RIP

[Parker]

The Adam Sandler snow boarding thing is actually a hoax. There are "reports" of it dating back into early 2012. It is unfounded and he is not dead.

Same goes for Mickey Roarke, George Clooney, and Jim Carey.

Please see:
Snopes.com: Snowboard Death Hoax

Adam Sandler is NOT Dead - 98FM Article

Adam Sandler Fake Snowboarding Death Story Returns, Actor Not Dead - LaLateNews Article

[Kobi]

Karen Black, the prolific actress who appeared in more than 100 movies and was featured in such counterculture favorites as "Easy Rider," ''Five Easy Pieces" and "Nashville," has died. She was 74.

Known for her full lips and thick, wavy hair that seemed to change color from film to film, Black often portrayed women who were quirky, troubled or threatened. She was a prostitute who takes LSD with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 1969's "Easy Rider," a breakthrough that helped get her the role as a waitress who dates an upper-class dropout played by Jack Nicholson in 1970's "Five Easy Pieces." Black won an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe Award for that performance.

Cited by The New York Times as a "pathetically appealing vulgarian," Black's performance won her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe Award. She would recall that playing Rayette really was acting: The well-read, cerebral Black, raised in a comfortable Chicago suburb, had little in common with her relatively simple-minded character.

"If you look through the eyes of Rayette, it looks nice, really beautiful, light, not heavy, not serious. A very affectionate woman who would look upon things with love, and longing," Black told Venice Magazine in 2007. "A completely uncritical person, and in that sense, a beautiful person. When (director) Bob Rafelson called me to his office to discuss the part he said, 'Karen, I'm worried you can't play this role because you're too smart.' I said 'Bob, when you call "action," I will stop thinking,' because that's how Rayette is.'"

In 1971, Black starred with Nicholson again in "Drive, He Said," which Nicholson also directed. Over the next few years, she worked with such top actors and directors as Richard Benjamin ("Portnoy's Complaint"), Robert Redford and Mia Farrow ("The Great Gatsby") and Charlton Heston ("Airport 1975"). She was nominated for a Grammy Award after writing and performing songs for "Nashville," in which she played a country singer in Robert Altman's 1975 ensemble epic. Black also starred as a jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, "Family Plot," released in 1976.

"We used to read each other poems and limericks and tried to catch me on my vocabulary," she later said of Hitchcock. "He once said, 'You seem very perspicacious today, Miss Black.' I said, 'Oh, you mean "keenly perceptive?" 'Yes.' So I got him this huge, gold-embossed dictionary that said 'Diction-Harry,' at the end of the shoot."

The actress would claim that her career as an A-list actress was ruined by "The Day of the Locust," a troubled 1975 production of the Nathanael West novel that brought her a Golden Globe nomination but left Black struggling to find quality roles. By the end of the '70s, she was appearing in television and in low-budget productions. Black received strong reviews in 1982 as a transsexual in Altman's "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." But despite working constantly over the next 30 years, she was more a cult idol than a major Hollywood star. Her credits included guest appearances on such TV series as "Law & Order" and "Party of Five" and enough horror movies, notably "Trilogy of Terror," that a punk band named itself "The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black."

Black was also a screenwriter and a playwright whose credits included the musical "Missouri Waltz" and "A View of the Heart," a one-woman show in which she starred.

[Soft*Silver]

oh man...I verified it with two seperate articles before I posted this. Hahahah..they got me! But I am SO glad he is alive!!!

Originally Posted by Parker

The Adam Sandler snow boarding thing is actually a hoax. There are "reports" of it dating back into early 2012. It is unfounded and he is not dead.

Same goes for Mickey Roarke, George Clooney, and Jim Carey.

Please see:
Snopes.com: Snowboard Death Hoax

Adam Sandler is NOT Dead - 98FM Article

Adam Sandler Fake Snowboarding Death Story Returns, Actor Not Dead - LaLateNews Article

[Kobi]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eydie Gorme, a popular nightclub and television singer as a solo act and as a team with her husband, Steve Lawrence, has died. She was 84.

Gorme, who also had a huge solo hit in 1963 with "Blame it on the Bossa Nova," died Saturday. Gorme was a successful band singer and nightclub entertainer when she was invited to join the cast of Steve Allen's local New York television show in 1953.

She sang solos and also did duets and comedy skits with Lawrence, a rising young singer who had joined the show a year earlier. When the program became NBC's "Tonight Show" in 1954, the young couple went with it.

They married in Las Vegas in 1957 and later performed for audiences there.

"Eydie has been my partner on stage and in life for more than 55 years," Lawrence said in a statement. "I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and even more the first time I heard her sing. While my personal loss is unimaginable, the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time."

Although usually recognized for her musical partnership with Lawrence, Gorme broke through on her own with the Grammy-nominated "Blame it on the Bossa Nova." The bouncy tune about a dance craze of the time was written by the Tin Pan Alley songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Her husband had had an equally huge solo hit in 1962 with "Go Away Little Girl," written by the songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

Gorme would score another solo hit in 1964, but this time for a Spanish-language recording. Gorme, who was born in New York City to Sephardic Jewish parents, grew up speaking both English and Spanish.

When she and her husband were at the height of their career as a team in 1964, Columbia Records President Goddard Lieberson suggested she put that Spanish to use in the recording studio. The result was "Amor," recorded with the Mexican combo Trio Los Panchos.

The song became a hit throughout Latin America, which resulted in more recordings for the Latino market, and Lawrence and Gorme performed as a duo throughout Latin America. "Our Spanish stuff outsells our English recordings," Lawrence said in 2004. "She's like a diva to the Spanish world."

Gorme and Lawrence, meanwhile, had an impressive, long-lasting career in English-language music as well, encompassing recordings and appearances on TV, in nightclubs and in concert halls.

Throughout it, they stuck for the most part with the music of classic composers like Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and other giants of Broadway and Hollywood musicals. They eschewed rock 'n' roll and made no apologies for it.

Soon after their marriage, the pair had landed their own TV program, "The Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Show," which was a summer replacement for Allen.

Not long after that, however, Lawrence entered the Army, and Gorme went on the nightclub circuit as a soloist until his return to civilian life two years later.

After his discharge, Lawrence and Gorme quickly reteamed, and their careers took off. They appeared at leading nightclubs in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Las Vegas, combining music with the comedy bits they had learned during their apprenticeship on Allen's show. With nightclubs dwindling in popularity in the 1980s, they moved their act to large theaters and auditoriums, drawing not only older audiences but also the Baby Boomers who had grown up on rock 'n' roll.

Gorme, who was born Aug. 16, 1928, began to seriously consider a music career while still a student at William Taft High School in New York City's borough of the Bronx, where she had been voted the "Prettiest, Peppiest Cheerleader."

After graduation, she worked as a Spanish interpreter for a time but also sang on weekends with the band of Ken Greenglass, who encouraged her and eventually became her manager.

Her first big break came when she landed a tour with the Tommy Tucker band, and she followed that up with gigs with Tex Beneke, Ray Eberle and on radio and television.

Among her radio appearances was one on a Spanish language show, "Cita Con Eydie ("A Date with Eydie"), which was beamed to Latin America by Voice of America. Early in her career, Gorme considered changing her name, but her mother protested. "It's bad enough that you're in show business. How will the neighbors know if you're ever a success?" she told her, so Gorme decided to keep the family name but changed her given name from Edith to Edie. Later, having grown tired of people mistaking it for Eddie, she changed the spelling to Eydie.

[Parker]

Lee Thompson Young, a former Disney Channel star who appeared on "Rizzoli & Isles," was found dead this morning at the age of 29.

Police confirmed that the versatile young actor died in an apparent suicide of a gunshot wound. TMZ reports that Young’s landlord found him when he did not report to the set of the TNT drama this morning.

When officers arrived to his apartment at the 5000 block of Tujunga Avenue, they pronounced him dead at the scene. There is no word on whether Young left a note, and the coroner is taking over the case.

"It is with great sadness that I announce that Lee Thompson Young tragically took his own life this morning," said Young's long-time manager Jonathan Baruch in a statement.

"Lee was more than just a brilliant young actor, he was a wonderful and gentle soul who will be truly missed. We ask that you please respect the privacy of his family and friends as this very difficult time."

[Martina]

OH no! That's heartbreaking. I loved his character on Rizzoli and Isles. He was a good actor. He did a lot with a small but regular part. So appealing as an actor. I just hate to hear that.

Originally Posted by Parker

Lee Thompson Young, a former Disney Channel star who appeared on "Rizzoli & Isles," was found dead this morning at the age of 29.

Police confirmed that the versatile young actor died in an apparent suicide of a gunshot wound. TMZ reports that Young’s landlord found him when he did not report to the set of the TNT drama this morning.

When officers arrived to his apartment at the 5000 block of Tujunga Avenue, they pronounced him dead at the scene. There is no word on whether Young left a note, and the coroner is taking over the case.

"It is with great sadness that I announce that Lee Thompson Young tragically took his own life this morning," said Young's long-time manager Jonathan Baruch in a statement.

"Lee was more than just a brilliant young actor, he was a wonderful and gentle soul who will be truly missed. We ask that you please respect the privacy of his family and friends as this very difficult time."

[Kelt]

Marian McPartland, Jazz Pianist and NPR Radio Staple, Dies at 95



By PETER KEEPNEWS
Published: August 21, 2013

Marian McPartland, the genteel Englishwoman who became a fixture of the American jazz scene as a pianist and, later in life, hosted the internationally syndicated and immensely popular public radio show “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz,” died on Tuesday at her home in Port Washington, N.Y. She was 95.

Ms. McPartland was a gifted musician but an unlikely candidate for jazz stardom. She recalled in a 1998 interview for National Public Radio that shortly after she arrived in the United States in 1946, the influential jazz critic Leonard Feather, who himself was born in England and who began his career as a pianist, said, “Oh, she’ll never make it: she’s English, white and a woman.”

Mr. Feather, she added, “always used to tell me it was a joke, but I don’t think he meant it as a joke.”

The odds against any woman finding success as a jazz musician in the late 1940s and early ’50s were formidable, but Ms. McPartland overcame them with grace. Listeners were charmed by her Old World stage presence and captivated by her elegant, harmonically lush improvisations, which reflected both her classical training and her fascination with modern jazz.



By 1958 she was well enough known to be included in Art Kane’s famous Esquire magazine group photograph of jazz musicians, the subject of Jean Bach’s 1994 documentary, “A Great Day in Harlem.” One of the few women in the picture, she stood next to her friend and fellow pianist Mary Lou Williams.

Ms. McPartland’s contributions to jazz were not limited to her piano playing. An enthusiastic and articulate spokeswoman for the music, she lectured at schools and colleges and wrote for Down Beat, Melody Maker and other publications. (A collection of her essays, “All in Good Time,” was published in 1987 and reissued in 2003.) Most notably, for more than 30 years her “Piano Jazz” was one of the most popular jazz shows ever on the radio.

The show, produced by South Carolina’s public radio network, made its debut on NPR in 1978. The format was simple: an informal interview interspersed with extemporaneous duets.

“I didn’t have any idea I’d be good at something like this,” Ms. McPartland told The Associated Press in 2000. “I certainly never thought people would know me because of my voice.” But she proved a natural.

As its title suggests, “Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz” was originally a show about piano players. But the guest list came to include vocalists, among them Mel Tormé, Tony Bennett and even Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello, as well as trumpeters, saxophonists and other instrumentalists.

Jazz pianists remained the focus, however, and over the years Ms. McPartland played host to some of the most famous, from the ragtime pioneer Eubie Blake to the uncompromising avant-gardist Cecil Taylor. She gamely played duets with all of them, even Mr. Taylor, whose aggressively dissonant approach was far removed from Ms. McPartland’s refined melodicism.

“I just did the kind of thing he does,” she said. “Or else I went in the opposite direction, and that sounded fairly interesting too.”

“Piano Jazz” was heard on more than 200 radio stations all over the world. It received a Peabody Award in 1983.

Ms. McPartland recorded her last show in September 2010, although she did not officially step down as host until November 2011; “Piano Jazz” has continued with reruns and guest hosts.

Marian McPartland was born Margaret Marian Turner in Windsor, England, on March 20, 1918. She began picking out melodies on the family piano when she was 3, and at 17 she entered the Guildhall School of Music in London.

In 1938, over her parents’ strong objections, she left school to go on tour with a four-piano vaudeville act. “My mother said, ‘Oh, you’ll come to no good, you’ll marry a musician and live in an attic,’ ” she recalled in 1998. “Of course, that did happen.”

While on a U.S.O. tour in 1944 she met the American jazz cornetist Jimmy McPartland in Belgium; they married in early 1946, and she moved with him to Chicago later that year.

Ms. McPartland worked for a while in her husband’s group, but he was a tradition-loving Dixieland musician and she was more interested in the harmonically sophisticated new sounds coming from New York City, where the McPartlands moved in 1949.

Encouraged by her husband, she formed a trio and found work at the Embers, an East Side nightclub, in 1950. Two years later she began what was supposed to be a brief engagement at the Hickory House, one of the last surviving jazz rooms on the city’s once-thriving 52nd Street nightclub row. That booking turned into an eight-year residency.

The McPartlands’ marriage ended after two decades, but they remained close friends and continued to work together occasionally. The divorce, she was fond of saying, did not take. She helped care for him when he had lung cancer, and they remarried shortly before he died in 1991.

Her survivors include two grandchildren.

Ms. McPartland recorded for Savoy, Capitol and other labels in the 1950s and ’60s, but in 1969, disenchanted with the business, she formed her own record company, Halcyon. “It was quite a job,” she told one interviewer. “I used to actually go to a record store like Sam Goody and tell them, ‘I need that money you owe me.’ ”

Halcyon released 18 albums in 10 years and had a roster that included her fellow pianists Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines as well as Ms. McPartland herself, but her career as an executive ended when she signed with Concord Jazz in 1979. She remained a Concord artist until she stopped recording, just a few years before her death.

The bare-bones accompaniment of bass and drums was always Ms. McPartland’s preferred format, but she also appeared in concert with symphony orchestras, and in 1996 she recorded an album of her own compositions, “Silent Pool,” on which she was accompanied by a string orchestra.

That album provided a rare showcase for an underappreciated aspect of her talent: although she told The New York Times in 1998 that she “never had all that much faith in myself as a composer,” she was a prolific songwriter whose work was recorded by Peggy Lee, Mr. Bennett, Sarah Vaughan and others. She performed her symphonic work “A Portrait of Rachel Carson” with the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra in 2007.

In her last years Ms. McPartland received numerous honors. She was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2000, given a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2004, inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007 and named a member of the Order of the British Empire in 2010.

And she continued playing almost to the end. Reviewing her appearance at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in Manhattan the night before her 90th birthday in 2008, Nate Chinen wrote in The Times, “Ms. McPartland still has her pellucid touch and her careful yet comfortable style.”

Unlike some jazz musicians of her generation, Ms. McPartland never became set in her ways; her playing grew denser and more complex with time, and even late in life she was experimenting with new harmonic ideas. “I’ve become a bit more — reckless, maybe,” she said in 1998. “I’m getting to the point where I can smash down a chord and not know what it’s going to be, and make it work.”

[Kobi]

Julie Harris, 87, one of the great stage actresses of the last half-century who amassed five Tony awards and was also renowned for her film work, died Aug. 24 at her home in West Chatham, Mass.

In a career of durability, longevity and versatility, time and her own gifts transmuted her roles from troubled tomboy to appealing ingénue to scheming older woman. Presidential wife Mary Todd Lincoln, poet Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare’s Ophelia were all portrayed with panache and verve by Julie Harris.

She was the wistful, lonesome pre-adolescent Frankie in Carson McCullers’s “The Member of the Wedding” on Broadway and in Hollywood. The film performance more than 60 years ago earned her an Academy Award nomination.

The year the movie came out, 1952, she created the devil-may-care Sally Bowles on Broadway in “I Am a Camera,” winning the first of her Tony awards.

Broadway appearances also included “The Lark” in 1955, in which she played Joan of Arc and appeared as Joan on the cover of Time magazine. She was in “Forty Carats” in 1968 and “The Last of Mrs. Lincoln” in 1972. She played Mrs. Lincoln in the stage and film versions.

In the movies, her work on “East of Eden” with James Dean was credited by director Elia Kazan with bringing out the best in her often difficult co-star. She was in “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” and she and Paul Newman acted in “Harper,” a private-eye drama. She was also known for “Reflections in a Golden Eye.”

A Tony recognized her portrayal of the reclusive New England poet Emily Dickinson in “The Belle of Amherst.” An audio recording of that role won her a Grammy Award for best spoken-word recording.

She was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005.

At a ceremony in the White House, President George W. Bush said: “It’s hard to imagine the American stage without the face, the voice and the limitless talent of Julie Harris. She has found happiness in her life’s work, and we thank her for sharing that happiness with the whole world.”

That work also included many television appearances, most notably in “Knots Landing,” in which she was a scheming Southern belle.

Known for her sensitivity, she was quoted as saying that “God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other. . . . It’s a way of expressing our humanity.” She was also a gritty survivor of surgery after a backstage fall, of at least one stroke, and of breast cancer. Chemotherapy continued while she played in the long-running “Knots Landing.”

In the Ken Burns series “The Civil War,” she gave voice to diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut.

Julia Ann Harris was born in the prosperous Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Mich., on Dec. 2, 1925. Her father, William Pickett Harris, was an investment banker. Her mother, Elsie, was a nurse. She was impressed by plays they saw in Detroit, and in her teens , unwilling to remain at home and do what was expected of a young woman of her background, she enrolled in the Yale School of Drama. In 1945 she left in mid-semester for a role in a Broadway show, which flopped, sending her back to New Haven.

She made her home on Cape Cod. Reference works indicated that three marriages ended in divorce. She had one son.