Dead Celebrity Alert

Robert Goulet, the handsome, big-voiced baritone whose Broadway debut in “Camelot” launched an award-winning stage and recording career, has died. He was 73.

The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant, said Goulet spokesman Norm Johnson.

He had been awaiting a lung transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being found last month to have a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis. …

The Massachusetts-born Goulet, who spent much of his youth in Canada, gained stardom in 1960 with “Camelot,” the Lerner and Loewe musical that starred Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as his Queen Guenevere. …

He became a hit with American TV viewers with appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other programs. … Read full obituary

Country music icon Porter Wagoner has died in Tennessee at 80, days after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Wagoner was hospitalized Oct. 15, and was transferred Friday from the hospital to hospice care. He died Sunday night, The Nashville Tennessean reported.

Wagoner — a member of the Grand Ole Opry for 50 years — began his career with the Blue Ridge Boys singing on a Missouri radio station, and starred in “The Porter Wagoner Show” on TV from 1960 to 1979. Another country music icon, Dolly Parton, became an international star during her seven years on the show. … Read full obituary

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Max McGee, the unexpected hero of the first Super Bowl and a long-time challenge for Hall of Fame coach Vince Lombardi, died Saturday after falling from the roof of his home, police confirmed. He was 75.

Police were called to the former Green Bay receiver’s Deephaven home around 5:20 p.m., Sgt. Chris Whiteside said. Efforts to resuscitate McGee were unsuccessful.

McGee was blowing leaves off the roof when he fell, according to news reports. A phone message left at a number listed for an M. McGee wasn’t immediately returned. …

Inserted into Packers’ lineup when Boyd Dowler was sidelined by a shoulder injury, McGee went on to catch the first touchdown pass in Super Bowl history in Green Bay’s 35-10 victory over Kansas City in January 1967. Still hung over from a night on the town, McGee caught seven passes for 138 yards and two TDs. … Read full obituary

SALISBURY, Conn. (AP) — Catherine Roraback, a pioneering attorney who was among the founders of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, died this week at a local retirement home, according to family members.

She was 87. …

Some of the cases that Roraback litigated led to landmark rulings establishing privacy rights and the right of access to contraception.

Roraback, who described her work as protecting the rights of “dissenters and the dispossessed,” also defended the Black Panthers in New Haven and civil rights workers in Mississippi. … Read full obituary

Joey Bishop, the stone-faced comedian who found success in nightclubs, television and movies but became most famous as a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, has died at 89.

He was the group’s last surviving member. Peter Lawford died in 1984, Sammy Davis Jr. in 1990, Dean Martin in 1995, and Sinatra in 1998.

Bishop died Wednesday night of multiple causes at his home in Newport Beach, publicist and longtime friend Warren Cowan said Thursday.

The Rat Pack — originally a social group surrounding Humphrey Bogart — became a show business sensation in the early 1960s, appearing at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in shows that combined music and comedy in a seemingly chaotic manner.

Reviewers often claimed that Bishop played a minor role, but Sinatra knew otherwise. He termed the comedian “the Hub of the Big Wheel,” with Bishop coming up with some of the best one-liners and beginning many jokes with his favorite phrase, “Son of a gun!” … Read full obituary

Singer Teresa Brewer, an Ohio native who topped the charts in the 1950s with such hits as “Till I Waltz Again with You” and performed with jazz legends Count Basie and Duke Ellington, died Wednesday. She was 76.

Brewer died at her home in New Rochelle of a neuromuscular disease, family spokesman Bill Munroe said. Her four daughters were at her bedside.

Brewer had scores of hits in the 1950s and a burgeoning film career but pared down her public life to raise her children. She re-emerged a decade later to perform with jazz greats Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and Wynton Marsalis. … Read full obituary

Deborah Kerr, who shared one of Hollywood’s most famous kisses and made her mark with such roles as the correct widow in “The King and I” and the unhappy officer’s wife in “From Here to Eternity,” has died. She was 86.

Kerr, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, died Tuesday in Suffolk in eastern England, her agent, Anne Hutton, said Thursday.

For many she will be remembered best for her kiss with Burt Lancaster as waves crashed over them on a Hawaiian beach in the wartime drama “From Here to Eternity.” …

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Kerr six times for best actress, but never gave her an Academy Award until it presented an honorary Oscar in 1994 for her distinguished career as an “artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection, discipline and elegance.” …

She played virtually every part imaginable from murderer to princess to a Roman Christian slave to a nun. …

Among her other movies is “An Affair to Remember” with Cary Grant. … Read full obituary

Australian author and playwright Steve J. Spears died yesterday at an Adelaide nursing home after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 56.

Spears, who had an international hit in 1976 with the play The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, a wickedly funny story about an ageing gay elocution teacher who fell for one of his pupils, was based in Sydney for more than two decades but returned to Adelaide about eight years ago to be closer to friends.

Spears developed lung cancer early last year but was given the all-clear in February. Two months later he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour after losing control of his car. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Actress Carol Bruce, perhaps best known for her role as Mama Carlson on television’s “WKRP in Cincinnati,” has died. She was 87.

Bruce died October 9 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in suburban Woodland Hills, spokeswoman Jaime Larkin said in a news release. …

She appeared in the films “This Woman Is Mine,” “Keep ‘em Flying” and “Behind the Eight Ball” between 1941 and 1942, then returned to the stage, where she was praised for her Broadway performances in the 1946 revival of “Showboat.” …

In 1979, she took over the role that Sylvia Sidney had originated on “WKRP in Cincinnati” a year earlier as Mama Carlson, the tough-talking owner of a radio station managed by her son Arthur, played by Gordon Jump. Bruce kept the recurring role until the series ended in 1982. … Read full obituary

From September 22:

ATLANTIS, Florida (AP) — The Rev. Rex Humbard, a former itinerant preacher whose televangelism ministry once reached more parts of the globe than any other religious program, died Friday, a family spokeswoman said. He was 88.

Humbard died of natural causes at a South Florida hospital near his Lantana home, family spokeswoman Kathy Scott said. …

As with his contemporaries Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, Humbard’s ministry began to flourish in the post-World War II era. …

By 1970, Humbard’s syndicated program appeared on more TV stations in America than any other program and eventually reached more than 600 stations, according to the 1999 reference work “Religious Leaders of America.” …

His ministry suffered from internal disputes and extensive borrowing. In the 1970s, federal and state regulators complained that millions of dollars in notes that he had issued to followers over the years violated securities laws.

Humbard eventually left in 1982 and the congregation dwindled, sometimes with as few as 75 people showing up. … Read full obituary

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Al Oerter was destined to become an athlete, although he often wondered what he might have been if not for a chance meeting with a discus. …

The discus great who won gold medals in four straight Olympics to become one of track and field’s biggest stars in the 1950s and ’60s, died Monday of heart failure, less than two weeks after his 71st birthday. …

Oerter won gold medals in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Oerter and Carl Lewis are the only track and field stars to capture the same event in four consecutive Olympics. Oerter, however, is the only one to set an Olympic record in each of his victories. … Read full obituary

Popular former West Coast premiership player Chris Mainwaring will be remembered for his central role in establishing the Eagles as a formidable force in the AFL both on and off the field.

The charismatic wingman, who died overnight, aged 41, was one of the club’s most recognisable figures as they became the competition powerhouse of the early 1990s, after entering the AFL in 1987. …

Blond, good looking and a keen surfer, he enjoyed a reputation as a larrikin and a party boy during his playing days.

Following his retirement, his ongoing popularity and understanding of the game helped him establish a media career.

He worked for the Seven Network in Perth as a newsreader and sports reporter, as well as working on Perth radio. … Read full obituary