The Celebrity Obituary Thread

[higashimori]

 '' Joe Cocker, Raspy-Voiced Rock Star With Distinctive Moves, Is Dead at 70 ''     He was only 70!! 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/arts/music/joe-cocker-is-dead-at-70.html?emc=edit_na_20141222&nlid=51580126
 
 

Joe Cocker, the gravelly British singer who became one of pop’s most recognizable interpreters in the late 1960s and ’70s with passionate, idiosyncratic takes on songs like the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” died on Monday at his home in Crawford, Colo. He was 70.

The cause was lung cancer, his agent, Barrie Marshall, said.

 

 R.I.P. Joe!!

[Jed Cooper]

Rest in peace, Mr. Cocker.  May God bless you and may you rest in peace, sir.   

[KC]

Back-to-back Oscar winner Luise Rainer has died at the age of 104.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/luise-rainer-award-winning-actress-dies-at-104.html


Luise Rainer as Anna Held with William Powell as Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. in the 1936 film “The Great Ziegfeld.” Credit MGM, via Photofest

R.I.P.

[higashimori]

 Wow she was 104!! That's long life!!

 R.I.P. Mme Rainer.

[higashimori]

 '' Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies ''

 

Buddy DeFranco, the innovative clarinetist who rose from the remains of the swing era to forge new and lasting prominence as the instrument’s pre-eminent interpreter of bebop, died on Wednesday in Panama City, Fla. He was 91.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/arts/music/buddy-defranco-versatile-jazz-clarinetist-dies-at-91.html?_r=0

 

 R.I.P. Buddy.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2888148/Buddy-DeFranco-dies-aged-91-Florida-eight-influential-decades-music-industry.html

 http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30615936

[Christopher]

Christine Cavanaugh, who did the voice of Babe and Chuckie from Rugrats, has died at 51. http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/30/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/feat-obit-christine-cavanaugh-babe-rugrats-voice/

[Jed Cooper]

Wow, rest in peace Ms. Rainer, Mr. DeFranco and Ms. Cavanaugh.  I came across a notice about Ms. Rainer's passing on Facebook last night.  Yes, such long lives led by her and Mr. DeFranco.  Sadly, not so for Ms. Cavanaugh.  I remember her from watching Rugrats with my nephew when he was younger.  May God bless them all.

[Christopher]

Donna Douglas, best known as Elly May on The Beverly Hillbillies, has died at 81. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2015/01/02/beverly-hillbillies-star-donna-douglas-dies-at-81/21195559/

[The Schofield Kid]

Aussie actor Rod Taylor has passed away aged 84.

SMH

[KC]

Aussie actor Rod Taylor has passed away aged 84.

SMH

Best remembered, at least by me, for his role in the Hitchcock chiller The Birds:


http://variety.com/2015/film/news/rod-taylor-dead-the-bird-the-time-machine-1201396390/

R.I.P.

[Christopher]

I didn't know Rod was an Aussie, but I always think of him in The Birds as well.

[The Schofield Kid]

I didn't know Rod was an Aussie

He grew up in the same suburb as my father but the families didn't know one another.

[The Schofield Kid]

Lizabeth Scott passed away on January 31.

Lizabeth Scott, a sultry blonde with a come-hither voice cut out for the seething romantic and homicidal passions of her Hollywood film noir roles in the late 1940s and early ’50s, died on Jan. 31 in Los Angeles. She was 92.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center confirmed the death, but did not give a cause.

Ms. Scott was billed as another Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake, and in many of her 22 films she portrayed a good-bad girl with love in her head and larceny in her heart, or vice versa. Her co-stars were Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and other tough gents, and her movies’ titles were lurid stuff: “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” “Dead Reckoning,” “Pitfall,” “Dark City,” “I Walk Alone” and “Bad for Each Other.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/movies/lizabeth-scott-film-noir-siren-dies-at-92.html?_r=0

I know Holden Pike is a big fan.

http://www.clinteastwood.org/forums/index.php?topic=7062.msg117848#msg117848

[KC]

I saw that obit and meant to post it, then it slipped my mind.

R.I.P., Lizabeth Scott.

And thanks, SK, for the link to Holden's great post from the good old days. I wonder if Holden ever even lurks around here any more?

[KC]

Louis Jourdan has died at the age of 93:


Leslie Caron, in the title role [of Gigi], and Louis Jourdan as playboy Gaston.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Jourdan played key roles in scores of films and TV shows, but felt he was too often stereotyped as the European lover, complete with charming accent.

"That ooh-la-la, conventional, embarrassing character," he complained in a 1965 interview with the Associated Press. "I'm proud to be a Frenchman, but I resent the image people have of the stupid, continental charmer.

"Against that type of role I fight pitilessly."

Robert Osborne, film historian and host of the Turner Classic Movies cable channel, said Jourdan was indeed capable of serious work in roles such as the callous concert pianist he played in the 1948 movie "Letter From an Unknown Woman" that has become a film-buff favorite.

But at the time it came out, the film didn't do Jourdan's career much good. "Audiences didn't want to see him in that kind of role," Osborne said in an interview with The Times. "I think he's right that he was stereotyped.

"He was hired for his profile."

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-louis-jourdan-20150215-story.html

R.I.P.

[KC]

Leonard Nimoy, R.I.P.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/television/leonard-nimoy-spock-of-star-trek-dies-at-83.html

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

[antonis]

So sad .......

[Gant]

Very sad news..... I grew up with Star Trek, it's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I'm not usually affected by celebrity deaths but this one got me.
Mrs Gant met Mr Nimoy briefly some years ago and always said what a lovely person he was... Amongst many other things he created one of the most memorable TV characters of all time... He's gonna be missed...

I wonder if in the future there'll be a TV star as famous as Leonard Nimoy

R.I.P

[KC]

The last reel has finally run through the projector for Manoel de Oliveira. The late-life prodigy was 106.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/arts/manoel-de-oliveira-pensive-filmmaker-who-made-up-for-lost-time-is-dead.html

For much of the past 25 years Mr. Oliveira was known among cinephiles as the world’s oldest active filmmaker. Unable to work for decades under the repressive right-wing government of António de Oliveira Salazar, who came to power in 1932, Mr. Oliveira started making up for lost time in his 60s, at an age when most directors are entering their creative twilight.

Almost as old as cinema itself, Mr. Oliveira often seemed like a filmmaker out of time, or perhaps of many times, a 20th-century modernist drawn to the themes and traditions of earlier eras. He was known for ruminative, melancholic, often eccentric movies about grand subjects like the nature of love and the ever-present specter of death.

The director Manoel de Oliveira in 2009 at an announcement of a retrospective in Berlin.
Credit Barbara Sax/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

^ He looks pretty good for a hundred-year-old!

Clint has occasionally mentioned him in interviews as someone whose continued productivity at an advanced age is to be emulated.

R.I.P.

[Christopher]

Actor James Best died Monday at 88. He's best known for The Dukes of Hazard, of course, and I remember him from some episodes of Twilight Zone and The Andy Griffith Show. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/tv/media-scene-blog/article17597600.html