Peter O'Toole
 

Joan Fontaine
 

Hollywood stalwart Joan Fontaine, best known for her roles in director Alfred Hitchcock's 1939 Rebecca and her Best Actress Oscar-winning role in his 1940 film Suspicion, died Sunday at her northern California home, according to several reports. She was 96.

In addition to playing a mousey spouse in both the Hitchcock films, first alongside Laurence Olivier and then to Cary Grant, Fontaine's other well-known movies included 1943's The Constant Nymph, which got her a third Oscar nomination, 1944's Jane Eyre with Orson Welles, 1952's Ivanhoe with Robert Taylor, and 1957's controversial Island in the Sun with Harry Belafonte.

Her final role was in a 1994 TV movie.

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in Tokyo to British parents, Fontaine recalled for PEOPLE in 1978: "My mother, Lilian de Havilland ... was beautiful, gracious and a talented actress. My father was an English professor at Waseda and Imperial universities in Tokyo who left Mother for our Japanese maid when I was 2. My mother later married a department store manager, George Milan Fontaine, but she remained the dominant figure in our lives."

While her older (by one year) sister, Olivia de Havilland, best known for playing Melanie in Gone with the Wind, sought an acting career, Joan studied at the American School in Tokyo before joining de Havilland in Los Angeles, where she too got a screen test.

Among Fontaine's earliest roles were in 1939's all-star The Women at MGM, with Cary Grant that same year, in RKO's Gunga Din.

Fontaine lived out her days in Carmel, Calif. She had two children from her four marriages. Her husbands were actor Brian Aherne, TV producer William Dozier, producer Collier Young and journalist Alfred Wright Jr.

In her PEOPLE interview, Fontaine, who now leaves her sister as one of the last survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age, spoke of how she wanted to die.

"At age 108," she said, "flying around the stage in Peter Pan, as a result of my sister cutting the wires. Olivia has always said I was first at everything – I got married first, got an Academy Award first, had a child first. If I die, she'll be furious, because again I'll have got there first!"

http://www.people.com/people/article...ntent=My+Yahoo

R.I.P. Uncle Phil
 

>linkyloo<

Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers dies at 74
 

LOS ANGELES - Phil Everly, who with his brother Don formed an influential harmony duo that touched the hearts and sparked the imaginations of rock 'n' roll singers for decades, including the Beatles and Bob Dylan, died Friday. He was 74.

Phil and Don Everly helped draw the blueprint of rock 'n' roll in the late 1950s and 1960s with a high harmony that captured the yearning and angst of a nation of teenage baby boomers looking for a way to express themselves beyond the simple platitudes of the pop music of the day.

The Beatles, early in their career, once referred to themselves as "the English Everly Brothers." And Bob Dylan once said, "We owe these guys everything. They started it all."

The Everlys' hit records included the then-titillating "Wake Up Little Susie" and the universally identifiable "Bye Bye Love," each featuring their twined voices with lyrics that mirrored the fatalism of country music and a rocking backbeat that more upbeat pop. These sounds and ideas would be warped by their devotees into a new kind of music that would ricochet around the world.

In all, their career spanned five decades, although they performed separately from 1973 to 1983. In their heyday between 1957 and 1962, they had 19 top 40 hits.

The two broke up amid quarrelling in 1973 after 16 years of hits, then reunited in 1983, "sealing it with a hug," Phil Everly said.

Although their number of hit records declined in the late 1980s, they made successful concert tours in this country and Europe.

They were inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, the same year they had a hit pop-country record, "Born Yesterday."

Don Everly was born in 1937 in Brownie, Kentucky, to Ike and Margaret Everly, who were folk and country music singers. Phil Everly was born to the couple on Jan. 19, 1939, in Chicago where the Everlys moved to from Brownie when Ike grew tired of working in the coal mines.

The brothers began singing country music in 1945 on their family's radio show in Shenandoah, Iowa.

Their career breakthrough came when they moved to Nashville in the mid-1950s and signed a recording contract with New York-based Cadence Records.

Their breakup came dramatically during a concert at Knott's Berry Farm in California. Phil Everly threw his guitar down and walked off, prompting Don Everly to tell the crowd, "The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago."

During their breakup, they pursued solo singing careers with little fanfare. Phil also appeared in the Clint Eastwood movie "Every Which Way but Loose." Don made a couple of records with friends in Nashville, performed in local nightclubs and played guitar and sang background vocals on recording sessions.

Don Everly said in a 1986 Associated Press interview that the two were successful because "we never followed trends. We did what we liked and followed our instincts. Rock 'n' roll did survive, and we were right about that. Country did survive, and we were right about that. You can mix the two but people said we couldn't."

In 1988, the brothers began hosting an annual homecoming benefit concert in Central City, Kentucky, to raise money for the area.

Phil Everly
 

Man. My sister and I used to love to sing to the Everly Brothers when we were kids. Mom and Dad used to play the tapes in the car.

Carl Goodman

Co-founder of Act Up

http://oblogdeeoblogda.me/2014/01/06...mmits-suicide/

Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gilligan's Island, Dead at 89
 

Russell Johnson, who played Professor Roy Hinkley on Gilligan's Island, has passed away at age 89.

Johnson was a busy but little-known character actor when he was cast in the slapstick 1960s comedy about seven people marooned on an uncharted Pacific island.

His character, high school science teacher Roy Hinkley, built generators and other gadgets out of scraps of junk found on the island. Johnson later joked that the one thing The Professor never figured out how to do was to fix the leaky boat so the group could get back to civilization.

Dave Madden
 

NEW YORK (AP) — The actor who played the agent on the hit 1970s sitcom "The Partridge Family" has died in Florida. Dave Madden was 82.

Madden was best known for his role as Reuben Kinkaid, who managed the family band and clashed with the precocious pre-teen bassist played by Danny Bonaduce (bahn-uh-DOO'-chee).

Before "The Partridge Family," Madden was part of the comedy ensemble on the "Laugh-In" variety series.

He later had a recurring role as a customer at Mel's Diner on the long-running sitcom "Alice."

Madden was born in Ontario, Canada, and grew up in Terre Haute, Ind.

He began show business as a nightclub comic and landed his first acting job on the short-lived sitcom "Camp Runamuck" in the mid-1960s.

RIP

Geez, I remember him from all three of those shows. I don't feel old until I have a moment like this.

Ruth Robinson Duccini -Died January 16, 2014 Las Vegas, Nevada
 

Pete Seeger, Legendary Folk Singer, Dies at Age 94
 

Pete Seeger, the banjo-picking troubadour who sang for migrant workers, college students and star-struck presidents in a career that introduced generations of Americans to their folk music heritage, died on Monday at the age of 94.

Seeger – with his a lanky frame, banjo and full white beard – was an iconic figure in folk music. He performed with the great minstrel Woody Guthrie in his younger days and marched with Occupy Wall Street protesters in his 90s, leaning on two canes.

He wrote or co-wrote "If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." He lent his voice against Hitler and nuclear power. A cheerful warrior, he typically delivered his broadsides with an affable air and his banjo strapped on.

"Be wary of great leaders," he told the Associated Press two days after a 2011 Manhattan Occupy march. "Hope that there are many, many small leaders."

With The Weavers, a quartet organized in 1948, Seeger helped set the stage for a national folk revival. The group – Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman – churned out hit recordings of "Goodnight Irene," "Tzena, Tzena" and "On Top of Old Smokey."

Seeger also was credited with popularizing "We Shall Overcome," which he printed in his publication People's Song, in 1948. He later said his only contribution to the anthem of the civil rights movement was changing the second word from "will" to "shall," which he said "opens up the mouth better."

"Every kid who ever sat around a campfire singing an old song is indebted in some way to Pete Seeger," Arlo Guthrie once said.

Pete and Toshi Seeger were married July 20, 1943. The couple built their cabin in Beacon, N.Y., after World War II and stayed on the high spot of land by the Hudson River for the rest of their lives together. The couple raised three children. Toshi Seeger died in July at age 91.

His musical career was always braided tightly with his political activism, in which he advocated for causes ranging from civil rights to the cleanup of his beloved Hudson River. Seeger said he left the Communist Party around 1950 and later renounced it. But the association dogged him for years.

http://www.people.com/people/article...s-topheadlines

More News to Come
 

Seems it was a drug over dose

>linkyloo<

No!!! I love him! :(

I'm shocked
 

I loved his portrayal of Truman Capote. He did a fantastic job. Was a gifted actor.

aaaargh...

What???
 

I don't read this thread; I've been here once before and don't know why I poked my head in today. I'm literally in the middle of The Master, I pulled it up this morning because of him. I still have his imdb.com tab up because I was searching for the name of this movie. I had paused it to talk with a friend and jumped here to the planet before resuming.

WTF? I read Snow's headline, set the laptop aside before even knowing details and ran upstairs repeating, "No, no, no, no, no..." I'm beside myself right now. He's one of my favorites and once the denial wears off I'm really going to freak. Herion? God damm it!

Gwen Avery
 

Gwen Avery, singer/songwriter/musician, has died at the age of 71. Avery was best known for her composition “Sugar Mama”, which was featured on Olivia Records’ groundbreaking collection, Lesbian Concentrate, in 1977. Originally slated to release a solo album on Olivia, she toured with her labelmates Linda Tillery and Mary Watkins on the Varied Voices of Black Women Tour, which also featured poet Pat Parker and Vicki Randle providing supporting vocals and percussion.

Avery stood apart in the Women’s Music Movement: a woman of color who understood the connection between her grandmother’s juke joint and the women’s music movement that Olivia Records was at the center of. Avery was quoted as saying “I dressed differently. I would wear satin suits and platform shoes with an afro with neckties and beautiful silk shirts. They were wearing plaid shirts and blue jeans.“ In an interview with the San Francisco Gate in 2002, she maintained that “the same issues of race and classism that confounded the early feminist and gay rights movements also infected the women’s music scene. I’ve always felt like a warrior or soldier. I’ve learned to deal with separation, isolation in the crowd, rejection in the abandonment.”

Her solo album never came to be via Olivia Records, but she continued to work on the road until her debut solo album, Sugar Mama, was released independently in 2001.

She spent the last decade of her life performing in the Bay Area’s Russian River region, bridging the gap between the blues and gospel, continuing to thrill audiences with her distinct interpretation of the rich heritage of black music. She performed numerous times at June Millington’s Institute for the Musical Art as well. Millington recalls “Gwen used to come to IMA to hang and rest her weary bones. We’d laugh—a lot! Then we’d jam and she’d let me play bass. She’d look at me and say ‘Wow! You can really play this!’ I didn’t even hear the blues until I was 19 or so, certainly not growing up in the Phillipines, but somewhere we met and knew without words. It was strong and true.”

Grammy nominated singer/songwriter/producer Linda Tillery reflects:

Gwen Avery was an authentic blues and gospel singer. She was raised in a juke joint, where from an early age, she heard first hand, the sounds of Black Troubadors weaving tales of love, passion, frustration and pleas to God - any god, for release from Jim Crow, segregation and the horrible legacy of racism in America.

Lesbian yes, Black woman yes, real deal soulful singer, yes. Yet I wonder how many people really understood her gift? You would have had to listen to Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Mahalia to recognize the "time stamp" that marked her unique style. She became the "Sugar Mama" of Women's Music, no longer a prisoner of love denied but a champion of love out in the open - raw and unashamed. That was her gift to us all.

Jazz vocalist Rhiannon describes her as “a tough, fragile woman..an open book in a way, with such tender passion for music and life. Vulnerable, flawed, capable of singing all that complex, powerful feeling. Not easy for her, and what she gave us was unique.”

By Tim Dillinger