Dead Celebrity Alert

Maureen Stapleton, an Oscar-winning actress who created a gallery of pugnacious but vulnerable heroines on Broadway, in films and on television and who put an indelible stamp on some of Tennessee Williams’s most memorable characters, died today in Lenox, Mass., said her daughter, Katherine Bambery. She was 80. …

“The Rose Tattoo” fulfilled Ms. Stapleton’s childhood dream of becoming a star and also earned her a Tony Award. But the stress of her first major role also brought her face to face with the demons that would pursue her throughout her career. She began to drink, although she always maintained that she only drank after a performance (she routinely vomited before curtain time). She also became convinced that someday, someone in the audience was going to kill her. Her growing paranoia led her to seek out a psychotherapist after the show ended its tour, but a cure for her ills — she also had a lifelong fear of elevators and airplanes — proved elusive. One therapist was to treat her for 14 years. …

She was hospitalized for detoxification, after which she voluntarily entered a psychiatric facility for further treatment. …

The awards and nominations kept coming. She was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress for “Airport” (1970); she won a best-actress Tony that same year… Read full obituary

Bernie Geoffrion, the Montreal Canadiens’ Hall of Fame wing who popularized the slap shot, a weapon that changed the face of hockey and brought him the enduring nickname Boom Boom, died Saturday in Atlanta. He was 75.

The cause was stomach cancer, said the Canadiens, who retired Geoffrion’s number at the Bell Center in Montreal on Saturday night in a previously scheduled ceremony. …

Geoffrion starred on six Stanley Cup championship teams in his 14 seasons with the Canadiens, then played two seasons with the Rangers. He scored 393 regular-season goals and won the National Hockey League scoring title twice. He later coached the Rangers, the Atlanta Flames and the Canadiens. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972. … Read full obituary

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal.

The tribunal said an autopsy would be conducted to establish cause of death, but there was no indication of suicide.

Zdenko Tomanovic, a lawyer for Mr Milosevic, says the autopsy should take place elsewhere as his client said he was being poisoned in the jail.

Mr Milosevic, 64, had been held at the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes since 2001. …

The BBC’s Geraldine Coughlan at The Hague says Mr Milosevic’s death is a blow to prosecutors, who had been hoping to convict him as being part of a joint criminal enterprise that operated across the former Yugoslavia, intent on setting up a greater Serbian state.

Mr Milosevic faced charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged central role in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s.

He also faced genocide charges over the 1992-95 Bosnia war, in which 100,000 people died. … Read full obituary

John Profumo, a former British Cabinet minister whose liaison with a prostitute nearly brought down a government, died late Thursday night after suffering a stroke, an official said Friday. He was 91. …

Profumo, who spent more than 40 years redeeming himself with charity work for London’s poor, was Britain’s secretary of state for war when he was involved with Christine Keeler in 1963. At the same time, she was seeing a Soviet naval attache and intelligence agent. Profumo first denied the affair, but after the publication of a letter he wrote her, he resigned on June 5, 1963.

Although there proved to be no breach of security, the scandal rattled the government to its foundations, made a celebrity of Keeler, and transfixed newspaper readers around the world.

The scandal was a severe blow to the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan… Read full obituary

Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with “The Learning Tree” and the hit “Shaft,” died Tuesday, a family member said. He was 93.

Parks, who also wrote fiction and was an accomplished composer, died in New York, his nephew, Charles Parks, said in a telephone interview from Lawrence, Kan. …

He covered everything from fashion to politics to sports during his 20 years at Life, from 1948 to 1968.

But as a photographer, he was perhaps best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement. … Read full obituary

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Dana Reeve, who won worldwide admiration for her devotion to her “Superman” husband, Christopher Reeve, through his decade of near-total paralysis, has died of lung cancer at the age of 44.

Reeve, a singer-actress who gave up some of her own career to be one of the nation’s best-known caregivers, died late Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Medical Center, said Kathy Lewis, president of the Christopher Reeve Foundation.

Reeve had succeeded her husband as chair of the foundation, which funded research into spinal-cord paralysis cures. She announced in August that, while she wasn’t a smoker, she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. …

Christopher Reeve, star of Hollywood’s “Superman” movies, became an activist for spinal cord research after a horse-riding accident paralyzed him in 1995. He died Oct. 10, 2004.

Dana Reeve was a constant companion and supporter of her husband during his long ordeal and his work for a cure for spinal cord injuries. … Read full obituary

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Christopher Reeve

Kirby Puckett died Monday, a day after the Hall of Fame outfielder had a stroke at his Arizona home, a hospital spokeswoman said. He was 44.

Puckett died at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Kimberly Lodge said. He had been in intensive care since having surgery at another hospital following his stroke Sunday morning. …

The hospital said Puckett was given last rites and died in the afternoon. …

The buoyant, barrel-shaped Puckett broke into the majors in 1984 and had a career batting average of .318. Glaucoma forced the six-time Gold Glove center fielder and 10-time All-Star to retire when he went blind in his right eye. … Read full obituary

Jack Wild, whose angelic, cheeky face shot him to stardom and almost an Oscar as the Artful Dodger in the 1968 film Oliver!, has died from cancer aged 53 after a life pitted with disappointment and illness.

The working-class boy from Hounslow, west London, never repeated his early success and his fall was as meteoric as his rise. By the age of 21 he was an alcoholic and his career lay in ruins.

He later picked up minor film and television roles and made an attempt at being a pop star but four years after cancer was diagnosed in 2000, part of his tongue and his larynx were removed leaving him unable to talk. …

Lured to Hollywood … to front the American children’s television series HR Pufnstuf and then star in a film version — he took up heavy drinking, smoking and partying. …

When Daniel Radcliffe won the film role of Harry Potter, Wild wrote him an open letter of warning. … Read full obituary

COLUMBIA, Tenn. — North Carolina native James Ronald “Bunkie” Blackburn, a former NASCAR driver who once won a race at Daytona International Speedway, died Tuesday. He was 69. …

Blackburn drove in the Grand National and NASCAR circuits from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, driving for teams run by Smokey Yunick and Petty Enterprises. … Read full obituary

WASHINGTON, March 2 /PRNewswire/ — Harry Browne, best-selling author and two-time Libertarian Party presidential nominee, died in his home in Franklin, Tennessee, Wednesday night, March 1, after a long illness. He is survived by his wife Pamela and his daughter Autumn. He was 72.

Browne broke into national prominence in the early 1970s with three best-selling books. “How You Can Profit from the Coming Devaluation” was the first to make the best-seller lists. His next book, “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World,” is widely regarded as a modern libertarian classic…

Browne twice ran for President as the nominee of the Libertarian Party in 1996 and 2000. … Read full obituary