Dead Celebrity Alert

AMELIA ISLAND, Florida (AP) - Actress Debralee Scott, who appeared in the sitcom “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and some of the “Police Academy” movies, has died, her family said. She was 52.

Scott died April 5 at her home in Amelia Island of natural causes, said her sister, Jeri Scott, a talent manager in Beverly Hills. …

Scott got her first major role at age 22, playing Cathy Shumway on “Mary Hartman.” She later played the role of Hotsy Totsy on the show “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and acted in 1984’s “Police Academy” and 1986’s “Police Academy 3: Back in Training.”

She had been engaged to John Dennis Levi, a police officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Scott had just moved to north Florida to be with her older sister. … Read full obituary

Another one missed (a big one for us horror fans)! From March 8, 2005:

Screenwriter and producer Debra Hill, best known for her work on the 70s horror classic Halloween, has died in Los Angeles aged 54. Hill, who had been suffering from cancer, co-wrote the 1978 film, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a babysitter terrorised by a psychopath. …

Hill also worked with [John] Carpenter on Escape From New York and The Fog.

Born in New Jersey, Hill began her career as a production assistant and worked her way through the ranks, becoming an assistant director and second-unit director before she began collaborating with Carpenter.

She was regarded by many as a pioneering woman in film, taking on jobs in the 70s that were more commonly taken by men. … Read full obituary

It was a strong heart, his doctor said, that allowed Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen to hang on for so long as the rest of his body failed.

But the end finally came at 6pm yesterday with Sir Joh, 94, dying surrounded by his family in a little hospital room in his home town of Kingaroy, about 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane.

“So now an era has passed,” Ken Crooke, Sir Joh’s former press secretary, said outside the hospital. “A chapter in Australia’s and Queensland’s political history has closed. …

Not long before Sir Joh’s death, Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen remembered her husband, who spent a record 19 years as Queensland’s premier, as a loving grandfather and a man who had worked “very hard” in building his state.

She said it was “sad” that Sir Joh, a devout Lutheran, was deposed as premier in 1987 and that he later stood trial for perjury in the wake of the Fitzgerald inquiry into official corruption. But the high points still far outweighed the low. … Read full obituary

Actor, director, father of Hayley Mills and Juliet Mills. … Read full obituary

Missed this one back in February [the 21st]; apparently many news sources were sluggish about getting around to printing Dr. Scott’s obit. And after checking the lame, boring obits still available online, I went back to the source where I stumbled across the news by accident: rotten.com. Be warned, however, that the rest of rotten.com is extremely offensive to most audiences, so browse the site only at your own risk! — JR

You’re watching Dr. Gene Scott’s program, already in progress.

It’s “not a lot of hooey — just straight talk” from a man everybody’s encountered at one time or another while flipping from channel to channel. His face looms large against the Ultimatte blue background, and he radiates forth a righteous indignation. He’s the richest television star in world history, and he could easily hold a Guinness record for spending the most time live on the air in front of millions of people.

“You ever meet Christians? You wish you could shove a pipe in their mouth. Anything to shut them up.”

He’s unpredictable, entertaining, ridiculous and brilliantly inspired. There he is again: puffing a cigar, harassing a visibly shaken staff, delivering hateful missives against the FCC. He’s the Bill Hicks of adult preachers, cracking jokes with impeccable timing and delivery. Everything about him is immaculately watchable, and there’s no denying he’s smart and f***in’ funny. … Read full bio

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — John Fred Gourrier, best known for his 1960s hit “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” died Friday at Tulane Hospital after being ill for months, his former manager said. He was 63.

Gourrier went by the stage name John Fred.

John Fred & His Playboy Band had a regional following in the South when they recorded their parody of the popular 1967 Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” … Read full obituary

Sam Mills managed to inspire two generations of players, first as a player and then as a coach. Despite a smaller stature than normal for linebackers in pro football, Mills became a standout in the USFL and then the NFL, where he played for the New Orleans Saints and the Carolina Panthers.

As a coach with the Panthers, his gritty battle with cancer of the small intestine in 2003 as the club drove to its only Super Bowl appearance left associates marveling at his will.

But Mills lost that battle Monday. He was 45. Five times a Pro Bowl pick in 12 NFL seasons, Mills is the only former player enshrined in the Panthers Hall of Fame. … Read full obituary

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Laura Canales, who paved the way for women to infiltrate the genre of Texas border music known as Tejano, has died. She was 50.

Canales, a Kingsville native, had been hospitalized since March 28 for a gall bladder operation. Complications including pneumonia arose after the surgery and she died Saturday, said family spokesman Javier “J.V.” Villanueva, CEO of the Tejano ROOTS Hall of Fame in Alice.

“We call her the grande dame of Tejano music. … The early Selena,” said Wanda Reyes, spokeswoman for the Tejano Music Awards. …

Canales was born to a middle-class family in Kingsville, a town known for its cattle ranching about 100 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border. She came of age just as local dance bands were mixing keyboards into the Mexican-style polka known as conjunto — creating the Tejano sound now common at parties and festivals throughout Texas. … Read full obituary

The American feminist icon, writer and campaigner Andrea Dworkin, who linked pornography to rape and violence, died at the weekend, her agent said today. She was 59 years old.

Her radical-feminist critique of pornography began with her first book, Woman Hating, published when she was 27. She campaigned frequently on the subject, helping to draft a law in 1983 that defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women.

The law, later overturned by an appeal court as unconstitutional, was inspired by the case of Linda Marchiano, who as Linda Lovelace said she had had been violently coerced into pornography, including the film Deep Throat, but had no recourse to the courts.

The drive of Ms Dworkin’s writing and activism was to break the silence around violence against women, but her wider career saw her become a figure of adulation and loathing in equal measure. To opponents she was an archetypal man-hater, killjoy and proponent of censorship, but supporters rallied to her impassioned lectures and books. … Read full obituary

Related:
“Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace

Barbara Bel Geddes, who played Miss Ellie Ewing in the long-running TV series “Dallas,” died Monday of lung cancer in Northeast Harbor, Maine. She was 82.

Bel Geddes, daughter of renowned industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the 1948 drama “I Remember Mama” and was the original Maggie the Cat on Broadway in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Coming out of retirement because she needed money following her husband’s long illness, which depleted her savings, Bel Geddes won an Emmy in 1980 for her role in “Dallas” as best lead actress in a drama series and remains the only nighttime soap star to be so honored. …

In 1946, she signed a contract with RKO that granted her unusual request to be committed to only one picture a year. In her first movie, she co-starred with Henry Fonda in “The Long Night”… Read full obituary

PENNGROVE, Calif. Apr 7, 2005 — Dale Messick, whose long-running comic strip “Brenda Starr, Reporter” gave her entry into the male world of the funny pages, has died at age 98.

Messick, whose strip ran in 250 newspapers at its peak in the 1950s, died Tuesday, said her daughter, Starr Rohrman, who had been caring for her mother in Sonoma County.

Messick who jettisoned her given name Dalia to further her career once said Brenda had “everything I didn’t have.” But she charmed acquaintances with spunk and style worthy of her redheaded creation.

Mixing hot copy with high fashion, Brenda plunged from one thrilling adventure to another, sassing her tough-talking editor, Mr. Livwright, and sometimes filing her copy with the only person left in the newsroom, the cleaning woman. … Read full obituary

Prince Rainier III of Monaco, Europe’s longest-reigning monarch, died today at the age of 81 in a hospital overlooking the tiny state he turned into a billionaires’ paradise.

In a statement, his palace said he had been suffering heart, lung and kidney disorders. He died at 6.35am (0535 BST) with his son and heir, 47-year-old Prince Albert, at his side.

Prince Rainier, who had ruled Monaco since 1949, brought Hollywood glamour to the world’s second smallest state when he married the actress Grace Kelly and transformed the principality from a faded gambling centre into a playground for the rich.

Flags in Monaco were today already at half-mast in honour of Pope John Paul II, and the mood was sombre. “Everyone here feels orphaned,” Patrick Leclercq, Monaco’s minister of state, said in a statement broadcast on French television.

The prince is expected to be buried next to his wife, who died after a car crash in 1982, following at least a week of mourning in the principality. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy who in Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift and other novels both championed and mourned the soul’s fate in the modern world, died Tuesday. He was 89.

Bellow’s close friend and attorney, Walter Pozen, said the writer had been in declining health, but was “wonderfully sharp to the end.” Pozen said that Bellow’s wife and daughter were at his side when he died at his home in Brookline, Mass. … Read full obituary

VATICAN CITY (CNN) — Pope John Paul II was remembered Saturday as a “champion of human freedom,” a “tireless advocate of peace” and a man with a “wonderful sense of humor” who was easy to talk to.

The charismatic pontiff, who led the world’s 1 billion Catholics for 26 years, died at 9:37 p.m. Saturday (2:37 p.m. ET) in his private apartment, the Vatican said. He was 84.

“The Holy Father’s final hours were marked by the uninterrupted prayer of all those who were assisting him in his pious death and by the choral participation in prayer of the thousands of faithful who for many hours had been gathered in Saint Peter’s Square,” a Vatican statement said.

Archbishop Stanislow Dziwisz presided over a Mass for the pontiff in his final hours.

“During the course of the Mass that the viaticum (communion for the dying) was administered to the Holy Father and, once again, the sacrament of anointing the sick,” the statement said.

Archbishop Leonardo Sandri asked for a few moments of silence as he announced the death to the thousands of faithful who had congregated in St. Peter’s Square. People in the crowd bowed their heads to pray, some of them in tears.

Then they burst into applause. … Read full obituary

Obit to come.