Actor Michael Showers, perhaps best known for his work as Captain John Guidry on the HBO series “Treme,” was found dead in the Mississippi River early Wednesday morning.
He was 45 years old.
A steamboat captain spotted him at around 11:15 a.m. in waters near New Orleans’ French Quarter and Harbor Police recovered the body about 30 minutes later, authorities told the Times-Picayune.
An autopsy will be performed to determine cause of death, but the chief investigator for the Orleans Parish coroner’s office estimated that Showers’ body had been in the water for two days.
The Times-Picayune identified Showers as being from Chalmette, a village in southeast Louisiana situated on the east bank of the Mississippi River.
In addition to Treme, Showers made appearances in Breaking Bad and The Vampire Diaries, and his movie credits include Traffic, I Love You Phillip Morris and The Tree of Life.
A family member said, “Annette had recently started having difficulty breathing … and when she went to the doctor she learned that she had a cancerous tumor in one of her lungs.”
“They call me Cha Cha. Because I’m the best dancer at St. Bernadette’s.”
James Arness, a bigger-than-life actor who kept the peace as Marshal Matt Dillon on ‘Gunsmoke’ for its 20-year run, died Friday of natural causes at his home in Brentwood, Calif., his family confirmed to the Los Angeles Times.
He was 88.
‘Gunsmoke’ debuted on CBS in 1955 and ran until 1975, in the process making Arness one of the more enduring stars on television and the Matt Dillon character one of its most beloved and trusted.
The 6 foot 7 Arness towered over the cast, including Dillon’s deputy, Chester, played by Dennis Weaver. Other supporting stars included Amanda Blake as Kitty and Milburn Stone as Doc Adams.
By the time Arness got the part of Dillon, he had been a WWII combat veteran and appeared in several films, most notably the science-fiction classics ‘Them!’ and ‘The Thing From Another World,’ in which he played an alien.
The Minneapolis native’s younger brother, actor Peter Graves, who died last October, encouraged him to get into acting. He cut his Western teeth in four John Wayne film, including ‘Hondo’ and ‘Big Jim McLain.’
It was Wayne that recommended Arness for ‘Gunsmoke’ and an on-air endorsement from the film great himself. “I knew there was only one man to play in it, James Arness,” Wayne told viewers (watch video below). “He’s a young fella and may be new to some of you. But I’ve worked with him, and I predict he’ll be a big star. So you might as well get used to him, like you’ve had to get used to me.”
The role of Marshal Dillon proved a complex one and became a focus of the show, but Arness is said to have pushed producers to move the focus off him and onto the large ensemble cast.
When ‘Gunsmoke’ ended in 1975, appeared a string of TV shows including the miniseries ‘How The West Was Won’ and in the early 1980s, turned leading man again in cop drama ‘McClain’s Law.’
He brought Matt Dillon back for five ‘Gunsmoke’ movies starting in 1987′s ‘Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge.’
Arness is survived by his wife, Janet, two sons and six grandchildren.
Actress and former Playboy Playmate Yvette Vickers‘ mummified body was found in her Beverly Hills home last week, nearly a year after her death.
Vickers was best known for her bit roles in B-movies of the 1950′s like ‘Attack of the 50-Foot Woman‘ and was the Playboy Playmate in July 1959.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Vickers, 82, was not seen for a long time and one of her neighbors, actress Susan Savage, went to check on her after noticing old letters and cobwebs in her mailbox.
Savage said, “The letters seemed untouched and were starting to yellow. I just had a bad feeling.”
After Savage pushed open a barricaded front gate and scaling a hillside, she entered through a broken window after seeing a shock of blond hair, which turned out to be a wig.
Savage said the inside of the house was in disrepair and it was hard to move between the rooms as boxes containing clothes, junk mail and letters formed barriers.
She eventually found Vickers in a room upstairs and while Savage had known the actress for a long time, she said that the remains were unrecognizable.
“We’ve all been crying about this. Nobody should be left alone like that,” Savage said.
The police have said that the body’s mummified state suggests that Vickers could have been dead for close to a year.
The police have also said that while the official cause of death is still to be determined, they do not suspect foul play.
IMDB states that Vickers was divorced twice and she had an on-and-off 15-year relationship with the late actor Jim Hutton, the father of Timothy Hutton.
The veteran character actor died at home in Burbank, Calif., from cancer-related pneumonia. He was 88.
In a statement, Lesser’s daughter, Michele Lesser, said, “Heaven got a great comedian and actor today. … Thank you to all the people who helped make my father’s last journey special, and surrounded with love. The doctors, nurses, and staff have been outstanding, and Dad was in phenomenal hands. His passing was peaceful, with great dignity, and surrounded by those who loved him dearly.”
In addition to his widely known role on ‘Seinfeld,’ Lesser appeared on many other television series over the course of his 60-year career, including ‘Get Smart,’ ‘That Girl,’ ‘The Munsters,’ ‘The Monkees,’ ‘thirtysomething,’ ‘ER’ and ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.’ His most recent TV appearance was on TV drama ‘Castle.’
Lesser also appeared in a handful of movies including ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales,’ ‘Kelly’s Heroes,’ ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ and ‘Death Hunt.’
The actor is survived by his daughter, Michele; son, David; daughter-in-law, Julie; and grandchildren, Jonathan, Kayla and Mayah.
Oscar-winning film composer John Barry, who scored some of the most memorable movies of all time including multiple James Bond films, died Sunday of a heart attack in New York, the AP has confirmed. He was 77.
The news first came from current Bond film composer David Arnold, who announced, via Twitter,
“It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that John Barry passed away this morning.”
Arnold went on to pay tribute to his predecessor: “I am profoundly saddened by the news but profoundly thankful for everything he did for music and for me personally.”
Born in York, England, Barry won the first of his five Oscars in 1967, for Best Original Song and Best Score for ‘Born Free.’ He also went on to compose the score for the spinoff TV series. ‘Born Free’ star Virginia McKenna told the BBC that Barry was “a wonderful musician and composer.”
Barry went on to win Academy Awards for his work on ‘Out of Africa,’ ‘Dances With Wolves’ and ‘The Lion in Winter,’ and he was nominated for ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’ and ‘Chaplin.’ He also won a Grammy for ‘Dances With Wolves’ and a Golden Globe for ‘Out of Africa.’
Barry is best known for his iconic work on the James Bond movie franchise. He composed the soundtracks for 11 Bond films, including ‘Goldfinger,’ ‘Diamonds are Forever’ and ‘A View to a Kill,’ and his ‘Bond’ compositions were introduced to younger audiences via cover versions by The Propellerheads and Robbie Williams.
Although Barry is most famous for his movie compositions, he also wrote the themes for several TV series in the 1960s and ’70s. He was twice nominated for Emmy Awards, for the TV special ‘Elizabeth Taylor in London’ and for ‘Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years.’ He also wrote the themes for U.K. hit show ‘Juke Box Jury’ and the Tony Curtis-Roger Moore spy adventure series, ‘The Persuaders.’
Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru who inspired television viewers to trim down, eat well and pump iron for decades before diet and exercise became a national obsession, died on Sunday. He was 96.
LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay on California’s central coast, said his longtime agent Rick Hersh.
LaLanne ate healthy and exercised every day of his life up until the end, Hersh said.
“I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for,” Elaine LaLanne, Lalanne’s wife of 51 years and a frequent partner in his television appearances, said in a written statement.
Just before he had heart valve surgery in 2009 at age 95, Jack Lalanne told his family that dying would wreck his image, his publicist Ariel Hankin said at the time.
LaLanne (pronounced lah-LAYN’) credited a sudden interest in fitness with transforming his life as a teen, and he worked tirelessly over the next eight decades to transform the lives of others.
“The only way you can hurt the body is not use it,” LaLanne said. “Inactivity is the killer and, remember, it’s never too late.”
His workout show was a television staple from the 1950s to the ’70s. LaLanne and his dog Happy encouraged kids to wake their mothers and drag them in front of the television set. He developed exercises that used no special equipment, just a chair and a towel.
He also founded a chain of fitness studios that bore his name. In recent years, he touted the value of raw fruits and vegetables as he helped market a machine called Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer.
When he turned 43 in 1957, he performed more than 1,000 push-ups in 23 minutes on the ‘You Asked For It’ television show. At 60, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco — handcuffed, shackled and towing a boat. Ten years later, he performed a similar feat in Long Beach harbor.
He maintained a youthful physique and joked in 2006 that “I can’t afford to die. It would wreck my image.”
“I never think of my age, never,” LaLanne said in 1990. “I could be 20 or 100. I never think about it, I’m just me. Look at Bob Hope, George Burns. They’re more productive than they’ve ever been in their whole lives right now.”
Fellow bodybuilder and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger credited LaLanne with taking exercise out of the gymnasium and into living rooms.
“He laid the groundwork for others to have exercise programs, and now it has bloomed from that black and white program into a very colorful enterprise,” Schwarzenegger said in 1990.
A Michigan factory worker used as the unwitting model for the wartime Rosie the Riveter poster whose inspirational “We Can Do It!” message became an icon of the feminist movement has died.
Doyle didn’t realize she had a famous face until she was flipping through a magazine in 1982 and spotted a reproduction of the poster, her daughter told The New York Times.
But while Doyle recognized her face under the red and white polka dot bandana, the strong arm held up in a fist wasn’t hers.
“She didn’t have big, muscular arms,” Mrs. Gregg said. “She was 5-foot-10 and very slender. She was a glamour girl. The arched eyebrows, the beautiful lips, the shape of the face — that’s her.”
Doyle was just 17 when she took at job at a metal pressing plant near Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1942.
She quit about two weeks later after learning that another woman had badly injured her hand on the job — she was worried she’d lose the ability to play the cello, her daughter said.
She was there, however, when a United Press International photographer came to the factory while documenting the contribution of women to the war effort.
A picture of Doyle was later used by J. Howard Miller, a graphic artist at Westinghouse, for the poster which was aimed at deterring strikes and absenteeism.
The poster was not widely seen until the 1980′s when it was embraced by the feminist movement as a potent symbol of women empowerment.
The iconic image now graces a US postage stamp and has been used to sell lunch boxes, aprons, mugs, t-shirts and figurines.
Bobby Farrell, the lead singer of Boney M, a European chart-topping disco group in the 1970s, has died at age 61 while on tour in Russia.
The singer’s agent, John Seine, says the ‘Daddy Cool’ star was found dead in his hotel room in St. Petersburg on Thursday morning by hotel staff after he failed to respond to a wake-up call.
Seine said Farrell performed as scheduled Wednesday night, but complained of breathing problems before and after his show.
Officials in St. Petersburg said an investigation is underway. “There was no sign of violent death,” a source told the AFP. “The investigation continues.”
The original Boney M, which was based in Germany, disbanded in 1986 after scoring Europe-wide hits with ‘Daddy Cool’ and ‘By the Rivers Of Babylon.’ Watch a Pair of Boney M’s Big Hits:
While not a household name in the United States, Boney M’s music has influenced current hitmakers like Lady Gaga, who sampled the vocal “Ma-Ma-Ma” from ‘Ma Baker’ for her monster track ‘Poker Face.’
At the time of his death, the singer was leading a group called Bobby Farrell and Boney M, with three female backup singers. Farrell was born Alfonso Farrell in Aruba and lived in Amsterdam.
A French model who allowed images of her skeletal frame to be photographed and distributed in a shock awareness campaign of the dangers of anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders has died, according to media reports.
Isabelle Caro allowed herself to be photographed by celebrity photographer Oliviero Toscani in 2007. The ad campaign highlighting her emaciated figure drew immediate worldwide attention.
Caro died in mid-November after a two-week hospitalization for a lung infection, the Swiss website 20minutes.ch reported Wednesday. Paris Match reported that she was in Japan at the time of her death.
Her age was listed as 28. She first suffered symptoms of anorexia when she was 12 and endured several hospital visits after nearly starving herself to death.
‘You’re stuffed with awful food like a fattened goose. You’re forced to gain weight,’ she said once. ‘And as soon as you’re released, you lose all the weight again. At least that’s the way it was with me.’
After her 2007 photo session, Caro told German magazine Stern that she felt like ‘an ambassador for anorexia.’ The photo session provided her with heightened media awareness.
Two years ago, she released an autobiography titled The Little Girl Who Didn’t Want To Get Fat.
The thought-provoking photos of Caro were simultaneously an awareness campaign, but also advertising for an Italian fashion line. Toscani also photographed AIDS patients and dead soldiers for the campaign.
Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s,’ ’10′ and the ‘Pink Panther’ farces, is dead at age 88.
Edwards died from complications of pneumonia at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake’s wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.
Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was “pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two,” Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.
At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the ‘Pink Panther’ movies. The other, ‘Big Rosemary,’ was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.
“His heart was as big as his talent. He was an Academy Award winner in all respects,” said Schwam, who knew him for 40 years.
A third-generation filmmaker, Edwards was praised for evoking classic performances from Jack Lemmon, Audrey Hepburn, Peter Sellers, Dudley Moore, Lee Remick and Andrews, his wife of nearly half a century.
He directed and often wrote a wide variety of movies including ‘Days of Wine and Roses,’ a harrowing story of alcoholism; ‘The Great Race,’ a comedy-adventure that starred Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood; and ‘Victor/Victoria,’ his gender-bender musical comedy with Andrews.
He was also known for an independent spirit that brought clashes with studio bosses. He vented his disdain for the Hollywood system in his 1981 black comedy, ‘S.O.B.’
“I was certainly getting back at some of the producers of my life,” he once remarked, “although I was a good deal less scathing than I could have been. The only way I got to make it was because of the huge success of ’10,’ and even then they tried to sabotage it.”
For a decade, Edwards’ only hits were ‘Pink Panther’ sequels. Then came ’10,’ which he also produced and wrote. The sex comedy became a box-office winner, creating a new star in Bo Derek and restoring the director’s reputation. He scored again in 1982 with ‘Victor/Victoria,’ with Andrews playing a woman who poses as a (male) female impersonator. His later films became more personal, particularly the 1986 “That’s Life,” which he wrote with his psychiatrist.
After Sellers’ death in 1980, Edwards attempted to keep the ‘Pink Panther’ franchise alive. He wrote and directed ‘Curse of the Pink Panther’ in 1983 and ‘Son of the Pink Panther’ in 1993 but both were failed efforts.
Elizabeth Edwards, the political wife whose public battle with breast cancer, coping with marital infidelity and continued advocacy for the downtrodden raised her profile above that of her husband, died Tuesday. She was 61.
Edwards died at her Chapel Hill home, where family and friends had gathered in recent days after doctors informed her that her cancer had spread and recommended that she not undergo further treatment.
Edwards was first diagnosed with cancer in the waning days of the 2004 presidential campaign, when her husband, then-U.S. Sen. John Edwards, was the Democratic nominee for vice president. The couple didn’t disclose her illness until after the election.
The cancer went into remission after surgery and months of treatment, but it resurfaced in early 2007, as John Edwards was mounting a second run at the White House. The Edwardses agreed at the time that they wouldn’t allow the cancer to derail his candidacy.
Because the cancer had moved into her bones, her doctors said at that time that it was no longer curable but could be treated.
Nielsen’s nephew told CJOB that the actor had been in the hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for 12 days and that with family and friends by his side at 5:30pm Sunday “he just fell asleep and passed away.”
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.
Nielsen was indeed a lead actor for decades in Hollywood, appearing the 1956 sci-fi classic ‘Forbidden Planet’ as well as ‘The Poseidon Adventure.’ But his turn in 1980′s classic comedy ‘Airplane!’ as a deadpan doctor on a doomed flight, changed his career forever as he switched gears to become one of Hollywood’s top comic talents.
His turn as detective Frank Drebin in ‘The Naked Gun’ was a smash and was followed by two sequels. The role in the comedy actual was born in the short lived TV series ‘Police Squad’ which had followed on the heels of Nielsen’s success in ‘Airplane!’
Two-time Oscar nominee Jill Clayburgh died Friday at her home in Connecticut of complications from chronic leukemia, the New York Times reports.
The 66-year-old struggled with the disease for more than two decades.
Her husband, playwright David Rabe, said she faced her illness with courage, turning it into “an opportunity for her children to grow and be human.” She is reportedly survived by three children.
Clayburgh portrayed family matriarch Letitia Darling on the ABC series ‘Dirty Sexy Money,’ (co-starring Lucy Liu and Peter Krause), which ran for two seasons and ended last year.
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.
Alexander Anderson Jr., creator of the classic cartoon ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle,’ has passed away at age 90, The Washington Post reports.
Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose first landed on network TV in 1959. They lived in the town of Frostbite Falls and found themselves embroiled in all manner of absurd plots involving espionage and devious villains.
The show contained outrageous puns and veiled Cold War commentary that sailed over the heads of the children who were its primary audience.
The Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons also featured another of Mr. Anderson’s popular creations, Dudley Do-Right, a strutting Canadian Mountie in constant pursuit of his nemesis, the mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash.
Mr. Anderson was not part of the production of the original series, which ran on ABC from 1959 to 1961 and NBC from 1961 to 1964.
As the years passed, his role in developing the characters was largely forgotten. He received nothing when a lucrative video deal was struck for the burgeoning Bullwinkle franchise.
“I’m thrilled that something I did has become so popular,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1991. “But I’m sorry that I don’t get any credit for it.”
According to Anderson’s son, Terry, his father died from complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the Carmel, California, nursing home where he had been living.
Alexander Anderson Jr. is survived by his wife, two sons, three step-children, fourteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
