Jennifer Jones: Actress, Dead at 90...

Jennifer Jones
(March 2, 1919 – December 17, 2009)




Jennifer Jones was an American actress. A five-time Academy Award nominee, Jones won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

Jones was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Phil and Flora Mae Isley, who ran a travelling theatre. She toured with her parents as a child in vaudeville tent shows. Her first stage role, playing a peppermint candy, was at the age of five.

Her father hoped she would become a lawyer, but she persuaded him to let her attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she met and married her first husband, the actor Robert Walker. They travelled to Hollywood.

Hollywood publicised her as an overnight discovery, though this was not strictly true. She had first tried her hand there four years earlier under her real name, Phylis Isley, playing opposite John Wayne in a B picture, New Frontier, and in a small role in the serial Dick Tracy's G-Men (both 1939).

Thanks to her early success, she enjoyed a reputation as a "heavyweight" actress, that got her dramatic roles. There were those who felt that she rarely measured up to them, and that parts in Madame Bovary (1949), Gone to Earth (1950), Carrie (1952) and Tender Is the Night (1962) allegedly exposed her limitations.

She starred in two comedy films, yet they were among her most accomplished work. Cluny Brown (1946), which she made for Ernst Lubitsch and John Huston's Beat the Devil (1954).

It was often stated that Jones was a manufactured star. Two of her three husbands were millionaires. David O Selznick, whom she married in 1949, was a celebrated Hollywood tycoon who had made Gone with the Wind (1950). He took personal charge of her career, casting her in his own pictures and leasing her services to others as a prime attraction. With Selznick's death in 1965, her acting career petered out. She made only three more films, with long intervals between them. The last, The Towering Inferno (1974), offered her only a cameo role as one of those trapped on the upper floors of a burning skyscraper.

In 1971, Jones married her second tycoon – the multi-millionaire industrialist Norton Simon.

With Robert Walker, Jones had two sons – Michael, who predeceased her, and Robert Walker Jr, who also became an actor. Her daughter, Mary Selznick, died aged 21 in 1976.

Jones enjoyed a quiet retirement in Southern California close to her son, Robert. She granted no interviews and rarely appeared in public. She died of natural causes at her home.

RIP

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Ciarán MacMathúna: Irish Broadcaster, Dead at 84...

Ciarán Mac Mathúna
(November 26, 1925 – December 11, 2009)




Ciarán Mac Mathúna was a former Irish broadcaster and music collector. He was a recognised authority on Irish music and lectured extensively on the subject. He travelled around Ireland, England, Scotland and America collecting music.

A native of Co. Limerick, Ciarán Mac Mathúna first joined RTÉ as a radio producer in 1955. One of his first jobs was to travel around the country in the company of a mobile recording unit gathering material for Radio Éireann’s traditional music archive.

Mac Mathúna's long-running Sunday morning radio series Mo Cheol Thú (You are my music) began in 1970 and continued until November 2005, when he retired from broadcasting. Each 45 minute programme offered a miscellany of archive music, poetry and folklore, mainly of Irish origin. It was one of radio's longest running programmes. The last episode was broadcast on 27 November 2005.

For more than 50 years he made an enormous contribution to the preservation and development of Irish traditional music.

Mac Mathúna won two Jacob's Awards, in 1969 and 1990, for his RTÉ Radio programmes promoting Irish traditional music. He received the Freedom of Limerick City in June 2004. He was also awarded honorary doctorates by NUI Galway and the University of Limerick.

In 2007, he was awarded with the Musicians Award at the 10th annual TG4 Traditional Music Awards.

He was married to Dolly MacMahon, who was a singer of traditional songs. She came from Galway an met her husband in 1955. He lived with Dolly, who survives him, in Templeogue, Dublin. He and Dolly had three children and four(?) grandchildren.

RIP

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Liam Clancy: Musician/Singer, Dead at 74...

William 'Liam' Clancy
(September 2, 1935 - December 4, 2009)




Liam Clancy was an Irish folk singer and musician.

He was the last surviving member of the Clancy Brothers, who were credited with bringing Irish traditional music to a world audience in the 1960s. Bob Dylan described Mr. Clancy as the “just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my whole life”.

Born in Carrick on Suir Ireland, he was the youngest of 11 children. As a young man he dreamed of life on the stage, but there was music in his blood too.

In his late teens he met and travelled Ireland with US song collector Diane Hamilton Guggenheim and eventually travelled to the US with her.

His brothers Paddy and Tom had emigrated before him - and along with renowned Armagh singer Tommy Makem - they began performing in New York.

With their trademark Aran jumpers The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem played legendary venues such as the White Horse Tavern in New York.

They became international stars following a performance on the Ed Sullivan television show.

The band played a key role in the 60s folk revival - reworking traditional ballads for both an international and an Irish audience.

When the Clancy Brothers later went their separate ways, Liam pursued a solo career in Canada before reuniting with Tommy Makem to form the hugely popular duo Makem and Clancy. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem did play together again in the 1980s, and in later years Liam, maintained a successful solo career.

Alan Gilsenan directed a full length biography of Liam Clancy, which was released at the 2009 Dublin Film Festival, The Yellow Bittern: The Life and Times of Liam Clancy and includes appearances by Pete Seeger, Jean Ritchie, Bob Dylan, Oscar Brand, Odetta, Josh White, and many others.

Mr. Clancy died in hospital in Cork, Ireland, after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis - scarring of the lungs. His brother Bobby died of the same disease in 2002.

He is survived by his wife Kim and four children.

RIP

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Edward Woodward: Actor, Dead at 79...

Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE
(1 June 1930 – 16 November 2009)



Edward Woodward was an English actor and singer.

Originally a Shakespearean stage actor, he was best known for his roles in the 1960s-1970s television spy series Callan, the 1973 film The Wicker Man, the 1980 Australian biographical film drama Breaker Morant and his lead role in the 1980s American television series The Equalizer.

Woodward was seen in EastEnders earlier this year, playing the role of Tommy Clifford.

The actor was a BAFTA award winner for 'Callan', a Golden Globe award winner for 'The Equalizer' and a News and Documentary Emmy award winner for 'Remembering World War II'.

Woodward had a fine tenor voice, appearing on a number of occasions in The Good Old Days and making a dozen LPs. He also recorded three albums of poetry, capitalising on the reputation he had forged at Stratford as a lyrical speaker of verse.

Woodward died at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro. He had lived in Hawker's Cove, Cornwall, near Padstow and had been suffering from various illnesses, including pneumonia.

Woodward married first, in 1952, Venetia Mary Collett, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, all of whom became successful actors. The marriage was dissolved in 1986, and he married secondly, in 1987, Michele Dotrice, daughter of the actor Roy Dotrice and best known for her role as Betty Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em; they had a daughter. Survivors include his wife and his children.

RIP

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FRIEL Life Remembered: John Peel...

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE, known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter and journalist. He was born in Liverpool, England on August 30, 1939 and died on October 25, 2004.

Peel promoted the more esoteric and extreme fringes of contemporary popular music for more than 30 years, becoming a national institution in the process. He did not conform to the clichés of the rock 'n' roll fast life. That was his attraction for generations of listeners; for championing music that few other DJs would touch.

He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death. He was known for his eclectic taste in music and his honest and warm broadcasting style. He was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock, reggae and punk records on British radio, and he is widely acknowledged for promoting artists in various styles including alternative rock, pop, death metal, British hip hop and dance music.

Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular 'Peel sessions', which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist live in the BBC's studios, and which often provided the first major national coverage to bands that later would achieve great fame.

Peel appeared frequently on British television, as one of the presenters of Top of the Pops in the 1980s, and he provided voice-over commentary for a number of BBC programmes. He became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his Home Truths programme which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners' domestic lives.

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FRIEL Life Remembered: Christopher Reeve...

Christopher D'Olier Reeve was an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter that died on October 10, 2004, aged 52.

He achieved stardom for his acting achievements, including his notable motion picture portrayal of the fictional character Superman.

On May 27, 1995 Reeve became a quadriplegic after being thrown from his horse in an eventing competition in Virginia. He required a wheelchair and breathing apparatus for the rest of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries, and for human embryonic stem cell research afterward. He founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center.

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FRIEL Life Remembered: Miles Davis...

Miles Davis was an American trumpeter, bandleader and composer, that died on September 28th, 1991 at Santa Monica, California, aged 65.

He was probably the most influential and financially successful of all jazz musicians - as well as the most controversial.

Miles Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

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Patrick Swayze, Actor, Dead at 57...

Patrick Wayne Swayze
(August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009)




Patrick Wayne Swayze was an American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter. He was best-known for his roles as romantic leading men in the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost and as Orry Main in the North and South television miniseries. He was named by People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991.

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born in Houston, Texas, where his mother, Patsy, ran a dance school. At his primary school and Waltrip High School in the city, Patrick was teased for being a sissy when he made his way to dance lessons.

After school, Swayze went to New York to train as a dancer at Harkness Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet School. His first professional engagement was with Disney on Parade in 1978, and soon afterwards he joined the Broadway cast of the musical Grease.

His first film was the forgettable Skatetown, USA (1979), an attempt to cash in on the roller-disco craze, in which Swayze played Ace, and he had a number of minor roles in television, including a part in an episode of M*A*S*H.

In 1984's Red Dawn, Swayze took the lead as Jed, the head of a gang of teenagers who turn themselves into guerrilla fighters after a Russian invasion of America. The film, a kind of advertisement for the right to bear arms, was cited by The Guinness Book of Records as containing the greatest number of acts of violence in any movie.

After Grandview, USA (1984), a dull comedy drama in which he played a driver in a demolition derby, Swayze appeared the following year in the television miniseries North and South, a civil war drama in which he gave one of his better performances.

Youngblood (1986) was a dire ice hockey movie in which he appeared with Rob Lowe and Keanu Reeves. In Road House (1989), Swayze plays a philosophy graduate turned bouncer who manages to transform the fortunes of a seedy roadside bar. The film's obvious badness ensured it a kind of cult following.

After Ghost Swayze played a Zen thug in Point Break (1991), an action thriller about surfing bank-robbers, which also starred Keanu Reeves. This was perhaps the most successful period of his career. But though Swayze continued to act as steadily, almost all his subsequent films fared badly at the box office.

He played a doctor in India in City of Joy (1992), and a positively alarming drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar (1995), though he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance.

In 1996 Swayze fell from a horse and hit a tree. Both his legs were broken, and he suffered detached tendons in his shoulder. Swayze recovered, but took little work until 2000, when he co-starred in Waking Up in Reno with Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron, and in Forever Lulu with Melanie Griffith.

In 2001 he had a part in the surreal Donny Darko, and in 2004 took a cameo (as a dance instructor) in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, a lacklustre sequel. That year he also played Allan Quatermain in a television film of King Solomon's Mines.

In 2003 he appeared in the Broadway production of Chicago, and in 2006 he took on the role of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls in the West End.

His most recent films included The Fox and the Hound 2, in which he provided the voice of an Alpine Dachsbracke; a comedy called Christmas in Wonderland; and Powder Blue, in which he plays the owner of a strip club in Los Angeles.

Most recently, Swayze starred in A&E network's "The Beast," which debuted in January. Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late January 2008, and underwent chemotherapy and other treatments at the Stanford University Medical Center. He agreed to take the starring role of an undercover FBI agent before his diagnosis. The network agreed to shoot an entire season of the show after Swayze responded well to cancer treatment.

"The Beast" was canceled in June because of Swayze's illness, after doctors told him the cancer had spread to his liver.

Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa shooting King Solomon's Mines. Swayze was married since 1975 to Lisa Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. Lisa and Patrick did not have any children.

Swayze's publicist, Annett Wolf, confirmed that he had died of pancreatic cancer. Swayze died with his family at his side, twenty months after being diagnosed.

RIP

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Edward Kennedy, US Politician, Dead at 77...

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
(February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)



Edward Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. In office since November 1962, Kennedy served nine terms in the Senate. He was one of the most influential and longest-serving senators in US history - a liberal standard-bearer who was also known as a consummate congressional dealmaker - the Irish-American senator had been battling brain cancer, which was diagnosed in May 2008.

For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassinations, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy was born in Boston and raised in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and England. He graduated from Harvard in 1956 and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1959. His 1958 marriage to Virginia Joan Bennett produced three children and ended in divorce in 1982.

He was a manager in his brother John's successful 1960 campaign for president, then worked as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Kennedy entered the Senate in a 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by John. Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006.

Kennedy once ran for the Presidential office, in the 1980 election, but it ended in a primary campaign loss to incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Due to his long history and influence in the legislature, he became known as "The Lion of the Senate". More than 300 bills that Kennedy wrote have been enacted into law, and he was known for his ability to work with Republicans and to find compromises among Senate members with disparate views.

Kennedy's personal life was often subject to criticism, but his 1992 marriage to Victoria Anne Reggie stabilized his life.

Kennedy died of brain cancer on Tuesday, August 25, 2009, at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife Victoria, his sister Jean Kennedy Smith, and his three children.

RIP

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Don Hewitt, Television news pioneer, Dead at 86...

Donald Shepard Hewitt
(December 14, 1922 – August 19, 2009)




Don Hewitt was an American television news producer and executive, best known for creating 60 Minutes, the CBS news magazine in 1968, currently the longest-running prime time broadcast on American television.

Born in 1922 in New York, Hewitt started his career in newspapers. "His picture experience prompted a friend in 1948 to tell him about television, where CBS News had a job opening," according to a CBS statement. He told reporters years later his response was: "Whatavision?"

He directed the first television network newscast on May 3, 1948, featuring Douglas Edwards, the network said. In 1960, he was named executive producer of "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite," a position he held for five years. In 1963, the Cronkite broadcast became the first to go to a half-hour format.

Hewitt's innovations included the use of cue cards for news readers -- an early version of the electronic teleprompter that is used today, CBS said. In addition, he was the first to use "supers" -- captions and other written information superimposed on the lower third of the television screen. And he was the first to use the film "double" -- cutting back and forth between projectors.

Hewitt also produced and directed coverage for the three main television networks for the first-ever televised presidential debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

Hewitt stepped aside as executive producer of 60 Minutes in 2004 at 81. He is an eight-time Emmy Award winner. Hewitt is the author of Tell Me a Story: Fifty Years and 60 Minutes in Television, in which he chronicles his life as a newsman. He is also the author of the book Minute by Minute, a look at the history of 60 Minutes. On April 3, 2008, Hewitt was honored with Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism.

Hewitt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2009. He died at his home in Bridgehampton, New York, surrounded by his family. He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Marilyn Berger, and four children.

RIP

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Les Paul, Electric Guitar Pioneer, Dead at 94...

Lester William Polsfuss
(June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009)


Les Paul was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible." His many recording innovations include overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording.

His innovative talents extended into his unique playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many of the guitarists of the present day.

He was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin to George and Evelyn Polsfuss. The family name was first simplified by his mother to Polfuss before he took his stage name of Les Paul.

Paul first became interested in music at the age of eight, when he began playing the harmonica. After an attempt at learning to play the banjo, he began to play the guitar. By 13, Paul was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist. At the age of 17, Paul played with Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and soon after he dropped out of high school to join Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, Missouri. In the 1930s, Paul worked in Chicago in radio, where he performed jazz music.

Paul was dissatisfied with the acoustic guitars that were sold in the mid 1930s and began experimenting with a few designs for an electric model on his own. Famously, he created "The Log," which was one of the first solid-body electric guitars (1939).

In 1948, Paul was injured in a near-fatal automobile accident, which shattered his right arm and elbow. Doctors set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar.

In 1949, Les Paul married the singer Iris Colleen Summers, who later changed her name to Mary Ford at his suggestion. Capitalising on his innovative sound-on-sound technique, he multi-tracked his wife's vocals and his instrumental backing. The couple had a string of hits in the first half of the 1950s. In their radio and television appearances, Les Paul used what he called the Les Paulveriser, a backstage electronics system controlled from a black box attached to his guitar.

It was at this time that the Gibson Les Paul guitar – a manufactured guitar based on Paul's solid-body concept of the late 1930s – burst on to the market. The Gibson Les Paul was deliberately conceived as a high-end instrument. The contract between Les Paul and Gibson, endured until the early 1960s, when he fell out with the company over design changes. He continued to play, with his wife, and by 1962, when they divorced, they had cut 36 gold discs together.

Subsequently Les Paul increasingly exchanged his life as a professional musician for one as a professional inventor. During the 1970s he recorded two albums with the influential country guitarist Chet Atkins. One of the results, Chester and Lester (1976), won them a Grammy for best country instrumental performance.

In recent years, Les Paul (in his nineties) continued to play a regular Monday night session at a jazz club in New York, where rock stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page sometimes came to listen to him.

Paul, whose ex-wife died in 1977, had three sons and an adopted daughter. Paul was the godfather of rock guitarist Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band, to whom Paul gave his first guitar lesson. In 1978, Paul and ex-wife Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1988, Paul was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Jeff Beck. Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005 for his development of the solid-body electric guitar. In 2006, Paul was inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Les Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, NY. His family and friends were by his side. His attorney Michael Braunstein said that Paul had been "in and out of the hospital" because of illness.

RIP

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Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Special Olymics Founder, Dead at 88....

Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver
(July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009)




Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a member of the Kennedy family (one of the most prominent American political families of the 20th century).

Mrs Shriver founded the Special Olympics in the 1960s as a national organization. She helped demonstrate that the mentally disabled can triumph on the field of competition and lead rich and productive lives outside the walls of institutions.

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald). Her eight siblings include President Kennedy, former New York Senator Bobby Kennedy and serving Senator Edward Kennedy, who is currently battling brain cancer.

She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London, England; and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, graduating in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology; after which she went to work for the United States Department of State in the Special War Problems division.

In 1950, she became a social worker at the then-named Federal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, and the following year she moved to Chicago, Illinois, to work with the House of the Good Shepherd and the Chicago Juvenile Court.

On May 23, 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, New York. Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the Democratic U.S. Vice Presidential candidate in 1972 (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President).

Shriver actively campaigned for her elder brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, during his successful 1960 U.S. presidential election. In 1968, she helped Ann McGlone Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement.

Her daughter, Maria Shriver, is married to actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Shriver was a Democrat, she was a vocal supporter of the pro-life movement.

Shriver, who was believed to have suffered from Addison's disease, had several health setbacks in recent years, and on November 18, 2007, she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; she spent several weeks there.

Shriver died at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts in the early hours of Tuesday morning (Aug. 11th). The immediate cause of her death has not yet been disclosed.

Her husband, her five children and her 19 grandchildren were all with her when she died.

RIP

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John Hughes, Film Director, Dead at 59...

John Hughes, Jr.
(February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009)




John Hughes was an American film director, producer and writer. He made some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s, including National Lampoon's Vacation; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Weird Science; The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Pretty in Pink; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Hughes, born in Lansing, Michigan, began his career as an ad copywriter in Chicago. During this time, he created what became the famous Edge "Credit Card Shaving Test" ad campaign.

His first attempt at comedy writing was selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers.

His first directorial effort, Sixteen Candles, won almost unanimous praise when it was released in 1984, due in no small part to its more realistic depiction of middle-class high school life. Hughes was responsible for a slew of films in the 1980s that defined what it meant to be an American teenager, from the music to the fashion to the social faux pas. Though he graduated to more adult fare with films like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and had his biggest hits with explicitly family-oriented material like “Home Alone".

In recent years, Hughes had stepped back from the movie business to spend more time with his family, as well as maintain a functioning farm in northern Illinois and support independent arts.

Hughes died suddenly of a heart attack, while walking in Manhattan, New York City, where he was visiting his family.

Hughes is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy; two sons and four grandchildren.

RIP

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Naomi Sims, Supermodel, Dead at 61...

Naomi Ruth Sims
(March 30, 1948 - August 1, 2009)



Naomi Ruth Sims was an African American model, businesswoman and author.

Sims, the first black supermodel, broke barriers when she made the cover of Ladies Home Journal in 1968 — becoming the first black model to do so on a mainstream women’s magazine.

It was a defining achievement for the “Black is Beautiful” movement at the time – and Sims went on to appear on the covers of Life, Cosmopolitan and Essence.

Sims was born in Oxford, Miss., in 1948. Her parents divorced soon after she was born and her mother moved Sims and her two sisters to Pittsburgh. She left Pittsburgh for New York at age 18 to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and hit the pavement to jump-start her own modeling career. When she began approaching modeling agencies, she was turned down — with some telling her that her skin was too dark. Instead of giving up, she pushed forward and approached photographers directly.

The approach landed her the cover of the Times' August 1967 fashion supplement. She used that photo to market herself directly to advertising agencies. Before long, she was modeling for top designers.

Sims gave up modeling after five years and launched her own wig-making business geared toward black women. She eventually expanded the multimillion-dollar business to include beauty salons and cosmetics, and she wrote "All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman" and other books.

Today, two photographs of Sims hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Model as Muse” exhibition.

She died of breast cancer on August 1, 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey. She is survived by her son, Bob Findlay, a granddaughter, and her elder sister, Betty Sims.

RIP

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Brenda Joyce, Actress, Dead at 92...

Betty Graffina Leabo
(February 25, 1917[1] – July 4, 2009)


Brenda Joyce was an American film actress. She was born as Betty Graffina Leabo in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.

She was the only "Jane" to star opposite two different Tarzans in the talking era of the big screen.

After Maureen O'Sullivan exited the "Tarzan" series after six films, the strikingly blonde Joyce stepped in to star with Johnny Weissmuller in "Tarzan and the Amazons" (1945). She played the intrepid Jane Parker in four more movies, culminating with "Tarzan's Magic Fountain" (1949) opposite the new Tarzan, Lex Barker.

As a model and 21-year-old student at UCLA, Joyce was spotted by a Fox talent scout and named the studio's Discovery of the Year for 1939. That year, she was given the plum role of Fern Simon in "The Rains Came," an adaptation of the Louis Bromfield novel that starred Myrna Loy, Tyrone Power and George Brent.

In addition to the "Tarzan" films, Joyce appeared in such films as "Little Old New York" (1940), "Marry the Boss's Daughter" (1941), "The Postman Didn't Ring" (1942) and "The Spider Woman Strikes Back" (1947).

Joyce didn't make a movie after 1949. She worked for a decade in Washington for the Department of Immigration and appeared in two episodes of PBS kids show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" in 1971.

She died July 4th at a nursing home in Santa Monica. A family friend said she died of pneumonia after suffering from dementia for a decade.

She is survived by a son, two daughters and three grandchildren.

RIP

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Bobby Robson, Football Icon, Dead at 76...

Sir Robert William Robson CBE
(18 February 1933 – 31 July 2009)

Sir Bobby Robson was a former international football player and former manager of several European clubs and the England national football team.

His professional playing career as an inside-forward spanned nearly 20 years, during which he played for just three clubs – Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and briefly for the defunct Vancouver Royals. He also made 20 appearances for England, scoring four goals.

After his playing career he found success as both a club and international manager, winning league championships in both the Netherlands and Portugal, earning trophies in England and Spain, and taking England to the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup. His last management role was as a special consultant to the Republic of Ireland during Steve Staunton’s tenure (2006).

Robson was created a Knight Bachelor in 2002, was inducted as a member of the English Football Hall of Fame in 2003, and was the honorary president of Ipswich Town.

The former England manager, who had fought a long battle with cancer, passed away peacefully at his home in County Durham, England with his wife and family beside him.

RIP

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Jill Balcon, Actress, Dead at 84....

Jill Angela Henriette Balcon
(3 January 1925 – 18 July 2009)



Jill Balcon was an English actress of film and radio. She was known for her distinctive and beautifully-modulated voice and spent much of her career working in radio; but for most of her life her own fame was eclipsed by that of the famous men in whose shadow she lived: her father, the film producer Sir Michael Balcon, her husband Cecil Day-Lewis, the Poet Laureate, and her son, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis. She made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby (1947). Over the years she appeared regularly, though not extensively, on screen.

In 1951, she married the Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis was 21 years her senior and was married when they started their relationship. Day-Lewis broke with both his wife and his mistress to be with Balcon for the remainder of his life.

After her marriage to Day-Lewis, she made several more films in the late 1940s and 1950s before having her family. She continued to work mainly in radio, becoming, with her distinctive, honeyed voice, a supreme performer in plays and poetry readings. In 2003 the BBC commissioned Juliet Ace to write a play for her to mark her 60th anniversary on the airwaves, Deadheading the Roses, which featured her son Daniel Day-Lewis playing a friend of her character.

In later life she took cameo roles in two Derek Jarman films – Edward II (1991) and Wittgenstein (1993) – and was an imposing Lady Bracknell in Oliver Parker's 1999 adaptation of An Ideal Husband alongside Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver and Rupert Everett.

RIP

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Walter Cronkite, Journalist, Deat at 92...

Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009)

Walter Cronkite was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–81). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited in viewer opinion polls as "the most trusted man in America" because of his professional experience and kindly demeanor. Although he reported many events from 1937-1981, including bombing in World War II, the Nuremberg trials, combat in the Vietnam War, the death of JFK, Watergate, and the Iran Hostage Crisis, he was known for extensive TV coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings (with co-host Wally Shirra), to the Space Shuttle.

He was the only non-NASA recipient of a Moon-rock award. The Beatles' first American TV broadcast was with Walter Cronkite. Following one of his central tenets to "report the news, don't become it," the title "anchor" was invented as his role. In later years, he appeared as a host or guest-star in many TV broadcasts.

In late June, Cronkite was reported to be gravely ill. Despite denials of his illness, Cronkite died on July 17, 2009, at his home in New York City. He is believed to have died from cerebral vascular disease.

RIP

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Karl Malden, Actor, Dead at 97...

Karl Malden
(born Mladen George Sekulovich March 22, 1912 – July 1, 2009)

Karl Malden was an Academy Award winning American actor. In a career that spanned over seven decades, he was featured in classic Marlon Brando films such as "A Streetcar Named Desire", "On the Waterfront" and "One-Eyed Jacks". He won the best supporting actor Oscar for "Streetcar," and was nominated for his role as a priest crusading against crooked union bosses in "On the Waterfront." Among other notable film roles are Archie Lee Meighan in Baby Doll, Zebulon Prescott in How the West Was Won and General Omar Bradley in Patton.

His best-known role was on television as Lt. Mike Stone on the police crime drama, "The Streets of San Francisco", starring along side Michael Douglas from 1972-77. He was nominated four times for Emmys for the show.

Malden died at his home on July 1, 2009 from what it appears to be natural causes.

RIP

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Gale Storm, TV Actress, Dead at 87...

Josephine Owaissa Cottle
(April 5, 1922 - June 27, 2009)

Gale Storm, born Josephine Owaissa Cottle, was an American actress and singer, who starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, "My Little Margie" (originally a summer replacement for "I Love Lucy" on CBS) and "The Gale Storm Show".

Before landing the starring role in "My Little Margie" in 1952, Storm appeared in numerous B movies opposite such stars as Roy Rogers, Eddie Albert and Jackie Cooper. After her last TV series, "The Gale Storm Show," ended in 1960 she went on to a successful singing career while continuing to make occasional TV appearances.

She died in a convalescent home in Danville, California.

RIP

Michael Jackson, Pop Icon, Dead at 50...

Michael Joseph Jackson
August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer and businessman. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he made his début to the professional music scene at the age of 11 as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1969, and began a solo career in 1971 while still a member of the group. Referred to as the "King of Pop" in subsequent years, his 1982 album Thriller is the world's best-selling record of all time and four other solo studio albums are also among the world's best-selling records: Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995).

In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African American entertainer to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. The popularity of his music videos airing on MTV, such as "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — widely credited with transforming the music video from a promotional tool into an art form — helped bring the relatively new channel to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made Jackson an enduring staple on MTV in the 1990s. With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced many hip hop, pop and contemporary R&B artists.

He died from what was apparently a cardiac arrest. Jackson was pronounced dead at about 2:26 pm local time, at the UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, California. A final verdict on Michael Jackson's autopsy will only be possible after the toxicology test results are confirmed.

RIP

Farrah Fawcett, Actress, Dead at 62...

Ferrah Leni ("Farrah") Fawcett
February 2, 1947 – June 25, 2009

Ferrah Leni ("Farrah") Fawcett was an American actress. A multiple Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she first appeared as private investigator Jill Munroe in the TV series Charlie's Angels in 1976. Fawcett later appeared off-Broadway to the approval of critics and in highly rated television movies in roles often challenging and sometimes unsympathetic. Fawcett was also a pop culture figure whose hairstyle was emulated by millions of young women and whose poster sales broke records, making her an international sex symbol in the 1970s and 1980s. While her impact was particularly strong on the teens of the 1970s, her appeal spreads over multiple generations.

She died in the intensive care unit of Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, with her longtime partner Ryan O'Neal and friend Alana Stewart by her side.

RIP

Ed McMahon, TV Personality, Dead at 86...

Edward Leo Peter McMahon, Jr.
March 6, 1923 - June 23, 2009 (aged 86)

Edward Leo Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr. was a decorated war veteran, an American comedian, game show host, announcer, and television personality. Most famous for his work on television as Johnny Carson's announcer on The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992, also as the host of the talent show Star Search from 1983 to 1995, also co-hosting with Dick Clark on TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes from 1982 to 1986.

He died shortly after midnight at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. No formal cause of death was given, but McMahon's publicist attributed his death to the many health problems he had suffered over his final months.

RIP

Farewell...Remember...Icons...Entertainers...Legends

Dedicated to the memory of those Icons, Entertainers and Legends that have passed away recently. Rest In Peace.

Also includes Lives Remembered this week in the past for Icons, Entertainers and Legends.

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