Rolling Obituary Thread: 2015

http://www.tmz.com/2015/01/02/donna-douglas-dead-beverly-hillbillies-elly-may-clampett/

Donna Douglas -- who famously portrayed Elly May Clampett on the legendary 60s TV series "The Beverly Hillbillies" -- passed away Thursday at her home in Louisiana with friends and family by her side.

Douglas' granddaughter confirmed the death to TMZ.

Donna starred on "The Beverly Hillbillies" for all nine seasons and even returned for the 1981 reunion TV movie.

Douglas also appeared in several other iconic TV series, including "Mister Ed," "The Twilight Zone," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," "Adam 12," and "Route 66."

She also co-starred with Elvis Presley in "Frankie and Johnny."

Douglas filed two famous lawsuits over the years. In the 1990s, she sued Disney claiming they stole the idea for "Sister Act" from her. In 2011, she sued Mattel for making a Barbie doll with her likeness without her permission. She lost the "Sister Act" case and settled the Barbie case.

Donna was 81.

http://www.relapse.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/small_image/225x150/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/o/b/obituary_1.jpg

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/mario-cuomo-new-york-governor-dead-82-article-1.2063258

Ever-eloquent Mario Cuomo, a son of Queens who rode his rhetorical gifts to three terms as New York governor and tantalized Democrats by flirting with a run for President, died Thursday. He was 82.

Cuomo passed away at 5:15 p.m. of heart failure, surrounded by family in his Manhattan apartment as his son, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was in Buffalo delivering his second inaugural address of the day.

(I know this was covered at the tail end of the 2014 thread, but I put it here for posterity.)

http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2015/01/02/little-jimmy-dickens-opry-star-dies-obit/21210809/

RIP Little Jimmy Dickens

RIP & May The Bird of Paradise Fly You Up A Nose and Into Heaven

http://pitchfork.com/news/53635-swans-announce-new-album-rip-and-may-the-bird-of-paradise-fly-you-up-a-nose-and-into-heaven-featuring-little-jimmy-dickens-michael-gira-announces-solo-tour/

Eh, what?

According to Charlie Louvin, Little Jimmy was the classic tough little short guy. Earlier this evening I took a tater and waited. RIP.

v strange, a friend was talking on New Years Eve about meeting Dickens backstage

Time for new screenname

Oh wait, wrong Dickens

Edward Brooke, liberal Republican from Massachusetts who in 1966 became the first African-American popularly elected to the Senate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/edward-w-brooke-first-african-american-elected-to-the-us-senate-dies-at-95/2015/01/03/cdabb80a-938b-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html

ESPN anchor Stuart Scott:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/12118296/stuart-scott-espn-anchor-dies-age-49

RIP Stuart Scott. You were the man.

These two clips featured here will shred ya. Just a bit of fair warning.

http://deadspin.com/rich-eisen-hannah-storm-others-react-live-to-stuart-1677360761/

Meantime, in contrast, I give you the National Review. So successful.

https://twitter.com/NRO/status/551803970621308929

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/world/middleeast/serge-hochar-producer-of-lebanese-wines-dies-at-75.html

Bess Myerson

she can beard for Ed Koch once more

Rene Vautier, who claimed to be the "most censored director in France", died on Sunday aged 86, his family said.

...Many of his films were banned or condemned by the establishment and one even landed him in prison. He was sentenced to a year in jail for making "Africa 50", which he shot when was just 20, and which is seen as the first French anti-colonial film. It denounced the crimes of the French army and the lack of education afforded to the natives of French colonies. It was banned for 40 years.

http://artdaily.com/news/75510/French-anti-colonial-firebrand-film-maker-Rene-Vautier-dies-aged-86-in-Brittany

Rod Taylor

http://www.people.com/people/mobile/article/0,,20890158,00.html

Jack Cardiff's Dark of The Sun RULES.

Another one for the 'I Thought They Died Years Ago'.Appearing in the The Time Machine AND Zabriskie Point is kinda cool.

musicologist Bob Gilmore

http://www.bobgilmore.co.uk/

RIP Andraé Crouch

Comic actor and calypso singer Lance Percival:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30746784

Francesco Rosi:

http://www.dw.de/italian-director-francesco-rosi-dies-at-92/a-18183765

RIP:(

Taylor Negron according to Twitter.

No!

http://deadline.com/2015/01/taylor-negron-dead-57-after-long-battle-with-cancer-1201346798/

:-(

RIP. Did not notice mention of The Aristocrats in that obit.

I think I'd heard something about him being sick, but I'd totally forgotten it. R.I.P.

Anita Ekberg?

Yes:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/anita-ekberg-of-la-dolce-vita-fame-dies-1.2897039

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o15UTomYsc

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/drummer-vocalist-popsy-dixon-holmes-brothers-dies-28125004

Soulful falsetto vocalist

Very sad.

This is beautiful and amazing and heartbreaking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPNhnIwT920

http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/2015/01/brian-clemens-dead-83/

Probably best known for The Avengers, also lots of other British TV and some film work including the Golden Voyage Of Sinbad.

Oh sad - definitely one of the major figures of British genre film/tv. I'm particularly fond of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, perhaps the most polymorphously perverse of all Hammer movies.

Yeah, shame, RIP Brian.

Tim Drummond:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tim-drummond-bassist-neil-young-bob-dylan-dead-20150112

Hear him walk a little bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1wtIfs8lg

Oh no, that is terrible news. RIP.

Samuel Goldwyn Jr., key arthouse distributor of the 1980s

http://thedissolve.com/news/4434-samuel-goldwyn-jr-1926-2015/

Dozy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-30811311

RIP Dozy. I always mean to investigate DDDBMT, I like them, but I never do.

Now, they are Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich

You want awesome?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lxwZXeNSI

Novelist Robert Stone

RIP Kim Fowley

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6443507/kim-fowley-legendary-record-producer-dead-at-75

o

Shocker, RIP Kim!!!!!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/arts/music/ervin-drake-composer-of-pop-songs-dies-at-95.html?action=click&contentCollection=Music®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

Ervin Drake’s “Now That I Have Everything” debuted the same day he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983, a fitting coda for a career that was punctuated by hit versions of his songs, like Frank Sinatra’s “It Was a Very Good Year,” Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache” and the inspirational “I Believe,” sung by Frankie Laine.

Mr. Drake, who wrote lyrics and music, produced television programs and was president of the American Guild of Authors and Composers, died on Thursday at 95 at his home in Great Neck, N.Y. The cause was complications of bladder cancer, said his stepson, Jed Berman.

Takao Saitô, Kurosawa's cinematographer on Ran, Sanjuro and many others

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/takao-saito-cinematographer-18-kurosawa-761859

Faten Hamama, actress who was "Lady of Arabic Cinema"

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-faten-hamama-1931-2015

Big loss to the Herald, and Scottish journalism. I will miss his elegant, clever opinion pieces. Younger than I thought, too.

Honduran footballer Arnold Peralta

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35068362

basketball great Dolph Schayes

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/hall-famer-dolph-schayes-dead-87-article-1.2461463

Marjorie Lord, sit-mom on The Danny Thomas Show

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-1212-marjorie-lord-20151212-story.html

http://toptiding.com/LWQpcOoNVS_s.jpg

was that the first fat-comedian-married-to-hottie sitcom?

Benedict Anderson died yesterday in Indonesia http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/12/13/world/asia/ap-as-indonesia-obit-benedict-anderson.html?_r=0

RIP guitarist and very funny guy Adam Roth, of bile duct cancer, one month after being diagnosed.

Jimmy Hill: Former Match of the Day presenter dies aged 87

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvDQvT5MuM

Facebook has apparently decided to kill off Peter O'Toole for a second time.

Kurt Masur

Lord Janner: saved by the knell.
http://gu.com/p/4f8p4?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Nigel Buxton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb-GbYxGLik&feature=youtu.be

aw

Nick Combe, the original drummer in Gallon Drunk.

Don Howe

Brooke McCarter, one of the teen vamps from The Lost Boys.

George Clayton Johnson, author of Twilight Zone scripts, Star Trek's debut episode "The Man Trap" and co-novelist of Logan's Run

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-clayton-johnson-dead-twilight-850954

Wow, what a résumé.

Stevie Wright of The Easybeats

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/12/28/australian-rock-legend-stevie-wright-dies.html

Helped shape a decade:

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/haskell-wexler-dead-93-cinematographer-1201668018/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/us/gen-h-norman-schwarzkopf-us-commander-in-gulf-war-dies-at-78.html?_r=0

GODDAMMIT FACEBOOK, QUIT CIRCULATING 3 YEAR OLD STORIES!

I usually don't get taken by these, but...

Ellsworth Kelly

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/arts/ellsworth-kelly-artist-who-mixed-european-abstraction-into-everyday-life-dies-at-92.html

Carson Van Osten, bass player for the (Todd Rundgren) Nazz, and later an artist for Disney

http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-carson-van-osten-of-nazz-1945-2015-20151227

Meadowlark Lemon!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/28/entertainment/meadowlark-lemon-obit-globetrotters-feat/

I'm not 100% sure, but I think I did see them at Maple Leaf Gardens when I was kid.

I gasped when I read that, coming back on the train to London. RIP big guy.

Lemmy.

Oh, damn. His recent interview with Marc Maron was hilarious. RIP.

aw, fuck.

Well, that seems unlikely. RIP.

There's no question that the news is true, but allow me to not believe it for a while longer. R.I.P. Lemmy

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-9/10710773_1106121706072795_6645400775584024850_n.jpg?oh=5c0f1489cd175d37201045b21bd96b00&oe=5717672D

RIP stormin norman

RIP Lemmy - Killed by Death, just like he predicted.

it's like when Ronnie James Dio died. I knew he was sick but it never crossed my mind to picture what it would be like without him

and now bummertown usa ;_;

Let me get this straight, Lemmy is dead?

Meadowlark Lemmy

I don't wanna live forever ;_;

Czech goalie Pavel Srnicek, 47:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/29/pavel-srnicek-newcastle-united-sheffield-wednesday-west-ham-dies-aged-47-cardiac-arrest

The Specials' John Bradbury

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/29/john-bradbury-of-the-specials-dies-ages-62

Guru Josh

http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/9092/Muzieknieuws/article/detail/2570076/2015/12/29/Danceproducer-Guru-Josh-Infinity-overleden.dhtml

Hearing Guru Josh as well, but can't find a link

xpost, ah there we go

And there's your English-language report:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/29/guru-josh-rave-star-dies-aged-51

Aidan Higgins.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/acclaimed-irish-writer-aidan-higgins-dies-aged-88-1.2478631

http://tvline.com/2015/12/31/wayne-rogers-dead-age-82-mash/

R.I.P. Trapper John

No way. He always had that youthful glow. RIP

natalie cole

rip

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/singer-natalie-cole-dead-65-article-1.2482580

Ring out the old: Rolling Obituary Thread: 2016