The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

German character actor Gottfried John, star of German stage, film and television who found international success as a James Bond villain, died this week of cancer. He was 72.

John was one of a generation of German actors to emerge after World War 2 who took German theater and film in a new direction. He was part of the acting troupe surrounding directing legend Rainer Werner Fassbinder and shot several films with him, including The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lili Marleen and the acclaimed TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz.

John's international breakthrough came in 1995 playing General Ourumov, the villain in the James Bond film Goldeneye. A number of international features followed, including starring alongside John Malkovich in Volker Schlondorff's The Ogre (1996); playing Julius Caesar in French comic book adaptation Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (1999), co-starring Christian Clavier and Gerard Depardieu; and as a kidnap victim in Proof of Life (2000) with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan.

In Germany, John was a regular on stage, film and TV and continued to work until his illness made that impossible. One of his later roles was doing the German voice of Shifu in Kung Fu Panda 2, adapting the role done in the original by Dustin Hoffman.

Gottfried John died in Munich on Sept. 1. He is survived by his wife.

German actor Gottfried John dies, aged 72 | News | DW.DE | 02.09.2014

[harrybarracuda]

Last remaining British survivor of Great Escape dies, aged 93
Published date: 03 September 2014 | Published by: Staff reporter



THE last remaining British survivor of the Great Escape team has died, aged 93.

Wing commander Ken Rees, who was born on February 2, 1921 in Wrexham and educated at Ruabon Grammar School, was the last surviving member of the digging team that dug the tunnel used during the famous Great Escape from Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp in March 1944.

He worked for two years in a draper’s shop before joining the RAF to train as a pilot. He died on Saturday, August 30.

He was also the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s character 'Cooler King’ Virgil Hilts in the 1963 film The Great Escape.

At the time of the film’s release, Mr Rees said: “He is taller than I am, I’m heavier than he is, he’s American and I’m a Welshman.

“The only things we’ve got in common is that we both annoyed the Germans and ended up doing stretches in the cooler.

“I didn’t get out and if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to ride a motorbike anyway.”

Flight Lieutenant Rees was a prisoner of war at the infamous German PoW camp, and spent the majority of his time there in solitary confinement.

He joined the RAF at 18 and flew Wellington bombers during the war, before being shot down in flames over Norway in 1942 and being taken prisoner.

He was later captured and eventually found himself in the Luftwaffe run camp, where it was considered the sworn duty of officers to prevent escapes.

But in 1944 he was among a group of airmen who attempted the famous tunnel plan - which was then immortalised in the 1963 film.

Mr Rees helped burrow an escape route out of the camp, but was caught during the breakout in the tunnel when it was discovered by a guard. He was lucky to escape with his life when he was pulled from the tunnel as German shots rang out in the darkness.

Mr Rees and his wife ran a post office in Bangor-on-Dee for five years before moving to Anglesey.

Mr Rees married Mary Sinfield in October 1942.

His funeral will take place next Saturday at Bangor Crematorium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_III

[harrybarracuda]

Director Andrew V. McLaglen Dies at 94
5:33 AM PST 09/03/2014 by Mike Barnes



A veteran of Westerns and the son of an Oscar-winning actor, he helmed John Wayne in four films and Jimmy Stewart in two

Andrew V. McLaglen, a specialist with the sagebrush who directed John Wayne in four films and helmed scores of episodes of the classic CBS Western series Gunsmoke, Have Gun — Will Travel and Rawhide, has died. He was 94.

McLaglen, whose father was the Oscar-winning British actor Victor McLaglen, died Saturday at his Friday Harbor home in the San Juan Islands of Washington state, the Journal of the San Juan Islands reported.

According to IMDb, McLaglen from 1956 through 1965 directed 96 episodes of the legendary series Gunsmoke and guided 116 installments that spanned the entire run of the popular Have Gun — Will Travel, which aired from 1957-63 and starred Richard Boone as a gentleman gunfighter named Paladin.

The 6-foot-7 McLaglen called the shots for Wayne in the Westerns McLintock! (1963) — which he always said was his big career break — The Undefeated (1969), Chisum (1970) and Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973) and directed the famed actor in Hellfighters (1968), an action film about oil-well firefighters.

He paired with James Stewart for the Westerns Shenandoah (1965), The Rare Breed (1966) and Bandolero! (1968) and for the comedy Fools’ Parade (1971).

McLaglen also directed such feature Westerns as The Ballad of Josie (1967), starring Doris Day and Peter Graves; The Way West (1967) with Kirk Douglas; One More Train to Rob (1971), starring George Peppard; Something Big (1971) with Dean Martin; and The Last Hard Men (1976), starring Charles Bronson.

McLaglen helmed such war films as The Devil's Brigade (1968), starring William Holden; The Sea Wolves (1980) with Gregory Peck; and Breakthrough (1979) with Richard Burton.

His film résumé also includes the Disney comedy Monkeys, Go Home! (1967); Mitchell (1975), starring Kirk Douglas; The Wild Geese (1978) with Burton; North Sea Hijack (1979) with Roger Moore; Sahara (1983) with Brooke Shields; and his final film, Eye of the Widow (1991), with F. Murray Abraham.

His father, the burly Victor McLaglen, a former professional boxer, won the best actor Oscar for his work in The Informer (1935) and also starred in such classic films as Gunga Din (1939), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950) and The Quiet Man (1952), the latter three directed by John Ford and starring Wayne. (He also earned an Oscar nom for The Quiet Man.)

Andrew McLaglen, who was born July 28, 1920, in London but grew up around Hollywood, learned the art of directing from the likes of Ford. He directed his first film, Gun the Man Down, starring Gunsmoke star James Arness, in 1956, and helmed his dad in The Abductors (1957) and in a 1959 episode of the Clint Eastwood starrer Rawhide, which aired a month before Victor McLaglen’s death in November 1959.

In a 2009 interview, McLaglen talked about spending two weeks on the set of Gunga Din shortly after he graduated from high school.

“I got to see [director] George Stevens, Cary Grant, my father and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in action, which was quite an experience!” he recalled. “I just kept out of the way, because they were working hard; they had a picture to make! I had another school buddy with me at the time, we were 18 and 19 years old, and we had a terrific time.

“We got to know Cary and Doug Jr. and Joan Fontaine; what a great group of people they were! And George Stevens — in years to come, whenever I bumped into him, we would always talk about those Gunga Din days, because I think that was one of his favorite projects.”

McLaglen also directed episodes of such series as Hotel de Paree, Perry Mason, Gunslinger, Banacek and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and did the 1977 telefilm Murder at the World Series, starring Lynda Day George, and installments of the 1982 miniseries The Blue and the Gray.

The Journal noted that The Palace Theater on the San Juan Islands has a Wall of Fame in its foyer in McLaglen's honor featuring on-location and photographs from his career. He moved to the area in 1997.

[FloridaBorn]

Maybe the band name is ironic?

That too..

[FloridaBorn]

Last remaining British survivor of Great Escape dies, aged 93
Published date: 03 September 2014 | Published by: Staff reporter



THE last remaining British survivor of the Great Escape team has died, aged 93.

Wing commander Ken Rees, who was born on February 2, 1921 in Wrexham and educated at Ruabon Grammar School, was the last surviving member of the digging team that dug the tunnel used during the famous Great Escape from Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp in March 1944.

He worked for two years in a draper’s shop before joining the RAF to train as a pilot. He died on Saturday, August 30.

He was also the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s character 'Cooler King’ Virgil Hilts in the 1963 film The Great Escape.

At the time of the film’s release, Mr Rees said: “He is taller than I am, I’m heavier than he is, he’s American and I’m a Welshman.

“The only things we’ve got in common is that we both annoyed the Germans and ended up doing stretches in the cooler.

“I didn’t get out and if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to ride a motorbike anyway.”

Flight Lieutenant Rees was a prisoner of war at the infamous German PoW camp, and spent the majority of his time there in solitary confinement.

He joined the RAF at 18 and flew Wellington bombers during the war, before being shot down in flames over Norway in 1942 and being taken prisoner.

He was later captured and eventually found himself in the Luftwaffe run camp, where it was considered the sworn duty of officers to prevent escapes.

But in 1944 he was among a group of airmen who attempted the famous tunnel plan - which was then immortalised in the 1963 film.

Mr Rees helped burrow an escape route out of the camp, but was caught during the breakout in the tunnel when it was discovered by a guard. He was lucky to escape with his life when he was pulled from the tunnel as German shots rang out in the darkness.

Mr Rees and his wife ran a post office in Bangor-on-Dee for five years before moving to Anglesey.

Mr Rees married Mary Sinfield in October 1942.

His funeral will take place next Saturday at Bangor Crematorium.

Stalag Luft III - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wow! 3 within weeks of each other, that's ironic as well..

[FloridaBorn]

The 6-foot-7 McLaglen called the shots for Wayne in the Westerns McLintock! (1963)

Wow 6' 7" larger than life, I remember him in many flicks of the era and liked his characters, look at that pic with Jimmy, he is sitting in a much lower chair, I guess they didn't want him upstaging the star of the movie with his size..

[harrybarracuda]

The 6-foot-7 McLaglen called the shots for Wayne in the Westerns McLintock! (1963)

Wow 6' 7" larger than life, I remember him in many flicks of the era and liked his characters, look at that pic with Jimmy, he is sitting in a much lower chair, I guess they didn't want him upstaging the star of the movie with his size..

It's really quite a snap isn't it.

[misskit]

Thawan Duchanee, the bearded sage of Baan Dam, long ago prepared for death, but he knew his art will live on

The death yesterday morning of Thawan Duchanee, one of Thailand's most esteemed artists - and one of its best known overseas - set off ever-widening ripples of grief through the art world, along with fond recollections of a man as extraordinary in his creativity as he was in his appearance and speech.

Thawan, who called Chiang Rai home, was instantly recognisable for his bushy white beard and northern-style clothes - invariably black and adorned with animal bones and claws. His voice was loud and commanding, often given to satirical, absurdist humour.

He died of kidney failure following three months of treatment. He would have turned 75 on September 27.

Named a National Artist in 2001, the same year he won the Fukuoka Asian Culture prize, Thawan was renowned for the painstaking weeks-long efforts that went into his drawings and paintings, all elaborate lines and delicate patterns. In contrast, he could, with a flourish of brushwork, capture in seconds the swift motions of horses and eagles, tigers and lions.

"Although I paint neither the starvation nor the poverty of man, my painting is powerful," Thawan told The Nation in 2004 when his exhibition "Trinity" was at the Queen's Gallery in Bangkok.

"Many collectors say, when they see my bold brushstrokes, that they feel the power and the spiritual satisfaction. I believe a good artist should direct people to look at the sparkling light of the Milky Way rather than their waiting graves."

The astounding "Trinity" show drew the sort of spectators who rarely frequent art galleries. It was his first retrospective in Thailand - and turned out to be his last. Thawan earned his doctorate at Amsterdam's Rijks Academic Van Beeletende Kunster in 1968 and took a long time sharing his work with compatriots.

And yet "Trinity" was not a retrospective, he insisted. "If it were, the organisers would have had to travel around the world to borrow my work from all the museums, and the insurance alone would cost more than Bt1 billion."

As it was, the exhibition required five 10-wheel trucks to deliver 300 pieces from his sprawling home in Chiang Rai. Ten technicians toiled for four days to mount them on all three floors, and this was just work from the previous couple of years.

There were his sketches on white paper and red canvas - 20-second assaults in oil or black ink that uncannily caught the lunge of a jungle beast.

These weren't whimsical impressions, either. "I went to a desert in Arizona to observe a snake that's capable of hopping short distances," he said. "I spent three months in the Philippines observing the behaviour of the eagle that eats monkey brains. Its movement is so fast that the monkey isn't even aware of its existence."

The animals of the real world took on supernatural form in his art. "If you're going to use the animal's anatomy symbolically, you need a room of anatomy in your mind," Thawan said. "For example, you should first be good at the form of a snake before trying to paint the naga. Otherwise your naga might look like pipe snake, or your lion might look like a dog."

As to the symbolism, however, Thawan bristled if anyone asked about meaning. "We never ask a star for whom it flickers, or ask a bird for whom it sings. I want people to feel something, not try to interpret its meaning. Feeling is what distinguishes humans from other animals."

Collectors both local and foreign have always been ready to pay generous prices for Thawan's art, among them prominent businessmen like Boonchai Bencharongkul and the Sophonpanich family. Boonchai has more than 100 of his paintings on view at his Museum of Contemporary Art on Vibhavadi-Rangsit Road.

"Thawan inspired me to become a patron of the arts 20 years ago, when he said I could be 'a drop of water for parched soil'," Boonchai recalled in 2012. "He's a great representative of the artists from the East."

Thawan's personal empire in Chiang Rai is called Baan Dam - the Black House - an acute though coincidental contrast to nearby Wat Rong Khun, the ornate white temple his artist-friend Chalermchai Kosipitpat is building.

Thawan's personal empire in Chiang Rai is called Baan Dam - the Black House - an acute though coincidental contrast to nearby Wat Rong Khun, the ornate white temple his artist-friend Chalermchai Kosipitpat is building.

Baan Dam has more than 30 structures scattered across hundreds of rai, varying in size and style. Some are associated with "the diabolical", perhaps thanks to their inky tones, but they do house his collection of animal skins, bones, horns and claws and the chairs and beds he fashioned from the bits of creatures. Some of the structures reflect the Lanna style while others resemble temple stupas.

About 10 years ago I cheekily asked Thawan how much he was worth. It wasn't the sort of question he was ever going to answer directly.

"I've never counted, but I don't know what poverty is!" he said. "Ever since I was 33 I've had enough money to live for 100 years. So I can devote the rest of my life to painting without worrying about expenses. But I'm like a candle that's lit at both ends. I might produce more light, but I burn out quicker.

"I've already prepared for death," he continued. "When I was 37 I built my own coffin, delicately crafted in wood, and I'm now planning my funeral. I've erected the buildings and a chapel to house my work and my collections. I might die - but my art has to remain."







A farewell to greatness - The Nation

[BaitongBoy]

^Extremely interesting article there...He was a character, indeed...RIP...

[FloridaBorn]

Joan Rivers, Comedy Legend and TV Host, Dies at 81



Raspy-voiced and brassy, Rivers was always self-deprecating, foul-mouthed and politically incorrect. A master of reinvention, she endured in show business because of her tenacious work ethic — which she credited to her "immigrant mentality."

Comedians typically push the envelope, but Rivers proved time and again that she didn't even see the envelope. To her fans, she was as shocking as she was endearing.

Joan Rivers, Comedy Legend and TV Host, Dies at 81 - NBC News

[FloridaBorn]

A lot of people didn't like her or her comedy because they didn't "get her sarcasm" but she told it like it is. She had more fans than detractors.. I liked much of what she did..

[harrybarracuda]

I thought she was a poisonous old c u n t and I hope she rots in hell.

[FloridaBorn]

Nice......

[cyrille]

Refreshingly honest and well deserved.

[FloridaBorn]

Sweet, a lot of envy here, but what's new..Point is most of what is being said is probably what she'd be saying in response.

[Davis Knowlton]

If she once, years ago, had a humorous moment, I must have missed it.

[Humbert]

^

[can123]

I liked much of what she did..

Did you like the dying bit ?

[harrybarracuda]

Bernard F. Fisher, Vietnam rescuer who earned Medal of Honor, dies at 87





BY STEVE CHAWKINS
Los Angeles Times
September 7, 2014

The jungle airstrip was a burning mess and about 1,000 feet shorter than Maj. Bernard F. Fisher would have liked.

But his wingman, Maj. Dafford "Jump" Myers, had crash-landed there and leaped from the flames into the underbrush. With a rescue chopper at least a half-hour away, he would soon be killed by North Vietnamese soldiers who were pounding the besieged Green Beret outpost in the A Shau Valley.

"There wasn't an option," Fisher later recounted.

The only way to save Myers would be to land in heavy fire on a runway littered with jagged metal wreckage and fragments of tin roofs from bombed-out huts. It was "almost suicidal," Fisher later acknowledged, "but I felt a strong impression that I should do this."

"Jump was one of the family - one of the fellows we flew with - and I couldn't stand by and watch him get murdered without at least trying to rescue him," he wrote in his 2004 autobiography, "Beyond the Call of Duty: The Story of an American Hero in Vietnam."

Fisher, whose spectacular rescue of his stricken comrade was witnessed by other pilots providing cover from above, became the first Air Force officer in Vietnam to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for courage on the battlefield.

Fisher died Aug. 16 at the Idaho State Veterans Home in Boise. He was 87.

His son Steven said Fisher, who had Parkinson's disease, died from conditions related to old age.

A modest man wholly lacking in flyboy swagger, Fisher retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1974. For several years, he flew for an Idaho-based commuter airline. He also grew fruit trees and kept bees on his family farm in Kuna, Idaho, where his parents had moved when he was a teenager.

He was a scoutmaster and loved to fly low over camping events, dropping sweets on the delighted Scouts.

"We'd pack candies into nylon stockings and I'd be the bombardier," Steven Fisher, a retired Air Force officer, recalled.

Born in San Bernardino, Calif., on Jan. 11, 1927, Bernard Francis Fisher grew up in Clearfield, Utah, and served in the Navy from 1945 to 1947. He attended Boise State Junior College and the University of Utah before dropping out, concluding that he'd be happier as an Air Force pilot than as a doctor.

The university belatedly gave him his bachelor's degree in a 2008 ceremony at the Utah state Capitol.

In Vietnam from 1965 to 1966, he flew some 200 combat missions. After only six months, the casualty rate among the pilots he arrived with was about 40 percent, he wrote.

On March 9, 1966, Fisher led a mission in the embattled A Shau Valley that earned him the Silver Star.

The next day came his celebrated rescue - an achievement that quickly resounded throughout the Air Force.

Fisher and Myers were part of a small unit of planes assigned to aid Special Forces troops and Montagnard fighters who were surrounded by 2,000 enemy soldiers. While strafing North Vietnamese forces, Myers' A1E-Skyraider was hit.

When Fisher swooped down after it he skidded into a fuel storage dump, but his wingtips passed over most of the barrels. Turning around on the tight strip, he saw Myers, who had lifted himself out of a ditch. The frightened pilot waved him down, and then desperately hoisted himself onto a wing.

"I grabbed him by his flight suit and pulled him into the cockpit headfirst, and he crumpled to the floor," Fisher wrote. "We didn't say much, but he looked up and gave me a weak smile and mumbled something like, 'You are one crazy son-of-a-gun.' "

As enemy soldiers peppered the plane with ground fire, Myers, slathered in mud, oil and soot, asked for a cigarette.

"Sorry, I don't smoke," Fisher responded.

Years later, Lt. Col Eugene Deatrick told the Air Force Times that he called his superiors to recommend Fisher for the Medal of Honor.

"I've got this family man with five kids who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and the strongest cuss word he uses is 'Shucks!' " Deatrick said. "He has just pulled off the bravest act of the war."

Fisher and his wife, Realla, whom he met at a church ice cream social, later had a sixth child. After 60 years of marriage, Realla Johnson Fisher died in 2008.

Fisher's survivors include their six sons, 33 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.

For years, Fisher and Myers kept in touch. Until Myers' death in 1992, they exchanged calls every March 10.

In 1999, a supply vessel for the Navy was named after Fisher. A Utah highway also bears his name, along with a park in Kuna, Idaho.

His plane, pocked with bullet holes, is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

[harrybarracuda]

Worth a post if only for a most memorable quote. Well said mate!

The atheist community is mourning the death of Victor Stenger, a prominent physicist who championed rooting out religion from the public sphere and was best known for quipping: “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”

Stenger, who also graced a short list of authors who hit The New York Times best-seller list writing about atheism, died Aug. 25 in Hawaii. He was 79.

Atheist, skeptic and science blogs, in the U.S. and in England, were filled with tributes and remembrances over the long holiday weekend.

“Vic was an unassuming physicist and teacher who took on the challenge [of] taking science out of the classroom and applied it to some of our most sacred cows, from psychics and New Age belief to Intelligent Design creationism,” skeptic D.J. Grothe said on The Friendly Atheist blog.

[harrybarracuda]

NEW YORK) -- Actor Richard Kiel, who starred in two James Bond films as the steel-toothed villain Jaws, died Wednesday. He was 74.



The 7-foot-2-inch actor was best known for playing the Bond villain in 1977′s The Spy Who Loved Me and 1979′s Moonraker, but a new generation got to know Kiel from his role in 1996′s Happy Gilmore as Adam Sandler’s adversary-turned-ally towards the end of the film.

His representative called him “a giant actor, a giant man, [and] a giant friend.”

“He was very loyal as we had a thirty-five year client and friend relationship,” his representative told ABC News. “He was a wonderful husband and great father. Richard lived life to the fullest, and I will miss him. A show business giant has left the stage. RIP dear friend.”



Read On ABC News Radio: James Bond, "Happy Gilmore" Actor Richard Kiel Dies at[at]74 - Entertainment News - ABC News Radio

[Mr Lick]

Primal Scream guitarist Robert 'Throb' Young dies



Robert Young (right) is pictured with Primal Scream in 2003, three years before he left the group


Robert "Throb" Young, the guitarist who helped Primal Scream to rock stardom in the 1990s, has died.

Young founded the band with school friend and singer Bobby Gillespie in Glasgow in 1984.

They hit the heights with psych-pop album Screamadelica in 1991, which included songs like Movin' on Up and Loaded and won the first Mercury Prize.

Young left the group in 2006 to deal with what Gillespie described as "problems in his personal life".

When the news of his death emerged on Thursday, former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher wrote on Twitter: "RIP Robert Young AKA 'Throb'. Live Forever LG x"

Author Irvine Welsh wrote: "RIP Robert Young. One of the best, the most beautiful, who WAS rock n roll. Big love bro, give them it big time over the other side. #Throb"

The Charlatans singer Tim Burgess wrote: "So sad to hear of the death of Rob 'Throb' Young… A real good un."

[Necron99]

NEW YORK) -- Actor Richard Kiel, who starred in two James Bond films as the steel-toothed villain Jaws, died Wednesday. He was 74.



The 7-foot-2-inch actor was best known for playing the Bond villain in 1977′s The Spy Who Loved Me and 1979′s Moonraker, but a new generation got to know Kiel from his role in 1996′s Happy Gilmore as Adam Sandler’s adversary-turned-ally towards the end of the film.

His representative called him “a giant actor, a giant man, [and] a giant friend.”

“He was very loyal as we had a thirty-five year client and friend relationship,” his representative told ABC News. “He was a wonderful husband and great father. Richard lived life to the fullest, and I will miss him. A show business giant has left the stage. RIP dear friend.”



Read On ABC News Radio: James Bond, "Happy Gilmore" Actor Richard Kiel Dies at[at]74 - Entertainment News - ABC News Radio

[harrybarracuda]

Gratuitous shot of Barbara Bach in a bikini.

Nice work.

[chassamui]

“I didn’t get out and if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to ride a motorbike anyway.”

He could pilot a Wellington bomber, but could not ride a motorbike?
I can ride a motorbike but could not pilot a Wellington. Puts Ms Rivers life into perspective anyway. Well done Taff.