RIP

[Gemme]

Queen Elizabeth II passed away on Thursday, September 8th. She was 96 years old. Buckingham Palace confirmed the news.

[Stone-Butch]

My heart is so sick and sad over the loss of our wonderful Queen Elizabeth.

RIP Your Majesty . My prayers have gone up for days and now may you pass to the other side and know you lived for your people who love you and mourn all over the world at your loss. Your portrait will hang in my home wherever I am as it always has. We miss you already.

[Gemme]

Sooo, Coolio died. I guess he'll find a new Gangsta's Paradise now. I always liked him and am sad to learn about his passing.

He's not much older than me. Granted, I'm a not famous rapper and I didn't do all the things that come with that position but it still hits home. Too many Gen Xers passing away too young.

[FireSignFemme]

"Too many Gen Xers passing away too young."

Isn't that the truth.

[Orema]

Actress and Activist Sacheen Littlefeather Dies at 75.


Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Sacheen Littlefeather, the actress and Native American activist who delivered Marlon Brando’s Academy Award rejection speech, has died. She was 75.

The news comes just two weeks after the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave a celebration in her honor.

Earlier this year, the Academy offered a formal apology for how it treated Littlefeather after the Oscars.

Littlefeather refused to accept Brando’s award for The Godfather, “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry,” she said through the crowd’s boos, “and on television in movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”

Littlefeather’s speech did return national attention to the standoff at Wounded Knee, but it also resulted in death threats and Littlefeather becoming persona non grata in Hollywood. “I was blacklisted, or you could say ‘redlisted,’” Littlefeather said in a documentary about her life. “Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and others didn’t want me on their shows. […]

The doors were closed tight, never to reopen.” Littlefeather went on to work in health activism, working in the Bay Area treating AIDS patients and teaching traditional Native American medicine.

https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/sach...on-brando.html

[Kätzchen]

RIP Loretta Lynn

[Gemme]

I loved Murder, She Wrote!

Angela Lansbury, the scene-stealing British actor who kicked up her heels in the Broadway musicals “Mame” and “Gypsy” and solved endless murders as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” has died. She was 96.

Lansbury died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, according to a statement from her three children. She died five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Lansbury won five Tony Awards for her Broadway performances and a lifetime achievement award. She earned Academy Award nominations as supporting actress for two of her first three films, “Gaslight” (1945) and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1946), and was nominated again in 1962 for “The Manchurian Candidate” and her deadly portrayal of a Communist agent and the title character’s mother.

Her mature demeanor prompted producers to cast her much older than her actual age. In 1948, when she was 23, her hair was streaked with gray so she could play a fortyish newspaper publisher with a yen for Spencer Tracy in “State of the Union.”

Her stardom came in middle age when she became the hit of the New York theater, winning Tony Awards for “Mame” (1966), “Dear World” (1969), “Gypsy” (1975) and “Sweeney Todd” (1979).

She was back on Broadway and got another Tony nomination in 2007 in Terrence McNally’s “Deuce,” playing a scrappy, brash former tennis star, reflecting with another ex-star as she watches a modern-day match from the stands. In 2009 she collected her fifth Tony, for best featured actress in a revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” and in 2015 won an Olivier Award in the role.

Broadway royalty paid their respects. Audra McDonald tweeted: “She was an icon, a legend, a gem, and about the nicest lady you’d ever want to meet.” Leslie Uggams on Twitter wrote: “Dame Angela was so sweet to me when I made my Broadway debut. She was a key person in welcoming me to the community. She truly lived, lived, lived!”

But Lansbury’s widest fame began in 1984 when she launched “Murder, She Wrote” on CBS. Based loosely on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories, the series centered on Jessica Fletcher, a middle-aged widow and former substitute school teacher living in the seaside village of Cabot Cove, Maine. She had achieved notice as a mystery novelist and amateur sleuth.

The actor found the first series season exhausting.

“I was shocked when I learned that had to work 12-15 hours a day, relentlessly, day in, day out,” she recalled. “I had to lay down the law at one point and say `Look, I can’t do these shows in seven days; it will have to be eight days.‘”

CBS and the production company, Universal Studio, agreed, especially since “Murder, She Wrote” had become a Sunday night hit. Despite the long days — she left her home at Brentwood in West Los Angeles at 6 a.m. and returned after dark — and reams of dialogue to memorize, Lansbury maintained a steady pace. She was pleased that Jessica Fletcher served as an inspiration for older women.

“Women in motion pictures have always had a difficult time being role models for other women,” she observed. “They’ve always been considered glamorous in their jobs.”

In the series’ first season, Jessica wore clothes that were almost frumpy. Then she acquired smartness, Lansbury reasoning that, as a successful woman, Jessica should dress the part.

“Murder, She Wrote” stayed high in the ratings through its 11th year. Then CBS, seeking a younger audience for Sunday night, shifted the series to a less favorable midweek slot. Lansbury protested vigorously to no avail. As expected, the ratings plummeted and the show was canceled. For consolation, CBS contracted for two-hour movies of “Murder, She Wrote” and other specials starring Lansbury.

“Murder, She Wrote” and other television work brought her 18 Emmy nominations but she never won one. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for best actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for lead actress in a drama series.

In a 2008 Associated Press interview, Lansbury said she still welcomed the right script but did not want to play “old, decrepit women,” she said. “I want women my age to be represented the way they are, which is vital, productive members of society.”

“I’m astonished at the amount of stuff I managed to pack into the years that I have been in the business. And I’m still here!”

She was given the name Angela Brigid Lansbury when she was born in London on Oct. 16, 1925. Her family was distinguished: a grandfather who was the fiery head of the Labour Party; her father the owner of a veneer factory; her mother a successful actor, Moyna MacGill.

“I was terribly shy, absolutely incapable of coming out of my shell,” Lansbury remembered of her youth. “It took me years to get over that.”

The Depression forced her father’s factory into bankruptcy, and for a few years the family lived on money her mother had saved from her theater career. Angela suffered a shattering blow when her beloved father died in 1935. The tragedy forced her to become self-reliant — “almost a surrogate husband to my mother.”

When England was threatened with German bombings in 1940, Moyna Lansbury struggled through red tape and won passage to America for her family. With the help of two sponsoring families, they settled in New York and lived on $150 a month. To add to their income, Angela at 16 landed a nightclub job in Montreal doing impersonations and songs.

“The only thing I ever had confidence in is my ability to perform,” she said. “That has been the grace note in my sonata of life, the thing that has absolutely seen me through thick and thin.”

Moyna moved the family to Hollywood, hoping to find acting work. Failing that, she and Angela wrapped packages and sold clothing at a department store. An actor friend suggested Angela would be ideal for the role of Sybil Vane in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” which was being prepared at MGM. She tested, and studio boss Louis B. Mayer ordered: “Sign that girl!”

She was just 19 when her first film, “Gaslight,” earned her an Oscar nomination, but MGM didn’t know what to do with the new contract player. She appeared as Elizabeth Taylor’s older sister in “National Velvet,” Judy Garland’s nemesis in “The Harvey Girls,” Walter Pidgeon’s spiteful wife in “If Winter Comes,” Queen Anne in “The Three Musketeers.”

Tired of playing roles twice her own age, she left MGM to freelance but the results were much the same: the mother of Warren Beatty in “All Fall Down,” of Elvis Presley in “Blue Hawaii,” of Carroll Baker in “Harlow,” and of Laurence Harvey in “The Manchurian Candidate,” in which she unforgettably manipulates her son and helps set off a killing spree.

In the mid-1940s, Lansbury had a disastrous nine-month marriage to Richard Cromwell, a soulful young star of the 1930s. In 1949, she married Peter Shaw, a Briton who had been under an acting contract to MGM, then became a studio executive and agent. He assumed the role of Lansbury’s manager. They had two children, Peter and Deirdre; he had a son David by a previous marriage.

The 1950s were a troubled time for the Shaws. Angela’s career slowed down; her mother died after a battle with cancer; Peter underwent a hip operation; the children were on drugs; the family house in Malibu burned to the ground.

Lansbury later said of the fire: “It’s like cutting off a branch, a big, luscious branch of your life and sealing it off with a sealer so it doesn’t bleed, That’s what you do. That’s how the human mind deals with those things. You have to pick up the pieces and go on.”

Weary of 20 years of typecasting, Lansbury tried her luck on Broadway. Her first two shows — “Anyone Can Whistle” and “Hotel Paradiso” (with Bert Lahr) — flopped.

Then came “Mame.” Rosalind Russell declined to repeat her classic role as Patrick Dennis’s dizzy aunt in a musical version. So did Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. Others considered: Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Beatrice Lillie, Judy Garland. Composer Jerry Herman chose Lansbury.

The opening on May 24, 1966, was a sensation. One critic wondered that “the movies’ worn, plump old harridan with a snakepit for a mouth” could turn out to be “the liveliest dame to kick up her heels since Carol Channing in ‘Hello, Dolly.‘”

After her “Sweeney Todd” triumph, Lansbury returned to Hollywood to try television. She was offered a sitcom with Charles Durning or “Murder, She Wrote.” The producers had wanted Jean Stapleton, who declined. Lansbury accepted.

During the series’ long run, she managed to star in TV movies, to be host of Emmy and Tony shows and even to provide the voice for a Disney animated feature. She played Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast” and sang the title song. “This was really a breakthrough for me,” she said of her young following. “It acquainted me with a generation that I possibly couldn’t have contacted.”

In 2000, Lansbury withdrew from a planned Broadway musical, “The Visit,” because she needed to help her husband recover from heart surgery. “The kind of commitment required of an artist carrying a multimillion-dollar production has to be 100%,” she said in a letter to the producers.

Her husband died in 2003.

She was back on Broadway in 2012 in a revival of “The Best Man,” sharing a stage with James Earl Jones, John Larroquette, Candice Bergen, Eric McCormack, Michael McKean and Kerry Butler. She also recently co-starred in Emma Thompson’s “Nanny McPhee” and with Jim Carrey in “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.”

At the 2022 Tony Awards, Len Cariou — her “Sweeney Todd” co-star — accepted the lifetime Tony given to Lansbury. “There is no one with whom I’d rather run a cutthroat business with,” Cariou said.

In 1990, Lansbury philosophized: “I have sometimes drawn back from my career. To what? Home. Home is the counterweight to the work.”

In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury.

[Blade]

RIP Bill Dance
RIP Vince Dooley

[Kätzchen]

[Bèsame*]

Rest in Peace, Kirstie Alley

[Gemme]

I am stunned. Absolutely stunned. Not only that he passed so young but that it was via suicide. I never felt that sadness in him. I never met the man, but I love dance and I have watched him mature and improve through the years. He is part of many fond memories of mine. My condolences to his family...wife...children.

Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, 'Ellen DeGeneres Show' DJ, dead at 40

Stephen "tWitch" Boss — best known for being the DJ on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, a judge and contestant on So You Think You Can Dance and for his fun Instagram dance videos with wife Allison Holker Boss — has died by suicide at age 40.

"It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to share my husband Stephen has left us," Holker Boss, 34, said in a statement obtained by Yahoo Entertainment. "Stephen lit up every room he stepped into. He valued family, friends and community above all else and leading with love and light was everything to him. He was the backbone of our family, the best husband and father, and an inspiration to his fans."

It continued, "To say he left a legacy would be an understatement, and his positive impact will continue to be felt," she continued. "I am certain there won't be a day that goes by that we won't honor his memory. We ask for privacy during this difficult time for myself and especially for our three children."

Holker Boss concluded her statement with a message to her husband, saying, "Stephen, we love you, we miss you, and I will always save the last dance for you."

TMZ was first to report the news on Wednesday morning. The outlet said Holker Boss went to an unspecified LAPD station to report that Boss had left home without his car, which had her worried. Shortly after, police were called to a hotel near the couple's house where he was found deceased. The L.A. County Coroner later confirmed Boss died by suicide at a hotel. The case is closed.

DeGeneres, who brought on Boss as the talk show's resident DJ in 2014, a job he had for the remainder of the show's run, posted a tribute on social media. The "heartbroken" DeGeneres called him "pure love and light" and said she "loved him with all my heart."

Boss, who hailed from Montgomery, Ala., studied dance performance at Southern Union State Community College in his home state as well as Chapman University in California. The hip-hop dancer and choreographer first found stardom competing on So You Think You Can Dance's fourth season in 2008, being named the runner-up. One of his dances, with contestant Katee Shean and choreographed by Mia Michaels, was nominated for an Emmy for Choreography in 2009. He returned to the show for further performances and was one of the SYTYCD All-Stars in several seasons. Earlier this year, Boss joined the judging panel for Season 17.

In 2014, he was first featured as a guest DJ on DeGeneres's talk show. She introduced him by calling him her "favorite dancer." It soon became a permanent role with Boss staying on the show until it ended in May.

In 2020, he was promoted to co-executive producer of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, helping helm the ship amid the show's workplace toxicity scandal. Boss, who backed DeGeneres during the turmoil, also served as DeGeneres's co-star on the spin-off show Ellen’s Game of Games.

Boss appeared in 2015's Magic Mike XXL with Channing Tatum, playing dancer Malik. He was also an honorary judge on Jennifer Lopez's World of Dance.

He met his future wife through SYTYCD, as Holker Boss is also a dancer. She competed during Season 2 of the show and they were both later All-Stars. Talking about how they got together, she revealed that she asked for his number after they attended the 2010 Step Up 3D premiere together with a group, but ended up dancing the night away together. He said at the wrap party for SYTYCD that year, she pulled him onto the dance floor and they "danced the entire night, and we've been together ever since."

In 2013, they were married at Villa San-Juliette Winery in Paso Robles, Calif., owned by SYTYCD co-creator Nigel Lythgoe, and they welcomed a son, Maddox, in 2016 followed by daughter, Zaia, in 2019. Boss also adopted his wife's now 14-year-old daughter, Weslie, from a past relationship. In November, they appeared on the Jennifer Hudson Show and said they were considering expanding their family.

Holker Boss and Boss co-hosted Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings on Disney+ from 2018 to 2020.

The couple — and entire family, in fact — has been known for their fun, uplifting dance videos shared to social media. The last one, a holiday dance featuring Boss and Holker Boss in front of a tree, was posted two days ago.

The couple also recently celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary. On Dec. 10, Boss shared a black and white image of them dancing at their wedding, writing, "Happy anniversary my love." She shared a video with different memories from that day, writing on Instagram that marrying Boss has "been one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life!! I feel so blessed and loved!! I love you baby and I will never take you or OUR love for granted! I LOVE YOU."

They last appeared together at a public event on Dec. 5. They attended the Critics Choice Association's 5th Annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television at Fairmont Century Plaza and posed for a series of portraits together.

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Barbara Walters was a trailblazer in journalism and for women. I will miss her eye-opening and deep, candid interviews.

[theoddz]

Yet another one of "The Greats" has passed, this time, Mr. Burt Bacharach. He was always one of my most favorite songwriters and was well known for some of the most celebrated and long played hits of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and beyond. He was 94 years old. RIP and Godspeed, Mr. Bacharach!! We'll always want to be "Close to You".

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/enter...ath/index.html




~Theo~

[Gemme]

Raquel Welch passed away February 15, 2023.

Jo Raquel Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. (1966).

Although Welch had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became bestselling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970), and Hannie Caulder (1971). She made several television variety specials.

Through her portrayal of strong female characters, which helped in her breaking the mold of the traditional sex symbol, Welch developed a unique film persona that made her an icon of the 1960s and 1970s. Her rise to stardom in the mid-1960s was partly credited with ending Hollywood's vigorous promotion of the blonde bombshell. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance in The Three Musketeers. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Film for her performance in the film Right to Die (1987). In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History". Playboy ranked Welch No. 3 on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list.

Welch was born as Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first child of Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo and Josephine Sarah Hall. Her father, Armando Tejada, was an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, son of Agustin Tejada and Raquel Urquizo.