Dead Celebrity Alert

Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh features for more than three decades and a versatile ventriloquist who became a fixture in early children’s television along with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, has died. He was 82.

Mr. Winchell died early Friday in his sleep at his home in Moorpark, Calif., Burt Du Brow, a television producer and close family friend, said Saturday.

Although he was a legendary ventriloquist and built a career attractin legions on followers on that dwindling art, Mr. Winchell’s most durable legacy might be his rich voice as Tigger and other animated characters on television and in motion pictures. …

Mr. Winchell was also an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an early artificial heart he built in 1963 and then donated to the University of Utah for research. Dr. Robert Jarvik and other University of Utah researchers later became well-known for the Jarvik-7 which was implanted into patients after 1982.

Among Winchell’s other inventions were an early disposable razor, a flameless cigarette lighter, an invisible garter belt and an indicator to show when frozen food had gone bad after a power outage. … Read full obituary

John K. Vance, 89, a member of the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general’s staff in the early 1960s who discovered that the agency was running a research project that included administering LSD and other drugs to unwitting human subjects, died May 27 of respiratory arrest.

Mr. Vance learned about MKULTRA in the spring of 1963 during a wide-ranging inspector general survey of the agency’s technical services division… Read full obituary

Richard Eberhart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet considered one of the foremost writers of lyric verse in the 20th century, died on Thursday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 101. …

The author of several dozen volumes of poetry, Mr. Eberhart won a Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for “Selected Poems, 1930-1965″ (New Directions, 1965) and a National Book Award in 1977 for “Collected Poems, 1930-1976″ (Oxford University, 1976).

At his death, Mr. Eberhart was emeritus professor of English at Dartmouth College, where he had taught since 1956. He was also, variously, a crewman on a tramp steamer, a maker of furniture polish and a tutor to the crown prince of Siam.

With their concern for the natural world, and their persistent exploration of the tension between spirit and matter, Mr. Eberhart’s poems hark back to the Romantic tradition of Blake and Wordsworth. (He parted company with full-blown Romanticism through his use of short lines and irregular rhythms.) … Read full obituary

Anne Bancroft, enshrined in film history as the iconic Mrs. Robinson, the seductress who devours her daughter’s nerdy boyfriend-to-be (Dustin Hoffman) in the 1967 film “The Graduate,” and also remembered for her sensitive portrayal on both stage and screen of Annie Sullivan, the teacher who leads the blind and deaf Helen Keller out of darkness into light in “The Miracle Worker,” died Monday at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 73.

The cause was uterine cancer, said John Barlow, a spokesman for the family. …

During more than 50 years of acting in films, theater and television she played everything from Brecht’s “Mother Courage” to the mother superior of a convent, and from an aging ballerina to the Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel, and repeatedly won praise for her work. …

Anna Maria Louisa Italiano was born Sept. 17, 1931, in the Bronx to Italian immigrant parents. …

During her first stay in Hollywood she married Martin A. May, a building contractor, in 1954. They were divorced in 1957. In 1964 she married Mel Brooks, who survives her along with their son, Maximilian, and grandson. … Read full obituary

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Leon Askin, the actor who played Gen. Albert Burkhalter in the 1960s television comedy “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died, Austrian officials said Friday. …

Askin was best known for his role as the Nazi general who constantly threatened to send the prisoner of war camp’s inept commander, Col. Wilhelm Klink, to the Russian front because of his stupidity. … Read full obituary

FONTANA, Calif. — Two San Diego County men were killed when their Porsche crashed and burned at the California Speedway, authorities said.

The 2005 Porsche Carrera GT went out of control, left the inside track and careened onto the grass, hit a barrier and caught fire at 10:40 a.m. Thursday, San Bernardino County officials said.

The passenger, Corey Nicholas Rudl, 34, died at the scene. The driver, Benjamin Miles Keaton, 39, was airlifted to Loma Linda University Hospital, where he died about an hour later, according to the county coroner’s office. … Read full story

George Mikan, the “gentle giant” who a half-century ago brought fame and stability to the fledgling world of professional basketball and literally transformed the game, has died 18 days shy of his 81st birthday.

Mikan died Wednesday night at a Scottsdale rehabilitation center following a long fight with diabetes and kidney ailments. His right leg was amputated below the knee in 2000, and he had undergone kidney dialysis treatment three times a week for five years, his son Terry said.

A superstar decades before the term existed, Mikan was the first big man to dominate the sport. No one before had seen a 6-foot-10 player with his agility, competitiveness and skill.

When the Minneapolis Lakers came to New York in December, 1949, the marquee at Madison Square Garden read “Geo. Mikan vs. the Knicks.” …

Timberwolves star and 2004 MVP Kevin Garnett knew of Mikan, though. “When I think about George Mikan, I skip all the Wilt Chamberlains and Kareem Abdul-Jabbars and I call him the ‘The Original Big Man,’” Garnett said. “Without George Mikan, there would be no up-and-unders, no jump hooks, and there would be no label of the big man.” … Read full obituary