Rolling Obituary Thread 2022

Wow. RIP.

Mace Neufeld, producer of various films over the decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_Neufeld

Will always have a soft spot for Hunt For Red October.

Also memorably played by Samuel l Jackson in the Phantom Menace.

Fred Parris of the Five Satins on January 13

“In the Still of the Night” late ‘50s r’n’b/ Doo wop

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Fred-Parris-co-founder-of-the-Five-Satins-dies-16776613.php

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/arts/music/fred-parris-dead.html

Sonny Turner who became lead singer of the Platters in 1959

https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/entertainment-columns/kats/legendary-platters-singer-sonny-turner-dies-at-82-2513048/

For Fred Parris--I'm sure he never would have guessed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-a5aihwahU

Thought Fred Parris might have been mentioned the other day. RIP.

Thierry Mugler

encyclopedia brown's second worst foe

You know you’re old when you blink at the Thierry Mugler obits having pics of Kim Kardashian, not the Too Funky video. RIP, your clothes were great (but your perfumes stink).

Disagree. But RIP Mugler!

Jean-Claude Mézières, co-creator and artist of "Valerian and Laureline", 83

https://downthetubes.net/in-memoriam-french-comic-artist-jean-claude-mezieres-co-creator-of-valerian-and-laureline/

Longtime NY Assembly Speaker and disgraced politico Sheldon Silver
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/nyregion/sheldon-silver-dead.html

Former Celtic manager Wim Jansen.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/60123570

RIP!!!

The man who saved the planet from the nightmare of Rangers winning 10 in a row. All humanity bears him gratitude.

I noticed he was the one who signed Larsson, that proved to be a good decision!

That too.

Andy Ross, the man behind Food Records, who signed Blur.

Don't these Taylor Swift fans have any mercy?!?

He had been ill with cancer for quite some time, and today has reminded me that he was absolutely universally loved by artists and the people who worked with them. RIP, friend. Sleep well.

Prior to Food Records, he was in Disco Zombies, who I reissued on vinyl some years back.

Goodbye my dear friend Andy Ross The Boss: signer of Blur, wearer of shorts, singer in the Disco Zombies, inventer of the word “Shoegazing” and pop quiz master. I will miss you very much 🖤 pic.twitter.com/cmBQkHzWU3

— Complete Control PR (@pollybirkbeck) January 25, 2022

Peter Robbins, the voice of Charlie Brown, suicide at 65

bad grief

Don't want to seem like I'm clutching pearls here but is this really the thread to drop unfunny puns and LOLs?

Yep fair, apologies for the bad call on my part

Barry Cryer, one of Britain's greatest ever comedy writers.

Oh no! RIP Barry ;_;

St Peter's question at the gates should surely be to rhetorically ask about having had his tea.

He'd begun to look increasingly frail though still entirely switched on.

I last saw him in the opening sequences of Kenny Everett's Bloodbath At The House Of Death and am fairly convinced he could have had a decent career in giallo as a grizzled but sexy policeman.

Ah man. End of an era.

The joke about the woman reading the Bible from Richard Herring's RHLSTP is amazing but I won't embed for people who have autoplay on. Delete the ellipsis from the end of the URL.

RIP Barry Cryer. One of my all time comedy heroes. This clip, taken from the recent @Herring1967 podcast, had me in tears. pic.twitter.com/RNrFd0llnI

— Josh Jeffery (@JeffCarnage) January 27, 2022

Haha it fixed itself anyway. The joke wants to be heard.

what a loss, what a life. a guy who found his niche and delivered.

I am removing the word "writer" from my CV. pic.twitter.com/YL8x9tEgmA

— simon evans (@TheSimonEvans) January 27, 2022

Richard Christiansen (RIP, 90 years old) was the Chicago Tribune's lead theater critic from the 1970s through the early 2000s. Discovered a shit-ton of playwrights (Mamet et al), actors (Franz, Farina, Adian Quinn, dozens more), directors, sometimes the only critic championing a show.

And really good at what he did: taking the duty of describing a show as seriously as his take.

Brian Dennehy wrote: "“There was no group so small, no venue so foreboding, that he would not find himself climbing flights of stairs or descending into damp cellars to see what delights or disasters the latest groups of young thespians would deliver.”

What people love about Chicago—that you can do a play in a little room and if it’s good people will come—is singularly down to Christiansen doing that and telling others to follow.

— Justin Sherin (@wychstreet) January 29, 2022

Oh the irony.

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2022/01/former-washington-state-trooper-who-refused-vaccine-dead-of-covid-19/

howard hessman, aka WKRP’s johnny fever

Aw man.

RIP Howard Hessman. What great times we had. Great laughs and fun going to see Etta James in Manhattan Beach and Joe Tex at The Parisian Room. Staying at your beautiful house in Ramatuellle. Oh god this hurts.

— Laraine Newman (@larainenewman) January 30, 2022

Oh man, I was just explaining WKRP to a friend on Friday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzgLeC54cqs

BOOGER!

Feelin this one, y'all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BXPwFcvp1U

HH arrives at the end...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-KQUyPHbAg

Wtf how can Johnny Fever be dead

Hesseman in '69

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA3YXa_kLqg

Many xposts Yvette Mimieux was also in (and I think this was her breakthrough) Light In The Piazza, which I started to leave TCM because of: in that 50s technicolor way of making Italy x romcom look like expensive cheese, much better on the plate than the screen---but just before changing channels, I noticed something a little off about this disgustingly happy AmeriKKKan blonde princess of the Cold War----I mean, more off than blundered into, intentionally off, just a hair. And her helicopter Mom, played by Olivia de Haviland, has a lucid look, down some road they've been before. Turns out her daughter had a childhood accident, resulting in subtle brain damage, a certain tinge of arrested development, surfacing now and then. So then she meets an Italian boy, George Hamilton, who's actually kind of good in his role: of a kid who means to be charming, and is, in a disarming, anxious and funny way, sort of semi-self-aware? way, as he senses he may be getting into more than he'd bargained for, re daughter x mother, then later his father (Rosano Brazzi_works some American expectations of Italian charmer-businessman possibilities, and Yvette's buttoned-down Manhattan executive Daddy (Barry Sullivan) shows up, and Olivia adjusts to everything now in play, as best she can.
Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer, who recently got her own Library of America collection, and I suspect there's more than made it into the movie, which still manages some implications, and is an usual balance of period interest in expensive cheese *and* mental health, though could play now on a double bill with Suddenly Last Summer (which is better, but could easily imagine Yvette in a Tennessee Williams movie).

RIP Hessman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wML2V6crNc0

Hargus "Pig" Robbins, session pianist supreme

https://variety.com/2022/music/obituaries-people-news/hargus-pig-robbins-dead-nashville-country-hall-famer-bob-dylan-1235167182/