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In Memoriam: Entertainment Industry Celebrity Deaths

Kromm

By Kromm
in Everything Else TV

Mr. Sparkle
Message added by Mr. Sparkle,

Reminder:

This thread is for deaths of celebrities in the entertainment business only. No notices about politicians, please. 

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Bastet
Bastet

Piss up a rope, Val Kilmer.  If your physical illness got so bad that your life utterly sucked and no end to that suffering was in sight, so that suicide was or seemed to be the best of the available

wilsie
wilsie
BetterButter
BetterButter

Olivia Newton-John Has Died At 73

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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)
what a great vocalist he was.

 

I know - that voice!  His version of Bye, Bye, Blackbird was terrific, but I just loved listening to him sing, period.  You Are So Beautiful, You Can Leave Your Hat On, Feelin' Alright, With a Little Help From My Friends, Delta Lady ... the list truly goes on and on.

Edited by Bastet
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Jipijapa

Jipijapa

(edited)

This must be the magic year when I finally turned old, because so many celebrity passings this year made an outsize impact on me.  I mean, they're just celebrities right?  Why should I give a crap?  So explain to me why James Garner's death made me compulsively devour every episode of The Rockford Files... why I'm making a point of going to see Night at the Museum (a movie I ordinarily wouldn't care about) to see Mickey Rooney and Robin Williams... and why I postponed an entire Christmas shopping trip so I could sit and watch Bob Hoskins in some BBC remake of The Lost World this morning...

 

I feel OLD and this HURTS!!!

 

(and now Joe Cocker on top of it...)

Edited by Jipijapa
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Inquisitionist

Inquisitionist

(edited)

Luise Rainer has died at age 104.

 

LONDON (AP) — Luise Rainer, a star of cinema's golden era who won back-to-back Oscars but then walked away from a glittering Hollywood career, has died. She was 104.

Rainer, whose roles ranged from the 1930s German stage to television's "The Love Boat," died Tuesday at her home in London from pneumonia, said her only daughter, Francesca Knittel-Bowyer.

"She was bigger than life and can charm the birds out of the trees," Knittel-Bowyer said. "If you saw her, you'd never forget her."

The big-eyed, apple-cheeked Rainer gained Hollywood immortality by becoming the first person to win an acting Academy Award in consecutive years, taking the best actress prize for "The Great Ziegfeld" in 1936 in and "The Good Earth" in 1937.

It's a feat since achieved by only four other actors.

Those trophies marked the peak of Rainer's career, which declined so rapidly that many considered her an early victim of "the curse of the Oscars." She fought with her studio over control of her career, fled Hollywood for New York and suffered through a brief, unhappy marriage to the playwright Clifford Odets. By the early 1940s, her stardom had essentially ended.

Rainer herself described the double victory as the worst thing that could have happened to her.

"When I got two Oscars, they thought, 'Oh, they can throw me into anything,'" Rainer told The Associated Press in a 1999 interview.

 

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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

TCM had a 105th birthday tribute planned for Luise Rainer on January 12th, so presumably that will be turned into a memorial.

 

Christine Cavanaugh will always be "Amanda Nelligan" to me, from one of the greatest X-Files episodes ever made, Small Potatoes.

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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

I can't remember whether they've done anything honoring her before (maybe on her 100th?).  I don't think she was ever Star of the Month, simply because she didn't do enough films for that, but I'm not sure if she ever got a Summer Under the Stars day.  I know she was a featured guest at one (or maybe more) of the TCM Film Festivals.

 

For a back-to-back Oscar winner from Hollywood's "Golden Age," she'd been surprisingly forgotten since she left the business, though, so it's possible this birthday tribute was, in fact, going to be the first thing TCM ever aired in her honor (other than the interview - by Robert Osborne - from the film festival).

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Inquisitionist

Inquisitionist

(edited)

For a back-to-back Oscar winner from Hollywood's "Golden Age," she'd been surprisingly forgotten since she left the business,

 

Apparently, there was some snarking about her wins even in the 1940s.  As this piece notes:

 

David Shipman's essay on Luise Rainer starts with an anecdote about Raymond Chandler preparing to go to an Oscar ceremony. The writer, no fan of Hollywood, still was nervous over his nomination for Double Indemnity. His wife told him to relax, that an Oscar was no big deal--"after all, Luise Rainer won it twice."

 

I remember watching The Good Earth in 9th grade, after we read the novel in English class.  Rainer was very moving in that.  Haven't seen her in anything else.

Edited by Inquisitionist
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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

She was basically a nobody when she won for The Great Ziegfeld, and her part in that was far better suited to the new Supporting Actress category, but she was up for Lead Actress.  But that was all Louis B. Mayer, not her.  And she won over Carole Lombard for My Man Godfrey, Norma Shearer for Romeo & Juliet and other better-known actors in good roles that I'd have to look up.  There was a bit of Ziegfeld backlash overall, feeling it swept the major categories based not on its overall merit but on its showiness (and, again, Mayer's machinations).  I tend to agree, and I wouldn't have voted for her, but that famous telephone call scene is a pretty damn fine piece of work, and I think she was an interesting performer.  I always admired her blunt honesty about Hollywood, the turn her career took, and why she got the hell out.

Edited by Bastet
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Wiendish Fitch

Wiendish Fitch

(edited)

Poor Christine Cavanaugh, she was only 51. It's so sad, she was in so many cartoons I loved as a kid (Dexter's Laboratory, Darkwing Duck). I will miss this talented woman, and I know I'm not the only one.

Edited by Wiendish Fitch
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vb68

vb68

RIP  Ms. Rainer.   I also remember seeing The Good Earth.   She really did own a piece of film history.

 

And as My Mom put it about Joe Cocker, "he got lifted up where he belongs."   That's a lovely way to put it even if it makes me cry.

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AltLivia

AltLivia

(edited)

For some reason I'm taking Christine Cavanaugh's death kind of hard. In addition to being in that great X Files episode (and part of so many animated shows throughout my childhood) she played Ranger Mona, counselor Ugg's girlfriend on Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts. Mona was a total national parks nerd and adorably awkward before I knew there was such a thing. Plus, even in ranger gear, Cavanaugh was really beautiful.

Edited by AltLivia
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Bastet

Bastet

(edited)

I'm finding it rather ... something ... that Cavanaugh, having never been a big star and retiring from acting a while back, was just one of the many "regular person" obituaries placed by loved ones in the newspaper.  It took a week for entertainment media to realize she'd died. 

 

Some are more easily immortalized than others, leaving behind work that can be seen and heard in perpetuity and thus related to by strangers, but at the end we're all fundamentally someone's child, sibling, friend, partner, parent, etc.

Edited by Bastet
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Jipijapa

Jipijapa

Yes, he was a great character actor.  I associate him with being one of the leading 'Hey, It's That Guy"'s of the 70s and 80s.

 

Wow, this year has just royally sucked for celebrity passings.  And there are still a few hours to go...

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Inquisitionist

Inquisitionist

First time I can remember seeing Hermann was his performance as Lou Gehrig in a made-for-TV movie with Blythe Danner back in the 1970s.  This may be sacrilege, but the two of them seemed much more like a real couple than Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright in Pride of the Yankees.  I had the privileged of seeing Mr. Hermann on stage a few years ago as Pope Urban to Jay O. Sanders' Galileo in Two Men of Florence.  Wonderful actor; always got the impression he was a nice person, too.

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Bastet

Bastet

The early '80s TV movie The Electric Grandmother (in which he played the kids' father) came out about a year after my grandma died, and I watched that thing over and over.  So I still strongly associate him with that role, all these decades later.

 

When he showed up in The Aviator as the awful Joseph Breen, I thought, "How am I going to properly hate this guy if he's played by Edward Hermann?!"

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CherryMalotte

CherryMalotte

Hermann had a great performance in The Cat's Meow as WR Hearst, and played him just as I imagined Hearst to be.  He was really a marvel, and I'll miss him.  There's something wonderful about great character actors such as Edward, rarely in the spotlight, but you can't imagine the films or shows without them.  I read an interview he gave to the AV Club a couple of years ago and he seemed like such a warm funny man, who loved and appreciated his profession.  He'll be very very missed.

 

I wish to Christ or whatever Higher Powers that Compromising Positions would get a dvd release, he's great in it and it sorely needs to be seen. 

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applecrisp

applecrisp

Ed Herrman was such a great narrator as well as an actor.  His voice was distinctive but not distracting.  He is of course remembered as the patriarch of the Gilmores,  but he was in so many things.  He even played Herman Munster.

 

He was a character actor and I am afraid a dying breed.  I think that is what makes me the most sad.  When I watch old movies,I always marvel at all the unique people who were the supporting cast.   I am especially fond of his role on St. Elsewhere as the priest who started the hospital.  The highest compliment is he was a true character.

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Jipijapa

Jipijapa

(edited)

Mario Cuomo's passing (not a celebrity, but still) helped me put my finger on why all these celebrity passings are bothering me this year.  It's because these people were the famous "grownups" who were part of my world before *I* grew up.  They were, in various ways, the adults who I accepted as being at the top of their games in their various fields (politics, acting, comedy, etc).  They aren't my contemporaries, but rather they were the people who (for better or worse) I was supposed to look up to. 

 

Now the people who were grownups when I was a child, and were doing their best work, are hitting the age where old age takes its toll.  Both my parents are still alive, but now I understand that I'm entering the life phase where it's getting closer and closer that *those* most important grownups in my life will also not be around forever.

 

This is why Philip Seymour Hoffmann passing is a shame (he was my age), but Robin Williams and James Garner, et al, passing is a grief.  (And I think I count Edward Herrmann among that group as well.)

 

This probably sounds corny, but it makes me feel like I want to step up my own game, as a person and (hopefully) a grownup.

Edited by Jipijapa
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