Dead Celebrity Alert

Marzano, a former Major League catcher who most recently served as an engaging host of the “Leading Off” show on MLB.com, died this weekend [Saturday] at his home in South Philadelphia, apparently after taking a fall down a flight of stairs and possibly after suffering a heart attack. He was 45.

Marzano, a first-round draft pick of the Red Sox in 1984 who played for the Sox, Rangers and Mariners, was in his second season as an on-air personality at MLB.com. …

Marzano played in the Minors for his hometown organization, and the Phillies, like so many others, expressed genuine sorrow upon the news of his passing. …

Marzano worked for WIP Radio in Philadelphia and at Comcast SportsNet as a postgame analyst for Phillies games before joining MLB.com. … Read full obituary

Robin Moore’s subjects as a writer included Pope John Paul II and the notorious former call girl, Xaviera Hollander with whom he wrote The Happy Hooker. In 1969 he wrote the novel, The French Connection, on which the acclaimed film was based. …

For a time Moore settled down to run a smallholding in Jamaica while writing schlock paperbacks. But hankering for wilder action than mucking out pigs, he trained with the US Army’s Green Berets whose Vietnam service yielded his multi-million selling The Green Berets (1965). This was further promoted by collaboration with an injured staff sergeant, Barry Sadler, on the rousingly patriotic song Ballad of the Green Berets in 1966. The Green Berets was made into a film, starring John Wayne, in 1968. …

He is survived by his fifth wife, Helen, and by two daughters.

Robin Moore, writer, was born on October 31, 1925. He died on February 21, 2008, aged 82 … Read full obituary

Thriller writer, creator of the private investigator Jacob Asch and author of a study of American satanism …

His satanic interests led to a non-fiction study, The Second Coming: Satanism in America (1970). It inspired his first Jacob Asch novel, The Dead Are Discreet (1974).

Whether in the boxing world of Dead Ringer (1977), or the slaughter houses of The Killing Floor (1976), or even music industry of Three With a Bullet (1984), Asch’s asides were the main entertainment… Read full obituary

Veteran Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, the longest-serving female member of parliament, died last night at the age of 77 after a short illness.

A formidable and well-respected Commons figure who championed backbench rights and shot to prominence as the chair of the transport select committee, Dunwoody was taken ill a week ago and died peacefully yesterday evening, according to her son. …

The MP for Crewe and Nantwich came from political stock. Both her grandmothers were suffragettes, her father, Morgan Phillips, was general secretary of the Labour party and her mother, Norah Phillips, served in the Lords before being made Lord Lieutenant of London. …

She was often a thorn in New Labour’s side…

“For me,” she said in 2005, “parliament is not only the most important forum for the British people, it is also the last defender of the rights of all citizens.” … Read full obituary

See also:
GwynethDunwoody.co.uk

The esteemed Martinique poet and politician Aimé Césaire, a leading figure in the movement for black consciousness, died Thursday, the French president’s office and a hospital said. He was 94.

Césaire died in Fort-de-France on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, the hospital that was treating him said.

Césaire was involved in the fight for French West Indian rights, and he also served as a lawmaker in the lower house of France’s parliament for nearly 50 years. French President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully led a campaign last year to change the name of Martinique’s airport in honor of Césaire. …

Césaire’s 1950 “Discourse on Colonialism” has become a classic of French political literature and helped develop the concept of negritude, which urges blacks to cultivate pride in their heritage. … Read full obituary

LONDON — She was an innocent beauty working in the catering department of a wartime ministry. He was making government films by day and writing poems at night. …

A poem soon followed — and “A Subaltern’s Love Song” became the most popular work of John Betjeman, one of his generation’s most loved poets.Joan Hunter Dunn, the muse who inspired the classic poem of love and longing, died in a London nursing home last week at age 92. She changed her name after she married and was known as Joan Jackson.

But she will be forever associated with the poem that captured her in the first bloom of youth. … Read full obituary

Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band’s sound on hits from “Hungry Heart” through “The Rising,” died Thursday. He was 58.

Federici, who battled melanoma for three years, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. News of his death was posted late Thursday on Springsteen’s official Web site.

According to published reports, Federici last performed with Springsteen and the band March 20, appearing during portions of a show in Indianapolis, Indiana. …

It was Federici, along with original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez, who first invited Springsteen to join their band. … Read full obituary

[Bob Kames was] … the man credited with the modern-day version of “Dance Little Bird,” better known as “The Chicken Dance.” He operated his Bob Kames Wonderful World of Music stores here for 42 years. He performed professionally, including a stint with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. He produced his own television specials and recorded more than 70 albums.

Kames, who had struggled with Alzheimer’s disease in recent years, died Wednesday [April 9, 2008] of prostate cancer. He was 82. …

In 1949, he composed a pop tune, calling it, “You Are My One True Love,” based on a Polish folk song. … It was picked up by London Records in England, becoming a huge hit. …

Kames went on to make his “Happy Organ” and other albums. In 1966, he produced his first television show, “The Bob Kames Family Room,” and other specials followed over the next 17 years. …

As for that “Chicken Dance,” even a self-promoter like Kames couldn’t quite believe how it caught on. … Read full obituary

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) Former state GOP Chairman Dan Ross, the man credited with creating South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Republican presidential primary, is dead at 83.

Ross died at a Barnwell County nursing home, Barnwell County coroner Lloyd B. Ward said Wednesday.

Ross chaired the state party from 1976 to 1980 after running the 1974 campaign of former Gov. James Edwards. Edwards was the first Republican governor elected in South Carolina since the 1890s. … Read full obituary

MIDLAND, Texas — Wally Kleine, a football standout who played defensive tackle for Notre Dame and the Washington Redskins, has died, family members said Wednesday. He was 43.

Kleine died of heart failure Sunday at a Lubbock hospital, his sister Emily Kleine said.

Kleine was an all-state player at Midland High School in 1981 and starred at Notre Dame. He was a second-round pick by the Redskins in 1987 and spent two years with the NFL team. … Read full obituary

A sexy star of “The Raven” and similar horror films has died

1 of Roger Corman’s so-called “scream queens” is gone.

Hazel Court died of a heart attack at age 82 at her home near Lake Tahoe, California.

1 of her most famous roles is in the 1963 film “The Raven.” Other films include “The Premature Burial,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Curse of Frankenstein” and “Devil Girl from Mars.” … Read full obituary

An active opponent of apartheid, Dr Ivan Toms went on to campaign against conscription and homophobic discrimination in South Africa.

Born in Cape Town in 1953 Toms completed his medical degree at the University of Cape Town in 1976 and two years later was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF). … In the end he served as a non-combatant doctor in Namibia.

A passionate Christian, Toms set up a clinic in the Crossroads squatter camp, peopled by penniless African migrants from the Eastern Cape in 1979. He was the only doctor serving 60,000 people. …

The openly gay Toms, whose three weeks’ fast in St George’s Cathedral as a protest against the deployment of the SADF in the townships cost him his gall bladder, was the target of dirty tricks campaigns, including posters lewdly denouncing his homosexuality. …

Dr Ivan Toms, physician and activist, was born on July 11, 1953, and was found dead on March 25, 2008, aged 54 … Read full obituary

Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday. He was 90.

He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he came up with the scientific concept that small effects lead to big changes, something that was explained in a simple example known as the “butterfly effect.” He explained how something as minuscule as a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil changes the constantly moving atmosphere in ways that could later trigger tornadoes in Texas.

His discovery of “deterministic chaos” brought about “one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton,” said the committee that awarded Lorenz the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences. … Read full obituary

Cameron Diaz’s father passed away…

The elder Diaz, Emilio Diaz, was reportedly down with the flu that turned into pneumonia. His death was sudden and it came as a shock to everyone he knew as he was in good health.

Emilio Diaz was 58 years old and was a popular resident of Seal Beach, Calif. He was briefly seen starring alongside his daughter in the 1998 movie “There’s Something About Mary,” in which he appeared as “Jailbird.” … Read full obituary

Johnny Byrne was one of the most prolific and best respected TV and screenwriters of our time. He wrote for many of British television’s classic series, including All Creatures Great and Small and Doctor Who. As well as writing, he created the hugely successful rural policing drama Heartbeat. …

In 1971 he got his first taste of screenwriting with the TV movie Season of the Witch, and in 1972 scripted the Spike Milligan biopic Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall. Byrne now engaged full-time in what was to be his lifelong occupation as a writer of TV drama series including Doctor Who, Space 1999, Love Hurts, One by One, Tales of the Unexpected, Noah’s Ark and Heartbeat — a series he created. But perhaps he will be best remembered for his long involvement in the much-loved TV vet series All Creatures Great and Small, for which he was story consultant and wrote some 30 episodes. …

Johnny Byrne, television screenwriter, was born in 1935. He died of cancer on April 2, 2008, aged about 77 … Read full obituary