Dead Celebrity List

Rue McClanahan, who played a man-crazy Southern belle in the seminal ’80s sitcom “Golden Girls,” died early Thursday of a massive stroke. She was 76. McClanahan had suffered a minor stroke in January during recovery from heart bypass surgery, her manager said at the time.

“Golden Girls,” which has aired in syndication nearly nonstop since its successful run from 1985 to 1992 on NBC, has been discovered by a whole new generation lately, partly because of costar Betty White and her resurgent popularity.

White is now the sole surviving cast member. Bea Arthur died last year of cancer, and Estelle Getty died in 2008.

McClanahan won an Emmy in 1987 for her portrayal of Blanche Devereaux, an aging beauty who still had an eye for the fellas. The actress’ resume stretches back to the ’60s and includes some of TV’s most memorable shows, such as “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “The Love Boat” and “Touched by an Angel.”

In 2007, she published  a memoir with the sassy title “My First Five Husbands … and the Ones Who Got Away.”

— T.L. Stanley

Photo: Rue McClanahan at a signing for her book “My First Five Husbands” at Book Soup in 2007. Photo credit: Mark Mainz / Getty Images

Coleman was hospitalized Wednesday after falling and suffering a head injury at his home south of Salt Lake City, according to family members. He died Friday at age 42. The diminutive actor was best known for his role on TV’s Diff’rent Strokes. He played precocious Arnold Jackson, who, with his brother Willis (Todd Bridges), was adopted by a wealthy, white Manhattan man (Conrad Bain) and his daughter (Dana Plato).

Coleman’s pudgy cheeks and flawless comic timing made him the break-out star of the popular series, which ran from 1978-86.

His signature line, “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” became a national catchphrase.

But Coleman’s bright beginnings were overshadowed by domestic disputes, legal troubles and health issues. Coleman was born with a congenital kidney disease that resulted in his small stature. He had two kidney transplants and required frequent dialysis.

At the height of Diff’rent Strokes‘ popularity, Coleman reportedly received up to $100,000 an episode. Beginning in 1980, he won four consecutive People’s Choice Awards as Favorite Young TV Performer

He parlayed his prime-time success into steady work in TV guest spots, made-for-TV movies and feature films, including On the Right Track and The Kid with the Broken Halo. The latter inspired the animated TV series The Gary Coleman Show.

But in the years after Diff’rent Strokes, Coleman was in the headlines more often for his off-screen troubles than for his acting.

In 1989, he successfully sued his parents and former advisers for misappropriation of his trust fund, which had dwindled. He was awarded $1.3 million.

In 1999, Coleman filed for bankruptcy, blaming his troubles on financial mismanagement.

In 1998, while working as a security guard, he was charged with assault for hitting a woman who had been seeking an autograph. He pleaded no contest and received a suspended sentence.

In 2007 he was cited for disorderly conduct after arguing with his wife, Shannon Price, whom he married that August. They had met on the set of the 2006 comedy Church Ball.

In 2008, he and Price appeared on the syndicated TV show Divorce Court in an attempt to save their marriage.

But last year, the two were involved in a domestic dispute which resulted in Price being arrested and both receiving disorderly conduct citations.

And he recently settled a lawsuit with a man he allegedly hit with his car outside a Utah bowling alley in 2008.

In January, Coleman was arrested for failure to appear in court for an unspecified earlier charge.

Coleman’s troubles led him to be the butt of jokes for comedians and he even inspired a character by the same name in the Tony-winning musical Avenue Q.

Through it all, Coleman maintained his perspective and sense of humor. “I parody myself every chance I get,” he said. “I try to make fun of myself and let people know that I’m a human being, and these things that have happened to me are real. I’m not just some cartoon who exists and suddenly doesn’t exist.”

Despite his real-life travails, Coleman will remain an ’80s TV icon, a quick-witted boy whose onscreen charm lives on in television syndication.

Vic Mizzy, a film and television composer best known for writing the memorable theme songs for the 1960s sit-coms “Green Acres” and “The Addams Family,” has died. He was 93.

Mizzy died of heart failure Saturday at his home in Bel-Air, said Scott Harper, a friend and fellow composer.

A veteran writer of popular songs such as “There’s a Faraway Look in Your Eye” and “Pretty Kitty Blue Eyes,” Mizzy launched his TV career in 1960 when he was asked to compose music for the dramatic anthology series “Moment of Fear.”

He quickly moved on to score episodes of “Shirley Temple’s Storybook” and “The Richard Boone Show” and to write the themes for “Klondike” and the Dennis Weaver series “Kentucky Jones.”

Then came an offbeat assignment: the 1964-66 TV series based on Charles Addams’ macabre magazine cartoons and starring John Astin as Gomez Addams and Carolyn Jones as his wife, Morticia.

For his theme song, Mizzy played a harpsichord, which gives the theme its unique flavor. And because Filmways refused to pay for singers, Mizzy sang it himself and overdubbed it three times. The song, memorably punctuated by finger-snapping, begins with: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether ooky: the Addams family.”

In the 1996 book “TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes From ‘Dragnet’ to ‘Friends,’ ” author Jon Burlingame writes that Mizzy’s “musical conception was so specific that he became deeply involved with the filming of the main-title sequence, which involved all seven actors snapping their fingers in carefully timed rhythm to Mizzy’s music.”

For Mizzy, who owned the publishing rights to “The Addams Family” theme, it was an easy payday.

“I sat down; I went ‘buh-buh-buh-bump [snap-snap], buh-buh-buh-bump,” he recalled in a 2008 interview on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” show. “That’s why I’m living in Bel-Air: Two finger snaps and you live in Bel-Air.”

The season after “The Addams Family” made its debut, Mizzy composed the title song for “Green Acres,” the 1965-71 rural comedy starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.

For “Green Acres,” Burlingame observed in his book, Mizzy “again conceived the title song as intertwined with the visuals” of the show’s opening title sequence and telling the story of wealthy Oliver and Lisa Douglas moving from New York City to a farm in the country.

Burlingame on Monday described the themes for “The Addams Family” and “Green Acres” as “two of the best-remembered sitcom themes of all time.”

“Vic was an old-school songwriter who believed in melody and humability,” Burlingame said. “He thought that people ought to be able to easily remember a theme.

“Vic was one of the wittiest composers I ever met, and he had an uncanny ability to incorporate his own personal sense of humor into his music.”

Mizzy’s use of bass harmonica and fuzz guitar in the music of “Green Acres,” for example, “was somehow perfect for that show’s setting, and it only added to the humor of the situations,” Burlingame said.

In the case of “The Addams Family,” he said, “you’ve got the harpsichord, which lends this antique, sort of macabre quality to the theme. But then you add the lyrics, which make it funny. So you have the perfect combination of macabre and amusing. It was just right for that show’s sensibility.”

Mizzy’s many TV credits include writing the themes for Phyllis Diller’s 1966-67 sitcom “The Pruitts of Southampton” and “The Don Rickles Show” (1968-69), for which Mizzy also conducted the orchestra.

Among his movie credits as a composer are the Don Knotts comedies “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” “The Reluctant Astronaut,” “The Shakiest Gun in the West,” “The Love God?” and “How to Frame a Figg.”

Born in Brooklyn on Jan. 9, 1916, Mizzy learned to play the piano as a child. While he was a student at New York University, he and his friend Irving Taylor began writing songs and sketches for variety shows.

They appeared on radio’s “Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour” and won an amateur contest on the Fred Allen show. The team’s first published song was “Your Heart Rhymes with Mine.”

Mizzy, who served four years in the Navy during World War II, had a number of hits with Taylor, including “Three Little Sisters” and “Take It Easy.” Under a later partnership with Mann Curtis, Mizzy had hits such as “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,” “The Whole World Is Singing My Song” and “The Jones Boy.”

Mizzy is survived by his daughter Lynn Mizzy Jonas; his brother Sol; and two grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. today at Eden Memorial Park, 11500 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills.

Source (w/pic):
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-vic-mizzy20-2009oct20,0,1713293.story

Mary Travers, one-third of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died.

The band’s publicist, Heather Lylis, says Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday. She was 72 and had battled leukemia for several years.

Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s.

The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of “If I Had a Hammer” became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included “Lemon Tree,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Puff (The Magic Dragon.)”

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Actor Henry Gibson, who played roles ranging from loopy poets to vengeful Illinois Nazis and cranky judges during a 40-year film and television career, has died at age 73, his representatives said Wednesday.

Gibson was a regular on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” where he was known for popping up to read short, humorous poems during the show’s 1968-71 run.

He was a frequent guest star on television shows from the 1970s through the mid-2000s, with a recurring role as a judge on ABC’s “Boston Legal” as late as 2008.

LOS ANGELES — Patrick Swayze has died after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Swayze’s publicist Annett Wolf says the 57-year-old “Dirty Dancing” actor died Monday with family at his side. He came forward about his illness last spring, but continued working as he underwent treatments.

It was 1987 when Swayze became a star with his performance in “Dirty Dancing,” a coming-of-age story set in a Catskills resort. The 1990 film “Ghost” cemented his status as a screen favorite.

Swayze played a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee through a spirit played by Whoopi Goldberg.

US writer and musician Jim Carroll, best know for writing The Basketball Diaries, has died in New York aged 60 following a heart attack.

Carroll’s 1978 book, which was made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was about his formative years as a star player and drug user.

The poet, who was also linked with The Doors and Lou Reed, appeared in artist Andy Warhol’s films.