RIP
 

Erica Kennedy, author, 42
 

Erica Kennedy, an author and blogger best known for popular novels Feminista and Bling, has died. She resided in Miami Beach and was 42 years old at the time of her death, according to a family member.

A former fashion publicist, Kennedy started her writing career as a special correspondent for the New York Daily News. She went on to write about fashion and entertainment for magazines such as Vibe, In Style, Paper and Elle UK, according to her website.

In 2004 she published a satire on the high stakes world of hip-hop with her debut novel, Bling, which went on to become a New York Times best-seller. Five years later she released her second novel, Feminista, a story about smart, modern women.

LeRoy Neiman, artist of sports world, dies
 

NEW YORK (AP) — LeRoy Neiman, the painter and sketch artist best known for evoking the kinetic energy of the world's biggest sporting and leisure events with bright quick strokes, died Wednesday at age 91.

Neiman was a media-savvy artist who knew how to enthrall audiences with his instant renditions of what he observed. In 1972, he sketched the world chess tournament between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a live television audience.

He also produced live drawings of the Olympics for TV and was the official computer artist of the Super Bowl for CBS.

Neiman's paintings, many executed in household enamel paints that allowed the artist his fast-moving strokes, are an explosion in reds, blues, pinks, greens and yellows of pure kinetic energy.

http://news.yahoo.com/leroy-neiman-a...3688--spt.html

Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist Richard Adler, who wrote 'Pajama Game,' dies at 90
 

Composer and lyricist Richard Adler, who won Tony Awardsfor co-writing the songs for such hit musicals as "The Pajama Game" and "Damn Yankees," has died. He was 90.

His family says he died Thursday at his home in Southampton, New York.

Some of Adler's biggest songs are "You Gotta Have Heart," ''Hey, There," ''Hernando's Hideaway," ''Whatever Lola Wants," ''Steam Heat," ''Rags to Riches" and "Everybody Loves a Lover."

Adler staged and produced several shows for U.S. presidents, including the unforgettable birthday celebration for President John F. Kennedy featuring Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday."

Nora Ephron, famed screenwriter and director, dies at 71
 

When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Silkwood" screenwriter Nora Ephron has died, according to the Washington Post and CBS News. She was 71 years old and was said to be suffering from leukemia.

Known as a prolific writer spanning film, stage, novels, works of journalism and blogs, Ephron was also an accomplished filmmaker, having both written anddirected "Julie & Julia" (2009), "Bewitched" (2005), "You've Got Mail" (1998), "Michael" (1996), "Mixed Nuts" (1994), "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) and "This Is My Life" (1992). She was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

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

Nora Ephron passed away today. Not only did we lose an amazing writer, thinker, journalist, storyteller, and director; we lost the world’s funniest feminist.

Ephron came up in the 1960s, working first as an intern in John F. Kennedy's White House (“…it has become horribly clear to me that I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House whom the president did not make a pass at,” she wrote in The New York Times), and then the New York Post (she got that job by satirizing Post columnists and being a little too good at it). From there she started writing essays for Esquire like “A Few Words About Breasts,” which combined her penchant for personal history mixed with incredible humor.

Ephron graduated from Wellesley at a time when six girls in her class were expelled for lesbianism. “We weren't meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them,” she told the college's class of 1996. “We weren't' meant to have politics, or careers that mattered, or opinions, or lives; we were meant to marry them. If you wanted to be an architect, you married an architect.”

Naturally she had something to say about that. Her work in the late 1960s and 1970s focused on women, sex and the feminist movement, which was eventually compiled into the books Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women and Scribble Scribble. She used her greatest gift to cut to the core of inequality and misogyny so prevalent at the time:

“Men dominate the conversations in Washington and therefore, as far as I am concerned, the conversations are far less interesting than those in New York.”

“I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.”

“I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity [Wellesley] stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.… How marvelous it would have been to go to a women's college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”

Forget the never-ending “women aren’t funny” line that spews from every male comedian who has been or will be on the Celebrity Apprentice. The debate Ephron tackled was sexual politics itself and she did it with humor, with words both powerful and resonant. She understood that aphorisms aren’t just throw-aways that cheapen over time but can be piercing retorts in the right woman’s mouth. As Entertainment Weekly wrote about Crazy Salad, “Gloria Steinem was never this much fun,” which is both a little catty and deeply true — Steinem’s weapon of choice was never humor.

Of course, Ephron also made fun of the women’s movement when she found things frustrating or ridiculous. You are more likely to be heard if you’re a member of a choir you’re preaching to after all. When Crazy Salad was published, the AP wrote, “A dedicated feminist, Miss Ephron nevertheless pokes affectionate fun at her consciousness-raising group and sexual politics (‘We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy…and a dry martini and now we have come to the era when happiness is ‘knowing what your uterus looks like.’)” (Notice that the AP called her “Miss” and not “Ms.”)

Ephron took on Betty Friedan, Phyllis Chesler and Jan Morris in her essays, always poking holes where she saw hypocrisy, cliché or narcissism, and at the same time outwardly struggling with how to be a good reporter and a good feminist. I would (with admitted bias) argue that even if you don’t agree with what she wrote the courage and talent behind it was great for women.

As her career grew, she extended her voice from journalism to film, writing Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and directing Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and many more. She said she “[tried] to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.” Considering the number of Oscar nominations and the number of roles Meryl Streep took in her films, I think she exceeded expectations.

In 1996, two years before You’ve Got Mail would premiere, she gave the commencement address at her alma mater. After some warm-up jokes about dated hairstyles and tuition prices, Ephron, in no uncertain terms, challenged the graduating class to bring it or go home:

What I'm saying is, don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don't let The New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you — there's still a glass ceiling. … Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don’t have the alibi my class had.

When her book I Feel Bad About My Neck came out, she again found herself at odds with some women of her generation who saw it as demeaning to negatively portray the process of aging. If that were what the book was about, I’d agree with them, but it was so much more than that. It was about family and politics, food and parenting, and yes, a look at those little embarrassing moments that come with time and all the little injustices your body inflicts without your consent. As she’s said in many ways over the years, “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.” I dare you to argue that’s not empowerment.

Nora Ephron will be remembered for many things — that she loved her family, that she helped change the voice of journalism, that she was one of the first great female directors — but I will always remember her for what she did for women be they her friends, women she mentored, women she advised, women she employed or women who read/heard/saw her work. Thanks, Nora, from all of us.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/enter...minist/53954/#

My Three Sons star, Don Grady 68
 

Don Grady, who was one of television's most beloved big brothers as Robbie Douglas on the long-running 1960s hit "My Three Sons," died Wednesday.

Born in San Diego as Don Louis Agrati, Grady had a brief stint singing and dancing on "The Mickey Mouse Club" starting at age 13.

But he was best known by far as one of Fred MacMurray's "My Three Sons" on the series that ran on ABC and later CBS from 1960 to 1972.

A musical prodigy from a young age, Grady appeared with a band, the Greefs, in the series, and in real life played drums for The Yellow Balloon, who had a minor hit with a self-titled song in 1967.

He made a handful of guest appearances on TV series in the 1970s and 1980s, but worked primarily as a musician and composer, writing the theme for "The Phil Donahue Show" and music for the Blake Edwards film "Switch" and the popular Las Vegas show "EFX," a showcase for "Phantom of the Opera" star Michael Crawford.

Doris Sams, Pro Baseball Star, Dies at 85
 

Doris Sams, who pitched a perfect game and set a single-season home run record in the women’s professional baseball world of the 1940s and 50s that inspired the movie “A League of Their Own,” died Thursday in Knoxville, Tenn. She was 85.

Sams was one of the leading players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, founded in 1943 by Phil Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, to provide evening entertainment in Midwestern towns and keep interest in baseball alive when the majors were losing most of their players to military service in World War II.

The women’s league, which survived into 1954, was largely forgotten until the 1992 Hollywood comedy with Madonna and Geena Davis on the field and Tom Hanks as the profane manager who drove one of his players to tears and then famously exclaimed in bewilderment, “There’s no crying in baseball!”

Playing for Michigan’s Muskegon Lassies and their successor franchise, the Kalamazoo Lassies, from 1946 to 1953, Sams, who was 5 feet 9 inches and wore glasses, pitched underhand, sidearm and overhand, as the rules governing deliveries evolved.

She hit a league-record 12 home runs in 1952, playing in 109 games; she hit better than .300 in each of her last four seasons; threw out many runners playing the outfield when she was not pitching; and she was the league’s player of the year in 1947 and 1949.

Sams pitched her perfect game in August 1947, retiring all 27 batters for the Fort Wayne Daisies in a 2-0 victory, then threw a no-hitter the next year against the Springfield Sallies.

Doris Jane Sams was born in Knoxville on Feb. 2, 1927. A grandfather and her father, Robert, played semipro baseball, and she joined with two older brothers in playing baseball as a youngster. By 11, she was playing fast-pitch softball on a team with much older girls. She also won a regional marbles tournament and was a Knoxville city badminton champion before turning to pro baseball after a tryout in 1946.

She was soon a star and shared the covers of Dell publishing’s 1948 major league yearbook with Ted Williams — he on the front, she on the back. She estimated that she was paid about $4,000 a season.

The Hall of Fame displayed one of Sams’s player-of-the year trophies along with her Louisville Slugger bat when it opened its permanent exhibition on women in baseball.

In her interview with The Post-Dispatch, Sams said that a mannequin of Babe Ruth was on display near the women’s exhibit.

“I look over to the right and see Babe Ruth,” she said. “I look over on the left and see Ted Williams. Then I look in the mirror and say, ‘What are you doing here?’ It’s all so unbelievable. I never ever dreamed our league would get this kind of recognition.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/sp...ies-at-85.html

R.I.P. Andy Griffith!!
 

matlock adjourned.
 

I live 20 minutes from Mt Airy, which is where Mayberry was set. I am quite sure there will be amazing tributes and may find myself aimlessly riding down there today or tomorrow.

Will be missed without a doubt...

http://img.discountpostersale.com/po...y-Griffith.jpg

sweet dreams (((( andy ))))

R.I.P. ERNEST BORGNINE (1917-2012)

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/...ead/56097750/1

I loved him in McHale's Navy. TY for posting this.

I got to meet him 2 yrs ago,,he was a very kind man

Interesting how famous people get more press than this person. Kind of sad if you think about it. She was so young and was murdered, she didn't get to live a full life. I'm sure it was a hate crime. really sad. My thoughts go to Kristene.

Producer Richard D. Zanuck, inventor of the summer blockbuster, dies at age 77
 

Born December 13, 1934, Zanuck, was the son of legendary producer and studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, and amassed his own impressive resume of notable films going back several decades. Zanuck gave a young TV director named Steven Spielberg his entrée into features with the low-budget road adventure “The Sugarland Express,” which was well-reviewed but only modestly successful financially. Their next collaboration, “Jaws,” fared somewhat better. That movie virtually invented the summer blockbuster and changed the movie industry forever.

That kicked off a wild run of movies, good, bad and indifferent, that made Zanuck a force to be reckoned with during the seventies and eighties. Zanuck is a credited producer or executive producer on titles such as Clint Eastwood's “The Eiger Sanction,” the biopic“MacArthur,” which starred Gregory Peck, “Jaws 2,” Sidney Lumet's “The Verdict” with Paul Newman and James Mason, Ron Howard's “Cocoon” and “Driving Miss Daisy.

In the nineties he produced some forgettable commercial fare, ranging from “Chain Reaction” to “Deep Impact,” and Lee Tamahori’s “Mulholland Falls,” with Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, Chris Penn, Jennifer Connelly and Treat Williams.

He also produced “Road to Perdition,” hands-down the best gangster movie since “The Godfather.” That movie was directed by Sam Mendes, and starred Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Daniel Craig.

More recently he emerged as the producer of most of Tim Burton’s output, including “Big Fish,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “Alice in Wonderland” and this summer’s “Dark Shadows.”

http://www.examiner.com/article/prod...es-at-age-77-2

Broadway, film veteran Celeste Holm dies
 

Kitty Wells
 

Singer Kitty Wells, whose hits such as Making Believe and It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels made her the first female superstar of country music, died Monday. She was 92.

Her solo recording career lasted from 1952 to the late 1970s and she made concert tours from the late 1930s until 2000.

She recorded approximately 50 albums, had 25 Top 10 country hits and went around the world several times. From 1953 to 1968, various polls listed Wells as the No. 1 female country singer.

In 1976, she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and 10 years later received the Pioneer Award from the Academy of Country Music. In 1991 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences — the group that presents the Grammy Awards.

Her 1955 hit Making Believe was on the movie soundtrack of Mississippi Burning that was released 33 years later. Among her other hits were The Things I Might Have Been, Release Me, Amigo's Guitar, Heartbreak USA, Left to Right and a version of I Can't Stop Loving You.

In 1989, Wells collaborated with Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn and k.d. lang on the record The Honky Tonk Angels Medley.

Her songs tended to treasure devotion and home life, with titles like Searching (For Someone Like You) and Three Ways (To Love You). But her It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels gave the woman's point of view about the wild side of life. The song opened the way for women to present their view of life and love in country music. It also encouraged Nashville songwriters to begin writing from a woman's perspective.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/...sic/56256608/1

Deep Purple's Jon Lord dies at age 71
 

LONDON (AP) — British rocker Jon Lord, the keyboardist whose powerful, driving tones helped turn Deep Purple and Whitesnake into two of the most popular hard rock acts in a generation, died Monday. He was 71.

Lord co-wrote some of Deep Purple's most famous tunes, including "Smoke on the Water," and later had a successful solo career following his retirement from the band in 2002.

Lord got his musical start playing piano, first taking classical music lessons before shifting to rock and roll.

After moving to London to attend drama school, he joined blues band the Artwoods in 1964 and later toured with The Flowerpot Men — known for their hit "Let's Go To San Francisco" — before joining Deep Purple in 1968.

Deep Purple — which featured Lord along with singer Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover — was one of the top hard rock bands of the '70s. Influenced by classical music, blues and jazz, Lord took his Hammond organ and distorted its sound to powerful effect on songs including "Hush," ''Highway Star," ''Lazy" and "Child in Time."

The group went on to sell more than 100 million albums before splitting in 1976.

Lord went on to play with hard rock group Whitesnake in the late 1970s and early 1980s and later, a re-formed Deep Purple.

http://news.yahoo.com/deep-purples-j...181213090.html

'Encyclopedia Brown' Author Donald Sobol Dies At 87
 

Donald J. Sobol, the author who dreamed up the kid sleuth Encyclopedia Brown and wrote dozens of books that sold millions of copies, has died at age 87.

His series featured amateur investigator Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, who would unravel local mysteries with the help of his encyclopedic knowledge of facts great and small. The books, first published in the early 1960s, became staples in classrooms and libraries nationwide. They were translated into 12 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide.

The Encyclopedia Brown books also featured Brown's friend and detective partner, the tough and athletic Sally Kimball. John Sobol said his dad was ahead of his times in creating a strong female character.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the Encyclopedia Brown series. Donald Sobol's latest adventure, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Soccer Scheme, will be published in October, according to a release from Penguin.

Born in New York City, Sobol served in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II and graduated from Oberlin College. He later worked as a copywriter at the New York Sun, where he eventually became a reporter. His first book was rejected two dozen times before it was published, his son said.

In 1958, Sobol became a successful syndicated columnist with his "Two Minute Mystery" series before publishing Encyclopedia Brown Boy Detective five years later to launch the most popular series of his career.

The Encyclopedia Brown concept, in which the solutions to the mysteries are shown after the story, came to Sobol while he was researching an article at the New York Public Library. A clerk mistakenly handed him a game book, with puzzles on one side and the solutions on the other.

Sobol decided to write a mystery series with the same premise. He earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America award for the series.

John Sobol said his father would frequently test out story ideas on his four children. "We would talk about it sitting around dinner," he said, adding, "My mom also helped inject humor into the stories."

The series inevitably attracted Hollywood, which tried for decades to adapt the books for the big screen, with Anthony Hopkins, Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn among those interested in the project. But legal disputes over who controls film rights have prevented any feature film from being made.

Sobol's work never brought him the financial success of blockbusters like the Harry Potter series, his son said, but his father loved hearing from countless librarians and parents about children who hated to read until they picked up an Encyclopedia Brown book.

Sobol wrote more than 80 books, working daily until the very end.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/16/156860...bol-dies-at-87

Stephen R. Covey, '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' author, dies
 

Stephen R. Covey, author of the bestselling self-help book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," died Monday, his family announced. Covey, 79, had been injured in a major bicycle accident in April.

Covey's signature work was published in 1989 and became a lasting bestseller — in 1994, it had been on the New York Times bestseller list for 220 weeks. Currently its sales are tallied at more than 20 million copies. He went on to write a number of sequels and spinoffs, including "The Third Alternative" (2011) and "The Eighth Habit" (2005). He was also a sought-after management advisor.

Covey was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He got an MBA at Harvard, then returned to Utah to get a doctorate from Brigham Young University, where he taught business management.

The Salt Lake Tribune writes:

Covey’s management post at BYU led to "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," which launched a second career as management guru for companies and government agencies, among them Saturn, Ritz Carlton, Proctor & Gamble, Sears Roebuck and Co., NASA, Black & Decker, Public Broadcasting Service, Amway, American Cancer Society and the Internal Revenue Service.

The books have legions of adherents in corporate America who swear by its principles. But critics tend to see it as part of a cult of the self-help American frenzy of past decades or so that tends to trivialize big problems.

Covey founded a Utah-based management training center that sold books and videos and held training seminars. In 1997 it merged with FranklinQuest, a deal from which Covey was said to have made about $27 million in cash and stock.

"We believe that organizational behavior is individual behavior collectivized," he told Fortune magazine in 1994. "We want to take this to the whole world."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jack...-has-died.html

'I Love Lucy' director Bill Asher dies at 90
 

PALM DESERT, Calif. — The director and producer behind the television classics "I Love Lucy" and "Bewitched" has died. Bill Asher was 90.

His wife, Meredith, says he died Monday at a facility in Palm Desert, Calif., of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

Asher was best known for his work on "I Love Lucy," where he directed Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz for 100 of the show's 181 episodes between 1952 and 1957.

He also produced and directed "The Patty Duke Show" and "Bewitched," which starred his then-wife Elizabeth Montgomery. Montgomery and Asher had three children together.

Asher brought Sally Field to TV screens in "Gidget," and took the same sensibility to movies as director of the teen romps "Beach Blanket Bingo" and "Beach Party," starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501368_1...er-dies-at-90/

Sylvia Woods, 'Queen of Soul Food'
 

The victims of the Colorado movie threater shootings
 

Jon..........

My loed,so many people I grew up watching on tv or reading about in books or news papers.May they rest in in the hands of peace and love..

I agree Arwen. He was such a handsome man and one of those men that was just as handsome as an older man, as he was as a young one.

Every time I see that there is a new entry in this RIP thread, I say to myself, "Darn, who died now" and I half-hate to look.

It does feel strange to see so many folks pass that were famous, or at least known to me through TV or movies, when I was younger; pass on lately.

Author Maeve Binchy dies
 

Best-selling Irish author Maeve Binchy has died aged 72 after a short illness.

Binchy, born in Dalkey, Co Dublin, has sold more than 40 million books. Her works were often set in Ireland and have been translated into 37 languages.

They include The Lilac Bus as well as Tara Road and Circle of Friends, which were both adapted for screen.

Binchy trained as a teacher before moving into journalism and writing, publishing her first novel - Light a Penny Candle - in 1982.

She had written the novel in her spare time from her day job as a journalist at The Irish Times.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19057922