Isn't he the father of Jaime Lee Curtis? RIP

TIS scored with him.

I'm sorry to hear that. I haven't seen him a a real long time but gosh he was very popular during his time. Good looking too!!

Right now trying to think way back to his movie roles (it's way too early) the one that comes to mind is probably his most dramatic, The Boston Strangler.


Sad news


TIS

He was one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the '50s/early '60s.

RIP, Tony. Loved him in "Some Like It Hot".

Jamie Lee?? I thought his son was Jackie Curtis, the pioneering transgender film star. No? Were Jackie and Jamie step-siblings? So sad. I believe that Jackie predeceased his dad.

Jamie Lee Curtis is the DAUGHTER of Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh. They also had another daughter together and yes, I do remember reading years ago about Tony Curtis having lost a son to (I think) drug abuse. In fact, I remember seeing a photo with Jamie Lee standing behind her bereaved father, at the gravesite ceremony. Sometime during the 1990's...a while ago. I don't know though, if that was 'Jackie Curtis' referenced by SB.

I always liked Tony...he came through from alot of personal problems and emerged as an accomplished painter over the past 25 years. Also...probably because of her behavior on 'Some Like It Hot', he was one of the very few Hollywood icons to squelch the legend of Marilyn Monroe being some kind of abused, birdlike saint. I believe he made the infamous statement that she kissed 'like Hitler'....(not sure how he would know that, but you can see in that yacht scene that the passion is somewhat lacking...despite the quality of the movie overall).

RIP, Tony Curtis...you made it through the rain.

Apple

I read Tony Curtis's autobiography several months ago. In recent years, he had been through quite a lot, health-wise. In fact, I think his wife actually finished the book for him due to a stroke-like condition that nearly killed him as he was finishing up the final chapters.

But he was able to bounce back, and I seem to have a memory of some friends of mine seeing him at a nostalgia convention in New Jersey within the last couple of years. Walking was, at times, difficult for him, so he used a wheelchair. Also, I heard he had stopped wearing the toupees he had sported for the last twenty years or so, and had started shaving his head. He was quite nice to his fans, and very friendly, from what I remember my friends telling me.

I remember an incident back in the 1970's that did hamper his career somewhat: He was doing a series of nationally televised anti-smoking commercials when he was busted for carrying marijuana at (IIRC) an airport. Well, the commercials were immediately yanked off the air and the press had a field day.

Oops!

I know that his remark about kissing Marilyn Monroe being "like kissing Hitler" bothered him in later years, and he regretted saying it. As I remember, he explained that, at the time, he was largely unaware of the true extent of the problems she was dealing with in her private life.

Signor V.

Some Like It Hot was one of the greatest films ever made. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis (now both dead) were hilarious.

I read his obituary online today... he had a tragic childhood...grew up in poverty, was put in an orphanage for a time, his best friend and brother was killed when Tony (fka Bernie Schwartz) was about 13.

Overall I liked him, but I always remember him in one of his first flicks...could have been The Vikings. He still had a thick Bronx accent, and in one scene he said "Yonda is da castle of my fodder."

How ironic that one of my memories of Tony is when he lent his voice for the character of Stoney Curtis on The Flinstones. Today marks the 50th anniversary of The Flintstones.

"Flintstones. Meet The Flintstones. They're a modern stoneage family......"

Producer Stephen J. Cannell has died. WOW!! What a shocker. I think for a time practically every show I liked was one of his.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/entertainment/20101001/US.Obit.Stephen.J.Cannell/

I remember him! I checked the link to make sure the face I was picturing was correct. Wasn't there a show that showed him regularly at the very end????? I just can't remember.

EDIT: I remember now....at the end of the show, he'd be typing, pull the paper out of the typewriter and toss it. I just don't remember which show.

I didn't know he was sick. RIP


TIS

I think it was The Rockford Files.

Former NY Post sports writer, Maury Allen, died yesterday. He was a long time columnist for the paper and wrote many sports biographies. He used to say that October 3, 1951 was the worst day of his life ~ that was the day The NY Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a playoff for the NL pennant.

Odd that he died on the same day (October 3rd). It REALLY was the worst day of his life.

Albertina Walker, Grammy-winning Queen of Gospel,' dies at 81
CHICAGO — Albertina Walker, the Grammy-winning vocalist known around the world as the "Queen of Gospel" who helped launch some of the biggest names in traditional gospel through her vocal ensemble the Caravans, has died. She was 81.

Walker died Friday morning at RML Specialty Hospital Chicago of respiratory complications, said Pam Morris, who coordinated the Chicago Gospel Music Festival for 20 years through 2009. The singer had been hospitalized since Aug. 29, her 81st birthday, having long suffered from emphysema.

Gospel music icons such as Dorothy Norwood, Shirley Caesar, Inez Andrews, Bessie Griffin and James Cleveland established their careers in the Caravans, who achieved wide fame in the late 1950s, headlining at Carnegie Hall and other high-profile venues.

Through the Caravans, Walker popularized the music she heard growing up on the South Side of Chicago; and the celebrated ensemble in turn made her a legend.

"She was the starmaker," said Norwood, who joined the Caravans in 1954. "She was a great singer - one of the greatest."

Walker played her last major performance with a reunited version of the Caravans last June at the Chicago Gospel Music Festival.

The youngest of nine children, Walker was born in Chicago and raised in the heart of the city's Bronzeville community, where generations of African-Americans converged during the Great Migration. This vast demographic wave made the South Side of Chicago an epicenter of jazz, blues and gospel, with Walker - and uncounted others like her - absorbing black cultural traditions through prayer.

"I grew up going to church," Walker said in 1993. She heard the greatest singer in gospel history, Mahalia Jackson; the founder of modern gospel music, Thomas A. Dorsey; and choirs of such magnificence as to persuade her to pursue the music as her life....

Full Article

That was a shocker, Beth. Aside from being one of the most iconic television producers EVER, he was a damn good novelist. I've read every single one of his novels and will miss his "Shane Scully" series a great deal.

RIP Stephen.

He was one of the last of the great soul men (Brown, Tex, Pickett, Redding). Fans of "The Wire" might remember him singing "Fast Train" over the season ending montage.

AMSTERDAM – Solomon Burke, the larger-than-life "King of Rock and Soul," whose songs blended soul, gospel, country and R&B, died early Sunday at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at age 70.

Born to the sound of music in an upstairs room of a Philadelphia church, Burke was acknowledged as one of the greatest soul singers of the 1960s, but his popularity never matched that of contemporaries like James Brown or Marvin Gaye.

Even so, legendary Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler once called Burke, "the best soul singer of all time."

Burke, a giant man with a powerful soulful voice to match, joined Atlantic in 1960 and went on to record a string of hits in a decade with the label.

Burke's family said on his website the singer died of natural causes, but did not elaborate.

"This is a time of great sorrow for our entire family. We truly appreciate all of the support and well wishes from his friends and fans," the statement said.

"Although our hearts and lives will never be the same, his love, life and music will continue to live within us forever," it added.

Two of Burke's best-known songs were boosted by featuring on the soundtracks of popular movies.

He wrote "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" in 1964 and it was later featured in the Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi movie "The Blues Brothers." The Rolling Stones and Wilson Pickett also recorded it.

His song "Cry To Me" featured in the background as a bare-chested Patrick Swayze danced seductively with Jennifer Grey in one of the most memorable scenes from the movie "Dirty Dancing."
....
Solomon Burke died

Barbara Billingsley, best known for portraying the mother on "Leave it to Beaver" died at age 94.

Almost everyone picked her in the pool, EXCEPT ME

One of the funniest bit parts I ever saw in a movie was her playing a plane passenger talking jive in "Airplane".

R.I.P. Barbara, and thanks for the laughs.

Barbara Billingsley:

Even if I did have her on my list, I'm sorry to hear that. That's a great clip SC. So out of character for her. She will forever be Mrs. Cleaver.



TIS

i diden't even knew she was in that movie...one of the funniest scenes in the movie. also too is she the second actor from this film to die this year?

First Mrs. Cleaver, now Mr. Cunningham. RIP Tom Bosley.


Happy Days's Tom Bosley Dead at 83
By Stephen M. Silverman

ABC's Happy Days, died Tuesday in his Palm Springs, Calif., home. On Oct. 1 he had turned 83.

The actor died of a staph infection, according to TMZ, which first reported his death.

Before finding fame on the small screene, Bosley won a Tony for starring as the beloved New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the Puliter-Prize-winning 1959 musical Fiorello!. He also made a memorable mark in the 1964 Peter Sellers cult comedy The World of Henry Orient, as the too-understanding husband of Angela Lansbury's character.

After Happy Days, he would frequently costar with Lansbury on her CBS series, Murder She Wrote.

Reacting to Bosley's death, his Happy Days costar Henry Winkler expressed his sadness, telling Los Angeles's KNX-1070 News Radio, "I'm in shock, I really am. I spoke to him just a few weeks ago and he seemed to be getting his strength back."

Born in Chicago, Bosley was the younger son of a real estate broker father and a former concert pianist mother. "We were fairly wealthy until the stock market crashed," he told PEOPLE in 1979, during the Happy Days craze. "When I was 2, my father lost all his money." His parents divorced nine years later.

Bosley joined the Navy in 1945 at 17 ("I'm the only guy I know who went in as a seaman and came out a seaman"), then enrolled in pre-law at DePaul University. In his first year, he switched to acting.

After stock theater in Illinois (with fellow aspirants Paul Newman and Geraldine Page), he flipped a coin in 1950 to decide between New York and Los Angeles. New York won.

For nine years before Fiorello! he acted off-Broadway and in summer stock while working menial jobs to feed himself. Movie and TV roles followed, and whenever there was a Happy Days reunion, he could always be counted upon to appear – and tease his TV son, Ron Howard, about not casting him in his movies.

Bosley married twice. His first wife, Jean, a dancer, died in 1978 (they had wed in 1962). His second wife, the former Patricia Carr, survives him. They married in 1980. He also has a daughter, Amy.

Ironically, Bosley's death comes only a few days after that of another iconic '50s TV parent, Barbara Billingsley, of Leave It to Beaver.

Oh no!!! I'm surprised. I can't open the link, but had he been ill?




TIS

I edited my post.

I just read that. That is sad to hear. When he played on murder she wrote did he play a priest? I remember him being on a tv show where he played a priest but I can't remember the name of it.

Oh no, Mr C. died?

That would be Father Dowling Mysteries. I think it ran from 1990-91. I know that buried in my archives somewhere I have an episode from the series titled "The Consulting Detective Mystery" where Father Dowling meets the real (!) Sherlock Holmes. It aired in April 1991. I don't think the show lasted more than one season, but my memory is a bit foggy about this.

Signor V.

Oh yea, I remember that show. I wasn't a regular viewer,but know which one you mean. Wasn't Tracy Nelson (Rick's daughter)in it with him? She played a nun????


TIS

Yes. And Mary Wicks played the maid. I liked the show. I think I was the only one under 60 who wtched it.

Just found out that actor Simon MacCorkindale died on October 14, age 58. He had battled bowel and lung cancer for more than four years. He was married to British actress Susan George for the last 26 years; she was best known for appearing in Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs.

Though he had quite a long career, viewers in the US might remember him from a very short-lived NBC series years ago called Manimal.

Signor V.

Here's another "just found out" death:

It was posted on the Internet today that former actor Johnny Sheffield died last Friday at age 79. His wife said he suffered a heart attack four hours after falling off a ladder while pruning a palm tree.

For several years beginning in 1939, Sheffield played "Boy" in the Tarzan movies that starred Johnny Weissmuller. Later he played Bomba the Jungle Boy in a series of low-budget programmers. He retired from acting in 1955, but still received fan mail and would occasionally appear at nostalgia conventions.




Signor V.

Wow.... I sure remember those cheapo movies from early Saturday morning tv. His "Tarzan's New York Adventure" was a favorite of mine.

As a kid, I swore it was his face on the Fox's U-Bet chocolate syrup label.