Actor played police chief in classic 'Jaws'
Twice a nominee for an Academy Award, he was best known for role in shark thriller
Associated Press
February 11, 2008

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Roy Scheider, a two-time Oscar nominee best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie "Jaws," has died. He was 75.

Mr. Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital did not release a cause of death.

However, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Mr. Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.

He was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1971's "The French Connection," in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and for best actor in 1979's "All That Jazz," the autobiographical Bob Fosse film.

However, he earned the most fame for his role in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film "Jaws," the enduring classic about a killer shark that terrorizing beachgoers -- as well as millions of moviegoers.

Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, it also was the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office. Mr. Scheider starred with Richard Dreyfuss, who played an oceanographer.

In 2005, one of Mr. Scheider's most famous lines in the movie -- "You're gonna need a bigger boat" -- was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from U.S. movies.

That year, some 30 years after "Jaws" premiered, hundreds of movie buffs flocked to Martha's Vineyard, off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, to celebrate the great white shark.

The island's JawsFest '05 also brought back some of the cast and crew, including screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel that inspired Spielberg's classic. Spielberg, Mr. Scheider and Dreyfuss were absent.

Mr. Scheider was politically active. He participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a New York demonstration in March 2003 that drew about 125,000 activists.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Clarke moved to Sri Lanka in 1956, lured by his interest in marine diving which he said was as close as he could get to the weightless feeling of space.

"I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

------ On the Net:

The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation: http://www.clarkefoundation.org

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ollie Johnston, the last of the "Nine Old Men" who animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Fantasia," "Bambi" and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95.


In addition to being a legendary animator, Ollie Johnston was an avid train hobbyiist.

1 of 2 Johnston died of natural causes at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, Walt Disney Studios Vice President Howard Green said Tuesday.

"Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today," Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and director emeritus of the Walt Disney Co., said in a statement.

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his "Nine Old Men," borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of the U.S. Supreme Court's members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs.

Although most of Disney's men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Johnston and Thomas and their families became neighbors in the Los Angeles suburb of Flintridge, and during their 45-minute drive to the Disney Studios each day, they would devise fresh ideas for work.

Johnston worked as an assistant animator on "Snow White" and became an animation supervisor on "Fantasia" and "Bambi" and animator on "Pinocchio."

He was especially proud of his work on "Bambi" and its classic scenes, including one depicting the heartbreaking death of Bambi's mother at the hands of a hunter. That scene has brought tears to the eyes of generations of young and old viewers.

"The mother's death showed how convincing we could be at presenting really strong emotion," he remarked in 1999.

Johnston's other credits included "Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp," "Sleeping Beauty," "101 Dalmatians," "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book," "The Aristocats," "Robin Hood" and "The Rescuers."

"[People] know his work. They know his characters. They've seen him act without realizing it," film historian Leonard Maltin said. "He was one of the pillars, one of the key contributors to the golden age of Disney animation."

After Johnston and Thomas retired in 1978, they lectured at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe. They also co-authored the books "Bambi: The Story and the Film," "Too Funny for Words," "The Disney Villains" and the epic "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life." They were the subjects of the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie," produced by Thomas' son Ted.

The pair's guide to animation is considered "the bible" among animators, said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios and Johnston's longtime friend.

Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. was born October 31, 1912, in Palo Alto, California, where his father was a professor at Stanford. He once noted that he and Thomas "were bound to be thrown together" at the university, as they were two of only six students in its art department at the time. When not in class, they painted landscapes and sold them at a local speakeasy for meal money.

Johnston had planned on becoming a magazine illustrator but fell in love with animation.

"I wanted to paint pictures full of emotion that would make people want to read the stories," he once said. "But I found that [in animation] was something that was full of life and movement and action, and it showed all those feelings."

Johnston was honored with a Disney Legends Award in 1989, and in 2005, he was the first animator honored with the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.

He was also a major train enthusiast. The backyard of his Flintridge home boasted a hand-built miniature railroad, and Johnston restored and ran a full-size antique locomotive at a former vacation home in Julian, California.

Johnston's wife of 63 years, Marie Worthey, died in 2005. Johnston is survived by sons Ken and Rick and daughters-in-law Carolyn Johnston and Teya Priest Johnston. The Walt Disney Studios is planning a life celebration for Johnston. Funeral services will be private

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Irreverent comedian George Carlin dead at 71

LOS ANGELES - George Carlin, the acerbic, Grammy-winning comedian whose career spanned more than 50 years, died of heart failure Sunday after being admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pains, a hospital spokesman said. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, died at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica shortly before 6 p.m., said his publicist Jeff Abraham.

The comedian, who toured college campuses for years and made a name for himself using dirty language and delivering biting social commentaries, had released 22 solo albums and three bestselling books.

He finished a show at The Orleans in Las Vegas last week and was planning to take the month off to relax and work on a new book of essays and musings, Abraham said.

Carlin normally took summers off and was scheduled to begin touring again beginning with a July 20 performance at Humphrey's Concerts By The Bay in San Diego. He had dates lined up through December, Abraham said.

"He was looking forward to it," Abraham said.

Carlin went to the hospital Sunday afternoon because "his heart just didn't feel right," the publicist said.

Carlin starred in a variety of TV and movie roles and gained fame for a routine about the seven dirty words that could not be uttered on television.

"There are three ingredients in my comedy," he said in a 1991 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "Those three things which wax and wane in importance are English language and wordplay; secondly, mundane, everyday observational comedy -- dogs, cats and all that stuff; and thirdly, sociopolitical attitude comedy."

He earned several gold comedy albums and five Emmy nominations.

Carlin was arrested in 1972 in Milwaukee for using indecent language. In a separate case in 1973, a radio listener complained after a station played part of his album. That case went the Supreme Court, which in 1978 ruled in favor of the Federal Communications Commission, saying the radio station could not broadcast those words at times when children could be listening.

Last year, he said a highlight of his career was a 1992 HBO special titled "Jamming in New York."

"That was the point where I probably became more of a writer who performed his own material.

"The material became more like essays, they became more socially conscious, and it was just a major jump from being what I think of as only an entertainer to being an artist-entertainer," he said in a 2007 Times interview.

Last year, Carlin released "George Carlin: All My Stuff," a 14-DVD collection of his HBO specials from 1977 to 2005.

He had shown no signs of slowing down.

Just last week, the John F. JFK Center for the Performing Arts announced Carlin would be awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

The center is scheduled to honor Carlin at a tribute performance by former colleagues on Nov. 10, which will be broadcast later on PBS. Actor and comedian Billy Crystal won last year's Mark Twain prize.

Carlin was born May 12, 1937, in the Bronx and grew up in New York.

He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; older brother Patrick Carlin; sister-in-law Marlene Carlin and longtime manager, business partner and best friend Jerold Hamza. Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997.

Obituary: Cyd Charisse

Cyd Charisse danced with Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain
Cyd Charisse danced with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in some of Hollywood's finest musicals - The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings with Astaire, and Singin' in the Rain and Brigadoon with Gene Kelly.


She was one of the most brilliant and beautiful female dancers ever to appear on the big screen.


With the decline of big musicals she took straight roles, but not with the same success.

Cyd Charisse was born Tula Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, in 1921, she was six when she began dance lessons to strengthen her muscles after a bout of polio.

She went on to study ballet and, at the age of 18, married Nico Charisse, her instructor.

She became known as Sid when she was a child - the nearest her brother could get in his attempt to say Sis. Later, when she signed for MGM, she changed the spelling to Cyd.

Erotically charged

Cyd Charisse made several films in the early 1940s, using the name Lily Norwood, but became a star of film musicals as Cyd Charisse after joining MGM, who were reputed to have insured her undeniably lovely legs for a million dollars each.

But Cyd Charisse later revealed that that had been an invention of the MGM publicity machine.



Cyd Charisse dancing with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire
She was married to her second husband, the singer Tony Martin, and a new mother, when she starred with Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.

She worked with the sometimes rough and always demanding Kelly again in Brigadoon and partnered Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon and her favourite film, Silk Stockings.

Like Kelly, Astaire was a perfectionist, but Cyd Charisse's time with Diaghilev's ballet company had equipped her for the challenge:

"Coming from a Russian ballet company and a lot of hard training," she said later.

"I was a strong dancer and I loved to dance and I loved to work and he found someone who liked to work just as much as he did and we got along fabulously well together."

She also appeared in The Unfinished Dance, Words and Music, It's Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance.

Later she was in Two Weeks in Another Town, and made some films in Europe, including Warlords of Atlantis.

Cyd Charisse did play some straight roles, but her dancing was more eloquent than any spoken word.

While the censors were always on the set, training their eagle eyes on her costumes, the erotic nature of her dance escaped them.

And though the golden age of Hollywood musicals came to an end, admirers still remember Cyd Charisse's vital role.

Estelle Getty of 'Golden Girls' dies at 84

LOS ANGELES — Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV's "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 84.

Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.

"Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams," former "Golden Girls" co-star Rue McClanahan told The Associated Press. "Don't feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia."

"The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in "Maude," Betty White in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and McClanahan in "Mama's Family." The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.

"Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her," Arthur said in a statement.

When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play "Torch Song Trilogy." In her early 60s, she flunked her "Golden Girls" test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80.

"I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast."

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

"The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us," White said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

"The Golden Girls" culminated a long struggle for success during which Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.

"I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I'd say, 'Don't promote me, please,'" she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including "Tootsie," "Deadly Force" and "Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story."

After her success in "The Golden Girls," other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in "Mask," Sylvester Stallone's in "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" and Barry Manilow's in the TV film "Copacabana." Other credits included "Mannequin" and "Stuart Little" (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

"The Golden Girls," which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan's libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open blouse."

"I always told her she should be a standup comic. She was so funny in person," McClanahan recalled. "She would always say, 'Why couldn't we make these characters Jewish? Why am I Sicilian?'"

Getty had gained a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did standup comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were rare in those days, however, and she bombed.

Undeterred, she continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that she learn office skills so she would have something to fall back on.

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.

She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in "The Golden Girls."

Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was "under 5 feet and under 100 pounds."

McClanahan said her nickname for Getty was "Slats."

"Because she was so short, itty-bitty," she said.

In addition to her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.

Randy Pausch, author of 'Last Lecture,' has died
The Associated Press
8:58 AM CDT, July 25, 2008
PITTSBURGH - Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose "last lecture" about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, has died. He was 47.

University spokeswoman Anne Watzman says Pausch died early Friday at his home in Virginia.

Pausch was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in September 2006. His popular last lecture at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 garnered international attention and was viewed by millions on the Internet.

In it, Pausch celebrated living the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on impending death.

The book "The Last Lecture, " written with Jeffrey Zaslow, topped best-seller lists after its publication in April.

Bernie Mac blended style, authority and a touch of self-aware bluster to make audiences laugh as well as connect with him. For Mac, who died Saturday at age 50, it was a winning mix, delivering him from a poor childhood to stardom as a standup comedian, in films including the casino heist caper "Ocean's Eleven" and his acclaimed sitcom "The Bernie Mac Show."