R.I.P CELEBRITY DEATHS(NON WRESTLING) 2018

[TTX]

Jo Jo White, former Celtics star passes from brain cancer

www.cbssports.com/nba/news/former-boston-celtic-jo-jo-white-dies-at-71-after-battle-with-cancer/

[jimsteel]

Dorothy Malone, 'Peyton Place' Star and Oscar Winner, Dies at 92

he won her Academy Award for 'Written on the Wind' and had memorable roles in 'The Big Sleep,' 'Man of a Thousand Faces' and 'Too Much, Too Soon.'
Dorothy Malone, the matriarch of TV’s Peyton Place who received an Oscar for playing the sex-crazed sister of playboy Robert Stack in the 1956 melodrama Written on the Wind, has died. She was 92.

The big-eyed, dark-haired beauty, who flourished in Hollywood soon after she went platinum blonde in the mid-1950s, died Friday morning in Dallas, her manager, Burt Shapiro, told The Hollywood Reporter. She had been ill for the past few years.

Malone also starred in the biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), playing opposite James Cagney as Lon Chaney’s emotionally charred first wife, and was the moody and tempestuous Diana Barrymore in Too Much, Too Soon (1958), with Errol Flynn as her father, acting legend John Barrymore.

She was lots of fun as Dean Martin’s love interest in the Lewis & Martin musical comedy Artists and Models (1955). And for her final credit, she had a brief but memorable cameo in Basic Instinct (1992) as a released murderess befriended by Sharon Stone.

Earlier, Malone stirred the film noir faithful with a brief scene in The Big Sleep (1946), when, as a bookstore proprietress, she closed up her shop, seductively removed her glasses and shared a bit of whiskey with Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) on a rainy night.

[jimsteel]

Bradford Dillman, Actor in 'Compulsion' and 'The Way We Were,' Dies at 87

He also appeared in the original Broadway production of 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' and in a pair of Dirty Harry movies.
Bradford Dillman, who starred with Dean Stockwell in the taut 1959 crime drama Compulsion and portrayed Edmund in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, has died. He was 87.

Dillman died Tuesday in Santa Barbara due to complications from pneumonia, family spokesman Ted Gekis announced.

The lanky, dark-haired Dillman also played Robert Redford's best friend J.J. in The Way We Were (1973), and his daughter Pamela said that it was this movie that "perfectly captured the essence" of her father, particularly during the scene on a boat when the actors reminisce about their lives and best moments.

Dillman also appeared opposite Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films The Enforcer (1976) and Sudden Impact (1983).

In director Richard Fleischer's Compulsion, derived from the infamous Leopold & Loeb case of the 1920s, Dillman and Stockwell starred as the brazen killers Arthur A. Straus and Judd Steiner, respectively, who think they have committed the perfect murder.

Dillman, Stockwell and Orson Welles (who played their attorney) shared best actor honors at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. The Fox film was an adaptation of a Broadway hit, with Dillman taking on the role that Roddy McDowall had originated on the stage.

Dillman's family said that he was most proud of his work in Compulsion, along with his portrayal of Willie Oban in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973), an adaptation directed by John Frankenheimer for the American Film Theater

[jimsteel]

Jim Rodford, ex-bassist of The Kinks and The Zombies, dead at 76

Former Kinks bassist Jim Rodford has died after a fall. He was 76.

The Zombies, the group Rodford had played with since 1999, confirmed the death of the British musician on their Facebook page Saturday.

Zombies co-founder Rod Argent says his cousin and longtime bandmate was a “magnificent bass player.”

Rodford joined The Kinks in 1978, touring with the group and playing on its later albums. Ray Davies, The Kinks’ co-founder, tweeted that Rodford was “an integral part of the Kinks later years.”

Argent also highlighted Rodford’s commitment to music in St Albans, north of London, where he lived his entire life.

[jimsteel]

John Coleman, former ABC 7 Chicago weatherman and Weather Channel co-founder, dies at age 83

John Coleman, a former ABC 7 Chicago weatherman who co-founded the Weather Channel and was the original meteorologist on ABC's "Good Morning America" during his six-decade broadcasting career, has died. He was 83.

The Texas native got his first TV job in Champaign while still a student at the University of Illinois. Coleman worked at WLS-TV from 1968 to 1979 and several local stations in the Midwest before joining "GMA" when it launched in 1975.

He served as CEO of the Weather Channel for about a year after helping launch it in 1981.

Coleman went on to join KUSI-TV in San Diego, where he spent 20 years as weatherman for its morning show before retiring in 2014.

[jimsteel]

Connie Sawyer Dies: Hollywood’s Oldest Working Actress Was 105

Actress Connie Sawyer died peacefully at the age of 105 at her in Woodland Hills, CA. With more than 140 TV and film credits to her name, Sawyer was known as Hollywood’s oldest working actress who worked through late 2017.

Sawyer was born on November 27, 1912, in Pueblo, Colo. Her career in entertainment began at the age of eight when she won a talent contest in Oakland. At 18 years old, she landed her first Vaudeville show in Santa Cruz.

Legendary singer, comedian, and actress Sophie Tucker became Sawyer’s mentor before she went on to Broadway where she played Miss Wexler in A Hole in the Head. She would later take the same role in the film adaptation starring Frank Sinatra. Her other film credits include The Way West, Ada and The Man in the Glass Booth.

To many, she is recognized as the lady in Dumb and Dumber who stole Jim Carrey’s character’s wallet. She also appeared in The Pineapple Express, as well as When Harry Met Sally.

She has numerous TV credits which span six decades. This includes The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Hawaii Five-O, Dynasty, Murder, She Wrote, Archie Bunker’s Place, Home Improvement, Seinfeld, Will & Grace, ER, The Office, and How I Met Your Mother. Most recently she appeared in Showtime’s Ray Donovan as James Woods’ mother.

In addition to her being highlighted in the documentaries Showfolk and Troupers, she published her autobiography, I Never Wanted To Be a Star – And I Wasn’t.

[jimsteel]

Simon Shelton Barnes, Best Known for Playing Tinky Winky on Teletubbies, Dead at 52

Simon Shelton Barnes, a British actor best known for playing Tinky Winky in the children’s TV show Teletubbies, has died. He was 52.

Barnes portrayed the character between 1998-2001 after the firing of original actor Dave Thompson.

[jimsteel]

Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88

Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.

Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months.

Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes. The conflicts they face are typically rooted in a clash of cultures and resolved more by conciliation and self-sacrifice than by swordplay or space battles.

Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Several, including “The Left Hand of Darkness” — set on a planet where the customary gender distinctions do not apply — have been in print for almost 50 years. The critic Harold Bloom lauded Ms. Le Guin as “a superbly imaginative creator and major stylist” who “has raised fantasy into high literature for our time.”

In addition to more than 20 novels, she was the author of a dozen books of poetry, more than 100 short stories (collected in multiple volumes), seven collections of essays, 13 books for children and five volumes of translation, including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by the Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral. She also wrote a guide for writers.

philosophical fables. They combine compelling stories, rigorous narrative logic and a lean but lyrical style to draw readers into what she called the “inner lands” of the imagination. Such writing, she believed, could be a moral force.
ence fiction, because, she recalled, the stories “seemed to be all about hardware and soldiers: White men go forth and conquer the universe.”

[TTX]

She wrote many good books. RIP.

[jimsteel]

Olivia Cole, Award-Winning ‘Roots’ Actress, Is Dead at 75

Olivia Cole, an actress best known for her Emmy Award-winning role in the acclaimed mini-series “Roots,” died on Friday at her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She was 75.

The cause was a heart attack, said Linda Cooper, the executive secretary of the cremation and burial association that is handling Ms. Cole’s remains.

In 1977, Ms. Cole won a supporting-actress Emmy for her portrayal of Matilda, the wife of Chicken George (Ben Vereen), in “Roots,” the eight-episode ABC mini-series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 book by Alex Haley. The series followed his ancestors’ journey from West Africa to the United States as slaves, and many generations beyond.

More than 28 million viewers watched the first episode, and by the time the finale arrived more than 100 million people had tuned in, breaking ratings records. That year, The New York Times reported, “people everywhere, even those who had not seen it, were talking about ‘Roots.’ ”

“I thought ‘Roots’ would be a boon to all black actors and actresses,” Ms. Cole told United Press International in 1977. “But that didn’t prove to be the case. At least my telephone didn’t start ringing off the hook afterwards. And I don’t think it helped many others.”

Continue reading the main story
If “Roots” did not make Ms. Cole a star, she nonetheless continued to work for decades. She had roles in the mini-series “Backstairs at the White House,” which earned her an Emmy nomination; another mini-series, “The Women of Brewster Place,” produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey; the movie “First Sunday,” starring Tracy Morgan; and numerous theater productions.

“Backstairs,” seen on NBC in 1979, was a behind-the-scenes look at the White House as told by the people who worked there, based on a best-selling memoir. Ms. Cole played the role of the first black maid to be employed on “the presidential floor.”

“The wonderful thing about ‘Backstairs’ is that it offers a challenging role for an actress, not a black actress,” Ms. Cole told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1979. “If only people would stop thinking in terms of black and white, and think only of who’s the best in terms of ability!”

In 2016 Ms. Cole appeared in a production of the 1995 play “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years” at the Long Wharf Theater and Hartford Stage in Connecticut. The play, written by Emily Mann and based on the book of the same name, explored the bond between two elderly sisters who grew up in the Jim Crow era. Ms. Cole played Sadie Delany, who became a high school teacher; Brenda Pressley played Bessie Delany, who became a dentist.

“This is the sort of theater that feeds you,” Ms. Cole told The Harford Courant at the time.