Dead Celebrity Alert

Film critic Joel Siegel has died Friday in New York at the age of 63, WCBS-TV New York reports.

Siegel, best known as the resident movie critic on ABC’s “Good Morning America” for 25 years, was surrounded by family and friends as he passed away after a long battle with colon cancer. … Read full obituary

Liz Claiborne, the designer of indefatigable career clothes for professional women entering the workforce en masse beginning in the 1970s, died Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 78. … Read full obituary

Obit to come.

MILWAUKEE, June 26 (AP) — Ralph F. Stayer, the founder of a Wisconsin sausage company [Johnsonville Sausage Company] that helped popularize bratwurst in the United States, died Sunday in Florida. He was 92. … Read full obituary

Hank Medress, whose vocals with the doo wop group the Tokens helped propel their irrepressible single “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to the top of the charts and who produced hits with other groups, has died of lung cancer. He was 68. … Read full obituary

Kenneth L. Franklin, long the Hayden Planetarium’s top astronomer, whose accomplishments included helping pinpoint the first noise known to have come from another planet and inventing a watch for use on the moon, died in Boulder, Colo., on Monday when the sun rose in New York at 5:07 a.m. He was 84, and had for years provided astronomical information to this newspaper, including the hour of sunrise. … Read full obituary

Gianfranco Ferre, the Italian designer known as the “architect of fashion” for his structured, sculpted shapes and for his groundbreaking tenure at Christian Dior, has died. He was 62.

Ferre was taken to the San Raffaele hospital in Milan on Friday after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage. The hospital, in a statement authorised by Ferre’s family, said he died at 9pm last night. … Read full obituary

Charles Lee Remington, the intellectual patriarch of modern American lepidopterology, the scientific study of butterflies and moths, died on May 31 in Hamden, Conn. He was 85. … Read full obituary

June 16, 2007 — Claudia Cohen, a high-profile gossip reporter for television and newspapers who was a frequent subject of the gossip columns herself, partly because of her marriage to, and remunerative divorce from, the billionaire businessman Ronald O. Perelman, died yesterday in Manhattan. She was 56 and had homes in Manhattan and Easthampton, N.Y. … Read full obituary

Oskar Morawetz, one of Canada’s best-known and frequently performed classical composers, died Wednesday in Toronto at age 90.

Winner of two Juno awards for classical music, Morawetz was known for lyrical melody, lively rhythm and innovative exploitation of instrumental colour. … Read full obituary

WWE is saddened to learn of the death of WWE Hall of Famer “Sensational” Sherri. She was 49.

She passed away at her mother’s home in Birmingham, Ala. Friday morning, according to her husband of 10 years, Robert Schrull. … Read full obituary

Ruth Graham, who surrendered dreams of missionary work in Tibet to marry a suitor who became the world’s most renowned evangelist, died Thursday. She was 87. Graham died at 5:05 p.m. at her home at Little Piney Cove, surrounded by her husband and all five of their children, said a statement released by Larry Ross, Billy Graham’s spokesman. … Read full obituary

Kurt Waldheim, 88, a seemingly colorless diplomat who became secretary general of the United Nations and president of his native Austria only to be barred from the United States for suspected involvement in Nazi war crimes, died today at a Vienna hospital. He had been treated for an infection since last month. … Read full obituary

Frankie Abernathy, a cast member on The Real World: San Diego in 2004, died Saturday night at her mother’s Shorewood, Wisconsin, home.

An official cause of death is yet to be determined, but the 25-year-old had suffered from cystic fibrosis, a hereditary disease that causes a buildup of mucus in the lungs and pancreas and inhibits the body’s ability to move water and salt in and out of cells. … Read full obituary

Senegalese movie icon, Ousmane Sembene, died on Saturday evening in Dakar at the age of 84, following a protracted illness. Sembene, who will long be remembered as the “father of the African cinema”, adapted most of his novels for the movie. Some of the novels include: ‘Borom Saret’ in 1963, ‘La Noire de …’ (1966), ‘Le Mandat’ (1968), ‘Xala’ (1974), ‘Guelawar’ in 1992 and his last feature-length film ‘Molade’ in 2004. … Read full obituary

A man hailed as one of Britain’s greatest polar explorers has died. Sir Wally Herbert became the first person to reach the North Pole on foot without motorised transport in 1969.

The 72-year-old, from Laggan near Aviemore, had suffered from diabetes and heart trouble and died in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actress Mala Powers has died of complications from leukemia. She was 76.

Powers played Roxanne to Jose Ferrer’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” and starred in other films of the 1940s and 1950s. … Read full obituary

New Zealand’s oldest surviving film star, Witarina Harris, has died at the age of 101.

In 1928, aged 22, she was picked by Universal Pictures to play the starring role of Princess Miro in the silent movie Under The Southern Cross, later known as The Devil’s Pit. … Read full obituary

The former leader of the Warumpi Band, for cultural reasons now only referred to as George Burrarrawanga, is being remembered in a traditional Gumatj ceremony on Elcho Island off the Northern Territory. … Read full obituary

Lynne Randell, the Mod from Mordialloc who scored a top 10 hit in 1967 with Ciao Baby, has died.

Friends say Randell, 57, was found dead at her home on Friday morning after a four-year battle against an illness that had affected her nervous system. There were no suspicious circumstances. A note was reportedly found nearby. … Read full obituary

Playwright Lee Nagrin, whose new work Behind the Lid will debut in New York City next week, succumbed to complications from advanced colon cancer this morning in New York City. She was 78. … Read full obituary

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William Silver, who unsuccessfully sought to be ordained by the Presbyterian Church in 1975, died at 59 of AIDS complications on May 26, the New York Times reported. He graduated from the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan in 1969 and came out in 1973. When he applied to work as an assistant pastor at the Central Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue, “he shocked committee members interviewing him by saying he was gay,” the newspaper reported. They sought guidance from the national Church and in 1978 its general assembly banned “unrepentant” gays from ministry. … Read full obituary

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