The RIP Famous Person Thread

[NZdick1983]

^ That's no excuse..

I suppose it's been mentioned, but Celine Dion's husband of 21 years (René Angélil) died last month RIP.

The pair met in 1981 when the 12-year-old Dion, the youngest of 14 children, sent Angelil a demo tape of her belting out a song she had written with her mother and brother. Later, at an audition, “While I was singing, he started to cry,” Dion once said.
Angelil mortgaged his house to help produce Dion’s first record, La voix du bon Dieu (The Voice of the Good God), and took her (and her mother) on a tour through Canada, Japan and Europe.


Rene Angelil, Celine Dion's Husband, Dies at 73 | Billboard

[Bobcock]

and two days later her brother died. No obit though because he really wasn't famous......

[klong toey]

'Father Jack' actor Kelly dies aged 77



Irish actor Frank Kelly, best known for playing Father Jack in comedy Father Ted, has died aged 77.
Kelly had been a veteran of the stage and screen for 60 years.
As well as appearing on the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted, Kelly had more recent roles in Emmerdale and Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie.
He revealed last November that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, although he said he would continue to work.
Kelly had received the all-clear from bowel cancer in 2011. He was treated for skin cancer last year and also had heart problems.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35682191

[Looper]

Arse Biscuits!!!

[crackerjack101]

'Father Jack' actor Kelly dies aged 77

OH Fuck;

what a shame.

RIP old chap.

[BaitongBoy]

Jaysus, klong toey...How did it feel to read that?...

[klong toey]

Jaysus, klong toey...How did it feel to read that?...

[can123]

and two days later her brother died. No obit though because he really wasn't famous......

Thank you for your explanation.

[Neo]

Feck

Frank Kelly death: Tributes paid to 'Father Jack' actor - BBC News

[harrybarracuda]

Tough-guy actor George Kennedy dies aged 91
PUBLISHED
01/03/2016



George Kennedy, the tough-guy character actor who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a savage chain-gang convict in the 1960s classic Cool Hand Luke, has died.
His grandson Cory Schenkel said Kennedy died on Sunday morning of old age in Boise, Idaho. He was 91.

He had undergone emergency triple bypass surgery in 2002. That same year, he and his late wife moved to Idaho to be closer to their daughter and her family, though he was still involved in occasional film projects.

His biggest acting achievement came in Cool Hand Luke, a 1967 film about a rebellious war hero played by Paul Newman who is bent on bucking the system as a prisoner on a Southern chain gang.

Its theme of rebelling against authority and the establishment helped make it one of the most important films of the tumultuous 1960s.

Kennedy played Dragline, the chain-gang boss who goes from Luke's nemesis to his biggest disciple as Newman's character takes on folk hero status among fellow inmates.

The film garnered four Academy Award nominations, and Kennedy was named best supporting actor.

After the critical and commercial success of Cool Hand Luke, Kennedy carved out a niche as one of Hollywood's most recognisable supporting actors.

He had parts in several action flicks in the 1970s, played Leslie Nielsen's sidekick in the Naked Gun spoofs and was JR Ewing's business rival in the final seasons of Dallas.

One of his strongest supporting roles was in the hit 1970 film Airport, which spurred the run of 1970s disaster pictures.

The film spawned several sequels (Kennedy was in all of them) and landed Kennedy a Golden Globe nomination.

Kennedy said his acting ambitions were cemented when he was a young child.

"I remember listening to a radio programme when I was young and it made me feel good and I remember telling my mom that I wanted to make people feel the way this radio programme made me feel," Kennedy said in 1995.

"I got some great breaks, and I wound up being an actor."

His film career began to take flight when he starred in 1963's Charade, while his other acting credits in the 1960s included The Dirty Dozen and Guns Of The Magnificent Seven.

Kennedy became a regular face in action movies in the 1970s after the success of Airport, including Earthquake and Death On The Nile.

He turned to comedy roles in the 1980s and 1990s, the most memorable being the three Naked Gun films.

Kennedy's last on-screen role was in the 2014 remake of The Gambler, which starred Mark Wahlberg.

Kennedy was born in New York in 1925. He started acting at the age of two when he joined a touring company.

He enlisted in the Army at 17 and served in the Second World War, opening the first Army Information Office that provided technical assistance to films and TV shows. Kennedy spent 16 years in the Army and left as a captain.

He made his television debut in The Phil Silvers Show in 1955 and made guest appearances in the Westerns Have Gun, Will Travel, Cheyenne and Gunsmoke.
Kennedy, an avid reader, also dabbled in writing and published a couple of murder mysteries.

In later years, he became an advocate for adopted children. He had four adopted children, including his granddaughter Taylor, whose mother, also adopted by Kennedy, had become addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Tough-guy actor George Kennedy dies aged 91 - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

[Davis Knowlton]

Bummer. Just re-watched Cool Hand Luke a while ago.

[AntRobertson]

What we got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach.

[Davis Knowlton]

A REALLY great movie!

[harrybarracuda]

One of my favourite George Kennedy films was this one:

Zig Zag (1970) - IMDb

A dying man frames himself for the kidnapping and murder of an industrialist so his wife and daughter can benefit from the reward money. However, his plan goes awry when he is cured!

I didn't like the ending though!

(And no, that is not an invitation for a spoiler!).

[harrybarracuda]

Oscar-winning editor Jim Clark dies aged 85
1 March, 2016 | By Tom Grater






The British film editor’s credits included The Killing Fields, The Mission and Vera Drake.

Jim Clark, the Oscar-winning film editor, has died aged 85 following an illness.

The Guild of British Film and Television Editors (GBFTE), of which Clark was a founding editor, released a statement describing Clark as a “likeable and respected man” who “will be missed especially by Laurence his wife.”

Clark’s glittering career encompassed more than 40 films, including his Oscar and BAFTA-winning work on Roland Joffé’s 1984 war drama The Killing Fields and his BAFTA-winning work on the same director’s historical drama The Mission.

Additional credits included John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, on which he was a creative consultant, and more recently as editor for James Bond film The World Is Not Enough and Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake.

Clark detailed some of his colourful experiences in the well-received 2011 memoir Dream Repairman: Adventures in Film Editing.

Oscar-winning editor Jim Clark dies aged 85 | News | Screen


Wow did a lot....

CREDITS
Film Editor
(As James Clark) One Wish Too Many (also known as The Magic Marble), Sterling Educational Films-Children's Film Foundation, 1956
(As James Clark) Surprise Package, Columbia, 1960
(As James Clark) The Grass Is Greener, Universal, 1960
(As James Clark) The Innocents, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1961
(As James Clark) Term of Trial, Warner Bros., 1962
(As James Clark) Charade, Universal, 1963
(As James Clark) The Pumpkin Eater, Royal-Columbia, 1964
(As James Clark) Darling, Embassy, 1965
X Y and Zee (also known as Zee and Co.), Columbia, 1972
The Day of the Locust, Paramount, 1975
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (also knownas Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother), Twentieth Century-Fox, 1975
Marathon Man, Paramount, 1976
(With Arthur Schmidt) The Last Remake of Beau Geste, Universal, 1977
Agatha, Warner Bros., 1979
Yanks (also known as Yanks--Gestern waren wir noch Freunde), Universal, 1979
Honky Tonk Freeway, Universal-AFD, 1981
Privates on Parade, HandMade Films, Orion Classics, 1984
The Killing Fields, Warner Bros., 1984
The Frog Prince, Goldcrest-Warner Bros., 1985, released in the United States as French Lesson, Warner Bros., 1986
The Mission, Warner Bros., 1986
(With Bryan Oates) Il giovane Toscanini (also known as Toscanini and Young Toscanini), Italian International Films, 1988
Spies Inc. (also known as Code Name: Chaos, S.P.O.O.K.S., and Spies, Lies and Alibis), 1988
Memphis Belle, Warner Bros., 1990
Meeting Venus, Warner Bros., 1991
This Boy's Life, 1993
A Good Man in Africa, 1994
Nell, 1994
Radio Inside, 1994
Copycat, 1995
Marvin's Room, Miramax, 1996
The Jackal (also known as Le chacal and Der Schakal), Universal, 1998
Onegin, Samuel Goldwyn Films, 1999
The Trench (also known as La tranchee), Somme Productions,1999
The World Is Not Enough (also known as Pressure Point and T.W.I.N.E.), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, 1999
Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang), 2000
City by the Sea, Warner Bros., 2001
Film Director
(As James Clark) The Christmas Tree, CFF, 1966
Think Dirty (also known as Every Home Should Have One), British Lion, 1970
Rentadick, Virgin, 1972
Madhouse (also known as Deathday, The Madhouse of Dr. Fear, and The Revenge of Dr. Death), American International, 1974
(Second unit director) Honky Tonk Freeway, Universal-AFD, 1981
Other Film Work
Creative consultant, Midnight Cowboy, United Artists, 1969
Consulting editor, War of the Buttons, 1994

[harrybarracuda]

Well there's your hat trick from the movie biz....

Former Detroit city councilman, actor Gil Hill dies at 84
Comments Email Print
By Corey Williams
Associated Press



Gil Hill, a former Detroit city councilman and one-time mayoral candidate well known to action movie fans as the salty-tongued police Inspector Douglas Todd in three "Beverly Hills Cop" films, has died.

Hill died Monday afternoon, Detroit's Sinai Grace Hospital spokeswoman Bree Glenn said. He was 84.

A cause of death was not released.

"Gil had been recently hospitalized and was on the road to recovery," family spokesman Chris Jackson said. "We are relieved that his passing was peaceful and painless."

Hill spent 30 years with the Detroit Police Department and about a dozen years on the City Council. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2001.

"He never stopped believing in our city and dedicated his life to making our city a better place for all," Mayor Mike Duggan said Monday night in a statement.

Hill was head of the Detroit Police Department's homicide division when he landed the supporting role in 1984's action-comedy "Beverly Hills Cop."

In the film, Todd was boss to Eddie Murphy's Detective Axel Foley character. Todd, who was killed off early in the third film in the series, often would erupt with expletives due to Foley's rule-bending investigative methods.

Hill was elected Detroit City Council president in November 1997, unseating incumbent Maryann Mahaffey. It was his third four-year term on the council.

As a councilman, Hill supported casino gambling in the city and helped broker deals for new baseball and football stadiums downtown.

He finished second to then-state Rep. Kwame Kilpatrick in the 2001 Detroit mayoral primary, but lost a close race to Kilpatrick in the November general election.

Funeral service details were not immediately released.

Former Detroit city councilman, actor Gil Hill dies at 84 - Crain's Detroit Business

[harrybarracuda]

Amazing, still have housewives here in the sandpit who almost wept when they found out about Filmon. Back in the day they used to receive "Street" videos with the same excitement you could imagine POWs getting Red Cross parcels.




Tony Warren, the British scriptwriter who created soap opera Coronation Street, has died. He was 79.



The news was announced on Wednesday on the official Coronation Street Twitter account. An ITV spokesperson later said that Warren had died on Tuesday night "surrounded by his loving friends after a short illness."

Born Anthony McVay Simpson near Manchester in 1936, Warren first adopted his stage name as a child actor, becoming a regular on BBC radio. But it was at the age of 23 in 1959 when he would conceive his most famous creation, reportedly while on a sleeper train when he woke up a BBC producer and said he had a "wonderful idea" about a "little back street with a pub at one end and a shop at the other, and all the lives of the people there, just ordinary things."

Coronation Street – as it became known when it first aired on Manchester-based Granada Television in December 1960 after the BBC rejected the idea – would soon become the most-watched show in the U.K., go on to change the face of British TV and become a pillar of popular culture in Britain. In 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

Although ratings have declined from the highs of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, when Coronation Street episodes would regularly draw in excess of 20 million viewers, the show is still one of the most popular on U.K. television, with around 9 million tuning in per episode (of which there are five per week).

Warren regularly wrote scripts for Coronation Street until 1968 and then sporadically after until the late-70s. He won countless accolades for his creation, including a lifetime achievement award from the Royal Television Society. In 1994, was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Although it wasn't the first-ever soap opera, Coronation Street's depiction of the ordinary lives of working-class people paved the way for a slew of other similar series in the U.K., most notably the BBC's London-based EastEnders, which first aired in 1985 and would become a ratings rival.

Over the years, alongside its regular characters, which included a young Ben Kingsley during the late 1960s, several famous names would prop up the bar of Coronations Street's famed pub, The Rovers Return. Ian McKellen was a notable casting addition, appearing for 10 episodes in 2005, while Prince Charles appeared in a live episode in 2000 to mark its 40th anniversary.

Among its fans were late stage and screen icon Laurence Olivier, who reportedly was due to appear in a scene but scheduling conflicts with 1976's Marathon Man forced him to cancel. More unusually, Snoop Dogg has also spoken of his love for the show, in 2010 claiming that he had urged his agent to to reach out to the producers to see if they could find him a role.

Warren himself made a cameo in the 50th anniversary live episode of Coronation Street in December 2010.

Tributes Pour In For Coronation Street Creator And Writer Tony Warren Who Has Died Aged 79 | Her.ie

[harrybarracuda]

Pat Conroy dies at 70; 'Great Santini,' Prince of Tides' author
Associated Press




Conroy, whose best-selling novels drew from his own sometimes painful experiences and evoked the South Carolina coast and its people, has died.

The beloved author of "The Great Santini" and "The Prince of Tides" died Friday evening. He was 70.

Conroy, who announced last month that he had pancreatic cancer, died at home among family and loved ones in Beaufort, S.C., according to his publisher. The author had battled other health problems in recent years, including diabetes, high blood pressure and a failing liver.

"The water is wide and he has now passed over," his wife, novelist Cassandra Conroy, said in a statement from publisher Doubleday.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley tweeted: "We can find comfort knowing his words and love for SC will live on."

Funeral arrangements were still being made.

Few contemporary authors seemed more knowable to their readers over than Conroy. An openly personal writer, he candidly and expansively shared details of growing up as a "military brat" and his anguished relationship with his abusive father, Marine aviator and military hero Donald Conroy. He also wrote of his time in military school and his struggles with his health and depression.

"The reason I write is to explain my life to myself," Conroy said in a 1986 interview. "I've also discovered that when I do, I'm explaining other people's lives to them."

His books sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, but for much of his youth he crouched in the shadow of Donald Conroy, who "thundered out of the sky in black-winged fighter planes, every inch of him a god of war," as Pat Conroy would remember. The author was the eldest of seven children in a family constantly moving from base to base, a life readers and moviegoers would learn well from "The Great Santini" as a novel and film, which starred Robert Duvall as the relentless and violent patriarch.

The 1976 novel initially enraged Conroy's family, but the movie three years later made such an impression on his father that he claimed credit for boosting Duvall's career (The actor had already appeared in two "Godfather" films), saying, "The poor guy got a role with some meat on it."

But the book also helped achieve peace between father and son.

"I grew up hating my father," Conroy said after his father died in 1998. "It was the great surprise of my life, after the book came out, what an extraordinary man had raised me." The author would reflect at length on his relationship with his father in the 2013 memoir "The Death of Santini."

"The Prince of Tides," published in 1986, secured Conroy a wide audience, selling more than 5 million copies despite uneven reviews for its story of a former football player from South Carolina with a traumatic past and the New York psychiatrist who attempts to help him.

"Inflation is the order of the day. The characters do too much, feel too much, suffer too much, eat too much, signify too much and, above all, talk too much," said the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

But Conroy focused on the advice he once got from "the finest writer I ever encountered," novelist James Dickey, who taught him at the University of South Carolina.

"He told me to write everything I did with all the passion and all the power you could muster," Conroy recalled. "Don't worry about how long it takes or how long it is when you're done. You know, he was right."

"The Prince of Tides" was made into a hit 1991 film starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who also produced and directed it. Conroy worked on the screenplay and shared an Oscar nomination, one of seven Oscar nominations it earned, including best picture.

Conroy's much-anticipated "Beach Music," published in 1995, was a best-seller that took nine years to complete. Conroy had been working on "The Prince of Tides" screenplay, but he also endured a divorce, depression, back surgery and the suicide of his youngest brother.

Conroy had other demons. After attending (at his father's insistence) The Citadel, South Carolina's state military college, he avoided the draft and went into teaching. In 2013, he wrote on his blog that he had begun his life as "a draft dodger and anti-war activist" while his classmates "walked off that stage and stepped directly into the Vietnam War."

"When I talk to Ivy Leaguers or war resisters of that era, I always tell them that Vietnam was not theoretical to me, but deeply and agonizingly painful. Eight of my Citadel classmates died in that war," he wrote.

For years, he was alienated from The Citadel, which he renamed the Carolina Military Institute in his 1980 novel "The Lords of Discipline." A harsh tale of the integration of a Southern military school, the book was adapted into a film in 1983, but had to be made elsewhere because The Citadel's governing board refused to allow filming on campus.

While "The Lords of Discipline" had made him unpopular with Citadel officials, reconciliation came in 2000 when he was awarded an honorary degree. In 2002, he visited during homecoming weekend and fans lined up to get him to autograph copies of his books.

"I never thought this would happen," Conroy said. "This is my first signing at the Citadel. That's amazing." He had recently published "My Losing Season," about his final year of college basketball at The Citadel.

The good feelings deepened when Conroy's cousin Ed Conroy, a 1989 Citadel grad, became the Citadel's basketball coach in 2006 — and within a couple of years brought about a remarkable improvement in the team's fortunes.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour >>
Pat Conroy's other books included "South of Broad," set in Charleston's historic district, and "My Reading Life", a collection of essays that chronicled his lifelong passion for literature.

He was born Donald Patrick Conroy on Oct. 26, 1945. The Conroy children attended 11 schools in 12 years before the family eventually settled in Beaufort, about an hour from Charleston. He read obsessively as a child and called fellow Southerner Thomas Wolfe his inspiration to become a writer.

"Thomas Wolfe was the first writer I felt was writing for me," Conroy said. "He was articulating a vision of the world that seemed ready for me."

Following graduation in 1967, he worked as a high school teacher in Beaufort. While there, he borrowed $1,500 to have a vanity press publish "The Boo," an affectionate portrait of Col. Thomas Courvoisie, an assistant commandant at The Citadel.

For a year he taught poor children on isolated Daufuskie Island, not far from the resort of Hilton Head. The experience was the basis for his 1972 book, "The Water Is Wide," which brought him a National Endowment for the Arts award and was made into the movie "Conrack."

Conroy was married three times and had two daughters. Although he lived around the world, he always considered South Carolina his home and lived since the late 1990s on Fripp Island, a gated community near Beaufort.

"Make this university, this state, yourself and your family proud," Conroy told University of South Carolina graduates in a 1997 commencement speech.

"If you have a little luck, any luck at all, if you do it right, there's a great possibility you can teach the whole world how to dance."

Pat Conroy dies at 70; 'Great Santini,' Prince of Tides' author - LA Times

[harrybarracuda]

Email inventor Ray Tomlinson dies at 74
ARPAnet pioneer and networking legend Ray Tomlinson, who is best known for his contributions in developing email standards, has died.
By Evan Koblentz | March 5, 2016, 6:54 PM PST



Ray Tomlinson, one of the early ARPAnet pioneers in the 1960s at engineering firm Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), died Saturday morning of a suspected heart attack. He was 74.

Tomlinson was best known for choosing the @ symbol to indicate a message should be sent to a different computer on a network. He also led development of standards for the from, subject, and date fields found in every email message sent today.

He earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1963 and a master's in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, where he worked on speech synthesis.

News of his death began circulating on a BBN alumni email list tonight. Another networking legend, TCP/IP inventor Vint Cerf, confirmed it via Twitter.

Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012. Memories from fellow BBN employees are documented here (PDF).

Tomlinson's death is the third passing of an MIT-educated computer industry legend this year. Artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky died in January, and personal computing innovator Wesley A. Clark died in February. Both were 88.

Email inventor Ray Tomlinson dies at 74 - TechRepublic

[Troy]

Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt dies at 86

he celebrated Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt - considered to be the "pope" of the baroque music revival - has died in Vienna aged 86.
A statement on his website said he "took his last breath peacefully surrounded by family".
The Vienna Musikverein, home to the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, said his death marked the end of an era.
The conductor announced his retirement in a farewell letter in December, citing health reasons.
"My physical capacities mean that I have to cancel all my upcoming projects," he wrote, saying he would not appear on the concert stage again.
He penned the open letter to fans, who found it in the programme for a concert by the ensemble he founded, the Concentus Musicus Wien (CMW).
Thomas Angyan, director of the Vienna Musikverein, said: "I did not think so little time would pass between his retirement and death. We must continue the musical legacy he leaves us."


Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt dies at 86 - BBC News

[Looper]

Nancy Reagan dead at 94

Former first lady Nancy Reagan has died in California at the age of 94.



Mrs Reagan had been living in Bel Air, Los Angeles, and had been in failing health in recent years.

Her 52-year marriage to Ronald Reagan was once described as the greatest love affair in the history of the American presidency.

When she became first lady in 1981, Mrs Reagan was criticised for an expensive renovation of the White House, but later became a much-loved figure.

Nancy Reagan: Former US First Lady dies aged 94 - BBC News

[Sumbitch]

^ That's sad. RIP, Nan.

[bobo746]

Sir George Martin, the 'fifth Beatle' dead at 90
Sir George Martin, the 'fifth Beatle' dead at 90


Legendary British music producer Sir George Martin, best known for his work with The Beatles and often referred to as "the fifth Beatle" has died, aged 90, according to a message on social media from former Beatle drummer Ringo Starr.
A Universal spokesperson confirmed his death to The Hollywood Reporter though details are not yet clear.
The composer, arranger and musician is famed for his work with The Beatles in the 1960s and '70s, and was considered one of the greatest record producers of all time, with 30 number one singles in the UK and 23 in the US, throughout his career.

[palexxxx]

R.I.P. George, you played a major part in 20th century musical history.

[Loy Toy]

Without George Martin the Beatles would never have been nearly as big.

Thanks George for your musical genuis.