Damn. What a terrible loss.

RIP Jeanne Cordova, an amazing lesbian activist and butch woman who did so much for us. She has always been a great role model of mine.

David Bowie Dies at age 69
 

Gender expression non-conformist David Bowie passed away at his home in the company of family on Sunday, January 10, 2016. His death followed an 18-month battle with cancer. His latest album, _Blackstar_, was just released on Friday, his birthday.*

His stage persona Ziggy Stardust definitely influenced me as a young queer person. David Bowie, you will be so missed, and you will leave a hole in the world.

*source: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35278872

RIP David Bowie........you were a pioneer in the gender bending community......you will be missed.

RIP Bowie ~ Best music we ever danced too ,and still do !

I'll miss you Ziggy...:( One of the absolute best!

David Bowie </3
 

rip
 

Alan Rickman
 

Alan Rickman, Harry Potter and Die Hard actor, dies aged 69

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35313604

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...20100303190020

Actor Alan Rickman, known for films including Harry Potter, Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, has died at the age of 69, his family has said.

The star had been suffering from cancer, a statement said.

He became one of Britain's best-loved acting stars thanks to roles including Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films and Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

Tributes have come from figures like Sense and Sensibility director Ang Lee, who called him "a great human being".

He was also a "brilliant actor [and] a soulful actor", according to Lee, who cast Rickman opposite Kate Winslet in the 1995 film.

Announcing his death on Thursday, a family statement said: "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends."

Sir Michael Gambon, who appeared with Alan Rickman in Harry Potter as well as on stage, told BBC Radio 4 he was "a great friend".

He added: "Everybody loved Alan. He was always happy and fun and creative and very, very funny. He had a great voice, he spoke wonderfully well.

"He was intelligent, he wrote plays, he directed a play. So he was a real man of the theatre and the stage and that's how I think of Alan."

Actor Richard E Grant wrote on Twitter: "Farewell my friend. Your kindness and generosity ever since we met in LA in 1987 and ever since is incalculable."

Harry Potter actor James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley, said on Twitter he was "shocked and sad" to hear the news. He wrote: "One of the nicest actors I've ever met. Thoughts and prayers with his family at this time."

His twin brother Oliver Phelps, who played George Weasley, added: "Terribly sad news about the passing of Alan Rickman. A funny and engaging person who put a shy young actor at ease when I was on Harry Potter."

TV star and Bafta ceremony host Stephen Fry wrote: "What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm and stunning screen and stage presence. He'll be sorely missed."

Actor David Morrissey also paid tribute. He said: "So sad to hear the news of Alan Rickman. A wonderful actor and lovely man. Tragic news."

The London-born star began his career in theatre, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company, before winning roles in TV dramas like Smiley's People and The Barchester Chronicles in the 1980s.

His performance as the manipulative seducer Le Vicomte in Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Broadway in 1986 brought him the first of two Tony Award nominations.

It also brought him to the attention of Die Hard producer Joel Silver, who offered him his film debut as a result.

He went on to become best known for playing screen villains - including the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for which he won a Bafta award, and Judge Turpin opposite Johnny Depp in 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

But he showed his gentler side in films like 1990's Truly Madly Deeply, in which he played Juliet Stevenson's ghost lover and which also earned him a Bafta nomination.

Further Bafta nominations came for his roles as Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility and the calculating Eamon de Valera in 1996's Michael Collins.

The following year, he won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or television film for the title role in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny.

Meanwhile, he continued to be a major presence on the stage in London and New York.

Another Tony nomination came for Private Lives in 2002, in which he appeared opposite Lindsay Duncan on Broadway following a transfer from London.

He recently revealed he had married Rima Horton in secret last year. The couple had been together since he was just 19 and she was 18.

René Angélil
 

René Angélil has died at the age of 73, ABC News has confirmed.

Angélil, who has been married to the famed singer since 1994, had been battling cancer for some time.

"René Angélil, 73, passed away this morning as his home in Las Vegas after a long and courageous battle against cancer," a rep for the couple told People magazine. ""The family requests that their privacy be respected at the moment; more details will be provided at a later time."

Grizzly Adams Passed Away Today
 

I never missed that show when I was little :(

https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/u...izzlyadams.jpg

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment...ty-dead-at-74/

rip
 

Omg....Grizzly Adams was my favoritest show as a kid :( and I grew up listening to the Eagles...sigh...

I'm gonna have to stop reading this thread for a while...

Abe Vigoda, 94
 

Vigoda was known best for playing perennially grumpy Detective Sergeant Phil Fish for three seasons on "Barney Miller" and another two on its spinoff, "Fish." He was also in "The Godfather" and briefly in "The Godfather Part II," playing Salvatore Tessio, a Mafia capo. Though these were his most notable roles, Vigoda was in dozens of other movies, including "Look Who's Talking," "Joe Versus the Volcano" and "Good Burger," and he was a cast member on TV shows "Dark Shadows," "As the World Turns" and "Santa Barbara."

Perhaps as well-known as Vigoda's career was the series of erroneous reports of his death. As early as 1982, when Vigoda was barely in his 60s, he was assumed dead when a People magazine story referred to him as "the late Abe Vigoda." Vigoda handled the error well, posing in a coffin, sitting up and holding a copy of the magazine with the mistake. Just five years later, the same error was made on TV station WWOR. It became a pop culture meme, one that Vigoda himself poked fun at during talk show appearances and in movie roles.

-------------------------


I double checked. It's true. Loved this guy in Barney Miller.

I totally forgot that Abe Vigoda was on Barney Miller. I grew up watching the Godfather movies with my mother and it escaped me that that was him....

Didn't he just have a great face?? There's not a lot of great faces out there. He definitely had one....

No, Fish, noooo :( I loved that show and his voice.

Alyce Dixon, one of the first African-American women to serve in the army and believed to be the oldest living female veteran, died Wednesday. She was 108.

Thank you for your service Alyce Dixon, RIP.

http://images.military.com/media/new...-dixon-600.jpg

Jeanne and I met when we were both "baby butches." There were not too many Butch Mexican American activist back then in Los Angeles or anywhere for that matter. (I digress.) We did not always agree but I had and still have much respect for her. RIP Jeanne and thank you for all you did for our community.

George Gaynes, Star of 'Police Academy' and 'Punky Brewster
 

The character actor is best known for playing Commandant Eric Lassard in all seven Police Academy films, as well as the grouchy foster parent Henry Warnimont on the 1980s sitcom Punky Brewster.

Gaynes also starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the 1982 film Tootsie, which received 10 Academy Award nominations, although only Jessica Lange won for best supporting actress.

Gaynes’ other film credits include The Way We Were, Altered States and Wag the Dog. He appeared in hundreds of episodes on television shows, including The Defenders, Mission: Impossible, Bonanza, The Six Million Dollar Man and Hawaii Five-0, as well as the daytime soap opera General Hospital.

He was 98.

Harper Lee
 

http://cp91279.biography.com/1000509...ers-Lee-SF.jpg

Harper Lee, whose first novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” about racial injustice in a small Alabama town, sold more than 10 million copies and became one of the most beloved and most taught works of fiction ever written by an American, has died. She was 89.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/20...ww.google.com/

Oh, that's a tough one. I was I in the middle of Go Set a Watchman.

I so love photos of creative beautiful transformative women that smoked and lived to be 89. RIP Harper Lee.

Yolande Betbeze Fox, Miss America Who Defied Convention
 

Yolande Betbeze Fox, a convent-educated Alabamian who defied convention, and set new standards, by refusing to tour the country as Miss America of 1951 in revealing bathing suits, died on Monday in Washington. She was 87.

By the time Ms. Fox won her title on Sept. 9, 1950, in Atlantic City, pageant officials, trying to calibrate propriety and sex appeal amid changing mores, had already decided to stop crowning Miss America while she was wearing a swimsuit. That pageant staple had been confined to the swimsuit competition, an event Ms. Fox — Ms. Betbeze at the time — had already won. She began her reign in a gown.

But given that the swimsuit competition’s chief sponsor, Catalina, manufactured swimwear, Ms. Fox was still expected to model bathing suits as the reigning Miss America.

What the organizers did not expect was her response. “Yolande declared, ‘I’m an opera singer, not a pinup!’ and refused posing in a bathing suit again,” according to her official biography on the pageant’s website.

As a result, Catalina withdrew as the pageant sponsor and began the rival Miss USA contest.

“In Yolande’s words, she made a stand for ‘propriety’ that has gone down as a significant flash of pageant history and altered the course of its future,” the official biography says.

Ms. Fox put it another way in an interview with The Washington Post in 1969: “There was nothing but trouble from the minute that crown touched my head.”

Ms. Fox never fulfilled her goal of becoming a professional opera singer, though she belted out “Caro Nome” from “Rigoletto” in the talent competition. But she used her newfound fame to become a model, theatrical producer and social activist.

She participated in a vigil in 1953 at Sing Sing prison to protest the impending execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Manhattan couple convicted of conspiring to commit espionage. She joined civil rights protesters in picketing a Woolworth’s in Times Square in 1960 to support black sit-ins at the store’s lunch counters in the South. (“I’m a Southern girl, but I’m a thinking girl,” she said.) And she joined demonstrations against nuclear weapons.

In a 2006 profile, Smithsonian magazine said Ms. Fox’s “exotic Basque looks” — she was of Basque ancestry — and her rebellious streak may have made her “the most unconventional Miss America ever.”

Yolande Betbeze (her mother picked her given name from a book of medieval history) was born in Mobile, Ala., on Nov. 29, 1928, the daughter of William and Ethel Betbeze. Her father was a butcher.

She was educated in Roman Catholic convent schools and the extension division of the University of Alabama. She began her beauty contest career in 1949, when she won Spring Hill College’s Miss Torch pageant. She entered the Miss Alabama competition hoping to win a scholarship to study singing in New York.

After her one-year reign, she studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York; married Matthew Fox, a movie executive (they had a daughter, Yolande Fox Campbell, who survives her, along with a granddaughter); and produced theater in a playhouse on East Houston Street.

She later moved to Washington, where she bought the Georgetown mansion formerly owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and became a fixture of the capital’s social scene.

In the 1960s, Ms. Fox criticized the Miss America pageant for its lack of ethnic and racial diversity. “ ‘How could we say it’s Miss America,’ I asked, ‘if it’s not open to all Americans?’ ” she was quoted saying in “Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations,” a 2011 book by Roy Hoffman. In the 1970s, she said the pageant perpetuated sexist attitudes.

“Today,” the Miss America website says, “Yolande feels her actions have been pivotal in directing pageant progress towards recognizing intellect, values and leadership abilities, rather than focusing on beauty alone.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us...ies-at-87.html

-----------------------

Love the brave women who had the courage to speak up, stand by their values, and pave the way for the rest of us.

George Kennedy
 

George Kennedy, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in “Cool Hand Luke,” died Sunday. He was 91.

Kennedy’s film credits also included “The Dirty Dozen,” the “Airport” movies, a series of “Naked Gun” comedies and the disaster film “Earthquake,” among many others.

Kennedy also starred as rival rancher Carter McKay in the long-running CBS drama “Dallas” for three seasons. His many television appearances included roles on “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Peter Gunn,” “Bonanza,” “Maverick,” “McHale’s Navy” and “Gunsmoke.”

As an author, Kennedy wrote three books, including the 1983 murder mystery “Murder on Location,” the novel “Murder on High,” published the following year, and his 2011 autobiography, “Trust Me.”

Pat Conroy, Author of ‘The Prince of Tides’ and ‘The Great Santini,’ Dies at 70
 

Pat Conroy, whose tortured family life and the scenic marshlands of coastal South Carolina served as unending sources of inspiration for his fiction, notably the novels “The Great Santini,” “The Lords of Discipline” and “The Prince of Tides.”

obit

Bud Collins sports commentator, tennis pro
 

http://tennischannel.com/watch-now/court-report/b3f7fa3e-21e7-d892-e78547e1ae43a47a/"]Tennis tribute to Bud[/URL]


Loved watching and listening to this guy. His wardrobe choices were an extra perk.

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscm...-2880-1000.jpg


Former first lady Nancy Reagan has died, according to a spokeswoman with the Reagan Library. She was 94.

The cause of death was congestive heart failure, according to her rep Joanne Drake. "Mrs. Reagan will be buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, next to her husband, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who died on June 5, 2004," Drake wrote in a statement...http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...l_nbn_20160306

Anita Brookner: July 16, 1928 - March 10, 2016
 

After reading this interview, I realize why I was so drawn to her books at one point in my life. I think I read Hotel du Lac at least a couple of times in my twenties.

Anita Brookner, the final interview: 'praise is irrelevant'

Brookner prize-winning author and art historian Anita Brookner died on March 15, 2016, aged 87. The bestselling novelist, who won the 1984 award for Hotel Du Lac, lived a reclusive life in her final years. This, her last interview, was conducted by Mick Brown in 2009, when it was first published in The Telegraph.

.....

And I read the first sentence: "Dr Weiss, at 40, knew that her life had been ruined by literature." I thought, well that's a damned good sentence – such an interesting sentence that I had to read on. Her books have a very page-turning quality. They're beautifully constructed. And while there aren't hugely dramatic events taking place, within the world about which she writes you get a very clear and compelling portrait of human nature.'

....

In Hotel du Lac the timorous, middle-aged romantic novelist Edith Hope, sent into exile by her friends for reneging on her wedding promise to dull, dependable Geoffrey, has her moral probity challenged by the suave voluptuary Philip Neville. 'One can be as pleasant or as ruthless as one wants,' Neville argues. 'If one is prepared to do the one thing one is drilled out of doing from earliest childhood – simply please oneself – there is no reason why one should ever be unhappy again.' 'Or perhaps entirely happy,' Edith replies.

---------------------------



Anita Brookner’s subversive message – the courage of the single life deserves respect

“I do not sigh and yearn,” she says, “for extravagant displays of passion”. What she wants is something much more modest. “What I crave,” she says, “is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards.” But you can’t do this, she decides, with someone you don’t love. And so she turns him down.

Brookner’s heroines are single not because they are too dowdy, but because they are too honest. They know that life is full of compromise, but they still see a compromise too far. If they don’t exactly live what the philosopher Thoreau called “lives of quiet desperation”, they have certainly learned to live with quiet courage because of the choices they have made.

http://latelastnightbooks.com/wp-con...TABROOKNER.jpg

Joe Santos
 

Joe Santos, best known for playing Lt. Dennis Becker, the frustrated L.A. policeman pal of James Garner's private detective on The Rockford Files, died Friday. He was 84.

The Brooklyn native played Becker, who had a love-hate relationship with Garner's Jim Rockford, on 112 episodes of The Rockford Files, which ran on NBC from 1974-80. He was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1979 and reprised the role for several telefilms.

His 40-year career was filled with roles as good cops on such series as Police Story, Magnum, P.I. and Hardcastle and McCormick and on the 1973 miniseries The Blue Knight opposite William Holden, though he played a bad guy, Consigliere Angelo Garepe, on The Sopranos.

Santos also portrayed a detective in the Al Pacino starrer The Panic in Needle Park (1971) and a reporter in the Frank Sinatra film The Detective (1968). He also was in such films as The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), Shaft’s Big Score! (1972), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Blue Thunder (1983), The Last Boy Scout (1991) and Chronic (2015).

http://news.yahoo.com/rockford-files...lfMQRzZWMDc2M-

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...d_2980731c.jpg

I just watched him on Rockford Files last night :(

Rockford Files Star, Joe Santos, Dies at 84
http://bit.ly/1pQZgyt


http://img2-3.timeinc.net/people/i/2...-drake-435.jpg

Dr. Giggles is gone :( :( :(

Larry Drake: Emmy Award-Winning Actor Known for Role on 'LA Law' Dies at 66, Agent Says
http://www.people.com/article/larry-...book_peoplemag

Frank Sinatra Jr.
 

Frank Sinatra Jr., who carried on his famous father’s legacy with his own music career and whose kidnapping as a young man added a bizarre chapter to his father’s legendary life, died Wednesday. He was 72.

https://www.yahoo.com/music/sinatra-...003227750.html

--------------------------



The older he got, the more he looked like his Dad.

Larry Drake
 

Larry Drake, best known for playing Benny on “L.A. Law,” died on Thursday at the age of 66.

The actor’s role as office messenger Benny Stulwicz on the NBC cop drama was hailed as a revolutionary portrayal of developmental disorders for the time, and earned him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1988 and 1989. He reprised the role in the 2002 TV movie.

He also starred in as the villain Durant in Sam Raimi‘s 1990 cult hit “Darkman” alongside Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand, as well as the direct-to-video sequel “Darkman II: The Return of Durant.”

Though he had recently taken a step back from acting to teach, Drake’s recent credits included the 2009 thriller “Dead Air,” and guest roles on “7th Heaven,” “Six Feet Under” and “Boston Legal.”

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/larry-drake...232728060.html

John Robert Kotfila Jr
 

Firefighters, police, and citizens lined the road as a State police-escorted motorcade arrived in Falmouth, Massachusetts, with the body of Deputy Sherriff John Robert Kotfila Jr. on Sunday evening.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers and citizens followed the procession from Logan Airport to pay their respects to the fallen officer of the Hillsborough County Sherriff’s Department, whose cruiser was struck by a wrong-way driver in Brandon, Florida, near Tampa, on March 12.

Kotfila was a traffic crash investigator always out helping the injured, writing reports, and investigating vehicular accidents. At 1 a.m. he was working on his fifth crash of the day that involved an adult and teenager. He had driven to Tampa General Hospital to see how they were doing and was heading home around 2:45 a.m. when he died. John had worked for the sheriff’s office for six years.

Reports say the courageous officer had actually driven his patrol car into the path of a female driver headed towards the wrong-way vehicle. Hillsborough County Sherriff David Gee hailed Kotfila’s exemplary bravery and how he gave his life so that another person could live.

Deputy John Kotfila Jr. , 30, was a third-generation police officer. He is survived by his wife and 2 young daughters.

-------------------------------------

John was a local kid and one of the good guys.

Welcome home dude. You done good. You made us proud. Rest in peace.

Ken Howard
 

Actor Ken Howard, who starred in the 1970s series "The White Shadow" and served as president of SAG-AFTRA, has died at age 71.

Howard's career spanned four decades in TV, theater and film. In the CBS series "The White Shadow," which aired from 1978 to 1981, he starred as a white coach to an urban high school basketball team — a part, one of Howard's best known, that drew on the personal history of the 6 feet 6 inch tall actor, who played basketball growing up on Long Island in New York and at Amherst College.

He was a staple character actor on television, starring opposite Blythe Danner in "Adam's Rib" on ABC and appearing as the chipper Kabletown boss Hank Hooper on NBC's "30 Rock."

Howard played Thomas Jefferson on Broadway in "1776," a role he reprised in the 1972 film. He won a Tony Award for Robert Marasco's Catholic boarding school drama "Child's Play."

After making his film debut opposite Liza Minnelli in 1970's "Tell Me That You Love Me," Howard's films included "Rambo," ''In Her Shoes" and "Michael Clayton." He won an Emmy for his performance in HBO's "Grey Gardens" in 2009.

He was also familiar to viewers of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, providing an update on the union's accomplishments during the televised awards ceremony.

Howard was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 2009 and was a catalyst for its 2012 merger with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union. Combined, the groups represent 160,000 actors, broadcasters and recording artists.

Howard was the first president of SAG-AFTRA and was re-elected to the post last year.

http://news.yahoo.com/actor-ken-howa...212315843.html

Joe Garagiola
 

Joe Garagiola, legendary broadcaster and former MLB catcher, died today. He was 90.

Outside of baseball fans Garagiola is best known for his two stints as a panelist on The Today Show from 1967 – 1973 and again from 1990 – 1992. His colorful personality served him well during a broadcasting career that spanned seven decades. He had a 30-year association with NBC as a baseball announcer, providing both play-by-play duties as well as color commentary at various points during his career on television and radio.

Garagiola was born on February 12, 1926 in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up across the street from future baseball legend Yogi Berra in the Italian-American neighborhood known as The Hill. The block on Elizabeth Avenue became retroactively known as “Hall of Fame Place.”

Following the end of his playing career, Garagiola entered the broadcast booth, and it was here that his personality and often self-deprecating humor shined. He called radio broadcasts for the Cardinals from 1955 – 1962. He joined NBC’s national broadcasting team in 1961 and became was a fixture of the NBC baseball crew for decades and called three World Series, 1984, 1986 and 1988.

Following his departure from NBC Sports he joined the broadcasting booth for the California Angels cable-televised games in 1990 and did part-time color commentary for the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1998 – 2012.

In addition to broadcasting baseball he was a regular panelist on The Today Show and occasionally guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Other broadcasting jobs included hosting the Orange Bowl Parade and the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

In 1991 he was awarded baseball’s Ford C. Frick award for outstanding broadcasting accomplishments and honored at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

http://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity...a-sr-1926-2016

Earl Hamner Jr., creator of 'The Waltons
 

Earl Hamner Jr., the Virginia-born writer who created not only TV’s folksy, Depression-era family drama “The Waltons” but the California wine country prime-time soap opera “Falcon Crest,” died Thursday. He was 92.

In a long career that included writing episodes of “The Twilight Zone” in the 1960s and adapting the E.B. White classic “Charlotte’s Web” for a 1973 animated film, Hamner was best known for tapping his childhood memories of growing up in a large family in rural Virginia during the Great Depression.

“Spencer’s Mountain,” Hamner’s childhood-inspired 1961 novel, was turned into a 1963 movie starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara.

His 1970 book “The Homecoming: A Novel About Spencer’s Mountain,” inspired by Christmas Eve 1933 when Hamner’s father was late in arriving home, was turned into “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story,” a two-hour CBS television movie that introduced the family, renamed the Waltons, to television viewers in December 1971.

Its success led to the weekly hourlong TV series.

In a 1973 interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, Hamner said he thought “people are hungry for a sense of security. They’re hungry, too, for real family relationships — not just rounding up the family for a cookout but real togetherness where people are relating honestly."

Expanding on his feeling that there was “a need” for the Waltons in contemporary American society, Hamner wrote in a 1972 guest column for The Times: “Audiences in all entertainment media have been brutalized by crudities, vulgarity, violence, indifference and ineptitude.”

With “The Waltons,” he wrote, “we are attempting to make an honest, positive statement on the affirmation of man.”

While still overseeing “The Waltons,” Hamner created “Falcon Crest,” which debuted on CBS in 1981 and ran until 1990.

The hourlong drama set in the fictitious Tuscany Valley in California starred Jane Wyman as the powerful and manipulative Falcon Crest winery owner and family matriarch Angela Channing and Robert Foxworthy as her nephew, Chase Gioberti.

After leaving “Falcon Crest” after the fifth season, Hamner formed a production company with TV executive and novelist Don Snipes, whose programs included “Snowy River: The McGregor Saga,” an hourlong series that ran on the Family Channel from 1993 to 1996.

Hamner and Snipes also co-wrote the 2000 mystery novel “Murder in Tinseltown.”

Hamner’s credits include writing the 1963 movie “Palm Springs Weekend” and creating the short-lived TV series “Apples Way” in the 1970s and “Boone,” another short-lived series in the 1980s.

He also wrote the 1968 TV adaptation of “Heidi,” and 8 episodes of the Twilight Zone.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...324-story.html

James Noble
 

James Noble, the actor who played the absent-minded Gov. Eugene Gatling on the 1980s hit TV sitcom "Benson," died March 28. He was 94.

The show, which starred Robert Guillaume as the butler turned lieutenant governor, has shown up in syndication on the Nick at Night and TV Land cable channels.

Noble's acting credits include stints on Broadway, most notably in "The Big Knife," "The Velvet Glove," and "A Far Country."

Noble appeared on daytime TV soap operas including "The Brighter Day," "The Edge of Night," "As the World Turns," "Another World," "The Doctors," and "A World Apart."

His acting wasn't limited to the small screen. His film credits include "The Sporting Club," "Dragonfly," "10," "Being There," and "Airplane II."

---------------------------------


This is getting depressing.