Free Republic

Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter died Thursday after a battle with brain cancer. He was 57. Affectionately known as the “Kid” during his 19-season major league career, Carter was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2003, his sixth year on the ballot. Carter was a career .262 hitter with 324 homers and 1,225 RBIs. He hit at least 20 homers in nine seasons and topped 100 RBIs four times, leading the National League in that category in 1984 when he drove in 106 runs. Among catchers, Carter ranks third all-time in RBIs and games caught, and fifth homers...

Dory Previn, the lyricist for three Oscar-nominated songs who as a composer and performer mined her difficult childhood, bouts of mental illness and a very public divorce to create a potent and influential personal songbook, died on Tuesday at her home in Southfield, Mass. She was 86... Her early success came in Hollywood, writing songs for the movies, generally as a lyricist working with her husband, André Previn, who later earned fame as a classical composer and conductor...

Police are investigating the death of Zina Bethune, a renowned ballet dancer and a longtime teacher of disabled children, who was struck by two vehicles after she apparently stopped to help an injured animal on the side of the street.

Peter Breck, who played a hot-headed son of California ranch owner Barbara Stanwyck on the 1960s TV Western The Big Valley, died Monday in Vancouver after a long illness. He was 82. His wife announced his death on the website The Big Valley Writing Desk. Before the 1965-1969 ABC series, the hark-haired, rugged-looking Breck had worked as a regular on two other TV Westerns: Maverick, as Doc Holliday opposite James Garner, and Black Saddle, on which he played a gunman turned lawyer opposite future Gilligan’s Island actor Russell Johnson. A native of Haverhill, Mass., and the son of a jazz...

LOS ANGELES - Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

The night before the 1986 explosion, Boisjoly and four others argued that joints in the shuttle's boosters couldn't withstand a cold-weather launch.

Producer, director and screenwriter Zalman King, whose credits include erotically-charged films such as "9 1/2 Weeks," "Red Shoe Diaries" and "Wild Orchid," died Friday morning at his Santa Monica home following a six-year battle with cancer. King, whose wife Patricia Louisianna Knop, was at his side at the time of his death, was 70.

The head of memory chip maker Micron, long known for taking risks in stunt piloting, died Friday when a small experimental plane he was piloting steeply banked, stalled and crashed near an Idaho runway. Steve Appleton, who survived a similar crash eight years ago and had a reputation as a hard-driving daredevil, was the only person aboard the plane when witnesses said it crashed shortly after its second take-off attempt in Boise, according to safety investigators.

Ben Gazzara, an intense actor whose long career included playing Brick in the original “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway, roles in influential films by John Cassavetes and work with several generations of top Hollywood directors, died on Friday afternoon in Manhattan. He was 81. He died of pancreatic cancer at Bellevue Hospital Center, his lawyer, Jay Julien, said. Mr. Gazzara lived in Manhattan.

<p>BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Steve Appleton, the chief operating officer and chairman of Micron, has died in a small plane crash in Boise. He was 51.</p> <p>Micron spokesman Dan Francisco confirmed Appleton's death Friday. Trading in Micron stocks has been halted.</p>

Angelo Dundee, the brilliant motivator who worked the corner for Muhammad Ali in his greatest fights and willed Sugar Ray Leonard to victory in his biggest bout, died Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. He was 90.

Utah's gentleman bruiser, Don Fullmer, 72, who fought some of the world's most famous boxers and came within a single fight of a world title himself, died peacefully Saturday morning surrounded by the prize he valued most — his family. Fullmer and his boxing brothers, Gene, the oldest and a world middle weight champion in 1957, and Jay, second oldest who left the sport with a 20-5-2 record after an eye injury, put Utah on the international boxing stage in the 1950s and '60s.

'Nicol Williamson, the star of Excalibur, who was described as 'the greatest actor since Marlon Brando', has died at the age of 73. Barely three months after Inadmissible Evidence, the John Osborne play that made his name, was revived in London, Nicol Williamson has died, aged 73, in Holland. The colourful Scot – who was described by Osborne as the greatest actor since Marlon Brando, and, by Samuel Beckett, as “touched by genius” – had not made a film since 1997’s superhero picture Spawn. He had, in recent years, been concentrating on music. His son, Luke, by his former wife...

Actor James Farentino, a mainstay of television for decades who also appeared in films and onstage, died Tuesday of heart failure in Los Angeles. He was 73.

Dick Tufeld, the man with the unique voice best known for Dr. Smith's nemesis and Will Robinson's best friend, the B-9 robot from Irwin Allen's Lost In Space, has passed away.

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Johnny Otis, the "godfather of rhythm and blues" who wrote and recorded the R&B classic "Willie and the Hand Jive" and for decades evangelized black music to white audiences as a bandleader and radio host, has died. He was 90. Otis, who had been in poor health for several years, died at his home in the Los Angeles foothill suburb of Altadena on Tuesday, said his manager, Terry Gould. Otis, who was white, was born John Veliotes to Greek immigrants and grew up in a black section of Berkeley, where he said he identified far more with black culture than...

Richard Threlkeld, a far-ranging and award-winning correspondent who worked for both CBS and ABC News during a long career, has been killed in a car crash on New York's Long Island.

Tony Blankely, a noted conservative author and commentator and former editorial page editor of The Washington Times, died Sunday morning, according to family sources. He was 63 and had been battling stomach cancer. Mr. Blankley was an executive vice president of the Edelman public-relations firm in Washington, a visiting senior fellow in national-security communications at the Heritage Foundation, a syndicated newspaper columnist and an on-air political commentator for CNN, NBC and NPR. He was also a regular weekly guest on “The McLaughlin Group.” Mr. Blankley was editorial page editor of The Times from 2002 to 2007, and from 1990 to...

Kim Jong-il is dead

For Vaclav Havel, and for his people, everything changed in 1989, the year of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, when he led the extraordinary display of people power which toppled the ruling communist regime. The world watched with astonishment as, within weeks, the dissident playwright became president. Vaclav Havel was born in 1936. His father was a successful engineer and, by his own admission, young Vaclav was a pampered child from a wealthy family. *Drama critic* But when the communists came to power he saw his family lose everything. The new government decided the young Havel was "too bourgeois" to be allowed...

Nothing you can say about Bob Brookmeyer can possibly rival the truth about him. He was one of the giants of jazz, a great valve trombonist, a composer of the first rank, and an astonishingly gifted teacher ...

R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens December 15, 2011 11:51 P.M. By Daniel Foster     Vanity Fair reports that Christopher Hitchens has passed away. Often frustrating, usually provocative, always brilliant. He added to the culture, and the conversation. I’m sure I join many in hoping he is in for a glorious, glorious surprise.

'John Neville, the respected British-born actor and director who was artistic director of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival 1985-89, died in Toronto on Nov. 19, surrounded by family, the festival announced Nov. 20. He was 86. A private funeral will take place immediately. Plans for a memorial will be announced in the New Year. Late in his career, Mr. Neville, who received the Order of the British Empire in the 1960s, starred in the motion picture "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and he played The Well-Manicured-Man in TV's "The X-Files." Mr. Neville, however, was a man of theatre first. In the...

TCM Remembers memorial montage for 2011. The song is "Before You Go" by OK Sweetheart.

Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series “M*A*S*H,” died Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96. His son Charles confirmed his death. In more than 100 movies, Mr. Morgan played Western bad guys, characters with names like Rocky and Shorty, loyal sidekicks, judges, sheriffs, soldiers, thugs and police chiefs. On television, he played Officer Bill Gannon with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb’s always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated “Dragnet,” from 1967 to 1970. He starred as Pete Porter,...

Ukulele player Bill Tapia, believed to be the oldest performing musician in the world, died on Friday at the age of 103, his official website said.

Alan Sues, an actor whose loud, clownish comedic style made him an invaluable cast member on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” one of the top-rated shows on television in the late 1960s, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85.

Patrice O'Neal, who helped roast Charlie Sheen in September, died Tuesday from complications of a stroke he suffered last month. O'Neal's manager, Jonathan Brandstein, said he died at a New York-area hospital.

'Film director Ken Russell, who was Oscar-nominated for his 1969 film Women In Love, has died at the age of 84. His son, Alex Verney-Elliott, said he died on Sunday following a series of strokes. During his career, he became known for his controversial films including Women In Love, which featured Oliver Reed and Alan Bates wrestling nude. He also directed the infamous religious drama The Devils and The Who's rock opera, Tommy, in 1975.'

DENVER — Heavyweight contender Ron Lyle, who fought Muhammad Ali for the title in 1975 and later battled George Foreman, has died in Denver at age 70.

Tom Wicker, one of postwar America’s most distinguished journalists, who wrote 20 books, covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for The New York Times and became the paper’s Washington bureau chief and an iconoclastic political columnist for 25 years, died on Friday at his home near Rochester, Vt. He was 85.

Anne McCaffrey wasn't just the inventor of Pern, the world where a whole society is based on dragon-riding. She was also an incredibly influential author who helped transform the way science fiction and fantasy authors wrote about women, and the way all of us thought about bodies and selfhood. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award, as well as a Grand Master of science fiction.

Walt Hazzard, the former UCLA and NBA star who played on the Bruins' first NCAA championship basketball team in 1964 and later coached the team for four seasons in the 1980s, died Friday. He was 69. Hazzard's family said he had been recuperating for a long time from complications following heart surgery. The school said Hazzard died at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center.

Killer Karl Kox, who died today, was a funny son-of-a-gun, but fans would never have known that given his wild, violent personality in the ring. When called upon his 80th birthday in May, he shrugged off the best wishes.

(CNN) -- Joe Frazier, the hard-hitting boxing heavyweight who handed the legendary Muhammad Ali his first defeat, died Monday, shortly after being diagnosed with liver cancer, his family said in a statement. The former heavyweight champion, who was 67, became a legend in his own right and personified the gritty working-class style of his hard-knuckled hometown, Philadelphia -- a fitting setting for the "Rocky" film series, starring Sylvester Stallone as hardscrabble boxer Rocky Balboa. "You could hear him coming, snorting and grunting and puffing, like a steam engine climbing a steep grade," Bill Lyon wrote in a Philadelphia Inquirer column...

Joe Frazier needed the night of his career to knock down "The Greatest." Frazier knocked Muhammad Ali down in the 15th round and became the first man to beat him in the Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, the first in a trilogy of bouts that have gone down as boxing's most fabled fights. "That was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life," Frazier said. It was his biggest night, one that would never come again. The relentless, undersized heavyweight ruled the division as champion, then spent a lifetime trying to fight his...

Andy Rooney, whose prickly wit was long a mainstay of CBS News and whose homespun commentary on “60 Minutes,” delivered every week from 1978 until 2011, made him a household name, died Friday in New York City. He was 92 and lived in Manhattan, though he kept a family vacation home in Rensselaerville, N.Y., and the first home he ever purchased, in Rowayton, Conn. CBS News said in a statement that Mr. Rooney died after complications following minor surgery. In late September, CBS announced that Mr. Rooney would be making his last regular weekly appearance on “60 Minutes” on Oct....

Sid Melton, the jug-eared character actor best known for his regular roles in the television shows “Make Room for Daddy” and “Green Acres,” and for his unflagging reliability as the comic relief in many science-fiction and noir films of the 1950s, died on Wednesday in Burbank, Calif. He was 94. Mr. Melton’s acting career spanned more than a half-century, from his stage debut in a road production of the Broadway play “See My Lawyer” in 1939, to a recurring role as the husband (deceased, appearing in flashbacks and dreams only) of Sophia, the mother of Bea Arthur’s character in “The...

Matty Alou, once part of an all-Alou outfield for the San Francisco Giants with brothers Felipe and Jesus, died Thursday in his native Dominican Republic. He was 72.

<p>Dorothy Rodham, mother of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton's mother-in-law, died Tuesday at age 92 after an illness.</p>

James Hillman, a charismatic therapist and best-selling author whose theories about the psyche helped revive interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, animating the so-called men's movement in the 1990s and stirring the pop-cultural air, died on Thursday at his home in Thompson, Conn. He was 85... ...Mr. Hillman had adapted Jungian ideas into a model he called archetypal psychology, rooted in the aesthetic imagination...

Robert Pierpoint, a CBS Newsman whose coverage of six presidents made him one of the longest-serving White House correspondents and whose reports from the front lines in Korea were among the first for television to focus on the individual soldier, died Saturday after complications related to hip surgery. He was 86 and lived in Santa Barbara, Calif.

According to several sources, master watchmaker George Daniels died this evening in his home in England. Daniel is, of course, the inventor of the co-axial escapement, which was eventually purchased by Omega...

(CNN) -- Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has died, a State Department official told CNN on Friday. There were no more immediate details about his death.

Norman Corwin, the legendary writer, director and producer of original radio plays for CBS during the golden age of radio in the 1930s and '40s when he was revered as the "poet of the airwaves," has died. He was 101. Corwin, a journalist, playwright, author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles...

Dennis Ritchie, an internationally renowned computer scientist who created the C programming language, has died at age 70. Ritchie died at his home over the weekend, according to a Google+ post from longtime colleague Rob Pike. His Wikipedia entry was updated to say he had died in Murray Hill, N.J. His death was confirmed today by Bell Labs, in a message from its president, Jeong Kim, to employees. That message reads, in part: Dennis was well loved by his colleagues at Bell Labs, and will be greatly missed. He was truly an inspiration to all of us, not just for...

Patricia Breslin Modell, a longtime television actress who became the wife of former NFL team owner Art Modell, died Wednesday, Oct. 12. She was 80 and had been hospitalized for around five months.

This comes as a complete shock to me as I’m sure it will with most of you. David Hess, an absolute icon in the genre and someone who portrayed a character known as “Krug” in Wes Craven’s Last House On The Left has always left a withstanding impression upon me. His character truly scared me to the bone as with all his characters he portrayed.

Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis has died at 82, with the team's website posting a simple tribute with his name in large silver letters, saying "the Raider family will issue a statement later today."