The Off Topic 2010 Celebrity Dead Pool

[Straybow]

Stephen J. Cannell, of writer/creator/producer of many hit TV shows and hundreds of scripts, died from complications of melanoma on September 30. Rockford Files and A-Team are some of his best known works.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6904PF20101001

[Wezil]

All I can say is my guys ain't dying, and I reckon it's got something to do with Wezil.

I reckon if you guys spent half as much time compiling a good team as you do complaining about your bad picks you just might do better.

[Grandpa Troll]

Barbara Billingsley, who wore a classy pearl necklace and dispensed pearls of wisdom as America's quintessential mom on "Leave it to Beaver," has died at age 94, a family spokeswoman said Saturday.

The actress passed away at 2 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) Saturday at her home in Santa Monica, California, after a long illness, spokeswoman Judy Twersky said. A private memorial is being planned.

"She was as happy as a lark being recognized as America's mom," actor Tony Dow, who played Wally Cleaver, told CNN's Don Lemon. "She had a terrific life and had a wonderful impact on everybody she knew, and even people she didn't know."

Actor Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, spoke of Billingsley's talent during a 2000 appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live."

"Barbara was always a true role model for me. She was a great actress," he said. "And in a lot of ways ... we kind of stifled her, because her true talent didn't really come out in 'Leave it Beaver.' She was like the straight man, but she has an awful lot of talent."

The actress won a new legion of fans in a brief, but memorable, scene in the 1980 send-up movie "Airplane."

"Oh, stewardess. I speak jive," Billingsley said in her role -- much different from her June Cleaver persona -- as an elderly passenger comforting an ill man on the flight. She, the sick man and his seat companion engaged in street-slang banter.

From the moment its catchy theme song sounded in black-and-white TV sets of the 1950s, "Leave it to Beaver" enthralled Americans during a time of relative prosperity and world peace. Its characters represented middle-class white America.

June Cleaver dutifully pecked the cheek of her husband, Ward (played by the late Hugh Beaumont), when he came home to learn about the latest foibles -- nothing serious -- committed by Beaver and Wally.

The parents would dispense moralistic advice to their sons. The boys' friends included Lumpy and the obsequious Eddie Haskell, who avoided trouble and often buttered up Ward and June.

"That's a lovely dress you're wearing, Mrs. Cleaver," Eddie would typically say to Billingsley's character.

Perhaps fittingly, "Leave it to Beaver" was canceled in 1963 on the eve of the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War and the tumult of the 1960s.

In the 1980s, Dow appeared with Billingsley in "The New Leave it to Beaver." She shifted from being a mom figure to a good friend who supported his directing and artistic endeavors, Dow said.

"She always had a positive thing to say," said Dow, 65.

Born December 22, 1915, in Los Angeles, Billingsley began her career as a model in New York City in 1936.

She was under contract to MGM in 1945 before becoming a household name with the launch of "Leave it to Beaver" in 1957.

Billingsley also voiced the role of Nanny in Nickelodeon's "Muppet Babies" from 1984 to 1991.

Billingsley is related by marriage to actor/producer Peter Billingsley, known for his starring role as Ralphie in the seasonal TV-movie classic "A Christmas Story," according to the Internet Movie Database. Peter Billingsley's mother, Gail Billingsley, is the cousin of Barbara's first husband, Glenn.

Billingsley, whose second and third husbands predeceased her, is survived by her two sons, Drew Billingsley of Granada Hills, California, and Glenn Billingsley of Phillips Ranch, California.

Asked once to compare real-life families to TV families, Billingsley responded, "I just wish that we could have more families like those. Family is so important, and I just don't think we have enough people staying home with their babies and their children."

[-Jrabbit]

RIP.

[SlowwHand]

RIP.

[-Jrabbit]

Another classic TV parent passes...

'Happy Days' Actor Tom Bosley Dies

KTLA News, 1:48 p.m. CDT, October 19, 2010

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (KTLA) -- Actor Tom Bosley, best known as the beloved Mr. Cunningham on "Happy Days," has died.

The family says Bosley died of heart failure at 4 a.m. Tuesday at a hospital near his Palm Springs home. Bosley's agent, Sheryl Abrams, says he was also battling lung cancer. He was 83 years old.

Bosley was most known for his role as Howard Cunningham on the long-running sitcom 'Happy Days.' TV Guide ranked Bosley's "Happy Days" character No. 9 on its list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" in 2004. The show debuted in 1974 and ran for 11 seasons.

He was also known for portraying Sheriff Amos Tupper on "Murder, She Wrote" and Father Frank Dowling on the TV mystery series, "Father Dowling Mysteries," which ran from 1989 to 1991.

Actor Henry Winkler, who played Arthur Fonzarelli on 'Happy Days' says he's shocked to hear the news.

"I'm just in shock, I really am," Winkler told KNX 1070 News Radio.

"I spoke to him just a few weeks ago and he seemed to be getting his strength back," he said.

When he was first offered the costarring role in "Happy Days," a series about teenage life in the 1950s, he turned it down.

"After rereading the pilot script," he recalled in a 1986 interview, "I changed my mind because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father/son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project."

Propelled by the nation's nostalgia for the simple pleasures of the 1950s, "Happy Days," which debuted in 1974, slowly built to hit status, becoming television's top-rated series by its third season.

Although "Happy Days" brought him his widest fame, Bosley had made his mark on Broadway 15 years before when he turned in a Tony Award-winning performance in the title role in "Fiorello!" He also was the crime-solving priest in television's "The Father Dowling Mysteries."

His Broadway triumph depicted the life of New York's colorful reformist mayor of the 1930s and '40s, Fiorello La Guardia. For two years, Bosley stopped the show every night when he sang in several languages, depicting La Guardia during the years the future mayor worked at New York's Ellis Island, aiding arriving immigrants. The play won a Pulitzer Prize and Bosley received the Tony for best actor in a musical.

After failing to duplicate his success in "Fiorello!," Bosley moved to Hollywood in 1968. He would not return to Broadway until 1994 when he originated the role of Belle's father in Disney's production of "Beauty and the Beast."

In Hollywood, the rotund character actor found steady work appearing in the occasional movie and as a regular on weekly TV shows starring Debbie Reynolds, Dean Martin, Sandy Duncan and others.

During the 1990s, Bosley toured in "Beauty and the Beast" and "Show Boat," playing Captain Andy in the latter.

Bosley made only a handful of theatrical movies. Among them: "Love With the Proper Stranger," "Divorce American Style," "The Secret War of Henry Frigg," "Yours, Mine and Ours."

Born in Chicago in 1927, Bosley served in the Navy before returning to his hometown to study at De Paul University. Intrigued with acting, he enrolled at the Radio Institute of Chicago and began appearing in radio dramas. He made his theatrical debut in a production of "Golden Boy."

After moving to New York, he studied at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg.

Bosley married dancer Jean Eliot in 1962 and the couple had one child, Amy. Two years after his wife's death in 1978, Bosley married actress-producer Patricia Carr, who had three daughters from a previous marriage.

[SlowwHand]

RIP

[Grandpa Troll]

To a man who brought me many pleasureable experiences ....R.I.P.

Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione died Wednesday of cancer at a Plano, Texas, hospital, his family said Wednesday night.

Guccione, 79, died at Plano Specialty Hospital, with his wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione and two of his children, Bob Jr. and Tonina, at his side, a family statement said.

April Guccione's mother, Georgann Flinchbaugh, told CNN her daughter, who had been married to the publishing and entertainment magnate since 2006, was too distraught to talk.

"He was a wonderful man," Flinchbaugh said. "She's heartbroken. He was the love of her life."

Bob Guccione: Life in the Penthouse

Guccione launched Penthouse magazine, one of several magazine ventures, in 1965. He and Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner competed for the attention of men for several decades.

A painter and art collector, the businessman was born into a family of Sicilian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York.

Guccione's consuming interest was painting, the family said, and in 1948 he wrote to a friend, "I want to devote my life to the serious and profound intricacies of true and imaginative art."

Eventually, he launched Penthouse, which was more explicit than Playboy, its main competitor. The Penthouse key became a well-known trademark.

Guccione, who was married four times, also produced or invested in several movies, including "Caligula" and "Chinatown."

Writing in New York magazine, Anthony Haden-Guest said, "Bob Guccione pushed the soft-core envelope, building one of the most profitable porn empires in the world."

Services will be private, the family said.

[OzzyKP]

Amazing, I've never heard of the guy. Everyone knows Larry Flint & Hugh Hefner, but this guy somehow kept a very low profile.

[SlowwHand]

Penthouse. It was between Playboy and Hustler, in regard to explicit.

RIP

[OzzyKP]

Yes, I've heard of Penthouse, I just never heard of Guccione.

[Solomwi]

You're young, Ozzy. In the 80s, Guccione was pretty well known, albeit maybe not quite as high profile as Hef and Flynt. Caligula, for instance, had his name plastered all over it and was not a low profile project.

[Wezil]

Not an eligible pick but worthy of note:

Paul the Octopus, the tentacled tipster who fascinated soccer fans by correctly predicting results at this year's World Cup, died Tuesday.

Paul had reached the octopus old age of 2 1 / 2 years and died in his tank on Tuesday morning in an aquarium in the western German city of Oberhausen, spokeswoman Ariane Vieregge said.

Paul seemed to be in good shape when he was checked late Monday, but he did not make it through the night. He died of natural causes, Vieregge added.

“We had all naturally grown very fond of him and he will be sorely missed,” Sea Life manager Stefan Porwoll said in a statement.

I suspect he died of boredom.

[Al B. Sure!]

Gregory Isaacs died. RIP

Gregory Isaacs — one of the most popular and versatile reggae singers of the late-1970s, and the smooth-voiced dancehall crooner behind the genre's landmark 1982 LP Night Nurse — passed away this morning at his London home following a year-long battle with lung cancer, the BBC reports.

[SlowwHand]

Gregory Isaacs - Night Nurse (1982)

RIP