The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

That's two Oscar winners in quick succession. Apart from the obvious fear amongst the rest, the people that do the Oscars In Memoriam video must be chuffed about the overtime.

[reddog]

sad about his demise,but you would think when you have 3 little kids
you would stop being selfish with your own pleasure and cut the harmful
drugs out and think of your kids instead.
also he was a great talent,why throw it all away for a quick buzz.

[blue]

Eric James Borges




Gay Anti-Suicide Activist Kills Himself

(NEWSER) – A 19-year-old gay filmmaker committed suicide this week, just a month after making an "It Gets Better" video, the huffington post reports.
In that video, Eric James Borges, who went by EricJames, told a tale of brutal homophobia. He said he'd dropped out of high school after peers assaulted him in a full classroom, in front of his teacher, and that when he came out to his "extremist Christian" family, they condemned him and kicked him out.
Borges said, however, that for him it had gotten better. Indeed, he was an intern with the Trevor Project, a group dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBT youth, and a supplemental instructor in sexuality at the College of the Sequoias.

Gay Anti-Suicide Activist Kills Himself - Just one month after making an 'It Gets Better' video

[ChiangMai noon]

i absolutely loved hoffman

an authentically brilliant actor

[kmart]

He was a very good actor indeed. But how does such a talented guy get himself fucked up like this:

In a search of the fourth-floor Bethune Street apartment, investigators recovered 49 glassines believed to contain heroin, as well as bottles of antianxiety and other prescription medications, the official said. Several empty glassiness, used and unused syringes and other drug paraphernalia also were discovered in the residence, the official said.

Link:
Philip Seymour Hoffman's Estranged Partner Said He Appeared to Be High Saturday - WSJ.com

[harrybarracuda]

Jimmy Murphy dies at 75; ran celebrity hangout Jimmy's Beverly Hills
Murphy's eatery was a favorite haunt of Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. For many years he was maitre d' at the popular Bistro.



Gregory Peck, Anne and Jimmy Murphy, and Maureen O'Hara at the America Ireland Fund dinner in January 1999 at Jimmy's II restaurant. Murphy and his wife were instrumental in starting the St. Patrick's Day parade in Beverly Hills. (Lee Salem / December 1, 1999)


By Russ Parsons
February 3, 2014, 5:54 p.m.
Jimmy Murphy, the genial Irishman who reigned as a Beverly Hills dining room power broker for more than three decades, has died. The longtime maitre d', first at the Bistro in Beverly Hills and later at his own Jimmy's Beverly Hills, was an icon in the days when restaurants were better known for their dining room staffs than for the chefs who were working in their kitchens.

Murphy, 75, died at home in Beverly Hills on Friday afternoon after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, his family said.

Jimmy's, located at 201 S. Moreno Drive in Beverly Hills, was a favorite haunt of celebrities and socialites in the 1970s and 1980s. Among Murphy's regulars were Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Restaurant investors included Johnny Carson, Don Rickles and Bob Newhart, who emceed a celebrity gala in Murphy's honor in 1983.

The public relations firm Rogers & Cowan had its offices upstairs from the restaurant, and Mike Ovitz's powerful talent agency, CAA, was just down the block.

The secret to his success, Murphy once told The Times, was catering to his customers. "It's important to have a good retention of names and to remember people's favorite little things," he said in a 1982 interview. "People will come in and the waiter will automatically bring their drinks because he remembers their habits, what they like. For a birthday or anniversary, we'll bake a special cake. Or if a customer doesn't want dessert but has a yen for a little something sweet, we'll send over some little cookies. No, there's no charge."

One of his sons, Sean, remembers his father sitting for an hour before every lunch and dinner service plotting out exactly where everyone would sit. "He used to tell me it was like setting a stage play," he said.

Murphy was born June 4, 1938, in Kilkenny, Ireland, and trained in the restaurant business, working his way up to a position at London's Savoy Hotel. He moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of his future wife, a nurse named Anne Power, who came to California to work. "[She] kept sending me photos of convertibles and bikinis and sunshine!" he told Patricia Danaher in an interview for the Irish American website. "We kept corresponding for about nine months and during the following winter, which was one of the worst in Europe in decades, I made the decision to go to L.A."

Not long after arriving, Murphy went to work for the legendary Kurt Niklas at his then-new Bistro restaurant in Beverly Hills, where he worked for 14 years, meeting and greeting the great and powerful. (Niklas died in 2009 at age 83.) Murphy went out on his own in 1978, spending a then-astronomical nearly $1 million building an elegant 14,000-square-foot restaurant and cocktail lounge that would fit with his customers' expectations.

"It was a time when people really dressed up to go out," Murphy told Danaher. "They would buy new dresses, get their hair done because they were going to have dinner at Jimmy's. There was always glamour associated with it almost from Day One."

Murphy and his restaurant were regulars in Southern California society coverage. In 1981 he was interviewed by The Times along with socialites Denise Hale, Marvin Mitchelson and Marcia Medavoy on the subject of status in Hollywood. "Old status is and always will be the establishment," he said. "Old status gets the best tables. It's a question of RHIP [rank has its privileges]. The mark of truly statused people is that they never offend, whether they are owners or guests."

Murphy and his wife were instrumental in launching the long-running Beverly Hills St. Patrick's Day parade, which they led for many years.

But by the 1990s, the world was changing and in 1998, Murphy closed the restaurant. "Dining in an elegant setting is not what it used to be," he told The Times then. "It seems to be trendier. People are always looking for the newest thing."

Murphy and his family attempted a couple of comebacks. In 1999, the restaurant reopened on the same site, with his two sons, Jamie and Sean, and daughter, Geraldine, working the room. But that lasted less than a year. They made another run in 2003 with Jimmy's Tavern, a more casual place on Pico Boulevard, just south of Beverly Hills.

When Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila reviewed the place, she found "from the very first week, it was as if Murphy pressed the play button after a long pause, and the ongoing party that was Jimmy's picked up where it left off three years before. There's the stately Sidney Poitier at the head of a large table one night, and across the room, a face I glimpsed in an old late-night film. Like the old Jimmy's, this one has its moments, and its audience."

It closed in 2004, and Murphy devoted the next decade to his long-cherished project of developing a Broadway musical around the life of Charlie Chaplin. It debuted at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2010 and opened on Broadway in 2012 to mixed reviews.

Murphy is survived by his wife of 50 years and their three children.

[email protected]

[harrybarracuda]

We Remember: Reggae singer ‘Bunny Rugs’ Dies at 65
February 3, 2014





William “Bunny Rugs” Clarke, the husky-voiced lead singer of internationally popular reggae band Third World, died of leukemia at his home in Florida, longtime friends and colleagues said Monday. He was 65.

Former bandmate Colin Leslie said the singer died Sunday in Orlando a week after he was released from a hospital following cancer treatment.

Clarke worked with the band Inner Circle and top reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry in Jamaica before joining Third World in 1976. The next year, the band released “96 Degrees in the Shade,” one of its most popular albums. The group was signed to Island Records and had hits on British and U.S. charts, including “Now That We Found Love,” “Always Around” and “Reggae Ambassador.” He performed on all of Third World’s records except the group’s debut.

[Mr Lick]

George Magovern - obituary

George Magovern was a heart surgeon who in 1963 developed an artificial valve that transformed the prognosis for patients




George Magovern, who has died aged 89, was a pioneering heart surgeon whose design for a self-sealing cardiac valve transformed the mortality rates in valve replacement procedures.

In 1959, when Magovern was recruited to Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General Hospital, open heart surgery was still in its infancy. Eight in every 10 patients receiving a new aortic valve died, primarily because of the time it took to stitch in the device.

Patients could be on the operating table for an hour or more, which put them at great risk of complications. Determined to redress such grim statistics, Magovern partnered Harry Cromie, a local machinist engineer, to create the Magovern-Cromie sutureless valve. Up to one-and-a-half inches across, the valve was edged with more than 30 tiny pincers which secured it to the heart wall without the use of needle or thread. Surgeons could have it in place within four minutes .


The potential of Magovern’s and Cromie’s design, which was completed in 1963, was immediately apparent. In their initial cohort study, 19 of 20 patients survived the operation, and by the end of the decade their joint company Surgitool Corporation was among the world’s leading manufacturers of valve technologies. Magovern himself performed upwards of 700 procedures, and in 1989 he could report that more than half of his discharged patients were still alive after two decades. “You have to invent things, because what was happening was terrible,” he wrote. “People were dying, and it was hard to stand there and not do something.”


Some cases were successful to a remarkable degree. In 2007 an Israeli surgeon operating on a 65-year-old man in Haifa found that his Magovern-Cromie atrial valve was functioning perfectly after 42 years.


George Jerome Magovern was born in New York on November 17 1923 into a medical family; though his father worked in insurance, both grandfathers and two uncles were doctors. War broke out just as he was applying to medical school, and after joining the Navy he studied at Marquette University, Milwaukee

Back in New York after retiring his commission, he began training at Kings County Hospital. By then, however, the Korean War was getting under way and Magovern joined the Army, serving at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. There he gained further experience of cardiac surgery, employing many of the techniques that had only become possible with the inter-war advances in fields including blood transfusion and anaesthesia. Progress was such that surgeons aiming to widen a constricted heart valve, for example, were able to make a small incision in the heart and insert a finger, without fear that shock, infection or blood loss would prove fatal.

After the war Magovern finished his residency in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC, transferring to Pittsburgh for the last six months. On July 7 1963, following two years of experimentation on dogs, he and his colleague Adolph Yates performed the world’s second lung transplant, just a few weeks behind Dr James Hardy at the University Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. Magovern’s patient was Regis Sismour, a 44 year-old man with terminal emphysema; he received the lung of a brain-dead 33 year-old man. Watching the shrunken, darkening donor organ transform as oxygen flowed back in was, Magovern recalled, “a beautiful sight” – but their elation was short-lived.

While Hardy’s patient had survived 18 days, Sismour succumbed to infection on the eighth day after surgery.

Despite this their efforts were well-received by the media, Life magazine terming it “a noble failure”. Magovern went on to perform Allegheny General Hospital’s first heart transplant six years later. Under his leadership as chairman from 1970 to 1994, the department of surgery boasted the largest cardiac surgery programme in Pennsylvania, performing up to 2000 open heart procedures annually.

A dedicated researcher and scholar, Magovern was quick to apply the potential of new technologies to his chosen field, collaborating on the development of a prototype nuclear-powered artificial heart and a nuclear-powered pacemaker. In 1985 he successfully employed two external blood pumps to take over a patient’s heart function for five days, while the man recovered from surgery. Unlike other assist pumps at the time, Magovern’s procedure did not require anticoagulants, which can have severe side effects. The patient was also able to breathe unassisted throughout, rather than relying on a ventilator.

Magovern was president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons in 1984-5, and served as director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery of the American Medical Association for six years from 1984.

George Magovern’s wife, the former Ann Walsh, died in 2011. A son, James, himself a cardiothoracic surgeon, also predeceased him, and he is survived by another five children.


George Magovern, born November 17 1923, died November 4 2013

[Mr Lick]

Calton Younger - obituary

Calton Younger was an airman who found his own great escape from Stalag Luft III by writing



Calton Younger, who has died aged 92, spent three years as a prisoner of war, a period that influenced and shaped much of his later life.

Younger was the observer of a No 460 (RAAF) Squadron Wellington bomber shot down during an attack on an aero-engine plant west of Paris on the night of May 29-30 1942. He and another crew member parachuted to safety. After a week on the run, 20-year old Younger was captured and sent to a PoW camp near Konigsberg before being transferred to Stalag Luft III, the scene of the Great Escape.


With a flair for writing and drawing, Younger recorded his experiences and later wrote No Flight from a Cage (1956). The book is a raw tale about existing with others in close quarters and harsh conditions. With characteristic humility, however, Younger is almost a minor character in his own memoir .


During the harsh winter of January 1945, he and his fellow prisoners were forced to march west as Soviet forces advanced from the east. The “Long March” took a heavy toll on the ill-equipped prisoners before Younger and his colleagues reached Fallingbostel, where they were liberated in April.


Calton Hearn Younger was born on November 27 1921 in Berwick, Victoria, and educated at Melbourne High School. Keen to be a journalist, his hopes were disrupted by the war and he trained as an observer in the RAAF

He sailed to England in May 1941 to complete his training on bombers before being posted to the newly-formed No 460 Squadron.

After his release from the RAAF as a warrant officer, Younger remained in England.

His abhorrence of oppression, his understanding of freedom, his unsentimental compassion for those in difficulties, his general love of the arts and appreciation of beauty all underpinned his family and professional life.

His early promise in writing and drawing blossomed into an easy accuracy with words and pencil – the latter produced a constant flow of cartoons. But he was a serious author and historian. An expanded edition of No Flight from the Cage was published in 2013, when he introduced another 18,000 words in addition to caricatures and sketches created during his internment. His other published works include two books on Irish history (Ireland’s Civil War in 1968 and, in 1972, A State of Division) in addition to a biography of Arthur Griffiths (1981) and one novel, Less than an Angel (1960). In addition he edited The Kreigie, the quarterly journal of the RAF ex-POW Association.

In charitable foundations, Younger worked tirelessly in pursuing his commitment to freeing those oppressed by circumstance. As secretary or trustee, he worked with the Lankelly Chase Foundation, supporting those facing severe disadvantage, and with Norman House, supporting ex-prisoners. He was a trustee of the Association in Deaf Education and a founding trustee of the Swan Mountain Trust, which aims to improve mental health and criminal justice. His love of the arts led him to provide strong support to the Kirckman Concert Society, which provides platform experience to young professional musicians. He was an early trustee of two RAF ex-PoW Association charities and remained so until his death.

His final, unfinished, work, in collaboration with two other authors, was to commemorate the Great Escape.

He had been commissioned to write an introduction and an epilogue to a book containing brief biographies of the 50 men shot after the escape from Stalag Luft III in 1944, as well as biographies for the seven Australians involved.

Calton Younger married Dee in 1963. She died in 2005 and their son and daughter survive him.


Calton Younger, born November 27 1921, died January 1 2014

[Teflon Don]

Philip Seymour Hoffman Photo - NYC 03/14/09 EXCLUSIVE: Philip Seymour Hoffman girlfriend Mimi O'Donnell with their 3 kids,

Strange and sad indeed
It seems he was normal and had a girlfriend and children but played several gay roles.

Hoffman was one of the most versatile and in-demand actors of his generation. He first came to the attention of many moviegoers as Scotty, the gay member of a porn crew who is smitten with Mark Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler, in 1997′s Boogie Nights. In the 1999 comedy Flawless, Hoffman vividly portrayed a drag queen who helped rehabilitate Robert DeNiro’s cop character after he suffered a stroke.
Hoffman won numerous awards for his unforgettable performance as gay writer Truman Capote, despite there being no physical resemblance between the two men, in the 2005 film, beating Heath Ledger’s searing turn as the closeted cowboy in Brokeback Mountain for many honors.

Heath ledger was also normal but killed himself after playing a homo.
Maybe acting gay , makes you a target for gay demons or just plain mental illness?
and causes deep self loathing or something that only drugs can mask ?

Whatever it is, it seems best to avoid acting gay if you want a long happy life .
Anyway RIP and i hope other young actors take note and avoid these sick roles .

That is a theory I never heard before. Ingesting stuff

[jamiejambos]

Sean Penn will be next then, Theory-wise.

[harrybarracuda]

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Richard Bull, who played shopkeeper and put-upon spouse Nels Oleson on TV's "Little House on the Prairie," has died. He was 89.



Bull died Monday at the Motion Picture & Television Fund's hospital, fund spokeswoman Jaime Larkin said. The actor, a resident of what was once known as the Motion Picture and TV home, died of natural causes after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Larkin said Tuesday.

"Everyone loved him so much," said Bull's "Little House" co-star Alison Arngrim, who played his daughter, Nellie, and remained close to him. "People are posting (condolences) in six different languages on my Facebook page."

Bull "was as Nels Oleson as you'd possibly want someone to be. He was calm, rational, sensible," Arngrim said.

The Illinois-born character actor appeared in a wide range of TV shows, from "Perry Mason" in the 1950s to "Mannix" in the 1960s to Kelsey Grammer's "Boss" in 2011. Bull played opposite his wife of 65 years, actress Barbara Collentine, in several projects.

Among the movies he appeared in were "High Plains Drifter" and "Executive Action," both in 1973.

Dean Butler, who played Almanzo James Wilder on the 1974-83 NBC series inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder's novels about her 19th-century prairie family's life, recalled his friend.

"Richard was a very generous, soft-spoken actor with a wonderful appetite for work," Butler said. "He always made it (acting) look so easy."

Melissa Gilbert, who starred in the series with Michael Landon (who died in 1991), tweeted: "This man will be missed. Goodbye Richard working with you was such a joy but nearly as joyful as being your friend."

Bull and Collentine, also 89, moved to the Motion Picture & Television Fund home from Chicago in September 2012, Larkin said.

Another resident there was Scottie MacGregor, who played Oleson's difficult wife, Harriet, on "Little House," according to Butler.

After Bull's death, Collentine and MacGregor had dinner together and agreed "they had both lost a wonderful husband," Butler said.

Funeral plans for Bull were not immediately announced.

© Copyright (c)

[malcy]

Sean Penn will be next then, Theory-wise.

Hope so

[Eliminator]

Hoffman is like ALL other heroin users and should be judged like MOST of the drug dealers that you guys condemn when arrested for selling drugs. I feel more SORRY for the family that he decided to NOT care about for his own PLEASURE or way to COPE with his work.

[malcy]

I don't class it as work , more of an extremely well paid hobby . Also have no time for smack heads selfish kunts .

[harrybarracuda]

Gloria Leonard, who became a pornographic film star in her 30s and then a men’s magazine publisher and a prominent spokeswoman for her industry, died on Monday in Waimea, Hawaii. She was 73.

The cause was a stroke, her daughter, Robin Leonardi, said.

Ms. Leonard took a decidedly atypical path into pornographic movies in the 1970s, a time many in the industry now regard as its golden age, when films had story lines and actors enjoyed some crossover appeal with mainstream audiences. She was a divorced single mother, much older than most starlets and had held other jobs, including as a Wall Street broker and publicist.

“I was a fairly liberated lady, and I figured this would be the supreme test of just how liberated I really was,” she told The Miami Herald in 1983.

Her first credited role was in “The Opening of Misty Beethoven” (1976), Radley Metzger’s erotic reimagining of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion.” She went on to appear in dozens of films, including “Odyssey: The Ultimate Trip” (1977), directed by Gerard Damiano of “Deep Throat” fame, and “All About Gloria Leonard” (1978), based on her memoirs, which she also directed.

Ms. Leonard’s background in public relations, as well as her high profile on screen, led to her hiring as the publisher of the men’s magazine High Society in 1977, a job she held for more than a decade while continuing to appear in and direct films.

One feature she introduced to the magazine showcased risqué photos of celebrities like Jodie Foster and Goldie Hawn, usually lifted from film stills. “We were sued by a number of celebrities, including Barbra Streisand and Ann-Margret, and we won every case,” Ms. Leonard said in an interview with The Rialto Report, a website and podcast dedicated to pornographic cinema. A sultry recording of her voice on an answering machine previewing the magazine’s next issue proved so popular that it inspired the magazine’s Living Centerfold Telephone Service, one of the first phone-sex lines, in 1983. About 500,000 to 700,000 callers each day paid to listen to recorded messages on answering machines.

Ms. Leonard defended the pornography industry and her participation in it, appearing on talk shows and in debates on college campuses with feminists who regarded the business as misogynistic.

“I said the whole point of the women’s movement is for women to choose whatever they want to do,” she said “Why should my choice be considered any less or more valid than your choice?”

Ms. Leonard was born Gale Sandra Klinetsky in the Bronx on Aug. 28, 1940. Her first two marriages ended in divorce. She was separated from her third husband, Bobby Hollander, a producer and director of pornographic films, when he died in 2002.

After she left High Society, Ms. Leonard was the administrative director of the Adult Film Association from 1989 to 1992. In 1998 she became president of the Free Speech Coalition, a pornography industry trade group. At her death she lived in Hawi, Hawaii.

Besides her daughter, Ms. Leonard is survived by a granddaughter.

Ms. Leonard said that she had no regrets about her career, but that she thought the sex-film industry had been cheapened by the ubiquity of video. Anyone with a video camera “can rent a hotel room and make a porno these days,” she told The Rialto Report. She added, “I don’t know that anyone will remember the girls of today’s porn.”

[harrybarracuda]

ISLAMABAD: Sepoy Mirza, perhaps the only survivor of World War-II in Pakistan, breathed his last on Wednesday at his ancestral village Nagri Totial in Abbottabad district.
He was 110. Mirza was living with his son and grandsons in the picturesque Nagri Totial.
As per official record, he was a pensioner from the Punjab Regiment, enrolled as a soldier in 1941 and assigned a number 2336959. He was discharged from duty on September 14, 1957.
He fought in the British Indian Army against the Japanese. He was awarded Gallantry Award, which he used to proudly display till his death.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 6th, 2014.

[Rainfall]

That's two Oscar winners in quick succession. Apart from the obvious fear amongst the rest, the people that do the Oscars In Memoriam video must be chuffed about the overtime.

Three actually, Joan Fontaine died a month or two ago. The oldest best actress still alive is 104 years old, Luise Rainer. Got her two Oscars before WW2. Before Gone with the wind. Remarkable.

[harrybarracuda]

A month or two ago.....

Peter O'Toole died a month or two ago. These two died within days of each other this week.....

[harrybarracuda]

Not too many people will miss this nasty old bastard.

Vasil Bilak, former communist leader who invited Soviet troops to Czechoslovakia, dies aged 96


BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FEBRUARY 6, 2014 5:40 AM


BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Vasil Bilak, a former hard-line communist leader who paved the way for Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, has died. He was 96.

Slovakia's Communist Party said Bilak died Tuesday in the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, where he lived. No cause of death was given.

Bilak was among the communists who opposed Alexander Dubcek's attempts at reforming the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in late 1960s that became known as the Prague Spring. Bilak is better remembered as one of five communist leaders who wrote a letter inviting Soviet troops into the country that crushed the movement in 1968.

"The very existence of socialism in our country is threatened," the letter addressed to Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet Communist Party chief, urging him to use "all means you have in your disposal to help."

Bilak was the last living author of the letter.

Vaclav Havel, who led the 1989 Velvet Revolution that ended more than 40 years of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, was given a copy of the letter by Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992.

More than 100 people were killed in 1968 by the Soviet Union-led invasion of armies from five Warsaw Pact countries.

As a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he played a major role in establishing the hard-line regime following the invasion. In the 1980s, Bilak opposed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms.

Bilak survived efforts to try him for his role in 1968. In 2011, the Slovak state prosecution dropped the case for lack of evidence.

He was born Aug 11, 1917, in the village of Krajna Bystra in northeastern Slovakia.

[reddog]

classic of gloria leonard dropping off the mortal coil with a stroke.
liked her style as in up the femnazis,lead your own life.

[pompeysbroke]

Former Chelsea and Liverpool striker Tony Hateley dies


Former Chelsea, Liverpool and Aston Villa striker Tony Hateley has died at the age of 72.

Hateley scored 211 league goals during his career and was a club-record signing for both Chelsea and Liverpool, costing the Blues £100,000 in 1966.

His son Mark was also a striker, playing 32 times for England.

A Liverpool statement said: "The thoughts of everyone at Liverpool Football Club go out to his family and friends at this sad time."

Hateley started his career with Notts County before moving to Villa Park in 1963, scoring 68 times in 127 league appearances.

After his big-money move to Chelsea, Liverpool paid £96,000 to take him to Anfield and at the time of his retirement in 1974 his combined transfer fees were a record in English football.

Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker tweeted: "Sorry to hear of the death of Tony Hateley.

"I played with his son, Mark for England, and met Tony. A wonderful football family. #RIP."

Son Mark was prolific at Portsmouth, AC Milan, Monaco and Rangers during the 1980s and 1990s and grandson Tom Hateley is also a professional footballer, currently playing in Poland after spells at Motherwell and Tranmere



Hateley (far right) scored more than 200 league goals in his career

The Times obituary included a Shankley comment I hadn't heard before:

Hateley was in an aerial clash and sustained a knock which left him dazed. The physio told Shankley, "He doesn't know who he is".
Shankley replied, "Tell him he's Pele"

.....Those were the days

[Cujo]

Sean Penn will be next then, Theory-wise.

Hope so

Why? he's a good actor.

[malcy]

I didn't like him mouthing off about Britain and the Falklands .

[Mr Lick]

Louise Brough - obituary

Louise Brough was an American tennis star whose lethal serve helped her win 35 Grand Slam titles, including 13 at Wimbledon




Louise Brough, who has died aged 90, was one of the great women tennis players of her era, winning 35 grand slam titles, including 13 at Wimbledon, where she was singles champion in 1948, 1949, 1950 and 1955.

Known for her quiet demeanour on court, Louise Brough was gifted with a superb volley and lethal topspin serve. As one writer noted: “Power is the keynote of her game, and she doesn’t let her personable appearance interfere with it. She sticks out her tongue and makes funny faces while unloading her service, her best shot and as severe a stroke as any woman player ever had... She is not always a gazelle in rushing to the net, and she falls with a loud impact in scrambling after shots, but she usually gets the ball.”


In the singles, Louise Brough won the Australian Open (1950); three French Opens (1946, 1947 and 1950); and the US title in 1947. In 1955 she was ranked No 1 in the world.


She was even more prolific in the women’s doubles, taking no fewer than 12 US titles (nine in a row, with Margaret Osborne duPont, between 1942 and 1950, and three in a row between 1955 and 1957). She also won five at Wimbledon and three in France.

In the mixed, she won four times at Wimbledon and three times in the United States



Althea Louise Brough was born on March 11 1923 in Oklahoma City, the daughter of a wholesale grocer. When she was 13 the family moved to Beverly Hills in California.

As a young girl Louise was not particularly interested in playing tennis, taking it up only to avoid having to do piano practice.

But once in Beverly Hills she received lessons from the well-known professional coach Dick Skeen, and under his tutelage she soon progressed, winning the outdoor girls’ championship and the national junior singles and doubles titles in 1941. By the next year she was second in the US national rankings, and at the same time found the time to study marketing at the University of Southern California.

Her first appearance in a Wimbledon singles final was in 1946, when she lost in straight sets to her fellow American Pauline Betz.

Louise Brough continued to compete at the top level until 1957, but by then she was already suffering from a crisis of confidence: “I couldn’t even toss the ball up on my serve. I was way off balance. My nerves were shot... The youth and adrenalin, I guess both of them ran out.”

She considered Maureen (“Little Mo”) Connolly her most formidable opponent: “I only beat her once and she beat me four or five times. She hit the ball very hard, she was all business and she just never missed. ”

In later life Louise Brough lived quietly near San Diego, California, preferring to watch the game on television . She had little time for the modern women’s game, and disapproved of their tight tennis outfits. As for the men, when some of them, during the 2003 US Open, complained at having to play four days in a row, she observed: “I think they’re babies.”

She gave most of her trophies to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, which formally inducted her in 1967. She reflected: “I’m sorry that I didn’t end up with all that money, but I’m not bitter. I suppose because when you don’t have anything, you don’t miss it. I was privileged. It was a wonderful life.”

In 2003 — when she was 80 — it was reported that she had broken her hip after falling while playing tennis at the Vista tennis club near her home. “I’m doing fine,” she remarked. “I’m about ready to use a cane and take off.”

Louise Brough married Alan Clapp, a Pasadena dentist, when she was in her thirties. He predeceased her, and she is survived by two nephews and two nieces.


Louise Brough, born March 11 1923, died February 3 2014