The 2013 Off Topic Celebrity Dead Pool

[Robert]

We never heard of him, we don't live there.

ACK!

I never heard of half of the people on my list, do your homework :P

[Wezil]

(Reuters) - The oldest former U.S. senator, Harry Byrd Jr., whose family had deep ties to newspaper publishing in his home state of Virginia, died on Tuesday at age 98.

Byrd died at his home in Winchester, according to an obituary in the Winchester Star newspaper, which is now run by his son.

Byrd, a conservative Democrat who entered Congress in 1965 to fill the Senate seat his father had held for more than three decades, later won re-election as an independent after breaking with the Democratic Party. He retired from Congress in 1983.

Harry was 98 and a Unique Pick for Hauldren Collider (4)

= (171 - 4) + (100 - 98) + 25

= 194 points

HC moves into 3rd place.

[Wezil]

Checked into rehab and didn't check out. Can't say I'm surprised.

Does Dr. Drew run that rehab?

[Tuberski]

I never heard of half of the people on my list, do your homework :P

Screw that, I just think up names and put them on here.

ACK!

[Wezil]

Elmore Leonard — the legendary writer whose works have been turned into countless TV shows and movies — died Tuesday from complications he had from a stroke. He was of 87.

Leonard had suffered the stroke last month and had been recovering in a Detroit-area hospital. Leonard’s long-time researcher, Gregg Sutter, told the Detroit News that Leonard was surrounded by family when he passed.

[-Jrabbit]

Truly an excellent writer. He elevated his genre. May he RIP.

[Uncle Sparky]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/20...rd-elmore.html

Acclaimed American crime novelist Elmore Leonard, whose witty, gritty and undeniably cool stories were turned into Hollywood hits such as Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty and TV's Justified, has died at the age of 87.

Leonard "passed away this morning at 7:15 a.m. at home surrounded by his loving family," according to an update posted Tuesday on his website.

The writer, based for decades in Bloomfield Township, Mich., northwest of Detroit, died of complications from a stroke suffered in early August, according to his longtime researcher, Gregg Sutter.

Though born in New Orleans, he and his family eventually settled in Detroit in the mid-1930s. After serving in the U.S. Navy in the mid 1940s, he enrolled in the University of Detroit and studied English and philosophy.

Despite a busy career as an advertising writer during the 1950s, Leonard started a career writing fiction on the side. His dedication was evident in his work ethic: he would wake in the early hours to spend time writing Westerns before heading in for a day at the Campbell-Ewald Agency.

He published dozens of short stories (such as 3:10 to Yuma), a handful of novels (including his debut, The Bounty Hunters, and the acclaimed Hombre) and sold movie rights to several projects before feeling comfortable enough to quit advertising to focus on fiction full-time in 1961. Even then he maintained a dedicated schedule of writing from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Leonard began to gain a devoted and ever-larger following with a switch to crime novels, including The Big Bounce, Glitz, Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight and The Switch...

'I try to leave out the parts that people tend to skip'—Elmore Leonard

[Wezil]

He's worth a double mention.

[Wezil]

Actually I got it from Wikipedia. Didn't know about the faker thing

The inoperable cancer hasn't got him yet...

But he does have a new CD out.

[regexcellent]

god damnit

[Guynemer]

Son of a ****ing *****.

I love Elmore Leonard.

[Guynemer]

(Reuters) - The oldest former U.S. senator, Harry Byrd Jr., whose family had deep ties to newspaper publishing in his home state of Virginia, died on Tuesday at age 98.

Byrd died at his home in Winchester, according to an obituary in the Winchester Star newspaper, which is now run by his son.

Byrd, a conservative Democrat who entered Congress in 1965 to fill the Senate seat his father had held for more than three decades, later won re-election as an independent after breaking with the Democratic Party. He retired from Congress in 1983.

Harry was 98 and a Unique Pick for Hauldren Collider (4)

= (171 - 4) + (100 - 98) + 25

= 194 points

HC moves into 3rd place.

GOD****ING DAMMIT I HAD THAT ******* ON MY LIST EVERY GODDAMNED YEAR UNTIL THIS ONE WHAT THE **** IS GOING ON

[Uncle Sparky]

Actress Julie Harris to appear with James Dean

Julie Harris, one of Broadway's most honored performers, whose roles ranged from the flamboyant Sally Bowles in "I Am a Camera" to the reclusive Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst," died Saturday. She was 87.

Harris died at her West Chatham, Mass. home of congestive heart failure, actress and family friend Francesca James said.

Harris won a record five Tony Awards for best actress in a play, displaying a virtuosity that enabled her to portray an astonishing gallery of women during a theater career that spanned almost 60 years and included such plays as "The Member of the Wedding" (1950), "The Lark" (1955), "Forty Carats" (1968) and "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" (1972).

She was honoured again with a sixth Tony, a special lifetime achievement award in 2002. Only Angela Lansbury has neared her record, winning four Tonys in the best actress-musical category and one for best supporting actress in a play.

Harris had suffered a stroke in 2001 while she was in Chicago appearing in a production of Claudia Allen's "Fossils." She suffered another stroke in 2010, James said.

"I'm still in sort of a place of shock," said James, who appeared in daytime soap operas "All My Children" and "One Life to Live."

"She was, really, the greatest influence in my life," said James, who had known Harris for about 50 years.

Television viewers knew Harris as the free-spirited Lilimae Clements on the prime-time soap opera "Knots Landing." In the movies, she was James Dean's romantic co-star in "East of Eden" (1955), and had roles in such films as "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962), "The Haunting" (1963) and "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967).

http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/...#ixzz2cx511w1t

[SlowwHand]

GOD****ING DAMMIT I HAD THAT ******* ON MY LIST EVERY GODDAMNED YEAR UNTIL THIS ONE WHAT THE **** IS GOING ON

You're kind of the anti-doctor. If you want someone to live (or don't care), they die. If you want them to die, they take on an aura of near immortality.

[Uncle Sparky]

Frederik Pohl is dead - science fiction writer, "The Space Merchants", "Man Plus", "Gateway"

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...cience-fiction

Frederik Pohl, one of the few writers who was truly deserving of the overused epithet "grandmaster of science fiction", has died aged 93.

His granddaughter Emily Pohl-Weary broke the news last night when she tweeted, "Rest in peace to my beloved grandfather Frederik Pohl, who showed me by example how to be an author. 1919-2013."

From his first published work in 1937, a poem entitled "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", printed in Amazing Stories magazine under the pseudonymous byline Elton Andrews, Pohl turned out an astonishingly huge body of work.

He will perhaps be best remembered for his 1977 novel Gateway, which won the Hugo Award the following year. A multilayered novel describing a space-station in a hollowed-out asteroid, built by a long-gone alien race who had left behind hundreds of space ships which humanity was learning to operate through trial and error, the novel also scooped the Locus, Nebula and John W Campbell awards and is considered a major milestone in SF writing today.

In his book on science fiction, New Maps of Hell, Kingsley Amis called Pohl "the most consistently able writer science fiction, in its modern form, has yet produced".

Even in his advanced years, Pohl embraced the internet and was an inveterate blogger, posting his latest missive just days ago – a piece on poverty in which he wrote, "Everyone knows that the principal thing lacking in the poor is the same all over the world. Its name is Money."

In his 1978 book The Way the Future Was, Pohl, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, explained how he joined the Young Communist League in 1936 because it was pro-union and anti-Hitler, Mussolini and racism.

He served with the US Army in the second world war and was stationed in Italy with the 456th Bombardment Group. Since 1940, Pohl was married no fewer than five times.