Caroll Spinney, the big-hearted Muppeteer who climbed inside a claustrophobic feathered costume to play the beloved Sesame Street character Big Bird for almost a half-century, died Dec. 8 at the age of 85. Spinney, who also operated and voiced Oscar, Big Bird's grumpy trash can-dwelling neighbor, before retiring from the iconic kids program in October 2018, died at his home in Connecticut after "living with dystonia for some time," according to the show's statement. Spinney collected five Daytime Emmy Awards for his contributions to Sesame Street and received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 2006, entrancing hundreds of millions of kids along the way. After four years in the service, Spinney made his way to Bozo's Big Top, where he portrayed a number of characters and drew animation for the TV show as well. Jim Henson visited him backstage and, despite the mishap, told Spinney, "I liked what you were trying to do." Henson invited Spinney to meet with him about working together, and Spinney landed a job on the new Sesame Street, which bowed on PBS on Nov. 10, 1969. Spinney appeared on thousands of episodes — more than any other castmember — during his 49 years on the show. (He was making a reported $300,000 when he retired.) He also starred on the 1983 NBC special Big Bird in China, which was shot on location shortly after the country opened up to the West, and Follow That Bird (1985), the last Muppets feature released before Henson's death in May 1990. Survivors include his wife, Debra — they met in 1972 when she was working for Children's Television Workshop — and his children Jessica, Benjamin and Melissa.
Robert Forster
Robert Forster, the stalwart leading man whose Oscar-nominated performance as a bail bondsman in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown made for one of Hollywood's most heartwarming comeback stories, died on Oct. 11 at the age of 78. Forster died at his Los Angeles home of brain cancer, his publicist told The Hollywood Reporter. He made his film debut opposite Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), then sparkled as an ethically challenged cameraman in Haskell Wexler's ultra-realistic Medium Cool (1969). By the early '90s, the actor was down to supporting roles in such low-budget efforts as Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence,Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction and Scanner Cop II and supplementing his income with speaking engagements. A fan of Forster since he was a kid, Tarantino had brought the actor in to audition for the part of aging gangster Joe Cabot in 1992's Reservoir Dogs, but he had his heart set on casting Lawrence Tierney. Tarantino never forgot Forster, however, and as he was crafting the screenplay for Jackie Brown (1997) — an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 1992 novel Rum Punch — he wrote Max Cherry with him in mind. After Jackie Brown, Forster was inundated with offers and worked in such films as Psycho (1998), Me, Myself and Irene (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001), Human Nature (2001), Like Mike (2002), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Firewall (2006), Lucky Number Slevin (2006) and The Descendants (2011). In 2013, Forster was cast as the key Breaking Bad character The Disappearer in the AMC series' penultimate episode, with the show's team citing Max Cherry as an inspiration. He reprised the role in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which opened in theaters and is available to stream on Netflix.
Diahann Carroll
Diahann Carroll, the captivating singer and actress who came from the Bronx to win a Tony Award, receive an Oscar nomination and make television history with her turns on Julia and Dynasty, died Oct. 4 at the age of 84. Carroll died at her home in Los Angeles after a long bout with cancer, her daughter, producer-journalist Suzanne Kay, told The Hollywood Reporter. Carroll was known as a Las Vegas and nightclub performer and for her performances on Broadway and in the Hollywood musicals Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess when she was approached by an NBC executive to star as Julia Baker, a widowed nurse raising a young son, on the comedy Julia. She didn't want to do it. However, when Carroll learned that Hal Kanter, the veteran screenwriter who created the show, thought she was too glamorous for the part, she was determined to change his mind. She altered her hairstyle and mastered the pilot script, quickly convincing him that she was the right woman.Carroll thus became the first African American female to star in a non-stereotypical role in her own primetime network series. (Several actresses portrayed a maid on ABC's Beulah in the early 1950s.) Julia, which premiered in September 1968, finished No. 7 in the ratings in the first of its three seasons, and Carroll received an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for her work.While recuperating after starring on Broadway in Agnes of God, Carroll had found herself digging Dynasty and lobbied producer Aaron Spelling for a role on his series. As the sultry fashionista Dominique Deveraux — the first prominently featured African American character on a primetime soap opera — Carroll played a much edgier character for three seasons on ABC's Dynasty and its spinoff The Colbys, delightfully dueling with fellow diva Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins). In addition to her daughter, survivors include her grandchildren, August and Sydney.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, the Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning author, died Aug. 5 at age 88 after a short illness. "She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing," Morrison's family said in a statement. Beginning with her 1970 debut novel The Bluest Eye, Morrison quickly established herself as a strong, distinctive voice of her generation. Morrison's second novel, Sula, released in 1973, was nominated for a National Book Award. Her third, 1977's Song of Solomon, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. Song of Solomon put Morrison in the national spotlight, but it was her fifth novel, Beloved, published in 1987, that proved to be her most celebrated work. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and in 1998, the book was adapted into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993, the first black woman to be so honored. Morrison published 11 novels in total, including 1981's Tar Baby, 1992's Jazz, 1997's Paradise, 2003's Love, 2008's A Mercy, 2012's Home and 2015's God Help the Child. In May 2012, Morrison received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Lee Mendelson
Lee Mendelson, the six-time Emmy winner who produced more than 60 TV specials, films and other projects featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Peanuts gang died on Christmas Day at the age of 86 of congestive heart failure at his home in Hillsborough, California, after a long battle with cancer, his son Jason Mendelson told The Hollywood Reporter. Working often with the late Bill Melendez (the only animator permitted by Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz to work with the iconic characters), Mendelson collected his first Emmy in 1966 for A Charlie Brown Christmas — he wrote the lyrics to "Christmastime Is Here" for that one — and his last in 2016 for It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown. (His son Jason shared the final Emmy with him). Mendelson also wrote and directed for the franchise and amassed 29 Emmy noms during his career — 26 for his work with Peanuts characters — while earning a pair of Grammy noms as well. His landmark résumé included 1966's It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, 1967's You're in Love, Charlie Brown, the Oscar-nominated A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1971), 1973's A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, 1975's You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, 1976's It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown and 1980's She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown. Mendelson also brought to air 12 primetime Garfield specials and a 121-episode series Garfield and Friends with Garfield creator Jim Davis and Mark Evanier; a series of Mother Goose and Grimm animated shows with cartoonist Mike Peters; three primetime Cathy specials with cartoonist Cathy Guisewite; and the first two Barbar the Elephant specials. He won two other Emmys, in 1984 and 1987, for producing Garfield and Cathy programs. Survivors include his wife, Ploenta; children Glenn, Lynda, Jason and Sean; stepson Ken; and grandchildren Palmer, Lena, Kyler, Logan, Jillian, Talyn, Ronan and Zander.
Danny Aiello
Danny Aiello, the New York actor and former Greyhound bus employee best known for his Oscar-nominated turn as Sal the pizza-joint owner in Do the Right Thing and for portraying Cher's lovelorn suitor in Moonstruck died on Dec. 12 at the age of 86. His rep Tracey Miller told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor died after a brief illness in a medical facility close to his home in New Jersey. Aiello, who didn't start acting until he was 35, often played loathsome types, as in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), where he starred as Mia Farrow's gruff, drunken husband. In a similar vein, he battled with Paul Newman in Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), portraying a crooked cop who tosses a kid off a roof. In The Godfather: Part II (1974), Aiello played gangster Tony Rosato (his line, "Michael Corleone says hello," said as he garrots Frankie Pentangeli, was improvised), and he appeared as the neighborhood bookie who takes bets from Allen's character in The Front (1976). A real charmer, Aiello also portrayed Lee Harvey Oswald killer Jack Ruby in Ruby (1992), starred for Paul Mazursky as a flailing Hollywood director in The Pickle (1993) and played it for laughs alongside Ellen Burstyn, Olympia Dukakis and Diane Ladd in The Cemetery Club (1993). The movie he always said he was most fond of was the New York-set 29th Street (1991), in which Anthony LaPaglia played his son. Survivors also include nephew Michael Kay, a former newspaperman and now play-by-play man for the New York Yankees. (Aiello said he "pulled some strings" to help Kay get a job with the New York Post years ago.)
Don Imus
Don Imus, the radio personality whose insult humor and savage comedy catapulted him to a long-lasting and controversial career, died on Dec. 27 at 79. His three-hour radio program, Imus in the Morning, was widely popular, especially with the over-25 male demographic. Imus died at Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in College Station, Texas, after being hospitalized on Christmas Eve, a representative said. The cause of death was not disclosed. Imus in the Morning, which debuted on WNBC-AM in New York in 1971, most recently reached radio listeners via Citadel Media and was simulcast on the Fox Business Network. Imus was loved or hated for his caustic loudmouth. Outspoken in an age of political correctness, his often coarse satire offended sensibilities. Yet his listeners included those whom he often ridiculed. His call-in guests included President Clinton, Dan Rather, Tim Russert, Bill Bradley, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani and political analyst Jeff Greenfield. He sparked national outcry in 2007 when he made derogatory, racist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team. CBS Radio and MSNBC then dropped his show. He rebounded by signing a multiyear contract with the Fox Business Network in 2009 to simulcast Imus in the Morning from 6-9 a.m., with Fox anchors appearing during the program. He also performed stand-up for a time, garnering favorable reviews from such unlikely reviewers as TheNew York Times. Imus is survived by his wife, Deirdre; sons Wyatt and Lt. Zachary Don Cates; and daughters Nadine, Ashley, Elizabeth and Toni.
Sue Lyon
Sue Lyon, the titular "nymphet" in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita died at the age of 73 on Dec. 26 in Los Angeles. A friend, Phil Syracopoulos, told the The New York Times that she had been in "declining health" for a while, but a cause of death was not provided. Born in 1946 in Davenport, Iowa, Lyon was a model with two acting credits to her name when she beat out a reported 800 other actors for the part of Dolores Haze in Kubrick's Lolita, a project that was controversial from the start. Seven years old at the time of the film adaptation's release, Lolita divided critics over its depiction of a pedophile's relationship with a 12-year-old girl. After its initial publication in 1955 in France, officials in the U.K. and France banned sales of the book, which was finally published in the U.S. in 1958. In the face of naysayers, Lolita nevertheless became a bestseller and cultural sensation. Lyon shot to fame after playing Haze and, two years later, appeared in John Huston's Night of the Iguana. She also starred in John Ford's 1966 film 7 Women, 1967's Tony Rome and 1970's Four Rode Out and Evel Knievel, among a few other titles. Most recently, Lyon appeared in 1980's Alligator as an "ABC Newswoman." In her personal life, Lyon married five times, to actor and filmmaker Hampton Fancher (Blade Runner); photographer and football coach Roland Harrison; Cotton Adamson, who was a convicted murderer at the time of their marriage; Edward Weathers; and radio engineer Richard Rudman. Lyon is survived by her daughter with Harrison, Nona.
Valerie Harper
Valerie Harper, the resilient sitcom star whose nine-season run in the 1970s as wisecracking straight-shooter Rhoda Morgenstern made her one of the most beloved TV actresses of her era, died Aug. 30 at age 80 after a courageous battle with cancer. Harper collected four Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe for playing the brash New Yorker on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then on her own spinoff series Rhoda. Cristina Cacciotti, Harper's daughter, wrote on Twitter that her father, Tony, asked to share this statement: "My beautiful caring wife of nearly 40 years has passed away at 10:06 a.m. after years of fighting cancer. She will never, ever be forgotten. Rest In Peace, mia Valeria." The actress was told by doctors in January 2013 that she had leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, and was given as little as three months to live. Eight months later, she revealed that her cancer was near remission. Harper allowed NBC News to film her for a documentary and accepted an invitation to appear on ABC's Dancing With the Stars. Her film credits include Li’l Abner (1959), Freebie and the Bean (1974), The Last Married Couple in America (1980) and Blame It on Rio (1984). She reunited with Moore for the ABC telefilm Mary and Rhoda (2000) and has worked on Desperate Housewives. More recently, she had guest appearances on 2 Broke Girls, Melissa & Joey and Hot in Cleveland.
Shelley Morrison
Shelley Morrison, who played the cranky El Salvadoran maid Rosario Salazar on Will & Grace,died at the age of 83. Morrison died on Dec. 1 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from heart failure after a brief illness, publicist Lori DeWaal told the Associated Press. Morrison also portrayed the earnest Puerto Rican Sister Sixto, who drew laughs for her attempts to grasp the English language, on three seasons of the 1967-70 ABC comedy The Flying Nun, starring Sally Field. Originally signed for just one episode of Will & Grace — the NBC comedy's first-season finale — Morrison stuck around for 67 more installments and remained with the show until its conclusion in May 2006. Morrison — she changed her name in the mid-'50s so she wouldn't be limited to ethnic roles — made her onscreen debut in 1961 on the ABC series Adventures in Paradise, then appeared on such shows as Dr. Kildare, The Farmer's Daughter,The Fugitive and My Favorite Martian. She played a housekeeper in the low-budget Castle of Evil (1966), the wily Linda Little Trees on Laredo, an NBC Western, and a work friend of Stella Stevens' in How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968). Her film résumé also included Divorce American Style (1967), Funny Girl (1969), Mackenna's Gold (1969), Blume in Love (1973), Rabbit Test (1978), Max Dugan Returns (1983), Troop Beverly Hills (1989), Fools Rush In (1997) and Shark Tale (2004). More recently, Morrison had voice roles on the Disney Channel animated series Handy Manny (as Mrs. Portello) and in the 2012 film Foodfight! Survivors include her husband, writer-director Walter Dominguez (Weaving the Past: Journey of Discovery), whom she married in 1973. They followed the Native American traditions of the Lakota Sioux and lived for decades in the same L.A. apartment building that she and her parents moved into (and then owned) when she was a child.
Rene Auberjonois
René Auberjonois, the prolific actor best known for his roles on the television shows Benson and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and his part in the 1970 film M*A*S*H playing Father Mulcahy, died at age 79. The actor died Dec. 8 at his home in Los Angeles of metastatic lung cancer, his son, Remy Auberjonois, told the Associated Press. Auberjonois worked constantly as a character actor in several golden ages, from the dynamic theater of the 1960s to the cinema renaissance of the 1970s to the prime period of network television in the 1980s and '90s — and each generation knew him for something different. For film fans of the 1970s, he was Father John Mulcahy, the military chaplain who played straight man to the doctors' antics in M*A*S*H. It was his first significant movie role and the first of several for director Robert Altman. For sitcom watchers of the 1980s, he was Clayton Runnymede Endicott III, the hopelessly highbrow chief of staff at a governor's mansion on Benson, the ABC series whose title character was a butler played by Robert Guillaume. And for sci-fi fans of the 1990s and convention-goers ever since, he was Odo, the shape-shifting Changeling and head of space-station security on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Late in his career, Auberjonois would work with independent filmmakers, including the artful director Kelly Reichardt, for whom he appeared in 2016's Certain Women and 2019's First Cow, his final role. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Judith, and their two children, Tessa and Remy.
Anna Karina
Anna Karina, the French New Wave starlet who rose to international acclaim in films directed by her then-husband Jean-Luc Godard died at the age of 79. Karina died Saturday, Dec. 14 at 2:38 p.m. in Paris of cancer, her agent, Laurent Balandras, told The Hollywood Reporter. Her husband, Dennis Berry, was by her side. She and Godard were married from 1961 to 1964, and she served as his muse in such memorable works as A Woman Is a Woman (1961) — for which she received a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival — Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965) and Alphaville (1965). The actress' productive career was not limited to the movies of Godard, however. Karina accumulated more than 50 feature credits, working with other major auteurs like Jacques Rivette, Luchino Visconti, Chris Marker, Volker Schlöndorff and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She also headlined a number of English-language productions, including Guy Green's The Magus (1968), J. Lee Thompson's Before Winter Comes (1968), George Cukor's Justine (1969), Tony Richardson's Laughter in the Dark (1969) and Jean-Yves Prate's Regina Roma (1982), in which she starred alongside Anthony Quinn and Ava Gardner.
Peter Fonda
Peter Fonda, who broke out from under the legendary Fonda family name with Easy Rider, died on Friday, Aug. 16, at his home in Los Angeles, according to his rep. He was 79. Fonda, the son of acting legend Henry Fonda, the younger brother of Jane Fonda and the father of Bridget Fonda, received an Academy Award nomination as a screenwriter for Easy Rider, which he shared with Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern. Fonda and Hopper dreamed up the idea of two motorcyclists who hit it big with a drug deal and take off across the country, ostensibly to attend Mardi Gras. Their trek was "in search of America," emblematic of the '60s zeitgeist of rebellion and drug experimentation. Featuring Jack Nicholson as their alcoholic, back rider/lawyer, the film was a low-budget, colossal hit. Fonda produced Easy Rider for about $384,00, with Columbia Pictures picking up distribution rights. Shot in roughly seven weeks between L.A. and New Orleans, it introduced the studios to the bright, educated youth market, and Fonda paved the way for independent filmmakers. For the cataclysmic year of 1969, Easy Rider was a road movie that accomplished cinematically what Jack Kerouac's On the Road did for literature. It won a standing ovation at Cannes and the festival's best director award. To a generation of young people, Fonda was "Captain America" and a poster-boy for the age. With his cool shades, leather jacket with the flag stitched on back, he sat perched atop a chrome-laden, high-handle-bar cycle, and the poster for the film was ubiquitous in college dorms in 1969 and the early '70s. As a symbol for rebellious youth, Fonda, along with Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Muhammad Ali and John Lennon, were among the most revered of countercultural poster boys. Nearly 30 years after Easy Rider, Fonda's performance in Ulee's Gold (1997) as a beekeeper and sullen Vietnam War veteran whose family had nearly fallen apart earned him a best actor Oscar nom. Fonda followed up Easy Rider by starring and directing The Hired Hand (1971), a feminist Western that his Pando Company made for Universal. He then helmed Idaho Transfer (1973), a message film about the environment. He directed and starred opposite Brooke Shields in Wanda Nevada (1979), which featured a cameo by his father. For a period after Easy Rider, Fonda lived on an 82-foot sailboat, essentially having dropped out. "I was writing during that period, and I got about as much writing done as a child in a sandbox," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1984. In the early '80s, Fonda appeared in a humdrum batch of projects: He played as charismatic cult leader in Split Image (1982), a freewheeling adventurer in Dance of the Dwarfs (1983) and a suicidal father in the 1985 NBC movie A Reason to Live. Fonda was born in New York City on Feb. 23, 1939. As a child, he attended a number of boarding schools in the Northeast. When at home, he and Jane spent most of their time with their maternal grandmother. In 1950, his mother, Frances, committed suicide on her 42nd birthday; Jane and Peter were told she died of a heart attack. Throughout his adult life, he openly referred to an uneasy relationship with his dad, who died in August 1982. His father remarried Susan Blanchard, the stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II, but she left him after five years of marriage. Subsequently, Peter was sent to live with relatives in Nebraska. He enrolled at the University of Omaha but quit school during his third year and became an apprentice at the Cecilwood Theatre in Fishkill, New York. After a year in New York, Fonda made his Broadway debut, playing an Army private in Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole. It was an auspicious turn: He received the Daniel Blum and the New York Drama Critics Award as the most promising young actor of 1961. He was signed to a personal contract with producer Ross Hunter to produce and to act. It gave him the chance to leave Manhattan, which he loathed. "New Yorkers don't know what the people who live in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado know: the reality of this world, what it is made of, the reality of days, nights, weather, season, dirt, air, food, love." Groomed to be the next Dean Jones, Fonda made his film debut opposite Sandra Dee in Tammy and the Doctor (1963). He followed up with The Victors (1963) and Lilith (1964), in which he played a suicidal mental patient. He then latched on with Roger Corman's low-budget enterprise and starred as biker Heavenly Blues in The Wild Angels (1966). He followed that with another Corman opus, The Trip (1967), a paean to LSD that was written by Nicholson and featured Hopper playing a freaked-out character. The film was widely popular among college-age students and meshed with the counter-cultural mindset of the day. Not content with cranking out cheapo motorcycle vehicles for Corman, the threesome decided to do "their own thing," in the parlance of the times, and that turned out to be Easy Rider. Fonda also starred in such features as Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) and Race With the Devil (1975) — where he starred with Warren Oates as two family men who take on a band of devil worshippers in Texas — and the Canadian horror film Spasms (1983). In addition to his daughter Bridget, Fonda had a son Justin, by his first wife, Susan Brewer. With his second wife, Betty Crockett McGuane, the pair had a combined family, including her son Thomas McGuane.
Rip Torn
Rip Torn, the tenacious, temperamental Texan whose much-admired career was highlighted by his brilliant turn as Artie the producer on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show, died on July 9 at the age of 88. Torn, who was nominated for an Oscar for portraying the hard-drinking father Marsh opposite Mary Steenburgen in the 1984 Martin Ritt drama Cross Creek, died peacefully at his home in Lakeville, Connecticut, his publicist announced. His wife, Amy Wright — an actress known for Stardust Memories and The Accidental Tourist — and his daughters, Katie and Angelica, were by his side. Torn wowed critics as the fiercely protective Artie (his last name was never mentioned during the series) on TheLarry Sanders Show, which starred Garry Shandling as a neurotic late-night TV talk-show host. The groundbreaking sitcom ran from 1992 to 1998, and Torn received an Emmy nomination for every one of its six seasons, winning in 1996. His character was said to be based on Fred De Cordova, the longtime producer of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. A few years after the end of Larry Sanders, Torn's unpredictability and intensity were smartly channeled on NBC's 30 Rock, where he played Don Geiss, the amped-up CEO of General Electric and Jack Donaghy's (Alec Baldwin) boss. He received another Emmy nom in 2008, the ninth of his career. In other comedic turns, he portrayed Zed, the head of the top-secret government organization, in the first two Men in Black films; had fun as Patches O'Houlihan, a legend of his sport, in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004); and played King Looney in the sword-and-sandals spoof The Legend of Awesomest Maximus (2011). As good as he was in comedy, Torn was at his best in dark dramas. He earned a Tony nomination in 1960 for playing Thomas J. Finley Jr. in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth and was the shifty blackmailer William Jefferson Slade in The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Onscreen debauchery was a specialty. He played a psychiatrist filming the women he sleeps with in the pornographic Coming Apart (1969); was a womanizing college professor who becomes David Bowie's confidant in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); and stood out as an egomaniacal record producer who seduces a young blonde in Forty Shades of Blue (2005). Torn was married from 1963 to 1987 to the acclaimed actress Geraldine Page, whom he met at the Actors Studio in New York. One of the leading acting couples of their era, they founded the off-Broadway Sanctuary Theater Workshop in 1976. They were separated when she died of a heart attack in 1987 at age 62. Torn also helped launch the Oscar-winning career of his cousin, actress Sissy Spacek, who was the daughter of his Uncle Ed. He was born Elmore Rual Torn Jr. on Feb. 6, 1931, in Temple, Texas. All the men in his family nicknamed themselves "Rip." He enrolled at Texas A&M to study agriculture but transferred to the University of Texas at Austin to pursue architecture. Soon, he "defected," as he put it, to the drama department, where he was taught by Shakespearean scholar B. Iden Payne. Torn then apprenticed at the Dallas Institute of Performing Arts, studying under Baruch Lumet, the father of director Sidney Lumet. After a two-year stint in the Army, Torn moved to New York and trained under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, where he met Page during a speech class (he was separated from his first wife, Ann Wedgeworth, at the time). He drew the attention of director Elia Kazan, who regarded him as the next James Dean or Marlon Brando. Kazan gave Torn his first big opportunity — as the understudy to Ben Gazzara as the booze-swilling Brick in the original 1955 production of Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Kazan later gave him small roles in Baby Doll (1956) and A Face in the Crowd (1957) and then cast him opposite Paul Newman and Page in Sweet Bird of Youth. (All three reprised their roles for the 1963 film.) Torn landed his first major movie role with Time Limit (1957), a court-martial drama in which he played a prisoner-of-war survivor who cracks on the witness stand. He went on to appear in another military-set drama, Pork Chop Hill (1959), and appeared as Judas in King of Kings (1961). Torn is also survived by his twin sons Tony and Jon; another daughter, Claire; his sister, Patricia; and his grandchildren, Elijah, Tana, Emeris and Hannah.
Doris Day
Doris Day, the fresh-faced singer and actress who was a ray of sunshine during the 1950s and ’60s, when she reigned as the queen of the box office, died May 13 at age 97. Day, an extremely popular pop singer and jazz vocalist before Warner Bros. brought her to Hollywood, died at her Carmel Valley, California, home surrounded by a few close friends, the Doris Day Animal Foundation announced in a news release. One of the most beloved movie stars of all time, Day was widely embraced for her ever-optimistic nature and innocent charm. Among her more than three dozen movies, she typically played a cheerful woman with a buttery voice and winning smile. With her clean-cut blond looks, Day was accessibly gorgeous, with audiences relating to her down-home demeanor. Most associated with the song, “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be),” the Academy Award-winning tune she first performed in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the Cincinnati native received her only Oscar nomination for starring as a career woman who falls for ladies man Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk (1959).
John Witherspoon
John Witherspoon, the prolific comic actor who starred in the cult Friday franchise as well as his long stint on The Wayans Bros. and The Tracy Morgan Show, died on Oct. 30 at the age of 77. A statement from Witherspoon's family posted on his official Twitter account confirmed that the comedian had died. "It is with deep sadness we have to tweet this, but our husband & father John Witherspoon has passed away. He was a Legend in the entertainment industry, and a father figure to all who watched him over the years. We love you “POPS” always & forever." In a long film and TV career that spanned five decades, Witherspoon also had major roles in cult animated show The Boondocks (voicing the role of Gramps) and parts in cult films such as House Party and Meteor Man as well as Hollywood movies like Vampire in Brooklyn, Bulworth and Dr. Doolittle 2. But on the big screen, Witherspoon is most immediately associated with his hilarious role as Ice Cube's dog-catcher father in F. Gary Gray's Friday (1995)and its sequels Next Friday (2000) and Friday After Next (2002). Witherspoon was set to reprise his role in Last Friday, but the project was in preproduction and had yet to start filming. On TV, Witherspoon played the memorable role ofJohn "Pops" Williams on The Wayans Bros. show that aired on The WB from 1995-99. He is survived by his wife, Angela, and his sons, JD and Alexander.
Luke Perry
Luke Perry, the Riverdale star and actor best known for his role as Dylan McKay on Beverly Hills, 90210,died on March 4 after suffering from a stroke the week prior, his rep confirmed to THR. He was 52.
His rep Arnold Robinson told THR: "He was surrounded by his children Jack and Sophie, fiancé Wendy Madison Bauer, ex-wife Minnie Sharp, mother Ann Bennett, step-father Steve Bennett, brother Tom Perry, sister Amy Coder, and other close family and friends."
Perry, born Coy Luther Perry III in Mansfield, Ohio, had initially auditioned for the role of Steve Sanders (played by Ian Ziering) before being cast as Dylan McKay, the resident bad boy of the zip code in 90210. "I'm going to be linked with him until I die, but that's actually just fine. I created Dylan McKay. He's mine," the actor once said about the career-defining role.
John Singleton
John Singleton, the pioneering writer-director of Boyz N the Hood, who traveled a short distance but sure came a long way as he blazed a trail from South Central to Hollywood, died April 29, his family announced. He was 51. "John passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends," they said in a statement. Singleton had gone to Cedars seeking medical care April 17 and was there when he suffered a stroke in the intensive care unit, his family said three days later. They said Monday morning he would be removed from life support. "This was an agonizing decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John's doctors," they said. In his all-too-brief career, Singleton directed just eight films after his startling debut, Boyz N the Hood (1991), for which he received Oscar nominations for original screenplay and directing. He was the first African-American to have been nominated in the latter category and, at 24, the youngest person named as well. He would become a major influence to young African-American filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Barry Jenkins. Singleton also wrote and directed the romantic drama Poetic Justice (1993), starring Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson; Higher Learning (1995), about three incoming college freshman (Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson and Michael Rapaport); the remake of Shaft (2000), starring Samuel L. Jackson as the iconic private eye; and Baby Boy (2001), a coming-of-age tale set in South Central and starring Tyrese Gibson. Singleton also helmed Rosewood (1997), a period piece about a racist attack; 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), the second installment in the high-octane franchise; Four Brothers (2005), with Gibson, Mark Wahlberg, André Benjamin and Garrett Hedlund as unlikely family members; and Abduction (2011), a thriller starring Taylor Lautner. As a producer, Singleton said he used $4 million of his own money to back Hustle & Flow (2005). That film earned an Academy Award nom for lead actor Terrence Howard and captured the original song trophy for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." Singleton's most recent project was Snowfall, the FX crime drama that he co-created with Eric Amadio and Dave Andron. It was renewed for a third season that was set to begin in September.
Albert Finney
Finney, the esteemed British actor and five-time Oscar nominee known for his shape-shifting work in such films as Tom Jones, The Dresser, Murder on the Orient Express and Erin Brockovich, died at the age of 82 on Feb. 8. Finney's family told the Associated Press that he "passed away peacefully after a short illness with those closest to him by his side." He died the day before at a hospital in London after being diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2007. One of the godfathers of modern British cinema, Finney mixed film, TV and stage performances throughout a standout career that spanned six decades. He never succumbed to the allure of screen stardom and was given BAFTA's Academy Fellowship award (the equivalent of a lifetime Oscar) in 2001. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed best actor Oscar noms on Finney for his roles in Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express; The Dresser (1983); and for Under the Volcano (1984). Finney received another Oscar nom, for best supporting actor, for portraying the crusading California environmental lawyer Ed Masry in Erin Brockovich (2000). His other feature credits include Stephen Frears' Gumshoe (1971), Wolfen (1981), Looker (1981), Shoot the Moon (1982), Rich in Love (1992), The Browning Version (1994), A Man of No Importance (1994), Breakfast of Champions (1999), Traffic (2000), Big Fish (2003), Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006) and Lumet's last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007).
Rutger Hauer
Rutger Hauer, the rugged Dutch actor who starred as renegade replicant leader Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, died July 19 at age 75. Hauer died at his home in the Netherlands of an undisclosed illness, his agent, Steve Kenis, told The Hollywood Reporter. Hauer made his Hollywood debut opposite Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks (1981) and went on to appear on the big screen in such films as The Osterman Weekend (1983), Ladyhawke (1985), The Hitcher (1986), Wanted — Dead or Alive (1986), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Batman Begins (2005), Sin City (2005), Hobo With a Shotgun (2011), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) and The Sisters Brothers (2018). He began his career in 1969 on the Dutch TV series Floris, directed by countryman and director Paul Verhoeven, who then cast him in Turkish Delight (1973) and Soldier of Orange (1977). In Germany, Turkish Delight "played next to Cabaret and Last Tango in Paris, and it outplayed them!" Hauer toldTHR's Scott Roxborough in February 2018. Hauer played a sculptor in the film, which was nominated for the foreign-language Oscar. He really made a name for himself with his turn as Batty and the character's "Tears in the Rain" speech — which he improvised — in the original Blade Runner. Hauer also won a Golden Globe in 1988 for his work on the TV film Escape From Sobibor andrecurred as the supernatural creature Niall Brigant on HBO's True Blood. He was known as an environmentalist and AIDS awareness activist. Survivors include his wife, Ineke; they met in 1968 and were married in 1985.
Russi Taylor
Actress Russi Taylor, best known for voicing the character of Minnie Mouse, died July 26 at age 75. "Minnie Mouse lost her voice with the passing of Russi Taylor," Disney CEO Bob Iger said in the statement. "For more than 30 years, Minnie and Russi worked together to entertain millions around the world — a partnership that made Minnie a global icon and Russi a Disney Legend beloved by fans everywhere." Born on May 4, 1944 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Taylor began her career in 1980 with The World of Strawberry Shortcake. She auditioned for the role of Minnie Mouse in 1986, going on to voice the character in a slate of theatrical films, TV series, animated shorts and theme park experiences. Her final award recognition for the role came in 2018, when Taylor was nominated for an Emmy for voicing her signature character in Mickey Mouse. The actress was married to Wayne Allwine, the voice of Mickey, until his death in 2009. Taylor also lent her voice talents to numerous other characters, including the roles of Huey, Dewey and Louie in the Ducktales animated series. Her voice can also be heard in The Smurfs, Paddington Bear, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and more. On The Simpsons, Taylor voiced twins Sherri and Terri and the character of Martin Prince in over 100 episodes, as well as in The Simpsons Movie.
Carol Channing
Carol Channing, the indomitable personality who electrified Broadway audiences with her energetic performances in the original musical comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly!, died at the age of 97 on Jan. 1. The three-time Tony Award winner, who also earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), died of natural causes at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, publicist Harlan Boll announced. With her husky voice — one of the most easily recognized and most imitated in the world — and gigantic saucer eyes, poofy platinum bob and ear-to-ear, pearly white grin, Channing was a larger-than-life luminary. Fans could not resist this daffy blonde. In Hello, Dolly!, which opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway in January 1964 and ran through December 1970, Channing crackled as meddling matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi. The role was written for Ethel Merman, but she was too busy and turned it down. Featuring a score by Jerry Herman and book by Michael Stewart and based on Thornton Wilder's 1954 stage play The Matchmaker, Hello, Dolly!, produced by David Merrick, amassed 10 Tonys, including one for best musical and another for Channing as best actress in a musical. Channing would play Dolly more than 5,000 times on Broadway (she also starred in revivals that opened in 1978 and 1995) and on the road, never needing a stand-in except once — when she missed half a performance in Kalamazoo, Michigan, because of food poisoning.
Carol Lynley
Carol Lynley, whose ethereal look captivated the public in commercials, movies and TV, died on Sept. 3. She was 77. Lynley died at her home in California following a heart attack, a source close to the family said. Lynley garnered national attention as a teen when she appeared in a number of Clairol and Pepsodent commercials. In 1955, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine, which reportedly inspired Walt Disney to cast her in the family drama The Light in the Forest (1958). Parlaying her modeling and commercial success into an acting career, Lynley embodied the waifish ingenue. She hit her career peak in 1965 when she posed for Playboy and starred in the thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing, in which she played the mother of a kidnapped child. That same year, Lynley limned the blonde bombshell Jean Harlow in one of two biopics released that year titled Harlow. In her film roles, Lynley personified an image as the blonde-girl-next-door gone bad. Following Light in the Forest, she was nominated for a Golden Globe as most promising newcomer — female. Her movie roles also capitalized on her brand of sensuality, including the box office hit The Poseidon Adventure (1972), in which she played an insecure singer, and the cattle-drive opus The Last Sunset (1961), in which she co-starred with Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone.
Denise Nickerson
Denise Nickerson, the child star who played Violet Beauregarde in the Gene Wilder-starring film adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, died on July 10 at the age of 62. She was taken off life support after she suffered a seizure. Her family announced her death in a Facebook post, which read, "She's gone." Earlier Wednesday, the family shared, "They just took off all the equipment. None of it was helping, but making her only more uncomfortable. We're telling her it's okay to let go." According to previous posts, the actress had pneumonia before she suffered a seizure, which complicated her health issue. On Tuesday night, her family created a GoFundMe to help cover her medical costs. In 2018, Nickerson also suffered a severe stroke and was treated in the ICU. Her family also kept fans updated on Facebook at the time and expressed worry about how to treat her. Born in New York City in 1957, Nickerson had her first major acting role when she played Amy Jennings and Nora Collins on Dark Shadows between 1968-70. When she was 13, she was cast as the gum-snapping Violet Beauregarde, who has bad manners but a competitive edge due to her participation in gum-chewing competitions; she is eventually second to leave the story's eponymous chocolate factory. In 2016, Nickerson remembered Wilder, who died in 2016, during her time making the Mel Stuart-directed 1971 film. “I’m a very fortunate lady to have been chosen to be a part of something that brings smiles to so many faces,” she told People at the time. “And working with Gene, he talked in a very soft whisper, nothing much furled his feathers, you know? He was such a kind, tenderhearted man. And for him to put up with us, my God what patience he must’ve needed for five of us running around [on set].” After starring in titles including The Electric Company, Search for Tomorrow and Zero to Sixty, Nickerson left the business in 1978 to pursue nursing. The GoFundMe page that Nickerson's family set up is now raising money in part to fulfill her final wish — to turn her ashes into a piece of glass art.
Nipsey Hussle
Rapper and community activist Nipsey Hussle was shot and killed on March 31 outside his South Los Angeles clothing store. He was 33. Hailing from Crenshaw, Los Angeles, the rapper, real name Ermias Ashgedom, was nominated for a Grammy for best rap album earlier this year for his debut studio album, Victory Lap. Previously, Hussle had built up a sizeable underground following after releasing a series of critically acclaimed mixtapes, beginning with 2010's The Marathon. In 2013, he came to mainstream prominence for his grassroots viral marketing campaign behind his 1,000 copies only mixtape Crenshaw, charging fans $100 for a physical copy. Rapper Jay-Z purchased 100 copies of Crenshaw, which sold out within 24 hours. Hussle followed a similar tactic for 2015's Mailbox Money, offering fans only 100 physical copies for $1,000 each, which again sold out in rapid time. Hussle also co-owned a popular clothing label, Marathon Clothing, that is known for its distinctive Crenshaw logos. Hussle was also well known for his commitment to his local community, investing time and money into educational and business programs. In February, a day before the release of Victory Lap, he opened Vector 90, an innovative co-working space and STEM center in Crenshaw. He was also an advocate and community partner for Destination Crenshaw, the new outdoor music, arts and culture event that celebrates black Los Angeles that will run along the 1.3 mile stretch of Crenshaw/LAX light-rail line. He had a child with actress Lauren London as well as children from previous relationships.
Tim Conway
Tim Conway, the cherub-faced comedian who became a TV star for playing the bumbling Ensign Parker on McHale's Navy and for cracking up his helpless colleagues on camera on The Carol Burnett Show,died on May 14. at age 85. A five-time Emmy Award winner, Conway died Tuesday at 8:45 a.m. at a health care facility in Los Angeles, his rep told The Hollywood Reporter. According to recent reports, he was suffering from dementia and unable to speak after undergoing brain surgery in September. For four seasons beginning in October 1962, the impish actor provided the heart and a lion's share of the laughs on ABC's McHale's Navy as the sweet, befuddled second-in-command on a PT boat full of connivers and con men led by the show's title character, played by Ernest Borgnine. Conway's popularity skyrocketed after he joined CBS' The Carol Burnett Show in 1975 for good after making numerous guest appearances on the program (he would be a regular on four of its 11 seasons). His array of goofy characters, combined with his impeccable comic timing, helped make the show a classic. He won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for performing and another Emmy for his writing on the series. "I'm heartbroken," Burnett said in a statement. "He was one in a million, not only as a brilliant comedian but as a loving human being. I cherish the times we had together both on the screen and off. He'll be in my heart forever." When the series ended its run in 1978, Conway embarked on another string of theatrical features, including They Went That-a-Way and That-a-Way (1978), The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979), The Prize Fighter (1979), The Private Eyes (1980) and The Longshot (1986). With the exception of the Apple Dumpling sequel, Conway also wrote the screenplays.Conway was married twice. In 1961, he wed Mary Anne Dalton. During their 17 years together, they had six children, including L.A. radio personality Tim Conway Jr. In 1984, he married Charlene Conway, and they had one child. His wife and a daughter from his first marriage, Kelly, sparred in court in March over whether he should be placed under a conservatorship. He also is survived by his sons Patrick, Jamie, Corey and Seann in addition to Tim.
Cameron Boyce
Actor Cameron Boyce, best known for his roles in Disney Channel's The Descendants and Jessie, died on July 7 at the age of 20. In a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, a rep for Boyce's family said that he died due to an "ongoing medical condition." The spokesperson continued, "It is with a profoundly heavy heart that we report that this morning we lost Cameron," revealing that the young star had "passed away in his sleep due to a seizure which was a result of an ongoing medical condition for which he was being treated. Boyce, a Los Angeles native, also starred in the 2010 Adam Sandler film Grown Ups and made appearances in other Disney Channel hits such as Austin & Ally and Liv and Maddie. Not long after news of his death broke, Boyce's famous friends and former co-stars took to social media to pay tribute. On Boyce's last Instagram post, a profile shot shared earlier this weekend, Skai Jackson — his Jessie co-star — commented, "love you. Forever in my heart." "Cameron Boyce. Over the past decade I’ve met many actors, but you always stood out," Gregg Sulkin posted. "Yes you were talented. But most importantly, you were kind. You were humble. You had a special spark. May that spark shine bright in heaven. RIP Cameron. All my prayers & love are with you & your family right now." Zendaya tweeted, "Absolutely heartbreaking, my heart goes out to his friends and family." Added Descendants director Kenny Ortega, "Peter Pan, The forever boy! Love you Cam." Walt Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger wrote: "The Walt Disney Company mourns the loss of #CameronBoyce, who was a friend to so many of us, and filled with so much talent, heart and life, and far too young to die. Our prayers go out to his family and his friends." For his part, Sandler posted a black-and-white photo of Boyce on Twitter with a touching message. "Too young. Too sweet. Too funny. Just the nicest, most talented, and most decent kid around. Loved that kid. Cared so much about his family. Cared so much about the world. Thank you, Cameron, for all you gave to us," he wrote. "So much more was on the way. All our hearts are broken. Thinking of your amazing family and sending our deepest condolences."
Peter Mayhew
Peter Mayhew, who became known to fans worldwide as the lovable Wookiee Chewbacca in the Star Wars galaxy of films, has died. He was 74. The actor died April 30 in his North Texas home with his family by his side. His official Twitter account shared the news Thursday. Mayhew had undergone spinal surgery in July in an effort to improve his mobility. The London native played Chewbacca in Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), Revenge of the Sith (2005) and The Force Awakens (2015). Mayhew had done some minor acting and was working as a hospital orderly when he tried out for the part of Chewbacca. He got the role based on his physique, as writer-director George Lucas was in desperate need of someone who would be able to play taller than Darth Vader. (In his prime, Mayhew stood 7-foot-3.) After wrapping the first Star Wars, he went back to work as an orderly and did not leave the job for good until the release of Return of the Jedi, after which he made a living off of Chewbacca, becoming a favorite on the fan convention circuit. While Mayhew did not provide the voice of the 200-year-old Wookiee (that was created by sound designer Ben Burtt), many credit the body language and expressiveness of the eyes the actor brought to the role in making Chewbacca a beloved character. "Peter was a wonderful man. He was the closest any human being could be to a Wookiee: big heart, gentle nature … and I learned to always let him win. He was a good friend and I'm saddened by his passing," George Lucas said in a statement.
Peggy Lipton
Actress Peggy Lipton, known for Mod Squad and Twin Peaks, died on May 11 at the age of 72. She was reportedly suffering from colon cancer. Previously married to composer and record producer Quincy Jones, Lipton was the mother of actress Rashida Jones. The Los Angeles Times was first to report the news after Rashida and sister Kidada informed the newspaper of Lipton's death. "She made her journey peacefully with her daughters and nieces by her side," said the daughters in a statement to the Times. "We feel so lucky every moment we spent with her." Born in New York City in 1946, Lipton began her acting career in television in 1965, appearing on Bewitched and The Magical World of Disney, among many other shows. She gained recognition on Mod Squad, taking on the role of Julie Barnes from 1968-1973. During that time, Lipton was nominated for four Golden Globes and won in 1971. In 1989, she began acting on Twin Peaks, which was followed by numerous roles in film and television, including When in Rome, and recently, A Dog's Purpose. Lipton's most recent role was a reprisal of her Twin Peaks character on the series that picked up 25 years after the original's events. Her co-star Kyle Lachlan on Sunday said via Twitter: "The RR diner is dark today. Very sorry to hear Peggy Lipton is gone. We’ve lost a beautiful soul." Lipton is survived by her two daughters.
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli, whose opulent set designs and sweeping directorial style bolstered operatic films, religious epics and Shakespearean love stories, died on June 15 at the age of 96. The Italian legend, who was nominated for an Academy Award for directing his innovative version of Romeo and Juliet (1968), died Saturday at his residence in Rome "without suffering," his son Pippo told The Hollywood Reporter. Romeo and Juliet, which starred then-unknown teenagers Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, also received a best picture nomination and garnered Academy Awards for cinematography and costume design, indicative of Zeffirelli's visual emphasis (he also penned the screenplay). The film introduced a new generation to Shakespearean tragedy, created notoriety at the time for showing Hussey topless and was a big hit for Paramount when the studio was in dire need of one. A year earlier, Zeffirelli wrote and directed an adaptation of another Shakespeare classic, The Taming of the Shrew, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at the peak of their careers. And in 1990, he helmed a well-received Hamlet, toplined by Mel Gibson, then known as an action hero, and Glenn Close. Zeffirelli staged opera in an epic style and drenched movies in the pathos of opera. His works were unabashedly sweeping extravaganzas that were popular with tourists and moneymakers for such auspicious venues as the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His lavish romantic style was, at times, overly saccharine, as seen with The Champ (1979), the boxing-movie remake starring Jon Voight, Faye Dunaway and Ricky Schroder, and Endless Love(1981), which starred a young Brooke Shields (and, in his film debut, Tom Cruise). Zeffirelli's first cut on the latter received an X rating. His religious epics were traditional and blessed by the Vatican. In 1972, Zeffirelli directed Brother Sun, Sister Moon, about the life of St. Francis of Assisi, and five years later helmed the international miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (with Hussey playing the Virgin Mary). His other directorial turns included the operatic La Traviata (1982) and Otello (1986), both starring the Spanish tenor Placido Domingo. For La Traviata, he earned another Oscar nom for art direction-set decoration. His direction of La Boheme in 1981 with Teresa Stratas and Jose Carreras was one of the most extravagant productions in the history of the Met (he led about a dozen productions for the famed opera house). For that opus, Zeffirelli created all the ornate, lavish sets. He received five David di Donatello Awards from his native country during the course of his career. Zeffirelli was born on Feb. 12, 1923, in Florence, Tuscany, the product of an affair his mother had with a cloth salesman. His mom wanted his last name to be Zeffiretti — after the title of an aria in Mozart's opera Idomeneo, the word means "little breezes" — but an error in transcription dashed that. She died when he was just 6. Educated at the Academia di Belle Arti in Florence, Zeffirelli first studied architecture, but after seeing Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944), he decided to make a career in theater. He won acclaim as an actor, hailed as the Italian Montgomery Clift. In 1945, Zeffirelli began work as a set designer at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence. While there, he met director Luchino Visconti, who was to become his mentor and communicated to Zeffirelli his passion for opera. For much of the 1950s and '60s, Zeffirelli concentrated on theater and opera, designing costumes and sets and directing. He helmed a wide range of productions from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams. His ornate works were largely popular successes staged in Europe's leading venues — the Old Vic, the National and the Comedie-Francaise.
Karl Lagerfeld
Legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel and Fendi who was known for his evolving creativity, modern influences and personal style and wit, died at the age of 85 on Feb. 19. Lagerfeld had been in ill health. Chanel confirmed to the Associated Press that Lagerfeld died in Paris after various French media outlets and The Guardian reported the same. A cause of death wasn't immediately announced. The designer and photographer — recognizable for his signature style of a white-collared shirt, white ponytail, fingerless gloves and black sunglasses — joined Fendi in 1967 (when he collaborated with Silvia Fendi on women’s ready-to-wear) and became artistic director of Chanel in 1983 (overseeing haute couture and ready-to-wear). The next year, Lagerfeld started his own eponymous fashion brand to sell Parisian and rock-themed ready-to-wear pieces for men and women while continuing his work with Fendi and Chanel until his death. The Germany-born designer has been hailed as "the master of reinvention" by Vogue and as "an ever-changing French Renaissance Man." In 2017, he was awarded Paris’ highest honor, La Medaille Grand Vermeil de la Ville, on top of many other accolades, including the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Fashion Awards in 2015 and the Couture Council Fashion Visionary Award in 2010. Survivors include his sister Christiane Johnson, who lives in the U.S.; his beloved, Instagram-famous cat Choupette; and godson Hudson Kroenig, a child model who is the son of model Brad Kroenig and who debuted on the Chanel runway in 2010.
Bob Einstein
Bob Einstein, the two-time, Emmy-winning writer and actor who recurred on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm and created the character of Super Dave Osborne, died Jan. 2 at the age of 76. His younger brother, fellow comedian and actor Albert Brooks, tweeted on Wednesday: "R.I.P. My dear brother Bob Einstein. A great brother, father and husband. A brilliantly funny man. You will be missed forever." Einstein has recurred on Larry David's HBO comedy since the fourth season and was one of many actors to return for the comeback season that aired in 2017. Einstein was scheduled to be part of the forthcoming 10th season, which is currently in production, but his health had prevented him from filming. "Never have I seen an actor enjoy a role the way Bob did playing Marty Funkhouser on Curb," Larry David said in a statement to THR. "It was an amazing, unforgettable experience knowing and working with him. There was no one like him, as he told us again and again. We're all in a state of shock." Einstein got his start in TV writing for variety shows, breaking out with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967. The groundbreaking variety show launched the careers of Einstein, as well as Rob Reiner, Carl Gottlieb and Steve Martin.
George Morfogen
George Morfogen, a veteran stage actor who is best known for portraying the inmate Bob Rebadow on the HBO drama Oz, died March 13 at his home in New York, his family announced. He was 86. Morfogen also showed up in eight films directed by Peter Bogdanovich: What's Up Doc? (1972), Daisy Miller (1974), At Long Last Love (1975), Saint Jack (1979), They All Laughed (1981), Mask (1985), Illegally Yours (1988) and She's Funny That Way (2014). Morfogen played the murderer Rebadow on 56 episodes over all six seasons (1997–2003) of Oz, created by Tom Fontana. His character, the oldest inmate at the Oswald State Correctional Facility, possessed a sort of mythical quality, especially after a blackout occurred while he was strapped in the electric chair, sparing his life. He went on to act in the Broadway productions of Arms and the Man in 1985; the 1994 revival of An Inspector Calls; Fortune’s Fool in 2002; and the 2008 revival of A Man for All Seasons. His prominent work included the title role in Uncle Bob, written by longtime friend Austin Pendleton; Voysey Sr. in The Voysey Inheritance; Freud in Freud's Last Session; and Shotover in Heartbreak House. His final stage appearance came in June 2017 in Horton Foote's Traveling Lady, directed by Pendleton at the Cherry Lane Theater.
Peter Tork
Peter Tork, the lovable, mop-topped former bassist and singer in The Monkees, died on Feb. 21. He was 77. The news was confirmed by Tork's official Facebook page, which paid homage to the actor/singer who made his name as a member of the made-for-TV band that became the American answer to The Beatles in the mid-1960s. A cause of death was not available at press time. Tork's sister, Anne Thorkelson, reportedly confirmed the news to The Washington Post. Peter Halsten Thorkelson was born Feb. 13, 1942, in Washington, D.C., and after showing early promise as a multi-instrumentalist, he moved to New York after college. It was there that he befriended fellow folk singer Stephen Stills, who passed along a tip to his pal about a new musical variety show that was being developed that he might be interested in. The show created by producers/writers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider was intended to capitalize on the popularity of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night by casting musicians to play the members of a fictitious band. Performing alongside former British child star Davy Jones, inscrutable guitarist Mike Nesmith and adorably daffy drummer Micky Dolenz, Tork appeared on the show during its two-year (1966-68) run, then performed live with the group through 1971 and on various reunion tours afterwards. Tork performed on a 1986 20th reunion anniversary tour and an accompanying album, Then and Now, as well as on a 1987 album, Pool It! He also released a solo album, Cambria Hotel, in 2007 and performed with his Shoe Suede Blues project throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Chris March
Project Runway alumnus Chris March has died. He was 56. "We are deeply saddened by the news of Chris March’s passing," a Bravo spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "He was a favorite among Bravo fans and the fashion community. Our condolences go out to his family and friends. He will truly be missed." The designer competed on season four of Project Runway and placed fourth (Christian Siriano won that year). March later starred in the All-Star Challenge TV special in 2009 and Project Runway All Stars series from 2014-16. He was also a writer, producer and star of his own Bravo show Mad Fashion that documented his life and aired in 2011. One of his biggest moments, however, was creating Meryl Streep's white Oscars gown and her Golden Globes gown in 2010. “I wanted to faint!” March told People about dressing her for the Globes. “I have always wanted to design something for someone like that, and it was a great and amazing opportunity. … I liked the idea of putting a belt on an evening gown — I think it gives [a gown] a modern twist. I sketched it out quickly and she really liked it." Raised in San Francisco, March worked at the musical revue Beach Blanket Babylon for 10 years before moving to New York in 2001. He went on to work with Madonna, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga on costumes. In 2010, he released a photo book, I Heart Chris March, chronicling his career, ranging from over-the-top wigs to elaborate costumes.
Kristoff St. John
Young and the Restless star Kristoff St. John was found dead inside his home on Feb. 4. "It is with unbelievable sadness that we say goodbye to our friend, #DaytimeEmmys winner @kristoffstjohn1. @YandR_CBS RIP," reads a message shared by the Daytime Emmy Awards Twitter account. Via social media, St. John's fiancee, model Kseniya Mikhaleva, mourned his death. "How did it happen ??? How ??? Why did you leave so early ???? and left me alone ….. I can't believe you were everything to me …. you were a loving father, a loving man,…. how lovee?? we should doing a lot of things in future……," she wrote along with a photo of the couple together.His cause of death is unclear. In a joint statement, CBS Television Network and Sony Pictures Television said, "The news of Kristoff St. John's passing is heartbreaking. He was a very talented actor and an even better person. For those of us who were fortunate enough to work with him on The Young and the Restless for the last 27 years, he was a beloved friend whose smile and infectious laugh made every day on set a joy and made audiences love him. On behalf of the Y&R cast and crew, CBS and Sony Pictures Television, we offer our heartfelt sympathy to his family and loved ones, especially his two daughters, Paris and Lola." The actor won numerous awards for playing Neil Winters on Young and the Restless.
Robert Axelrod
Robert Axelrod — the veteran character actor best known for voicing Lord Zedd and Finster on the iconic 1990s kids' series Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers — died Sept. 7, his agent announced via Twitter. He was 70. Axelrod's career began in the 1970s, during which the former guitarist pursued music before transitioning into television and film. His agent said that throughout the course of Axelrod's decades-long career, he crafted more than 150 different characters. In addition to his work on Power Rangers, Axelrod voiced Wizardmon and Armadillomon on the Japanese animated series Digimon, which aired in the U.S. in the late '90s and early 2000s. He also appeared on several TV shows, including The Bold and the Beautiful, Star Trek: Voyager and Family Matters, on which he played a Paul McCartney look-alike.
John Wesley
John Wesley, the actor who played Dr. Hoover on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, died from complications due to a long battle with multiple myeloma, his family confirmed Sept. 8 to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 72. After his acting career took off, Wesley went on to work with the likes of Denzel Washington, Barbra Streisand and Morgan Freeman, among other notable stars. While he was best known for his work on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Wesley had more than 100 film and television credits, including Big Fish, Frasier, The Jeffersons and Benson. Wesley was also a theater vet, having acted in such plays as Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic at London's Old Globe Theatre, as well as An American Clock by Arthur Miller and Wild Oats at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Wesley is survived by his wife, Jenny Houston; his mother, Hazel Baskin; his daughters, Kimiko Kamiel Houston and Kinshasha Houston; stepson, Kyler Richie; siblings; and grandchildren.
Eddie Jones
Eddie Jones, the dependable stage veteran who portrayed the kindly Pa Kent on the ABC series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, died on July 6 at at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his wife, Anita Khanzadian-Jones, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 84. Jones also played the widowed father of Megan Cavanagh's second baseman Marla Hooch in A League of Their Own (1992) and was Samuel Riddle, the owner of War Admiral and Man o' War, in Seabiscuit (2003). His solid big-screen résumé also included Bloodbrothers (1978), The First Deadly Sin (1980), Prince of the City (1981), Trading Places (1983), Year of the Dragon (1985), Stanley & Iris (1990), Cadillac Man (1990), The Grifters (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Sneakers (1992), Return to Me (2000) and The Terminal (2004). Jones recurred as Jonathan Kent, the husband of Martha Kent (K Callan) and father of Clark Kent/Superman (Dean Cain), on 87 episodes of Lois & Clark, which ran for four seasons, from 1993 through 1997. He also starred as the head of a spy agency on the 2000-02 Syfy Channel/syndicated series The Invisible Man and more recently showed up on episodes of Veep and Aquarius. Born on Sept. 18, 1934, in Washington, Pennsylvania, Jones hitchhiked to California and was working at a gas station when he was spotted by an agent, triggering his career as an actor. He eventually made his way back east and understudied for Charles Durning as George Sikowski in the original 1972 Broadway production of Jason Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning That Championship Season. Jones also starred in the original 1978 production of Sam Shepard's family tragedy Curse of the Starving Class and was an off-Broadway regular for the Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre and The Hudson Guild. He starred as Nick in a national tour of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and won an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for his portrayal of Willy Loman in an Interact Theatre Company production of Death of a Salesman. (He and his wife were longtime members of the Los Angeles-based group.) Interact said he appeared in more than 250 plays during his long career. In addition to his wife — they were together for 43 years — survivors include his sisters, Elaine and Marilyn, and several nephews and nieces.
Hal Prince
Harold "Hal" Prince, the masterful producer and director who served as the driving force behind such acclaimed Broadway musicals as Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Cabaret and Sweeney Todd, just to name a few, died in Reykjavik, Iceland on July 31 at age 91. In the 1950s and '60s, Prince produced such iconic shows as The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Fiorello!, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof. In 1962, Prince added directing to his résumé with A Family Affair. As a producer-director, his hits included She Loves Me, It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman, Cabaret, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Candide, Pacific Overtures and Merrily We Roll Along. His productions earned 16 best musical Tony nominations, and eight won. He himself garnered another 19 noms — 16 for best direction (winning eight) and three for producer (winning two). He received special Tony Awards in 1972 for Fiddler on the Roof and in 1974 for Candide. In 2006, the Tonys honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Prince summed up his career in nine words in a 2017 Washington Post article: "Putting unlikely shows on Broadway that ultimately made history."
Sid Sheinberg
Sid Sheinberg, the iron-fisted president and CEO of MCA who ran Universal Studios with Lew Wasserman and along the way championed a young director from Cal State Long Beach namedSteven Spielberg, died on March 14. He was 84. With his mentor Wasserman, Sheinberg was instrumental in shaping the persona of the Black Tower, vaulting Universal from a studio associated with “B” pictures and low-budget horror movies to an international giant. The pair made for one of the longest-running partnerships in show-business history. He started Spielberg off in television, having him direct a 1969 installment of Rod Serling’sNight Gallery that starred Joan Crawford. That led to work on such made-for-TV movies as the 1971 predatory road thriller Duel at ABC. In a statement to THR, Spielberg said Sheinberg's death has left his heart "broken." Sheinberg’s recent producing credits included The Devil’s Tomb (2009), starring Cuba GoodingJr., and What Lola Wants (2015). In 1964, Sheinberg served as an inaugural member and management co-chair of the DGA's Creative Rights Committee under the leadership of Frank Capra. Among other breakthroughs, it established the right to a "director's cut," and the guild made him an honorary life member in 1990. In addition to his sons, Sheinberg is survived by his wife, actress Lorraine Gary, whom he met when they both attended Columbia. She played the caring spouse of Roy Scheider’s sheriff in the first two Jaws movies.
Alvin Sargent
Alvin Sargent, the master of the adapted screenplay who won Oscars for Julia and Ordinary People in a fabled career that ran the gamut from Ben Casey and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour to The Amazing Spider-Man, died May 9 at the age of 92. He died of natural causes at his home in Seattle, friend and producer Pam Williams (Lee Daniels' The Butler) announced. Sargent had an uncanny knack for taking books and plays and transforming them into crisp screenplays that burst to life on the big screen. The Philadelphia native landed the first of his three Academy Award nominations by bringing Joe David Brown's 1971 novel Addie Pray to theaters as Paper Moon (1973), directed by Peter Bogdanovich. His other adaptations included the Dustin Hoffman crime drama Straight Time (1978), based on an Edward Bunker novel; Nuts, the 1987 Barbra Streisand thriller taken from Tom Topor's play; the Danny DeVito-starring Other People's Money, the screen adaptation of a Jerry Sterner play; and Unfaithful, the 2002 remake of Claude Chabrol's La Femme Infidele that featured Richard Gere and Diane Lane. Toward the end of his career, Sargent took on a unique challenge: adapting the story of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Spider-Man. He penned the screenplays for Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), both starring Tobey Maguire as the web-slinger, and did a rewrite on The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), featuring Andrew Garfield in the title role. Sargent also forged a career in dramatic television, turning out scripts for Naked City, Empire, Route 66, Mr. Novak and Run for Your Life.
Richard Erdman
Richard Erdman, the mirthful character actor who stood out on the big screen in The Men, Cry Danger and Stalag 17 and then on the sitcom Communitydied on March 16. He was 93. Erdman, who as a teenager so impressed legendary director Michael Curtiz that he was quickly signed to a contract at Warner Bros., died Saturday at an assisted living facility in West Hills, California, film historian Alan K. Rode told The Hollywood Reporter. He said Erdman had age-related dementia exacerbated by a recent fall. Erdman excelled at playing soldiers, sailors, wisecracking sidekicks and pals. Erdman portrayed a private opposite Errol Flynn in Raoul Walsh's Objective, Burma! (1945), one of nearly 30 films he made at Warners through 1947. And he was a pinball wizard in The Time of Your Life (1948), when he worked alongside one of his favorites, James Cagney. Erdman played an ensign in You're in the Navy Now (1951) with Gary Cooper, and in 1970, he graduated to colonel in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Erdman's film résumé also included The Admiral Was a Lady (1950), the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy The Stooge (1951) and Saddle the Wind (1958), which was written by Rod Serling and directed by Parrish. Erdman also had regular roles on the TV series Where's Raymond?, where he played the press agent and landlord to song and dance man Ray Bolger, and The Tab Hunter Show. He also showed up six times on Perry Mason and on other series including December Bride, Mister Ed, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hogan's Heroes, Police Story, Lou Grant, Wings and Felicity.
Agnes Varda
Agnès Varda, the influential matriarch of the French New Wave who received an honorary Oscar and an Academy Award documentary nomination in the span of three months in 2017-18, died on March 29. She was 90. Varda died at her home in Paris surrounded by family and friends following a short battle with cancer, her family confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. When her feature documentary Faces Places (2017) was nominated, the impish Varda became the oldest person to ever receive a competitive nom (she was eight days older than eventual adapted screenplay winner James Ivory of Call Me by Your Name.) Her films were uniquely structured. La Pointe Courte (1955), her directorial debut, contained double narration; Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962) took place in virtual real time; Vagabond (1985) was made up of 13 tracking shots; and Jane B. par Agnes V. (1988) was a portrait with deliberately missing pieces. Varda's other films included the provocative Le Bonheur (1965), which examined infidelity; Les Creatures (1966), a drama-fantasy she later recycled 35mm prints of into an art installation called My Failure Shack; and the documentary The Gleaners and I (2000). Varda's films rarely turned a profit, and her recognition was never as prominent outside of Europe and fervent cinephiles. The year 2017, however, brought her newfound renown. She received her honorary Oscar — the first female director to be saluted — for "compassion and curiosity [that] inform a uniquely personal cinema." A few weeks after receiving that honor at the Governors Awards, she was nominated in the best documentary feature category for Faces Places.
Georgia Engel
Georgia Engel, the actress with the baby-like voice who played the girlfriend and eventual wife of the blustery TV anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died. She was 70. Engel died April 12 in Princeton, New Jersey, according to John Quilty, her friend and executor. He told The New York Times that the cause was undetermined because, as a Christian Scientist, the actress did not consult doctors. Engel was Emmy-nominated for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1976 and 1977, then received other noms in 2003, '04 and '05 for playing Pat MacDougall, the mother-in-law of Brad Garrett's character, on another fabled CBS sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond. She joined The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1972 for its third season as Georgette Franklin. She came aboard Everybody Loves Raymond in 2003, that show's seventh season. The angelic Engel also portrayed Shirley Burleigh, the wife of Minnesota State athletic director Howard Burleigh (Kenneth Kimmins), on ABC's Coach and was a regular or recurring player on other series including The Betty White Show, Jennifer Slept Here, The Office and Hot in Cleveland. She also was in the original Broadway cast of The Drowsy Chaperone in 2006, and more recently appeared off-Broadway in Will Eno's Middletown and Annie Baker's John.
Michael Lynne
Michael Lynne, who partnered with Bob Shaye to transform New Line Cinema from a struggling independent studio to a powerhouse known for its sensational success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, died on March 24 at the age of 77. Lynne died at his home in New York, a spokesman for Unique Features, a company he founded with Shaye, told The Hollywood Reporter. Lynne was working as an entertainment lawyer in the early 1980s when he bumped into Shaye, an acquaintance from Columbia Law School, on a New York City street. Shaye, who had founded New Line in 1967 by distributing films to colleges, paid Lynne a $10,000 retainer to serve as outside counsel, and he was named president and COO in 1990. The financially savvy Lynne and Shaye, an occasional filmmaker, profited when New Line was acquired by Ted Turner in 1994 for more than $500 million in cash and stock, then were swept into the fold at Time Warner as part of the $7.5 billion merger with Turner's businesses in 1996. Lynne was named New Line co-chairman and co-CEO in 2001, and he and Shaye enjoyed a somewhat autonomous reign at Time Warner. They took a big chance on the Lord of the Ringsfilms, which cost a tidy $361 million to produce. Released in 2001, 2002 and 2003 — Shaye convinced director Peter Jackson to make three epics out of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel instead of two — the trilogy went on to rake in nearly $3 billion at the worldwide box office. The final installment, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, collected a record-tying 11 Oscars, including best picture.
Louisa Moritz
Actress Louisa Moritz — one of Bill Cosby's sexual assault accusers — died of natural causes on Jan. 4 at the age of 72, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed. Moritz was best known for her role as Rose in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which she starred alongside Jack Nicholson. She also appeared in the 1978 Cheech and Chong pic Up in Smoke, as well as on a handful of television shows in the '70s and '80s. Years later, Moritz made headlines in 2015 when she joined the myriad of women who accused Cosby of sexual assault. For her part, the actress claimed that the comedian forced her to participate in oral sex in a dressing room during a Tonight Show appearance in 1971. Moritz later filed a lawsuit against Cosby. The suit will continue despite her death.
Freddie Jones
Freddie Jones, the British actor best known for his role on ITV soap opera Emmerdale and the father of actor Toby Jones (Infamous, The Hunger Games), died on July 10 at the age of 91. According to his agent, Lesley Duff, Jones had suffered a short illness. "Freddie was a much loved and admired actor, known for his triumphs in classical theater, film and television," she said in a statement. The actor played Sandy Thomas, the father of a vicar, in Emmerdale from 2005 until last year when his character flew off to Australia following the death of his son. He reappeared on the soap early this year for a final goodbye to family and friends as he began his new life away from the village in which the series is set. "It’s about the balance of my life," he said in an interview with Radio Times magazine at the time. "I travel three hours by car, book into a hotel and then get up the next day to say maybe three sentences. And then do a three-hour journey back." He added: "The company generously offered me another 12 months. But I just thought, 'I have no idea what I’m going to do in another bloody year!'" Jones played amateur theater while working as an assistant in a laboratory before deciding to act full time. After a role on TV miniseries Androcles and the Lion (1960), he worked on dramas Far From the Madding Crowd and Nicholas Nickleby. He also appeared in David Lynch's films The Elephant Man (1980) and Dune (1984) as well as in British crime drama Juggernaut with Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Anthony Hopkins. Toby Jones is the eldest of the three sons Freddie Jones had with wife Jennifer. Said Jones' agent of the actor: "He will be greatly missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing him and most especially his family."
Peter Lindbergh
German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh — best known for his black-and-white photographs of candid supermodels — died Sept. 3. He was 74. The news was shared on his Instagram account with the note, “He leaves a big void.” Lindbergh rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s during the supermodel era by shooting the likes of Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. One of his most famous photos captured Linda Evangelista, Rachel Williams, Tatjana Patitz, Karen Alexander, Christy Turlington and Estelle Léfebure in 1988 for Vogue. The black-and-white image was taken on the beach in Santa Monica with the stars donning just underwear and oversized white blouses. Musician George Michael was struck by the photos before creating the video for “Freedom! '90," and as Lindbergh has said, the image “ushered in a new era.” “They were practical women who had plans and ambitions to fulfill in their lives. I chose the beach because it’s a flat and homogeneous backdrop, allowing me to concentrate on what really interests me about a women: her face,” he told Vogue Italia. Lindbergh worked most recently with Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, on her guest-edited September issue of British Vogue. He shot the 15 cover stars, including Jane Fonda, Gemma Chan, Laverne Cox and Yara Shahidi, marking his first cover shoot for British Vogue since the September 1992 issue. “His work is revered globally for capturing the essence of a subject and promoting healthy ideals of beauty, eschewing photoshopping, and preferring natural beauty with minimal makeup,” the Sussex Royal Instagram account posted Wednesday. “There is no other photographer she considered to bring this meaningful project to life. … He will be deeply missed.”
Stanley Donen
Stanley Donen, who co-directed Singin’ in the Rain with Gene Kelly and helmed two of the most acclaimed musicals of the 1950s, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Funny Facedied at the age of 94 on Feb. 23. Sons Joshua and Mark Donen told the Associated Press that their father died in Manhattan from heart failure. Donen was a dynamic part of the legendary MGM Studios creative force, directing and choreographing several of the great studio musicals. No other director, with the possible exception of VincenteMinnelli, contributed more aesthetically to the American musical. With George Abbott, he co-directed two excellent film adaptations, The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees (1958). With Kelly, he also co-directed On the Town (1949) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955). In 1998, the director-choreographer was awarded an honorary Oscar “in appreciation of a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit and visual innovation." Donen was responsible for the look, style and energy of the great musicals of the 1950s and ’60s. He directed the classic sequence in Royal Wedding (1951) in which Astaire danced up walls and across a ceiling, a dazzling display of ingenuity created in an era before computers. In addition, Donen’s visual panache sparked such comic thrillers as Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966). He won accolades for his direction of the Albert Finney-Audrey Hepburn romancer Two for the Road (1967). On a satiric plane, Donen directed Bedazzled (1967), starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. He was the last surviving director of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Daryl Dragon
Daryl Dragon, the musician best known as the Captain from the group The Captain and Tennille, died due to renal failure on Jan. 2. He was 76. "He was a brilliant musician with many friends who loved him greatly. I was at my most creative in my life, when I was with him," said Toni Tennille, Dragon's longtime partner and ex-wife, in remembrance. She was with him when he died. Dragon came from a musical family. His father was an Academy Award-winning composer and conductor and his mother was a singer who worked on Bing Crosby recordings among many others. A classically trained pianist, Dragon played keyboard for The Beach Boys from 1967 to 1972. He was given the nickname "Captain" by lead singer Mike Love due to Dragon's penchant for wearing a captain's hat onstage.
Gene Okerlund
"Mean" Gene Okerlund, the longtime broadcaster for WWE, died at the age of 76 on Jan. 2. WWE revealed the news of Okerlund's death on Jan. 2 but did not say how he died or when. Okerlund, who was given his nickname by the sport's star turned former Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, got his start at Omaha radio station KOIL before moving to Minneapolis, where he worked for a local TV station. In 1970, he segued to wrestling, serving as a fill-in for announcer Marty O'Neill at the American Wresting Association before becoming O'Neill's permanent replacement several years later. He left the AWA in 1983 to join the World Wrestling Federation (later renamed the WWE), where he interviewed such stars as Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior. Okerlund also hosted WWF shows including All-American Wresting and Tuesday Night Titans.
Rocci Chatfield
Rocci Chatfield, a two-time Daytime Emmy nominee who wrote for such shows as My Three Sons, Little House on the Prairie and Days of Our Lives, died on Sept. 10. She was 93. Chatfield died Aug. 24 of natural causes at West Hills Hospital & Medical Center, a family spokeswoman said. Chatfield served six terms as a governor on the Television Academy's Writers Peer Group and two terms on its Executive Committee. She wrote and produced the academy's 60th anniversary gala, served on numerous committees and produced dozens of events, including an "Inside" panel series, an annual Family Day celebration and special evenings with such stars as Tony Bennett and Liza Minnelli. Chatfield also was a member of the WGA's negotiating committee during the 1988 writers strike and received the guild's service award for her contributions to the organization. A native of Boulder, Colorado, Chatfield attended Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, before beginning her career as a TV writer in the early 1960s. She received her Daytime Emmy nominations in 1978 and '79 for her work on Days of Our Lives and also wrote for Family Affair, Falcon Crest, Knots Landing and Generations during her career.
Matt Rose
Matt Rose, an admired makeup artist and sculptor who worked on the first two Hellboy films, Ed Wood and the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, died on Jan. 25 at the age of 53. Rose was at his home in Burbank, his best friend and business partner, Chad Waters, told The Hollywood Reporter. The family was awaiting a coroner's report as to the cause of death, but "all signs point to natural causes." A protege of makeup legends Stan Winston and Rick Baker — he spent 15 years at the latter's Cinovation Studios in Glendale — Rose also contributed to other notable effects-driven films like Aliens (1986), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and The Nutty Professor (1996).
Dick Miller
Veteran Hollywood character actor Dick Miller, star of Roger Corman's 1959 cult classic A Bucket of Bloodand who played Murray Futterman in Joe Dante's Gremlins, died on Jan. 30 at the age of 90. Miller's death due to natural causes on Wednesday in Toluca Lake was confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter by a family spokesperson, and followed a month after his 90th birthday party. His wife Lainie, daughter Barbara and grand-daughter Autumn were at his side as he passed. "His sense of humor and the unique way he looked at the world won him many lifelong friends and worldwide fans," Miller's family said in a statement. The veteran actor, born in The Bronx on Dec. 25, 1928, served a tour of duty in the U.S. Navy, before attending the City College of New York and Columbia University. Miller performed on Broadway in between stints of work at the Bellevue Hospital Mental Hygiene Clinic and the psychiatric department of Queens General Hospital. In 1952, he moved to California, and one of his earliest acting roles was in Apache Woman in 1955. Miller began working with iconic director/producer Roger Corman, including in a starring role as Walter Paisley in A Bucket of Blood in 1959. His other early movie credits included The Little Shop of Horrors, The Terror, The Wild Angels, The Dirty Dozen and A Time for Killing.
James Frawley
James Frawley, a veteran Hollywood director of TV and film projects like The Monkees and The Muppet Movie, died Jan. 22 at his home in Indian Wells, California, TheDesert Sunreported. His wife, Cynthia Frawley, told the newspaper that he had fallen and had a heart attack. He also was secretive about having a serious lung condition after many years of smoking. Born on Sept. 29, 1936, in Houston, Frawley started out as an actor, initially in New York City and on Broadway. His early TV credits included The Seasons of Youth in 1961 and appearances on Gunsmoke, The Outer Limits and Perry Mason. But Frawley made a name for himself behind the camera, starting in 1966 when he helmed The Monkees. He was chosen by producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider to direct the series that was set around a pop rock group (Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork) amid Beatlemania. "I picked up a 16mm camera, and I shot two short films and edited them myself. They won a lot of awards and attracted the attention of Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, two young producers in Hollywood at that time. Because I had been an improvisational actor and done a lot of comedy, they thought I'd be a perfect combination to direct The Monkees," Frawley recalled in a 2007 interview with SFGate.
William Esper
William Esper, the influential acting teacher and Sanford Meisner disciple who lent his expertise to Kim Basinger, John Malkovich, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Rockwell, Tracee Ellis Ross and countless others, died on Jan. 26 at the age of 86. Esper, who launched his William Esper Studio in 1965, died Saturday of complications from Lewy body disease at his home in New York City, his son, Michael Esper, told The Hollywood Reporter. Esper's students also included Paul Sorvino, Mary Steenburgen, Jennifer Beals, Kristin Davis, William Hurt, Kim Delaney, Wendy Malik, Dule Hill, Calista Flockhart, Peter Gallagher, Patricia Heaton, Aaron Eckhart, Christine Lahti, Gretchen Mol, Larry David, Amy Schumer, David Morse, Michele Shay, Patricia Wettig, Richard Schiff and Timothy Olyphant.
Andy Vajna
Andy Vajna, the Hungarian producer behind the Rambo franchise who also oversaw a revival of Hungarian cinema as a government film commissioner, died Sunday, Jan. 20, at his home in Budapest. He was 74. Vajna's life had all the elements of the American dream. A child immigrant — he fled Hungary when he was just 12 — Vajna operated several successful businesses in the U.S. and Hong Kong, including a photography studio, a chain of movie theaters and even a wig-design business, before teaming with the Lebanese-born Mario Kassar to form Carolco Pictures in 1976. Their first project was The Sicilian Cross, a 1976 Italian film starring Roger Moore. After a series of mostly forgettable genre films, Kassar and Vajna, in 1980, paid Warner Bros. a reported $383,000 for the option rights to David Morrell's 1972 novel First Blood. The resulting 1982 movie — starring Sylvester Stallone as troubled Vietnam veteran John Rambo — cost $14 million to make and went on to gross $125 million worldwide. Overnight, Carolco was a major Hollywood player. Total Recall star Arnold Schwarzenegger remembered Vajna on Twitter: "Andy Vajna was a dear friend and a revolutionary force in Hollywood. He proved that you don’t need studios to make huge movies like Terminator 2 or Total Recall. He had a huge heart, and he was one of the most generous guys around. I’ll miss him. My thoughts are with his family."
Martin Charnin
Martin Charnin, the Tony-winning lyricist, writer and librettist best known for creating and directing the sensationally successful Broadway musical Annie, died on July 6 in a hospital in White Plains, New York, three days after suffering a heart attack, his daughter, Sasha, told The Hollywood Reporter. With more than 40 productions to his credit, Charnin penned lyrics for seven Broadway musicals and directed seven shows as well. He won his Tony Award for best original score, with composer Charles Strouse, for Annie. The show, produced by Mike Nichols, won seven Tonys in all, including best musical and best actress in a musical for Dorothy Loudon, who originated the role of unscrupulous, boozing orphanage administrator Miss Hannigan. Charnin also received three Emmys for his work on television variety specials and won a Grammy for Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)," which sampled his lyrics from the Annie song of that name. He conceived the musical Annie, which premiered at Goodspeed Opera House in 1976 and opened on Broadway the following year, from the Harold Gray comic strip about Little Orphan Annie, a street-smart youngster who goes to live with a wealthy bachelor during the Great Depression. Charnin directed the original production and wrote the lyrics for the musical, which had music by Strouse and book by Thomas Meehan. It played for 2,377 performances on Broadway in its original run and has become a fixture of the American musical theater canon. "No matter how you bend it, it just doesn't break — it's just one of those iconic musicals in the history of theater, and we are very grateful and lucky and thrilled about how it has survived," Charnin toldBroadway World in 2014. "In point of fact, there really aren't a lot of things out there like Annie." Born Martin Jay Charnin on Nov. 24, 1934, he grew up in New York, the son of an opera singer. He received his BFA from Cooper Union, and after graduating, he spotted an open call for actors, singers and dancers for West Side Story, then an unknown musical. Although Charnin had no performance training, he went to the audition and landed the part of Big Deal, one of the original Jets, in the premiere Broadway production in 1957. He went on to perform the role 1,000 times in New York and across the country. Charnin launched his lyric writing career off-Broadway, wrote lyrics for cabaret shows and revues and produced shows featuring such performers as Dionne Warwick and Leslie Uggams. He made his Broadway lyricist debut with Hot Spot in 1963, which he wrote with his frequent collaborator, Mary Rodgers. Charnin made his Broadway directing debut in 1973 with the revue Nash at Nine, and he went on to direct Music! Music! at City Center and The National Lampoon Show, which starred John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray. Throughout his career, Charnin directed several productions of Annie. He had mixed feelings about other productions, which included the 2012 Broadway revival directed by James Lapine and three major film adaptations — two for the big screen and one for television. "The fun of it for me is that every time I do it, I learn something new about it, and in theory every production that precedes the one I'm doing makes the one I'm doing the beneficiary of the stuff that I've learned," Charnin said. "So it keeps growing, it keeps changing." After Annie, Charnin wrote the lyrics for I Remember Mama, and he directed, wrote lyrics and co-wrote the book for The First, a 1981 musical about Jackie Robinson. In the '80s, he directed Cafe Crown and Sid Caesar and Company, which also featured his songs, for Broadway. Charnin worked up until his death, directing shows, and he was always looking for the next project. When asked if he ever had plans to retire, he told The Guardian, "Oh, God no, I still have shows to write and direct." Survivors include his wife, Shelly Burch Charnin, his seven children and three grandchildren.
James Ingram
R&B singer James Ingram, who collected two Grammy Awards and a pair of No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits over his decades-long career, died on Jan. 29 at age 66. The news was shared via Twitter on Tuesday by Ingram's friend and creative partner Debbie Allen. There are no details yet about when or how Ingram died. "I have lost my dearest friend and creative partner James Ingram to the Celestial Choir," Allen tweeted. "He will always be cherished, loved and remembered for his genius, his love of family and his humanity. I am blessed to have been so close. We will forever speak his name." Ingram charted nine hits on the Hot 100, including a pair of No. 1s: "Baby Come to Me," with Patti Austin, in 1983, and "I Don't Have the Heart" in 1990. He also co-penned Michael Jackson's top 10 hit "P.Y.T" from the Thriller album.
Billy Drago
Billy Drago, best known for his work playing Al Capone's top henchman in The Untouchables, died on June 26 in Los Angeles, his rep told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 73. Drago appeared in numerous films and TV shows over the years, including X-Files and Charmed, but he was most recognized for portraying real-life mobster Frank Nitti (always wearing a white suit) in the Brian De Palma 1987 classic. Drago's career spanned four decades, and he appeared in over 100 films, including Clint Eastwood's classic Western Pale Rider (1985). The actor was born in Hugoton, Kansas, to William Eugene Burrows Sr. and Gladys Marie Wilcox. His road to Hollywood was paved after a stint with a touring theater group, along with acclaimed performances in New York City. Drago is remembered as a fearless artist and poet who tackled his work with intensity and pushed creative boundaries while encouraging his peers and those new to the business. He enjoyed traveling across the globe, from Indonesia to Israel. Drago was married for a time to actress Silvana Gallardo, with whom he worked on numerous projects. He is survived by his sister Patty, brother Steve and his two sons, actor Darren Burrows and Derrick Burrows, as well as several grandchildren.
Kevin Barnett
Comedian Kevin Barnett, who co-created the Fox series Rel with Lil Rel Howery and Josh Rabinowitz, died on Jan. 22 at age 32. UTA, Barnett's talent agency, confirmed the news Tuesday on Twitter: "We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and client Kevin Barnett. He was an incredible talent and a wonderful person. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. We will miss him." Ben Kissel, who hosted the podcast Round Table of Gentlemen with Barnett, remembered the comic on Twitter. "Dear Last Podcast family," Kissel wrote. "It's with a heavy heart we inform you of the passing of Kevin Barnett. The joy he brought to our lives is the greatest gift we have ever received. Remind your friends you love them because you never know when you're [sic] see them again. We love you KB." Comedy Central also remembered Barnett, tweeting, "Kevin Barnett was an incredible comedian and writer, contributing to Broad City, the stand-up community and beyond. He'll be greatly missed."
Bill Harris
Bill Harris, the veteran Hollywood broadcast journalist who served as a co-host on the syndicated program At the Movies, has died. He was 75. Harris died Sept. 5 at the City of Hope hospital after a short bout with cancer, family spokesman Rusty Citron announced. Harris was hired as one of the first reporters for Entertainment Tonight, which premiered in 1981, and he served as head writer/reviewer on Rona Barrett's gossip segments for the Today show and Good Morning America. In 1986, Harris and New York critic Rex Reed assumed the aisle seats occupied by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on Tribune Broadcasting's nationally syndicated At the Movies program after the original pair had left for a similar Disney-produced show. More recently, he went on the road with actresses Barbara Eden and Sophia Loren to host Q&A events with their fans. For a hobby, Harris collected checks written out by such stars as Marilyn Monroe ($10.12 to Schwab's Pharmacy), Judy Garland ($228.58 to Colony House Liquors) and Marvin Gaye ($1,000 to cash).
Christopher Knopf
Christopher Knopf, the prolific screenwriter behind Emperor of the North, 20 Million Miles to Earth and a host of TV Westerns in the 1950s and '60s, died at the age of 91 on Feb. 15. Knopf died of congestive heart failure at his home in Santa Monica, his wife of 44 years, Lorraine, told The Hollywood Reporter. Knopf wrote for the CBS Western Zane Grey Theater, starring Dick Powell, and its spinoff, Trackdown, starring Robert Culp; penned the pilot episode for ABC's The Big Valley; and created CBS' Cimarron Strip, starring Stuart Whitman. His much-admired television work also included 1977's Scott Joplin: King of Ragtime (for which he won a Writers Guild Award); the 1981 biblical miniseries Peter and Paul, starring Anthony Hopkins and Robert Foxworth; and 1984's Pope John Paul II, starring Albert Finney. And he was a co-executive producer on the 1990 ABC legal drama Equal Justice. Born in New York on Dec. 20, 1927, Knopf attended UCLA, then joined the Air Force during World War II. His father, Edwin, directed the films Paramount on Parade (1930) and The Law and the Lady (1951) and produced Lili (1953), which received six Oscar nominations. Christopher Knopf's first film screenplay was the swashbuckling The King's Thief (1955), filmed in CinemaScope and produced by his dad. It starred Ann Blyth, David Niven, George Sanders and a young Roger Moore. He later was appointed vice president of the International Writers Guild and national chairman of the WGA. The three-time WGA Award-winning writer also received that group's Morgan Cox and Edward H. North honors. In addition to his wife, survivors include his sister, Wendy; daughter, Susan; stepdaughter, Laurie; stepson, Andrew; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Dave Smith
Dave Smith, the first-ever archivist at Disney and the founder of the Walt Disney Archives, died at the age of 78 in Burbank on Feb. 15. Over a 40-year career, Smith created and grew a department for preserving Disney's films, television projects, theme parks and more in addition to penning several books on Disney history and writing magazine columns. Among Smith's publications are Disney: The First 100 Years, Disney A to Z, Disney Trivia From the Vault, the four Ultimate Disney Trivia books and The Quotable Walt Disney. Smith worked in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, interned at the Library of Congress and worked at the Research Library at UCLA before he was hired by Roy O. Disney, Walt's brother and The Walt Disney Company co-founder. His first task at Disney? To preserve the items in the late Walt's office. During his time at Disney, Smith grew the department, joined the Society of California Archivists, served as the executive director of the Manuscript Society for 21 years and penned seven Disney books. He also wrote columns for Disney fan magazines and websites, where he had a column called "Ask Dave." In 2007, Smith was honored with the Disney Legend Award. After retiring in 2010, he worked as a consultant for the company for nine years as chief archivist emeritus.
Ken Welch
Ken Welch, a five-time Emmy-winning composer and musician who spent decades writing material for Carol Burnett, died Jan. 26 at his home in Encino, his family announced. He was 92. Welch amassed 19 Emmy nominations during his career, all shared with his late wife, composer, lyricist and writer Marilyn "Mitzie" Welch. They also had a nightclub act and were married from 1956 until her death in June 2014. The couple composed music for CBS' famed Carol Burnett Show for seven seasons, from 1971-77, and also wrote and produced material for the likes of Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Julie Andrews, Dolly Parton, Linda Lavin, Burt Bacharach, Suzanne Somers, The Carpenters, Hal Linden and Bob Hope. Ken Welch and Burnett worked together for the first time in 1957 when he accompanied her on the piano as she auditioned for a summer stock gig in the Adirondack mountains. In the early 1960s, Welch was hired to work on Garry Moore's CBS variety show, on which Burnett regularly performed, and he created a 1962 CBS special, Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, featuring Burnett and Andrews. The couple also came up with material for such TV specials as 1973's Barbra Streisand and Other Musical Instruments; 1976's Sills and Burnett at the Met and A Special Olivia Newton-John; 1979's Dolly and Carol in Nashville; 1978's The Star Wars Holiday Special; 1979's The Hal Linden Special; and 1987's Carol, Carl, Whoopi and Robin. Survivors include his daughters Julie and Gillian, a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who was nominated for an original song Oscar this year for "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings," featured in the Coen brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Joseph Sirola
Joseph Sirola, the genial actor and Tony Award-winning producer who was known as "The King of the Voice-Overs," died on Feb. 10. He was 89. Sirola died of complications from respiratory failure at a rehabilitation hospital in New York City, his longtime companion, Claire Gozzo, said. On the big screen, Sirola appeared in Strange Bedfellows (1965) opposite Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida; in George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); with Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High (1968); and in The Super Cops (1974), directed by Gordon Parks. Sirola portrayed bandleader Freddy Fleet on a season-three episode of CBS' The Andy Griffith Show and was U.S. spy Jonathan Kaye on a few installments of the original Hawaii Five-O. He played the patriarch of an Italian-American family on NBC's The Montefuscos, a sitcom from That Girl creators Bill Persky and Sam Denoff that lasted just a handful of episodes in 1975. He also was a regular on another short-lived NBC series, 1974's The Magician, starring Bill Bixby. Sirola also appeared opposite James Cagney in a 1984 CBS telefilm, Terrible Joe Moran — it would be Cagney's final onscreen role. And as Founding Father Thomas Paine, he was interviewed by Steve Allen for PBS' Meeting of the Minds. Sirola won his Tony in 2014 for producing the musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. His New York stage producing credits also included Cagney: The Musical; The Motherf**ker With the Hat; Love Letters (starring Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow); Ghetto Klown; Stick Fly; and Time Stands Still. On TV, Sirola also showed up on The Untouchables; Perry Mason; Mission: Impossible; The Man From U.N.C.L.E.; Get Smart; Quincy, M.E.; Wolf; Rhoda; The Rockford Files; NYPD Blue; and Silk Stalkings.
Ron Miller
Ron Miller, whose visionary yet turbulent tenure in charge of the legendary Walt Disney Co. that his father-in-law founded led to the creation of Touchstone Pictures, the Disney Channel, the Epcot theme park and a slew of Disney movie classics, died on Feb. 10. He was 85. Miller died in Napa, California, the Walt Disney Family Museum announced. He was the president of the board of directors at the museum that was founded in 2009 by his late wife, Diane, Walt Disney's oldest daughter. As Disney president from 1978-83 and then CEO 1983-84, Miller pushed for more daring and mature films from the studio. He greenlit the pioneering computer animation movie Tron (1982) and Tim Burton's early short films Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984), and acquired the rights to Gary K. Wolf's 1981 mystery novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? That eventually became Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Under his watch, Miller also produced the Disney classics Freaky Friday (1976), Candleshoe (1977), Pete's Dragon (1977) and The Black Hole (1979). He was an executive producer on Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), The Rescuers (1977), The Fox and the Hound (1981) and The Black Cauldron (1985). Miller also won an Emmy from six nominations for his work on the long-running family series The Wonderful World of Disney and appeared in the Disney family's official 2001 documentary Walt: The Man Behind the Myth. His 18-month tenure as CEO ended with his resignation after an unsuccessful takeover attempt of the company and criticism from investors and those perturbed by his vision. He was replaced by Michael Eisner and Frank Wells in a decision supported by Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney.
Al Reinert
Al Reinert, a newspaper reporter on the NASA beat who went on to receive an Oscar nomination for his Apollo 13 screenplay, died at the age of 71 on New Year's Eve at his home in Wimberley, Texas, after a battle with cancer, the Houston Chronicle reported. Survivors include his wife, actress Lisa Hart Carroll; she played Patsy, the best friend of Debra Winger's character, in Terms of Endearment. Reinert earned his first Oscar nom for producing (and directing) the feature documentary For All Mankind (1989), which used footage shot by astronauts during the Apollo moon missions that had never been seen by the public. It was his first film. Brian Eno contributed music, and the film won two documentary prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. According to the newspaper, Reinert recently received a letter from First Man director Damien Chazelle, who said he had asked his crew on the Neil Armstrong biopic to watch For All Mankind for inspiration. Reinert and William Broyles Jr. turned Lost Moon, a 1994 book written by astronaut James Lovell about his ill-fated 1970 Apollo mission, into the screenplay for Apollo 13. Reinert also wrote two episodes of the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, hosted by Tom Hanks.
Julie Adams
Julie Adams, the comely brunette with the cascading curls best remembered as the damsel in distress in the 1954 horror classic Creature From the Black Lagoon, died at the age of 92 on Feb. 3. Adams died in Los Angeles, her son Mitchell Danton, a TV editor, told The Hollywood Reporter. In more than six decades in film and on television, Adams also starred with Donald O'Connor in Francis Joins the WACS (1954), played opposite Elvis Presley in Tickle Me (1965) and appeared with Dennis Hopper in The Last Movie (1971) and with John Wayne in McQ (1974). Fans of Murder, She Wrote know Adams for playing the eccentric realtor Eve Simpson on the long-running Angela Lansbury starrer, and in the early 1970s, she portrayed Jimmy Stewart's wife in the legendary actor's first foray into starring on his own series. Seeking to cash in on the growing popularity of 3D films, Universal began production on Creature From the Black Lagoon. Conceived as an underwater version of Beauty and the Beast, it featured a mythical sea monster dubbed "Gill-Man." Played by Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning, the creature menaced a scientific expedition to the Amazon. The studio wanted Adams to star as Carlson's girlfriend, Kay Lawrence, who would become the creature's object of desire. But Adams considered the whole thing a step down in her career. A young Guillermo del Toro was a fan and years later used the movie as inspiration for The Shape of Water.
Larry Brand
Larry Brand, a writer-director who worked for producer Roger Corman and contributed to the screenplay for Halloween: Resurrection, died on Feb. 11. He was 69. Brand died unexpected Saturday at his home in Hollywood, Rebecca Reynolds, his writing partner of 39 years, announced. They launched the production company 8180 Films in 2008. With budgets ranging from $15,000 to $15 million, Brand's films included such independent releases as Paranoia (1998) and Christina (2010) and such studio productions as the sequel Halloween: Resurrection (2002) and Hard Luck (2006), a feature for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment that starred Wesley Snipes. Brand also co-wrote A Perfect Man (2013), starring Liev Schreiber and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Brand wrote episodes The Fall Guy and The Magical World of Disney before teaming with Reynolds on the script for the psychological thriller Backfire (1987), starring Karen Allen, Keith Carradine and Jeff Fahey. He also directed The Coexist Comedy Tour (2012), a documentary, and Beyond Glory (2016), starring Stephen Lang and Gary Sinise, and co-wrote and directed The Girl on the Train (2014). More recently, he worked on the Hollywood & Crime podcasts Young Charlie and The Wonderland Murders. Survivors include his brothers Tim and Nick, sister-in-law Amanda and nephew Chris. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the American Heart Association or The Munchkins' Mission.
Morgan Woodward
Morgan Woodward, the silent, menacing mirrored-glasses boss dubbed "The Man with No Eyes" in Cool Hand Luke, died at the age of 93 on Feb. 23. Woodward died Friday morning at his home in California, the Fielder House Museum in Arlington, Texas, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. They house a large portion of his film and television memorabilia in their "Woodward Room." A stalwart of the Western genre, he guest-starred in a record 19 episodes of Gunsmoke (and its 1992 television movie), 12 episodes of Wagon Train, across nine seasons on Dallas as oil-man Marvin "Punk" Anderson and as Hugh O'Brian's deputy on 80 episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. His prolific television career also included Bonanza, The Waltons, The Lucy Show (with John Wayne guest-starring), Hill Street Blues, MGM's series Logan's Run and Star Trek, on which he was the first victim of Mr. Spock's telepathic "Vulcan mind meld." On the big screen, Woodward played supporting roles in Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), The Gun Hawk (1963), opposite Audie Murphy in Gunpoint (1966), as a bad man dragged out of town in James Stewart and Henry Fonda's Firecreek (1968) and on the Alan Smithee pseudonym Western Death of a Gunfighter. Later he appeared in John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Jack Starrett's A Small Town in Texas (1976) and Final Chapter: Walking Tall (1977), Which Way is Up? opposite Richard Pryor and the romantic comedy Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (1985). Woodward was such a regular on Gunsmoke that CBS head honchos called producer John Mantley suggesting there surely must be other Hollywood journeymen who can do the show. For his contribution to the Western genre, he received the Golden Lariat Award at the National Western Film Festival and the prestigious Golden Boot Award from the Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Mark Medoff
Mark Medoff, a provocative playwright whose Children of a Lesser God won Tony and Olivier awards and whose screen adaptation of his play earned an Oscar nomination, has died in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was 79. Medoff died April 23 in a hospice surrounded by family, according to his daughter, Jessica Bunchman. He had been battling both multiple myeloma, a cancer, and renal failure, she said Wednesday in a family statement. Medoff wrote 30 plays and wrote, produced or directed 19 movies. He found his greatest success with Children of a Lesser God, the tale of a troubled love affair between a speech teacher and a deaf woman who struggle to overcome the communications gap between their two cultures. Medoff's other works include the plays The Wager, The Hand of Its Enemy, The Heart Outright, The Majestic Kid and the screenplay for the HBO movie thriller Apology. He also penned the 1978 Chuck Norris action film Good Guys Wear Black and the black comedy Refuge, starring Linda Hamilton, in 2010.
Terry Rawlings
Terry Rawlings, who received an Oscar nomination for best picture winner Chariots of Fire and edited the Ridley Scott films Alien, Blade Runner and Legend, has died. He was 85. Rawlings died April 23 of heart failure at his home in Hertfordshire, England, the Guild of British Film and Television Editors told The Hollywood Reporter. The London native also cut Barbra Streisand's and David Fincher's directorial debuts on Yentl (1983) and Alien 3 (1992), respectively, and worked on Pierce Brosnan's first outing as James Bond with GoldenEye (1995). His other work included Michael Winner's The Sentinel (1977) and Bullseye! (1990); Phillip Noyce's The Saint (1997); The Fugitive spinoff U.S. Marshals (1998); Entrapment (1999); and Joel Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera (2004). In the opening of the sci-fi classic Blade Runner (1982), Rawlings receives a "supervising editor" credit. "I was the only editor, and the reason I had to have that [credit] was I wasn't a member of the American union then," he recalled in a 2012 interview.He received an American Cinema Editors career achievement award and five BAFTA nominations across his career — for Women in Love, Isadora (1968), Alien, Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner — but never won. In interviews, Rawlings often cited Yentl as one of the favorite films he edited. "I love music. Music is very important to me," he said. "To work on a musical with [Streisand] was very special. She is fantastic to be with, she is a hard-working person. She's the only person to sing in the whole picture."
Steve Golin
Steve Golin, the Oscar-winning producer behind Spotlight and the founder of management powerhouse Anonymous Content, died April 21 in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer, his publicists announced. He was 64. As one of the industry's most decorated producers, the genial Golin took home two top trophies at the Golden Globes in 2016: for best dramatic film (Alejandro G. Inarritu's The Revenant) and best TV drama (Mr. Robot). In a sign of how prolific he was, The Revenant beat out his eventual Oscar winner Spotlight that year. The avid pop art collector (his office contained vintage copies of Interview magazine with covers photographed by Andy Warhol) also was Oscar-nominated for best picture for Inarritu's Babel (2006) and The Revenant. Golin won the Palme d'Or for David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) and produced other quirkily iconic films like Being John Malkovich (1999), directed by Spike Jonze, and Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He also produced such crowd-pleasers as the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore comedy 50 First Dates (2004). After producing such films as Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and Fincher's The Game (1997) at PolyGram, Golin left the company in 1999 after it was acquired by Seagram, freeing him up to create Anonymous Content that year. With the music industry retracting but the home video market booming, Anonymous became the place for edgy auteurs like Steven Soderbergh and later Cary Fukunaga to make forays into major studio films. The management firm also built an enviable roster of in-demand actors and actresses; today, the Culver City-based company boasts a staff of some 70 employees and a client list that includes Emma Stone, Samuel L. Jackson and Alfonso Cuaron.
David Picker
David V. Picker, who served as the head of United Artists, Paramount and Columbia over more than a half-century in the film business, died April 20 after succumbing to colon cancer at his home in New York, his longtime friend and former UA colleague Kathie Berlin told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 87. As head of production at United Artists and seeking a property for Alfred Hitchcock, he acquired the rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and fought for Sean Connery to star in the first adaptation, 1962's Dr. No, which spawned a franchise that continues to draw masses. The first film that Picker recommended UA's partners finance from scratch, Tony Richardson's Tom Jones, a British production, became a giant hit and was awarded the best picture Oscar. And, looking out for the United Artists Records and Music Publishing division, Picker recommended that the company make a low-budget documentary around a young British band that had impressed him, The Beatles. UA and The Beatles created blockbuster A Hard Day's Night and reteamed on 1965's Help! and 1968's The Yellow Submarine. During Picker's reign, UA also released John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1973). As Paramount's head of production, he greenlighted Randal Kleiser's Grease (1978) and Robert Redford's Ordinary People (1980) and after returning to independent producing, he produced Carl Reiner's The Jerk and Hal Ashby's Being There. Picker later became Columbia Pictures' president of production and again worked as an independent producer.
Bibi Andersson
Bibi Andersson, the acclaimed Swedish actress who in more than a dozen films from Ingmar Bergman went from beatific innocence to the disillusionment of age, has died. She was 83. Andersson's longtime friend, director Christina Olofson, confirmed her death to the Swedish media on April 14. Andersson began acting in her teens and had a wide-ranging career in film, television and on stage but was best known for her work with Bergman. He discovered her while directing a commercial for Bris soap in 1951 and cast her four years later — in a single scene — in Smiles of a Summer Night. She would go on to appear in 13 of his movies from the 1950s through the 1980s. The sun literally shone (and birds sang) every time she appeared onscreen as the gentle wife and mother in The Seventh Seal (1957). In Wild Strawberries (1957), Andersson looked like something torn out of a fairy tale: a blonde-haired maiden collecting berries in the forest. Andersson kept the short hair, and gained international recognition, in her breakout role playing nurse Alma in Bergman's Persona in 1966. She appeared alongside James Garner and Sidney Poitier in the violent Western Duel at Diablo (1966) as a woman abducted by Apaches who, once rescued, wants to return. She played a soft-spoken psychiatrist tending to Kathleen Quinlan's teen schizophrenic in 1977's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Steve McQueen's wife in An Enemy of the People (1978), which Arthur Miller adapted from Henrik Ibsen's original play. Andersson also appeared in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1970) and Robert Altman's Quintet (1979). She played Richard Chamberlain’s mother (although a year younger than Chamberlain) in Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story, the 1985 miniseries about the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis. She won best actress honors at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958 for Brink of Life — sharing the honor with her three female co-stars — and best actress honors at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1963 for The Mistress.In later life, Andersson appeared mainly in European TV roles, including the medieval adventure drama Arn, originally made as a miniseries, in 2010. Her stage career included three decades of work with Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre, starring in classics by Shakespeare, Moliere and Chekhov, and two Broadway appearances: Full Circle in 1973 and, together with her frequent film co-star Max von Sydow, The Night of the Tribades in 1977. Andersson also worked as a theater director in Sweden, directing several plays. During the civil war in Yugoslavia, she worked with several initiatives to bring theater and other forms of culture to the war-battered region.
Sylvia Miles
Sylvia Miles, the uninhibited actress whose 14 minutes of screen time as a poodle-owning hooker in Midnight Cowboy and a boozy broad in Farewell, My Lovely was enough to land her a pair of supporting Oscar nominations, died on June 12 at the age of 94. Publicist Mauricio Padilha toldThe New York Times that Miles died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital in Manhattan. Her friend Geraldine Smith told the New York Post that she had been in declining health and had recently left a nursing home because "she didn’t want to die there." In one of her most notorious roles in a career filled with them, Miles starred as a fading Hollywood movie star in Heat (1972), a satire of Sunset Boulevard from Andy Warhol's Warhol Factory. She appears naked and shares a steamy love scene with the hunky, much-younger Joe Dallesandro in the movie, directed by Paul Morrissey. Plus, she claimed to have made up every line of her dialogue. The inimitable actress also played a crazed German lesbian zombie in Michael Winner's The Sentinel (1977); a fortune teller, Madame Zena, who gets murdered, in Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse (1981); a Jewish matchmaker who tries to set up Amy Irving in Crossing Delancey (1988); and a hot-headed, vulgar landlord of a strip joint in Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales (2007). Miles also made quite the impression as Charlie Sheen's aggressive real estate agent in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), then reprised the role for the 2010 sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. A great chess player, Miles was married three times: to William Miles (1948-50), actor Gerald Price (1952-58) and radio personality Ted Brown (1963-70). All ended in divorce.
William Esper
William Esper, the influential acting teacher and Sanford Meisner disciple who lent his expertise to Kim Basinger, John Malkovich, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Rockwell, Tracee Ellis Ross and countless others, died on Jan. 26 at the age of 86. Esper, who launched his William Esper Studio in 1965, died Saturday of complications from Lewy body disease at his home in New York City, his son, actor and theater director Michael Esper, told The Hollywood Reporter. Esper's students also included Paul Sorvino, Mary Steenburgen, Jennifer Beals, Kristin Davis, William Hurt, Kim Delaney, Wendy Malik, Dule Hill, Calista Flockhart, Peter Gallagher, Patricia Heaton, Aaron Eckhart, Christine Lahti, Gretchen Mol, Larry David, Amy Schumer, David Morse, Michele Shay, Patricia Wettig, Richard Schiff and Timothy Olyphant. In 1962, Esper began training as a teacher and director with Meisner and worked closely with him for the next 15 years. He was on the staff of the Playhouse from 1965-77 and associate director of its acting department from 1974-77. Esper also founded the BFA and MFA professional actor training programs at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1977 and led the department until 2004. Esper and a former student, Damon DiMarco, co-wrote the 2008 book The Actor's Art and Craft: William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique.With his wife, Suzanne, Esper conducted numerous workshops throughout Europe, most notably at the National Film School of Denmark, the National Theater School of Norway and the State Theater of Mannheim. In 2008, they introduced Meisner's work to Russia at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theater. He worked extensively off-Broadway and was a member of the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York, and SAG honored him with a certificate of achievement for his service to acting. In addition to his wife and son, survivors include his daughter, Shannon, and her husband, Jake; and grandson Otis.
Arte Johnson
Arte Johnson, the comic best known for the hilarious characters he created for the 1960s NBC smash hit Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, died on July 3 at the age of 90. The 5-foot-4 Johnson, a master of ad libs, double-talk and dialects who was content to be a "second banana," died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of heart failure following a three-year battle with bladder and prostate cancer, his family announced. Johnson cracked up Laugh-In audiences with his portrayal of Wolfgang, a former German storm trooper who muttered "Verry interesting" to the most cracked proposals (or, "Verry interesting … but stupid"). He said he got the idea for the character while watching Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan battle the Nazis in the 1942 movie Desperate Journey. Outfitted in a comic combination of Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein — walking stick, bad suit, frizzy hair, odd top hat — Johnson also was delightful as Tyrone F. Horneigh, a dirty old man who propositioned the spinster Gladys (Ruth Buzzi) on a park bench. After his suggestive mutterings, she would swat him with her oversized purse. Johnson had a repertoire of more than 60 comic characters, including Piotr Rosmenko, an Eastern European song-and-dance man; Rabbi Shankar, an addled Indian guru; and a man in a yellow raincoat who could not help falling off his tricycle. "Humor for me consists in incongruity," he said in 1974. "If I were doing a Hasidic rabbi, I'd have him speak with an Irish accent. … You take it out of reality and make it cartoon-esque without being denigrating. Because people today are so sensitive, it's the only way of creating humor without offending someone." Johnson won an Emmy in 1969 for his work on Laugh-In but left the show after four seasons, saying its demanding workload didn't leave him time to do much else. In 1979, he portrayed Count Dracula's (George Hamilton) sniveling manservant Renfield in Love at First Bite. "I work best when I have a false nose, a false mustache, an odd costume, a piece of hair, a bone through my nose. Give me some odd, weird thing and that's me," he said in a 1972 interview. Arthur Stanton Eric Johnson was born on Jan. 20, 1929, in Benton Harbor, Michigan. His father was a lawyer, and Johnson spent most of his young years in Chicago. He entered Austin High School at age 12 and the University of Illinois at 16, where he graduated with a major in radio journalism. After college, Johnson migrated to New York, where he wrote for a calendar company, and then served a stint in the Army. Back in New York, he landed a publicity job at Viking Press (he worked with John Steinbeck getting out the 1952 novel East of Eden) but was disenchanted with the publishing world. Johnson came to Los Angeles in 1955 as a singer and appeared on such shows as It's Always Jan, Make Room for Daddy, Sally, The Twilight Zone, The Red Skelton Hour, The Andy Griffith Show and McHale's Navy and in the films Miracle in the Rain (1956), The Subterraneans (1960), The Third Day(1965) — as a neurotic killer — and The President's Analyst (1967). His versatile vocal creations led to work in scores of commercials over the years. Producer George Schlatter was impressed with his humorous characterizations and impersonations and asked Johnson to try out for Laugh-In, which debuted in September 1968. In the 1970s for NBC, Johnson headlined his own special, Verry Interesting; starred in the telefilm Call Holme, a comedy mystery that utilized his propensity for disguises and accents; and served as master of ceremonies for the quiz show Knockout. Later, he played a magazine photographer on Aaron Spelling's Glitter and Yakov Smirnoff's father on NBC's Night Court, used his vocal talents for audiobooks by Dave Barry and others and returned to Broadway to play several characters in a revival of Candide for Harold Prince. His brother, Coslough Johnson, was a comedy writer who worked on The Monkees, Laugh-In and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and on several cartoons (Arte voiced characters in some of those). In 1968, Johnson married a German woman, Gisela, and picked up a love of needlepoint from her. She survives him, as does his brother. Donations in his name can be made to Actors & Others for Animals. In the interview with Dana, Johnson said he never had any desire to be a star. "I was always a reactive performer. A guy does something, I will react to it," he said. "That's my mindset. I cannot be the No. 1. I guess I was born to be a second banana. And I had no reluctance in doing it. I loved it."
Max Wright
Max Wright, who portrayed the beleaguered father of the suburban family who gave a home on Earth to an extraterrestrial on the 1980s NBC sitcom ALF, died on June 26 at the age of 75. His son, Ben, confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter without providing details. Wright, who often played uptight characters, was a stage veteran who made his Broadway debut in 1968 in The Great White Hope; he had been in the original production at the Arena Stage in Washington. He received a Tony nomination for best actor in a play in 1998 for his turn as Pavel Lebedev, chairman of the local council, in Ivanov, and he appeared on Broadway in another Anton Chekhov classic, The Cherry Orchard. In the 1980s, Wright portrayed radio station manager Karl Shub on the short-lived but acclaimed NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill, starring Dabney Coleman, and from 1999-2001 he was Norm MacDonald's boss Max Denby on the ABC comedy Norm. He also played the manager of Central Perk in two early episodes of Friends and was a regular on another NBC show, Misfits of Science. On the big screen, the Detroit native was one of the futuristic scientists in the Alan Arkin comedy Simon (1980), and he appeared in All That Jazz (1979), Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), The Sting II (1983), Touch and Go (1986), Soul Man (1986), The Shadow (1994), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) and Snow Falling on Cedars (1999). Wright played the social worker dad Willie Tanner on ALF, which ran on NBC for four seasons, from 1986 through 1990. Tom Patchett, a producer on Buffalo Bill who created ALF with Paul Fusco, hired him for the job. "Max absolutely made you forget ALF was a puppet," Patchett said in a 2016 oral history of the show.
Sammy Shore
Sammy Shore, the co-founder of Los Angeles' World Famous Comedy Store and a stand-up comedian, died on May 18 at the age of 92. According to a post on the Comedy Store's Facebook page, he died from natural causes and was surrounded by family. "Words can’t express how much his comedic gift, friendship, and beneficence will be missed. The bright light he shone and the laughter he brought into the lives of everyone he touched will never dim. There is only one 'Brother Sam'!" the Comedy Store post read. Shore, who had an almost 70-year career as a stand-up comedian, founded the World Famous Comedy Store with his writing partner Rudy De Luca in 1972 in the former building that housed the legendary Sunset Strip nightclub Ciro's (owned by Hollywood Reporter founder Billy Wilkerson). By 1974, his ex-wife Mitzi Shore became the beloved owner of the club, which went on to host luminaries of the medium early in their careers, including Robin Williams, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jim Carrey, Richard Pryor, Garry Shandling and Roseanne Barr. Around the same time, Sammy Shore's career took off when he opened for Elvis Presley during his Las Vegas residency at the International Hotel in 1969, a partnership that would last three years. That began a series of high-profile openings he would perform for other artists, including Tony Orlando, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr., Tom Jones, Ann-Margret, Connie Stevens, Bobby Darin and Glen Campbell. Shore was prolific over the course of his career, writing three books — The Warm-Up, 70 Sucks! and The Man Who Made Elvis Laugh — and was in the process of completing another, called Last Comic Sitting (Confessions of a Pissed-Off Comic). Comedy albums he produced included Brother Sam, Come Heal With Me, and 70 Sucks, But 80 is Worse. He also performed in one-man shows and made cameos on films including Jerry Lewis' The Bellboy and Mel Brooks' Life Stinks and television series such as Sanford and Son. "However, he was most proud of his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, as you had 'arrived' if asked to appear on Ed’s show," the Facebook post reads. On Twitter, Shore's son, comedian and actor Pauly Shore, wrote, "Dad, you lived an amazing life and I'm so proud to say you are my father. When you're in heaven I'll be killing the crowds night after night and carrying on your legacy. Love you dad. Rest in peace." Shore is survived by Suzanne; his children Scott, Sandi, Peter and Pauly; his grandchildren Lola and Caleb; and three dogs.
Valentina Cortese
Academy Award-nominated actress Valentina Cortese died on July 10 in Milan. She was 96. Cortese, born in 1923, was one of the leading ladies of Italian cinema of the 1940s, first gaining fame with the role of Lisabetta in the 1942 film La cena delle beffeby from Alessandro Blasetti. Her screen presence earned her international acclaim. She starred as both Fantine and Cosette in the 1948 Italian version of Les Miserables, with Gino Cervi and a young Marcello Mastroianni. After starring in the 1949 British film The Glass Mountain, she starred in numerous American films of the time. In 1948, she signed with 20th Century Fox, joining films including Thieves’ Highway (1949), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), and The Barefoot Contessa (1954). She continued to work in Europe, starring in Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Amiche (1955), Federico Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Franco Zeffirelli films including Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and Sparrow (1993), as well as Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). In 1975, she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for her role as Severine in Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night. Cortese was also nominated for a Golden Globe and ultimately won a BAFTA award for the role. Ingrid Bergman, who ultimately took home the Oscar for Murder on the Orient Express, announced her shock and dismay that she had won over Cortese. "She gave the most beautiful performance that all we actresses recognized because, after all, we have all forgotten our lines and always open the wrong doors, and it was wonderful to see her do it so beautifully," said Bergman in her acceptance speech. "Here I am and I'm her rival and I don't like it at all. Please forgive me, Valentina. I didn't mean to. Thank you." The Grande Dame was also a fashion icon throughout her life. As a young girl, raised in a farming family, she wore scarfs around her head to protect herself from the sun. She resurrected this fashion trend in the latter part of her life, almost always photographed with an elaborate headscarf. In 2017, the Venice Film Festival celebrated Cortese with Diva! a documentary film by Francesco Patierno that honors her life and career. Eight contemporary Italian “divas” were cast to tell her story. Cortese had one son, actor Jackie Basehart, during her nine-year marriage to American actor Richard Basehart. Jackie died in Milan in 2015.
David Hedison
David Hedison, who starred as Captain Lee Crane on the 1960s ABC submarine series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, died July 18 at age 92. The handsome actor also portrayed scientist André Delambre, who got turned into an insect in The Fly (1958) long before Jeff Goldblum ever did, and he played CIA operative Felix Leiter in the James Bond films Live and Let Die (1973) and Licence to Kill (1989). From 1964 to 1968, Hedison's character worked aboard the submarine Seaview under the command of Adm. Harriman Nelson (Richard Basehart) on 110 episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The show was created by Irwin Allen, based on his 1961 movie of the same name. He worked alongside Uta Hagen and Michael Redgrave in-off Broadway productions by Clifford Odets and Christopher Fry, among others, and made his big-screen debut in the World War II naval drama The Enemy Below (1957), starring Robert Mitchum. In the 1990s, he played Spencer Harrison on the NBC daytime series Another World. His wife, Bridget Hedison, a producer on Dynasty and its spinoff The Colbys, died in February 2016. Survivors include his daughters Serena and Alexandra, the wife of Jodie Foster.
Nick Buoniconti
Nick Buoniconti, who helped lead the Miami Dolphins to the NFL's only perfect season before spending 23 years on the HBO program Inside the NFL, died July 30 at age 78. The Pro Football Hall of Fame middle linebacker died Tuesday in Bridgehampton, New York, said Bruce Bobbins, a spokesman for the family. He battled CTE, the irreversible degenerative disease caused by repetitive brain trauma, in his final years. Buoniconti was bypassed in the NFL Draft but went on to a 15-year career. He helped the Dolphins win back-to-back Super Bowls, including the 1972 team that finished 17-0. Following retirement, Buoniconti and his son, Marc, worked to raise more than a half-billion dollars in the search for a cure for paralysis. The younger Buoniconti was paralyzed from the shoulders down making a tackle for The Citadel in 1985. Nick Buoniconti was chosen for the all-time AFL team in 1970. He was chosen for the NFL Pro Bowl in 1972 and 1973. In addition to his gig hosting Inside the NFL with former Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson — they were first paired in 1980 — Buoniconti worked as an attorney, as president of U.S. Tobacco and as an agent to such athletes as Bucky Dent and Andre Dawson after his playing days were done. Buoniconti played for the Dolphins from 1969-74 and in 1976. He was the leader of Miami's famed "No-Name Defense" and in 1973 set a team record with 162 tackles. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001. In 1985, he and Marc Buoniconti helped to found the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, which has become the world's largest spinal cord injury research center.
Arthur McGee
Arthur McGee, widely known as the grandfather of fashion designers of color, died July 1 at age 86 in New York after a prolonged illness. McGee became a pioneer in the black fashion community, inspiring and mentoring the likes of Willi Smith, Elena Braith, Scott Barrie and B Michael. Following McGee's death, B Michael said in a statement, "Standing on your shoulders, it was an honor to call you friend. Thank you for your invaluable contribution to the tapestry of American fashion." In the 1960s, McGee opened his own shop on St. Marks Place and became the go-to dresser for stars including Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson and Lena Horne. He was honored in 2009 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Tyson and B Michael attended the luncheon. McGee attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he studied apparel design and millinery, in which he was placed due to his experience making hats growing up. During his six months at FIT, McGee worked for English-American designer Charles James. McGee said, "I quit [FIT] because they said to me, 'There's no jobs for a black designer.' So I left." He went on to create Broadway costumes and work on Seventh Avenue, making pieces for Sibyl Burton and Josephine Premice. But it was in 1957 that McGee made history as the first African-American designer to run a design studio — Bobbie Brooks — on Seventh Avenue in the garment district in New York. McGee sold his line to stores Henri Bendel, Bergdorf Goodman and Lord & Taylor, according to the New York Amsterdam News. McGee opened his store in the '60s on St. Marks Place. In 2010, FIT honored McGee with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is survived by his brother Gordon.
Gary LeMel
Gary LeMel, the longtime film music executive who was once dubbed the "Godfather of the Modern Soundtrack" for his supervision of blockbuster albums including The Big Chill, Ghostbusters and The Bodyguard, died July 6 at age 80. LeMel kicked off his executive career in music publishing and later artist management, including a three-year stint at Jerry Weintraub’s Management III. But the job that would set the course of the rest of his career was his role at First Artists — the short-lived film production company formed as a partnership between Barbra Streisand, Sidney Poitier, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen — where he supervised the soundtrack for Streisand’s 1976 remake of A Star Is Born. Selling more than 4 million copies on the strength of Streisand’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single "Evergreen," the soundtrack launched LeMel’s career in film music, where he would make an indelible mark during the next four decades. LeMel became an executive at Columbia Pictures in the early 1980s, when he oversaw soundtracks for The Big Chill, Ghostbusters and St. Elmo’s Fire, among countless others. LeMel suffered from Lewy body dementia in his later years, though even that didn’t keep him from performing. Along with others diagnosed with degenerative brain diseases, he sang with a musical ensemble known as the 5th Dementia band, which became the subject of a recent documentary. He is survived by his wife, Maddy, and three children. This story first appeared on Billboard.com.
Gordon Bressack
Gordon Bressack, the Emmy-winning writer known for such animated hits as Pinky and the Brain and Animaniacs, died on Aug. 30 at age 68 in Los Angeles after a long health battle, his son, filmmaker James Cullen Bressack, told The Hollywood Reporter. "Thank you for telling me I was going to be a filmmaker before I ever even knew what that meant," the younger Bressack wrote on Instagram. "You meant the world to me, you always have and you always will." Bressack worked on some of the most influential cartoons of the 1990s. He was nominated for five Daytime Emmys and won three that he shared with his colleagues — outstanding achievement in animation for Animaniacs in 1996; outstanding special class animated program for Pinky and the Brain in 1999; and outstanding children's animated program for Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain in 2000. In 1998, he became the first recipient of the Writers Guild's Animation Writers Caucus Animation Award. His credits also include Tiny Toon Adventures, The Smurfs, Mighty Max, Darkwing Duck, Bionic Six and his own creation, Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. Bressack was a New York native who came up in the theater. In his later years, he exercised his love of the stage by writing and directing plays in Los Angeles. In addition to his son — with whom he shared his most recent animation credit, on their 2017 feature-length film CarGo — Bressack is survived by his daughters, Jackie and Samantha; his grandchild, Logan; and siblings Margi, Celia and Roger.
John Clarke
John Clarke, the Days of Our Lives actor who portrayed lawyer Mickey Horton on the NBC soap opera for nearly four decades, right from the very beginning, died Oct. 16 in Laguna Beach, California. He was 88. Clarke also appeared on the fourth Twilight Zone episode, "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine," which first aired in 1959, and played an LAPD cop opposite Leslie Nielsen and future General Hospital star John Beradino on the Quinn Martin/ABC drama The New Breed, which ran for a season (1961-62). Clarke starred as one of the sons of Macdonald Carey's Dr. Tom Horton on Days of Our Lives from the show's debut in November 1965 until he retired in January 2004, when he received a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys. Clarke had only planned to stay with the show for a year. He also was nominated for the Daytime Emmy outstanding actor award in 1979. Survivors include his daughter, actress Melinda Clarke, who started her career on Days of Our Lives and played Julie Cooper on the Fox series The O.C.; his wife, Patty, a former ballet dancer; and son Joshua.
David Weisman
David Weisman, best known for producing the Academy Awards nominated Kiss of the Spider Woman, which earned William Hurt the best actor Oscar died Oct. 9 at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles due to complications from neuroinvasive West Nile virus at the age of 77. Inspired by a screening of the classic Italian film La Dolce Vita, Weisman dropped out of college to design film posters in Rome, where he managed to meet Federico Fellini, for whom he created a poster for 8 1/2. Returning to New York, Weisman was hired by Otto Preminger to create the title sequence for Hurry Sundown and then became Preminger’s assistant on the film. Weisman also designed the key art for The Boys in the Band, among many others. Weisman's long collaboration with Leonard Schrader began on The Killing of America, a feature documentary about the evolution of U.S. violence that he wrote with Leonard and Chieko Schrader. In 1982, Weisman acquired the screen rights to Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman book and developed the film script with Schrader. Kiss of the Spider Woman eventually competed at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, where Hurt won the best actor award. The film also received Oscar nominations for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay and the 1986 Oscar for best actor for Hurt. In recent years Weisman developed several projects with Schrader, including Little K, based on a book by Adrienne Sharp. Weisman is survived by his brother, film and TV director Sam Weisman, sister-in-law Constance McCashin, nephew Daniel Weisman and niece Margaux Weisman.
Bill Macy
Bill Macy, who played the frustrated husband Walter Findlay opposite Bea Arthur on the hit 1970s sitcom Maude died on Oct. 18. He was 97. Macy, who also portrayed Sy Benson, the head writer of a 1950s sketch comedy show, in the classic My Favorite Year (1982), died Thursday night in Los Angeles at 7:13 p.m. local time, producer and manager Matt Beckoff told The Hollywood Reporter. Macy also stood out as the weaselly Charlie Hatter, an old pal of Art Carney's aging detective character, in Robert Benton's The Late Show (1977), and his Stan Fox helped Steve Martin's Navin R. Johnson bring the (ultimately flawed) eyeglass invention the Opti-Grab to market in Carl Reiner'sThe Jerk (1979). Maude, a spinoff of All in the Family, debuted in September 1972 and ran for six seasons on CBS until April 1978. Both shows, of course, were created by sitcom legend Norman Lear. Macy also appeared on such series as St. Elsewhere, The Facts of Life, NYPD Blue, Seinfeld and My Name Is Earl, and in films including Serial (1980), Movers & Shakers (1985) — that one with Matthau — Analyze This (1999) and Surviving Christmas (2004). My Favorite Year was executive produced by Mel Brooks, who based the film on his experiences as a writer on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. Several characters in the movie were modeled after real people, so a case could be made that Macy played a version of head writer Mel Tolkin. Survivors include his wife since 1975, actress Samantha Harper, a regular on another Lear show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. They met in the late '60s when both were in the original Broadway production of the zesty Oh! Calcutta!
Sam Bobrick
Sam Bobrick, the Emmy-nominated writer and playwright who created the NBC comedy Saved by the Bell and wrote four comedies that played on Broadway died on Oct. 11. He was 87. Bobrick died Friday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center after suffering a stroke, his friend, Adam Carl, an actor, writer and producer, told The Hollywood Reporter. Bobrick also was on the staff of The Andy Griffith Show, for which he wrote 19 episodes, and worked on other TV comedies including The Flintstones; Gomer Pyle: USMC; Get Smart; Hey, Landlord; Good Morning, World; and Bewitched. The Chicago native received his Emmy nomination in 1968 for his writing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, sharing the honor with Lorenzo Music, Mason Williams and others, and later developed and produced The Paul Lynde Show. Bobrick wrote or co-wrote more than 40 plays during his career. Four of those, all created with one-time partner Ron Clark (also a Smothers Brothers writer), got to Broadway: Norman, Is That You?;No Hard Feelings; Murder at the Howard Johnson's and Wally's Cafe. In 2011 at age 79, he won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his play The Psychic, which made its world premiere at The Falcon Theater (now the Garry Marshall Theatre) in Burbank. Bobrick created Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which ran on the Disney Channel for a season (1988-89) and starred Hayley Mills, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Dustin Diamond. After it was canceled, NBC picked it up, renamed it Saved by the Bell and moved the Indianapolis-set show to Bayside High School in California. Saved by the Bell aired on NBC from 1989-93 and spawned spinoffs and TV movies, and a new series to star original castmembers Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley has been set for NBCUniversal's new streaming service, Peacock. Survivors include his wife, Julie; children Lori (and her husband, Caleb), Stefanie (Geoff) and Joey (Linda); grandchildren Ariel and Josh; and his "fourth child," Albert the Wonder Pug.
Erik Pleskow
Eric Pleskow, the former studio head at United Artists and Orion Pictures whose companies won seven best picture Oscars under his watch, died at age 95 on Oct. 1 in Westport, Connecticut, Eva Rotter, managing director of the Vienna International Film Festival, told The Hollywood Reporter. He had served as president of the Viennale since 1998. "His death is a great loss for all of us," the festival said in a statement. "Eric had a fulfilled and long life, and we appreciated him as a longtime friend and companion of our festival. As president and patron of the Viennale, he has always carried us with his humor and foresight." Pleskow helped lead United Artists from 1973-78, when the company released the eventual best picture Oscar winners One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Rocky (1976) and Annie Hall (1977). Then, after he exited with fellow top execs Arthur Krim, Mike Medavoy, Robert Benjamin and William Bernstein in a spat with UA parent Transamerica Corp. to launch Orion, that company reaped success with Amadeus (1984), Platoon (1986), Dances With Wolves (1990) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) taking home the top Oscar. He was with Orion as president and then chairman until 1992.
Phyllis Newman
Phyllis Newman, the popular Broadway actress who wore only a towel in her Tony-winning performance in the musical Subways Are for Sleeping died at age86 on Sept. 13 in New York after a long battle with lung disease, her son, Vogue theater critic Adam Green, announced. Survivors also include her daughter, Tony-nominated lyricist and composer Amanda Green (Hands on a Hardbody). She made her Broadway debut in 1952 in Wish You Were Here and went on to appear in Bells Are Ringing, The Apple Tree, On the Town, Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue and the one-woman musical The Madwoman of Central Park West, which she co-wrote with Arthur Laurents. Newman had an uncredited role in Picnic (1956) and went on to appear on the big screen in Let's Rock (1958), Bye Bye Braverman (1968), To Find a Man (1972), Mannequin (1987), The Beautician and the Beast (1997) and A Price Above Rubies (1998), among other films. She played Paul Dooley's wife on the short-lived 1988-89 CBS sitcom Coming of Age and also was on TV in programs including Robert Montgomery Presents, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Quincy M.E., thirtysomething and 100 Centre Street. In 2009, she received the inaugural Isabelle Stevenson Award, a special Tony, for her work as the founder of The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative of the Actors' Fund of America, which has raised millions of dollars to women in need. Newman wrote about her battle with breast cancer and the infidelities of her husband in her 1988 memoir, Just in Time: Notes From My Life.
Jan Merlin
Jan Merlin, who played villains in dozens of films and TV shows and good guys on Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and The Rough Riders, died Sept. 20 in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 94. In a painful year in England and Ireland in which he served as a "movable prop" and received no screen credit, Merlin donned masks and heavy makeup to portray several characters and substitute for Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra and others in John Huston's The List of Adrian Messenger (1963). He then wrote a 2001 novel, Shooting Montezuma, based on that experience. Merlin also spent about five years as a writer on the NBC soap Another World, winning a Daytime Emmy in 1975 and receiving another nomination two years later. From 1950-54, Merlin starred as Roger Manning on the kids TV program Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, based on a comic strip. He moved to Hollywood for a role in Six Bridges to Cross (1955), starring Curtis, then appeared with Mamie Van Doren in Running Wild (1955), with Dale Robertson in A Day of Fury (1956), with Tom Tryon in Screaming Eagles (1956) and with Ann Sheridan in Woman and the Hunter (1957). In 1958-59, Merlin portrayed Lt. Colin Kirby on The Rough Riders, an ABC series set in the aftermath of the Civil War. His credits also included the films Guns of Diablo (1964), The Oscar (1966), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), Take the Money and Run (1969) and The Hindenburg (1975) and such TV shows as Laramie, The Virginian, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Mannix, Mission: Impossible and Little House on the Prairie.
Julie Gibson
Julie Gibson, a singer, actress, studio rep and dialogue coach who collaborated with Preston Sturges, Orson Welles, Ida Lupino, John Huston, Edgar Bergen and The Bowery Boys during a fascinating career died on Oct. 2 at the age of 106. Gibson died in her sleep in North Hollywood, her cousin, James Rogers, told The Hollywood Reporter. A onetime contract player and "Sweater Girl" at Paramount, the petite Gibson had small roles in such notable films as Bing Crosby's Going My Way (1944) and Judy Garland's The Clock (1945). She sang in a nightclub scene at the start of The Feminine Touch (1941), and Sturges picked her to perform the opening number in Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). Later, she ran an acting studio with Agnes Moorehead, and two of their students were Sidney Poitier and Maya Angelou, her cousin said. She married Jimmie Grier and sang with his orchestra for the four years, performing six nights a week, four shows a night, two of which were broadcast live nationwide on Friday and Saturday evenings. The band also released multiple records on Decca featuring her as lead singer. Later, she sang on The Joe Penner Show on nationwide radio broadcasts on Sunday afternoons, performed at the 10th Academy Awards held in 1938 inside the Biltmore ballroom and led her own live weekly CBS radio program on Saturday nights. In the French capital, Gibson became a press representative for Fox and was assigned to the Huston films Moulin Rouge (1952) and Beat the Devil (1953). Gibson returned to L.A., and Paramount, and after accepting her back, named her "Sweater Girl of 1954" and loaned her out for a Columbia mystery/detective serial featuring kid crime-fighter Chick Carter. In the '60s, Gibson served as dialect advisor on Martin Ritt's The Outrage (1964), starring Paul Newman and she worked as the dialogue coach on Lupino's The Trouble With Angels (1966). In 1969, she joined the Brian Keith CBS series Family Affair as dialogue coach and stayed with that show until its 1971 conclusion. After divorcing Grier years earlier, she married Charles Barton, who directed more than 100 episodes of Family Affair. He died in 1981.
Bernard Slade
Bernard Slade, the Oscar-nominated writer who created The Partridge Family and wrote the enduring romantic comedy Same Time, Next Year for Broadway and the big screen, died Oct. 30. He was 89. Slade died peacefully at his Beverly Hills home from complications of Lewy body dementia, a family rep announced. In the 1960s and '70s, Slade also developed ABC's The Flying Nun and created NBC's The Girl With Something Extra, two comedies starring Sally Field; created ABC's Love on a Rooftop, featuring Judy Carne, Pete Duel and Rich Little, and CBS' Bridget Loves Bernie, starring David Birney and Meredith Baxter; and served as a story editor and penned 17 episodes for ABC's Bewitched, starring Elizabeth Montgomery. Both original versions of Same Time, Next Year starred Ellen Burstyn, who won a Tony in 1975 for her stage performance, then earned an Oscar nomination for best actress. She starred opposite Charles Grodin on Broadway and with Alan Alda in the 1978 feature. Slade's work netted him Tony and Oscar noms as well. The writer also adapted Tribute (back with Lemmon) and Romantic Comedy (starring Dudley Moore and Mary Steenburgen) for movies released in 1980 and 1983, respectively. Slade said that watching the musical family group The Cowsills perform on The Tonight Show inspired his idea for The Partridge Family. Launching the careers of teen idol David Cassidy, Susan Dey and Danny Bonaduce, the show starred Shirley Jones as the matriarch of the fictional family singing group. It ran for four seasons on ABC and was seen in syndication for years.
Nik Powell
Nik Powell, a co-founder of Virgin Records with Richard Branson and a producer on films including the best picture Oscar nominee The Crying Game, died Nov. 7. He was 69. Powell had been receiving treatment for cancer and died in Oxford, England, the National Film and Television School announced. He served as its popular director from 2003-17. "He loved the school deeply and was incredibly proud of every one of our graduates," the NFTS said in a statement. "Nik leaves a lasting legacy and will be missed by us all." Powell and Stephen Woolley launched the U.K. label Palace Pictures in 1982, and the London native was a producer on three films from writer-director Neil Jordan: The Company of Wolves (1984), Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992), for which Jordan won the original screenplay Oscar. Powell and Woolley went on to establish Scalla Productions in 1992, and Powell had producing credits on such other films as Backbeat (1994), The Neon Bible (1995), TwentyFourSeven (1997), Fever Pitch (1997), Understanding Jane (2001), Last Orders (2001), Ladies in Lavender (2004) and Brimstone (2016).Powell and Branson (they were friends as kids) teamed with Simon Draper and Tom Newman to found Virgin Records as a mail-order record operation in 1972; after Powell left for the movie business, the company was sold to EMI in 1992 for $960 million. Powell also served as chairman of the European Film Academy from 1996-2003 and then was vice chairman. NFTS director Jon Wardle said he spent "five incredibly happy years" working with Powell as his deputy at the film school. "He told me recently how his work to support and develop NFTS students to reach their full potential was probably the professional achievement he was most proud of," Wardle said in a statement. "The culmination of his work at the school was recognized in 2018 when together we collected the BAFTA for outstanding British contribution to cinema. "Nik leaves an unrivalled legacy, and no one has done more than him to set the bar high. We will continue to strive for the future success of the school in his honor."
Branko Lusti
Branko Lustig, a Croatia-born Jew who survived the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and went on to win two best picture Oscars, died Nov. 14 at his home in Zagreb, Croatia. He was 87. The Festival of Tolerance, a Jewish film festival that Lustig oversaw as president for more than a decade, announced his death on its website. Lustig spent more than 50 years in the film industry, starting on local productions made under the state auspices of what was then Yugoslavia. A job as location manager for Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971) led to more international work, including as an assistant director on Volker Schlöndorff's Oscar-winning The Tin Drum (1979) and as a local production supervisor on Alan J. Pakula's Sophie's Choice (1982), another Oscar winner. In the late '80s, Lustig moved to Los Angeles. He soon met Steven Spielberg, with whom he would produce Schindler's List, the film that would get him his first Academy Award for best picture in 1994. "It is a long way from Auschwitz to this stage," Lustig said as he accepted his Oscar. Schindler's List secured Lustig's place as one of the most influential producers in Hollywood. After producing The Peacemaker (1997), starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, Lustig began a long and productive collaboration with Ridley Scott. Together they would make six films — 2000's Gladiator (which won Lustig his second Academy Award), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), A Good Year (2006) and American Gangster (2007). When Lustig told Spielberg his story of life in the camps, the director reached over and took Lustig's arm, upon which his camp number was tattooed. “He kissed my number and said, ‘You will be my producer,’” Lustig recalled. “He is the man who gave me the possibility to fulfill my obligation.” In a statement, Spielberg referenced that moment and said he was "heartbroken" to hear of Lustig's death. "When we first met to discuss Schindler's List, he insisted his award-winning film credits were irrelevant, and that his qualification to work on the film was simple and singular," he said. "Rolling up his sleeves to reveal a numeric tattoo from Auschwitz, he left me speechless, and our lovely friendship of nearly three decades was born in that intimate moment. "Emerging from the horror of the Holocaust, his personal journey is a triumph of hope and determination; a story to which children from some of today’s unthinkable environments can aspire. He will be truly missed." After 45 years in Hollywood, Lustig returned to his native Croatia — now a sovereign state — and devoted his life to remembrance, serving as president of the Festival of Tolerance. Earlier this year, the city of Zagreb named him an honorary citizen for his outstanding contribution to “promoting the values ??of a democratic society, film art and a culture of understanding.” Lustig donated the Oscar he won for Schindler’s List to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. With Spielberg, he helped set up the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of more than 50,000 Holocaust survivors. It was, he told THR, his greatest achievement: “People say today around the world that [the Holocaust] doesn’t exist. And it’s important that we not forget, never forget. If you forget it, they will have really beat you.”
Niall Toibin
Niall Toibin, the Irish veteran of stage and screen who appeared in films directed by David Lean, Ron Howard and Joel Schumacher, died Nov. 13 in Dublin. He was 89. Toibin starred as famed Irish writer Brendan Behan in a 1967 stage version of Behan's Borstal Boy at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and shared a Drama Desk Award for his performance after it moved to Broadway in 1970 and won the Tony for best play. It was a role he returned to in seven other productions during his long career. Toibin also appeared for Lean in Ryan's Daughter (1970), starring Robert Mitchum; for Howard in Far and Away (1992), starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman; and for Schumacher in Veronica Guerin (2003), starring Cate Blanchett. His film résumé also included Poitín (1978), Eat the Peach (1986) and The Ballroom of Romance (1986) Toibin portrayed the boozy Slipper on the Channel 4 series The Irish R.M. and starred on the Irish soap opera Bracken with Gabriel Byrne and in the 1981 miniseries Brideshead Revisited alongside Jeremy Irons. "The depth of interpretation that he brought to a wide variety of characters showed a very deep intellectual understanding and, above all, sensitivity to the nuance of Irish life," Ireland president Michael Higgins said. The Irish Film and Television Academy honored Toibin with a lifetime achievement award in 2011. Born one of seven children on Nov. 21, 1929, in County Cork, Ireland, the colorful Toibin spent 14 years with the Radio Éireann Players in Dublin before joining the Abbey Theatre. The title of his 1995 memoir, Smile and Be a Villain, was taken from Hamlet. "Most of the material is my own, stolen from the plain people of Ireland, re-sprayed, re-molded, re-bored and given false number plates," he once said. Toibin was married to Judy Kenny from 1957 until her 2002 death and is survived by children Sean, Muireann, Aisling, Sighle and Fiana and seven grandchildren.
Rick Ludwin
Rick Ludwin, the legendary NBC executive who wrote jokes for Bob Hope, was a Seinfeld champion from the start and ran specials and late night programming at NBC for more than 30 years, died on Oct. 10 in Los Angeles after a brief illness. He was 71. Ludwin's tenure at NBC spanned the early days of Saturday Night Live and iterations of The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson and Jay Leno as well at the Late Night franchise with David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon. He commissioned and famously backed Seinfeld amid widespread doubt among fellow NBC executives that Jerry Seinfeld's "show about nothing" could be a contender. He also was at the center of the controversial decision in 2010 to cut short O'Brien's Tonight Show tenure and reinstall Leno. After 31 years at NBC, Ludwin was replaced in September 2011 by Paul Telegdy as president of alternative programs and late night. He became a consultant and left the next year. "The entire NBC family is deeply saddened today by the news of Rick Ludwin's passing," NBCUniversal Content Studios vice chairman George Cheeks said Monday in a statement. "Rick left an indelible mark in his 30-plus years at the network, with a rich legacy that lives on to this day. From Carson to Fallon and Seinfeld, Rick was instrumental in many of our greatest successes. Our thoughts are with Rick's family and loved ones as we remember a broadcasting legend and colleague."
Robert Evans
Robert Evans, the feisty and flamboyant producer and studio chief who resurrected Paramount Pictures in the 1960s by squiring such classics as Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather and Chinatown to the big screen, died on Oct. 26. He was 89. "Our son, Joshua, and I will miss Bob tremendously," his ex-wife, actress Ali MacGraw, said Monday in a statement, "and we are so very proud of his enormous contribution to the film Industry. He will be remembered as a giant." In 1966, the former actor and co-owner of a women's fashion company was named head of production at Paramount at age 36, and he rescued the teetering studio during a magical nine-year tenure, catapulting it from ninth and last place among the majors to No. 1 at the box office. As the first studio head since Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck allowed to produce his own films, Evans also shepherded such classics as The Odd Couple (1968), Goodbye, Columbus (1969), True Grit (1969), The Italian Job (1969), Love Story (1970), Harold and Maude (1971) and Lady Sings the Blues (1972). During his celebrated reign, the handsome, dark-haired Evans came to epitomize the wheeler-dealer, glamorous Hollywood producer — tanned and always hopping in and out of limousines with beautiful women. He was married seven times, with his wives including Love Story star MacGraw, Catherine Oxenberg of ABC's Dynasty and former Miss America Phyllis George. After being demoted at Paramount in a reshuffling that saw Barry Diller eventually assume control, Evans produced such standouts as Marathon Man (1976), Black Sunday (1977) and Urban Cowboy (1980) for the studio. On the other end of the success spectrum, Evans plummeted from the peak of his powers into a self-admitted paranoid haze of cocaine addiction and personal destruction. At the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, following the premiere of The Kid Stays in the Picture, the documentary about his career (and the title of his 1994 autobiography), Evans was asked what single thing he would change about his life. "The second half," he answered.
Lawrence G. Paull
Lawrence G. Paull, the production designer and art director who received an Oscar nomination for his work on the Ridley Scott sci-fi classic Blade Runner, died Nov. 10 in La Jolla, California, a publicist announced. He was 81. Paull's distinctive design style also can be seen in director Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future (1985) and Romancing the Stone (1984) and in Ron Underwood's City Slickers (1991), starring Billy Crystal and Jack Palance. He also worked on Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (1971); Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976), American Flyers (1985) and Another Stakeout (1993), all directed by John Badham; John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) and Escape From L.A. (1996); Jonathan Kaplan's Project X (1987) and Unlawful Entry (1992); Jon Avildsen's W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings (1975); and Paul Schrader's Blue Collar (1978). He shared his Oscar nom for art direction-set decoration with David L. Snyder and Linda DeScenna. "Ridley really knew how to appeal to the art department, he was very wise about it," Paull once said in a rare interview. "What he would say, up in the art department: 'If you build it, I'll shoot it.' And who could resist the temptation of that? Because we've all suffered, making films with gigantic sets, and beautiful sets, and all that is shown are talking heads. And that was disappointing. But because [Ridley] was an art director, he knew he could hook us with that bait. And he did it — if we built it, he shot it."
Chuy Bravo
Chuy Bravo, a Mexican-American actor best known for being Chelsea Handler's sidekick on the former E! show Chelsea Lately,died on Dec. 15. He was 63. Bravo was born Jesus Melgoza in 1956 in Tangancicuaro, Michoacán, Mexico. The youngest of seven children. he immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15 and began acting in the early 1990s. His acting credits include films The Honeymooners (2005) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007). Bravo went on to appear on the E! late-night talk show as Handler's sidekick — Handler famously referred to him as her "little nugget" — from 2007-2014. Chelsea Lately writer Heather McDonald took to Instagram on Sunday to offer her condolences to Bravo's family: "I just heard minutes ago about our Chuy. I don’t have many details but we are finding now. Please keep his family in your prayers and remember all the laughs and joy he brought to so many of use." Handler also posted a collage of photos with Bravo on Twitter, writing: "I loved this nugget in a big way, and I took great pleasure in how many people loved him as much as I did and do."
Allee Willis
Allee Willis, the prolific songwriter behind classics like the Friends theme song, "I'll Be There for You," and Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," died suddenly on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles from a cardiac event, her publicist Ellyn Solis confirmed. She was 72. Willis was famous for her collaboration with Earth, Wind & Fire, co-writing hit songs such as "September," "Boogie Wonderland" and "In the Stone." She was nominated for an Emmy for "I'll Be There for You" by The Rembrandts; and won two Grammy Awards for her work on Beverly Hills Cop and the Tony-nominated Broadway musical The Color Purple, which she co-wrote. The Color Purple opened in December 2005. In early 2006, Willis had seven of her hits featured in the Earth, Wind & Fire-themed musical Hot Feet, making her the first woman, and fifth person ever, to have written music for two shows opening on Broadway in the same season. The Detroit-born artist and performer was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018. Her other hits include The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance" and the Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield’s “What Have I Done to Deserve This.” According to her website, she has sold more than 60 million records.
Syd Mead
Syd Mead, the self-proclaimed "visual futurist" and conceptual artist who shaped the look of Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron, among other projects died on Dec. 30 at the age of 86 in his home in Pasadena after a three-year battle with lymphoma, his spouse, Roger Servick, told The Hollywood Reporter. After his work caught the eye of Hollywood studios, Mead went to produce conceptual artwork and other products on films including 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1982's Blade Runner, where he first gained the credit "visual futurist" (a name he coined to describe his position), 1982's Tron, 1986's Aliens, 1984's Timecop, 2000's Mission to Mars, 2006's Mission: Impossible III, 2013's Elysium, 2015's Tomorrowland and 2017's Blade Runner 2049. In the 1980s, Mead worked for Japanese companies including Sony and Honda and designed for two Japanese films, The New Yamato and Crises 2050. Survivors also include a sister and several nieces and nephews.