Veteran stage, TV and film actress Julie Harris passed away Saturday. She was 87. Harris died of congestive heart failure at home in West Chatham, Massachusetts, per NYT. The celebrated performer best known for her long and highly decorated Broadway career won five Tony Awards, three Emmys, and one Grammy over five decades in showbiz – narrowly missing the elusive EGOT with her 1953 Best Actress Oscar nomination for Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, her first screen role. Onstage Harris originated the role of Sally Bowles in 1951′s I Am a Camera and starred in a subsequent 1955 film adaptation, which in turn inspired the musical and Liza Minnelli pic Cabaret. Harris starred opposite James Dean in East of Eden, with Paul Newman in Harper, and in Robert Wise’s The Haunting while acting steadily in theater and television through the 1960s and 1970s. READ MORE »
R.I.P. Julie Harris
R.I.P. Newsman Lew Wood
The newsman who covered President Kennedy’s assassination and the civil rights movement for CBS and was an anchor on NBC’s Today in the mid-’70s has died of kidney failure In a Riverside hospice. Lew Wood … Read More »
R.I.P. Ted Post
The man who helmed Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High and Magnum Force, the first Dirty Harry sequel, died Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica at 95. Ted Post also directed Beneath the … Read More »
R.I.P. Gary Shusett
The man whose Hollywood film school boasts such alumni as James Cameron and Sylvester Stallone died August 9 of cancer. Gary Shusett was 72. Sherwood Oaks College has been dedicated to the craft of screenwriting for four … Read More »
R.I.P. Lisa Robin Kelly
That ’70s Show alum Lisa Robin Kelly has died after a long fight with addiction. She was 43. The actress best known for playing Eric Forman’s sister Laurie on the long-running Fox sitcom, Kelly originated the role but … Read More »
R.I.P. Brett Dicker
The longtime Disney marketing executive died Tuesday of heart failure at his home in Woodland Hills. He was 63. Brett Dicker retired in 2010 as EVP Marketing for Walt Disney Studios. He had worked at Disney for 14 years when he was promoted in 2001 to EVP at Buena Vista Pictures Marketing. The Brooklyn native was put in charge of developing and implementing marketing campaigns and strategies for movies released under the Walt Disney, Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures banners. He worked on campaigns for numerous blockbusters including The Lion King, Toy Story, Finding Nemo and the first three Pirates Of The Caribbean films. Dicker was SVP National Promotions and Marketing at BVPM from 1996-2001. He joined Disney in 1987 as director of promotions for Walt Disney Pictures and was promoted to VP Promotions at Buena Vista Pictures two years later. Early in his career, he worked as foreign publicity coordinator on Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 epic Apocalypse Now. Read More »
R.I.P. Acting Coach Ivan Markota
Veteran acting coach Ivan Markota, whose clients included Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston and Law & Order‘s Mariska Hargitay, died August 6 of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 86. Markota was CEO of … Read More »
R.I.P. Henry Polic
Veteran TV actor Henry Polic, who played Jerry Silver on ABC’s Webster and voiced Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow on Batman: The Animated Series, has died. He was 68. The longtime character actor, game show personality and host, and … Read More »
R.I.P. Publicist Eddie Michaels
One of the premier PR men of his generation, Eddie Michaels, succumbed last night in his lengthy battle with brain cancer and died at age 49. Michaels was surrounded at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by a coterie of industry friends, clients, his wife Lorin and his children, 7-year-old Matthew and 11-year-old daughter Dylan. To see a good guy go so young is heartbreaking to me today. I met Eddie when I had just moved over from Weekly Variety to Daily Variety. I was the Long Island kid who had upset the order of things by breaking film stories that were ordinarily the domain of L.A.-based trade reporters. He called me, riled about some story I’d broken on Allen and Albert Hughes, who didn’t want the details on a project out there because it was not at the studio where they’d made an overall deal, or at least that’s how I remember it. The phone call started out testy — me saying something arrogant like “you can work with me or just get out of my way” — but by the end, I could tell this guy was going to be important to me. And boy, was he ever.
Eddie was something of a throwback to what I imagined those old publicists to be. He ran his own shop, Insignia, forever. He was trustworthy, knew exactly what I needed, or what Claudia Eller needed at the LA Times, or Bruce Orwall at the Wall Street Journal, or any number of other journalists whose jobs he made easier. Our relationship evolved to a shorthand. He also knew exactly where and when to put his clients, not for volume placement, but where a strong piece served them best. He was a calm voice when one of them had a crisis. Read More »
R.I.P. Karen Black
The Five Easy Pieces Oscar nominee also known for such films Nashville and Alfred Hitchcock’s final pic Family Plot has died at 74. Karen Black recently had turned to crowdfunding to help with her long battle against cancer. Her husband, Stephen Eckelberry, confirmed Black’s death in a Facebook post: “It is with great sadness that I have to report that my wife and best friend, Karen Black has just passed away, only a few minutes ago,” he wrote. “Thank you all for all your prayers and love, they meant so much to her as they did to me.”
Black began her acting career in Off-Broadway shows before starring in three short-lived Main Stem productions from 1965-67. She also appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1966 romantic dramedy You’re a Big Boy Now. Several late-’60s TV guest roles on such shows as The Big Valley and Adam-12 led to her casting in the 1969 counterculture classic Easy Rider. A year later she and Jack Nicholson, who’d also appeared in Easy Rider, landed their breakout roles in Five Easy Pieces. Black earned a supporting actress Oscar nom and won the Golden Globe and NBR Award. She would add a second Globe four years later for The Great Gatsby. Black starred in films throughout the ’70s, including Airport 1975, The Day of the Locust, Robert Altman’s Nashville, Family Plot and Burnt Offerings. Read More »
R.I.P. Margaret Pellegrini
One of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard Of Oz has died. Margaret Pellegrini, who as a 15-year-old played the flowerpot Munchkin (right) … Read More »
R.I.P. Gail Kobe
Film and television actress and producer Gail Kobe died yesterday at the age of 82. Her first major film was Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments in 1956. She went on to appear in dozens of TV shows … Read More »
R.I.P. Bill Edwards
Longtime MGM international publicity director Bill Edwards has died. Edwards passed away at his home in Cape Town, South Africa on Wednesday, Screendaily reports. He was 84. Born in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, England, Edwards began his film industry career in London in 1952 at the trade paper Kine Weekly. He joined … Read More »
R.I.P. Jagdish Raj
A mainstay of Bollywood for 21 years, Jagdish Raj played a police inspector in at least 144 movies, which reportedly earned him a designation by the Guinness World Records as the film industry’s most typecast actor. Born in … Read More »
R.I.P. Kidd Kraddick
Radio host Kidd Kraddick, co-host of Twentieth TV’s syndicated program Dish Nation, died suddenly today at age 53. Kraddick passed away at a golf tournament in New Orleans raising money for his Kidd’s Kids … Read More »
R.I.P. Mark Corwin
Mark Corwin, Emmy Award-winning director of Wheel Of Fortune, died this morning in Los Angeles. He was 65. Corwin directed more than 2,000 episodes of the top-rated game show, and was beloved by staff and crew. … Read More »
R.I.P. Bernadette Lafont
Veteran French actress Bernadette Lafont passed away Thursday morning after being hospitalized earlier this week. She was 74. Lafont, who made her first feature in 1958, acted in more than 120 films and was set to appear in the upcoming … Read More »
R.I.P. Mel Smith
British actor and comedian Mel Smith, best known for the TV series Alias Smith And Jones and Not The Nine O’Clock News has died. His agent Michael Foster tells BBC News that Smith died Friday of a … Read More »
R.I.P. John Fahy
John “Jay” Fahy, an analyst for MSNBC who also commented on legal matters for cable outlets including CNBC and Court TV, was found dead last night under a railroad overpass near his office in East … Read More »
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