Dead Celebrity Alert

Tommy Newsom, the former backup bandleader on “The Tonight Show” whose “Mr. Excitement” nickname was a running joke for Johnny Carson, has died. He was 78.

Newsom died of cancer Saturday at his home in Portsmouth, the city of his birth, according to his nephew, Jim Newsom.

Newsom, who played saxophone, joined “The Tonight Show” in 1962 and rose from band member to assistant music director. He retired along with Carson in 1992. …

That was the name Carson gave Newsom to make light of his low-key personality and drab brown and blue suits — a sharp contrast to the flashy style of bandleader Doc Severinsen.

“He became a running character in Carson’s monologue,” Jim Newsom said. “Tommy enjoyed that.” … Read full obituary

Former racing writer and columnist Bill Casey has died in Sydney after a long illness. He was 72. …

Casey worked as a racing journalist on the Melbourne Argus and The Age before moving to Sydney to join the afternoon daily The Sun as racing editor.

He was later appointed sports editor and then assistant editor (news and sport), a position he held until the newspaper closed in 1988.

His non-racing assignments included covering Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. … Read full obituary

Josh Hancock, a relief pitcher who helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series last season, died early Sunday when his sport utility vehicle slammed into the back of a tow truck.

The Cardinals postponed their home game Sunday night against the Chicago Cubs. It was the second time in less than five years that a St. Louis pitcher died during the season. Darryl Kile was found dead in his hotel room in 2002. …

Police said the 29-year-old Hancock, who was single, was alone in his 2007 Ford Explorer when the SUV struck the rear of a flatbed tow truck at 12:35 a.m. The tow truck was in the left lane with its lights flashing while assisting another car that had crashed, Police Chief Joe Mokwa said.

Hancock died upon impact, Mokwa said. … Read full obituary

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Related:
Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile, 33

Dick Motz, the first bowler to take 100 wickets in test cricket for New Zealand, has died in Christchurch.

Motz, 67, was found dead yesterday by his former New Zealand and Canterbury captain Graham Dowling, The Press reported today. …

“He was a great fast bowler who never knew when to stop,” Dowling said. …

He was New Zealand cricketer of the year in 1961 and one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year in 1966 after New Zealand’s tour the previous year, when he topped the bowling aggregates and averages.

Motz reached a century of test wickets in 1969, against England at The Oval.

He finished on exactly 100 wickets after finding out that he had been bowling with a displaced vertebra and retired immediately. … Read full obituary

ZAGREB, April 29, 2007 — Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan died in a Zagreb clinic early today as a result of kidney cancer. He was 63.

Racan, who recently stepped down as the leader of the Social Democrats, led a governing coalition between 2000 and 2003. … Read full obituary

BERLIN (AP) — Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, a physicist who researched atomic weapons for the Nazis and became a philosophy professor who espoused pacifism after the Second World War, died Saturday, his family said. He was 94.

Born June 28, 1912, into a prominent family of jurists and theologians, Weizsaecker studied physics and mathematics in Leipzig, Berlin and Goettingen, and became a professor of physics. His brother Richard was president of Germany from 1984 to 1994.

Weizsaecker said he worked on the atomic bomb to avoid being conscripted into the Nazi army. He also insisted in postwar interviews that he was grateful the nuclear technology was never used by the Nazis.

But a secret recording of German scientists captured by the Allies caught Weizsaecker saying, after hearing of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japan, that, “If they were able to finish it by summer ‘45, then with a bit of luck, we could have been ready in winter ‘44-45.” … Read full obituary

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Johnny Perkins, who caught 163 passes in a seven-year NFL career spent entirely with the New York Giants, died of complications following heart surgery. He was 54. …

A second-round draft pick in 1977, Perkins played in 71 games and had 2,611 yards receiving and 18 touchdowns. Perkins retired after the 1983 season. …

Perkins’ best season was 1981, the year the Giants ended an 18-year postseason drought, when he led the team with career-high totals of 51 catches for 858 yards and six touchdowns. … Read full obituary

MOSCOW (Reuters) — Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who became an international symbol of the fight for artistic freedom under Soviet rule, died on Friday aged 80.

President Vladimir Putin, who last month feted the maestro when he made a frail appearance at his 80th birthday celebration in the Kremlin, called Rostropovich’s death a “huge loss”. …

Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, sheltered by Rostropovich during his tussles with Soviet authorities in the 1970s, said the musician’s passing was a “bitter blow”. …

The cellist’s death was announced four days after that of his friend, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, whom Rostropovich joined on the barricades to resist a coup by Soviet hardliners in 1991. … Read full obituary

Related:
Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, 76

Jack Valenti, the longtime head of the Motion Picture Association of America, died Thursday of complications from a stroke he suffered in March, his family announced. He was 85.

He died in Washington, less than a month after being hospitalized for a stroke, the MPAA announced Thursday evening.

Valenti spent 38 years as president of the U.S. movie industry’s trade association, serving as its top lobbyist and spokesman until his retirement in 2004. …

Valenti joined the MPAA in 1966 after being a special assistant to then-President Lyndon Johnson. He was central to the 1968 creation of the modern MPAA move-ratings system — now G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — He does the “Monster Mash” no more. Bobby “Boris” Pickett, whose dead-on Boris Karloff impression propelled the Halloween anthem to the top of the charts in 1962, making him one of pop music’s most enduring one-hit wonders, has died of leukemia. He was 69.

“Monster Mash” hit the Billboard chart three times: when it debuted in 1962, reaching No. 1 the week before Halloween; again in August 1970, and for a third time in May 1973. The resurrections were appropriate for a song where Pickett gravely intoned the forever-stuck-in-your-head chorus: “He did the monster mash. … It was a graveyard smash.” …

[Dr. Demento], who interviewed Pickett last year, said he maintained a sense of humor about his singular success: “As he loved to say at oldies shows, ‘And now I’m going to do a medley of my hit.’” …

The recording, done in a couple of hours, featured a then-unknown piano player named Leon Russell and a backing band christened The Crypt-Kickers. It was rejected by four major labels… Read full obituary

Anne Pitoniak, the Tony-nominated actress best known for her work in Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, “‘night, Mother,” has died of complications from cancer. She was 85.

Pitoniak died Sunday at her Manhattan home, her son, Christian Milord, told The New York Times. …

Pitoniak was also nominated for a Tony for her role in the 1994 revival of “Picnic.” Among her other Broadway credits were “The Octette Bridge Club” (1985), “Amy’s View” (1999) with Judi Dench, “Uncle Vanya” (2000), “Dance of Death” (2001) with Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren, and “Imaginary Friends” (2002). … Read full obituary

Warren E. Avis, a Michigan car dealership owner who, frustrated at waiting for taxis outside airports, founded a chain of car rental agencies and turned it into the nation’s second biggest, died yesterday at his home in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 92. …

In 1946, when Mr. Avis opened his first Avis Airlines Rent-A-Car in Florida and Michigan, all his rival companies were in downtown garages. … Read full obituary

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author David Halberstam was killed in a three-car accident this morning in Menlo Park [Calif.] near the Dumbarton Bridge, the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office announced.

Halberstam, author of 15 bestsellers, died at the scene after the car in which he was a front-seat passenger was broadsided by another vehicle. The coroner’s office said he died of massive internal injuries.

Halberstam, 73, was a passenger in a red Toyota Camry driven by UC-Berkeley student Kevin Jones. There were no other passengers in the vehicle. …

Halberstam wrote 15 bestsellers, including “The Best and the Brightest” on the Vietnam War, “Summer of ‘49″ on the 1949 pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Box and his latest book, “The Education of a Coach” on New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

His next book “The Coldest Winter” was to be an account of a battle of the Korean War. … Read full obituary

Former President Boris Yeltsin died of heart failure in a Kremlin hospital on Monday. He was 76.

The Kremlin’s top doctor, Sergei Mironov, said Yeltsin died at 3:45 p.m. at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. “He died as a result of progressive cardiovascular and multiple organ failures,” Mironov told reporters. …

It was not immediately clear what led to the heart failure. Less than two weeks ago, Yeltsin was planning a seaside vacation, said Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served for eight years as Yeltsin’s prime minister. …

Sergei Stepashin, who served as Yeltsin’s prime minister for just a few months, called Yeltsin “an entire epoch in the history of our country.”

“He was a complex man, but he assumed great responsibility for the fate of Russia,” said Stepashin, Interfax reported. Stepashin, now head of the Audit Chamber, was very loyal as prime minister and was visibly shaken when Yeltsin fired him in August 1999 to promote Putin to the post.

Yeltsin resigned four months later, leaving little time for the opposition to mount a meaningful challenge to Putin, his heir apparent. … Read full obituary

Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., died early Sunday of cancer, an aide said.

Millender-McDonald, who was 68, died at her home in Carson, Calif., said her chief of staff, Bandele McQueen.

McQueen could provide no details on what form of cancer Millender-McDonald had. …

She was in her seventh term representing a Southern California district that includes Compton, Long Beach and parts of Los Angeles. … Read full obituary