Dead Celebrity Alert

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 27 (AP) — Walker Edmiston, an actor who was the voice of many cartoon and puppet characters, including Ernie the Keebler elf in television commercials, died on Feb. 15 at his home in Woodland Hills. He was 81.

The cause was complications of cancer, said his daughter, Erin Edmiston. …

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Mr. Edmiston had a children’s show on local television, “The Walker Edmiston Show,” featuring his own puppets.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was the voice of many characters on shows created by Sid and Marty Krofft, including Dr. Blinkey and Orson the Vulture on “H. R. Pufnstuf” and Sparky the Firefly on “Bugaloos.”

Mr. Edmiston also had acting roles in episodes of television series like “Gunsmoke,” “Mission: Impossible” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and performed for nearly 20 years on “Adventures in Odyssey,” a radio series produced by the nonprofit group Focus on the Family. … Read full obituary

Australian rock legend Billy Thorpe has died after suffering a major heart attack.

“Mr Billy Thorpe did pass away at St Vincent’s Hospital in the early hours of this morning,” St Vincent’s spokesman David Faktor told the Nine Network.

“I understand he passed away from a heart attack. His family were with him when he passed away.” …

Thorpe was born in England but emigrated with his family to Brisbane in the 1950s.

He moved to Sydney in 1963 and recorded his first song the next year with his band Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.

They went on to perform at sellout venues across Australia and had a string of hits in the 60s and 70s, including Most People I Know.

His music career spanned five decades and he also wrote two autobiographies. … Read full obituary

Dr. David B. Ast, a dentist and public health official who led an effort to begin fluoridating the water supply in New York State in the 1940s and helped prove its safety and effectiveness in preventing tooth decay, died on Feb. 3 in Laguna Hills, Calif. He was 104.

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

In 1944, Dr. Ast began a 10-year study of fluoridation that became evidence of the benefits of treating public water and made a strong case for wider use. He selected two towns of comparable size along the Hudson River, Newburgh and Kingston, and compared the health and dental records of their residents. …

AUSTIN, Texas — Dennis Johnson, the star NBA guard who was part of three championships and teamed with Larry Bird on one of the great postseason plays, died Thursday, collapsing after his developmental team’s practice. He was 52.

Johnson, coach of the Austin Toros, was unconscious and in cardiac arrest when paramedics arrived at Austin Convention Center, said Warren Hassinger, spokesman for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services.

Paramedics tried to resuscitate him for 23 minutes before he was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, Hassinger added. Mayra Freeman, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office, said there will be an autopsy. …

Gay rights pioneer Barbara Gittings has died at the age of 75 from a lengthy and brave battle with breast cancer, Philadelphia Gay News publisher and friend Mark Segal announced today.

Gittings first came to the public spotlight in 1965 when she and a handful of gay men and lesbians held demonstrations outside the White House and Independence Hall seeking equal rights for homosexuals. These were the first such demonstrations in American history and began an era of gays coming out of the closet. Gittings’ involvement in the gay rights movement started in the late 1950s when she helped organize the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (D.O.B.). It was there she met her life partner Kay Lahausen, who has been by her side for 46 years.

Gittings’ other accomplishments include head of the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force. In 2003 The American Library Association presented Gittings with it’s highest honor, a lifetime membership. She was an active cornerstone in the campaign that led to the American Psychiatric Association dropping its categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. … Read full obituary

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Anna Nicole Smith, the voluptuous former Playboy centerfold who married an octogenarian billionaire and waged a legal battle for his fortune all the way to the Supreme Court, died Thursday after collapsing at a hotel. She was 39.

The blond bombshell — who recently became tabloid fodder all over again after the sudden, apparently drug-related death of her 20-year-old son — was stricken while staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and was rushed to a hospital.

Edwina Johnson, chief investigator of the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office, said the cause of death was under investigation and an autopsy would be done on Friday.

A private nurse called 911 after finding Smith unresponsive in her sixth-floor room, said Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger. He said Smith’s bodyguard administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation about an hour before she was declared dead.

Through the ’90s and into the new century, Smith was famous for being famous, a pop-culture punchline because of her up-and-down weight, her exaggerated curves, her little-girl voice, her ditzy-blonde persona, and her over-the-top revealing outfits.

The curvaceous Texas-born Smith was a topless dancer at strip club before she entered her photos in a search contest and made the cover of Playboy magazine in 1992, captivating readers with her Marilyn Monroe looks. She became Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1993. … Read full obituary

Related:

Anna Nicole’s nemesis, E. Pierce Marshall, dies unexpectedly

Daniel Smith, 20-year-old son of Anna Nicole Smith

Details to come.

Frankie Laine, the full-voiced singer who became one of the most popular entertainers of the 1950s with such hits as I Believe, Jezebel and the theme to the TV Western Rawhide, has died at 93.

Laine, one of the last of a generation of great Italian-American singers whose peers included Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, died of a heart attack after hip-replacement surgery at the Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, said his longtime producer, Jimmy Marino. …

During a career spanning four decades, Laine tallied 21 gold records and dozens of songs on the singles charts in the United States and abroad, selling roughly 250 million albums.

But he is perhaps best remembered by a younger generation of fans for his recordings of the theme to the hit television Western Rawhide and the theme to Mel Brooks’ 1974 big-screen western spoof Blazing Saddles. … Read full obituary

Barbara McNair, the pioneering black singer-actress who hosted her own TV variety show and starred with Sidney Poitier in the early 1970s, has died, her sister said Monday. She was 72.

McNair died Sunday after a battle with throat cancer in Los Angeles, sister Jacqueline Gaither said. …

Gaining fame in the 1960s as a nightclub singer, McNair graduated to film and television as opportunities were opening up for black women late in the decade. She made her Hollywood acting debut in 1968 in the film, “If He Hollers, Let Him Go.”

She later starred with Elvis Presley in his 1969 film “Change of Habit” and as Poitier’s wife in the 1970 film “They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!” … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES — Tige Andrews, the Emmy-nominated character actor who portrayed a police captain in charge of a trio of hip, young crime fighters in “The Mod Squad,” has died. He was 86.

Andrews died Jan. 27 of cardiac arrest at his home in the San Fernando Valley, his family said.

The actor often played detectives during his television career, which spanned five decades and included appearances on more than 60 shows. His daughter said he was proud of his stint as Capt. Adam Greer on “The Mod Squad,” which aired during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The popular TV drama starred three young actors — Clarence Williams III, Michael Cole and Peggy Lipton.

“He felt the show made a big difference because it was one of the first television series to address social issues such as drugs, prostitution and teen pregnancy that were more hush-hush before that time,” said Barbara Andrews, one of the actor’s six children. … Read full obituary

Composer Gian Carlo Menotti, the founder of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, died Thursday at a hospital in Monaco, his son said. He was 95. …

The Italian opera composer founded the annual creative arts festival in the Umbrian hilltown of Spoleto in 1957 and 20 years later, a similar undertaking, Spoleto, U.S.A., for Charleston, South Carolina, followed by one for Melbourne, Australia, in 1986.

Although Menotti’s own later works were criticized as shallow, his English-language operas, including “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” have been enthusiastically received by audiences. By 1976, The New York Times called him the most-performed opera composer in the United States.

He won two Pulitzer Prizes for music: in 1950 for “The Consul,” and in 1955 for “The Saint of Bleecker Street.” … Read full obituary