Dead Celebrity Alert

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 29) - Teen actress Tara Correa-McMullen, who portrayed a former gang member in the TV show “Judging Amy,” was shot to death amid gang violence, police said.

Authorities in Inglewood, a suburb south of Los Angeles, said the actress was shot several times as she stood outside an apartment complex Oct. 21. Two men with her were wounded. …

After filming her first movie, “Rebound,” which was released this summer, Correa-McMullen won a recurring role on “Judging Amy” as a former gang member named Graciela. … Read full obituary

October 26, 2005 — Wellington Mara, the patriarch of the National Football League, who served as a ball boy for the leather-helmeted 1925 Giants and later turned the team - founded by his father - into one of the marquee names in professional sports, died yesterday at his home in Rye, N.Y. He was 89.

The cause was cancer of the lymph nodes, the Giants said.

Mr. Mara had a front-row seat in the world of pro sports going back to the afternoon of Oct. 18, 1925, when the Giants played their first home game, losing to the Frankford Yellow Jackets. He witnessed the famed Sneakers Game, when the Giants outmaneuvered the Chicago Bears by wearing rubber-soled footgear in the 1934 championship game on a frozen Polo Grounds field.

After 31 seasons at the Polo Grounds, Mr. Mara took the Giants to Yankee Stadium in 1956, and they became the glamour franchise of the N.F.L., winning the league championship that season and playing in the title game five times in the next seven years. … Read full obituary

Rosa Parks, the black woman whose 1955 arrest for saying “no” to an order to give her bus seat to a white man served as a catalyst for the U.S. civil-rights movement, died today. She was 92. Parks died of natural causes at her home, the Associated Press reported, citing Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan, who was Parks’ former employer. … Read full obituary

Charles Rocket, an actor and former “Saturday Night Live” comedian who gained notoriety almost 25 years ago for uttering an unscripted obscenity during a skit on the NBC show, has died. He was 56.

Mr. Rocket, 56, was found dead Oct. 7 in a field near his home in Canterbury, Conn. His throat had been cut, and the Connecticut medical examiner’s office has ruled his death a suicide. …

Mr. Rocket joined the “SNL” cast in the fall of 1980 and let an expletive slip the following February during a spoof of the famed “Who Shot J.R.?” plot line from the CBS night-time soap “Dallas.” Viewers complained, and NBC issued an apology.

The former television newscaster was fired soon after along with other cast members and writers on the show, which had tepid ratings. … Read full obituary

CANTON, Ohio, Oct. 11 (AP) — Angelo Argea, who spent two decades as Jack Nicklaus’s caddie, died here Monday at the home of his nephew. He was 75.

The cause was liver cancer, said his friend Bill Taylor.

Argea went to the Palm Springs Classic in 1963 to caddie for a Las Vegas hotel executive when he was told more caddies were needed for the pros. He signed up with Nicklaus, believing he would not show up because of a hip injury. … Read full obituary

ATLANTA (AP) - Vivian Malone Jones, one of two black students whose effort to enroll at the University of Alabama led to George Wallace’s infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” in 1963, died Thursday. She was 63.

Jones, who went on to become the first black to graduate from the school, died at Atlanta Medical Center, where she had been admitted Tuesday after suffering a stroke, said her sister, Sharon Malone. …

Jones, a retired federal worker who lived in Atlanta, grew up in Mobile, Ala. She had enrolled at historically black Alabama A&M University in Huntsville when she transferred to the University of Alabama in 1963. The move led to then-Gov. Wallace’s infamous stand in defiance of orders to admit black students. Jones and James Hood, accompanied by then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, enrolled after Wallace finished his statement and left.

At an appearance last year in Mobile, she recalled meeting with Wallace in 1996, when the former governor was in frail health. … Read full obituary

Theodore Joseph Peshak died Sunday at his Lake Forest home at 87.

He was born Dec. 22, 1917 in Plymouth, Iowa. …

After the war, he worked in Chicago for Wilding Motion Picture Studios on Argyle Street. He directed some 350 educational films for Coronet Educational Films in Glenview. Coronet was later sold to Simon & Schuster.

After buying a 70-acre farm North of the Lake Forest Oasis, Ted then went into business for himself calling his company Peshak Films. …

Ted’s last big client was American Health Care Association (AHCA) making a series of 130 training films available to over 6,000 nursing homes and hospitals. … Read full obituary

Filmography from the IMDB:

1. Citizenship and You (1959)
2. Clothes and You: Line and Proportion (1954)
3. Choosing Your Marriage Partner (1952)
4. Date Etiquette (1952)
5. High School: Your Challenge (1952)
6. Going Steady? (1951)
7. Good Table Manners (1951)
8. How Billy Keeps Clean (1951)
9. Improve Your Personality (1951)
10. What to Do On a Date (1951)
11. Appreciating Your Parents (1950)
… aka Appreciating Our Parents (USA)
12. The Benefits of Looking Ahead (1950)
13. Control Your Emotions (1950)
14. Developing Friendships (1950)
15. Developing Your Character (1950)
16. Earning Money While Going to School (1950)
17. Fun of Being Thoughtful (1950)
18. Fun of Making Friends (1950)
19. Good Sportsmanship (1950)
20. How Do You Know It’s Love? (1950)
21. The Solar System (1950)
22. Act Your Age (1949)
23. Are You a Good Citizen? (1949)
24. Attitudes and Health (1949)
25. Choosing Your Occupation (1949)
26. Dating: Do’s and Don’ts (1949)
27. Exercise and Health (1949)
28. Family Life (1949)
29. Friendship Begins at Home (1949)
30. Everyday Courtesy (1948)
31. Are You Popular? (1947)
32. Shy Guy (1947)

TV comedy actor Ronnie Barker, who starred in Porridge and The Two Ronnies, has died aged 76.

One of the most loved and respected comedy performers of his generation, he was best known as one half of a double act with Ronnie Corbett.

But he also proved himself as an outstanding sitcom actor and script writer, winning four Bafta TV awards. … Read full obituary

Nipsey Russell, an actor and comedian whose impromptu versifying was familiar in years past to TV game show and late-night talk show audiences, died Oct. 2 of cancer at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Mr. Russell didn’t have a birth certificate, so his age couldn’t officially be confirmed, said Joseph Rapp, Mr. Russell’s manager for nearly 40 years. He was either 81 or 82 and had lived for many years in New York City.

Often called “the poet laureate of comedy,” Mr. Russell may be best known today as one of the polyester-wearing guests on TV quiz show reruns, cracking wise and rhyming couplets in the company of such B-list celebrities as Paul Lynde, Fanny Flagg and Charles Nelson Reilly. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he was a frequent guest on “To Tell the Truth,” “Match Game 73,” “Masquerade Party,” “What’s My Line?” and “Hollywood Squares.” He hosted a daytime game show called “Your Number’s Up.”

In addition to his numerous TV appearances, he was the Tin Man in “The Wiz,” the 1978 black-cast remake of “The Wizard of Oz.” … Read full obituary