The Rest In Peace & Remembrance Thread #2

Oscar-Nominated Actress Jill Clayburgh Dead at 66
By Derrik J. Lang, A.P.

Jill Clayburgh, the sophisticated Hollywood and Broadway actress known for portrayals of empowered women in a career spanning five decades, highlighted by her Oscar-nominated role of a divorcee exploring life after marriage in the 1978 film "An Unmarried Woman," has died. She was 66.

Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said Clayburgh died Friday surrounded by her family at her home in Lakeville, Conn., after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He said she dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."

Clayburgh, alongside such peers as Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine and Jane Fonda, helped to usher in a new era for actresses in Hollywood by playing women who were confident and capable yet not completely flawless. Her dramatic turn as a divorcee exploring her sexuality after 16 years of marriage in "An Unmarried Woman" earned Clayburgh her first Oscar nod.

"There was practically nothing for women to do on the screen in the 1950s and 1960s," Clayburgh said in an interview with The Associated Press while promoting "An Unmarried Woman" in 1978. "Sure, Marilyn Monroe was great, but she had to play a one-sided character, a vulnerable sex object. It was a real fantasy."

The next year, Clayburgh was again nominated for an Academy Award for "Starting Over," a comedy about a divorced man, played by Burt Reynolds, who falls in love but can't get over his ex-wife. For the next 30 years, Clayburgh steadily appeared in films and on stage and television, often effortlessly moving between comedic and dramatic roles.

Besides appearing in such movies as "I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can," "Silver Streak" and "Running With Scissors," Clayburgh's Broadway credits included Noel Coward's "Design for Living," the original production of Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers," and the Tony Award-winning musicals "Pippin" and "The Rothschilds."

Clayburgh's work also stretched across TV. She had a recurring role on Fox's "Ally McBeal" as McBeal's mother and most recently played the matriarch of the spoiled Darling family on ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money." She earned two Emmy nods: for best actress in 1975 for portraying a tell-it-like-it-is prostitute in the ABC TV film "Hustling" and for her guest turn in 2005 as a vengeful plastic surgery patient on FX's "Nip/Tuck."

Clayburgh came from a privileged New York family. Her father was vice president of two large companies, and her mother was a secretary for Broadway producer David Merrick. Her grandmother, Alma Clayburgh, was an opera singer and New York socialite.

Growing up in a such a rich cultural mix, she could easily have been overwhelmed. Instead, as she said in interviews, she asserted herself with willful and destructive behavior — so much so that her parents took her to a psychiatrist when she was 9.

She escaped into a fantasy world of her own devising. She was entranced by seeing Jean Arthur play "Peter Pan" on Broadway, and she and a school chum concocted their own dramatics every day at home. She became serious-minded at Sarah Lawrence College, concentrating on religion, philosophy and literature.

Clayburgh also took drama classes at Sarah Lawrence. She and her friend Robert De Niro acted in a film, "The Wedding Party," directed by a Sarah Lawrence graduate, Brian DePalma. After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree, she began performing in repertory and in Broadway musicals such as "The Rothschilds" and "Pippin."

Alongside Richard Thomas, she headed the 2005 Broadway cast of "A Naked Girl on the Appian Way," Richard Greenberg's comedy about one family's unusual domestic tribulations.

Director Doug Hughes, who directed her in a production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" at the Westport Country Playhouse in 2003, called her for "Naked Girl."

"That she has the time to do a run of a play is just an extraordinary boon because I've had the pleasure of seeing her play a bona fide tragic American role beautifully, and I have had the pleasure of directing her in a very, very smart light comedy and be utterly brilliant in that," he said in 2005.

During an interview that year, Clayburgh explained the unglamorous side of acting.

"One of the funny things about actors is that people look at their careers in retrospect, as if they have a plan," she said.

"Mostly, you just get a call. You're just sitting there going, 'Oh, my God. I'm never going to work again. Oh, God. I'm too old. Maybe I should go and work for Howard Dean.' And then it changes."

Clayburgh will next be seen playing the mother of Jake Gyllenhaal's character in the upcoming film "Love and Other Drugs."

She is survived by three children, including actress Lily Rabe, Michael Rabe and stepson Jason Rabe.

There will be no funeral, Rabe said. The family will have a memorial in about six months, though plans have not been finalized.

 

Producer Dino De Laurentiis dies at age 91
Nov 11, 11:29 AM (ET)

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Dino De Laurentiis, a film impresario and producer of "Serpico,""Barbarella" and "Death Wish," has died. He was 91.

The Academy Award-winning producer's daughter Raffaella De Laurentiis said in a statement that her father was surrounded by family when he died Wednesday night at his home in Beverly Hills. She did not give a cause of death.

De Laurentiis was a legend of Italian New Wave filmmaking. His works also included "Bitter Rice,""La Strada" and "Barbarella."

 

Source: Yahoo News

Leslie Nielsen of 'Naked Gun' fame dies at age 84

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Leslie Nielsen, who went from drama to inspired bumbling as a hapless doctor in "Airplane!" and the accident-prone detective Frank Drebin in "The Naked Gun" comedies, has died. He was 84.

His agent John S. Kelly says Nielsen died Sunday at a hospital near his home in Ft. Lauderdale where he was being treated for pneumonia.
The Canadian-born Nielsen came to Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas in New York. With a craggily handsome face, blond hair and 6-foot-2 height, he seemed ideal for a movie leading man.

He quickly became known as a serious actor, although behind the camera he was a prankster. That was an aspect of his personality never exploited, however, until "Airplane!" was released in 1980 and became a huge hit.

EW Article

 

I enjoyed Leslie's work, and am saddened to learn of his passing. His ability to deliver a punchline while keeping a completely deadpan expression was unique.

 

So sad about Leslie Nielsen.

Whenever I think of him I always think of "... and don't call me Shirely!" Iconic line!

RIP.

 

I thought he was a riot, his always straight face with his comedic lines. "Surely you can't be serious" Nielsen "I am serious and don't call me Shirley":lol: amonst many others to numerous to mention. he was 84 and led a long good life and made many people laugh, may he RIP~

 

RIP Leslie Nielsen. What a very big talent and a very funny man.

 

Long before the Police Squad TV series and Naked Gun movies, Nielsen was a serious actor. I remember watching him once in an episode of the original Hawaii Five-0, and before that in Forbidden Planet, the movie that introduced us to Robby The Robot. Also, he made the rounds of Ironsides, Barnaby Jones, Kojak, Columbo, and more.

 

Alfred Masini dies at 80; creator of 'Entertainment Tonight'

The television producer also created 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,' 'Star Search,' 'Solid Gold' and numerous other syndicated shows.

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2010

Alfred Masini, a pioneer of first-run syndication who created such hit television shows as "Entertainment Tonight" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," has died. He was 80.

Masini died Monday in Honolulu from complications of melanoma, said Kristin Jackson, his publicist.

"He was one of the creative forces in the development of non-network programming and a key force in helping to move the industry away from a three-network environment," Rich Frank, a former president of Disney Studios, said in a statement that called Masini "an early mentor."

When Masini had several popular syndicated TV shows on the air in 1984, he downplayed his creativity, telling the Washington Post: "I work on the premise that there are no new, unique ideas."

From television's golden age, Masini mined "The Original Amateur Hour" with Ted Mack to come up with "Star Search," a talent contest that ran from 1983 to 1995. "Your Hit Parade" had been off the radio and television airwaves for most of two decades when he conceived "Solid Gold," a 1980s weekly countdown of musical hits.

"All of my ideas come from studying what's not on the air," Masini said in 1986 in the New York Times. "My attitude has always been to look for what's missing."

"Entertainment Tonight" — the breezy celebrity news show that turned 30 this year — was inspired by the success of People Magazine and TV Guide when there was nothing like those publications on television, Masini said in the Washington Post interview.

To ensure that "Entertainment Tonight" would be timely, Masini pioneered the use of satellites to transmit the syndicated program, according to the 1986 New York Times article.

The over-the-top "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," hosted by Robin Leach, aired from 1984 to 1996 —and tapped into society's burgeoning fascination with celebrity.

" 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' struck a piece of the American soul that was about to start flowering in so many ways," said Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University.

By expanding programming in what was then a new era of first-run syndication, Masini helped television move away from the network model before the cable era took hold, Thompson said.

The accomplishment included Operation Prime Time, another pioneering effort that sought to produce quality television films for independent stations around the country between 1976 and 1987. Shows included the miniseries "A Woman Called Golda" (1982) with Ingrid Bergman and "Sadat" (1983), starring Louis Gossett Jr.

"He was a syndication genius," said Vin Di Bona, who produced "Entertainment Tonight" in its infancy. "They stopped making executives like him who had the wherewithal and presence to get things done. He had an idea; he got it done."

Alfred Michael Masini was born Jan. 5, 1930, in Jersey City, N.J. The second of two children, he was raised by a widowed mother.

After earning a bachelor's degree at Fordham University in 1952, Masini served in the Air Force during the Korean War.

In 1954, he joined the CBS-TV library in New York as a film editor and left two years later to work for an advertising firm.

With future Disney executive Frank and others, Masini started TeleRep in New York City in 1968 to sell advertisements for client television stations. The firm grew to represent hundreds of stations, according to his publicist, and eventually entered the TV programming business.

A year after retiring from TeleRep in 1993, Masini moved to Hawaii and built a mountaintop home with a view of Diamond Head.

At 71, he married his fourth wife, Charlyn Honda Masini, 29, in a celebrity-studded spectacle worthy of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." The 2001 wedding and reception followed a 40-page script and began precisely on time, a Masini trademark.

He is survived by his wife and his sister, Melba Marvinny.


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Neutron bomb inventor Samuel Cohen dies in LA

LOS ANGELES — Neutron bomb inventor Samuel T. Cohen, who designed the tactical nuclear weapon intended to kill people but do minimal damage to structures, has died, his son said Wednesday.

Cohen died from complications of stomach cancer on Sunday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, his son Paul Cohen told the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Cohen worked for the RAND Corporation and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory when he developed the small neutron bomb in 1958, which used tiny particles that could zip through tanks, walls or buildings with minimal damage but kill humans, usually by attacking their central nervous system. It also minimized long-term nuclear contamination.

Ethicists questioned a weapon designed to destroy only life, but Cohen spent much of his life advocating for its adoption, saying the bomb's limited effects were a more moral alternative to other nuclear weapons.

"It's the most sane and moral weapon ever devised," Cohen told the New York Times in September. "It's the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact."

The Reagan administration worked on developing the weapon in the 1980s, and other nations including France and Russia are believed to have possessed them. But the neutron bomb was never widely embraced as Cohen had hoped.

Paul Cohen couldn't immediatedly be located by The Associated Press and a listed for Samuel T. Cohen's Brentwood home was disconnected.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Cohen went to college at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1943 and joining the army.

The army trained him in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and assigned him to work on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II. He worked on the calculations for Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

After the war in a 1951 trip to Seoul, South Korea for the RAND Corporation, he saw a city largely destroyed by the Korean War, and later said in his memoirs that it provided the inspiration for the small-scale neutron bomb.

"If we are going to go on fighting these damned fool wars in the future, shelling and bombing cities to smithereens and wrecking the lives of their inhabitants," he wrote, "might there be some kind of nuclear weapon that could avoid all this?"

Cohen is survived by his wife Margaret, sons Paul and Thomas of Los Angeles and daughter Carla Nagler of New Mexico.