The RIP Famous Person Thread

[Klondyke]

Mr. Preview:

https://www.classicfm.com/artists/an...e-wise-previn/

[harrybarracuda]

Golden Globe winning actress Katherine Helmond dies at 89




Hollywood actress Katherine Helmond has died at the age of 89.


Her talent agency confirmed that she passed away at her home in Los Angeles on 23 February due to complications from Alzheimer's disease.

She won two Golden Globes for her roles in sitcom Who's the Boss? and the spoof series Soap.

The seven-time Emmy Award nominee also starred in several other films and TV shows, including Everybody Loves Raymond and Disney Pixar's Cars.

"She was the love of my life," her husband, David Christian, said in a statement.

"I've been with Katherine since I was 19 years old. The night she died, I saw that the moon was exactly half-full, just as I am now."

Alongside her TV and film work, the Texas-born actress had a successful career on stage.

She secured a Tony Award nomination in 1973 for her Broadway performance in The Great God Brown.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47423586

[David48atTD]

For the Aussies, two notable passings ...

Billy J Smith dies - news reports

Veteran journalist Mike Willesee dead at 76 | ABC News

[cisco999]

Show

"Julie Adams, an actress best known for playing the damsel in distress in the 1954 monster movie “Creature From the Black Lagoon,”


Along with the film "Them" of the same year, Creature was one of my favorite horror movies. Scared the pants off me seeing it when it first came out in my local cinema. I believe children's admission was 15 cents and adults paid the hefty sum of a quarter.

[cisco999]

And the other one is there was not a single bullet hole in your airplane.’”

INcredible!!

[Cujo]

Mike Willesee, wow, I feel nostalgic or something sad. Next it'll be Wally Lewis.

[peaches]

Mike Willesee, wow, I feel nostalgic or something sad. Next it'll be Wally Lewis.

I remember well the night he was pissed out of his brain on his current affairs program.

All good fun .

R.I.P Mike.

[David48atTD]

Mike Willesee, wow, I feel nostalgic or something sad. Next it'll be Wally Lewis.

You a QUEENSLANDER ?

[Neverna]

The Prodigy's Keith Flint has died age 49



Instantly recognisable for his fluorescent spiked hair and incendiary performances, the musician sang lead vocals on both the band's number one singles, Breathe and Firestarter.

He was found dead at his home in Dunmow, Essex, on Monday morning.

The band, who were due to tour the US in May, confirmed his death in a statement, remembering Flint as a "true pioneer, innovator and legend".

In a post on The Prodigy's official Instagram account, bandmate Liam added: "I can't believe I'm saying this but our brother Keith took his own life over the weekend.

"I'm shell-shocked, angry, confused and heart broken."

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47442312

[Neverna]

[harrybarracuda]

Luke Perry, star of 'Beverly Hills, 90210', 'Riverdale', dies at 52 after severe stroke




Luke Perry, who rose to fame on the TV hit Beverly Hills, 90210 and stars in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, has died following a severe stroke. He was 52.


Perry passed away in hospital in Burbank outside Los Angeles on Monday (4) surrounded by family, according to reports. He had been in hospital under observation after suffering what was reportedly a huge stroke last week (February 28).

The actor was born in Mansfield, Ohio, on October 11 1966. He relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1980s in the hopes of earning a living in entertainment, and after numerous failed auditions finally landed commercials work and a role on TV shows Loving and Another World.

His big break came when he got the role of the roguish Dylan McKay on Beverly Hills, 90210, which became a smash and established Perry as a household name.

Other roles included the TV series Riverdale, Ties That Bind, Body Of Proof, Buffy The Vampire Slayer,and the film The Fifth Element.


Last week reports emerged of a cast reunion on a Beverly Hills, 90210 reboot. It is understood Perry had not committed to the project before he fell ill.

https://www.screendaily.com/news/luk...137389.article

[harrybarracuda]

‘Airwolf’ Star Jan-Michael Vincent Dies At 74





LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Actor Jan-Michael Vincent, best known for his role in the hit 1980s show “Airwolf,” has died at the age of 74, according to a report.

Vincent passed away on Feb. 10 at a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, according to a death certificate obtained Friday by TMZ.

Vincent died of a cardiac arrest, the death certificate reads.


Vincent starred as helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke in “Airwolf” from 1984 to 1987. He appeared in numerous films and television shows, including the 1978 Burt Reynolds film “Hooper.”

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019...nt-dies-at-74/

[Davis Knowlton]

^Major druggie. I saw him once in a Bangkok bar. He must have been around 50, but looked old and haggard. He hung around for a bit trying to score coke. When informed the bar had no drugs, he staggered off into the night, Surprised he lasted as long as he did.

[cyrille]

Major druggie.

Blimey.

Never suspected that when we went to see 'The World's Greatest Athlete' on my eleventh birthday.

[Davis Knowlton]

^Major alcoholic and IV coke user. Repeatedly arrested for DUI and drug use.

Came into the bar alone - no minders. Several of us were grouped at the end of the bar, including one DEA guy from the Embassy. Quite openly asked if any of us knew where to score some coke. DEA guy told him to fuck off. He did. I still had no idea who he was until someone told me. I'd never seen him on TV, although I think he may have been in a Bronson movie I'd watched.

Sooner or later they all wash ashore in LOS....or here.

[harrybarracuda]

Lost his leg to peripheral artery disease (not unusual amongst ageing, chronic alcoholics).

Did well to last that long really, although he didn't wear well.

[harrybarracuda]

Another 90210 actor. The rest of the cast must be shitting themselves.

Jed Allan Dead: ?Beverly Hills, 90210? & ?Days of Our Lives? Actor Dies at 84 | Jed Allan, RIP : Just Jared

[fishlocker]

Depends optional, ED most likely as well.

[harrybarracuda]

Hal Blaine, the Legendary Drummer Who Played on Every Top 40 Hit You’ve Ever Heard, Dies at Age 90




The amazing Hal Blaine died today in Los Angeles. He was 90. I was lucky to have met and talked to him over the years. He was the drummer for the Wrecking Crew, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, who put his beat on more top 40 hits than any other drummer in history. Everyone from the Beach Boys to the Ronettes to the Fifth Dimension, Sonny and Cher, and so on are in his debt.


Brian Wilson Tweeted: “I’m so sad, I don’t know what to say. Hal Blaine was such a great musician and friend that I can’t put it into words. Hal taught me a lot, and he had so much to do with our success – he was the greatest drummer ever. We also laughed an awful lot.”

Of course, his most famous moment is the tip off to “Be My Baby.”: It’s one of the most famous openings to any song, and defined Hal’s career. A second might be “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas. Imagine a juke box just filled with songs Hal Blaine played on: nirvana.


Hal didn’t just do pop/rock. It’s his drums on Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water” album. He’s what makes “The Boxer” so doleful and melancholy. He captured the light R&B of the Fifth Dimension in “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” He made Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” crackle.

Condolences to his daughter, Michelle, and all his friends and family. Hal Blaine was one of a kind.




https://www.showbiz411.com/2019/03/1...dies-at-age-90

[fishlocker]

That's sad, but I must say ninety is tough to beat. With all those tracks behind him you could say he had a rockin roll.

[tomcat]

...an author who wrote about the sub-culture long before it was popular to do so:

Gillian Freeman, whose novel ‘Leather Boys’ was a gay landmark, dies at 89
By Harrison Smith (WaPo)

Gillian Freeman, a British writer whose precise, richly detailed historical novels chronicled free spirits in Edwardian England and Nazi Germany, and who ventured outside the mainstream to write a pioneering study of pornography and a landmark work of gay literature, died Feb. 23 at a hospital in London. She was 89.
The cause was complications from dementia, said her husband, Edward Thorpe.

Ms. Freeman was working as a secretary for novelist Louis Golding when she began writing her first book, “The Liberty Man” (1955), about a middle-class schoolteacher and a cockney sailor whose love affair is stifled by the British class system.

She went on to write scripts for television, radio and an early Robert Altmanfilm; scenarios for Royal Ballet choreographer Kenneth MacMillan; and about a dozen more novels, often featuring undercurrents of romance and mystery, with protagonists who are outcasts by virtue of their religion, class or sexuality.

Raised in a liberal, middle-class London family, Ms. Freeman was no outsider. But she had a strong sympathy for those who were and an imagination that enabled her to craft fully realized characters such as Dick and Reggie, the gay, motorcycle-riding protagonists of “The Leather Boys” (1961).
The novel was commissioned by her literary agent turned publisher, Anthony Blond, who was bisexual. “Anthony said to her, ‘I would like a Romeo and Romeo story about simple young men, working-class young men,’ ” Thorpe said in a phone interview. “It was rather like the two guys in ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which she preceded by about 40 years.”


Gillian Freeman wrote “The Leather Boys” before homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain. (ANL/REX/Shutterstock)
Marketed as a British take on the Marlon Brando film “The Wild One,” Ms. Freeman’s novel featured shoplifting and theft, a preponderance of black leather jackets, a failed marriage and a male friendship that develops into a sexual relationship.

“When you kiss me . . . you don’t pretend I’m a girl or anything?” Dick asks his new lover. “Don’t be daft,” Reggie says. “ ’ow could I pretend you was a girl? You’re the wrong shape . . . I don’t want to pretend you’re a girl, neither.”

“The Leather Boys” was published six years before homosexuality was decriminalized in England and was part of a wave of boundary-breaking gay novels that included works by Christopher Isherwood, Mary Renault and (posthumously) E.M. Forster.

It “played a vital part in liberalizing British attitudes to homosexuality,” novelist Michael Arditti wrote in the foreword to the 2014 reissue of “The Leather Boys.”
Ms. Freeman released the book under a pseudonym, Eliot George, inverting the nom de plum that Mary Ann Evans used to publish “Middlemarch.” She used her own name while serving as screenwriter for a 1964 film adaptation drawn from “the novel by Eliot George.”

[harrybarracuda]

Thai ambassador to US Virachai dies at 58

national March 17, 2019 01:00
By The Nation




Thailand's ambassador to Washington, Virachai Plasai, passed away in the United States at the age of 58, according to the Foreign Ministry on Saturday.

The career diplomat and legal expert had been suffering from Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and had been admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland early this month.


He passed away at the hospital on Saturday at 0.43am local time in the US.

Prior to his current appointment, Virachai was the permanent representative to the United Nations since March 2015. Among his achievements while serving at the United Nations was his successful leadership of the Group of 77, the largest grouping of countries at the UN, as chairperson of the G-77 in 2016.




Virachai was the key official in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the contentious case on the Preah Vihear temple between Thailand and Cambodia in 2011-13 when he was the Ambassador of Thailand to the Netherlands, after serving his country in a variety of international economic, legal and diplomatic capacities.

Thai ambassador to US Virachai dies at 58

[Neverna]

58 - not old at all. RIP.


"Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are conditions that can occur when the blood-forming cells in the bone marrow become abnormal. This leads to low numbers of one or more types of blood cells. MDS is considered a type of cancer."

"The typical age of onset is 70 years. The typical survival time following diagnosis is 2.5 years."

[cisco999]

Actor Jan-Michael Vincent, who starred in the 1980s show "Airwolf," died last month,


Vincent was 73. He played pilot Stringfellow Hawke when "Airwolf" aired for three seasons on CBS from 1984 to 1986.

[cisco999]

although he didn't wear well.

Understatement of 2019 and it's only March.