Dead Celebrity Alert

Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian director whose chilly canticles of alienation were cornerstones of international filmmaking in the 1960s, inspiring intense measures of admiration, denunciation and confusion, died on Monday at his home in Rome, Italian news media reported today. He was 94. He died on the same day as Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish filmmaker who died at his home in Sweden earlier Monday.

“With Antonioni, not only has one of the greatest living directors been lost, but also a master of the modern screen,” said the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni. His office said it was making plans for Mr. Antonioni’s body to lie in state on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Tall, cerebral and resolutely serious, Mr. Antonioni harkens back to a time in the middle of the last century when cinema-going was an intellectual pursuit, when purposely opaque passages in famously difficult films spurred long nights of smoky argument at sidewalk cafes, and when fashionable directors like Mr. Antonioni, Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard were chased down the Cannes waterfront by camera-wielding cineastes demanding to know what on earth they meant by their latest outrage.

Mr. Antonioni is probably best known for “Blow-Up,” a 1966 drama set in Swinging London about a fashion photographer who comes to believe that a photograph he took of two lovers in a public park also shows, hidden in the background, evidence of a murder. But his true, lasting contribution to cinema resides in an earlier trilogy — “L’Avventura” in 1959, “La Notte” in 1960 and “L’Eclisse” in 1962 — which explores the filmmaker’s tormented central vision that people had become emotionally unglued from one another. … Read full obituary

Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, died Monday following a battle with leukemia, a source told KCRA 3.

Walsh died at about 11 a.m. at home, officials said.

Walsh was head coach with the 49ers from 1979 to 1988, where he won three Super Bowl championships and perfected the schemes that became known as the West Coast offense during his Hall of Fame career. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — Veteran talk show host Tom Snyder, whose idiosyncratic interviewing style bemused and annoyed late-night TV viewers during three decades, has died after a long battle with leukemia, associates said on Monday. He was 71.

The former host of NBC’s “Tomorrow” show and CBS’ “The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder” died on Sunday evening at his home in San Francisco, said his longtime agent and lawyer Ed Hookstratten. …

Comedian David Letterman, who took over Snyder’s time slot when Snyder left NBC and later hired Snyder to follow his own show after moving to CBS, said: “Tom was the very thing that all broadcasters long to be — compelling.”

Snyder gained national fame for hosting “Tomorrow” in NBC’s post-”Tonight Show” spot from 1973 to 1982, with some of his more memorable guests including former Beatle John Lennon, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols and convicted killer Charles Manson.

But a quirky on-air presence — including frequent digressions about his personal life and the habit of laughing gustily at his own jokes shared with an unseen crew — made him as much the center of attention as his interview subjects. … Read full obituary

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, the president of his foundation said. He was 89.

“It’s an unbelievable loss for Sweden, but even more so internationally,” Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which administers the directors’ archives, told The Associated Press.

Bergman died at his home in Faro, Sweden, Swedish news agency TT said, citing his daughter Eva Bergman. A cause of death was not immediately available.

Through more than 50 films, Bergman’s vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.

Bergman, who approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, became one of the towering figures of serious filmmaking.

He was “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera,” Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988. … Read full obituary

Former EastEnders actor Mike Reid has died at the age of 67 after suffering a suspected heart attack, his agent said.

The actor, who played Frank Butcher in the BBC soap, was living in Spain at the time of his death.

Reid became a stand-up comedian having worked as a stunt man. He went on to work in TV shows including Runaround, Doctor Who and Minder. …

[His agent David Hahn] paid tribute to Reid, who he described as “a very, very, very, funny” man. … Read full obituary

French actor Michel Serrault, best known internationally for the 1978 comedy La Cage aux Folles, has died after a long illness, his family announced late Sunday.

Serrault, 79, one of the great names of French cinema, made 135 films in a career covering more than 50 years, and shone in straight roles as well as the comedy for which he was perhaps better known.

La Cage aux Folles, in which he played a flamboyant drag performer, was adapted from a stage hit about a gay couple. It proved an unexpected hit internationally. … Read full obituary

Bill Flemming, one of the original announcers on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” who was also known for his Olympics, college football and golf broadcasts, died July 20 in Petoskey, Michigan He was 80.

The cause was prostate cancer, his son, W. Mason Flemming, said.

For over 60 years, Flemming was one of the principal voices in the rise of electronic journalism in sports. He announced 11 Olympics and more than 600 events for “Wide World of Sports,” once shuttling from hurling in Ireland to car racing in Santa Monica, California, to a parachuting contest in Bavaria, all in a single month. …

One of his successes was getting an interview with the reclusive chess champion Bobby Fischer during his 1972 matches with Boris Spassky in Iceland. … Read full obituary

Former Hamer government minister Walter Jona, credited with saving thousands of lives by ushering in compulsory seatbelt laws in Victoria, has died after a long fight with cancer.

Mr Jona held the Melbourne seat of Hawthorn for the Liberal Party for 21 years and was behind the 1971 laws that made seatbelts mandatory.

The 81-year-old held the seat of Hawthorn, now held by Liberal Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu, from 1964 until 1985. He served as Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs from 1976 until 1979 and was later minister for community services. … Read full obituary

Laszlo Kovacs, one of Hollywood’s most influential and respected directors of photography, died Saturday night in his sleep. He was 74.

Kovacs lensed the landmark cinematic achievement “Easy Rider” and compiled about 60 credits including “Five Easy Pieces,” “Shampoo,” “Paper Moon,” “New York, New York,” “What’s Up, Doc,” “Ghostbusters,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Miss Congeniality.”

The Hungary-born cinematographer also carried during his career a remarkable story of courage that occurred 50 years ago during his country’s revolution. …

Kovacs was an active member of the American Society of Cinematographers, and in 2002, he received the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, the organization’s highest honor.

In 1998, he received two lifetime achievement awards for cinematography: one at the Hawaii International Film Festival and one at CamerImage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, in Torun, Poland. … Read full obituary

SAN FRANCISCO — The Bay Area news community is mourning the loss of beloved veteran television and radio news anchor Pete Wilson.

Wilson, 62, died Friday night of a massive heart attack suffered during hip replacement surgery at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, according to KGO-TV, ABC-7.

Wilson co-anchored the 6 p.m. weekday KGO-TV, ABC-7 newscast since 2002 and hosted a daily afternoon talk show for KGO-AM 810 NewsTalk since 2000. Before that, Wilson anchored newscasts for KRON-4 in San Francisco beginning in 1990 and KXTL-TV in Sacramento. …

“Pete was one of the most valued and respected news professionals in the Bay Area and the country,” said ABC-7 President and General Manager Valari Staab said today. “For more than 30 years, he was welcomed into the homes of thousands of local viewers reporting on every major news event that touched their lives. This is a deep loss both personally and professional for all of his friends and colleagues at Channel 7 and for me.” …

Wilson received a number of broadcast journalism honors, including the Peabody Award, several Emmy Awards and many local and national awards. … Read full obituary

(CNN) — Tammy Faye Messner, the former televangelist and Christian singer who battled drug addiction and later inoperable cancer, died Friday morning, CNN’s Larry King said Saturday night. He said the family had asked him to make the delayed announcement.

She was 65.

Messner was a guest on “Larry King Live” on Thursday. She told him she couldn’t swallow food, and weighed only 65 pounds.

King said the family postponed the death announcement for a day so family members could gather. Messner was cremated and interred in a remote part of Kansas at the Kansas-Oklahoma state line, King said. …

“She died peacefully. Anyone who saw her on our show this week knew that she didn’t have long.”

King asked her Thursday if she were “a little scared.”

She responded, “A little bit,” adding that she mainly worried about her family. … Read full obituary

WASHINGTON, July 18 — Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who fought in jungles and deserts and commanded American Special Operations forces before becoming a senior adviser to President Bush for counterterrorism, died Wednesday in Peoria, Ill., where he was born and returned to live in retirement. He was 67.

His death was confirmed by the Peoria County coroner, Johnna Ingersoll, who said General Downing, a retired four-star Army officer, was admitted to a hospital on Monday with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer, and bacterial meningitis.

After graduating from West Point in 1962, General Downing served for 34 years in uniform, including two infantry combat tours in Vietnam. He was in charge of Special Operations missions during the invasion of Panama in 1989 and commanded a joint Special Operations task force during the first Persian Gulf war, operating deep behind Iraqi lines. …

General Downing served in the 1990s as commander of the Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s unconventional warfare units and elite counterterrorism teams.

That experience earned him an appointment by President Bush as deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism one month after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In that job, General Downing sought to coordinate the sometimes fractious efforts against terrorism.

He was said by colleagues to have been an early champion of fomenting insurrection against Saddam Hussein through a combination of Iraqi rebels supported by American commandos. As the concept circulated at the White House and Pentagon, it became known as the Downing Plan.

General Downing served less than a year in the National Security Council job. … Read full obituary

Jerry Hadley’s attractive lyric tenor voice, all-American good looks and exceptional acting ability carried him from a humble farm upbringing in northern Illinois to the world’s major opera houses, including a distinguished career with Lyric Opera of Chicago for nearly two decades.

Mr. Hadley died Wednesday at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., two days after he was taken off life support. He was left with severe brain damage after attempting suicide with an air rifle at his home in Clinton Corners, N.Y., on July 10, police said. He was 55.

During the late 1980s and 1990s he was riding high in the opera world, delighting audiences in Mozart, French lyric and Italian roles and modern parts such as Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress.”

But opera and concert bookings fell off in his later years. Although Mr. Hadley recently had discussed reviving his career by moving into character roles, his personal life was complicated by bouts of depression and financial worries, according to friends. … Read full obituary

Jack Odell, a self-trained engineer whose daughter’s mischievous habit of taking spiders to school in a matchbox prompted him to make her a tiny steamroller as a substitute — an invention that led to Matchbox Toys, maker of 3 billion Lilliputian vehicles in 12,000 models — died on July 7 in London. He was 87.

His son-in-law Josh Walsh, who announced the death, said Mr. Odell had had Parkinson’s disease.

The steamroller, made of brass and painted shiny red and green, satisfied Mr. Odell’s daughter, Anne, and so impressed her friends that Mr. Odell raced to meet their demand. It seemed a dandy toy: just right for a child’s hand but hard to swallow, no batteries, violence-free, quiet and costing just pennies to make.

By the next year, 1953, the steamroller and vehicles like it were rolling off a production line in a small factory that Mr. Odell and a pair of partners had set up in a former London pub, The Rifleman. After the steamroller came a Land Rover, a London bus, a bulldozer and a fire engine. In 1954, the 19th vehicle in the series was rolled out: a dainty MG TD roadster, the first Matchbox car. The toys quickly spread to the United States where they typically sold for 49 cents. … Read full obituary

Former NSW player and Test umpire, Tom Brooks OAM, passed away on Monday after a short illness, aged 88, Cricket NSW announced.

A Life Member of the NSW Cricket Association, Brooks made his First-Class debut on New Years Day 1947 and went onto play 16 matches for the state.

He later umpired 23 Test matches, standing in his final game in 1978. … Read full obituary