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Thread: Celebrity Deaths

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    Celebrity Deaths

    Actor Tony Curtis dies at Las Vegas home (AP)
    Source: AP Thu Sep 30, 2010, 6:35 am EDT



    Actor Tony Curtis is shown in this file photo. Curtis, whose real name was Bernard Schwartz, was perhaps most known for his comedic turn in Billy Wilder's 'Some Like It Hot' with co-stars Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon has died at 85 according to the Clark County, Nev. coroner. (AP Photo, File)

    HENDERSON, Nev. - Tony Curtis shaped himself from a 1950s movie heartthrob into a respected actor, showing a determined streak that served him well in such films as "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like It Hot."

    The Oscar-nominated actor died at age 85 Wednesday evening of cardiac arrest at his home in the Las Vegas-area city of Henderson, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said Thursday.

    Curtis began in acting with frivolous movies that exploited his handsome physique and appealing personality, but then steadily moved to more substantial roles, starting in 1957 in the harrowing show business tale "Sweet Smell of Success."

    In 1958, "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Academy Award nomination as best actor for his portrayal of a white racist who escaped from prison handcuffed to a black man, Sidney Poitier. The following year, he donned women's clothing and sparred with Marilyn Monroe in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."

    His first wife was actress Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame; actress Jamie Lee Curtis is their daughter.

    "My father leaves behind a legacy of great performances in movies and in his paintings and assemblages," Jamie Lee Curtis said in a statement Thursday. "He leaves behind children and their families who loved him and respected him and a wife and in-laws who were devoted to him. He also leaves behind fans all over the world."

    Curtis struggled against drug and alcohol abuse as starring roles became fewer, but then bounced back in film and television as a character actor.

    His brash optimism returned, and he allowed his once-shiny black hair to turn silver.

    Again he came back after even those opportunities began to wane, reinventing himself as a writer and painter whose canvasses sold for as much as $20,000.

    "I'm not ready to settle down like an elderly Jewish gentleman, sitting on a bench and leaning on a cane," he said at 60. "I've got a helluva lot of living to do."

    "He was a fine actor ... I shall miss him," said British actor Roger Moore, who starred alongside Curtis in TV's "The Persuaders."

    "He was great fun to work with, a great sense of humor and wonderful ad libs," Moore told Sky News. "We had the best of times."

    Curtis perfected his craft in forgettable films such as "Francis," "I Was a Shoplifter," "No Room for the Groom" and "Son of Ali Baba."

    He first attracted critical notice as Sidney Falco, the press agent seeking favor with a sadistic columnist, played by Burt Lancaster, in the 1957 classic "Sweet Smell of Success."

    In her book "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," Pauline Kael wrote that in the film, "Curtis grew up into an actor and gave the best performance of his career."

    Other prestigious films followed: Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus," "Captain Newman, M.D.," "The Vikings," "Kings Go Forth," "Operation Petticoat" and "Some Like It Hot." He also found time to do a voice acting gig as his prehistoric lookalike, Stony Curtis, in an episode of "The Flintstones."

    "The Defiant Ones" remained his only Oscar-nominated role.

    "I think it has nothing to do with good performances or bad performances," he told The Washington Post in 2002. "After the number of movies I made where I thought there should be some acknowledgment, there was nothing from the Academy."

    "My happiness and privilege is that my audience around the world is supportive of me, so I don't need the Academy."

    In 2000, an American Film Institute survey of the funniest films in history ranked "Some Like It Hot" at No. 1. Curtis — famously imitating Cary Grant's accent — and Jack Lemmon play jazz musicians who dress up as women to escape retribution after witnessing a gangland massacre.

    Monroe was their co-star, and he and Lemmon were repeatedly kept waiting as Monroe lingered in her dressing room out of fear and insecurity. Curtis fumed over her unprofessionalism. When someone remarked that it must be thrilling to kiss Monroe in the film's love scenes, the actor snapped, "It's like kissing Hitler." In later years, his opinion of Monroe softened, and in interviews he praised her unique talent.

    In 2002, Curtis toured in "Some Like It Hot" — a revised and retitled version of the 1972 Broadway musical "Sugar," which was based on the film. In the touring show, the actor graduated to the role of Osgood Fielding III, the part played in the movie by Joe E. Brown.

    After his star faded in the late 1960s, Curtis shifted to lesser roles. With jobs harder to find, he fell into drug and alcohol addiction.

    "From 22 to about 37, I was lucky," Curtis told Interview magazine in the 1980s, "but by the middle '60s, I wasn't getting the kind of parts I wanted, and it kind of soured me. ... But I had to go through the drug inundation before I was able to come to grips with it and realize that it had nothing to do with me, that people weren't picking on me."

    He recovered in the early '80s after a 30-day treatment at the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

    "Mine was a textbook case," he said in a 1985 interview. "My life had become unmanageable because of booze and dope. Work became a strain and a struggle. Because I didn't want to face the challenge, I simply made myself unavailable."

    One role during that era of struggle did bring him an Emmy nomination: his portrayal of David O. Selznick in the TV movie "The Scarlett O'Hara War," in 1980.

    He remained vigorous following heart bypass surgery in 1994, although his health declined in recent years.

    In a 2007 interview with the Las Vegas Sun, he described his frustration during a lengthy hospitalization for a bout with pneumonia in 2006. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported he was hospitalized several times in more recent years in Henderson and New York with breathing trouble, including once in July.

    Curtis took a fatherly pride in daughter Jamie's success. They were estranged for a long period, then reconciled. "I understand him better now," she said, "perhaps not as a father but as a man."

    He also had five other children. Daughters Kelly, also with Leigh, and Allegra, with second wife Christine Kaufmann, also became actresses. His other wives were Leslie Allen, Lisa Deutsch and Jill VandenBerg, whom he married in 1998.

    He had married Janet Leigh in 1951, when they were both rising young stars; they divorced in 1963.

    "Tony and I had a wonderful time together; it was an exciting, glamorous period in Hollywood," Leigh, who died in 2004, once said. "A lot of great things happened, most of all, two beautiful children."

    Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx in 1925, the son of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after World War I. His father, Manny Schwartz, had yearned to be an actor, but work was hard to find with his heavy accent. He settled for tailoring jobs, moving the family repeatedly as he sought work.

    "I was always the new kid on the block, so I got beat up by the other kids," Curtis recalled in 1959. "I had to figure a way to avoid getting my nose broken. So I became the crazy new kid on the block."

    His sidewalk histrionics helped avoid beatings and led to acting in plays at a settlement house. He also grew to love movies. "My whole culture as a boy was movies," he said. "For 11 cents, you could sit in the front row of a theater for 10 hours, which I did constantly."

    After serving in the Pacific during World War II and being wounded at Guam, he returned to New York and studied acting under the G.I. Bill. He appeared in summer stock theater and on the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills. Then an agent lined up an audition with a Universal-International talent scout. In 1948, at 23, he signed a seven-year contract with the studio, starting at $100 a week.

    Bernie Schwartz sounded too Jewish for a movie actor, so the studio gave him a new name: Anthony Curtis, taken from his favorite novel, "Anthony Adverse," and the Anglicized name of a favorite uncle. After his eighth film, he became Tony Curtis.

    The studio helped smooth the rough edges off the ambitious young actor. The last to go was his street-tinged Bronx accent, which had become a Hollywood joke.

    Curtis pursued another career as an artist, creating Matisse-like still lifes with astonishing speed. "I'm a recovering alcoholic," he said in 1990 as he concluded a painting in 40 minutes in the garden of the Bel-Air Hotel. "Painting has given me such a great pleasure in life, helped me to recover."

    He also turned to writing, producing a 1977 novel, "Kid Cody and Julie Sparrow." In 1993, he wrote "Tony Curtis: The Autobiography."
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    Barbara Billingsley

    Barbara Billingsley, Beaver Cleaver's TV mom, dies (October 17th, 2010 @ 4:00am)
    By CHRISTOPHER WEBER Associated Press

    LOS ANGELES (AP) - The affection people had for "Leave it to Beaver" many years after the series ended was a source of both surprise and satisfaction for Barbara Billingsley, who endeared herself to TV viewers with her gentle portrayal of the mother of Beaver and Wally.

    "We knew we were making a good show, because it was so well written," Billingsley once said. "But we had no idea what was ahead. People still talk about it and write letters, telling how much they watch it today with their children and grandchildren."

    The 94-year-old Billingsley, who played June Cleaver in the 1950s-1960s television series, died Saturday after a long illness at her home in Santa Monica, said family spokeswoman Judy Twersky.

    When the show debuted in 1957, Jerry Mathers, who played Beaver, was 9, and Tony Dow, who portrayed Wally, was 12. Billingsley's character, the perfect stay-at-home mom, was always there to gently but firmly nurture both through the ups and downs of childhood.

    Beaver, meanwhile, was a typical boy whose adventures landed him in one comical crisis after another.

    Billingsley's own two sons said she was pretty much the image of June Cleaver in real life, although the actress disagreed.

    "She was every bit as nurturing, classy, and lovely as 'June Cleaver,' and we were so proud to share her with the world," her son Glenn Billingsley said Saturday.

    She did acknowledge that she may have become more like June as the series progressed.

    "I think what happens is that the writers start writing about you as well as the character they created," she once said. "So you become sort of all mixed up, I think."

    A wholesome beauty with a lithe figure, Billingsley began acting in her elementary school's plays and soon discovered she wanted to do nothing else.

    Although her beauty and figure won her numerous roles in movies from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, she failed to obtain star status until "Leave it to Beaver," a show that she almost passed on.

    "I was going to do another series with Buddy Ebsen for the same producers, but somehow it didn't materialize," she told The Associated Press in 1994. "A couple of months later I got a call to go to the studio to do this pilot show. And it was 'Beaver.'"

    After "Leave it to Beaver" left the air in 1963 Billingsley largely disappeared from public view for several years.

    She resurfaced in 1980 in a hilarious cameo in "Airplane!" playing a demure elderly passenger not unlike June Cleaver.

    When flight attendants were unable to communicate with a pair of jive-talking hipsters, Billingsley's character volunteered to translate, saying "I speak jive." The three then engage in a raucous street-slang conversation.

    "No chance they would have cast me for that if I hadn't been June Cleaver," she once said.

    She returned as June Cleaver in a 1983 TV movie, "Still the Beaver," that costarred Mathers and Dow and portrayed a much darker side of Beaver's life.

    In his mid-30s, Beaver was unemployed, unable to communicate with his own sons and going through a divorce. Wally, a successful lawyer, was handling the divorce, and June was at a loss to help her son through the transition.

    "Ward, what would you do?" she asked at the site of her husband's grave. (Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward Cleaver, had died in 1982.)

    The movie revived interest in the Cleaver family, and the Disney Channel launched "The New Leave It to Beaver" in 1985.

    The series took a more hopeful view of the Cleavers, with Beaver winning custody of his two sons and all three moving in with June.

    In 1997 Universal made a "Leave it to Beaver" theatrical film with a new generation of actors. Billingsley returned for a cameo, however, as Aunt Martha.

    "America's favorite mother is now gone," Dow said in a statement Saturday. "I feel very fortunate to have been her "son" for 11 years. We were wonderful friends and I will miss her very much."

    In later years she appeared from time to time in such TV series as "Murphy Brown," "Empty Nest" and "Baby Boom" and had a memorable comic turn opposite fellow TV moms June Lockhart of "Lassie" and Isabel Sanford of "The Jeffersons" on the "Roseanne" show.

    "Now some people, they just associate you with that one role (June Cleaver), and it makes it hard to do other things," she once said. "But as far as I'm concerned, it's been an honor."

    In real life, fate was not as gentle to Billingsley as it had been to June and her family.

    Born Barbara Lillian Combes in Los Angeles on Dec. 22, 1915, she was raised by her mother after her parents divorced. She and her first husband, Glenn Billingsley, divorced when her sons were just 2 and 4.

    Her second husband, director Roy Kellino, died of a heart attack after three years of marriage and just months before she landed the "Leave it to Beaver" role.

    She married physician Bill Mortenson in 1959 and they remained wed until his death in 1981.

    Twersky said Billingsley's survivors include her sons, a stepson and numerous grandchildren.

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    'Happy Days' dad Tom Bosley dead at 83

    'Happy Days' dad Tom Bosley dead at 83 (October 19th, 2010 @ 12:34pm)



    In this undated film publicity image released by CBS Films, Tom Bosley is shown in a scene from, 'The Back-Up Plan.' (AP Photo/CBS Films, Peter Lovino, file)

    By BOB THOMAS - Associated Press Writer

    LOS ANGELES (AP) - Tom Bosley, whose long acting career was highlighted by his hugely popular role as the understanding father on television's nostalgic, top-rated 1970s comedy series "Happy Days," died Tuesday. He was 83.

    Bosley died of heart failure at a hospital near his Palm Springs home. Bosley's agent, Sheryl Abrams, said he was also battling lung cancer.

    TV Guide ranked Bosley's Happy Days character No. 9 on its list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" in 2004. The show debuted in 1974 and ran for 11 seasons.

    After "Happy Days" ended, Bosley went on to a recurring role in "Murder, She Wrote" as Sheriff Amos Tucker. He also was the crime-solving priest in television's "The Father Dowling Mysteries," which ran from 1989 to 1991.

    When he was first offered the costarring role in "Happy Days," a series about teenage life in the 1950s, he turned it down.

    "After rereading the pilot script," he recalled in a 1986 interview, "I changed my mind because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father/son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project."

    Propelled by the nation's nostalgia for the simple pleasures of the 1950s, "Happy Days," which debuted in 1974, slowly built to hit status, becoming television's top-rated series by its third season.

    It made a star of Henry Winkler, who played hip-talking, motorcycle-riding hoodlum Arthur "Fonzi" Fonzarelli. His image initially clashed with that of Richie and his "straight" friends. But over the show's 11-season run Fonzarelli would transform himself from high school dropout to successful businessman.

    After "Happy Days" ended, Bosley went on to a recurring role in "Murder, She Wrote" as Sheriff Amos Tucker, who was often outsmarted by Angela Lansbury's mystery writer, Jessica Fletcher.

    His own series, "The Father Dowling Mysteries," ran from 1989 to 1991. The avuncular Father Frank Dowling was assisted in his detective work by nun Sister Steve, played by Tracy Nelson.

    Although "Happy Days" brought him his widest fame, Bosley had made his mark on Broadway 15 years before when he turned in a Tony Award-winning performance in the title role in "Fiorello!" He also was the crime-solving priest in television's "The Father Dowling Mysteries."

    His Broadway triumph depicted the life of New York's colorful reformist mayor of the 1930s and '40s, Fiorello La Guardia.

    For two years, Bosley stopped the show every night when he sang in several languages, depicting La Guardia during the years the future mayor worked at New York's Ellis Island, aiding arriving immigrants.

    The play won a Pulitzer Prize and Bosley received the Tony for best actor in a musical.

    After failing to duplicate his success in "Fiorello!," Bosley moved to Hollywood in 1968. He would not return to Broadway until 1994 when he originated the role of Belle's father in Disney's production of "Beauty and the Beast."

    In Hollywood, the rotund character actor found steady work appearing in the occasional movie and as a regular on weekly TV shows starring Debbie Reynolds, Dean Martin, Sandy Duncan and others.

    During the 1990s, Bosley toured in "Beauty and the Beast" and "Show Boat," playing Captain Andy in the latter.

    Bosley made only a handful of theatrical movies. Among them: "Love With the Proper Stranger," "Divorce American Style," "The Secret War of Henry Frigg," "Yours, Mine and Ours."

    Born in Chicago in 1927, Bosley served in the Navy before returning to his hometown to study at De Paul University. Intrigued with acting, he enrolled at the Radio Institute of Chicago and began appearing in radio dramas. He made his theatrical debut in a production of "Golden Boy."

    After moving to New York, he studied at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg.

    After making his off-Broadway debut in "Thieves Highway" in 1955, he struggled to find other acting jobs, supporting himself as a temporary office worker, a doorman at Central Park's Tavern on the Green and a hat checker at Lindy's deli.

    Then came "Fiorello!" in 1959.

    Bosley married dancer Jean Eliot in 1962 and the couple had one child, Amy. Two years after his wife's death in 1978, Bosley married actress-producer Patricia Carr, who had three daughters from a previous marriage.

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    James Wall "Mr. Baxter" from Captain Kangaroo dead at 92

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    Jill Clayburgh, Oscar-nominated actress, dies at 66



    Jill Clayburgh, whose Broadway and Hollywood acting career stretched through the decades, highlighted by her Oscar-nominated portrayal of a divorcee exploring her sexuality in the 1978 film An Unmarried Woman, died Friday. She was 66.
    Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said she died after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She was surrounded by her family and brother when she died at her home in Lakeville, Conn., he said.

    She dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, Rabe said, and conducted herself with enormous grace "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."

    Clayburgh came from a privileged New York family. Her father was vice president of two large companies, and her mother was a secretary for Broadway producer David Merrick. Her grandmother, Alma Clayburgh, was an opera singer and New York socialite.

    Growing up in a such a rich cultural mix, she could easily have been overwhelmed. Instead, as she said in interviews, she asserted herself with willful and destructive behavior — so much so that her parents took her to a psychiatrist when she was 9.

    She escaped into a fantasy world of her own devising. She was entranced by seeing Jean Arthur play "Peter Pan" on Broadway, and she and a school chum concocted their own dramatics every day at home. She became serious-minded at Sarah Lawrence College, concentrating on religion, philosophy and literature.

    Clayburgh also took drama classes at Sarah Lawrence. She and her friend Robert De Niro acted in a film, The Wedding Party, directed by a Sarah Lawrence graduate, Brian DePalma. After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree, she began performing in repertory and in Broadway musicals such as The Rothschilds and Pippin.

    Alongside Richard Thomas, she headed the 2005 Broadway cast of A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Richard Greenberg's comedy about one family's unusual domestic tribulations.

    Director Doug Hughes, who directed her in a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons at the Westport Country Playhouse two years ago, called her for Naked Girl.

    "That she has the time to do a run of a play is just an extraordinary boon because I've had the pleasure of seeing her play a bona fide tragic American role beautifully, and I have had the pleasure of directing her in a very, very smart light comedy and be utterly brilliant in that," he said in 2005.

    During an interview that year, Clayburgh explained the unglamorous side of acting.

    "One of the funny things about actors is that people look at their careers in retrospect, as if they have a plan," she said.

    "Mostly, you just get a call. You're just sitting there going, 'Oh, my God. I'm never going to work again. Oh, God. I'm too old. Maybe I should go and work for Howard Dean.' And then it changes."

    Besides appearing in such movies as I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can, Silver Streak and Running With Scissors, Clayburgh's Broadway credits include Noel Coward's Design for Living, the original production of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, and the Tony Award-winning musicals Pippin and The Rothschilds.

    Clayburgh was also nominated for an Academy Award for Starting Over, a comedy about a divorced man, played by Burt Reynolds, who falls in love but can't get over his ex-wife. She appeared on TV shows including Dirty Sexy Money and was nominated for two Emmys: for best actress in 1975 for her work on Hustling and for her guest turn on Nip/Tuck on FX in 2005.

    She is survived by three children, including actress Lily Rabe, Michael Rabe and stepson Jason Rabe.

    There will be no funeral, Rabe said. The family will have a memorial in about six months, though plans have not been finalized.

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    Artist Jack Levine dies at NYC home at age 95 (November 9th, 2010 @ 10:53am)



    This undated photo provided by the DC Moore Gallery shows painter Jack Levine in New York in December 1988. Levine, a social realist artist known for skewering the rich and powerful, died at his home in New York on Monday, Nov. 8, 2010. He was 95. (AP Photo/DC Moore Gallery, Virginia Schendler)

    By KAREN MATTHEWS Associated Press

    NEW YORK (AP) - The social realist artist Jack Levine, who skewered the rich and powerful in paintings that echoed Old Masters like Goya and El Greco stylistically, has died. He was 95.

    Levine's son-in-law, Leonard Fisher, said the artist died Monday at his New York City home.

    Levine's works are in the collections of major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, New York's Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

    Born in Boston in 1915, Levine found work as a young man with the federal Works Progress Administration. He achieved wide recognition when his 1937 painting "The Feast of Pure Reason," a critique of political corruption, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.

    Levine's career was interrupted by a stint in the Army from 1942 to 1945. After the war he married artist Ruth Gikow and moved to New York.

    His 1946 painting "Welcome Home," a satire of military power, generated controversy when it was later shown in a State Department exhibition that traveled to Moscow.

    Levine was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, though he has said that in the end he never did.

    Levine remained a figurative painter throughout his career and fell out of fashion with the ascendance of abstraction at mid-century.

    "I love the Old Masters," he said in 2005. "I don't care for anybody modern. ... I want to paint with the dead ones."

    In a 2004 essay in New York magazine, writer Pete Hamill said Levine was a man of the left but never an ideologue.

    "He knew what side he was on and what he wanted to put in his paintings," Hamill said. "But he expressed his vision; he did not illustrate it."

    Levine's work encompassed Biblical themes in addition to political commentary. His "Cain and Abel" was acquired by the Vatican in 1973.

    He was the subject of a 1979 retrospective at New York City's Jewish Museum and continued to work through the 1990s.

    Levine is survived by his daughter, Susanna Fisher, his son-in-law and two grandchildren.

    "I am primarily concerned with the condition of man," he said in 1952. "The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite of saying that I have high expectations for the human race."

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    'Fiddler On the Roof' composer Jerry Bock dies (November 3rd, 2010 @ 3:58pm)



    FILE - In this Nov. 1, 2006 file photo, Broadway composer Jerry Bock poses before rehearsal of "The Apple Tree," in New York. Bock died Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010, at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco of heart failure. He was 81. (AP Photo/Adam Rountree, file)

    By MARK KENNEDY AP Drama Writer

    NEW YORK (AP) - Jerry Bock, who composed the music to some of the most memorable shows in Broadway history, including the melodies for "Fiorello!" and "Fiddler on the Roof," has died. He was 81.

    Richard M. Ticktin, Bock's attorney and family friend, said the composer died Wednesday morning at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y., of heart failure.

    Together with lyricist Sheldon Harnick, Bock wrote the powerful score to "Fiddler on the Roof," one of the most successful productions in the history of the American musical theater, having an initial run of eight years. It earned the two men Tony Awards in 1965.

    "He was wonderful to work with," said Harnick, who collaborated with Bock for 13 years. "I think in all of the years that we worked together, I only remember one or two arguments- and those were at the beginning of the collaboration when we were still feeling each other out. Once we got past that, he was wonderful to work with."

    Bock had recently spoken at a memorial service for "Fiddler" playwright Joseph Stein, who died Oct. 24. "So now two of the three creators of 'Fiddler on the Roof' have passed away within three weeks of each other," said Ticktin.

    Bock and Harnick first hit success for the music and lyrics to "Fiorello!," which earned them each Tonys and a rare Pulitzer Prize in 1960. In addition, Bock was nominated for Tonys in 1967 for "The Apple Tree" and in 1971 for "The Rothschilds." He won an Emmy Award this year for helping pen a children's song.

    "The world will remember him as a gentle human being with great talent who was a collaborator in musical theater. Jerry believed that the essence of musical theater was the collaboration- working with your colleagues, trying to make a unified whole out of disparate parts," Ticktin said.

    Born Jerrold Lewis Bock in New Haven, Conn., Bock was the son of a traveling salesman father and a mother who played the piano by ear. The young composer took up the piano at age 9, but admitted he was often impatient with formal lessons and preferred to improvise.

    At the University of Wisconsin he found his first collaborator, Larry Holofcener, a fellow student who became his lyricist. The two collaborated on the Broadway musical "Mr. Wonderful" in 1956, a vehicle for Sammy Davis Jr., who was making his Broadway debut. Bock's second complete score for the Broadway theater was "The Body Beautiful" in 1958. The boxing-themed musical had a book by Stein and Will Glickman, but quickly failed at the box office.

    Bock and Harnick were first introduced at a restaurant by actor Jack Cassidy after the opening-night performance of "Shangri-La," a musical in which Harnick had helped with the lyrics.

    They would form one of the most influential partnerships in Broadway history. Producers Robert E. Griffith and Hal Prince had liked the songs from "The Body Beautiful," and they contracted Bock and Harnick to write the score for their next production, "Fiorello!," a musical about the reformist mayor of New York City.

    "He was a brilliant composer, and with Harnick, they made a great team. He could write music that was as real and redolent of Jewish shtetl life, and a year earlier, a perfect Viennese light, almost opera, with beautiful soaring melodies," Prince said Wednesday. "He could get into the skin of all this very diverse music. He was enormously intelligent and perceptive and funny- a very, very funny fellow, both personally and creatively."

    Bock and Harnick then collaborated on "Tenderloin" in 1960 and "She Loves Me" three years later. Neither was a hit, but their next one was a monster that continues to be performed worldwide: "Fiddler on the Roof."

    Based on stories by Sholom Aleichem that were adapted into a libretto by Stein, "Fiddler" dealt with the experience of Eastern European Orthodox Jews in the Russian village of Anatevka in the year 1905. It starred Zero Mostel as Teyve, had an almost eight year run and offered the world such stunning songs as "Sunrise, Sunset," "If I Were a Rich Man" and "Matchmaker, Matchmaker."

    Bock and Harnick next wrote the book as well as the score for "The Apple Tree," in 1966, and the score for "The Rothschilds," with a book by Sherman Yellen, in 1970. It was the last collaboration between the two: Bock decided that the time had come for him to be his own as a lyricist and he put out two experimental albums in the early 1970s.

    "His career represents Broadway as good as it gets," Prince said.

    In 2004, Bock said his favorite moment in the creation of a song was playing it with his collaborator. "If it works, we say, 'Wow!'" Bock said. "There's no reward like it- to finish a song and celebrate it with your partner."

    Bock, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, also wrote dozens of children's songs and won an Emmy this year for "A Fiddler Crab Am I" from the show "The Wonder Pets!" Described by Ticktin as a "workaholic," Bock had just finished writing music and lyrics for a new unproduced musical, "Counterpoint," based on a script by Evan Hunter. (Ticktin said the rest of the creators still want to stage the musical.)

    Recalling his old friend, Harnick said Bock was someone filled with laughter: "He was a terribly funny man, a very witty man. And sometimes, the two of us would be just hysterical with laughter."

    Survivors include Bock's wife, Patti, daughter Portia Bock, son George Bock and granddaughter Edie Mae Shipler. Funeral services will be private, his lawyer said.

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    'Airplane!', 'Forbidden Planet' actor Nielsen dies



    By ANDREW DALTON and BOB THOMAS
    Associated Press

    LOS ANGELES (AP) - Despite decades spent playing sober commanders and serious captains, Leslie Nielsen insisted that he was always made for comedy. He proved it in his career's second act.

    "Surely you can't be serious," an airline passenger says to Nielsen in "Airplane!" the 1980 hit that turned the actor from dramatic leading man to comic star.

    "I am serious," Nielsen replies. "And don't call me Shirley."

    The line was probably his most famous- and a perfect distillation of his career.

    Nielsen, the dramatic lead in "Forbidden Planet" and "The Poseidon Adventure" and the bumbling detective Frank Drebin in "The Naked Gun" comedies, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

    The Canada native died from complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends, his agent John S. Kelly said in a statement.

    Critics argued that when Nielsen went into comedy he was being cast against type, but Nielsen disagreed, saying comedy was what he intended to do all along.

    "I've finally found my home- as Lt. Frank Drebin," he told The Associated Press in a 1988 interview.

    Comic actor Russell Brand took to Twitter to pay tribute to Nielsen, playing off his famous line: "RIP Leslie Nielsen. Shirley, he will be missed."

    Nielsen came to Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas in New York. With a craggily handsome face, blond hair and 6-foot-2 height, he seemed ideal for a movie leading man.

    Nielsen first performed as the king of France in the Paramount operetta "The Vagabond King" with Kathryn Grayson.

    The film- he called it "The Vagabond Turkey"- flopped, but MGM signed him to a seven-year contract.

    His first film for that studio was auspicious- as the space ship commander in the science fiction classic "Forbidden Planet." He found his best dramatic role as the captain of an overturned ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie, "The Poseidon Adventure."

    Behind the camera, the serious actor was a well-known prankster. That was an aspect of his personality never exploited, however, until "Airplane!" was released in 1980 and became a huge hit.

    As the doctor aboard a plane in which the pilots, and some of the passengers, become violently ill, Nielsen says they must get to a hospital right away.

    "A hospital? What is it?" a flight attendant asks, inquiring about the illness.

    "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now," Nielsen deadpans.

    It was the beginning of a whole new career in comedy. Nielsen would go on to appear in such comedies as "Repossessed"- a takeoff on "The Exorcist"- and "Mr. Magoo," in which he played the title role of the good-natured bumbler.

    But it took years before he got there.

    He played Debbie Reynolds' sweetheart in 1957's popular "Tammy and the Bachelor," and he became well known to baby boomers for his role as the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series "The Swamp Fox."

    He asked to be released from his contract at MGM, and as a freelancer, he appeared in a series of undistinguished movies.

    "I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent," he said.

    Meanwhile, he remained active in television in guest roles. He also starred in his own series, "The New Breed," "The Protectors" and "Bracken's World," but all were short-lived.

    Then "Airplane!" captivated audiences and changed everything.

    Producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker had hired Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges and Nielsen to spoof their heroic TV images in a satire of flight-in-jeopardy movies.

    After the movie's success, the filmmaking trio cast their newfound comic star as Detective Drebin in a TV series, "Police Squad," which trashed the cliches of "Dragnet" and other cop shows. Despite good reviews, ABC quickly canceled it. Only six episodes were made.

    "It didn't belong on TV," Nielsen later said. "It had the kind of humor you had to pay attention to."

    The Zuckers and Abraham converted the series into a feature film, "The Naked Gun," with George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley as Nielsen's co-stars. Its huge success led to sequels "The Naked Gun 2 1/2" and "The Naked Gun 33 1/3."

    His later movies included "All I Want for Christmas," "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" and "Spy Hard."

    Between films he often turned serious, touring with his one-man show on the life of the great defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow.

    Nielsen was born Feb. 11, 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan.

    He grew up 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle at Fort Norman, where his father was an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

    The parents had three sons, and Nielsen once recalled, "There were 15 people in the village, including five of us. If my father arrested somebody in the winter, he'd have to wait until the thaw to turn him in."

    The elder Nielsen was a troubled man who beat his wife and sons, and Leslie longed to escape. As soon as he graduated from high school at 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was legally deaf (he wore hearing aids most of his life.)

    After the war, Nielsen worked as a disc jockey at a Calgary radio station, then studied at a Toronto radio school operated by Lorne Greene, who would go on to star on the hit TV series "Bonanza." A scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse brought him to New York, where he immersed himself in live television.

    Nielsen also was married to: Monica Boyer, 1950-1955; Sandy Ullman, 1958-74; and Brooks Oliver, 1981-85.

    Nielsen and his second wife had two daughters, Thea and Maura.

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    'Dandy' Don Meredith Dies After Brain Hemorrhage



    SANTA FE, N.M. -- Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith has died in Santa Fe after suffering a brain hemorrhage and lapsing into a coma on Sunday. He was 72.

    Meredith's wife, Susan, confirmed the former football star's death. She says a private graveside ceremony is being planned and that family members are traveling to Santa Fe.

    Meredith played for the Cowboys from 1960-1968, becoming the starting quarterback in 1965. While he never led the Cowboys to the Super Bowl, Meredith was one of the franchise's first stars.

    Over his nine-year career, Meredith threw for 17,199 yards and 111 touchdowns. He retired unexpectedly before the 1969 season.



    "Dandy Don" Meredith - 17

    Known to millions of Monday Night Football fans for his famous line, "Turn out the lights, the party's over", Dandy Don led the team in passing from 1963-1968. Meredith led the Cowboys to the long defunct Playoff Bowl in 1965 against the Baltimore Colts, after finishing second in the NFL Eastern Division behind the Cleveland Browns. The game was not a pretty sight, losing 35-3, yet it was the beginning of what would turn out to be a common occurence -- the Cowboys in the NFL playoffs.
    The following year Dallas began the season thoroughly whipping their first four opponents, averaging 45 points a game, and the league knew they were to be reckoned with. By the end of the year Dallas had upended Cleveland as Eastern Division Champions, and won the right to face the Green Bay Packers in the Cotton Bowl. The Dallas-Green Bay winner would earn the right to play the AFL representative in the first Super Bowl.

    Dallas put up a tough fight, getting back into the game after falling behind 14-0. There was no intimidating the Cowboys this day. Vince Lombardi's Packers were in for the fight of their lives. The Cowboys were driving for the tying score when Dallas called the play that would haunt them for years. Dallas had the ball deep in Green Bay territory, down 34-27. Landry called a short out pass to tight end Pettis Norman, used primarily as a blocker and not receiver. Norman was wide open on the play, but because Meredith did not expect Norman in that position, Meredith threw the ball short. Norman, instead of catching the ball and jogging into the end zone, ran back for the ball and Green Bay tackled him at the two yard line. On the subsequent play, a pass into the end zone, rookie linebacker Dave Robinson hit Meredith, and the pass flew out of control from Dandy Don and into the arms of Packer safety Tom Brown.

    Meredith played three more years, taking the Cowboys to their second NFL Championship game, also against the Packers, and two Divisional Championship games against the Browns before retiring
    unexpectedly in 1969.

    Meredith provided the leadership Dallas needed to begin their winning tradition. Meredith played with a broken nose, when he could barely breathe. He was sacked and pounded often, yet rarely missed a game, except when they would not let him play. In an era where cornerbacks were allowed to bump and run with receivers throughout the field, Meredith was as effective as anyone, especially in 1966 when he won the NFL Most Valuable Player Award.

    "Dandy" Don Meredith remains an all time favorite quarterback, despite never winning an NFL Championship. Cowboy fans still love remembering Don Meredith leading the Cowboys. Time has illuminated the achievements his career, and "Dandy" Don is most often remembered as the courageous leader Dallas had when the tradition of Cowboys victory started. He was enshrined in the Ring of Honor in 1976
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    David Nelson dies at 74



    David Nelson dies at 74; last surviving member of the TV sitcom family David Nelson and his brother, Rick, joined their parents on 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet' on radio in 1949. The show moved to TV in 1952 and ran for 14 years. David Nelson later became a director.

    David Nelson, the elder son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and the last surviving member of the family that became an American institution in the 1950s and '60s as the stars of the classic TV sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," died Tuesday. He was 74.

    Nelson died at his Century City home of complications from colon cancer, said publicist Dale Olson.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/obituari...,1039470.story

    "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" began on radio in 1944, focusing on the home life of bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his vocalist wife, Harriet Hilliard.

    In 1949, the popular show became a true family affair when 12-year-old David and 8-year-old Ricky replaced the child actors who had been portraying them on radio.

    "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" moved to television three years later, debuting on ABC in October 1952.

    When the series ended in 1966 after 435 episodes, it had become the longest-running family situation comedy in TV history — as well as serving as the launch pad and showcase for teen idol Rick Nelson's singing career.

    In the process of playing fictionalized versions of themselves on television each week for 14 years, David and Rick Nelson literally grew up in front of millions of Americans.

    Indeed, after David and Rick were married in the early '60s, their wives — first David's wife, actress June Blair, and then Rick's wife, the former Kris Harmon — became their TV wives.

    The blurring of what was real and what was not real caused confusion in some viewers' minds.

    When David enrolled at USC and joined a fraternity after graduating from Hollywood High School in 1954, his TV character started college and joined a fraternity.

    But unlike his TV character, who became a lawyer on the show, David did not go into law.

    Instead, he launched his career as a director by taking the reins from his director-father for about a dozen episodes of the show in the early '60s. He spent the next several decades directing commercials and occasional TV series and movies.

    "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" has been criticized for presenting an idealized version of American family life that few could live up to.

    That included the Nelsons, as David pointed out in a 1971 Esquire article headlined "The Happy, Happy, Happy Nelsons."

    "We would keep up the front of this totally problemless, happy-go-lucky group," he said. "There might have been a tremendous battle in our home, but if someone from outside came in, it would be as if the director yelled, 'Roll 'em,' We'd fall right into our stage roles.

    "It's an awfully big load to carry, to be everyone's fantasy family."

    He was born Oct. 24, 1936, in New York City, when Ozzie and Harriet were in their big-band heyday.

    Rick was born in 1940, the year before the Nelsons moved permanently to Hollywood.

    After Ozzie and Harriet launched their radio show in 1944, David and Rick would accompany their parents to their live broadcasts.
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