.

Miller had just qualified as a doctor, and taken leave from his job to travel to Edinburgh. The show was a runaway success, and it was instantly apparent that he faced a choice.

He found performing intoxicating and addictive. He later described that first Edinburgh run as "a cocaine-like snort of celebrity and approval".

But, in the words of his biographer Kate Bassett: "He could not both walk the wards and tread the boards."

In the event, he signed up for the show's West End run and put his medical career on hold. In later life, he often claimed he was sorry.

Going into show business was like "stepping off the edge of a diving board into this murky swimming pool where my moral fibre rotted irreversibly. I still fiercely regret the distraction. I think that was a bad thing I did."

By 1965, he was working in television - as the editor and presenter of the BBC's arts programme, Monitor.

The following year, he directed a controversial television version of Alice in Wonderland. It was rather like a 1960s acid trip with John Gielgud as the Mock Turtle.

The programme was denounced in the House of Commons as a perversion unfit for children, and added to Miller's burgeoning reputation for being excessively trendy and pretentious.

He directed Whistle and I'll Come to You - a TV ghost story starring Michael Hordern and began to forge a reputation in the theatre.

His 1970 production of The Merchant of Venice starred Laurence Olivier. The grand old man of British theatre wanted to play Shylock as a traditional Jewish stereotype - complete with false nose and teeth.

Miller urged him to throw away the props and play the part as a 19th Century businessman - who happened not to be a gentile.

It reflected Miller's own approach to his background as a non-practising non-believer: "Not really a Jew... Jew-ish," to quote a line from Beyond the Fringe.

From 1973 to 1975, he was an associate director of the National Theatre, which was then run by Olivier. But when Olivier retired, the top job went to Peter Hall.

The two men fell out. Miller dismissed Hall as "a safari-suited bureaucrat". Hall retaliated, describing Miller as both a genius and a fool.

"Jonathan did very unsuccessful work," he said, "and there's nothing to breed discontent like failure."

In 1980, he joined the BBC's then-troubled project to televise all of Shakespeare's plays. He directed six of them, including The Taming of the Shrew with John Cleese and Othello with Anthony Hopkins.

But the yearning to return to medicine stayed with him. In 1978, he presented - in his inimitable fashion - a TV series about the history of medicine and anatomy, The Body in Question.

"And so, over millions of years," runs a typical line from the script, "the head has developed as a far-seeing helmsman which guides and controls the propulsive engine of the rear end."

It was clear that he still regretted that decision not to become a doctor. "There are things about the sciences which are difficult to do," he said on Desert Island Discs in 2005.

"You have to wrap a wet towel round your head to think out some of the things. It sounds like an idle and arrogant boast - most of the things I've done in the arts I can do with my right hand tied behind my back."

He did eventually returning to medicine full-time, spending two years at McMaster University in Canada, and as a research fellow in neuropsychology at Sussex University. But it didn't last.

Cutting-edge science, as he acknowledged, was beyond him: he'd been away too long. And it turned out that he craved the limelight after all.

He returned to run the Old Vic for a year, to his role as a kind of public intellectual and to a life of writing, broadcasting and directing - especially operas.

He'd staged his first opera, Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, for Kent Opera in 1974, despite being unable to read music.

Over the next four decades, more than 50 further productions followed at opera houses around the world. At one point, he was working on six international productions simultaneously.

Several of his productions were so successful they were repeatedly revived. His Mafia-style production for ENO of Verdi's Rigoletto, updated to New York in the 1950s, remains in the repertoire.

His production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado was equally successful, although he claimed to hold them both in contempt. "Boring self-satisfied drivel," he called their work. No better, he claimed, than "UKIP set to music."

The critics didn't always like his work - and Miller often displayed a thin skin. But that didn't stop him dishing it out to those he didn't like.

Opera singers of the old school (people assumed he had in mind Domingo, Carreras and Pavarotti) were derided as "Jurassic performers", who arrived at rehearsal "with shreds of primeval vegetation hanging from their jaws".

And Britain under Margaret Thatcher was described as "an ugly, racist, rancorous little place... a mean, peevish little country... with its acid rain of criticism and condescension."

He could be personally kind and thoughtful, but also monumentally tactless. The Royal Opera House, which commissioned several of his productions, was "a kind of wife kennel" for rich men.

A large part of the audience for his work he described as "disgusting old opera queens" - this from a man who had been a vice-chairman of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.

He continued to present television series - on language, madness and atheism - though the last was a term he objected to.

"I never use the word atheist of myself," he said. "It's scarcely worth having a name for. I don't have a name for not believing in pixies."

His versatility made him a figure of fun. Private Eye mercilessly satirised him as the self-important
Dr Jonathan, a sage and a pseud and too clever by half.

In later life, he became increasingly curmudgeonly. A newspaper profile described him as "famously, noisily, angrily fed-up".

He complained that he'd always felt undervalued in Britain, that he was no longer being offered work, that he was assumed to be dead and that he was giving up directing opera.

He was awarded him a CBE in 1983 and a knighthood in 2002. He never carried out his threat to leave the country, turning to making sculptures out of scrap metal instead.

Erudite and clever, witty and paradoxical, Jonathan Miller was a born performer, a brilliant talker and a first-rate director.

He will be remembered as a man, who even at his grumpiest, couldn't help being entertaining.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-21144364

[crackerjack101]

Bugger. I met him a couple of times, a stunning personality. Most memorable was he and Ned Sherrin decades ago. I was in awe of them both R.I.P.

[Neverna]

Gary Rhodes, celebrity chef and presenter has died aged 59.

[Neverna]

Iain Sutherland who helped compose Sir Rod Stewart hit 'Sailing' dies

The singer-songwriter who helped compose Sir Rod Stewart's famous 1975 hit song Sailing has died.

Iain Sutherland and his brother Gavin recorded the song in 1972 before it became a worldwide hit for Sir Rod.

Iain, who was 71 and from Ellon, Aberdeenshire, died on Monday following an illness.

He performed the song with his brother Gavin as part of the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. They also had a Top 10 hit with Arms of Mary.



https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...tland-50572228

[harrybarracuda]

Gary Rhodes, celebrity chef and presenter has died aged 59.

I didn't realise that he'd moved to Dubai.

Scant details suggest cancer.

[harrybarracuda]

A brilliant travel writer, and a not bad broadcaster. Whenever I hear of him I always remember his attempts at getting a broken light bulb changed in his Moscow hotel.

"The bathroom illuminations have been destroyed".

Clive James, Former ITV Host and TV Critic, Dies at 80



Clive James, a poet, television critic and former ITV presenter, has died after a decade-long battle with cancer. He was 80.

James passed away on Sunday at his Cambridge home, according to The Guardian. His funeral services have already taken place.

“Clive died almost 10 years after his first terminal diagnosis, and one month after he laid down his pen for the last time,” James’ agents said in a statement. “He endured his ever-multiplying illnesses with patience and good humour, knowing until the last moment that he had experienced more than his fair share of this ‘great, good world.'”

James was born Vivian James in 1939 in Sydney, Australia. He moved to London in the 1960s for college.

The prolific writer, who had also taken up poetry by this point, became the TV critic for The Observer in 1972. That led to him hosting his own ITV series, “Clive James on Television,” which aired from 1982-1997.

“We’re deeply saddened at the loss of Clive James,” an ITV spokesman told TheWrap in a statement. “He was a familiar presence on ITV from the 1970s onwards with original programmes that showcased his unique intelligence and wit. He will be sadly missed.”

James was diagnosed with cancer in 2010.


https://www.thewrap.com/clive-james-dead-80-television-critic/

[harrybarracuda]

What a shame we now have spineless suckups like Barr instead of men of integrity like this chap.

SEATTLE — William Doyle Ruckelshaus, who famously quit his job in the U.S. Justice Department rather than carry out President Richard Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, has died. He was 87.




Ruckelshaus served as the first administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which confirmed his death in a statement Wednesday.

The lifelong Republican also served as acting director of the FBI. But his moment of fame came in 1973, when he was a deputy attorney general and joined his boss, Attorney General Elliot Richardson, in resigning rather than carrying out Nixon’s unlawful order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

After Richardson and Ruckelshaus resigned, Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the firing in what became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” — prompting protests and outrage around the country.

“He was incorruptible,” longtime friend and Seattle philanthropist Martha Kongsgaard said Wednesday of Ruckelshaus. “It was very disappointing for him to see this happening again in our country, and maybe on a larger scale. Deep decency in the face of corruption is needed now more than ever.”

Ruckelshaus’ civic service and business career spanned decades and U.S. coasts, marked by two stints at the EPA under Nixon and Ronald Reagan, a lost bid for U.S. Senate in 1968 and top positions at Weyerhaeuser Co. and Browning Ferris Industries.

Ruckelshaus spent much of his life focused on air and water pollution and other environmental issues. As a young Indiana state attorney general, he sought court orders to prevent industries and cities from polluting waters, and in his later years, he was the Pacific Northwest’s most high-profile advocate for cleaning up Puget Sound in Washington state.

As the first EPA administrator from 1970 to 1973, he won praise for pushing automakers to tighten controls on air pollution. Shortly after taking over the agency, he ordered the mayors of Detroit, Atlanta and Cleveland to stop polluting waters and took actions against U.S. Steel and dozens of other water polluters.

Reagan asked him back to the EPA in 1983 to help restore public trust to the scandal-plagued agency. His wife, Jill, likened his return to a “self-inflicted Heimlich maneuver,” but Ruckelshaus said he accepted the job because he thought he could right the ship, help staff refocus on their work and reestablish the EPA’s credibility.

Several thousand EPA employees greeted his return with thunderous applause. One sign read, “How do you spell relief? Ruckelshaus.”

Reflecting on his long career of public service and private enterprise in 2001, Ruckelshaus ranked his time at the EPA as one of the most fulfilling and challenging.

“At EPA, you worked for a cause that is beyond self-interest and larger than the goals people normally pursue,” he said in an EPA oral history interview. “You’re not there for the money, you’re there for something beyond yourself.”

Ruckelshaus was born in 1932 in Indianapolis to a line of politically active lawyers. His grandfather had been the Indiana chairman of the Republican Party in 1900, and his father was the platform committee chairman at five Republican Conventions.

He told The Los Angeles Times in 1971 that his personal interest in nature and conservation was rooted in his childhood when his father took him fishing in northern Michigan.

Between his stints at the EPA, Ruckelshaus moved his family and five children to the Seattle area where he had spent two years out of high school as an army drill sergeant at the Fort Lewis. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

He met his wife on a blind date set up by her Sunday school teacher. It took place at his aunt and uncle’s house in Indianapolis, where they both grew up.

In the Northwest, Ruckelshaus led federal efforts to recover Chinook salmon and steered an ambitious state initiative to clean up and restore Puget Sound, where salmon and orcas are in danger.

His focus on a collaborative science-based process helped set the course for the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency charged with cleaning up the inland waters by 2020.

His daughter, Mary Ruckelshaus, served as the agency’s chief scientist at the same time her father led the leadership council that oversaw it.

Denis Hayes, who coordinated the first Earth Day in 1970, once called Ruckelshaus “a Republican environmental hero,” and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire described him as “big as the great outdoors.”

Ruckelshaus served on the boards of directors of several major corporations. He was senior vice president for law and corporate affairs at the Weyerhaeuser Co., before returning to the EPA for his second term. At the time, some environmentalists criticized his close ties to some of the industries that the EPA regulated.

He was CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. from 1988 to 1995 and served as chairman from 1995 to 1999. He was also a strategic director of Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, an early backer of companies such as Amazon.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/ruckelshaus-who-famously-defied-nixon-in-watergate-firing-dies-at-87

[Looper]

Japanese Maple

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that.That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

https://www.abc. net.au/news/2019-11-28/clive-james-japanese-maple-lucy-fahey-poem/11745902

[Dillinger]

Some Irish American Rugby player

[harrybarracuda]

Gary Rhodes, celebrity chef and presenter has died aged 59.

It now appears that there was an accident while filming and he bashed his head. One friend claims he went to hospital, the family never mentioned it but said he died at home of a subdural haemotoma. There are decent hospitals in Dubai with CT, etc. so who knows what happened.

[harrybarracuda]

Irving Burgie: Songwriter of calypso hit Day-O dies aged 95




US composer Irving Burgie, who helped to popularise Caribbean music with hit songs like Day-O, has died aged 95.

His death was confirmed by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, who called for a moment of silence for the man who wrote its national anthem.

Mr Burgie is best known for helping singer Harry Belafonte bring calypso music to the mainstream.

The 1950s song Day-O went on to be used in films, adverts and even as a wake-up call for astronauts in space.

The calypso hit, also known as The Banana Boat Song, featured in the popular film Beetlejuice and has been sampled by rapper Lil Wayne and singer Jason Derulo.

US media reports say Mr Burgie died on Friday as a result of complications from heart failure.

His website says his songs have sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Mr Burgie wrote eight of the 11 songs on Harry Belafonte's 1956 album Calypso, which was the first album in the US to sell more than a million copies.

During his career, the composer worked with artists including Jimmy Buffett, Chuck Berry and Sam Cooke.

His other well-known songs include Island in the Sun, Jamaica Farewell and Mary's Boy Child, which he co-wrote.

Brooklyn-born Mr Burgie did not begin pursuing a career in music until he returned from serving in an all-black US Army battalion in World War Two.

He then used the benefits he received as a war veteran to fund his studies at New York's prestigious Juilliard performing arts school and went on to launch a career as a singer and guitarist before moving into writing songs for others.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50619991

[harrybarracuda]

Benson and Star Trek actor Rene Auberjonois has died aged 79





Rene Auberjonois, a prolific actor best known for his roles on the television shows Benson and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, has died aged 79.

The actor died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles of metastatic lung cancer, his son Remy-Luc Auberjonois told The Associated Press.

Rene Auberjonois worked constantly as a character actor in several golden ages, from the dynamic theatre of the 1960s to the cinema renaissance of the 1970s to the prime period of network television in the 1980s and 90s — and each generation knew him for something different.

For film fans of the 1970s, he was Father John Mulcahy, the military chaplain who played straight man to the doctors’ antics in M.A.S.H.

It was his first significant film role and the first of several for director Robert Altman.

For sitcom watchers of the 1980s, he was Clayton Runnymede Endicott III, the hopelessly highbrow chief of staff at a governor’s mansion on Benson, the ABC series whose title character was a butler played by Robert Guillaume.

And for sci-fi fans of the 1990s and convention-goers ever since, he was Odo, the shape-shifting Changeling and head of space-station security on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

“I am all of those characters, and I love that,” Auberjonois said in a 2011 interview with the Star Trek website.

“I also run into people, and they think I’m their cousin or their dry cleaner. I love that, too.”

Auberjonois was born in New York in 1940, the son of Fernand Auberjonois, Swiss-born foreign correspondent for US newspapers, and the grandson of a Swiss post-impressionist painter also named Rene Auberjonois.

The younger Rene Auberjonois was raised in New York, Paris, and London, and for a time lived with his family in an artists’ colony in Rockland County, New York, whose residents included the actors John Houseman, Helen Hayes and Burgess Meredith.

After graduating from college at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon, Auberjonois hopped around the country joining theatre companies, eventually landing three roles on Broadway in 1968, including playing the Fool in a long-running version of King Lear.

The following year he would play Sebastian Baye opposite Katharine Hepburn in Coco, a play on the life of designer Coco Chanel that would earn him a Tony for best actor in a leading role in a musical.

He would later see Tony nominations for 1973’s The Good Doctor, 1984’s Big River, and 1989’s City of Angels.

https://www.lbcnews.co.uk/world-news/68188e07bbcd48e88a8480c8e549b3f4/

[harrybarracuda]

The inventor of the bar code has died.

His funeral will be at




https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy...ode-dies-at-94

[harrybarracuda]

Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson dies aged 61 after 17-year battle with cancer




Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson has died at the age of 61 after a long battle with cancer.
The Swedish star was first diagnosed with a severe brain tumour in 2002, but managed to return to the stage several years later.
In 2016 though, she had to retire from performing on doctors’ orders.
As part of Roxette, she had hits in the 1990s with the likes of The Look, Listen To Your Heart and It Must Have Been Love, selling over 80 million records worldwide.


Bandmate Per Gessle said: “Thank you, Marie, thanks for everything. You were an outstanding musician, a master of the voice, an amazing performer. Thanks for painting my black and white songs in the most beautiful colours.
“You were the most wonderful friend for over 40 years. I’m proud, honoured and happy to have been able to share so much of your time, talent, warmth, generosity and sense of humour. All my love goes out to you and your family. Things will never be the same.”

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/roxett...e-with-cancer/

[NamPikToot]

RIP David Bellamy died aged 86. Another piece of my childhood gone, what a great bloke and screen presence. Sorry but can't post links on this phone but Hazza will be along later no doubt.

[harrybarracuda]

An amiable buffoon, but didn't really understand much outside his chosen field.

David Bellamy, Ex-BBC Broadcaster and Environmentalist, Dies at 86




David Bellamy, the former BBC broadcaster and naturalist, died on Wednesday. He was 86.
Bellamy was a household name in the U.K., having authored dozens of watercolor books and appeared on hundreds of TV programs about the environment, particularly in the 1980s and ’90s.
He was frequently parodied by comedian Lenny Henry, and inspired Henry’s “grapple me grapenuts” catchphrase.
Bellamy’s TV programs included “Bellamy on Botany,” “Bellamy’s Britain,” “Bellamy’s Europe” and “Bellamy’s Backyard Safari.”
Bellamy on Botany, Bellamy’s Britain, Bellamy’s Europe and Bellamy’s Backyard Safari.[13] He was regularly parodied by impersonators such as Lenny Henry on Tiswas with a “gwapple me gwapenuts” catchphrase. His distinctive voice was used in advertising.[14]
The Conversation Foundation, of which Bellamy was president and co-founder, announced his death.
“He was a larger-than-life character who became a very special friend and teacher,” said David Shreeve, director of the Foundation. “He inspired a whole generation with his wide range of interests and enthusiasm which knew no bounds.”
Bellamy’s BBC career was cut short at the turn of the century. He blamed the end of his TV run on his views of climate change, which he called “poppycock.”
“All of the work dried up after that,” he told The Sun at the time. “I was due to start another series with the BBC but that didn’t go anywhere, and the other side [ITV] didn’t want to know. I was shunned. They didn’t want to hear the other side.”

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/david-bellamy-ex-bbc-broadcaster-and-environmentalist-dies-at-86-1203433224/