Dead Celebrity Alert

LOS ANGELES — Dennis Weaver, the slow-witted deputy Chester Goode in the TV classic western Gunsmoke and the New Mexico deputy solving New York crime in McCloud, has died. The actor was 81.

Weaver died of complications from cancer Friday at his home in Ridgway, in southwestern Colorado, his publicist Julian Myers said. …

Weaver was a struggling actor in Hollywood in 1955, earning $60 a week delivering flowers when he was offered $300 a week for a role in a new CBS television series, Gunsmoke. By the end of his nine years with Gunsmoke, he was earning $9,000 a week. …

He appeared in several movies, including Touch of Evil, Ten Wanted Men, Gentle Giant, Seven Angry Men, Dragnet, Way … Way Out and The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

Weaver also was an activist for protecting the environment and combating world hunger. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Darren McGavin was painting a movie set in 1945 when he learned of an opening for a small role in the show, climbed off his ladder, and returned through Columbia’s front gates to land the part.

The husky, tough-talking performer went on to become one of the busiest actors in television and film, starring in five TV series, including “Mike Hammer,” and endearing holiday audiences with his role as the grouchy dad in the 1983 comedy classic “A Christmas Story.”

McGavin, 83, died Saturday of natural causes at a Los Angeles-area hospital with his family at his side, said his son Bogart McGavin.

McGavin also had leading roles in TV’s “Riverboat” and cult favorite “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” Among his memorable portrayals was Gen. George Patton in the 1979 TV biography “Ike.”

Despite his busy career in television, McGavin was awarded only one Emmy: in 1990 for an appearance as Candice Bergen’s opinionated father in an episode of “Murphy Brown.”

He lacked the prominence in films he enjoyed in television, but he registered strongly in featured roles such as the young artist in Venice in “Summertime,” David Lean’s 1955 film with Katharine Hepburn and Rosanno Brazzi; Frank Sinatra’s crafty drug supplier in “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955); Jerry Lewis’s parole officer in “The Delicate Delinquent” (1957); and the gambler in 1984’s “The Natural.” He also starred alongside Don Knotts, who died Friday night, in the 1976 family comedy “No Deposit, No Return.” … Read full obituary

Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show,” has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs “The Andy Griffith Show,” and another Knotts hit, “Three’s Company.” …

The West Virginia-born actor’s half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmies. …

Knotts appeared on six other television shows. …

Knotts’ G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl — a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold. … Read full obituary

Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was involved in one of the biggest financial scandals to hit the Vatican, has died, church officials say.

The 84-year-old American had been living in Sun City, Arizona.

Marcinkus was head of the Vatican Bank at the time of the fraudulent collapse of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982, with which it had close ties.

He denied any wrongdoing. Although he was sought for questioning, he was granted immunity as a Vatican employee.

Archbishop Marcinkus was found dead at his home on Monday evening, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, in Arizona, said. The cause is unclear. … Read full obituary

Richard Bright, a veteran character actor who appeared in all three “Godfather” films and “The Sopranos,” died on Saturday in New York. He was 68 and lived in Manhattan.

He was hit by a bus as it rounded the corner of Columbus Avenue and 86th Street at about 6:30 p.m., and was pronounced dead at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center shortly thereafter, the police said.

A versatile actor with a characteristic rasp in his voice, Mr. Bright had a busy career in movies and theater that stretched back to the late 1950’s, when he made his film debut in a small part in Robert Wise’s “Odds Against Tomorrow.” During the 1970’s, he appeared in “The Panic in Needle Park” with Al Pacino, Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,” “Marathon Man” with Dustin Hoffman, “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” and “The Getaway.” …

Mr. Bright is survived by his wife, the actress Rutanya Alda; a son, Jeremy Bright, of Manhattan; and a brother, Charles, of Rowland, Pa. … Read full obituary

He was the smooth voice of sports history, a welcome companion who brought listeners Ted Williams’ last home run, the first Super Bowl and dozens of other dramatic moments.

Curt Gowdy, who died Monday, told generations of Americans about the games they loved from the broadcast booths at 13 World Series, 16 All-Star baseball games, numerous Rose Bowls and the 1976 Montreal Olympics. …

Gowdy died of leukemia at his winter home in Palm Beach. He was 86. … Read full obituary

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — The lead singer of the 1960s family band The Cowsills has died — and his family learned it just after a memorial service for his brother.

According to family members, William Cowsill died Friday in Canada. He had been suffering from emphysema, osteoporosis and other ailments. He was 58 years old. …

News of his death came just after a memorial ceremony honoring William Cowsill’s younger brother, Barry. Barry Cowsill drowned after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. … Read full obituary

Related:
Barry Cowsill

Peter Benchley, whose novel “Jaws” terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, has died at age 65, his widow said Sunday.

Wendy Benchley, married to the author for 41 years, said he died Saturday night at their home in Princeton, N.J. The cause of death, she said, was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive and a fatal scarring of the lungs.

Thanks to Benchley’s 1974 novel, and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie of the same name, the simple act of ocean swimming became synonymous with fatal horror, of still water followed by ominous, pumping music, then teeth and blood and panic. …

Benchley, the grandson of humorist Robert Benchley and son of author Nathaniel Benchley, was born in New York City in 1940. … Read full obituary

SAN FRANCISCO — Dr. Norman Shumway, the first surgeon to perform a successful heart transplant operation in the United States, died Friday of lung cancer, a Stanford University spokeswoman said. He was 83.

Shumway died at his home in Palo Alto, spokeswoman Ruthann Richter said. …

Shumway completed the first successful U.S. adult heart transplant in 1968, but he may be best known for continuing with transplant research as many others quit. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES — Franklin Cover, who became a familiar face as George and Louise Jefferson’s white neighbor in the long-running TV sitcom “The Jeffersons,” has died, his publicist said Thursday. He was 77.

Cover died of pneumonia Sunday at the Lillian Booth Actor’s Fund of America home in Englewood, N.J., said publicist Dale Olson. He had been living at the home since December 2005 while recuperating from a heart condition.

In his nearly six decades in show business, Cover made numerous appearances on television shows, including “The Jackie Gleason Show,” “All in the Family,” “Who’s the Boss?” “Will & Grace,” “Living Single,” “Mad About You” and “ER.” … Read full obituary

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — Alan Shalleck, who collaborated with the co-creator of “Curious George” to bring the mischievous monkey to television and a series of book sequels, was found dead outside his home, and police were treating the death as a possible homicide.

The bloodied body of Shalleck, 76, was found Tuesday covered in garbage bags in the driveway of his mobile home. Police said it was there for at least a day before a maintenance man discovered it. …

Shalleck’s death came just as “Curious George” is debuting as a full-length feature film this Friday, featuring the voices of Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore and Dick Van Dyke, among others.

Shalleck, 76, was the writer and director of more than 100 short episodes of “Curious George,” which were seen on the Disney Channel. …

A Syracuse University drama major, Shalleck got his start in 1950 in the CBS mailroom, working his way up to associate producer for “Winky Dink and You”… Read full obituary

Betty Friedan, whose manifesto “The Feminine Mystique” became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday, her birthday. She was 85. …

Friedan’s assertion in her 1963 best seller that having a husband and babies was not everything and that women should aspire to separate identities as individuals, was highly unusual, if not revolutionary, just after the baby and suburban booms of the Eisenhower era. …

As a founder and first president of the National Organization for Women in 1966, she staked out positions that seemed extreme at the time on such issues as abortion, sex-neutral help-wanted ads, equal pay, promotion opportunities and maternity leave.

But at the same time, Friedan insisted that the women’s movement had to remain in the American mainstream…

To more radical and lesbian feminists, Friedan was “hopelessly bourgeois,” Susan Brownmiller wrote at the time.

Friedan, deeply opposed to “equating feminism with lesbianism,” conceded later that she had been “very square” and uncomfortable about homosexuality. … Read full obituary

Al Lewis, the cigar-chomping patriarch of “The Munsters” whose work as a basketball scout, restaurateur and political candidate never eclipsed his role as Grandpa from the television sitcom, died after years of failing health. He was 95.

Lewis, with his wife at his bedside, passed away Friday night, said Bernard White, program director at WBAI-FM, where the actor hosted a weekly radio program. …

Lewis, sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, became a pop culture icon playing the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne’s ever-bumbling Herman Munster on the 1964-66 television show. He was also one of the stars of another classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on “Car 54, Where Are You?”

But Lewis’ life off the small screen ranged far beyond his acting antics. …

He operated a successful Greenwich Village restaurant, Grandpa’s..

Just two years short of his 90th birthday, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green Party candidate against incumbent Gov. George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against draconian drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as “Grandpa Al Lewis.” …

He also popped up in a number of movies…

But in 2003, Lewis was hospitalized for an angioplasty. … A year later, he was back offering his recollections of a seminal punk band on the DVD “Ramones Raw.” … Read full obituary