Dead Celebrity Alert

The last surviving hero of the Titanic, Herbert Johnston has died in hospital at Port Shepstone on KwaZulu-Natal South Coast at the age of 104 years. The man dubbed as “Pops” was a crewmember of the Carpathia, the first ship to arrive, after the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank.

Johnstone lived to tell detailed stories of the fateful night in 1912 when the so-called unsinkable Titanic sank on its maiden voyage. He was a 15-year old crewmember of the Carpathia that was bound for the Italian port of Genoa when the SOS came through. … Read full obituary

Genichi Kawakami, who built the Yamaha empire of pianos and motorcycles that exemplified Japan’s post-war revival, has died.

Known as the “emperor” of the Yamaha company, Mr Kawakami died at the weekend from natural causes, aged 90. Despite his success, Mr Kawakami shied away from publicity.

He died where he had lived his life, in the town of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, where the Yamaha organisation is based.

Under Mr Kawakami, the Yamaha group succeeded in two different markets — musical instruments and motorcycles. … Read full obituary

Jack Lockett, Australia’s oldest man, marched off to join his World War I comrades when he died peacefully in a Bendigo hospital at 111.

Victoria lost its last fighting soldier of the 1914-1918 conflict at 11.15pm on Saturday. Political, civic and RSL leaders leaders described the passing of the pioneer Mallee settler as the end of an era.

Premier Steve Bracks offered his family a state funeral. …

John Henry Lockett is the third World War I veteran to die in the past 11 days, following the last Gallipoli Anzac, Alec Campbell, and Raymond Durston.

Only 14 World War I veterans are left in Australia, two of them in Victoria. … Read full obituary

Related:
Alec Campbell, last Gallipoli Anzac, 103

SANTA ANA, Calif., May 24 (AP) — Joe Cobb, who played a cheerful, chubby boy named Joe in dozens of the “Our Gang” comedy films of the 1920’s, died on Tuesday at a convalescent home here, said his sister, Lucile Frank. He was 85. …

Mr. Cobb, who was also cast in other silent movies, appeared in the “Our Gang” series’s last silent film, “Saturday’s Lesson,” and its first talking short, “Small Talk,” both in 1929. …

Mr. Cobb never lost his rotund stature, or his sense of humor, his sister said. She recalled that he liked to say: “Children in my day were either cornfed or milk-fed. I was both.” … Read full obituary

RIVERSIDE, Calif., May 24 (AP) — Darwood Smith, who played Waldo in the “Our Gang” film series, died on May 15 after he was struck by a passing truck while taking a daily walk. He was 72. …

Mr. Smith was known as Darwood Kaye when he was a child. He appeared in 22 of the “Our Gang” comedies…

When Mr. Smith was a teenager, he stopped acting. He later became a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and worked as a missionary in Thailand. … Read full obituary

Dave Berg, who affectionately spoofed what he called “the human condition” in the pages of Mad magazine for more than 40 years, died on May 16 at his home in Marina del Rey, Calif. He was 81.

Mr. Berg created the magazine’s enduring “The Lighter Side of” comic strip. He began working for Mad as a freelancer in 1956, introducing “The Lighter Side of” in 1961. …

Born in New York City, Mr. Berg attended the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, landing a job inking backgrounds for the newspaper comic strip “The Spirit” when he was 20.

Later, Mr. Berg worked for Stan Lee at Timely Comics (now Marvel Comics)…

His final “Lighter Side” comic strip is scheduled for the September issue of Mad, which observes the magazine’s 50th anniversary. … Read full obituary

Sam Snead, who used golf’s smoothest swing to win a record 81 PGA Tour events and about 70 other tournaments, died yesterday at his home in Hot Springs, Va. He was 89.

Snead had a series of small strokes during the past two months, his daughter-in-law Ann Snead said.

In the major tournaments, Snead won three Masters, three Professional Golfers Association Championships and one British Open, but never the United States Open, losing it once with a disastrous triple-bogey 8 on the final hole that left him two strokes back. It was the only blemish in an enduring career that awed other touring pros, past and present. …

In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Snead became famous for his talent, his straw hat and a backwoods philosophy honed during the Depression. … Read full obituary

Alan P. Bell, a Kinsey Institute researcher who helped conduct a pioneering large-scale study that countered the notion that homosexuals were maladjusted, died on May 13 in Bloomington, Ind., where he lived. He was 70.

The cause was a stroke, his wife, Shirley, said.

In 1968, Dr. Bell and a colleague, Martin S. Weinberg, began surveying nearly 1,000 gays in San Francisco to assess their mental health and to try to determine what, if anything, in their lives had influenced their sexual orientation.

“It was the most ambitious study of male homosexuality ever attempted,” said Martin B. Duberman, a history professor at the City University of New York who has written on gay issues. The resulting books, “Homosexualities” (1978) and “Sexual Preference” (1981), “refuted a large number of previous studies that gay men were social misfits,” Professor Duberman said.

The study found that homosexuals were as well adjusted and as satisfied in their relationships as heterosexuals. … Read full obituary

Sihung Lung, the Taiwanese actor best known to Western audiences for deft portrayals of conflicted fathers in the Ang Lee films “Pushing Hands,” “The Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman,” died on May 2 in Taipei. He was 72.

The cause was liver failure, The Taipei Times reported.

Mr. Lung became known in the United States for playing traditional fathers struggling with modernity and adult children in the movies known to some fans as the “Father Knows Best” trilogy.

… He won Taiwan’s Golden Horse award for best actor for “Pushing Hands” and for best supporting actor for “The Wedding Banquet.”

He also played Sir Te, a court official entrusted with a powerful 400-year-old sword, in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” … Read full obituary

Jack Kruschen, a versatile character actor whose six decades in movies and television included an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his 1960 role in “The Apartment,” died on April 2. He was 80.

He had been ill for several years, his family said, and died while traveling. News of his death, which was reported by the show business publication Variety, did not appear in major newspapers at the time.

Known to many television viewers as Papa Papadapolis in the 1980’s series “Webster,” he was one of the stalwarts of radio, television and the movies, often playing tough guys early in his career and irascible but lovable neighbors later on. … Read full obituary

Pop artist Niki de Saint Phalle, best known for her brightly coloured and voluptuous figures of women that gained her a reputation as a leading contemporary artist in France, has died. She was 71.

Saint Phalle died on Tuesday in San Diego, California, after a long illness, according to a statement issued by the city of Hanover, Germany, where the artist was an honorary citizen. It did not elaborate. …

Born in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on November 29, 1930 as Catherine Marie-Agnes Fal de Saint Phalle, she moved with her parents to New York in 1937, where she grew up visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. … Read full obituary

The skeletal remains found this morning in Rock Creek Park have been identified as those of missing intern Chandra Levy, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey announced this evening.

Ramsey said Jonathan Arden, the D.C. medical examiner, established the identity through the analysis of dental records.

“There certainly is more work to be done at the medical examiner’s. But they did in fact verify that it is Ms. Levy.” …

The announcement this evening officially reclassifies the Levy investigation from a missing persons case to a “death” inquiry. …

The Levy case drew national attention when investigators learned that the former intern was having an affair with Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Calif.). … Read full story

The former Northern Ireland prime minister James Chichester-Clark has died.

The 79-year-old, who later became Lord Moyola, died after a short illness.

He was Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1969 when rioting on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry forced his administration to ask the government of Harold Wilson to send in troops to help maintain order. … Read full obituary

The girlfriend of Eddie Cochran who survived the crash that killed him has died aged 62.

Sharon Sheeley died in hospital in Los Angeles after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

She was best known for writing Rick Nelson’s 1958 hit Poor Little Fool. … Read full obituary

Stephen Jay Gould, the paleontologist and author who eloquently demystified science for the public and challenged his colleagues with revolutionary ideas about evolution, died Monday of cancer.

He was 60, and died at his home in New York City, according to his assistant, Stephanie Schur. …

Gould became one of America’s most recognizable scientists for his voluminous and accessible writings and his participation in public debates with creationists. He also aired his disagreements with other evolutionary theorists in publications such as the New York Review of Books, bringing evolutionary theory to a wider intellectual audience during an era of increasing scientific specialization.

“He really was paleontology’s public intellectual,” said Andrew Knoll, a colleague of Gould’s at Harvard University for 20 years. … Read full obituary