Rolling RIP/Obituary Thread 2012

still haven't seen any of his films :(

stage acting giant Nicol Williamson, whose best known films are probably Excalibur and Tony Richardson's Hamlet

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/nicol-williamson-1938-2012

RIP. John Osborne called him the greatest actor since Marlon Brando. More impressive than John Osborne though, I have a friend who saw everybody in the 60s and 70s, and generally hasn't got a good word to say about anybody, who says Nicol Williamson's Hamlet at the Roundhouse in 1969 was and is the greatest Hamlet of all time.

... born in Hamilton!

robert hegyes (juan epstein from welcome back kotter)

God, ya took the wrong sweathog

Ian Abercrombie, aka Mr. Pitt from Seinfeld, at 77:

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/01/28/seinfeld-actor-ian-abercrombie-dead-at-77/

Kevin White, 4-term mayor of Boston

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/kevin-h-white-82-boston-mayor-during-busing-crisis-dies.html

(what're the odds he'd serve 16 years w/ that name eh)

if u didnt see it in ILM, Don Cornelius of "Soul Train"

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/02/soul-train-creator-don-cornelius-dead-in-apparent-suicide.html

shit, mike kelley. this is...really unexpected.

http://www.galleristny.com/2012/02/mike-kelley-has-died/

A bad troika today -- add Dorothea Tanning.

http://www.galleristny.com/2012/02/dorothea-tanning-surrealist-painter-and-poet-dies-at-101/

...and Kelley is now being reported as a suicide. Damn.

i know it doesn't mean a lot in terms of larger-known artists and writers and personalities, but Stacy Doris, an amazing poet/writer and incredibly kind, wonderful woman, passed yesterday from cancer complications.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/702

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Doris.php

i remember Stacy Doris!

And damn, Mike Kelley, one of my favorites.

Poland Nobel poetry laureate Wislawa Szymborska dies

Muhammad Ali trainer Angelo Dundee dies

... one of those guys you thought had died years ago

Oh, I had no idea that Dorothea Tanning was still alive. That's her and Leonora Carrington passing away in the last few months, must be the last of that whole wave of Surrealists?

*sadmeltingfacewithboobsforeyesorsomething*

ben gazzara

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/movies/ben-gazzara-actor-of-stage-and-screen-dies-at-81.html

aw, rip

so so great

rip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLdyuwqik4Q

;_;

goddamn you.

i speak for the common man here, morbz

ha

The very last quote in that Times obit is amazing.

gonna have to put They All Laughed in the library queue.

It was on HBO once many moons ago when I was home from college on break and in my vegetational state I watched it many times. I don't think overall it was very good but yeah, he and some of the rest of the cast did a good job.

And also, Wild Orchid director Zalman King:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/zalman-king-dies-69-red-shoe-diaries-nine-half-weeks-287000

Which makes me feel horribly shitty for blurbing this only days ago:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=4893&cpage=1#comment-129068

John Christopher.

That last one makes me sad. The Tripods and Sword of the Spirits trilogies were hugely important to my younger self.

Bill Hinzman, the first onscreen "ghoul" in Night of the Living Dead.

Had no idea that John Christopher was still alive. RIP.

Florence Green, Last World War I Veteran, Dies at 110

just came here to post that. crazy.

RIP keyboardist and arranger to the stars Clare Fischer: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/28/local/la-me-clare-fischer-20120128

A Boy Named Clare

rest in peace, nello ferrara! you were a giant in candyland!

http://chicagoist.com/attachments/chicagoist_chuck/2012_2_7_ferrara_pan_brands.jpg

http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/10477823-418/nello-ferrara-93-invented-lemonheads-saw-macarthur-in-occupied-japan-sang-with-sinatra.html

Tom Dada, I think there is also one in Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Well that's Thomas Hardy for you, he has a dude called Jude too

Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty. The character's role was greatly expanded from that in the novel and Kubrick allowed Sellers to adopt a variety of disguises throughout the film. Early on in the film, Quilty appears as himself: a conceited, avant-garde playwright with a superior manner. Later, he disguises himself as various personae. First, he is an inquisitive policeman on the porch of the hotel where Humbert and Lolita are staying. Next he is the intrusive Beardsley High School psychologist, Doctor Zempf, who lurks in Humbert's front room for the purpose of persuading him to give Lolita more freedom in her after-school activities.[2] Later in the film he is an anonymous phone caller conducting a survey

... but always he is a self-indulgent actor ruining a perfectly good film

^blech

Peter Breck of TV's "Big Valley" and Fuller's Shock Corridor:

http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/peter-breck-the-big-valley/

David Kelly, quintessentially feckless rogue and charmer, renowned Beckett/stage performer and the recipient of the finest umbrella hits in tv history

And walking Oirish hate-crime, never too busy to rubbish up any production with the same wince-inducing character over and over and over again.

a gig's a gig

"Oh, he didn't just have the one arm then?"

He was only following orders the script, yes.

RIP Mr. Kelly

Was particularly good in Tootsie. RIP

RIP Pappy ODaniel and Waring Hudsucker

and Sgt. Moretti :(

Weird that for all the Tootsies and Dog Day Afternoons he was in, my immediately association with him is always as Holly Hunter's father in Home From The Holidays (which is underrated, and which it's been far too long since I've watched).

i always think of him in O Brother Where Art Thou

search: Twilight's Last Gleaming, True Confessions

Saw him as the ex-prez in The Best Man on Broadway in 2000. He was very heavy but the line readings were gossamer.

NYT:

Mr. Durning was also remembered for his combat service, which he avoided discussing publicly until later in life. He spoke at memorial ceremonies in Washington, and in 2008 France awarded him the National Order of the Legion of Honor.

In the Parade interview, he recalled the hand-to-hand combat. “I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium,” he said. “A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15. I didn’t see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn’t shoot.”

They grappled, he recounted later — he was stabbed seven or eight times — until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept.

Mr. Durning said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else.

“There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we don’t want anyone to know about,” he told Parade. “There’s terror and repulsion in us, the terrible spot that we don’t talk about. That place that no one knows about — horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting.”

For whatever reason, him yelling "I don't give a fuck!" in Sharkey's Machine has always been one of my favorite lines in a film. RIP.

Two consecutive best supporting actress noms in the early eighties (never saw Best Little Whorehouse in Texas).

He plays this beautifully:

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

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

(not the scene i was hoping to find, but a good, and appropriate, one)

"Languishing!! Goddamn campaign is languishing!!"

"Eckard! You may as well start draftin' my concession speech right now."
"OK Pappy."
"I'm just makin' a point, ya stupid sonovabitch! Gimme back my hat!"
"Pappy just makin' a point."
"Shut up!!"

(it's a lot funnier when you see it)

love this guy, RIP

My favourite moment of his is right at the end of Alfred's first clip above: where he fake-punches Hoffman out of exasperation/affection after Hoffman confesses. It's like Keaton fake-strangling his girl in The General.

Let's all dance a little sidestep in his honor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG75FJkjr8

http://www.youtube.com/v/RiKy3ktxw6M

Someday I will figure out how to embed videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiKy3ktxw6M

sigh

Fontella Bass

Oh no you didn't, WmC .

I didn't do it! It was a heart attack!

I think it was the image posted here that did it: "Rescue Me" (Denis Leary firefighter show on FX) - anyone?

seeing on twitter that norman schwarzkopf is dead

RIP Fontella Bass, Stormin Norman, not quite so much, but still.

Jean Harris, Scarsdale diet doc killer.

tony greig

Former Indy 500 driver, wannabe actor, and hard-luck case Salt Walther. Perhaps most remembered for this crash in 1973

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-IsOuo5be8

http://www.tmz.com/2007/12/04/rapper-pimp-c-found-dead-in-hollywood-hotel-room/

aw shit of course that happened five years ago.

Not going to be missed: Sir Irvine Patnick.

Ray Collins, singer with the Mothers

need new thread

Rolling Obituary Thread 2013.