Dead Celebrity Alert

Herb Ritts, the photographer whose glorifying images of the well known helped to further mythologize celebrity in the 1980’s and 90’s, died yesterday in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 50 and lived in Los Angeles.

The cause was complications from pneumonia, his friend Stephen Huvane, a Hollywood publicist, said.

A photographer whose subjects ranged from Madonna and Cindy Crawford to the Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan, Mr. Ritts, like George Platt Lynes, relied on clean, graphic compositions that often portrayed models and celebrities in the visual language of classical Greek sculpture.

“He shot exquisite, iconic photographs,” said Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, a magazine to which Mr. Ritts contributed dozens of cover images.

Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Mr. Ritts grew up in a prosperous family that owned a furniture business. … Read full obituary

George Roy Hill, the independent-minded former Marine pilot who directed Paul Newman and Robert Redford in both “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting,” died Friday. He was 81.

Hill died at his Manhattan apartment of complications from Parkinson’s disease, said Hill’s son, George Roy Hill III.

The Redford-Newman films brought Hill awards — “The Sting” won the Oscar for best picture and director — as well as the distinction of being the only director to have two films among the all-time top-10 moneymakers at that time. …

Born Dec. 20, 1921, into a well-off Minneapolis newspaper family, the young George Roy Hill loved both classical music and adventure. He haunted the Cedar Airport outside Minneapolis, watching and listening to the barnstorming aviators, many of them veterans of World War I. At 16 he became a full-fledged pilot. … Read full obituary

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. - Ken Tobey, who had seven prolific decades playing small roles in movies such as 1951’s classic “The Thing from Another World” and in numerous television shows, died Dec. 22. He was 85.

Tobey often played a law enforcement officer, a soldier or military brass. His nearly 100 films ranged from Westerns to B-movie thrillers. He also made dozens of appearances in television from the 1990s back to 1949, when he played a sheriff’s deputy in an episode of “The Lone Ranger.” … Read full obituary

LONDON (AP) - Punk legend Joe Strummer of “The Clash” has died, his record company said Monday. He was 50.

Strummer, who was the band’s guitarist, vocalist and songwriter alongside Mick Jones, died on Sunday. The cause of his death was not announced. …

“The Clash” were known for injecting leftist politics into punk. Their album “London Calling” was named the best album of the 1980s by Rolling Stone magazine, despite being released in 1979. … Read full obituary

Frederick Knott, a notoriously unprolific playwright who scored big when he did write — with his 1952 Broadway hit “Dial M for Murder” and later with the 1966 thriller “Wait Until Dark” — died on Tuesday in his Manhattan apartment. He was 86.

“He hated writing,” his wife, Ann Hillary Knott, said.

That is perhaps understandable. The clever, complicated “Dial M for Murder” was turned down by seven London producers before being accepted as a television drama by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Mrs. Knott said that he became so discouraged that he almost tore up the script.

Making matters worse, he signed away the movie rights for a paltry £1,000 after the television production. Though he wrote the screen version for Alfred Hitchcock in 1954, he thus made far less money than he might have. …

Then the struggle really began. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES — The estranged mother of broadcaster “Dr. Laura” was found murdered, Laura Schlessinger announced to her radio audience Friday. The body of Yolanda Schlessinger, 77, was found this week in her Beverly Hills condo. Police released few details other than that the killing occurred weeks ago.

“I have to talk to you listeners about something,” Laura Schlessinger said before signing off from her call-in advice show’s last broadcast of the year. “You may have already heard that my mother was found murdered. …

It said that the body was discovered Monday when officers made a welfare check at a North Palm Drive residence after a neighbor became concerned about not seeing the woman for several weeks. … Read full story

LONDON, Dec. 19 — James Hazeldine, an admired stage and television actor who had just taken on a role at the Royal National Theater here, died on Tuesday. He was 55.

He became ill on Dec. 10, four days after beginning performances in the new Christopher Hampton play, “The Talking Cure,” at the National. He played Sigmund Freud.

He was in intensive care before he died, his agent, Nicola van Gelder, said, but no cause of death was announced. … Read full obituary

Former Utah Congressman Wayne Owens was found dead Wednesday on a beach in Israel, according to a spokesman for the State Department. He was 65.

Owens, a Democrat, had represented the Salt Lake County area for four terms in Congress, and helped launch the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, a Washington-based group interested in fostering peace in the troubled region.

Stuart Patt, spokesman for the State Department’s Consular Affairs Bureau, said Owens’ body was found on a beach in Tel Aviv about 9 p.m. local time Wednesday night. Owens appeared to die of natural causes, Patt said. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bruce Vidal, a well-known disc jockey who held his “dream job” at KIIS-FM (105.9) for 15 years, has died. He was 54.

Mr. Vidal, whose sonorous voice was featured on local area airwaves from 1982 through 1996, died Friday of an apparent heart attack at his home near Palm Desert, said Don Barrett, author of the book “Los Angeles Radio People.” Mr. Vidal had suffered from complications of diabetes.

During the mid-1980s, Mr. Vidal was married to one of his chief competitors, Laurie Allen. … Read full obituary

Related:
California DJ Rick Chase, 45

Rick Chase, long-time DJ for several Bay Area radio stations, was found dead at his home in Stockton home this morning.

When he didn’t show up to host the morning show at Stockton station KWIN-FM (97.7), a fellow employee went by his home, said Roy Williams, president and general manager of Silverado Broadcasting. …

Chase was 45. The cause of his death wasn’t known, Williams said. …

The Salinas-born DJ went to work at KWIN two years ago. He is best known for his 13 years at KMEL-FM (106.1). He also worked at KFRC-FM (99.7) and at KITS-FM (105.3), when the alternative station was still a Top-40 station. … Read full obituary

Philip F. Berrigan, the former Roman Catholic priest who led the draft board raids that galvanized opposition to the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s, died on Friday in Baltimore after a lifetime of battling “the American Empire,” as he called it, over the morality of its military and social policies. He was 79.

His family said the cause was cancer.

An Army combat veteran sickened by the killing in World War II, Mr. Berrigan came to be one of the most radical pacifists of the 20th century — and, for a time in the Vietnam period, a larger-than-life figure in the convulsive struggle over the country’s direction. … Read full obituary

Dave McNally, a star pitcher who took part in the 1975 labor grievance that created free agency in major league baseball, died Sunday at his home in Billings, Mont. He was 60.

The cause was lung cancer, his family said.

McNally, a left-hander, won at least 20 games for the Baltimore Orioles every season from 1968 to 1971. McNally, Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar and Pat Dobson each won at least 20 games in 1971, a feat that four teammates had not accomplished since the Chicago White Sox rotation of 1920. … Read full obituary