Dead Celebrity Alert

Princess Alice, aunt of Queen Elizabeth II and the oldest member of the British royal family, has died aged 102, Buckingham Palace said Saturday.

In a statement, the palace said Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, died quietly in her sleep at Kensington Palace with her immediate family around her. …

Princess Alice was the second member of the royal family to reach her centenary, after the Queen Mother Elizabeth, who died in March 2002 at the age of 101. … Read full obituary

John Peel, who championed rock/pop music made by people other than chart acts has died aged 65. On his radio show from the sixties to the present day he would give exposure to all forms of music not normally accessible on radio to the UK public.

Many bands have paid tribute to him, and have said that the face of music was constantly being changed by Peel, thanks to him and his radio show, which gave a chance for people to discover new music and new bands who might otherwise have been over-looked. … Read full obituary

Acclaimed singer Robert Merrill, the opera baritone who felt equally comfortable on opening night at the Metropolitan Opera House or opening day at Yankee Stadium, has died. He was 85.

Merrill died Saturday at his home in suburban New York City, family friend Barry Tucker said Monday. …

Merrill, once described in Time magazine as “one of the Met’s best baritones,” became as well-known to New York Yankees fans for his season-opening rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” a tradition that began in 1969.

In his 31 consecutive seasons with the Metropolitan Opera, Merrill performed virtually every baritone role in the operatic repertoire. … Read full obituary

Pierre Emil George Salinger, 79, press secretary to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and chief European foreign correspondent for ABC News, died of a heart attack yesterday at a hospital near his home in Le Thor, France, his wife said.

Mr. Salinger, a witty, debonair bon vivant, rose from a newspaper reporter in San Francisco to a top position at the White House before he was 40. He was an appointed senator from California for five months, wrote books and became ABC’s Paris bureau chief. His journalistic reputation was besmirched in the 1990s after his insistence that two major airline crashes were not what they seemed. …

Always a Democrat, Mr. Salinger worked for John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy on their presidential campaigns, and for George McGovern in 1972. He was White House press secretary from 1961 to 1964 and ran the first live televised presidential news conference in 1961.

President Kennedy called him “the voice of the White House,” but Mr. Salinger described himself as “a reporter for the rest of the press.” He was agile at leaking news and suggesting stories. The job demanded incredible discretion; between the president’s sexual liaisons and his secret ailments, Mr. Salinger was often called to account for a missing commander in chief. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — On the field, Ken Caminiti’s all-out style served him well. Off the field is where it got him in trouble.

The 1996 National League MVP, who later admitted using steroids during his major league career, died Sunday. He was 41.

Caminiti died of a heart attack in the Bronx, said his agent-lawyer Rick Licht. The city medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy Monday but could not rule on a cause of death until toxicology tests were complete, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said. That process could take as long as 10 days. …

Caminiti’s 15-year big league career ended in 2001, five seasons after he led the San Diego Padres to a division title and was a unanimous pick for MVP. But the three-time All-Star third baseman often was in trouble the last few years.

Just last Tuesday, he admitted in a Houston court that he violated his probation by testing positive for cocaine last month, and was sentenced to 180 days in jail. … Read full obituary

Christopher Reeve, the star of the Superman movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52. … Read full obituary

Rodney Dangerfield, the goggle-eyed comic famed for his self-deprecating one-liners and signature phrase “I can’t get no respect,” died on Tuesday at age 82, his publicist said.

Dangerfield, who became a pop culture sensation with a string of broad film comedies starting with “Caddyshack” in 1980, died at 1:20 p.m. PDT (4:20 p.m. EDT) at the UCLA Medical Center, where he had undergone heart valve replacement surgery in August, spokesman Kevin Sasaki said in a statement. … Read full obituary

Janet Leigh’s most famous scene was so terrifying it put her off showers for the rest of her life.

Leigh, who died Sunday, insisted she always took baths after seeing the finished cut of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” in which her character was slashed to death in a motel shower in what may be the silver screen’s most memorable murder. …

Leigh died at her Beverly Hills home, with husband Robert Brandt and her daughters, actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis, at her side. She was 77. …

The blond beauty had 60-odd film and TV roles in a career whose highlights included playing Frank Sinatra’s romantic interest in “The Manchurian Candidate” and Charlton Heston’s abducted bride in Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” …

Leigh had been married twice before coming to Hollywood: to John K. Carlyle, 1942, the marriage later annulled; and Stanley Reames in 1946, whom she divorced two years later.

In 1951, she married Tony Curtis when their stardoms were at a peak. … Read full obituary