A founding member of ELO has been killed following a freak accident involving a giant bale of hay. Mike Edwards, 62, who played cello for the band [Electric Light Orchestra] for three years, died when the giant bale weighing 50 stone crashed down on top of his van. … Read full story
Cammie King Conlon, who jokingly lamented that she was famous for an experience she barely remembered, portraying Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler’s ill-fated young daughter in the film “Gone With the Wind,” has died. She was 76. … Read full obituary
Rue McClanahan was an American actress fêted for her role as the fun-loving southern belle Blanche Devereaux in the 1980s US sitcom The Golden Girls, for which she won an Emmy award in 1987. …
Dennis Hopper, the maverick director and costar of the landmark 1969 counterculture film classic “Easy Rider” whose drug- and alcohol-fueled reputation as a Hollywood bad boy preceded his return to sobriety and a career resurgence in the films ” Hoosiers” and “Blue Velvet,” died Saturday. He was 74. …
Gary Coleman, who soared to fame in the late 1970s as the child star of the hit sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” and whose post-TV-series life included a stint as a shopping mall security guard and an unlikely run for California governor, died Friday. He was 42. …
Art Linkletter, the radio and television talk-show pioneer who was best known for eliciting hilarious remarks from the mouths of babes and who late in life was a popular motivational speaker and author, challenging seniors to live as zestfully as he did, has died. He was 97. …
Ronnie James Dio, a legendary heavy metal singer who replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath and also was lead singer for the bands Rainbow and Dio, has died. He was 67. …
Lena Horne, the silky-voiced singing legend who shattered Hollywood stereotypes of African Americans on screen in the 1940s as a symbol of glamour whose signature song was “Stormy Weather,” died Sunday in New York City. She was 92. …
Helen Wagner, who played mild-mannered Nancy Hughes on the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns” for more than a half-century, has died, CBS announced. She was 91. …
Lynn Redgrave, a member of the distinguished British acting family who became an overnight sensation playing the title character in the 1966 film “Georgy Girl” and later achieved acclaim on stage as both an actress and a writer, has died. She was 67. …
The death of Dorothy Height reminded America that Rosa Parks — famed for refusing to vacate a whites-only seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama — was not the first, or even the second or third, black woman, to have driven the civil rights agenda in the United States. …
Daryl F. Gates, the rookie cop who rose from driver for a legendary chief to become chief himself, leading the Los Angeles Police Department during a turbulent 14-year period that found him struggling to keep pace with a city undergoing dramatic racial and ethnic changes, died Friday. He was 83. …
Civil rights leader Benjamin L. Hooks, a lawyer, minister and pioneering judge who revived a flagging NAACP after he became its executive director in the late 1970s, has died. He was 85. …
Dixie Carter, who gained television fame as Julia Sugarbaker on the long-running CBS sitcom “Designing Women,” has died. She was 70. …
Every musical era throws up its sharp-witted entrepreneurs with an eye to the main chance, ready to market the latest anti-establishment trend to the very mainstream it was created to oppose. In the late 1970s Malcolm McLaren achieved both respect and notoriety for his role in the selling of punk rock and the buccaneering way he guided the Sex Pistols through their brief and tempestuous career. In the process he became the best-known manager in rock music since Brian Epstein steered the Beatles to success in the 1960s. …
An Old Etonian and the son of a Coldstream Guards brigadier, Christopher Cazenove lent his patrician good looks and stiff upper lip to a string of British films and television dramas. But he attracted his biggest audience in the US soap opera Dynasty (1981-89) as Ben Carrington, the scheming brother of the oil tycoon Blake Carrington, played by John Forsythe, who died last week…
Corin Redgrave enjoyed a long career as an actor on stage and in films. His reputation was overshadowed by his sisters and father, and he was better known to some sections of the British public for his left-wing politics. But he did have a distinguished stage career and appeared in dozens of feature films and television dramas, often in small supporting roles. …
John Forsythe, the suave actor with the silvery hair and mellifluous voice who was familiar to millions for his roles on the popular television series “Bachelor Father,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Dynasty,” died Thursday. He was 92. …
Singer Johnny Maestro, who performed the 1958 doo-wop hit “16 Candles” with The Crests and enjoyed a decades-long career with The Brooklyn Bridge, has died of cancer. He was 70. …
Robert Culp, the veteran actor best known for starring with Bill Cosby in the classic 1960s espionage-adventure series “I Spy” and for playing Bob in the 1969 movie “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” died Wednesday morning. He was 79. …
Stewart L. Udall, an ardent conservationist and a son of the West, who as interior secretary in the 1960s presided over vast increases in national park holdings and the public domain, died Saturday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. The last surviving member of the original Kennedy cabinet, he was 90. …
Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, died Thursday. He was 85. …
Charlie Gillett was a broadcaster, journalist and author who played a significant role in shaping the tastes of several generations of music fans. After writing The Sound of the City, one of the first books to attempt a serious survey of the early history of rock’n’roll, he began his broadcasting career on BBC Radio London, presenting the weekly Honky Tonk show throughout most of the 1970s. The programme became hugely influential, popularising American roots music and unearthing British acts such as Dire Straits, Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, all of whom received their first exposure on his show before any of them had signed a recording contract. He also co-managed Ian Dury and discovered Lena Lovich. …
The urgent, jangling power-pop that Alex Chilton made with his band Big Star turned him into a cult icon and inspired the sound of a raft of bands that followed, from REM to Teenage Fanclub. …
Peter Graves, the rugged actor who starred in the hit TV series “Mission: Impossible” and whose career took a comic turn in the disaster spoof “Airplane!” has died. He was 83. …
