Dead Celebrity Alert

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Bebe Moore Campbell, whose many best sellers such as “Brothers and Sisters” touched on America’s ethnic and social divides, died Monday. She was 56.

Campbell died at home in Los Angeles from complications due to brain cancer, said publicist Linda Wharton-Boyd. She was diagnosed with the disease in February. …

Her books, largely fiction and based on real-life stories, included the perspective of many ethnic groups.

One of her first novels, “Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine,” was published in 1992 and spanned a 40-year period. It dealt with prejudice in the United States. The book earned her an NAACP Image Award for literature. … Read full obituaryl

Pat Dobson, one of four pitchers to win 20 games for the Baltimore Orioles in 1971, has died. He was 64.

Dobson died suddenly Wednesday night in the San Diego area, the San Francisco Giants said Thursday. He was a special assistant to Giants general manager Brian Sabean this year, his ninth with the club.

The team didn’t immediately release details about the cause of death. But USA Today reported on its Web site that Dobson’s wife, Kathe, said he died one day after being diagnosed with leukemia. … Read full obituary

William Diehl, best-selling author of “Primal Fear” and other novels, has died at Emory University Hospital. He was 81.

Diehl died Friday, said Sarah Carter of H.M. Patterson & Son funeral home in Atlanta. He died of aortic embolism, said his wife, Virginia Gunn.

He started on his first novel, “Sharky’s Machine,” while serving as a juror. Diehl, then 50, was bored by the trial and started writing fiction on a notepad. The book, published in 1978, became a best-seller and — later — a movie starring Burt Reynolds.

Diehl was unemployed when he got the news that the book was going to be published, his longtime friend Michael Parver said. When his agent first called to tell him, the phone line went dead. Diehl hadn’t paid the bill… Read full obituary

Betty Comden, whose more than 60-year collaboration with Adolph Green produced the classic New York stage musical “On the Town,” as well as “Singin’ in the Rain,” has died. She was 89.

Comden had been ill for a few months and died Thursday of heart failure at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia, said her longtime attorney and executor Ronald Konecky. …

On Broadway, Comden and Green (the billing was always alphabetical) worked most successfully with composers Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne and Cy Coleman. The duo wrote lyrics and often the books for more than a dozen shows, many of them built around such stars as Rosalind Russell, Judy Holliday, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett and Lauren Bacall. …

The two were never married to each other, although many thought they were, considering the longevity of their working relationship. …

Green died in October 2002 at age 87. At a memorial for him a few weeks later, Comden recalled their early days as collaborators and then halted before saying: “It’s lonely up here. It was always more fun with Adolph.” …

It was “On the Town,” a musical comedy expansion of Jerome Robbins’ ballet “Fancy Free,” that introduced Comden and Green to Broadway in 1944. …

[At MGM], they wrote screenplays for “Good News,” starring June Allyson and Peter Lawford, and the film version of “On the Town,” which scrapped most of Bernstein’s melodies, replacing them with music by Roger Edens. It even sanitized the lyrics to “New York, New York.” Yet the movie, starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, was a huge hit.

At MGM, Comden and Green also scored their biggest critical success, writing the screenplay for “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952). The film placed No. 10 on the list of 100 best American movie of the century, compiled in 1998 by the American Film Institute. … Read full obituary

Anita O’Day, whose sassy renditions of “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Sweet Georgia Brown” and other song standards that made her one of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s and ’50s, has died. She was 87.

O’Day died in her sleep early Thursday morning at a convalescent hospital in Los Angeles where she was recovering from a bout with pneumonia, said her manager Robbie Cavolina. …

Once known as the “Jezebel of Jazz” for her reckless, drug-induced lifestyle, O’Day lived to sing and she did so from her teen years until this year when she released “Indestructible!” … Read full obituary

Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had been fighting for his life in recent days after an apparent poisoning, has died, the London hospital where he was being treated said today.

“We are sorry to announce that Alexander Litvinenko died at University College Hospital (UCH) at 9.21pm GMT (0821 AEDT) on the 23rd of November 2006,” the spokesman for the hospital said.

“He was seriously ill when he was admitted to UCH on Friday November 17, and the medical team at the hospital did everything possible to save his life.”

Litvinenko was a former lieutenant-colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) — the successor to the Soviet KGB. His friends have in recent days blamed Russia for his apparent poisoning.

Oleg Gordievsky, a former colonel in the KGB who defected to Britain in the mid-1980s, said before Litvinenko died that there was “no mystery” for him, pointing the finger directly at the Russian secret service. … Read full story

Beloved French actor Philippe Noiret, whose neighbourly face was among the most familiar on the silver screen in France, died Thursday of cancer.

He was 76. The exact circumstances surrounding his death were not immediately known. Friends said he had been battling cancer.

Noiret made more than 125 movies in his 55 years entertaining on stage and in the cinema. Among his first big successes was Louis Malle’s 1960 movie “Zazie dans le metro” (Zazie in the Metro).

Among the doyens of French cinema, Noiret made his last movie this year, “Trois Amis” (Three Friends) under director Michel Boujenah. … Read full obituary

Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind “M-A-S-H,” “Nashville” and “The Player” who made a career out of bucking Hollywood, has died at 81.

The director died Monday night at a Los Angeles Hospital, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman’s Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told The Associated Press. …

A five-time Academy Award nominee for best director, most recently for 2001’s “Gosford Park,” he finally won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006. …

Altman had one of the most distinctive styles among modern filmmakers. He often employed huge ensemble casts, encouraged improvisation and overlapping dialogue and filmed scenes in long tracking shots that would flit from character to character.

Perpetually in and out of favor with audiences and critics, Altman worked ceaselessly since his anti-war black comedy “M-A-S-H” established his reputation in 1970, but he would go for years at a time directing obscure movies before roaring back with a hit. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) Jeremy Slate, the versatile actor who co-wrote and starred in the cult film “Hell’s Angels ‘69,” died Sunday, according to his agent. He was 80.

Slate died at UCLA Medical Center of complications following surgery for cancer of the esophagus.

Slate gained fame in the early 1960s on the TV series “The Aquanauts” and a few years later appeared alongside Elvis Presley in “Girls! Girls! Girls!” He guest-starred on nearly 100 TV shows… Read full obituary

Bo Schembechler, who became one of college football’s greatest coaches in two decades at Michigan, died Friday after taping a TV show on the eve of the important Big Ten game against the Wolverines’ perennial rival, top-ranked Ohio State. He was 77.

Schembechler collapsed during the taping of a television show in Southfield and was taken by ambulance to hospital. His death at 11:42 a.m. ET was confirmed by Mike Dowd, chief investigator for the medical examiner’s office in Oakland County. …

The seven-time Big Ten coach of the year had a 194-48-5 record at Michigan from 1969-89. Schembechler’s record in 26 years of coaching was 234-64-8. … Read full obituary

Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley died Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan of complications from leukemia.

Bradley joined the staff of the venerable news magazine 26 years ago. His consummate skills as a broadcast journalist and his distinctive body of work were recognized with numerous awards, including 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till.

Bradley grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, was wounded while covering the Vietnam War and later became the first black White House correspondent for CBS News. …

“He certainly was a reporter’s reporter,” fellow 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace told CBS News Radio. …

Bradley’s groundbreaking journalism included an interview with condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh — the only television interview ever given by the man guilty of one of the worst terrorist acts on American soil. It also earned Bradley an Emmy.

His reporting on the worst school shooting in American history, “Columbine,” revealed that authorities ignored telling evidence with which they might have prevented the massacre. …

Extensive coverage, tributes, photos & video, from CBS

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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Actor Jack Palance, who won an Oscar with his comedic self-parody in 1991’s “City Slickers,” died Friday.

He was 87, said spokesman Dick Guttman, and died of natural causes in his home in Montecito, California, surrounded by his family.

Known for hard, grizzled roles in numerous Westerns during his six-decade career, Palance gained a second wind of fame when he won the best supporting actor Oscar for playing Curly in “City Slickers.”

The actor clutched his Oscar in one hand and dropped to the ground for a round of vigorous one-handed push-ups. …

It was a magic moment that epitomized the actor’s 40 years in films. Always the iconoclast, Palance had scorned most of his movie roles.

“Most of the stuff I do is garbage,” he once told a reporter, adding that most of the directors he worked with were incompetent, too. … Read full obituary