R.I.P. CELEBRITY DEATHS 2019(NON WRESTLERS)

[jimsteel]

Sylvia Miles, Actress With a Flair for the Flamboyant, Dies at 94

Sylvia Miles, who earned two Academy Award nominations (for “Midnight Cowboy” and “Farewell, My Lovely”) and decades of glowing reviews for her acting before drawing equal attention for her midlife transition to constant partygoer and garishly flamboyant dresser, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 94.

Her death was confirmed by a friend, the publicist Mauricio Padilha. He said she died in ambulance on the way to a hospital.

Blond-maned and nasal-voiced, Ms. Miles was in her mid-40s when she portrayed, briefly, a well-groomed, poodle-owning Upper East Side hooker (her building has a doorman) who manages to out-hustle Jon Voight’s character, an aspiring prostitute himself, in “Midnight Cowboy” (1969).

She earned her second Oscar nomination for a five-and-a-half-minute scene with Robert Mitchum in “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975), based on a crime novel by Raymond Chandler. He was the detective Philip Marlowe, and she was a former entertainer wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the day who trades information for a bottle of bourbon. Perhaps her most memorable line was, “When I like a guy, the ceiling’s the limit.”

In between, as the sexual revolution hit its peak, she established a reputation as daring and bawdy. She starred as an aging movie actress enjoying a younger man (Joe Dallesandro) in “Heat” (1972), an X-rated film directed by Paul Morrissey, under the aegis of Andy Warhol. She appeared bare-breasted in European posters for the film and posed nude (with a group of men, also naked) for a magazine layout. Criticized widely, she was quoted in Earl Wilson’s column in The New York Post as saying: “What’s wrong with it? They’re all friends of mine.”

But her acting abilities were still taken seriously.

“Sylvia Miles is something special, a persona,” Vincent Canby wrote, reviewing “Heat” in The New York Times. He added, “She looks great even when she looks beat, and because she’s a good actress she automatically works 10 times as hard as everyone else to enliven the movie.”

She was, however, beginning to acquire a reputation for going to every party possible in whatever town she was in. She would “attend the opening of an envelope,” the comedian Wayland Flowers was said to have remarked.

[jimsteel]

Pat Bowlen Denver Broncos Owner Dead at 75

the longtime owner of the Denver Broncos who helped the team win THREE Super Bowls -- has died at 75.

The Broncos announced Friday the Hall of Famer passed away late Thursday night following his battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Bowlen is one of the most successful team owners in sports history ... he bought the Broncos back in 1984 and helped SEVEN different rosters make the Super Bowl.

Pat's Broncos also averaged more than 10 wins per season in his 35-year tenure as Broncos' owner.

"We are saddened to inform everyone that our beloved husband and father, Pat Bowlen, passed on to the next chapter of his life late Thursday night peacefully at home surrounded by family," his family said in a statement released by the team.

"His soul will live on through the Broncos, the city of Denver and all of our fans."

Pat -- who stepped down from his day-to-day role as owner of the Broncos in 2014 because of his battle with Alzheimer's -- is most famously known for his relationship with John Elway.

After Elway won his first Super Bowl with the Broncos in the 1997 season ... Pat famously grabbed the Lombardi Trophy and said, "This one's for John!

Of course, about 20 years later -- after Elway won Super Bowl 50 as Denver's general manager -- he said, "This one's for Pat!"

Bowlen was just named a Hall of Famer this year ... and will be officially inducted at a ceremony in Canton, Ohio this summer.

[on_the_edge]

Going to be an extra emotional HOF Ceremony this year.

[TTX]

RIP Pat. One of those owners you knew by name unlike a lot of the entities nowadays.

[jimsteel]

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli dies at age 96

Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director renowned for his extravagantly romantic opera productions, popular film versions of Shakespeare and supercharged social life, died on Saturday at his home in Rome. He was 96.

His death was confirmed by a spokesman for the Franco Zeffirelli Foundation in Florence.

Critics sometimes reproached Mr. Zeffirelli’s opera stagings for a flamboyant glamour more typical of Hollywood’s golden era, while Hollywood sometimes disparaged his films as too highbrow. But his success with audiences was undeniable.

Beginning with his 1964 staging of Verdi’s “Falstaff,” his productions drew consistently large audiences to the Metropolitan Opera in New York over the next 40 years. His staging with Maria Callas of Verdi’s “La Traviata” in Dallas in 1958 and Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” at Covent Garden in London in 1962 “remain touchstones for opera aficionados and Callas cultists,” Brooks Peters wrote in a profile of Mr. Zeffirelli in Opera News in 2002.

Mr. Zeffirelli’s filming of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” starring the teenage Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, thrilled millions of young viewers who had been untouched by the bard. “I’ve made my career without the support of the critics, thank God,” he told Opera News.

Even for the hyperbolic world of opera, his sets and costumes could seem overdone. In Bizet’s “Carmen,” he populated the stage with horses and donkeys. The headdress he designed for the imperious princess in Puccini’s “Turandot” appeared to be on the verge of collapsing under its own weight. Mr. Zeffirelli’s 1998 revamping of “La Traviata” was savaged by the critics for its overwhelming décor.

“His new look at Verdi’s masterpiece remains waiting and ready for a cast strong enough in personality to compete with its director’s illusions of grandeur,” Bernard Holland wrote in The New York Times. Nonetheless, performances of the opera sold out.

Some divas adored Mr. Zeffirelli despite his reputation for focusing too much on the staging. The mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves recounted how he helped her create an interpretation of the headstrong gypsy in his 1996 production of “Carmen” that was hailed for years to come.

Mr. Zeffirelli convinced Ms. Graves that unlike the conventional view of Carmen as a carefree, liberated woman, she in fact lacked confidence and feared losing her freedom by falling in love.

“I had never thought of it that way,” Ms. Graves told The Times in 2002. “It began to open a window in my mind that I didn’t know existed. From that moment on I had to relearn and rethink everything. I felt that I had no idea who Carmen was. It changed my singing completely. And that was just in the first five minutes.”

[TTX]

Gloria Vanderbilt passes.

www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/gloria-vanderbilt-heiress-jeans-queen-142408058.html

[jimsteel]

Crowbar's Kelly Jay, Co-Writer of Canadian Classic 'Oh, What a Feeling,' Dies Following a Stroke at 77

Kelly Jay, formerly of Canadian group Crowbar, whose 1971 hit "Oh, What A Feeling" became the title of commemorative box sets celebrating milestone anniversaries of the Juno Awards and was called "Canada's second National Anthem" by late guitarist Jeff Healey, passed away today (June 21) in Calgary after suffering a stroke. He was 77.

Jay played keyboards, percussion, bass, harmonica and sang, and wrote or co-wrote many of Crowbar's songs.

[jimsteel]

Heartbeat actor William Simons dies aged 79

Heartbeat actor William Simons, who charmed Sunday evening viewers for nearly two decades as easygoing veteran PC Alf Ventress, has died aged 79.

Welsh-born Simons played the character in all 18 series of the 1960s-set show.

He also appeared in Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Crown Court and Last of the Summer Wine during his 60-year career.

His agent said: "He was a wonderful, kind, warm, witty, lovely human being and anyone who ever worked with him or knew him will be devastated."

Simons was already 51 when he landed the biggest role of his career, playing Alf Ventress when Heartbeat first landed on TV screens in 1992 as a prime-time vehicle for former EastEnders star and chart-topping singer Nick Berry.

Berry played a young London constable who moved north with his family and encountered Ventress as one of the colleagues who helped him build a new life while fighting crime in a rural setting.

The show, set in the fictional Yorkshire villages of Ashfordly and Aidensfield, attracted more than 13 million viewers and saw guest appearances by Gary Barlow, Charlotte Church, Lulu, and David Dickinson - and Yorkshire's legendary cricket umpire Dickie Bird.

Simons was very popular with viewers and his character continued to appear in the show as a civilian even after he retired from the force.

And when ITV launched a spin-off show called The Royal, he was asked to play Ventress in six episodes.

[Bazzy]

R.I.P Williams Simons who played Heartbeat's Alf Ventress

[jimsteel]

Judith Krantz, Whose Tales of Sex and Shopping Sold Millions, Dies at 91

Judith Krantz, who almost single-handedly turned the sex-and-shopping genre of fiction into the stuff of high commerce, making her one of the world’s best-selling novelists if not one of the most critically acclaimed, died on Saturday at her home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. She was 91.

Her publicist, John Tellem, confirmed the death.

Though she did not publish her first book until she was 50, Ms. Krantz reigned for decades afterward as the international queen of poolside reading. Her 10 novels — beginning with “Scruples” in 1978 and ending with “The Jewels of Tessa Kent” in 1998 — have together sold more than 85 million copies in more than 50 languages.

Most became television movies or mini-series, many of which were produced by Ms. Krantz’s husband, Steve Krantz.

What drove Ms. Krantz’s books to the tops of best seller lists time and again was a formula that she honed to glittering perfection: fevered horizontal activities combined with fevered vertical ones — the former taking place in sumptuously appointed bedrooms and five-star hotels, the latter anywhere with a cash register and astronomical price tags.