[middbrew]

Former Solicitor General Robert Bork Dies

Former Solicitor Gen. Robert Bork Dies

Read that today. I hope he doesn't get borking from the ever after.

FYI: He thought that the phrase "borking" was his means to immortality.

[BergerKing]

Lee Dorman Dead: Iron Butterfly Bassist Dies At 70

[Laura Knotek]

Elwood Jensen

Cincinnati professor nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Elwood Jensen Obituary: View Elwood Jensen's Obituary by The Plain Dealer

[cerealberry]

Jack Klugman passed away at age 90..
NYT: Jack Klugman, Stage and Screen

[BergerKing]

Jack Klugman passed away at age 90..
NYT: Jack Klugman, Stage and Screen

Thanks for putting that up. Always loved his characters.

[BergerKing]

NYT: Charles Durning, Prolific Char

Charles Durning, who overcame poverty, battlefield trauma and nagging self-doubt to become an acclaimed character actor, whether on stage as Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" or in film as the lonely widower smitten with a cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie," died Monday in New York. He was 89.


He died of natural causes, The Associated Press reported, citing Judith Moss, his agent and friend.Charles Durning may not have been a household name, but with his pugnacious features and imposing bulk he was a familiar presence in American movies, television and theater, even if often overshadowed by the headliners.

Alongside Paul Newman and Robert Redford's con men, Mr. Durning was a crooked cop in the 1973 movie "The Sting"; starring with Nick Nolte; he was a dedicated assistant football coach in "North Dallas Forty" (1979); in the shadow of Robert De Niro, he was a hypocritical power broker in "True Confessions" (1981).If his ordinary-guy looks deprived him of leading-man roles, they did not leave him typecast. He could play gruff and combative or gentle and funny. In the comedy "Tootsie" (1982) he was a little of each, playing Jessica Lange's unsuspecting father, who falls for a television actor masquerading as a woman.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Durning's two Oscar nominations were for supporting roles, as a slippery governor in the Burt Reynolds film "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982) and as a lustful Nazi colonel in Mel Brooks's "To Be or Not to Be" (1983).

His television credits were voluminous, from guest spots to substantial parts in TV movies and mini-series. He was a regular on "Evening Shade," the 1990s sitcom that starred Burt Reynolds, and "First Monday," a short-lived 2002 drama about the Supreme Court. He had recurring roles as a priest on "Everybody Loves Raymond" and as the ex-firefighter father of Denis Leary's Tommy in the firehouse series "Rescue Me." In all, Mr. Durning received nine Emmy Award nominations, although he never won.

His Big Daddy, the bullying, dying plantation owner in a 1990 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," brought him a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play. Frank Rich, then the chief drama critic for The New York Times, likened the performance to "a dying volcano, in final, sputtering eruption.""Cat" was Mr. Durning's first Broadway hit since 1972, when he drew praise as a small-town mayor seeking re-election in "That Championship Season," Jason Miller's Tony-winning drama about the reunion of a high school basketball team.

He went on to appear in a pair of short-lived 1973 Broadway productions - David Rabe's "Boom Boom Room" and Hugh Leonard's "Au Pair Man," in which he co-starred with Julie Harris - and, three years later, in Jules Feiffer's comedy "Knock Knock.

"Despite his success, Mr. Durning fought a lifelong battle with himself."I lack confidence as an actor," he told The Toronto Star in 1988. When asked what he thought his image was, he replied: "Image? ****, I don't have an image." He later told The Pittsburgh Gazette that he was "driven by fear - the fear of not being recognized by your peers."

Charles Durning was born into poverty on Feb. 28, 1923, in the Hudson River village of Highland Falls, N.Y., the ninth of 10 children. His father, James, an Irish immigrant, had been sickened by mustard gas and lost a leg in World War I. He died when Charles was 12. Five of Charles's sisters died of either smallpox or scarlet fever in childhood, three of them within two weeks.

Never a good student, young Charles dropped out of school and fled to Pennsylvania, deciding that his mother, Louise, a laundress at the United States Military Academy at West Point, would fare better with one less mouth to feed. He worked as a farmhand and did other menial jobs before moving to Buffalo, where again he took odd jobs. One, opportunely, was as an usher in a burlesque house.

One night a frequently drunk comedian failed to show up, and Mr. Durning, who had memorized the comic's jokes, persuaded the manager to let him go on. He "got laughs," he later recalled, and was "hooked" on show business. He made his stage debut in Buffalo.

Then came World War II, and he enlisted in the Army. His combat experiences were harrowing. He was in the first wave of troops to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day and his unit's lone survivor of a machine-gun ambush. In Belgium he was stabbed in hand-to-hand combat with a German soldier, whom he bludgeoned to death with a rock. Fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, he and the rest of his company were captured and forced to march through a pine forest at Malmedy, the scene of an infamous massacre in which the Germans opened fire on almost 90 prisoners. Mr. Durning was among the few to escape.

By the war's end he had been awarded a Silver Star for valor and three Purple Hearts, having suffered gunshot and shrapnel wounds as well. He spent months in hospitals and was treated for psychological trauma.

After the war, still mentally troubled, Mr. Durning "dropped into a void for almost a decade" before deciding to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, he told Parade magazine in 1993. The school dismissed him within a year. "They basically said you have no talent and you couldn't even buy a dime's worth of it if it was for sale," he told The New York Times in 1997.

He went from job to job, from doorman to dishwasher to cabdriver. He boxed professionally for a time, delivered telegrams and taught ballroom dancing, meeting his first wife, Carol, at an Arthur Murray studio. Every so often he landed a bit part in a play.

His big break came in 1962, when Joseph Papp, founder of the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival, invited him to audition. It was the start of a long association with Papp, who cast him, often as a clown, in 35 plays, many by Shakespeare.

Mr. Durning preferred the stage to movies, finding roles in Dennis J. Reardon's "Happiness Cage," "The World of G�nter Grass" and Ernest Thompson's "On Golden Pond," among others.

His work in "That Championship Season," first produced at the Public Theater, led the film director George Roy Hill to tap Mr. Durning for the part of a corrupt police lieutenant in "The Sting." Two years later he played a beleaguered police hostage negotiator squaring off against Al Pacino's manic bank robber in Sidney Lumet's celebrated "Dog Day Afternoon."

The 1970s and '80s were fruitful years. Mr. Durning received Emmy nominations for supporting performances in the mini-series "Captains and the Kings" (1976), the prison drama "Attica" (1980) and a CBS production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" (1985), in which he played Charley, the sympathetic neighbor of Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman). He was also nominated for his starring performance as a mailman romancing a lonely widow (Maureen Stapleton) in the 1975 CBS television movie "Queen of the Stardust Ballroom."

In 1977 he played an American president held hostage by rogue military men in Robert Aldrich's film "Twilight's Last Gleaming." His many other film roles include Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's colorful "**** Tracy" (1990), Holly Hunter's kind-hearted father in "Home for the Holidays" (1995) and, in a pair of Coen brothers films, a suicidal industrialist in "The Hudsucker Proxy" (1994) and a gruff Southern governor in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000).

He tried to perform in at least one play a year. In 1996 he fought a courtroom duel with George C. Scott in the Broadway revival of "Inherit the Wind," the drama by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee based on the Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925. Mr. Durning played the prosecutor, a character based on William Jennings Bryan, and Scott, in his last Broadway role, was the defense attorney, modeled on Clarence Darrow.

The following year Mr. Durning co-starred with Julie Harris in a Broadway revival of "The Gin Game," D. L. Coburn's Pulitzer-winning play about two nursing home residents whose game of cards becomes a clash of wills. In 2000, in the retitled revival called "Gore Vidal's 'The Best Man,'*" he played an ailing former president who tries to mediate a power struggle between two candidates. In 2002 he appeared with Mr. Pacino in an Off Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht's "Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui." At Lincoln Center in 2005, he was the senile father of a college professor (Dianne Wiest) in Wendy Wasserstein's "Third."

Most recently he starred in "The Waiter" (2010) and "Rogue Assassin" (2012), crime films directed by Jason Konopisos, according to the Internet Movie Database. In 2008 the Screen Actors Guild gave Mr. Durning its Life Achievement Award, as if to dispel any lingering doubts he had about being recognized by his peers. And in 2007 the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the school that he said had long ago rejected him, created a scholarship in honor of him and two other alumni, Anne Bancroft and Gena Rowlands.

Mr. Durning was also remembered for his combat service, which he avoided discussing publicly until later in life. He spoke at memorial ceremonies in Washington, and in 2008 France awarded him the National Order of the Legion of Honor.

In the Parade interview, he recalled the hand-to-hand combat. "I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium," he said. "A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn't have been more than 14 or 15. I didn't see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn't shoot."

They grappled, he recounted later - he was stabbed seven or eight times - until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept.

Mr. Durning said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else."There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we don't want anyone to know about," he told Parade. "There's terror and repulsion in us, the terrible spot that we don't talk about. That place that no one knows about - horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting."

[BergerKing]

Marva Whitney, Soul Sister No. 1 in James Brown Revue, Dies at 68 - The Hollywood Reporter

[amazinglygraceless]

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, coalition forces leader during Persian Gulf War, dies | Fox News

[amazinglygraceless]

"Rescue Me" soul singer Fontella Bass dead at 72 - CBS News

[middbrew]

Lee Dorman Dead: Iron Butterfly Bassist Dies At 70

Thanks for posting that BK. I was away for Christmas and hadn't heard that.

[middbrew]

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, coalition forces leader during Persian Gulf War, dies | Fox News

Thanks AG, I hadn't heard about his passing either.

[BergerKing]

Thanks for posting that BK. I was away for Christmas and hadn't heard that.

Yes, I stumbled on his name on the famous deaths reference I use. I need to compile my list for the year, there were quite a few before I thought to start this thread. This is a lot easier to keep track of than individual posts.

[cerealberry]

Ooh!! We should play deathwatch.. I love that game.

[BigBadWulf]

Yes, I stumbled on his name on the famous deaths reference I use. I need to compile my list for the year, there were quite a few before I thought to start this thread. This is a lot easier to keep track of than individual posts.

[Laura Knotek]

Mobster Calabrese dies in federal prison in N.C.
Mobster Calabrese dies in federal prison in N.C.

[middbrew]

Yes, I stumbled on his name on the famous deaths reference I use. I need to compile my list for the year, there were quite a few before I thought to start this thread. This is a lot easier to keep track of than individual posts.

This thread is definitely a good idea to keep up with those that have died. A year end list would be great.

[BergerKing]

Houston McCoy, police officer who shot University of Texas Tower sniper, dies at 72 | Boston Herald

[BergerKing]

Houston McCoy, police officer who shot University of Texas Tower sniper, dies at 72 | Boston Herald

[BergerKing]

Bob Anderson, 89, British Olympic fencer (1952), film fight director and choreographer (Star Wars,*The Lord of the Rings).
Larry Reinhardt, 63, American rock guitarist (Iron Butterfly,*Captain Beyond), liver cirrhosis.
Bob Weston, 64, British guitarist and songwriter (Fleetwood Mac), gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
Don Carter, 85, American professional*bowler, complication from pneumonia and emphysema.
Natalee Holloway, 18 (in 2005), American student, missing since
2005.*(declared legally dead on this date)
Morgan Jones, 83, American actor (The Blue Angels,*The Twilight Zone).
Richard Threlkeld, 74, American television journalist (CBS News), traffic collision.
Dan Evins, 76, American entrepreneur, founder of*Cracker Barrel Old Country Store.*
Joe Paterno, 85, American college football coach (Penn State Nittany Lions), lung cancer.
**** Tufeld, 85, American voice actor and announcer, voice of*Robot B-9*on*Lost in Space.
Andy Musser, 74, American sportscaster (Philadelphia Phillies,*Philadelphia 76ers).
James Farentino, 73, American actor (Dynasty,*ER,*Melrose Place),*sequelae*from hip fracture.
John Rich, 86, American television director (All in the Family,*Benson,*The **** Van Dyke Show), heart failure.
Leslie Carter, 25, American singer and reality star (House of Carters), sister of*Nick*andAaron Carter, drug overdose.



February.

Don Cornelius, 75, American television host and producer (Soul Train), suicide by gunshot.
Ben Gazzara, 81, American actor (The Big Lebowski,*Road House), pancreatic cancer.
Sam Coppola, 79, American actor (Saturday Night Fever,*Fatal Attraction).
Bill Hinzman, 75, American actor (Night of the Living Dead), cancer.
Peter Breck, 82, American actor (The Big Valley).
Phil Bruns, 80, American actor (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman;*Barney Miller;*The Great Waldo Pepper), natural causes.*
Whitney Houston, 48, American singer ("I Will Always Love You") and actress (The Bodyguard), drowned.
David Kelly, 82, Irish actor (Fawlty Towers,*Strumpet City,*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
Freddie Solomon, 59, American football player (Miami Dolphins,*San Francisco 49ers), colon and liver cancer.
Gary Carter, 57, American*Hall of Fame*baseball player (Montreal Expos,*New York Mets), brain tumor.
**** Anthony Williams, 77, American actor (Edward Scissorhands,*The ****,*Homefront), after long illness.
Davy Jones, 66, British actor and musician (The Monkees), heart attack.

March.
Andrew Breitbart, 43, American publisher and political commentator, apparent heart attack.
Phillip R. Allen, 72, American actor (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,*The Bad News Bears).
Callan Pinckney, 72, American fitness professional, created*Callanetics.
Leonardo Cimino, 94, American actor (Moonstruck,*Dune), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Ralph McQuarrie, 82, American conceptual designer and illustrator (Star Wars,*Cocoon).
Dennis Bowen, 61, American actor (Caddyshack II;*Welcome Back, Kotter).*
Garry Walberg, 90, American actor (Quincy, M.E.,*The Odd Couple). chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart failure.
Warren Stevens, 92, American actor (Forbidden Planet,*The Barefoot Contessa), lung disease.
Earl Scruggs, 88, American bluegrass musician, natural causes.

[BergerKing]

Leila Denmark, 114, Americansupercentenarian, author, and physician, credited with developing a whooping cough vaccine.
Jim Herr, 87, American businessman, founder of*Herr's Snacks.
Thomas Kinkade, 54, American painter, overdose of alcohol and Valium.
Mike Wallace, 93, American news correspondent (60 Minutes).
**** Clark, 82, American television host and producer (American Bandstand,***** Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve,*Pyramid), heart attack.
Levon Helm, 71, American musician (The Band) and actor (Coal Miner's Daughter), throat cancer.
Charles Colson, 80, American*White House Counsel*convicted in*Watergate scandal, evangelist, founder of*Prison Fellowship, brain hemorrhage.
Chris Ethridge, 65, American country rock bassist (International Submarine Band,*The Flying Burrito Brothers).
Amarillo Slim, 83, American professional gambler, winner of the*1972 World Series of Poker*main event, colon cancer.
George Murdock, 81, American actor (Barney Miller,*Battlestar Galactica,*The X-Files), cancer.April.

[BergerKing]

Western character actor Harry Carey Jr. dies at 91 | Boston Herald

[middbrew]

Patti Pages dies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/ar...t-85.html?_r=0

[Laura Knotek]

Scott Sterling, son of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, found dead in Malibu home

Read more: Scott Sterling, son of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, found dead in Malibu home - NY Daily News

[Laura Knotek]

Women's history pioneer Gerda Lerner, 92, dies

Women's history pioneer Gerda Lerner, 92, dies

[BergerKing]

Tony Lip, former 'Sopranos' actor, dies at 82 - NBC40.net