Dead Celebrity Alert

Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., has died. She was 78.

Scott King was admitted to Atlanta’s Piedmont Hospital on Aug. 16, 2005, suffering from a stroke that left her weakened on her right side, unable to walk, and barely able to speak. …

The Kings were married in 1953, and the following year, they moved to Montgomery, Ala., where King began his ministry.

Scott King spent much of her life devoted to raising their four children — Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine — and to supporting her husband’s work in the civil rights movement. …

Scott King became an activist in her own right, as well, carrying messages of international peace and economic justice to organizations around the world. …

When King was assassinated outside a motel room in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, Scott King channeled her grief into action. …

Scott King continued working for equality, peace and economic justice for the remainder of her life, both in the United States and abroad. … Read full obituary

See also:
Coretta Scott King Appears At MLK Event (January 16, 2006)

Playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who chronicled the feminist struggles and successes of the baby-boomer generation in such wryly observant works as “The Heidi Chronicles” and “The Sisters Rosensweig,” has died of lymphoma at the age of 55.

Wasserstein died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said Andre Bishop, header of Lincoln Center Theater and Wasserstein’s close friend and mentor. She had been ill for several months.

Broadway theaters will dim their lights Tuesday in honor of Wasserstein. …

Wasserstein’s writing was known for its sharp, often comedic look about what women had to do to succeed in a world dominated by men. …

Wasserstein found her greatest popular success with “The Heidi Chronicles,” which won the best-play Tony as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1989. …

While primarily a playwright, Wasserstein also wrote for TV and the movies… Read full obituary

Pioneering psychotherapist and writer Betty Berzon died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 78 years old.

Berzon had been sick with cancer, but still continued to see patients and write while undergoing chemotherapy.

Her desire to continue work while sick seemed like classic Berzon persistence. She was known for turning one of the lowest points of her life into her life’s direction. During her early adult years, she had been hospitalized after trying to kill herself, in part because she struggled with her sexual orientation. During her recovery, doctors encouraged her to become a psychotherapist. She went on to become one of our community’s best-known, with a gift for helping gay people come to terms with their true selves and with each other. …

She was one of the founding board members for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in 1971. …

[Terry] DeCrescenzo, the president of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, and Berzon became a couple in 1973. They married in 1993 during a mass wedding ceremony at the March on Washington. … Read full obituary

Chris Penn, the younger brother of Academy Award winner Sean Penn, has been found dead.

Character actor Chris Penn, the younger brother of Oscar winner Sean Penn, was found dead today at an apartment near the Pacific Ocean in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica.

No cause of death was immediately determined but there were no signs of foul play, police sources said. …

Penn, 43, was a character actor who appeared in dozens of films including Reservoir Dogs, Mulholland Falls and the 2004 film Starsky & Hutch. …

Recently, Penn voiced Officer Eddie Pulaski in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Penn’s late father, Leo Penn, directed television shows, his mother, Eileen Ryan, is an actress whose credits include I Am Sam, Magnolia and Parenthood, and another brother is musician Michael Penn. …

Penn’s latest film, The Darwin Awards, was scheduled to premiere tomorrow at the Sundance Film Festival. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES — Anthony Franciosa, the rakishly handsome, cleft-chinned actor who came to fame on Broadway in the 1950s and had a long career in Hollywood that included starring in five TV series, including “The Name of the Game” and “Matt Helm,” has died. He was 77.

Franciosa had a stroke Monday and died Thursday at the UCLA Medical Center, said his publicist Dick Guttman.

An alumnus of New York’s fabled Actors Studio, Franciosa received his big theater break in 1955 when an Actors Studio workshop production of “A Hatful of Rain” moved to Broadway. His searing portrayal of the brother of a heroin addict earned him a Tony nomination in 1956. …

A string of plum film roles followed…

The actor earned a reputation for having a hair-trigger temper, an image summed up in a 1975 TV Guide article as “hotheaded” and “arrogant.” …

Franciosa, who made his Broadway debut in “End as a Man” in 1953, fell in love with Actors Studio classmate Shelley Winters.

In 1957, after divorcing his first wife, writer Beatrice Bakalyar, Franciosa married Winters. His marriage to Winters, who died Jan. 14, ended in 1960. He also had a six-year marriage to Judy Balaban Kanter. Franciosa is survived by his wife, Rita; his children, Nina, Christopher and Marco; and a granddaughter. … Read full obituary

Related:
Shelley Winters

Soul legend Wilson Pickett had a heart attack and died while seeking help at a hospital in Reston, Virginia, near his home in Ashburn on Thursday (January 19); he was 64 years old.

Pickett, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, helped shape modern R&B with his stripped-down classics like “In the Midnight Hour” and “Mustang Sally.” His gruff voice, raw sexuality and sweaty style earned him the nickname of “the Wicked Pickett.”

Pickett’s 40-plus-year career started when he sang gospel in Southern Baptist churches in Pratville, Alabama. Later as a teen in Detroit, Pickett joined the vocal group the Violinaires and eventually the Falcons, who had a hit with “I Found a Love,” which Pickett wrote. … Read full obituary

Shelley Winters, the forceful, outspoken star who graduated from blond bombshell parts to dramas, winning Academy Awards as supporting actress in The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue, has died. She was 85.

Winters died of heart failure at The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills, her publicist Dale Olson said. She was hospitalised in October after suffering a heart attack. …

Ever vocal on social and political matters, Winters was a favoured guest on television talk shows, and she demonstrated her frankness in two autobiographies: Shelley, Also Known as Shirley (1980) and Shelley II: The Middle of My Century (1989).

She wrote openly in them of her romances with Burt Lancaster, William Holden, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and other leading men. …

She received her final Oscar nomination, for 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure…

During her 50 years as a widely known personality, Winters was rarely out of the news. Her stormy marriages, her romances with famous stars, her forays into politics and feminist causes kept her name before the public. She delighted in giving provocative interviews and seemed to have an opinion on everything. …

During the Detroit run of a musical revue, she married a businessman, Paul “Mack” Mayer on January 1, 1942. … They divorced in 1948.

Winters’ second and third marriages were brief and tempestuous: to Vittorio Gassman (1952-1954) and Anthony Franciosa (1957-1960). The combination of a Jewish Brooklynite and Italian actors seemed destined to produce fireworks, and both unions resulted in headlines. … Read full obituary

Phyllis Gates, the former wife of Hollywood star Rock Hudson and secretary to his agent, has died at the age of 80. Gates died of complications from lung cancer on 4 January at her Los Angeles home, her lawyer Mark Waldman said. …

Gates married Hudson in 1955, and they divorced in 1958. She later learned the romance was arranged to dispel rumours about Hudson’s homosexuality. …

Gates wrote in her 1987 book, My Husband, Rock Hudson: “I couldn’t believe that this was really happening to me, that Phyllis Gates of Montevideo, Minnesota, was marrying Rock Hudson, the movie star.” …

Hudson had feared before the marriage that rumours he was gay would destroy his career. … Read full obituary

See also:
The Secret Life (and Death) of Rock Hudson

WASHINGTON — Neil Strawser, who anchored CBS News radio coverage of President Kennedy`s assassination, died Saturday. He was 78.

For 34 years, Strawser worked in Washington as a CBS News radio and television reporter. He anchored CBS Radio for four straight days after Kennedy`s assassination in 1963.

He left journalism in 1986 to serve as a Democratic spokesman for the House Budget Committee. … Read full obituary

The death has taken place of Irish actor Brendan Cauldwell at the age of 83.

Mr Cauldwell had played the role of Pascal Mulvey in the RTÉ soap Fair City since 1996.

Born in Fairview in Dublin and educated in O’Connell’s CBS, he worked in the insurance industry before becoming a full time actor.

His interest in acting was prompted by his uncle, who taught him different dialects in an attempt to solve a bad stammer he suffered from as a child.

Mr Cauldwell went on to act in a host of stage, screen and radio productions over the years, including Strumpet City, Far and Away and Angela’s Ashes. … Read full obituary

A 15-year-old son of Bahrain’s king has been killed in an accident while driving a car, the Bahraini Royal Court says.

Prince Faisal, the sixth son of Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, died instantly after he lost control of the car he was driving and collided with a traffic light and billboard, said an official in the Ministry of Youth on Thursday.

A senior information ministry official confirmed the death. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release the news to the press.

State radio and television did not promptly announce the death, but they stopped their regular programmes and played readings from the Islamic holy book, the Quran — a sign of mourning. … It was not known how the prince came to be driving on a public road. Under Bahraini law, one has to be 18 years of age to apply for a driving licence. … Read full obituary

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Patricia Reilly Hitt, who served as national co-chair of Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and became his assistant secretary of health, education and welfare, died of natural causes. She was 87.

Hitt, who worked her first campaign for Nixon in 1946, died Monday at her home on Balboa Island, said Andy Quinn, spokesman for the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace.

She died on what would have been Nixon’s 93rd birthday. …

Hitt became the first woman to hold a senior leadership position for a major U.S. political party when she was named national co-chair of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign.

It marked a milestone in her long career of campaigning that began in 1946, when Hitt went door-to-door for Nixon’s successful run for Congress in Southern California. … Read full obituary

Alan Sytner, who founded the Cavern Club, has died on holiday in France. Inspired by Paris’s underground clubs, Sytner opened the converted cellars in Mathew Street, Liverpool, in 1957, as a jazz band venue.

The Cavern attracted skiffle groups and became the launchpad for the Merseybeat of the early 1960s. It remains linked most closely to the Beatles, who played there 292 times between 1961 and 1963. A lifelong jazz devotee, Sytner was never entirely comfortable with his musicians: once he passed a note on stage to John Lennon saying: “Cut out the bloody rock.” … Read full obituary

Joseph Waksberg, who helped invent a widely used method of conducting phone surveys so they efficiently reach people with unlisted as well as listed phone numbers, has died. He was 90. …

With Mitofsky, Waksberg developed methods that improved the efficiency in drawing a representative sample of the population using random digit dialing, a crucial technique in telephone polling. …

He served for 30 years as a consultant on election night predictions for CBS and later for a cooperative of news media. … Read full obituary

LUBBOCK, Texas — Dave Brown, a former Michigan All-America who played 16 seasons in the NFL and was an assistant coach at Texas Tech, died Tuesday. He was 52.

Brown suffered an apparent heart attack while playing basketball on campus, according to a statement released by Texas Tech. …

Brown, a native of Akron, Ohio, played safety for the Wolverines in 1972-74, garnering All-Big Ten honors all three years. He was a unanimous All-America in 1974 and was co-captain that same season. U-M named him to its All-Century team.

In the NFL, Brown helped the Pittsburgh Steelers win Super Bowl X in 1976, beating the Dallas Cowboys, 21-17. … Read full obituary