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RIP Roger Rees

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RIP Roger Rees

Playbill
By Robert Simonson
July 11, 2015

Roger Rees, the Welsh actor who rocketed to fame as the title character in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a sprawling stage adaptation of an obscure novel by Charles Dickens, died July 10. He was 71. He worked virtually to the last weeks of his life, appearing in the Broadway musical The Visit until forced to withdraw due to his declining health.

 Nicholas Nickleby was unlike anything else ever seen on the London or New York stages when it arrived in the early 1980s. David Edgar adapted Dickens’ 1839 tale of the fortune-tossed, but loyal and good-hearted Nicholas who, after losing his father, must struggle to support his mother and sister, all without the help of his uncle Ralph, a heartless businessman.

 John Caird and Trevor Nunn co-directed the piece, which was performed in two parts, each four hours in length, for which audiences had to buy two separate tickets. An unlikely prospect to become a hot ticket, the show became a critical and popular sensation after it opened at the Aldrich Theatre in 1980. It arguably inaugurated an era of marathon theatre spectacles which continues to this day.

 In 1981, Nickleby played Broadway for a limited run, and proved popular again. It won the Tony Award for Best Play, and Mr. Rees won for Best Actor in a Play. The play aired on television in 1983, earning the actor his sole Emmy nomination.

 Roger Rees was in his mid-30s when he landed what would become the role of his lifetime, and it propelled his career into high gear. He appeared as a movie version of the film director Peter Bogdanovich in Bob Fosse’s final film "Star 80," about the tragic life and death of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. He starred in the British sitcom "Singles" from 1988 to 1991. In the States, he was highly visible as Robin Colcord, the wealthy and devious love interest of Kirstie Alley’s Rebecca Howe on "Cheers." Mr. Rees became a U.S. citizen in 1989.

 He was born May 5, 1944 in Aberystwyth, Wales, and grew up in south London. "I was at a pretty rough school, and the only thing I was good at was art," he told Playbill in 2013. "I got out of this school and went to Camberwell College of Arts, a terribly prestigious thing to do. I was there to be a painter. And I sketched so well that a year later I was sent to Slade School of Fine Art, one of the great art schools." He changed focus when, while painting scenery at Wimbledon Theatre, he was asked to fill a part in a play. "And I suddenly was an actor. I played the lead. I don't remember being nervous. I learned to be nervous later."

 He continued his stage career in the Royal Shakespeare Company, beginning in 1967. There he appeared in The Comedy of Errors, Three Sisters, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Twelfth Night and Cymbeline, primarily portraying, in his own words, “an eccentric comic character.” An association with playwright Tom Stoppard began when he acted as Henry in the original London production of The Real Thing in 1982. He also acted in the premiere of Stoppard’s Hapgood, playing a Russian double agent.

 It wasn’t until the early '90s that he returned to Broadway, first in the ill-fated musical The Red Shoes, then in a star-studded 1995 production of Cocteau’s romantic comedy Indiscretions (Kathleen Turner, Eileen Atkins, Cynthia Nixon and a young Jude Law were in the cast), that got mixed reviews, but netted Mr. Rees a Tony nomination. He then appeared in a revival of Anouilh’s The Rehearsal at the Roundabout Theatre Company and a 2000 staging of Uncle Vanya, starring as Dr. Astrov opposite Derek Jabobi’s Vanya.

 Off-Broadway, he won an Obie in Award in 1992 for his portrayal of a cynical, narcissistic British doctor in Jon Robin Baitz’s The End of the Day. The role was well-suited to the handsome, dark-haired Rees’ particular strengths in portraying morally compromised figures (or just plain rotters) with intellect, wit, dash and charm. "Rarely has a complete lack of integrity been played with so much integrity, or so entertainingly," The New York Times wrote of him.

 In 2002 at Lincoln Center Theater he found one of his most significant and unusual parts in the musical A Man of No Importance, based on the movie of the same name. He portrayed a closeted Dublin bus conductor who admires the works of Oscar Wilde.

 In the latter part of his theatre career, Mr. Rees spent more time directing and writing. He directed Lynn Nottage’s Mud, River, Stone at Playwrights Horizons in 1997, and an Off-Broadway revival of Arms and the Man in 2000. In 2004, he was named artistic director of the famed Williamstown Theatre Festival, only the fourth person to hold the post in its half century history, and the first non-American. However, his reign was short. He left the position in October 2007.

 Mr. Rees and his husband, the writer Rick Elice, collaborated on Peter and the Starcatcher, a play based on a novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, adapted by Elice, and co-directed by Rees and Alex Timbers. The show, a sort of prequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, traveled from La Jolla Playhouse to Off-Broadway and then to Broadway in 2012. It was a surprise success, running nearly a year and earning several Tony Award nominations, including one for Rees and Timbers. The next year, Mr. Rees essayed what many critics thought his best stage performance in years, as a father who tries to right a wrong against his young son––to the eventual ruin on his family and health––in a revival of Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy.

 Other film roles included Mel Brooks’ "Robin Hood: Men in Tights,""Frida" and "The Prestige." In the '00s, he played Lord John Marbury, the UK’s Ambassador to the United States in TV's "The West Wing."

 His final stage role was as Anton Schell, the doomed former lover of a vengeful millionairess in John Kander and Fred Ebb’s dark musical The Visit. He appeared in the show on Broadway in spring 2015 but had to bow out due to health reasons before the show closed.


REES, Roger
Born: 5/5/1944, Aberystwyth, Wales, U.K.
Died: 7/10/1945, New York City, New York, U.S.A.

Roger Rees’ western – actor:
The Young Riders (TV) – 1990 (Tyler Dewitt)


RIP Flora Carosello

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Italian actress and voice dubber Flora Carosello died Friday July 10th, age unknown but most likely in her late 80s. Flora was at one time married to director Antonio Boccaci and appeared in over 30 films and TV appearances. She was also a voice dubber with two dozen credits.


CAROSELLO, Flora
Born: 1920, Italy
Died: 7/10/2015, Lazio, Italy

Flora Carosello's westerns - actress: 
Django - 1965
A Man Called Apocalypse Joe – 1970 (Aunt Wila)
Eh? Who’s Afraid of Zorro! - 1975 (Donna Florinda).

RIP Herbert Winters

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RIP Herbert Winters

Delawareonline.com


 Age 90, of Pasadena, CA, passed away July 4, 2015 at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, CA. Born Herbert Schwartz on August 26, 1924 in Brooklyn, NY, he was the son of David and Alice Schwartz. The family moved to Wilmington, DE soon after. As a teenager, Herb opened a dance studio in Wilmington but then followed his dream to be a professional actor and moved to Hollywood, CA. Herb changed his last name to Winters and gained notoriety by working several years during the 60's & 70's on the hit TV shows - Bewitched and Laverne and Shirley. During show hiatus, Herb appeared in both movies and TV commercials. Herb was well respected in Hollywood circles and was elected president of his actors union guild with the support of Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery. Eventually, Herb retired from acting and began investing in multi-family real estate holdings.

 Preceded in death by his brother, Sidney in 2011, Herb is survived by his aunt, Ruth Goldstein of Fort Lauderdale, FL; two nephews, Steven Schwartz (Sandy) of Surpise, AZ and Arthur Schwartz (Susan) of Annandale, NJ and their sons, Michael Schwartz of Jersey City, NJ and Dr. Randall Schwartz (Yvonne) of Miami, FL.

 A graveside service will be 1:00 pm, Thursday, July 9, 2015 at the Machzikey Hadas Cemetery, 318 Wildel Avenue, New Castle, DE 19720


WINTERS, Herbert
Born: 8/26/1924, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
Died: 7/4/2015, Pasadena, California, U.S.A.

Herbert Winters’ western – dialogue coach:
Blazing Saddles - 1974

RIP Kinnie Gibson

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RIP Kinnie Gibson

KLTV
7/16/2015

Longtime hot air balloon competitor Kinnie Gibson died early this morning.

He and his friends and family knew he wouldn't make it to the next Great Texas Balloon Race but some of his fellow balloonists gave him a more intimate version when nine balloons flew over Lake Cherokee as a tribute to him over the weekend. They missed the target they placed on his dock even with his guidance over a radio, but his friends were able to share their mutual passion and have a good laugh one last time.

Gibson was also a skydiver, pilot, and Chuck Norris' stuntman for twenty years.

He was also known as the Rocketman. He traveled the world making appearances to fly his jet pack and even toured with Michael Jackson making a short flight as part of Jackson's concerts.

Gibson was being treated for terminal cancer.


GIBSON, Kinnie (Howard McKinnie Gibson)
Born: 1956, Beaumont, Texas, U.S.A.
Died: 7/16/2015, Longview, Texas, U.S.A.

Kinnie Gibson ‘s westerns – assistant director, stuntman:
Walker Texas Ranger (TV) – 1993, 1997 [assistant director, stuntman, Chuck Norris stunt double]

RIP Olaf Pooley

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Doctor Who News
By John Bowman
July 15, 2015

Olaf Poolet, the man who was the oldest surviving actor to have worked on Doctor Who, has died at the age of 101.

Olaf Pooley was one of a small group of actors to have appeared in both the Doctor Who and Star Trek franchises. He appeared in Doctor Who in 1970, playing both Professor Stahlman and his parallel-Earth counterpart Director Stahlman in the seven-part story Inferno. His appearance in Star Trek came thirty years later when he appeared in the Voyager episode Blink Of An Eye playing Cleric.

Pooley was born in the Parkstone area of Poole in Dorset to an English father and Danish mother, he studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and painting at the Chelsea School of Art. Until his death he was still an exhibiting painter.

His first full-time job was with Pinewood Film Studios' design department, and he then became a member of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company, with his prolific acting career also seeing him appearing in the West End, on film and on TV

During his career, he wrote and appeared in the film The Corpse - entitled Crucible of Horror in the USA - which starred Michael Gough, and wrote, directed and appeared in The Johnstown Monster. He also wrote the screenplay for a film version of Bernard Taylor's The Godsend, which was directed by his future second wife Gabrielle Beaumont. Pooley's other writing credits include the 1982 TV film Falcon's Gold, while he was an uncredited writer on the 1985 sci-fi horror movie Lifeforce.

His TV guest appearances since the 1950s included roles in Dixon of Dock Green, Paul Temple, Jason King and MacGyver, as well as playing Lars Torvik in the first episode of The Sandbaggers.

In 1958, Pooley took part in the BBC radio play Ambrose In Paris, and he played Sebastian in a 1956 film production of The Tempest. Pooley had a major career in West End theatre, appearing in notable productions such as Noël Coward's Peace In Our Time as well as The Tempest and Othello, and he counted Sir Alec Guinness among his close friends.

He emigrated to the United States in 1986, where he continued his acting, also becoming a respected artist both there and abroad. In an interview, he said: "It is a privilege to be an artist and I am fortunate in this respect."

He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2014 with a special exhibition of his paintings at the Santa Monica Art Studios

Olaf Pooley died on Tuesday.


POOLEY, Olaf (Ole Krohn Pooley)
Born: 3/13/2014, Parkstone, Poole, Dorset, England, U.K.
Died: 7/14/2015, Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.

Olaf Pooley’s western – actor:
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (TV) – 1996 (judge)

RIP Jacques Thébault

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Jacques Thébault, the voice of Steve McQueen, has died

Le Figaro
July 16, 2015

He was the voice of Steve McQueen, of Clint Eastwood but also Bill Cosby, Patrick McGoohan and Lucky Luke.  Jacques Thébault, French actor specialized in dubbing, died at Saint Arnoult Normandy, Wednesday 15 July, following a pulmonary embolism.  He was 90 years old.

1950 to 1980, he was one of the best voices of the small and big screen. He was Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958-1961) before accompanying the actor in his major roles: Bullitt (1968), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) The Getaway (1972), Papillon (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Hunter (1980).

He also embodied with perfection phlegm Patrick McGoohan, the famous Prisoner Number 6.  It was he, moreover, who had the idea of ​​the word, remained famous: "Hello world."  In English, Patrick McGoohan said, "Be seeing you."

Among his great voice acting, also include: Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, Robert Conrad in The Wild Wild West, John Cassavetes in The Dirty Dozen, Paul Newman in The Left-Handed Gun, Clint Eastwood in Coogan’s Bluff, Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun, Roy Scheider in Jaws, Bill Cosby in The Cosby Show.  In Doctor Zhivago David Lean, he dubbed both Alec Guiness and Klaus Kinski.

He often played hard. In Alien (1978), he is the voice of Ian Holm, the interpète the android Ash.  In Star Wars episodes IV and V, he remains on the dark side with Admiral Piett.  Just like in Tron, where he doubled the villain Ed Dillinger, aka Sark, and Blade Runner, where he is the creator of Eldon Tyrell Replicants.

After doubling Steve McQueen, Robert Conrad and Paul Newman in many westerns, Jacques Thébault voiced westerner Lucky Luke in The Daltons: Escape from Grumble Gulch in 1983 and in two cartoon TV series dating from 1984 and 1991.

Jacques Thébault appeared in several films, including The Tricycle with Darry Cowl.  He was also at a time approached by Jean-Pierre Jeunet to lend his voice to the narrator of Amelie Poulain, with this role is entrusted to André Dussollier.


THEBAULT, Jacques
Born: 1924, France
Died: 7/15/2015, Saint Arnoult, Normandy,

Jacques Thébault’s westerns – voice dubber:
God Forgives… I Don’t – 1967 [French voice of Terence Hill]
Escape from Grumble Gulch - 1983 [French voice of Lucky Luke]
Lucky Luke (TV) – 1983-1984, 1992 [French voice of Lucky Luke]

RIP Aubrey Morris

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The Guardian
Gavin Gaughan
July 16, 2015

In 1957, the character actor Aubrey Morris, who has died aged 89, was praised by Kenneth Tynan for his “mimetic cunning … wreathed in cringing smiles”. Adept at the vaguely camp and suggestively sinister, Morris always left an unconventional stamp on even the smallest, and seemingly conventional, roles. Small and rotund, with gleaming eyes, and occasionally wearing round spectacles, he could convey obsessions and monstrosity at odds with his corporeality. His visual characteristics included a wide smile, which displayed a prominent upper row of teeth, and a sly, sideways glance. With his distinctive, precise speech pattern, he could draw out vowel sounds amusingly, or unnervingly.

A career that lasted for more than 60 years took him from the Old Vic through much British television to Broadway and then Hollywood. One of his best remembered appearances was as Mr Deltoid, Alex’s self-styled “post-corrective adviser” in A Clockwork Orange (1971); although brief, it was a signature role in that it combined his abilities in the comedic, the threatening and as he put it, the “kinky”. Unlike other actors, his memories of Stanley Kubrick were positive.

He was born Aubrey Steinberg, in Portsmouth, Hampshire. His father, Morry, had sustained injuries in the First World War which meant his family had to care for him for the rest of his life. His mother, Becky, fostered an appreciation of the arts in her nine children: Aubrey’s sisters Julia and Sonia became professional dancers, and his brother Wolfe a character actor.

While attending Portsmouth Municipal College, he regularly participated in the Portsmouth Guildhall annual festival of music and drama, and he won the Leverhulme scholarship to study at Rada in London. His professional debut was in The Winter’s Tale, in the junior role of Clown, at the Regent’s Park theatre in May 1944; the company then went on a national tour “to avoid the buzz bombs”.

Morris’s first West End role was as a son in Fly Away Peter, a family comedy at the King’s theatre, Hammersmith, in May 1947. When it was restaged at the BBC’s television studios at Alexandra Palace in 1948, it became Morris’s small-screen debut; the impresario Peter Saunders had expected him to do this for free, and resented paying Morris’s £25 fee.

Morris would recall his time at the Old Vic, from 1954 to 1956, then spearheaded by Tyrone Guthrie, as his happiest professionally. He played servants in Julius Caesar, Richard II and Romeo and Juliet, and was well cast as the effusive Le Beau in As You Like It. In December 1955, he was Bardolph to Richard Burton’s Henry V. There was also an American tour, culminating on Broadway, at the Winter Garden theatre, from 1956 into 1957. Although his desire to play Iago was never fulfilled, all his life Morris retained a deep feeling for and knowledge of Shakespeare’s language.

Tynan’s review praising him was for his part in The Public Prosecutor, at the Arts theatre in 1957; the critic felt that Morris and Alan Badel managed to “rescue the piece from boredom”. In Expresso Bongo at the Saville in 1958, Morris supported Paul Scofield; but, like most of the cast, was not in the subsequent film version.

His Old Vic colleague Jeremy Brett once introduced Morris to Noël Coward as “the finest small-part player in London” which, Coward replied, was a rather unfortunately phrased compliment. At the Gaiety theatre in Dublin in 1960, he played Justice Silence in Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles’s adaptation of Henry IV and V; he later recalled Welles was as generous to his actors offstage as he was demanding on.

In September 1960, initially at the Cort theatre, New York, he was the hypocritical, seedy and supposedly religious Mulleady in the Broadway production of Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, directed in characteristicically freewheeling manner by Joan Littlewood. Morris likened the playwright to “a Gaelic Tommy Cooper”, and Behan’s bawdy songs long remained among Morris’s party pieces.

Again in Behan’s work, he was an inmate in the film version of The Quare Fellow (1962), starring Patrick McGoohan, with whom Morris developed a lasting friendship; they regularly met for dinner during the last 20 years of McGoohan’s life, when both were living in California. After appearing in McGoohan’s series Danger Man (1964-66), Morris was retained by the star for one episode of The Prisoner (1967). McGoohan wrote a character for him, even named Aubrey, for a never-made Prisoner film planned in the 1990s, but the friends did collaborate on a Columbo episode in 1998.

Morris’ favourite roles on what he called “the hot cod’s eye of TV” included Jamie (1971), a children’s series in which his character, Mr Zed, appeared at different ages throughout. He was also proud of The Fight Against Slavery (1975). Other highlights included Shades of Greene (1975), with Sir John Gielgud, and playing Khrushchev in the reconstruction Suez 1956 (1979).

In films, he was a larcenous passenger in If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), starring Ian McShane; later, he played McShane’s father in Disraeli (1978). He was among the gleefully gruesome locals in The Wicker Man (1973), and marched alongside Woody Allen in Love and Death (1975), but recalled much waiting on location while Allen worked on rewrites.

In 1980 he played Arthur Wicksteed in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus, at the Watford Palace theatre, and two years later appeared (as did the author) in Bennett’s Intensive Care for the BBC.

On relocating to America, his first job was in Murder, She Wrote (1986). He was also active there within the Screen Actors Guild. Again with McShane, Morris had a touching late role in HBO’s western Deadwood (2006), as an ailing actor helped towards death by Brian Cox quoting from King Lear. He appeared earlier this year in an episode of the sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as a retired psychiatrist, and was delighted still to be working.

His large family, centred in north London, always celebrated Morris’s visits to Britain.

MORRIS, Aubrey (Aubrey Steinberg)
Born: 5/13/1926, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, U.K.
Died: 7/15/2015

Aubrey Morris’ westerns – actor:
Outlaws (TV) – 1987
Deadwood (TV) – 2006 (Chesterton) 

RIP Paul Lukather

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RIP Paul Lukather

Final Farewells
By Rick
March 16, 2015

Actor Paul Lukather only appeared in about 18 movies, but he managed 1st billing in the very Orlac-ian HANDS OF A STRANGER, 2nd billing in the oddly beloved DINOSAURUS, and was way down the cast list for FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER. He did much more TV work, including GEMINI MAN, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, THE INVADERS, GET SMART, MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., OUTER LIMITS, and SCIENCE FICTION THEATER. He also did a lot of voice work, including numerous video games.

He passed away October 9, 2014. I was just reading the latest edition of Equity News, the union newsletter, and saw his name in the "Final Curtain" listing of recent deaths of Equity members. No date was given and there's none at IMDb and a quick Googling turned up nothing else. He was born in 1926 in New York City, New York.

I've told this before, but this is the place for it.  In 1975, my then-girlfriend was in Denver, rehearsing a dinner theater comedy.  One night we were talking on the phone long-distance and she said she'd told this guy in the show that her boyfriend knew all about monster movies and horror movies. The guy told her he'd been in a monster movie but there was no way the boyfriend -- me -- would know it. I asked her what the guy's name was. She couldn't remember exactly, but said it was "Paul...Luther... Luker...something like that." I instantly said "Paul Lukather. He was in DINOSAURUS. Or he could be thinking of HANDS OF A STRANGER." The next day at rehearsal she told him that I'd immediately had known who he was and she named those two movies. She said his jaw dropped in amazement, then he got very serious and said, "you should be careful of that guy."

I got to meet him a few weeks later and we got on famously. He was amused and, I think, pleased that someone knew him and his movies. All in all, he was a very nice guy, and though I never saw him again, I remember him fondly. I'd hate to see him overlooked in these Final Farewells. 

Rest in Peace.


LUKATHER, Paul
Born: 1926, New York City, New York, U.S.A.
Died: 10/9/2014, U.S.A.

Paul Lukather’s westerns – actor:
Mohawk – 1956 (angry settler)
Drango – 1957 (Burke)
The Sheriff of Cochise (TV) – (Junior)
Have Gun – Will Travel (TV) – (The French Kid)
Buckskin (TV) – 1958 (Job)
Cheyenne (TV) – 1959 (Clemmie Martin)
Lawman (TV) – 1959 (Mack, Corporal Been)
The Restless Gun (TV) – 1959 (Randy Clayton)
Sugarfoot (TV) – 1959 (Mungo)
26 Men (TV) – 1959
Bonanza (TV) – 1960, 1965 (Robie, Cletus)
Rawhide (TV) – 1960 (Gus Price)
Bat Masterson (TV) – 1961 (lieutenant)
Laramie (TV) – 1963 (Park)
Alvarez Kelly – 1966 (Captain  Webster)
The Way West – 1967 (Mr. Turley)
Hot Lead and Cold Feet – 1978 (cowboy)

RIP Alex Rocco

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RIP Alex Rocco

 Alex Rocco, a longtime character actor has died at the age of 79, according to the examiner.com. His death was first reported by his daughter on her Facebook page. One of his best known roles would be as casino owner Moe Greene in “The Godfather” who had the famous line, “Do you know who I am”?

He appeared in many films including “Freebie and the Bean, “Cannonball Run II”, and “Dream a Little Dream” (1989), which was directed by his son Marc Rocco, who passed away in 2009. He also appeared in such popular movies as “Get Shorty” in 1995 and in “That Thing You Do” in 1996.

Rocco also had a prolific career on television. He appeared on numerous shows, including as Jo’s father on “The Facts of Life” and as the executive who produced the classic Itchy and Scratchy cartoons on “The Simpsons.”

Rocco’s most recent appearances were on the TV shows “Episodes” last year and “Maron” earlier this year. At the time of his passing, he was set to appear in the horror movie “The Other.”

Alex Rocco was born Alexander Federico Petricone, Jr. in Cambridge Massachusetts. He moved to California and started out working as a bartender, and began taking acting classes with such teachers as Leonard Nimoy and noted acting teacher Jeff Corey.


ROCCO, Alex(Alexander Federico Petticone, Jr.)
Born: 2/29/1936, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Died: 7/18/2015, Studio City, California, U.S.A.

Alex Rocco’s westerns – actor:
Hearts of the West (TV) – 1975 (Earl)
Walker, Texas Ranger (TV) – 2000 (Johnny (Giovanni Rossini) Rose
Fallout: New Vegas – 2010 (Big Sal)

RIP Van Alexander

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Van Alexander, Big-Band Leader and Film-TV Composer, Dies at 100

Variety
Jon Burlingame
July 19, 2015

Van Alexander, the 1940s bandleader who co-wrote “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” with Ella Fitzgerald and went on to score dozens of films and TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s, died of heart failure Sunday afternoon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 100.

A three-time Emmy nominee for composition and music direction in the early 1970s, Alexander was head arranger for the entire run of NBC”s “Dean Martin Show” (1965-74) and wrote scores for many 1960s sitcoms including “Hazel,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Dennis the Menace,” “The Farmer’s Daughter,” “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie.”

He was also the composer of more than a dozen 1950s and ’60s film scores including “The Atomic Kid,” “Baby Face Nelson,” “Andy Hardy Comes Home,” “Girls Town” and a trio of William Castle films that have become cult favorites: “13 Frightened Girls,” “Strait-Jacket” and “I Saw What You Did.”

Alexander was the author of “First Arrangement,” a landmark 1946 how-to book for musicians learning how to arrange for orchestra. He later penned an autobiography, “From Harlem to Hollywood: A Life in Music.”

He was born in New York, May 2, 1915, and began piano lessons at the age of 6. He became friendly with bandleader Chick Webb at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom and sold his first arrangement at the age of 19.

 Webb’s featured singer Fitzgerald suggested the idea of making the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” into a jazz number, and they recorded it on Alexander’s 23rd birthday in 1938. It became her first big hit and his biggest hit as a songwriter. He went on to write band arrangements for Benny Goodman and Bob Crosby.

 Alexander led his own band from 1939 to 1944, moving to L.A. in 1945 and starting to compose for films in the 1950s. His work on “The Atomic Kid” and TV’s “The Mickey Rooney Show,” both in 1954, led to a series of scores for Rooney films into the 1960s.

 Over the years, Alexander worked with singers including Gordon MacRae, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Mitzi Gaynor, Lena Horne, Bob Hope, Tony Bennett and others.

 In television, Alexander worked as music director on numerous 1960s and ’70s variety specials including ones headlined by Gene Kelly, Dom DeLuise and Jonathan Winters. His Emmy noms were for Winters and Kelly shows and Martin’s summer-replacement series “The Golddiggers.”

Alexander was a past president of the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers, and served on its board of directors for many years. He received lifetime-achievement awards from the Los Angeles Jazz Society in 1997, Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters in 1997 and the ASCAP Foundation in 2002.

 Alexander celebrated his 100th birthday at an all-star bash in May at Catalina Bar & Grill, attended by more than 200 members of the jazz, film and TV music community.

His wife Beth, to whom he was married for 72 years, died in 2010. He is survived by two daughters, Joyce Harris and Lynn Tobias of Los Angeles, four grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.

 Services will be at 12 noon Wednesday at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.


ALEXANDER, Van (Alexander Van Vliet Feldman)
Born: 5/2/1915, New York City, New York, U.S.A.
Died: 7/19/2015, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Van Alexander’s westerns – songwriter, arranger, composer:
The Cowboy and the Lady – 1938 [songwriter]
Ride ‘Em Cowboy – 1942 [songwriter]
The Last Command – 1955 [arranger]
Timberjack – 1955 [arranger]
The Twinkle in God’s Eye – 1955 [composer]
Spoilers of the Forest – 1957 [composer]
A Time for Killing – 1967 [composer]

RIP Sandra Lynne Becker

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RIP Sandra Lynne Becker

Sacramento Bee
May 23, 2015

Becker-Balman, Sandra passed away peacefully at home on Friday May 15, 2015 at the age of 68. Survived by her husband Don, daughters Heather Cambra (Bill), Teresa Lynch (Garth), stepmother Betty Becker and grandchildren, Samantha, Gavin, Jacob, Hanna, Myles, Daniel and Anthony. Sandi was a loving wife, mother and grandmother (Meme).

She had a passion for animals, Spending time with her grandchildren is what brought her so much joy and they knew that she would do anything for them. Sandi also worked for Lyon Real Estate for 14 years.

Sandi was born on April 5, 1947 in Covina, California. She had such beauty inside and out. In 1965, she was the youngest woman crowned Miss California. After winning the crown, Sandi traveled with Bob Hope to Vietnam with the USO tour. She also performed with many young American singers at the time, including Perry Como, Angela Lansbury and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

During a 5-year contract with Warner Brothers Studios she appeared in several films and TV shows, including Bewitched, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Here Comes the Brides. Sandi also sang for the Christian Women's Club around the nation. We would like to express our sincerest thanks to all who have communicated their thoughts and prayers. Sandi was a loved woman who loved deeply.


BECKER, Sandra Lynne
Born: 4/5/1947, Covina, California, U.S.A.
Died: 5/15/2015, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

Sandra Lynne Becker’s western – actress:
Here Comes the Brides (TV) - 1968
 

RIP Theodore Bikel

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Theodore Bikel, Broadway's 'Fiddler on the Roof' Star, Dies at 91

Hollywood Reporter
by Duane Byrge , Alex Ben Block
7/21/2015

He also created Von Trapp for 'The Sound of Music' for the stage, earned an Oscar nom for 'The Defiant Ones' and was an accomplished folk singer.

Theodore Bikel, a prolific performer and political activist who created the role of Captain Georg Von Trapp in the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music and defined the role of Tevye the Milkman during more than 2,200 performances of Fiddler on the Roof, has died. He was 91.

Bikel died of natural causes on Tuesday morning at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll announced.

Internationally renown and respected as one of the most versatile actors of his generation, Bikel received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor for The Defiant Ones (1958), where he played a Southern sheriff.

Conversant in a number of languages, Bikel’s background and versatility led to a wide, multinational range of roles. Often playing authority figures, the native of Vienna starred as a Dutch doctor in The Little Kidnappers (1953); a Germany submarine officer in The Enemy Below (1957); a French general in The Pride and the Passion (1957); Russian military men in in Fraulein (1958) and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1965); and a Hungarian phonetics expert in My Fair Lady (1964),

Other memorable feature credits include The African Queen (1951), I Want to Live! (1958), See You in the Morning (1989), Crisis in the Kremlin (1992) and Shadow Conspiracy (1996). 

In The Sound of Music, which opened on Broadway in 1959 and ran until 1963, Bikel earned a Tony Award nomination for his work. The musical also starred Mary Martin as Maria. (Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer took their parts in the 1965 version, which won the Oscar for best picture.)

On television, Bikel made hundreds of appearances, co-starring as Henry Kissinger in the 1989 ABC miniseries The Final Days and guesting on shows as diverse as The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, All in the Family, Law & Order, JAG, Colombo and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He had recurring roles on the primetime soaps Dynasty and Falcon Crest.

Bikel did a weekly radio program, At Home With Theodore Bikel, which was nationally syndicated. He is the author of Folksongs and Footnotes, and his autobiography Theo was published in 1994.

Late into his life, Bikel wrote and starred in numerous performances of the play and musical Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears, which had its world premiere in Washington in 2008.

More recent film credits include Dark Tower (1989), Second Chances (1998) and Crime and Punishment (2002).

Bikel appeared in opera productions including La Gazza Ladra, Philadelphia Opera Company (1989); The Abduction From the Seraglio, Cleveland Opera Company (1992), Ariadne auf Naxos, Los Angeles Opera Company (1992); and Die Fledermaus, Yale Opera Company (1998).

On Broadway in the 1950s, he starred in productions including Tonight in Samarkand, The Rope Dancers (in which he received a Tony Award nomination) and The Lark.

Bikel was a noteworthy recording artist who enjoyed international popularity as a folk singer. He appeared at Carnegie Hall and sang for Queen Elizabeth, and in 1961, he founded the Newport Folk Festival.

He recorded 37 albums, more than 20 for Electra. Folksong of Israk, A Young Man and a Maid and An Actor’s Holiday featured songs in 12 languages, including Ukrainian and Zulu. He collected exotic folk instruments, sang with Pete Seeger and once owned a bistro in Hollywood.

A civil rights activist who became a naturalized American citizen in 1961, he was appointed by President Carter in 1977 to serve a five-year term on the National Council for the Arts.

“Everything that I’ve done and that I’ve lived through” Bikel said in a 2001 interview, “has really informed a commitment I have. I’m not just somebody who mouths words or sings songs on the stage; I’m also a human being, and that counts for something.”

Bikel was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, senior vp of the American Jewish Congress, vp of the International Federation of Actors (1981-91), a board member of Amnesty International (USA) and president of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America. He also was president emeritus of Actors Equity, which he served as president from 1973-82.

Bikel was born in Vienna on May 2, 1924. He was educated in Austria until the Nazis arrived when he was 13. His father, an insurance salesman and ardent Zionist, soon moved his family to Palestine (later Israel) and became director of the public health service. Bikel spent his teens living on a kibbutz and got his first acting job as a Czarist constable in a Hebrew production of the Tevye stories.

In 1946, he went to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatics Arts. He followed with work on the London stage, winning acclaim for his performance in Laurence Olivier’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Bikel also was noteworthy in Peter Ustinov’s The Love of Four Colonels.

Bikel came to the U.S. in 1954 to appear with Louis Jourdan in Tonight in Smarkand on Broadway. Strong critical notices helped him land the main supporting role opposite Julie Harris in The Lark.

He lived for many years in Connecticut and belonged to the Theater Artists Workshop of Westport. Most recently, he lived in Southern California.

Active until the end, Bikel was touring festivals with screenings of his latest film, Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem.

Survivors include his wife Aimee, sons Rob and Danny, stepsons Zeev and Noam and three grandchildren.

Donations can be made to The Actors Fund or Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

When he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in 1997, Bikel said: “In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them -- unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event."


BIKEL, Theodore (Theodor Meir Bikel)
Born: 5/2/1924, Vienna, Austria
Died: 7/21/2015, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Theodore Bikel’s westerns – actor:
The Defiant Ones – 1958 (Sheriff Max Muller)
Hotel de Paree (TV) – 1959 (Carmoody)
Wagon Train (TV) – 1962 (Dr. Denker)
Rawhide (TV) – 1964 (Pence)
Gunsmoke (TV) – 1965 (Martin Kellums)

RIP Al Checco

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RIP Al Checco


Forest Lawn

Al Checco, longtime Hollywood film and TV character actor died on July 19, 2015 in Studio City, California. He was 93 years-old, Al was born on July 21, 1921 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Arrangements are under the direction of Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California.


CHECCO, Al
Born: 7/21/1921, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Died: 7/19/2015, Studio City, California, U.S.A.

Al Checco’s westerns – actor:
Bronco (TV) – 1962 (Ken Rodney)
The Big Valley (TV) – 1969 (desk clerk)
There Was a Crooked Man – 1970 (Wheatley)
Bonanza (TV) – 1970, 1971 (Hornsby, Rufus)
Skin Game – 1971 (room clerk)
Cade’s County – 1972 (Merle)
Kung Fu (TV) – 1975 (referee)
Tales of the Apple Dumpling Gang (TV) – 1982 (Floyd Wilkins)

RIP E.L. Doctorow

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E. L. Doctorow Dies at 84; Literary Time Traveler Stirred Past Into Fiction

The New York Times
By Bruce Weber
July 21, 2015

E. L. Doctorow, a leading figure in contemporary American letters whose popular, critically admired and award-winning novels — including “Ragtime,” “Billy Bathgate” and “The March” — situated fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts, among identifiable historical figures and often within unconventional narrative forms, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 84 and lived in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, N.Y.

The cause was complications from lung cancer, his son, Richard, said.

The author of a dozen novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama, as well as essays and commentary on literature and politics, Mr. Doctorow was widely lauded for the originality, versatility and audacity of his imagination.

Subtly subversive in his fiction — less so in his left-wing political writing — he consistently upended expectations with a cocktail of fiction and fact, remixed in book after book; with clever and substantive manipulations of popular genres like the Western and the detective story; and with his myriad storytelling strategies. Deploying, in different books, the unreliable narrator, the stream-of-consciousness narrator, the omniscient narrator and multiple narrators, Mr. Doctorow was one of contemporary fiction’s most restless experimenters.

In “World’s Fair” (1985), for example, a book that hews closely to Mr. Doctorow’s autobiography and that he once described as “a portrait of the artist as a very young boy” (but also as “the illusion of a memoir”), he depicts the experience of a Depression-era child of the Bronx and his awakening to the ideas of America and of a complicated world. Ending at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, the book tilts irresistibly toward the technological future of the country and the artistic future of the man.

The narrator is looking back on his childhood, but the conventionality of the narration is undermined in two ways. For one thing, the man’s relatives get their own first-person chapters and inject their own memories, a strategy that adds depth and luster to the portrait of the time and place. For another, his own narration is offered in the present tense, as if the preadolescent character were telling an unfolding tale, though with the perspective and vocabulary of an adult. His opening recollection — or is it a contemporaneous report? — is of wetting the bed:

“Startled awake by the ammoniated mists, I am roused in one instant from glutinous sleep to grieving awareness; I have done it again. My soaked thighs sting. I cry. I call Mama, knowing I must endure her harsh reaction, get through that, to be rescued. My crib is on the east wall of their room. Their bed is on the south wall. ‘Mama!’ From her bed she hushes me.”

Beginning with his third novel, “The Book of Daniel” (1971), an ostensible memoir by the son of infamous accused traitors — their story mirrors that of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed as Russian spies in 1953 — Mr. Doctorow turned out a stream of literary inventions. His protagonists lived in the seeming thrall of history but their tales, for the convenience — or, better, the purpose — of fiction, depicted alterations in accepted versions of the past. Not that he undermined the grand scheme of things; his interest was not of the what-if-things-had-gone-differently variety. Rather, a good part of Mr. Doctorow’s achievement was in illustrating how the past informs the present, and how the present has evolved from the past.

Works With a ‘Double Vision’

In the book that made him famous, “Ragtime” (1975), set in and around New York as America hurtled toward involvement in World War I, the war arrives on schedule, but the actions of the many characters, both fictional and nonfictional (including the escape artist Harry Houdini, the anarchist philosopher Emma Goldman and the novelist Theodore Dreiser) were largely invented. Sometimes this was for droll effect — at one point Freud and Jung, visiting New York at the same time, take an amusement park boat ride together through the tunnel of love — and sometimes for the sake of narrative drama and thematic impact. Written in a declarative, confident voice with an often dryly arch tone mocking its presumed omniscience, the novel seemed to both lay claim to authoritative historical perspective and undermine it with winking commentary.

Houdini, Mr. Doctorow writes, “was passionately in love with his ancient mother whom he had installed in his brownstone home on West 113th Street.”

“In fact,” he continues, “Sigmund Freud had just arrived in America to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and so Houdini was destined to be, with Al Jolson, the last of the great shameless mother lovers, a 19th-century movement that included such men as Poe, John Brown, Lincoln and James McNeill Whistler. Of course Freud’s immediate reception in America was not auspicious. A few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever.”

Woven into the rollicking narrative of “Ragtime” are the dawn of the movies and the roots of the American labor movement, tabloid journalism and women’s rights. The central plot involves the violent retribution taken by a black musician against a society that has left him without redress for his heinous victimization. The events described never took place (Mr. Doctorow borrowed the plot from a 19th-century novel by the German writer Heinrich von Kleist, who based his tale on a 16th-century news event), but they contribute to Mr. Doctorow’s foreshadowing of racial conflict as one of the great cultural themes of 20th-century American life.

In “Billy Bathgate,” a Depression-era Bronx teenager is seduced by the pleasures of lawlessness when he is engaged as an errand boy by the gangster Dutch Schultz, who is about to go on trial for tax evasion. The novel is not an allegory but, published in 1989, as the “greed is good” decade of the 1980s came to a close, it makes plain that Schultz’s corrupt entrepreneurism is of a piece with the avaricious manipulations of white-collar financiers, forerunners of a Wall Street run amok.

“The distinguished characteristic of E. L. Doctorow’s work is its double vision,” the critic Peter S. Prescott wrote in Newsweek in 1984. “In each of his books he experiments with the forms of fiction, working for effects that others haven’t already achieved; in each he develops a tone, a structure and a texture that he hasn’t used before. At the same time, he’s a deeply traditional writer, reworking American history, American literary archetypes, even exhausted subliterary genres. It’s an astonishing performance, really.”

Most of Mr. Doctorow’s historical explorations involved New York and its environs, including “Loon Lake” (1980), the tale of a 1930s drifter who comes upon a kind of otherworldly kingdom, a private retreat in the Adirondacks; “Lives of the Poets” (1984), a novella and six stories that collectively depict the mind of a writer who has, during the 1970s, succumbed to midlife ennui; and “The Waterworks” (1994), a dark mystery set in Manhattan in the 1870s, involving a journalist who vanishes and an evil scientist.

More recently, in “City of God” (2000), Mr. Doctorow wrote about three characters — a writer, a rabbi and a priest — and the search for faith in a cacophonous and especially hazardous age, using contemporary Manhattan as a backdrop. And in “Homer and Langley” (2009), he created a tour of 20th-century history from the perspective of a blind man, Homer Collyer, a highly fictionalized rendering of one of two eccentric brothers living on upper Fifth Avenue who became notorious after their deaths for their obsessive hoarding.

Indeed, much of his oeuvre describes a fictional history, more or less, of 20th-century America in general and New York in particular.

“Someone said to me once that my books can be arranged in rough chronological order to indicate one man’s sense of 120 years of American life,” Mr. Doctorow said on the publication of “City of God.” “In this book, it seems I’ve finally caught up to the present.”

“The March” (2005) was Mr. Doctorow’s farthest reach back into history, and it also expanded his geographical reach, populating the destructive and decisive Civil War campaign of General William T. Sherman — the capture of Atlanta and the so-called march to the sea — with a plethora of characters. Black and white, wealthy and wanting, military and civilian, sympathetic and repugnant, they are a veritable representation of the American people.

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (also won by “Billy Bathgate”) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction (also won by “Ragtime” and “Billy Bathgate”), a finalist for the National Book Award (won by “World’s Fair”) and the Pulitzer Prize, “The March” was widely recognized as a signature book, treated by critics as the climactic work of a career.

Perhaps the most telling review came from John Updike, who was prominent among a noisy minority of critics who generally found Mr. Doctorow’s tinkering with history misleading if not an outright violation of the tenets of narrative literature. Updike held “Ragtime” in especial disdain.

“It smacked of playing with helpless dead puppets, and turned the historical novel into a gravity-free, faintly sadistic game,” he wrote in The New Yorker, going on to dismiss several other Doctorow books before granting their author a reprieve.

“His splendid new novel, ‘The March,’ pretty well cures my Doctorow problem,” Updike wrote, adding, “The novel shares with ‘Ragtime’ a texture of terse episodes and dialogue shorn, in avant-garde fashion, of quotation marks, but has little of the older book’s distancing jazz, its impudent, mocking shuffle of facts; it celebrates its epic war with the stirring music of a brass marching band heard from afar, then loud and up close, and finally receding over the horizon.

“Reading historical fiction,” Updike went on, “we often itch, our curiosity piqued, to consult a book of straight history, to get to the facts without the fiction. But ‘The March’ stimulates little such itch; it offers an illumination, fitful and flickering, of a historic upheaval that only fiction could provide. Doctorow here appears not so much a reconstructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.”


DOCTOROW, E.L. (Edgar Lawrence Doctorow)
Born: 1/6/1931, New York City, New York, U.S.A.
Died: 7/21/2015, Manhattan, New York, U.S.A.

E.L. Doctorow’s western – screenwriter, actor:
Welcome to Hard Times – 1967 [screenwriter]
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson – 1976 (Adviser to President Grover Cleveland)

RIP Antony Holland

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Local theatre legend Antony Holland dies at 95

The Georgia Straight
By Janet Smith
July 30, 2015

Antony Holland, Canada's oldest living actor, founder of Studio 58, and a massive local-theatre pioneer, died on Wednesday (July 29) at 95, according to the Langara acting school's Facebook page.

 It reported he "passed away earlier today at Nanaimo General Hospital. At this time we are awaiting details. Once more information is known we will share with all of you. For now, all of us at Studio 58 are deeply saddened by this news and extend our heartfelt condolences to his family." Studio 58 also updated its cover photo to a shot of an exhilarated Holland receiving the Order of Canada in 2014.

 Holland had distinguished himself during the Second World War by organizing theatre productions with his fellow soldiers (including during the North African campaign). His famous personal quote on IMDB is "I'm a really good actor, but I'm a terrible soldier." Later, he had a flourishing postwar career acting, directing, and teaching at Britain's famous Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. But in 1957, he moved to Canada with a different dream. He once told the Straight, “I loved gardening and I thought I’d come and grow vegetables and sell them.”

Fortunately for us, he didn't just remain a green thumb.

 Soon after coming here, he founded an innovative theatre school at a Maple Ridge prison, the Haney Correctional Institute, in 1960.(“You’d be locked in the gym to rehearse, and you’d suddenly need a prop or something, so you’d have to go to the door and get a guard to double-unlock the door," he once recalled to the Straight.) In 1965 he launched the first theatre-arts program at Vancouver City College, which would evolve into Studio 58 (now at Langara campus). Holland retired from his post heading the program in 1984.

 He once told the Straight: “Somebody had laid down ground rules for this program which consisted of a couple of acting classes a week, and then they were going to farm the students out to other departments like psychology and business administration and physical education. And I realized that’s not going to equip somebody to be an actor, and so I went to the administration and said: ‘This program is for the birds. My mandate is to give them the skills so they can earn their living, not go on to university.’ ” Holland designed a more practical curriculum, which included dance and musical training, and hired theatre professionals as part-time instructors. Although enrollment was initially small—he accepted all five students who applied into the first class—the program now receives hundreds of applications from around North America and has produced some of the city and country's finest actors. The school is gearing up for its 50th anniversary this fall.

 Some of his most well known roles included an appearance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at Studio 58 in 2008 and as King Lear there in 2005. At the 2008 show, he played other characters as well. The production was, almost unimaginably, what he dubbed "Free-Fall Shakespeare”: each night of the performance at the Langara theatre, the audience would help choose which actors would play which characters, and in performer-director Holland’s case, that meant the crowd could decide whether he’d be Old Gobbo, the Duke of Venice, or Shylock.

 Receiving the Jessie award for his acclaimed role in Tuesdays With Morrie at the Arts Club in 2006, he quipped, "My advice to everyone is if you spend 70 years in the theatre you may get the part you really want."

 Holland also had a storied TV and movie career, in everything from McCabe & Mrs. Miller to The Accused to Battlestar Galactica. He said of appearing on film opposite Katharine Hepburn “I got panicked for the first time in my life. I thought, ‘I had that woman’s portrait on my wall when I was 12'."

 More recently he lived on Gabriola Island, where he established a new company at the Gabriola Theatre Centre.

 He held a Lifetime Equity membership, membership in the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, and many Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards and lifetime achievement awards; there is also a scholarship at Studio 58 in his honour.

 Holland had celebrated his 95th birthday by acting in Nanaimo in March in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker.


HOLLAND, Antony
Born: 3/28/1920, Tiverton, Devon, England, U.K.
Died: 7/29/2015, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada

Antony Holland’s westerns – actor:
McCabe & Mrs. Miller – 1971 (Hollander)
The Grey Fox – 1982 (judge)


RIP Roddy Piper

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'Rowdy' Roddy Piper Dies at 61 From Cardiac Arrest

TMZ
By Staff
7/31/2015

Wrestling legend "Rowdy" Roddy Piper has died at the age of 61... TMZ Sports has learned.

Piper -- born Roderick George Toombs -- died from cardiac arrest in his sleep at his home in Hollywood at around noon Friday.

Piper was a wrestling icon -- one of the biggest stars in the WWE back in the '80s, and even wrestled in "Wrestlemania I" back in 1985 ... squaring off against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.

Roddy's rep tells us, "I am devastated at this news.  Rod was a good friend as well as a client and one of the most generous, sincere and authentic people I have ever known. This is a true loss to us all."

Piper had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2006, but last November he said he was cancer free.  A family source tells us he was "cancer free" at the time of his death.

A family member tells us, "Our family is saddened by the sudden passing of our father and beloved husband, Roderick Toombs aka Rowdy Roddy Piper."

Roddy was admitted into the WWE Hall of Fame back in 2005 and was one of the top 50 villains in the history of the WWE . 

Piper had a long relationship with WWE -- last wrestling back in 2008 ... but appeared on various WWE shows up until 2014.

Roddy is survived by his wife Kitty and their 4 kids -- including 3 daughters and son Colton who's pursuing a career in professional wrestling.

The death is especially shocking considering we just spoke to him on Friday and asked his opinion about the Hulk Hogan scandal.

PIPER, Roddy (Roderick George Toombs)
Born: 4/17/1954, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Died: 7/31/2015, Hollywood, California, U.S.A.

Roddy Piper’s westerns – actor:
Zorro (TV) – 1990, 1991 (Bishop, Will Adams)
Walker, Texas Ranger (TV) – 1998 (Cody 'The Crusader' Conway)

RIP Takeshi Kato

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RIP Takeshi Kato

Akira Kurosawa info
By Vili Maunula
August 1, 2015

Veteran Japanese actor Takeshi Katō has passed away on July 31 after collapsing in a sauna. He was 86.

 Katō, whose background was in English teaching and theatre, appeared in altogether seven Akira Kurosawa films during a period of thirty years. His first appearance for Kurosawa came as an uncredited extra for Seven Samurai (1954), after which he had roles in Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963) and Ran (1985).

 Katō’s roles under Kurosawa tended to be fairly small but often memorable. Take for instance the very beginning of The Hidden Fortress where, immediately after we are introduced to the two peasants, a bloodied soldier steps into the frame, only to be brutally killed by soldiers on horseback. That slaughtered soldier is Katō. His fate in Throne of Blood isn’t much better. Remember the scene where Toshirō Mifune’s character Washizu gives drugged sake to the lords’ guards and proceeds to kill them? One of those guards is Katō. In The Bad Sleep Well, Katō has a larger role as Nishi’s trusted friend Itakura who is continually present but never quite at the centre of the frame. In High and Low, he appears as detective Nakao, a part of the ensemble of police officers. His role in Yojimbo was similarly a part of a group, as he played one of the ronins, Kobuhachi.

 Katō was one of the Kurosawa regulars whom Stuart Galbraith IV interviewed for his book on the lives of Kurosawa and Mifune, and some of the most detailed glimpses behind the production curtain come from those interviews.

 In addition to Kurosawa’s works, Katō appeared in over a hundred films and numerous television productions, and was still actively working this year. His film credits include roles in the 1984 reboot of Godzilla, Hideo Gosha’s Sword of the Beast (1965), Shōhei Imamura’s films Pigs and Battleships (1961) and The Insect Woman (1963), Kon Ichikawa’s Princess from the Moon (1987) and Dora-heita (2000), Keisuke Kinoshita’s Children of Nagasaki (1983), as well as the Frank Sinatra directed None But the Brave (1965). He also worked as a voice actor.

 Throughout his career, Katō was also an active member of the modern theatre group Bungakuza, where he worked as both as an actor and a director.


KATO, Takeshi
Born: 5/24/1929, Tokyo, Japan
Died: 7/31/2015, Tokyo, Japan

Takeshi Katō’s western – actor:
Nosappu no jô - 1961

RIP László Sinkó

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Laszlo Sinko has died

Origo
By Koncz Tamas, Jankovics Marton

8/1/2015 


Laszlo Sinko has died, the nation's artist awarded the title Kossuth and Jászai Mari-winning actor, director. He participated in the founding of the Katona József Theatre, since 2003 he was a member of the National Theatre. The viewers of the Neighbourhood Funds have known, but he was Anthony Hopkins Hungarian voice.

 "I color outside the family and the house I live with my love of nature for 25 years in Budakalász, the mountain every tree, shrub I planted." - told this spring gave an interview Laszlo Sinko.

Budakalasz today told the official community site that the actor died on 31 July. At the age of 75 leaving Sinko Laszlo was a life member of the Immortals Society, and in 2014 was chosen artist of the Nation.

His family was in the theater and his love of nature
Also learned a lot from his brother

In 1962, he graduated from the Film and Theatre Academy, which contracted to Debrecen. He later became a member of the National Theatre, where it played for a while with his brother, Imre Sinkovits together.

"Most of the people there committed the mistake of looking for identity in us, but we were completely different, Imre water and fire. Taught me the love of nature, his first trip took me to the Pilis. In the theater I learned from him how to prepare a rehearsal performance "- said the actor's relationship with his brother.

Laszlo Sinko  in1982 participated in the founding of the Katona József Theatre in Budapest, where he spent 12 seasons. Later, in the New Theatre, then in 2003 he became a member of the National Theatre troupe.

One famous convert the soldier was the main role of King Ubu. In the March interview, he also told me how seriously made theatrical roles:

"If at night I played, my wife already has compiled the diet. I would soon be there. The Übünél was this rite. At six o'clock we sat down on the floor of the stage, the" zenekaruramék "Szacsvay, Border Castle, Vajdai Bill and the others, we sang all kinds of songs so I warming up with. My body is trained on Margaret Island, two years before he went to pieces, I left to run, and there I put my voice to Ubu fekvésébe. With deep guttural practiced, I saw fish inarticulate sounds while running, he saw this, he elcsodálkozhatott. The növendékeimnek also taught that we should prepare themselves fairly, because they will be confident in their play. "

Only the greatest poem they could say, as he did. Here Kosztolányi Dear poem chants.
Step One and a half million

In addition to theatrical work is featured in several well-known television program, Árpád Juhász made ​​a half million with the educational step program in Hungary, but the novel is full of Neighbors noticed more than one part, you Etus a friend or developed.

Typical organ benefited the roles are well synchronized. The cult cartoon Cat Grabowskinak voiced by Nick, but foreign actors are often translated to the domestic audience.

"I synchronized a lot. I was so identified certain players, such as Roger Moore in Ivanhoe and
once remarked in a rural pub to see how well I ride and will fight "

In an interview he said. Many times sounded in films, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson and even Anthony Hopkins he synchronized over ten films.

In 2011, he was made an honorary citizen title Budakalász Budakalász and living artist honored by the representative body of the city.


SINKO, László (László Sinkóvits)
Born: 3/18/1940, Budapest, Hungary
Died: 7/31/2015 Budakalász, Hungary

László Sinkó’s westerns – voice actor:
Shalako – 1968 [Hungarian voice of Peter van Eyck]
Tecumseh – 1972 [Hungarian voice of unknown actor]

RIP Coleen Gray

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Coleen Gray, Star of 'Kiss of Death' and 'Nightmare Alley,' Dies at 92

The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
8/3/2015

The actress, a favorite of film noir fans, also appeared in 'Red River,''The Killing,''Kansas City Confidential' and 'The Leech Woman.'


Coleen Gray, the dark-haired beauty who stood out in such film noir thrillers as Kiss of Death, Nightmare Alley and Kansas City Confidential, has died. She was 92.

Gray, who also starred opposite John Wayne in Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948) and played crook Sterling Hayden’s attractive accomplice in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), died Monday of natural causes at her home in Bel Air, longtime friend David Schecter told The Hollywood Reporter.

“My last dame is gone. Always had the feeling she'd be the last to go,” Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, wrote on Facebook. They collaborated on his 2001 book, Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir.

Gray was “introduced” to audiences in Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death (1947) as Nette, the girlfriend and future wife of ex-con Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), who battles psychopathic killer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in a bid to go straight once and for all.

The Nebraska native then segued to a role as scheming carnival barker Tyrone Power’s aide in Nightmare Alley (1947), then appeared as Wayne’s sweetheart Fen in Red River.

In Kansas City Confidential (1952), Gray portrayed the law-school daughter of a former cop (Preston Foster) who engineers a bank heist by framing a delivery man played by John Payne. (Gray and Payne’s characters fall for each other in the movie, and they were romantically linked offscreen as well.)

Gray also starred in the Frank Capra horse picture Riding High (1950), where her scene with Bing Crosby and Clarence Muse singing “Sunshine Cake” was the favorite film moment of her career.

She played a nurse femme fatale in The Sleeping City (1950) opposite Richard Conte, was manhandled by a creature in The Vampire (1957) and discovered the secret to immortality (but not without consequences) in The Leech Woman (1960).

Gray spent much of the 1960s on television, with guest-starring roles on such shows as Rawhide, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 77 Sunset Strip, Mister Ed, Perry Mason and Family Affair.

Later, on the NBC drama McCloud, she played the wife of police chief Peter B. Clifford (J.D. Cannon) in a few episodes.

She was born Doris Bernice Jensen on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Neb. At age 7, she and her family moved to Hutchinson, Minn., and she studied drama at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn.

With only $26 to her name, she took a Greyhound bus to Hollywood. She enrolled at USC and then drama school and starred in the play Brief Music. She was seen by an agent and signed with Fox, where she made her movie debut for the studio in State Fair (1945).

In 1949, Gray starred on Broadway in Leaf and Bough with Charlton Heston.

Gray was married three times, the first to screenwriter, producer and future TV director Rod Amateau and the last to biblical scholar Joseph “Fritz” Zeiser, who died in 2012 (they were together for more than 30 years). Survivors include her daughter Susan, son Bruce, stepsons Rick and Steve and several grandchildren.

A memorial service at Bel Air Presbyterian Church is being planned.


GRAY, Coleen (Doris Bernice Jensen)
Born: 10/23/1922, Staplehurst, Nebraska, U.S.A.
Died: 8/3/2015 Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Coleen Gray’s westerns – actress:
Fury at Furnace Creek – 1948 (Molly Baxter)
Red River – 1948 (Fen)
Sand – 1949 (Joan Hartley)
Apache Drums – 1951 (Sally)
Wide Country – 1952 (Gypsy Laveau)
The Vanquished – 1953 (Jane Colfax)
Arrow in the Dust – 1954 (Christella Burke)
Tennessee’s Partner – 1955 (Goldie Slater)
The Twinkle in God’s Eye – 1955 (Laura)
The Black Whip – 1956 (Jeannie)
The Dakotas (TV) – 1956 (Sue ‘Lucky’Duncen)
Frontier Gambler – 1956 (Sylvia ‘The Princess’ Melbourne)
Frontier (TV) – 1956 (Ruth)
Star in the Dust – 1956 (Nellie Mason)
Cooper Sky – 1957 (Nora Hayes)
Deputy (TV) – 1960 (Lucy Willis)
El Fego Baca (TV) – 1960 (Peggy Minters)
Shotgun Slade (TV) – 1960 (Ruby Devers)
Tales of Wells Fargo (TV) 1960 (Sandra)
Have Gun – Will Travel – 1961 (Lucy Jalisco)
Lawman (TV) – 1961 (Rena Kennedy)
Maverick (TV) – 1961 (Greta Blauvelt)
The Tall Man – 1961 (Edna Henry)
Rawhide (TV) – 1962 (Helen Wade)
The Dakotas (TV) – 1963 (Jenny Wyman)
Branded (TV) – 1965 (Leslie Gregg)
Town Tamer – 1965 (Carol Rosser)
The Virginian (TV) – 1966, 1967 (Pearl, Mrs. Marsh)
Bonanza (TV) – 1968 (Marcy)

RIP Jacques Thébault

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Jacques Thébault, the voice of Steve McQueen, has died

Le Figaro
July 16, 2015

He was the voice of Steve McQueen, of Clint Eastwood but also Bill Cosby, Patrick McGoohan and Lucky Luke.  Jacques Thébault, French actor specialized in dubbing, died at Saint Arnoult Normandy, Wednesday 15 July, following a pulmonary embolism.  He was 90 years old.

1950 to 1980, he was one of the best voices of the small and big screen. He was Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958-1961) before accompanying the actor in his major roles: Bullitt (1968), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) The Getaway (1972), Papillon (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Hunter (1980).

He also embodied with perfection phlegm Patrick McGoohan, the famous Prisoner Number 6.  It was he, moreover, who had the idea of ​​the word, remained famous: "Hello world."  In English, Patrick McGoohan said, "Be seeing you."

Among his great voice acting, also include: Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, Robert Conrad in The Wild Wild West, John Cassavetes in The Dirty Dozen, Paul Newman in The Left-Handed Gun, Clint Eastwood in Coogan’s Bluff, Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun, Roy Scheider in Jaws, Bill Cosby in The Cosby Show.  In Doctor Zhivago David Lean, he dubbed both Alec Guiness and Klaus Kinski.

He often played hard. In Alien (1978), he is the voice of Ian Holm, the interpète the android Ash.  In Star Wars episodes IV and V, he remains on the dark side with Admiral Piett.  Just like in Tron, where he doubled the villain Ed Dillinger, aka Sark, and Blade Runner, where he is the creator of Eldon Tyrell Replicants.

After doubling Steve McQueen, Robert Conrad and Paul Newman in many westerns, Jacques Thébault voiced westerner Lucky Luke in The Daltons: Escape from Grumble Gulch in 1983 and in two cartoon TV series dating from 1984 and 1991.

Jacques Thébault appeared in several films, including The Tricycle with Darry Cowl.  He was also at a time approached by Jean-Pierre Jeunet to lend his voice to the narrator of Amelie Poulain, with this role is entrusted to André Dussollier.


THEBAULT, Jacques
Born: 1924, France
Died: 7/15/2015, Saint Arnoult, Normandy,

Jacques Thébault’s westerns – voice dubber:
God Forgives… I Don’t – 1967 [French voice of Terence Hill]
Escape from Grumble Gulch - 1983 [French voice of Lucky Luke]
Lucky Luke (TV) – 1983-1984, 1992 [French voice of Lucky Luke]

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