Dead Celebrity Alert

December 23, 1971–March 10, 2010

Haim did not come from a showbiz family but his parents, concerned at his shyness, put him into acting classes. By ten he was appearing in commercials, and in the mid 80s had a regular role in the TV comedy series The Edison Twins. After a few films, he scored a hit as Liza Minelli’s dying son in the 1985 TV movie A Time to Live. In the post-divorce Murphy’s Romance he played Sally Field’s son, though it got limited distribution after a troubled production period.

After starring in the sub-John Hughes teen-comedy Lucas (1986) he fought teenage vampires in The Lost Boys (1987). A cult hit, it made Haim and his co-stars teen idols. It also introduced him to some important long-term friends and collaborators, notably Corey Feldman.

But he was succumbing to addiction, from cocaine through to crack, and eventually prescription drugs. The struggle crippled his career: the 90s saw a series of poor films and straight-to-video releases. Eventually his manager, Lost Boys co-star Brooke McCarter, dropped him and in 1997 he filed for bankruptcy. Read Full Obituary

August 29, 1923 - July 29, 2008

The Indian film producer Fakir Chand Mehra became one of the giants of Bollywood after 1953 when he established Eagle Films, today one of the largest film production houses in India.

The company has released at least one big film a year and has had some of the biggest box-office hits in India. It also owns two of the most famous cinemas in the country, the Plaza in Delhi and the Minerva in Bombay — the latter of which is one of the oldest cinemas in India and, with more than 1,300 seats, among the biggest.

Mehra produced some of the most memorable films in India, including The Professor, Ujala (The Awakening) and Amrapali and, in 1976, he negotiated a joint Indo-Soviet co-production of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, which cast some of the biggest stars of Indian and Soviet cinema. It was directed by his son, Umesh, and was a hit in both countries. … Read full obituary

Anita Page, the last surviving star of the silent movies, has died at the age of 98 in Los Angeles.

Page’s career spanned 84 years — and her lasting fame endured despite a 60-year career break forced upon the actress at the height of her fame after she refused to sleep with a studio boss.

She had started out as an extra in 1924 and broke into the big time with a powerful performance in the 1928 silent melodrama Our Dancing Daughters, alongside Joan Crawford. … Read full obituary

October 5, 1928 - August 25, 2008

There has always been in Ulster a breed of Protestants who, in the words of the poet Seamus Heaney, are at ease with a sense of Ireland and Irishness. One of these was the singer and documentary film-maker David Hammond, who died last week at the age of 79.

Hammond was an original. But he was also an archetype. While so many of his co-religionists spent the 1960s and beyond engaged in open warfare with their Catholic and nationalist fellow countrymen, Hammond followed his own path, empathising with both communities but only ever taking the side of the combatants’ shared humanity. He loved Ireland and all its people — especially their song. But most of all he loved Ulster, that curious hybrid of gaelic culture, Scottish influence and English dominance. … Read full obituary

Voiceover Master Don LaFontaine has died. He was 68.

LaFontaine, known as the “King of Voiceovers,” died Monday afternoon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. LaFontaine’s agent, Vanessa Gilbert, tells ET that he passed away following complications from Pneumothorax, the presence of air or gas in the pleural cavity, the result of a collapsed lung. The official cause of death has not yet been released.

Over the past 25 years, LaFontaine cemented his position as the “King of Voiceovers.” Aside from being the preeminent voice in the movie trailer industry, Don also worked as the voice of Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, as well as for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and UPN, in addition to TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network. … Read full obituary

July 16, 1929 - July 9, 2008

An influential manager of comic talent, Charles Joffe was, in partnership with Jack Rollins, the producer of almost all of Woody Allen’s films, most notably Annie Hall, which beat Star Wars to the Best Picture Oscar in 1977. In addition Joffe and Rollins fostered the careers of Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and had been among the first to promote Lenny Bruce. The actor Robin Williams good-naturedly called the cigar-brandishing Joffe “the Beast” in tribute to his tenacity in wresting worthwhile payment from studios. … Read full obituary

Chester-born comedian and actor Hugh Lloyd MBE, famed for co-starring with the legendary Tony Hancock, has died aged 85. …

He went on to star in 25 episodes of ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ from 1957-61 as the comedy great’s sidekick, including the classic ‘Blood Donor’ episode.

Following that great success, he got the title role in ‘Hugh and I’ with Terry Scott. Other TV credits included ‘The Gnomes of Dulwich’, ‘Lollipop Loves Mr Mole’, ‘Jury’ and ‘You Rang M’Lord’. He also starred in and devised the series ‘Lord Trump’. … Read full obituary

January 29, 1916 - May 22, 2008

The Czech actress Hana Pravda was a survivor of both the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps. She was a leading light in Prague theatre and later, from the 1960s, enjoyed a successful career in British television and films. Then, when she might have expected to move into quiet retirement, her moving wartime diary of her escape from a Nazi death march was rediscovered. Published in Czech and in English as I Was Writing This Diary for You, Sasha, it was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2000, and was recognised as one of the most vivid memoirs of the Holocaust. … Read full obituary

Evelyn Keyes, 91, a leading lady of dozens of Hollywood films who wryly dismissed much of her career, noting that she was most remembered for a bit part as Scarlett O’Hara’s younger sister Suellen in “Gone With the Wind,” died July 4 at a care facility in Montecito, Calif. She had uterine cancer.

Ms. Keyes wrote two memoirs that brushed by her appearances in more than 40 movies. Instead, she spoke at length about her marriages to director John Huston and bandleader Artie Shaw, as well as sexual conquests that included Kirk Douglas, David Niven and Anthony Quinn. …

Her light touch graced comedies (”Here Comes Mr. Jordan”) and musicals (”The Jolson Story,” “A Thousands and One Nights”), and she could convincingly adapt to the required accent, whether Georgia peach (”Gone With the Wind”) or English cockney (”Ladies in Retirement”). … Read full obituary

Don S. Davis, a college professor who found a second career as a character actor, gaining notice for his roles in TV’s “Stargate: SG-1″ and “Twin Peaks,” died of a heart attack June 29 at his home in Gibsons, Canada. He was 65. …

A native of the Missouri Ozarks who had served in the U.S. Army, Davis drew upon those experiences in his frequent portrayals of authority figures on television and film. He had a regular role as Gen. George S. Hammond on the science-fiction TV series “Stargate: SG-1″ from 1997 to 2006 and a recurring role as Maj. Garland Briggs on the quirky “Twin Peaks” in the early ’90s. He also appeared periodically as Scully’s father in “The X-Files” TV series about FBI agents investigating unsolved cases. … Read full obituary

September 18, 1929 - July 2, 2008

A large, jolly woman with an ample bosom and twinkling eyes, Elizabeth Spriggs was one of Britain’s best and most cherished character actresses, equally at home in Shakespeare and Dickens as in contemporary television drama. Superb in comic roles, she could also give her characters depth and gravitas. …

She served a long apprenticeship in regional theatre, crowned with spells at the Bristol Old Vic and Birmingham Repertory, where she played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Madame Ranevsky in The Cherry Orchard. But she was well into her thirties before she achieved national recognition. This came in 1962 when she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company under Peter Hall, and stayed for 14 years, appearing regularly at Stratford and the RSC’s London homes, the Aldwych Theatre and later the Barbican. … Read full obituary

Dody Goodman, whose ditzy comic persona was well known to patrons of theatre, film and television from the 1950s on, died June 22 at the Actors Fund Home in New Jersey, a spokesperson for the Fund confirmed. Her age was thought to be 92 by many accounts, though the subject of her birthdate was something she was known to falsify throughout her career. Her agent said she was 94. …

Her airhead persona, buttressed by curly hair, wide childlike blue eyes and a long, loopy grin, attracted the attention of Jack Paar, then the host of “The Tonight Show.” …

Fame and good fortune returned in the late ’70s when she took on the role of Martha Shumway in the widely praised, if short-lived, mock soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and made a much-commented-upon supporting turn in the film of “Grease.” A semi-regular role on “Diff’rent Strokes” followed. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in an 1984 revival of Ah, Wilderness!. She also spent a great deal of time in productions of Nunsense and its sequels. … Read full obituary

January 12, 1908 - June 19, 2008

In the 1950s Jean Delannoy was the French film director whom the upstart talent of the Nouvelle Vague most liked to bait and wound.

François Truffaut, the future director of Jules et Jim, told the readers of Cahiers du Cinéma that he had sat through Delannoy’s 1954 Jean Gabin drama Chiens perdus sans collier three times, in order to learn how not [to] direct.

His sins, in Truffaut’s eyes, included the academic precision of his images, the coolness of his temperament — both undoubted characteristics — and something much harder to prove: insincerity. … Read full obituary

October 27, 1927 - May 16, 2008

Jimmy Slyde was the aptly named practitioner of a sinuous, slithering form of tap dance that helped to define the heyday of an ever-changing cultural phenomenon. Whereas modern tap is aggressive, sometimes even obstreperous, Slyde embodied a seemingly effortless ability to, well, slide across a stage, often letting slip the odd mot juste as he made his way past an admiring public.

An early acolyte of such African-American tap legends as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Slyde in turn helped pave the way for the likes of Savion Glover, who transformed Slyde’s vaunted rhythmic ease into something deliberately rougher and more raw. The two generations of performer were both seen on Broadway in the elaborate 1989 revue Black and Blue, which began in Paris in 1985 before settling into a two year run in New York, where it won three Tony Awards. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died Tuesday. She was 86.

Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.

She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.

Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in 1946’s “Ziegfeld Follies” to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1956’s “The Band Wagon” (with Astaire).

She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearances with her husband, singer Tony Martin. … Read full obituary