Merlin Olsen, the Hall of Fame tackle who anchored the Los Angeles Rams’ Fearsome Foursome, the line that glamorized defensive play in the National Football League, died early Thursday at a hospital in Duarte, Calif. He was 69. …
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. …
1919 - September 4, 2008
“I notice only the ugliness in something,” the Milanese couturier Mila Schön said. “Take that away and it becomes beautiful.” Elegance and sobriety were perhaps better descriptions of her pared-down tailoring, which nonetheless for 50 years flattered with its graceful lines clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy and Farah Diba, the wife of the Shah of Iran. …
July 6, 1928 - September 7, 2008
Peter Glossop was one of the pre-eminent baritones of the Sixties and Seventies and specialised in such testing roles as Rigoletto, Iago, Rodrigo (Don Carlos) and Count di Luna (Il trovatore). Although he was often heard in London — at both Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden — he was one of the few British singers successfully to blaze a trail abroad and he appeared at all the world’s leading opera houses. …
Newton, MA, February 8, 1927 — Denver, CO, September 9, 2008
Nathaniel Merrill, who for twenty-eight seasons served as resident stage director at the Metropolitan Opera, directing the company’s premieres of Die Frau ohne Schatten (1966), Les Troyens (1973) and Porgy and Bess (1985) — as well as beloved productions of L’Elisir d’Amore (1960), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1962) and Hansel and Gretel (1967) that endured in the Met’s repertory for decades — has died. …
Marineland’s elderly dolphin Kelly has died after 34 years in the limelight, marking the “end of an era”, Napier Mayor Barbara Arnott said on Thursday. Kelly, 38, had been ill for several days and died on Wednesday night. …
Vernon Handley, one of the best-loved and most respected of British conductors, has died. Throughout his life he was a devoted champion of British repertoire, making some of the most intuitive and masterful recordings of works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Holst. It was also through Handley’s tireless — and most importantly, convincing — advocacy that many will have first developed a love of composers such as Bliss, Finzi, Howells, Rubbra and Bridge. …
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. …
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. …
Don Haskins, credited with helping break color barriers in college sports in 1966 when he used five black starters to win a national basketball title at Texas Western, died Sunday. He was 78. … Haskins, known for his gruff demeanor, was portrayed in the 2006 movie “Glory Road.” …
Joey Giardello, a former middleweight boxing champion who won a decision over Rubin Carter in 1964 and then sued over how the fight was depicted in the 1999 film “The Hurricane,” has died. He was 78. …
D. August 18, 2008
Author Ralph M. Kovel, known best for his pricing guides for collectibles and antiques, has died in Cleveland at the age of 88, his wife says. The man behind such published works as “Kovels’ American Silver Marks” and “Kovels’ Bid, Buy and Sell Online” died last month of complications of a broken hip…
Seven months after surviving two gunshot wounds to his head, former Kirkwood Mayor Mike Swoboda died this morning after a brief stay in a hospice. … Mr. Swoboda would have turned 70 later this month. …
October 30, 1927 - August 23, 2008
… Nosenko joined the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate in 1953 and was responsible for the surveillance and recruitment of foreigners in Moscow. In the 1960s he offered to provide the West with details of Soviet penetration agents and, later, information about the KGB connection with Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy. …
June 15, 1915 - August 23, 2008
The virologist and parasitologist Thomas Weller was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with his Harvard colleagues John Enders and Frederick Robbins for developing methods for growing the polio virus in the laboratory. …
October 12, 1918 - August 30, 2008
…Krishna Kumar Birla, a quiet-spoken, erudite, religious man with — for a tycoon — an uncommon interest in business ethics.
Known everywhere by the respectful Babu, meaning “boss” or “brother”, he was part of the massive expansion of the Birla empire in every corner of the Indian economy, including sugar, fertiliser production, heavy engineering, media and shipping. A famous flagship of the company, although economically irrelevant to it, is the Delhi-based Hindustan Times, one of India’s biggest dailies. …
Jim Krog, who managed both of Lawton Chiles’ winning campaigns for governor in the 1990’s and was a sought-after lobbyist and political strategist, died Thursday. He was 60. …
July 18, 1944 - July 17, 2008
Roy Shirley was one of the mainstays of Jamaican music in the 1960s, enjoying a string of hits sung in a highly-mannered, soul-influenced vibrato voice that helped to establish the sound known as rock steady. He moved to Britain in 1973 and continued to record but branched out to open a record shop and to found the British Universal Talent Development Association to help foster promising but under-privileged young musicians. …
February 5, 1934 - August 20, 2008
Little Arthur Duncan was a blues man of the old school who sang in a soulful voice that owed as much to James Brown as to Robert Johnson and who blew his harmonica as if his life depended upon it. He played the blues for more than a half a century but did not begin recording until he was in his mid-fifties, finally enjoying in the sunset of his years the success that had eluded him as a younger man, when he was forced to work on building sites during the week while playing with minimal reward in the blues clubs of Chicago at the weekend. …
April 28, 1940 - August 20, 2008
Although he always operated in the giant shadow of his older brother Buddy Guy — the only serious rival to B.B. King as the greatest surviving blues man of them all — Phil Guy was a respected blues guitarist in his own right. He spent many years playing rhythm guitar in his brother’s band and later formed his own group, Phil Guy and the Chicago Machine. …
October 5, 1928 - August 25, 2008
… 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. …
Wellington Zoo’s oldest resident, Nippy the gibbon, has died. Nippy has lived at Wellington Zoo since he arrived as a one-year-old in December, 1949. …
February 22, 1953 - August 29, 2008
As writer, producer, occasional actor and, for a time, BBC executive, Geoffrey Perkins was one of the most important figures in radio and television comedy over two decades with credits ranging from Spitting Image in the 1980s to The Catherine Tate Show. …
Voiceover Master Don LaFontaine has died. He was 68. …
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. …
October 5, 1938 - August 16, 2008
As the trumpeter with the Jamaican group the Skatalites, Johnny Moore played a key part in popularising the distinctive rhythms of ska, which later developed into reggae. His inventive soloing earned him the nickname “Dizzy” from his fellow musicians and the Skatalites enjoyed instrumental hits such as Guns of Navarone under their own name as well as playing on numerous recordings by other seminal Jamaican artists such as Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker and the Wailers. …
