RIP

[Kobi]

Actress Bonnie Franklin, known to TV fans as divorced mom Ann Romano on the '70s sitcom "One Day at a Time," has died at age 69. Her family says her death was due to complications from pancreatic cancer, which Franklin revealed she was battling back in September.

Franklin earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her lead role on "One Day at a Time," the groundbreaking 1975-1984 comedy from producer Norman Lear which tackled hard-hitting issues like sexual harrassment, suicide, and premarital sex. The show was a Top 20 hit and made stars of Franklin and her TV daughters, Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli. In 2011, Franklin and Bertinelli reunited on the latter's TV Land sitcom "Hot in Cleveland."

[Kobi]

CHICAGO (AP) — Roger Ebert, the most famous and most popular film reviewer of his time who became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism and, on his long-running TV program, wielded the nation's most influential thumb, died Thursday. He was 70.

Ebert, who had been a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, died early Thursday afternoon at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. He had announced on his blog Wednesday that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer.

He had no grand theories or special agendas, but millions recognized the chatty, heavy-set man with wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Above all, they followed the thumb — pointing up or down. It was the main logo of the televised shows Ebert co-hosted, first with the late Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and — after Siskel's death in 1999 — with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper. Although criticized as gimmicky and simplistic, a "two thumbs up" accolade was sure to find its way into the advertising for the movie in question.

Despite his power with the movie-going public, Ebert wrote in his 2011 autobiography "Life Itself," that he considered himself "beneath everything else a fan."

"I have seen untold numbers of movies and forgotten most of them, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind," Ebert wrote in his 2011 memoir, "Life Itself."

He was teased for years about his weight, but the jokes stopped abruptly when Ebert lost portions of his jaw and the ability to speak, eat and drink after cancer surgeries in 2006. But he overcame his health problems to resume writing full-time and eventually even returned to television. In addition to his work for the Sun-Times, Ebert became a prolific user of social media, connecting with fans on Facebook and Twitter.

The thumb logo remained the property of Ebert and Siskel's widow, and in early 2011, Ebert launched his new show, "Ebert Presents At the Movies." The show had new hosts, but featured Ebert in his own segment, "Roger's Office." He used a chin prosthesis and enlisted voice-over guests to read his reviews.

While some called Ebert a brave inspiration, he told The Associated Press in an email in January 2011 that bravery and courage "have little to do with it."

"You play the cards you're dealt," Ebert wrote. "What's your choice? I have no pain, I enjoy life, and why should I complain?"

Ebert joined the Sun-Times part time in 1966 while pursuing graduate study at the University of Chicago, and got the reviewing job the following year. His reviews were eventually syndicated to several hundred other newspapers, collected in books and repeated on innumerable websites, which would have made him one of the most influential film critics in the nation even without his television fame.

His 1975 Pulitzer for distinguished criticism was the first, and one of only three, given to a film reviewer since the category was created in 1970. In 2005, he received another honor when he became the first critic to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ebert's breezy and quotable style, as well as his knowledge of film technique and the business side of the industry, made him an almost instant success.

He soon began doing interviews and profiles of notable actors and directors in addition to his film reviews — celebrating such legends as Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum and offering words of encouragement for then-newcomer Martin Scorsese.

In 1969, he took a leave of absence from the Sun-Times to write the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." The movie got an "X'' rating and became somewhat of a cult film.

Ebert's television career began the year he won the Pulitzer, first on WTTW-TV, the Chicago PBS station, then nationwide on PBS and later on several commercial syndication services. Ebert and Siskel even trademarked the "two thumbs up" phrase.

And while the pair may have sparred on air, they were close off camera. Siskel's daughters were flower girls when Ebert married his wife, Chaz, in 1992.

Ebert was also an author, writing more than 20 books that included two volumes of essays on classic movies and the popular "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," a collection of some of his most scathing reviews.



___

[Parker]

Margaret Thatcher Dies at 87

Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to ever serve as prime minister of the United Kingdom, has died at the age of 87. A spokesperson announced that she had a stroke, though she had been in poor health in recent years and was reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

A family statement (via the BBC) said "It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning."

[Kobi]

NEW YORK — Annette Funicello, who became a child star as a perky, cute-as-a-button Mouseketeer on "The Mickey Mouse Club" in the 1950s, then teamed up with Frankie Avalon on a string of '60s fun-in-the-sun movies with names like "Beach Blanket Bingo" and "Bikini Beach," died Monday. She was 70.

The pretty, dark-haired Funicello was just 13 when she gained fame on Walt Disney's television kiddie "club," an amalgam of stories, songs and dance routines that ran from 1955 to 1959.

Cast after Disney saw her at a dance recital, she appeared in mouse ears, a pleated skirt and a turtleneck sweater emblazoned with her first name. She soon became the most popular Mouseketeer in the cast, receiving 8,000 fan letters a month, 10 times more than any of the 23 other young performers.

When "The Mickey Mouse Club" ended, Annette (as she was often billed) was the only club member to remain under contract to the studio. She appeared in such Disney movies as "Johnny Tremain," ''The Shaggy Dog," ''The Horsemasters," ''Babes in Toyland," ''The Misadventures of Merlin Jones" and "The Monkey's Uncle."

She also became a recording star, singing on 15 albums and hit singles such as "Tall Paul" and "Pineapple Princess."

Outgrowing the kid roles by the early '60s, Annette teamed with Avalon in a series of movies for American-International, the first film company to exploit the burgeoning teen market.

The shift in teen tastes begun by the Beatles in 1964 and Funicello's first marriage the following year pretty much killed off the beach-movie genre.

But she was somehow never forgotten though mostly out of the public eye for years. She and Avalon staged a reunion in 1987 with "Back to the Beach." It was during the filming that she noticed she had trouble walking — the first insidious sign of MS.

When it was finally diagnosed, she later recalled, "I knew nothing about (MS), and you are always afraid of the unknown. I plowed into books."

Her symptoms were relatively mild at first, but gradually she lost control of her legs, and she feared people might think she was drunk. So she went public with her ordeal in 1992.

She wrote of her triumphs and struggles in her 1994 autobiography, "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" — the title taken from a Disney song. In 1995, she appeared briefly in a television docudrama based on her book. And she spoke openly about the degenerative effects of MS.

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


She was one of my crushes early in life. Loved the beach movies but Ski Party was my favorite. Wonder what ever happened to Eric Von Zipper? Thanks for the memories.

[Kobi]

Jonathan Winters – an improvisational genius and the comedic spiritual godfather to a generation of younger comics, including Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and the late Andy Kaufman – died of natural causes Thursday night.

Known for the wild array of characters he could create in a flash – his naughty old lady Maude Frickert was a Tonight Show headliner who routinely broke up hosts Jack Paar and then Johnny Carson – Winters, playing doltish truck driver Lennie Pike, stole the all-star 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World out from every name comedian who was breathing at the time.

Dayton, Ohio, native, Winters dropped out of high school to join the Marines, with whom he served in the Pacific during World War II. After the war he deejayed on radio station back in his hometown, where he could never quite deliver the weather in a straight fashion.

"About the third day, I decided that I'd interview myself," he recalled years later for a PBS special, Pioneers of Television, saying he wished "to gamble a little bit with this so-called career. So I said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we have a wonderful gentleman here … Sir Edmund Denler. [He's] flown a secret flight aircraft all the way from London to Labrador, Labrador here to Dayton, and just wonderful to have you here, sir …' "

The radio station owner was not amused. The radio audience was.

A shot on CBS's Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts led to other spots on network TV and then on Broadway, in the revue Almanac. His true launching pad, in 1956, was the weekly TV variety The Jonathan Winters Show. And though it was hard to contain him on the small screen – records and clubs were his forte – Winters returned the medium back in 1981, to play Robin William's son on the last season of ABC's Mork and Mindy.

Truly a comedian's comedian, Winters received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1999. On a personal level, his wife of 60 years, Eileen, died, age 84, in early 2009, according to a friend's published remembrance. He is survived by two children, Lucinda Winters and Jay Winters.

Later in life, Winters credited much of his early success to the savvy TV hosts who grabbed him and put him on the air in the early '60s. According to Winters, they would say: "One thing about Winters, you never knew what he's going to say or do."

He added: "I don't think they sweated my being dirty … or embarrassing … they knew I would be funny."

And was he ever.

[Kobi]

Frank Bank, who played the clumsy bully Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford on the popular 1957-1963 series Leave It to Beaver, died Saturday, one day after his 71st birthday.

Born in Los Angeles, Bank first appeared on screen as the very young Will Rogers in the 1952 Warner Bros. biopic The Will Rogers Story, and then managed to deliver other TV roles at the same time he was appearing on Leave It to Beaver.

Once the gentle sitcom about childhood was canceled, Bank continued to make sporadic TV appearances, including those on The Hollywood Squares, Family Feud, the 1983 TV movie Still The Beaver (it spawned The New Leave It to Beaver series, which ran four years) – although, in 1972, he had entered an entirely different profession: as a stock-and-bond broker.

According to a 1998 PEOPLE profile, Bank learned to handicap horses and read The Wall Street Journal during breaks on the Beaver set, where he taught himself "everything there was to know about tax-free bonds." Within three years of getting started, he says, he was earning $300,000 a year at an L.A.-based company.

[puddin']

an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. this is what a hero looks like. i had da honour o' callin' him a friend.

r.i.p. mr. betts... you are well loved and truly missed.


http://www.examiner.com/article/bria...t-3-the-leader