The Off Topic 2010 Celebrity Dead Pool

[SlowwHand]

This is a particularly sad one.

Young `Lion King' actress with leukemia dies
– 18 mins ago

NEW YORK – An 11-year-old girl who played young Nala in "The Lion King" on Broadway has died after a battle with leukemia.

Katharina Harf, co-founder of the bone marrow donor center DKMS, says Shannon Tavarez (tuh-VAHR'-ehz) died Monday at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park, on New York's Long Island.

Tavarez had received an umbilical-cord blood transplant in August.

Stars including Alicia Keys, Rihanna and 50 Cent had campaigned to help Tavarez find a bone marrow donor. Cast members held donor registration drives. A perfect match wasn't found.

Tavarez was forced to quit the show in April.

She beat out hundreds of other hopefuls last year to earn the role.

[Wezil]

Bye Sparky.

Reds fans were taken aback when Sparky Anderson showed up in Cincinnati for his first day as a big league manager, an unknown taking over baseball’s first professional team.

Sparky who?

Really?

By the time he was done, this man with the shock of white hair and schoolboy nickname would produce a mighty list of achievements that featured three World Series titles — including crowns in each league — and a Hall of Fame entry on his resume.

Anderson, who directed the Big Red Machine to back-to-back championships and won another in Detroit, died Thursday from complications of dementia in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 76. A day earlier, his family said he’d been placed in hospice care.

Read more: http://sports.nationalpost.com/2010/...#ixzz14LfbQgkZ

[-Jrabbit]

RIP, Sparky. Thanks for the memories.

[SlowwHand]

RIP, Sparky.

[Ming]

RIP Sparky!

[Guynemer]

****.

[OzzyKP]

Sparky!!!

First Ernie, now Sparky.

[Grandpa Troll]

RIP Sparky!

Amen! I was watching some footage about him and quietly thought about how he was a well respected leader. I always thught he represented baseball well

[Boris Godunov]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101106/...VyYXNpbmdlcnM-

Opera singer Shirley Verrett dies at 79 in Mich.

By RONALD BLUM, Associated Press – Sat Nov 6, 12:25 am ET

NEW YORK – Shirley Verrett, an acclaimed American mezzo-soprano and soprano praised for her blazing intensity during a career that spanned four decades, died Friday in Ann Arbor, Mich. She was 79.

Verrett, one of the top opera singers of the 1970s and 1980s, had been suffering from heart trouble, said Jack Mastroianni of IMG Artists, who was notified of her death by the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Born in New Orleans, she was renowned for a blazing intensity in her performances as a mezzo for much of her career and a soprano in her later years. She battled racial prejudice in a predominantly white European-centered art form during a 40-year biracial marriage, according to her autobiography.

Verrett studied at the Juilliard School in New York and was a 1961 winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

This on the heels of losing Joan Sutherland...

[Tuberski]

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/Oscar-nominated-actress-Jill-Clayburgh-dead-at-66/5puMOreJlUO41HjfvC1cMA.cspx

By DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer

Jill Clayburgh, the sophisticated Hollywood and Broadway actress known for portrayals of empowered women in a career spanning five decades, highlighted by her Oscar-nominated role of a divorcee exploring life after marriage in the 1978 film "An Unmarried Woman," has died. She was 66.

Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said Clayburgh died Friday surrounded by her family at her home in Lakeville, Conn., after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He said she dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."

Clayburgh, alongside such peers as Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine and Jane Fonda, helped to usher in a new era for actresses in Hollywood by playing women who were confident and capable yet not completely flawless. Her dramatic turn as a divorcee exploring her sexuality after 16 years of marriage in "An Unmarried Woman" earned Clayburgh her first Oscar nod.

"There was practically nothing for women to do on the screen in the 1950s and 1960s," Clayburgh said in an interview with The Associated Press while promoting "An Unmarried Woman" in 1978. "Sure, Marilyn Monroe was great, but she had to play a one-sided character, a vulnerable sex object. It was a real fantasy."

The next year, Clayburgh was again nominated for an Academy Award for "Starting Over," a comedy about a divorced man, played by Burt Reynolds, who falls in love but can't get over his ex-wife. For the next 30 years, Clayburgh steadily appeared in films and on stage and television, often effortlessly moving between comedic and dramatic roles.

Besides appearing in such movies as "I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can," "Silver Streak" and "Running With Scissors," Clayburgh's Broadway credits included Noel Coward's "Design for Living," the original production of Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers," and the Tony Award-winning musicals "Pippin" and "The Rothschilds."

Clayburgh's work also stretched across TV. She had a recurring role on Fox's "Ally McBeal" as McBeal's mother and most recently played the matriarch of the spoiled Darling family on ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money." She earned two Emmy nods: for best actress in 1975 for portraying a tell-it-like-it-is prostitute in the ABC TV film "Hustling" and for her guest turn in 2005 as a vengeful plastic surgery patient on FX's "Nip/Tuck."

Clayburgh came from a privileged New York family. Her father was vice president of two large companies, and her mother was a secretary for Broadway producer David Merrick. Her grandmother, Alma Clayburgh, was an opera singer and New York socialite.

Growing up in a such a rich cultural mix, she could easily have been overwhelmed. Instead, as she said in interviews, she asserted herself with willful and destructive behavior — so much so that her parents took her to a psychiatrist when she was 9.

She escaped into a fantasy world of her own devising. She was entranced by seeing Jean Arthur play "Peter Pan" on Broadway, and she and a school chum concocted their own dramatics every day at home. She became serious-minded at Sarah Lawrence College, concentrating on religion, philosophy and literature.

Clayburgh also took drama classes at Sarah Lawrence. She and her friend Robert De Niro acted in a film, "The Wedding Party," directed by a Sarah Lawrence graduate, Brian DePalma. After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree, she began performing in repertory and in Broadway musicals such as "The Rothschilds" and "Pippin."

Alongside Richard Thomas, she headed the 2005 Broadway cast of "A Naked Girl on the Appian Way," Richard Greenberg's comedy about one family's unusual domestic tribulations.

Director Doug Hughes, who directed her in a production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" at the Westport Country Playhouse in 2003, called her for "Naked Girl."

"That she has the time to do a run of a play is just an extraordinary boon because I've had the pleasure of seeing her play a bona fide tragic American role beautifully, and I have had the pleasure of directing her in a very, very smart light comedy and be utterly brilliant in that," he said in 2005.

During an interview that year, Clayburgh explained the unglamorous side of acting.

"One of the funny things about actors is that people look at their careers in retrospect, as if they have a plan," she said.

"Mostly, you just get a call. You're just sitting there going, 'Oh, my God. I'm never going to work again. Oh, God. I'm too old. Maybe I should go and work for Howard Dean.' And then it changes."

Clayburgh will next be seen playing the mother of Jake Gyllenhaal's character in the upcoming film "Love and Other Drugs."

She is survived by three children, including actress Lily Rabe, Michael Rabe and stepson Jason Rabe.

There will be no funeral, Rabe said. The family will have a memorial in about six months, though plans have not been finalized.

[Wezil]

The family of Dino De Laurentiis has confirmed the film producer's death to CNN.

A statement from Raffaella De Laurentiis, family spokesperson and daughter of Dino De Laurentiis, said he died at 10 p.m. PT Wednesday at his Beverly Hills, California, home, surrounded by family.

His granddaughter, celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, issued this statement separately:

"My grandfather was a true inspiration. He was my biggest champion in life and a constant source for wisdom and advice. I will miss him dearly."

[Original post] Dino De Laurentiis, who produced more than 160 films and was nominated for Oscars 35 times, has died at age 91, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

De Laurentiis won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film for 1954's "La Strada," directed by fellow Italian Federico Fellini, according to imdb.com.

He produced the Jane Fonda cult classic "Barbarella" in 1968 and moved to the United States shortly after, according to Digital Spy.

He had a reputation for backing big-budget bombs, but he made good movies too. Among his credits are "Serpico," "Three Days of the Condor," "Flash Gordon," "Dune" and the 1976 remake of "King Kong."

He did not produce "The Silence of the Lambs" in 1991 but did take charge of "Hannibal" and "Hannibal Rising," according to DigitalSpy.

He was the grandfather of celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis.

[SlowwHand]

Serpico was great.


R.I.P.

[Wezil]

Page 3 bump.

Pat Burns, who went from tough-as-nails police officer to one of the best defensive coaches in NHL history, died Friday after a long battle with cancer.

He was 58.

Burns, a native of Montreal’s hardscrabble St-Henri district, won 501 games in 15 seasons as an NHL coach with the Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins and New Jersey Devils, which he led to the 2002-03 Stanley Cup title in his first season with the club.

Read more: http://sports.nationalpost.com/2010/...#ixzz15q427nHQ

[connorkimbro]

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/28/actor-leslie-nielsen-dies-of-complications-from-pneumonia/?hpt=T2

Leslie Nelson (Airplane, The Naked Gun) dead at 84: Nov 28th

[self biased]

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/28...umonia/?hpt=T2

Leslie Nelson (Airplane, The Naked Gun) dead at 84: Nov 28th

Shirley you can't be serious?