Original 'Marlboro Man' Robert Norris dies at his Colorado ranch at age 90 having NEVER smoked | Daily Mail Online Robert Norris, 90, died on Sunday at his ranch in Colorado Springs, Colorado He was approached by advertising executives who were scouting for a cowboy to appear in their Marlboro Man commercials Norris was the Marlboro Man for 12 years and appeared in TV commercials in the US and Europe He never smoked and, feeling that he was setting a bad example for his children, quit the advertising campaign
I read about this on the internet news today. I've never heard of her before but I wish her peace and peace to her family as well. A terrible way to go out of this life and she was just a young kid too. RIP Laurel
RIP. He didn't just back "Seinfeld" -- he sacrificed his budget from the "Specials" department so that they could produce an order of 4 episodes. Without that bit of creative financing, "Seinfeld" might never have turned into a regular series.
I have very belatedly learned of the death of baseball pitcher turned actor Jim Bouton, author of the hilarious memoir Ball Four. James Alan Bouton (March 8, 1939 – July 10, 2019) was an American professional baseball player. Bouton played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a pitcher for the New York Yankees, Seattle Pilots, Houston Astros, and Atlanta Braves between 1962 and 1978. He was also a best-selling author, actor, activist, sportscaster and one of the creators of Big League Chew. Bouton played college baseball at Western Michigan University, before signing his first professional contract with the Yankees. He was a member of the 1962 World Series champions, appeared in the 1963 MLB All-Star Game, and won both of his starts in the 1964 World Series. Later in his career, he developed and threw a knuckleball. Bouton authored the baseball book Ball Four, which was a combination diary of his 1969 season and memoir of his years with the Yankees, Pilots, and Astros. Jim Bouton in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. Jim Bouton - Wikipedia
Jane Galloway Heitz, actor, casting director who helped many get their starts, dead at 78 Jane Galloway Heitz, Actress on 'Glee,' Dies at 78
Sadly, Gahan Wilson, the brilliant cartoonist has died of complications of the dementia that he has been suffering from for the past several years. Gahan Wilson, Vividly Macabre Cartoonist, Dies at 89
From Perry Mason to blaxploitation films - quite a resume... Arthur Marks, Producer and Director on 'Perry Mason' and a Blaxploitation Maverick, Dies at 92
J.D's Revenge with Glynn Turman & Lou Gossett is an interesting movie. Not sure if I would call it a straight horror movie. More of a supernatural thriller in the vein of stories like Dracula.
I got his distinctive autograph after he spoke at my college in the early '70's. I was impressed with how quickly he wrote it.
I, too, got his autograph and some kind of cartoonist event in the late 70s. Got a signature (and a drawing of a foot) from Jack Davis as well.
'Star Trek' actor Robert Walker Jr. dead at 79 Robert Walker Jr., best known for a classic early Star Trek episode and as the son of Hollywood stars Robert Walker and Jennifer Jones, died Thursday in Malibu, according to family members. He was 79. The New York native portrayed the twitchy, callow title character in “Charlie X,” the second episode of Star Trek’s pioneering first season in 1966, and also handled the title role of the notable 1960s feature films Ensign Pulver and Young Billy Young. For Ensign Pulver, the comedic 1964 naval drama, Walker inherited a role that had earned Jack Lemmon an Oscar for best supporting actor for Mister Roberts (1955). In the 1969 gunfighter tale Young Billy Young, Walker was the volatile outlaw who finds a mentor in Robert Mitchum in film that also featured Angie Dickinson and David Carradine. That same year Walker and his wife, Ellie Wood, appeared together in the milestone counter-culture epic Easy Rider. Walker’s other big-screen credits include The Hook (1963), with Kirk Douglas; The Ceremony (1963), with Laurence Harvey; The War Wagon (1967), with John Wayne; Killers Three (1968), with Dick Clark; and Road to Salina (1970), with Rita Hayworth. On television his career spanned 20 years and his many credits included roles on Route 66, Ben Casey, Combat!, Bonanza, The Time Tunnel, The Six Million Dollar Man, Quincy, M.E.,Charlie’s Angels, Columbo, CHiPs, L.A. Law, and Murder, She Wrote. Walker was born in Queens in April of 1940, the year after his father (best remembered as Alfred Hitchcock’s off-kilter killer in the 1951 classic Strangers on a Train) and his mother (the Academy Award-winner from The Song of Bernadette in 1943) were married. The marriage ended in 1945. Four years later, the youngster got a powerful stepfather when Jones married David O. Selznick, the Hollywood titan who produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca.
Joan Staley Dead: ‘The Ghost And Mr. Chicken’ & ’77 Sunset Strip’ Actress – Deadline Joan Staley, the film, TV and stage actress whose memorable film roles included opposite Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, alongside Elvis Presley in Roustabout, and on TV in series including Perry Mason and 77 Sunset Strip, died November 24. She was 79. Her first husband, onetime TV director Chuck Staley, announced the news on social media earlier this week. She had been married to Hollywood talent manager Dale Sheets since 1967. Staley, born in Minneapolis to missionary parents, grew up in Los Angeles and was an accomplished violinist as a child, which led to her first film credit, the 1948 Bing Crosby-Joan Fontaine pic The Emperor Waltz. That led to roles at The Little Theater in Hollywood and small parts on live series like Playhouse 90. In 1958, she made the first of four appearances on Perry Mason, and that same year was Miss November in Playboy. Her early TV credits also included The Untouchables, The Tab Hunter Show and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1962 she co-starred with singer Vic Damone on NBC’s The Lively Ones. An MGM contract player, Staley’s film roles include parts in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Valley of the Dragons and Cape Fear. She played Marge opposite Elvis and Joan Freeman in the 1964 carnival-set Roustabout, and opposite Audie Murphy in the 1966 Western Gunpoint. That same year, she starred with Knotts in Universal’s successful comedy mystery The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. A serious back injury in 1966 suffered from a fall off a horse led to Staley focusing on TV work. Roles that followed included playing Okie Annie, opposite Cliff Robertson’s Shame, on Batman, and a co-starring role on the McHale’s Navy spinoff Broadside. Her small-screen credits also included The Dick Van Dyke Show, Wagon Train, The Munsters and Maverick. She later co-starred on the final season of ABC’s crime drama 77 Sunset Strip, along with roles on Mission: Impossible, Ironside, Adam-12 and Dallas.
Leonard Goldberg Dies: ‘Blue Bloods’, ‘T.J. Hooker’, ‘Fantasy Island’ Producer – Deadline Leonard Goldberg, a former president of 20th Century Fox and Head of Programming at ABC whose numerous producer credits include creating Charlie’s Angels and Blue Bloods, along with such shows as T.J. Hooker, Family and Fantasy Island and many other TV show and movies, has died. He was 85. The Emmy winner died from injuries resulting from a fall December 4, his publicist told Deadline. In partnership with Aaron Spelling, Goldberg was behind a string of hit TV series including Charlie’s Angels, Hart to Hart, The Rookies, Starsky & Hutch, Fantasy Island, Family and S.W.A.T. He won the NAACP Image Award for Television Producer of the Year for LAPD drama The Rookies. Goldberg shared three Outstanding Drama Series Emmy noms for Family, which aired on ABC from 1976-80, and won an Emmy for the drama special Something About Amelia in 1984. He received a motion picture Showmanship Award from the Publicists Guild in 1984, was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame two years later and was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 2007. Born on January 24, 1934, in New York, Goldberg began his broadcasting career with ABC’s research department. He moved over to NBC a year later, advancing to the position of Supervisor of Special Projects. He then joined Batten, Barton, Durstine Osborne Advertising but returned to the ABC Network as Director of New York Program Development, and quickly rose to become VP Daytime Programming. During his tenure at ABC Daytime, Goldberg introduced such memorable shows as The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and Dark Shadows. A year later, he was named Head of All Programming for ABC, a position he held for the next three years. It was during this period that he developed and introduced the new primetime format — Movies Made Directly for Television — which immediately became a favorite with viewers everywhere and which still provides some of the medium’s most innovative and stimulating shows. Among those ABC telefilms with John Travolta starrer The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. From 2007 to 2018, Goldberg served on the CBS Board of Directors. He is survived by his wife Wendy Howard Goldberg, daughter Amanda Goldberg Raskind, sons Richard Mirisch and John Mirisch, their spouses and five grandchildren.
Bob Dorian, Presenter of Classic Movies on AMC, Dies at 85 Bob Dorian, the amiable TV host who introduced cable viewers to movies of yesteryear back when AMC was known as American Movie Classics, died June 15 in Florida, his family announced. He was 85. Dorian started out as an actor and a magician (the Amazing Dorian), and his voice was heard on a tape recorder that resurrects a demon in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). He also had a recurring role on one of AMC's first original series, Remember WENN, which premiered in 1996 and was set at a fictional Pittsburgh radio station in the late 1930s, and appeared in the Woody Allen films The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) and Hollywood Ending (2002). Ten years before Turner Classic Movies, American Movie Classics launched in October 1984 as a premium cable channel that licensed and aired old films uncut and without commercials 24 hours a day. Execs were looking for announcers to introduce the features, and a producer recommended Dorian, he recalled in a 2009 interview. "Among the people they were looking at at the time were two Broadway actors, a well-known TV film critic and a few others who were more involved in writing as a profession," he said. "After call backs, I heard the powers that be had been thinking of pairing the TV critic and me as a sort of Siskel & Ebert duo. Interestingly, one of the AMC execs said, 'Wait a minute. The critic might not be too crazy about some of the films we've brought in. This guy Dorian likes everything!' That was it." Dorian served as AMC's primetime host, and Nick Clooney (George's father, singer Rosemary's brother) and Gene Klavan introduced pictures during the daytime. In 1998, AMC began inserting commercials into the films and then broadened its focus beyond features, eventually leading to original series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Dorian left the network in 2001. Born Robert Vierengel in Brooklyn on April 19, 1934, he said he always loved the movies. "As soon as I could go by myself, I would imitate the people. I thought I was Cary Grant, I thought I was Jack Benny or whoever it was," Dorian told the Baltimore Sun in 1995. "When I was 9, I went for my first suit. I wanted a black suit, and my father said, 'Why do you want a black suit?' I said: "It looks like a tuxedo. I'll look like Fred Astaire.' " Survivors include his wife, Jane.
John Briley - Wikipedia John Briley (June 25, 1925 – December 14, 2019) was an American writer best known for screenplays of biographical films. He won the Best Original Screenplay at the 55th Academy Awards for Gandhi (1982). As well as film scripts, he wrote for television and theatre, and published several novels.
