Harry Potter star Richard Griffiths dies
Date
March 29, 2013 - 9:34PM

Richard Griffiths, the British actor who played the boy wizard's unsympathetic Uncle Vernon in the "Harry Potter" movies, has died. He was 65.

Agent Simon Beresford says Griffiths died Thursday of complications following heart surgery.

Griffiths appeared in dozens of films and TV shows and was one of Britain's leading stage actors, creating roles including the charismatic teacher Hector in Alan Bennett's "The History Boys."

In 2007 he appeared onstage in "Equus" alongside his "Harry Potter" co-star Daniel Radcliffe.

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Radcliffe said Friday that he was "proud to say I knew him."

"Richard was by my side during two of the most important moments of my career," Radcliffe said, his first scene as the boy wizard and his stage debut.

Radcliffe said Griffiths' "encouragement, tutelage and humor made it a joy."


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/harry-potter-star-richard-griffiths-dies-20130329-2gzj3.html#ixzz2OvTd3gDP

Joffa beat me...

Rip uncle Vernon

Edited by StreetzFC: 29/3/2013 10:15:35 PM

r.i.p uncle vernon. 65 is too young.

Edited by waggzzz2: 29/3/2013 10:41:21 PM

Does it happen often?

Only when he doesn't do as he's told.

Only when I try to post articles on here :lol:

Quality actor - I'm quite stunned that he's only 65 because I can remember him from tv shows when I was quite young (World Cup - A Captains tale) comes to mind.

65 isn't young when you've been chronically overweight for a long long time though - the body isn't built to handle that.

And less of the Uncle Vernon - he'll always be Uncle Monty to me.

Grammy winning 'Pope of Pop' dies
Date
April 1, 2013


Phil Ramone, the legendary US music producer behind hits by Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel and Barbra Streisand, has died at the age of 79.

Ramone - a 14-time Grammy winner once dubbed the "Pope of Pop" - died in New York on Saturday after being hospitalised for weeks with an aortic aneurysm, Billboard magazine reported.

The South African native spent most of his career in New York City, first as a songwriter and engineer and then co-launching A&R Recording studios in 1958.

Throughout his career, he worked with artists running the gamut of musical genres, from country star Keith Urban to hip hop's Queen Latifah, rock icon Bono and R&B legend Aretha Franklin.

Ramone was known for his innovative use of technology and his support for the evolving formats in recording and production.

The first CD ever pressed, Billy Joel's 52nd Street, was one he produced, as was the first pop DVD, according to his website.

Among his awards spanning more than four decades was a Technical Grammy in 2004 "for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field".

But beyond the mechanics, Ramone also spoke of the importance of encouraging the musicians he worked with to shine.

In a 2005 interview with Sound on Sound magazine, Ramone described the producer's role as "convincing people that they are really good and getting them to play at a new level".

"People can perform and play well, but the actual intent in what they're trying to do in the music can be lost. Trying to get everybody on the same page is what being a good producer is about," he said.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/grammy-winning-pope-of-pop-dies-20130401-2h2eu.html#ixzz2PIu1KJT7

How did this one slip under the radar?, I was watching "Mad As Hell" on Iview and I noticed in the opening credits was In Memory of Annette Funicello, corny movies but still someone to be remembered.




"€œThey'€™re friends. There was a purity to them,"€ said Frankie Avalon of the characters he and Annette Funicello played on-screen. Funicello died Monday at age 70 of complications from multiple sclerosis.


[youtube]mdAdsHM8Pfg#![/youtube]



http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/08/showbiz/annette-funicello-obit/index.html

Jonathan Winters has passed away. Nanu Nanu.

AUSTRALIAN rock singer Chrissy Amphlett has lost her battle with breast cancer.

Amphlett, aged 53, passed away in her adopted home of New York with husband Charley Drayton.

The singer, who fronted rock band Divinyls, had fought breast cancer as well as suffering from Multiple Sclerosis.

She was also Australia's first rock chick.

Her cousin, Patricia 'Little Pattie' Thompson and family have released the following statement.

“Our beloved Chrissy peacefully made her transition this morning. Christine Joy Amphlett succumbed to the effects of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, diseases she vigorously fought with exceptional bravery and dignity. She passed gently, in her sleep, surrounded by close friends and family, including husband of fourteen years, musician Charley Drayton, her sister, Leigh, nephew, Matt, and cousin Patricia Thompson ("l
Litte Pattie.")


"Chrissy's light burns so very brightly. Hers was a life of passion and creativity; she always lived it to the fullest. With her force of character and vocal strength she paved the way for strong, sexy, outspoken women. Best remembered as the lead singer of the ARIA Hall of Fame inductee, Divinyls, last month she was named one of Australia's top ten singers of all time. Chrissy expressed hope that her worldwide hit I Touch Myself would remind women to perform annual breast examinations. Chrissy was a true pioneer and a treasure to all whose lives her music and spirit touched."
Leave a tribute for Chrissy here.



Former Divinyls manager Andrew McManus said Chrissy Amphlett's last days were incredibly sad.

McManus, who managed Divinyls for 11 years, said she was in terrible pain.

McManus went to New York, where Amphlett lived with husband Charley Drayton, to pay his last respects.

He said: "I spoke to Chrissy for a good half hour. She was in incredible pain and some of the things she said to me I'll never forget. I'll never repeat what she said, but it was incredibly sad."
Countdown host Ian 'Molly' Meldrum was a friend of Amphlett and husband Drayton.

"It’s devastating news," Meldrum said.


Singer Chrissy Amphlett, who has passed away after losing her battle with breast cancer. Photo: Supplied by the Amphlett Family

Meldrum has remembered his friend Amphlett as a music pioneer.

"She broke ground for women in Australian music, she was amazing and fearless," Meldrum said.

"Divinyls were an incredible band, they helped open the doors for Australian acts to tour America in the '80s.

"I absolutely adored her. And she terrified me. But right at the start, around Boys in Town, I remember going to see them at the Prince of Wales and Chrissy did this whole thing on stage of looking me straight in the eye and lifting her skirt. We became good friends after that. I became friends with her mother as well. Chrissie was really into football, so we'd occasionally have fights over that.

"She was a wonderful person, and so, so talented it didn’t matter. She had such a powerful voice and wrote such great songs with Mark (McEntee) in the Divinyls, some real classics that have stood the test of time. And Chrissy was one of the best on stage performers Australia has produced.

"She'd come around to my house with her husband Charley and she'd go and make herself a cup of tea. It was just odd to see Chrissy Amphlett from the Divinyls in my kitchen, making tea. Because she had that wild persona.

"I remember once I said to her 'Chrissie, you had this amazing persona with the Divinyls, you use to frighten the hell out of me. How can you go from that to playing Judy Garland in The Boy From Oz?' And she said 'They're both the same character Molly'."

ABC-TV has broadcast an episode of the musical quiz show Spicks & Specks featuring the late star.

During the show, Amphlett, who also suffered from multiple sclerosis, was helped to and from the microphone by comedienne Denise Scott.

The episode, on ABC 2, had Amphlett as a contestant on the team of Scott and Myf Warhurst.

On the show, Amphlett talks of being "shy" and "vulnerable" before her legendary performances on stage in a school uniform and fishnet stockings.

Amphlett had declared herself cancer-free two years ago, telling fans "I was given a chance to reflect on my own mortality; given a chance to choose life over the fear of death. Thank you to those who have given their support and love. Now let's celebrate Life!!!!!!"

The singer was diagnosed with MS in 1998 and would appear on stage with a cane. She revealed her battle with MS in 2007, and in 2011 announced she was also fighting breast cancer.

Amphlett was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006 with Divinyls band mate Mark McEntee



Amphlett's battle was documented by Channel 7's Sunday Night program in which she revealed she would be a "warrior" and not a victim.

The Divinyls hits include I Touch Myself, Pleasure and Pain and Boys in Town.

Tributes have already begun flooding social media networks.

We are devastated to hear of the passing of Chrissy Amphlett. Our thoughts are with her family and friends x — MS Australia (@MS_Australia) April 22, 2013

Other celebrities and fans have also posted their tributes online.



Chrissy Amphlett was properly rock. She won't be forgotten by anyone who values danger, courage and chaos. What an icon.— Eddie Perfect (@Eddieperfect) April 22, 2013


R.I.P. Chrissy AmphlettLegend fb.me/1Q00dbAnJ— Vanessa Amorosi (@VanessaAmorosi) April 22, 2013


Remembering @benfolds and I having a blast covering "I Touch Myself" a few times over the years. Safe travels to Chrissy Amphlett— Ben Lee (@benleemusic) April 22, 2013



RIP my dear friend Chrissie love you and will miss you — Jimmy Barnes (@JimmyBarnes) April 22, 2013


#ChrissyAmphlett is an icon of Australian rock. The times i met her she was absolutely delightful and hilarious. She will be missed. — Charlie Pickering (@charliepick) April 22, 2013


Loved The Divinyls . Those Manzil Room Days . #RIPChrissyAmphlett . Sad news . youtube.com/watch?v=wv-34w… — Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) April 22, 2013


Oh how i adored watching that wayward,wailing girl in the ripped stockings - I so wanted to be her.#RIPchrissieamphlett — wendy_harmer (@wendy_harmer) April 22, 2013


RIP Chrissy Amphlett. A true Pioneer of Oz Rock. A Trail Blazer in a School Uniform. She deserves a bigger send off than Thatcher. — Adam Hills (@adamhillscomedy) April 22, 2013


Its a sad day for Aussie RocknRoll - R.I.P Chrissy Amphlett - our Queen of Rock instagram.com/p/YZVd0wDN__/ — Prinnie Stevens (@missprinnie) April 22, 2013


Back in 2012, Amphlett kept her Facebook fans informed of her struggles with cancer and MS. She was always honest and open about what she was facing.


Born in October, 1959, Chrissy Amphlett will be best-remembered for her hit single I Touch Myself and for singing on stage dressed in a school uniform and fishnet stockings.

Released in 1991, I Touch Myself reached Number 1 in Australia, 10 in the UK and 4 in the US.

Her skill as a songwriter is underlined by Science Fiction, which the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) selected in 2001 as one of the top Australian songs of all time.

Amphlett wrote the song with Divinyls front man Mark McEntee, with whom she had a volatile relationship over the 16 year life of the band.

The cousin of 1960s Australian pop icon, Patricia "Little Pattie" Amphlett, Chrissy Amphlett was a hugely talented, if untamed free spirit who started out young on the road and had occasional brushes with the law, once ending up in jail in Europe for singing on the streets.

In 1999, Chrissy married drummer Charley Drayton, who played on the Divinyls’ eponymous album and who now plays with Cold Chisel.

Amphlett moved to New York, where she concentrated on a solo career and writing her autobiography Pleasure and Pain: My Life.

In 2007, she revealed she was suffering from multiple sclerosis.

Three years later, she announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but was thought to have since beaten the disease.

Listen to Chrissy Amphlett's famous hits here:



http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/music/chrissy-amphlett-dead-at-53-after-losing-breast-cancer-battle/story-e6frf9hf-1226626029214

Edited by Joffa: 22/4/2013 08:38:47 PM

So sad

I really loved the Divinyls, RIP Chrissy :cry:

How sad, RIP.

For those too young, back in the '80s she was THE sexy rock chick. You tube "Pleasure and Pain" or "I touch myself", she absolutely sizzled on stage.

RIP

These days Megan Washington absolutely nails that song.
<3

+ 1

Man dribbling football to Brazil killed by car

From: AP May 15, 2013 11:46AM

A SEATTLE man trying to dribble a football 16,000km to Brazil in time for the 2014 World Cup has died after being hit by a pick-up truck on the Oregon Coast.

Police in Lincoln City say 42-year-old Richard Swanson was hit yesterday morning while walking south along US Highway 101 near the city limits. He was declared dead at a hospital.

The driver has not been charged.

Lieutenant Jerry Palmer said investigators found materials among Swanson's things listing his website, breakawaybrazil.com.

Swanson set out on the trek to promote the One World Futbol Project, based in Berkley, California, which donates durable footballs to people in developing countries. The organisation did not immediately respond to a call for comment.

Police say Swanson's football was recovered.


In an interview with The Daily News newspaper in Longview, Washington, Swanson said he was a private investigator looking for an adventure while between jobs.

An avid runner, he picked up football just five years ago and played on club teams and rooted for the Seattle Sounders.

"I felt destined that I should go on this trip,'' he said.

His website said he left Seattle May 1, and the trip would take him through 11 countries before reaching Sao Paolo, Brazil, where the World Cup soccer tournament will be played.

"It will be a trip of a lifetime where I will push myself further than I ever thought possible,'' he wrote.

The website includes a map showing his route.

AP


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/man-dribbling-football-to-brazil-killed-by-car/story-e6frg6so-1226642916559

RIP Angelina Jolie's magnificent boobies.

Was thinking of doing this but thought it may be bad taste in this thread.. still +1

She's got implants. I'm surprised she kept them so natural for so long.

The Doors' Ray Manzarek dead at 74

From: AP May 21, 2013 8:26AM

RAY Manzarek, the keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, who had a dramatic impact on rock 'n' roll, has died at the age of 74.

Manzarek died at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany, surrounded by his family, said publicist Heidi Robinson-Fitzgerald. Robinson-Fitzgerald said his manager, Tom Vitorino, confirmed Manzarek's death. The musician had been stricken by bile duct cancer.

In a statement, bandmate Robby Krieger said: “I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek.

“I'm just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.”

Manzarek founded The Doors after meeting then-poet Jim Morrison in California. The band went on to become one of the most successful rock 'n' roll acts to emerge from the 1960s and continues to resonate with fans decades after Morrison's death brought an effective end to the band.

The Chicago native continued to remain active in music after Morrison's 1971 death. He briefly tried to hold the band together by serving as vocalist, but eventually the group fell apart. He played in other bands over the years, produced other acts, became an author and worked on films.

The Doors were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Manzarek is among the most notable keyboard players in rock history. His lead-instrument work with the band at a time when the guitar often dominated added a distinct end-times flavour that matched Morrison's often out there imagery and persona.

The group is best known for hits such as LA Woman, Break On Through to the Other Side, The End and Light My Fire and came to symbolise the decadence of Los Angeles as the counterculture grew in the US.

Morrison and Manzarek met at UCLA film school and ran into each other in Venice, California a few months after graduation, Manzarek recounted in a 1967 interview with Billboard.

Outwardly the two seemed so different. The strikingly tall, dark and handsome Morrison looked the part of rock star, while Manzarek, with glasses and comparatively close-cropped blonde hair, retained a more professorial look.

Inwardly, though, they were kindred spirits, as Manzarek discovered when Morrison read him the lyrics for a song called Moonlight Drive.

“I'd never heard lyrics to a rock song like that before,” Manzarek said. “We talked a while before we decided to get a group together and make a million dollars.”

The band would make far more than that. The Doors, which also included guitarist Krieger and drummer John Densmore, has sold more than 100 million albums and their music has been re-released and repackaged multiple times over the years, been featured prominently in movies and holds an oft-debated place in rock history. Manzarek and Krieger reunited to tour as The Doors in recent years.

While Morrison, with his proto-celebrity lifestyle and tragic end, forever will remain the face of The Doors, you could argue Manzarek's keyboard work was every bit as important and helped balance some of the singer's more over-the-top moments.

His creepy organ line on Light My Fire adds a weirdo menace to what outwardly is a rock 'n' roll pick-up song. And his after-hours, lounge style on Riders On the Storm transforms that song into an epic unlike anything else the band ever did.

Manzarek is survived by his wife, Dorothy, his son Pablo and two brothers, Rick and James. Funeral arrangements are pending.

AP

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/the-doors-ray-manzarek-dead-at-74/story-fn9d2mxu-1226647356189

Tom Sharpe dies: Author behind Porterhouse Blue and the Wilt series passes away at 85

7 Jun 2013 00:00
Novelist had been ill for several years and died at home in Spain after complications from diabetes

Novelist Tom Sharpe, the man behind Porterhouse Blue and the Wilt series, has died at the age of 85.

The author, who wrote 16 books and had works adapted for television, had been ill for several years and died at home in Spain after complications from diabetes.

It is thought he had also had a stroke in recent weeks, losing the use of his legs.

His American widow, Nancy, wept as she said she would remember her husband’s humour, morality and love of travel. She said: “It is very sad to lose him. He had not been well and he possibly had a stroke. He lost the use of his legs and could not accept that he couldn’t walk.

“He was strong but his breathing became weaker. It was sooner than I expected, I was shocked.”

His funeral will be held this weekend and 76-year-old Nancy, who married him in 1969, said her daughter from another relationship and two daughters with the writer would be there.


Books: Wilt on High was very popular
Sharpe, who moved to Spain in the early 1990s, came to writing late in life, publishing his first novel, Riotous Assembly, when he was 43 in 1971. Within a few years he had published his best-known works to huge acclaim, with The Times once calling him “the funniest novelist writing today”.

A BBC adaptation of his satire Blott on the Landscape starred George Cole, Geraldine James and David Suchet, while David Jason and Ian Richardson starred in Porterhouse Blue when it was made for TV. Susan Sandon, managing director of his publisher Cornerstone, said: “Tom Sharpe was one of our greatest satirists and a ­brilliant writer: witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life.

“The private Tom was warm, supportive and wholly engaging. I feel enormously privileged to have been his publisher.”

Sharpe went to school at Lancing College in West Sussex and Pembroke College, Cambridge, as well as serving in the Marines. He then moved to South Africa to work as a teacher and social worker.

But after 10 years, in 1961, he was deported for criticising the apartheid regime and returned here to lecture at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. His time there is said to have inspired his character Wilt.

Sharpe moved from Cambridge to Llafranc, in Palafrugell, northern Spain, after becoming disenchanted with the UK. He once said of Britain: “It is so depressing. I can’t bear it.”

And in 2010 he told a newspaper: “I love England but I don’t like the English. I can’t bear the culture, the hooliganism.”

The author’s ashes will be scattered in Llafranc, Cambridge, and at a church in Thockrington, Northumberland, where his grandfather and father came from.

Dr Montserrat Verdaguer, 58, who had befriended Sharpe and treated him for diabetes for years, said: “I helped him type out his last three books.

“He was writing until the last few months and had completed half his autobiography. He was a very good person but he had a very strong temperament. If he did not agree with something, he would let you know.”



Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/author-tom-sharpe-dies-85-1936701#ixzz2VW6N1ivk
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Esther Williams, Swimming Champion Who Became a Movie Star, Dies at 91

Esther Williams, a teenage swimming champion who became an enormous Hollywood star in a decade of watery MGM extravaganzas, died on Thursday in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 91.
Related


A Look Back at the Films of Esther Williams
By MEKADO MURPHY

Her death was announced by her publicist, Harlan Boll.

From “Bathing Beauty” in 1944 to “Jupiter’s Darling” in 1955, Ms. Williams swam in Technicolor pools, lakes, lagoons and oceans, cresting onto the list of Top 10 box-office stars in 1949 and 1950.

“Esther Williams had one contribution to make to movies — her magnificent athletic body,” the film critic Pauline Kael wrote. “And for over 10 years MGM made the most of it, keeping her in clinging, wet bathing suits and hoping the audience would shiver.”

In her autobiography, “The Million Dollar Mermaid” (1999), Ms. Williams spoke of movie stardom as her “consolation prize,” won instead of the Olympic gold medal for which she had yearned. At the national championships in 1939, Ms. Williams, who was 17, won three gold medals and earned a place on the 1940 United States Olympic team. But Hitler invaded Poland, and the 1940 Olympics were canceled with the onset of World War II.

At a time when most movies cost less than $2 million, MGM built Ms. Williams a $250,000 swimming pool on Stage 30. It had underwater windows, colored fountains and hydraulic lifts, and it was usually stocked with a dozen bathing beauties. Performing in that 25-foot-deep pool, which the swimmers nicknamed Pneumonia Alley, Ms. Williams ruptured her eardrums seven times.

By 1952, the swimming sequences in Ms. Williams’s movies, which were often elaborate fantasies created by Busby Berkeley, had grown more and more extravagant. For that year’s “Million Dollar Mermaid,” she wore 50,000 gold sequins and a golden crown. The crown was made of metal, and in a swan dive into the pool from a 50-foot platform, her head snapped back when she hit the water. The impact broke her back, and she spent the next six months in a cast.

Ms. Williams once estimated that she had swum 1,250 miles for the cameras. In a bathing suit, she was a special kind of all-American girl: tall, lithe, breathtakingly attractive and unpretentious. She begged MGM for serious nonswimming roles, but the studio’s response was, in effect, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Audiences rejected her in dramas like “The Hoodlum Saint” (1946) and “The Unguarded Moment” (1956). Her only dry-land box-office success was “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (1949), with Ms. Williams as the owner of a baseball team whose players included Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly (although even in that film, she was seen briefly in a swimming pool).

The men who played opposite her in a dozen lightweight comedies full of misunderstandings and mistaken identity were almost interchangeable. Johnny Johnston in “This Time for Keeps” (1947), John Carroll in “Fiesta” (1947) and Peter Lawford in “On an Island With You” (1948) were male ingénues whom the studio was hoping might turn into stars. In terms of star power, she was matched on screen only by Victor Mature, with whom she had an affair when they were making “Million Dollar Mermaid,” and by MGM’s all-American boy, Van Johnson, who wooed or was wooed by her in “Thrill of a Romance” (1945), “Easy to Wed” (1946), “Easy to Love” (1953) and “Duchess of Idaho” (1950).

“Just relax,” she recalled Mr. Johnson telling her after the first few days on “Thrill of a Romance.” “It’s your naturalness that’s going to make you a star.”

Esther Jane Williams was born in Los Angeles on Aug. 8, 1921, the fifth and last child of Lou and Bula Williams. Her father was a sign painter; her maternal grandparents had come west to Utah in a Conestoga wagon after the Civil War. Unwanted by a mother who was tired of raising children, Esther was turned over to her 14-year-old sister, Maurine. The family’s chief breadwinner was her brother Stanton. A silent movie star at the age of 6, Stanton died of a twisted intestine when he was 16 and Esther was 8.

That summer she learned to swim. From the beginning, Ms. Williams wrote in her autobiography, “I sensed the water was my natural element.” She counted wet towels at the neighborhood pool to earn the nickel a day it cost to swim there. The male lifeguards taught her the butterfly, a stroke then used only by men, and, at the Amateur Athletic Union championships in 1939, the butterfly won her a gold medal in the 300-meter medley relay.

Three years earlier, 20th Century Fox had signed the Norwegian ice skater Sonja Henie, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, and turned her into a movie star in a series of skating movies, and Louis B. Mayer, who ran MGM, wanted to match Fox. The studio found Ms. Williams performing in Billy Rose’s Aquacade at the San Francisco World’s Fair. She was, as she put it, learning to “swim pretty” in tandem with Johnny Weissmuller, a former Olympic gold medalist who was already the star of MGM’s “Tarzan” films.

At first, Ms. Williams was one of two dozen MGM contract players who had, she wrote, “a look, a voice, a sparkle or a smolder.” Few lasted more than a year. To test audience reaction to her, Ms. Williams was given the role of Mickey Rooney’s love interest in an Andy Hardy movie. Half a dozen starlets — including Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Kathryn Grayson — had already been tested that way. Fan mail response to the film, “Andy Hardy’s Double Life” (1942), was unequivocal: Audiences loved the girl in the two-piece swimsuit.

At 17, Ms. Williams married Leonard Kovner, a pre-med student whom she supported by working as a stock girl at a fancy department store. It was the first of her four marriages, and he would demand $1,500 — all the money she had saved from the Aquacade — before he would agree to a divorce.

Her 13-year second marriage, to the singer Ben Gage, would bring her three children and cost her considerably more money. According to Ms. Williams, Mr. Gage frittered away $10 million of her money on alcohol, gambling and failed business ventures. He also neglected to pay taxes and left her in hock to the Internal Revenue Service for $750,000 by the time they divorced in 1959. By then, Ms. Williams wrote, “I was 37 and there was not much mileage left in my movie career.”

A decade later she married Fernando Lamas, the Argentine-born actor and director, who had helped her to swim the English Channel in “Dangerous When Wet” (1953). He was the first man who gave Ms. Williams money rather than taking it from her, but he exacted a heavy price. Her three children were not allowed to live with them or even to come to their wedding.

That marriage lasted until Mr. Lamas’s death in 1982. Six years later she married Edward Bell, a professor of French literature 10 years her junior, with whom she introduced a collection of swimwear. She also put her name on a line of successful aboveground swimming pools.

She is survived by Mr. Bell; a son, Benjamin Gage; a daughter, Susan Beardslee; three stepsons, the actor Lorenzo Lamas, Tima Alexander Bell and Anthony Bell; three grandchildren; and eight stepgrandchildren.

Asked once who her favorite leading man was, Ms. Williams offered a simple and unsurprising response: “The water.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/movies/esther-williams-who-swam-to-movie-fame-dies-at-91.html?hpw&_r=0

Jefferson Airplane drummer killed in car crash

June 6, 2013

Rocker Joey Covington has died in a car accident in California.

The 67-year-old Jefferson Airplane drummer lost control of his sedan and slammed into a wall in Palm Springs on Tuesday, according to a local TV report.

Covington, the only passenger, was not wearing his seatbelt at the time of the accident and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The star was one of the founding members of blues-rock band Hot Tuna, alongside Jefferson Airplane members Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen. He rejoined them in Jefferson Airplane and played on the album Volunteers before replacing Spencer Dryden in 1970.

He also featured on the Jefferson Airplane albums Bark and Long John Silver, and co-wrote the single With Your Love.

Covington left the band in 1972 to carve out a solo career.

WENN



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/jefferson-airplane-drummer-killed-in-car-crash-20130606-2nrzt.html#ixzz2VcaIcmTE

Lets hope this bastard never rests in peace

Richard Ramirez, the ‘Night Stalker’ Killer, Dies at 53


Sam Robinson, a spokesman for San Quentin State Prison, where Mr. Ramirez was on death row, announced the death, The Associated Press reported. No cause was given.

The killings began on June 28, 1984, when Mr. Ramirez slit the throat of a 79-year-old woman, Jennie Vincow, during a burglary. They ended when an angry mob, recognizing him from his mug shot released to the news media, beat him and held him until the police arrived to make an arrest on Aug. 31, 1985.

Most of the killings were committed before dawn during residential burglaries in Los Angeles County, and all were markedly coldblooded, involving savage beatings, mutilations and sexual assaults.

His weapons included guns, knives and hammers, and his victims were both men and women, ranging from a 6-year-old to octogenarians.

Mr. Ramirez left occult symbols at crime scenes, most often an inverted pentagram as a mark of the devil. As frightened Angelenos raced to buy guns and locks, the news media named the mysterious killer the “Night Stalker.”

Four years after his arrest, a jury found Mr. Ramirez guilty of all 43 crimes of which he was accused. These included 13 counts of first-degree murder, one of second-degree murder and many more of rape, burglary and sodomy. He was sentenced to death.

As he awaited execution at San Quentin, Mr. Ramirez was linked to other murders, in one case by traces of DNA, but never tried for them.

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez was born in El Paso, Tex., on Feb. 28, 1960, the last of five children of Mexican immigrants. His father worked for the Santa Fe Railway and his mother for a boot factory.

A picture of his life emerged from interviews and court testimony. In the fifth grade, he was found to have epilepsy. In the seventh grade, he started sniffing glue. He began spending nights at cemeteries.

When he was 12, Richard’s cousin Miguel Ramirez returned from the Vietnam War, and they began spending time together. They smoked marijuana, and his cousin showed Richard photos of Vietnamese women he said he had raped, tortured and killed. When he was 13, Richard was present when his cousin shot his wife in the face, killing her. (Miguel Ramirez, in part because of his war record, was sentenced to seven years in prison.) By then Richard had begun burglarizing homes. He dropped out of high school after less than a year.

Shortly after turning 15, Mr. Ramirez moved to Los Angeles, where an older brother helped him refine his burglary techniques. He became addicted to cocaine, which he paid for by selling things he stole. He spent several months in jail for auto theft.

After his first known murder, in June 1984, he lay low until March 17, 1985, when he attacked Angela Barrio, 22, outside her home and shot her before entering the house. He then shot and killed her 34-year-old roommate, Dayle Okazaki. Ms. Barrio survived when the bullet ricocheted off the keys she was holding.

Mr. Ramirez continued his home invasions, usually through a window that had been left open. He became known for mutilating corpses, gouging out one woman’s eyeballs. Though he varied his routines, witnesses and surviving victims were able to provide the police with a description: Hispanic, with long hair and a foul smell.

One victim, who had been forced by Mr. Ramirez to declare her love for Satan and perform oral sex on him, was able to glimpse his car, an orange Toyota station wagon. A teenager who spotted the car, identifying it from news reports, wrote down half its license plate number.

The car turned out to have been stolen, and the police found it where Mr. Ramirez had abandoned it. They obtained a fingerprint from the mirror and identified Mr. Ramirez from his criminal records, then released his photo to the news media.

When Mr. Ramirez tried to steal another car, its owner, who was under the car working on it at the time, identified him as the “Night Stalker.” A mob soon formed and began beating him with an iron post before the police arrived to rescue him and take him into custody.

At his trial, Mr. Ramirez wore black sunglasses and flashed a two-finger “devil sign” to black-clad Satanists who attended the trial. Eight witnesses — including six women who had survived his attacks — identified him as the assailant or placed him at crime scenes. More than 1,600 potential jurors had to be interviewed to find 24 (including 12 alternates) who could promise to be impartial about Mr. Ramirez.

As he left the courthouse after being convicted, he offered a one-word comment: “Evil.”

While on death row, he married Doreen Lioy, a freelance magazine editor, in 1996. She had begun writing to him in 1985 after his arrest, and he proposed in 1988, choosing Ms. Lioy over other correspondents who were also hoping for a relationship with him.

She bought a gold wedding band for herself and a platinum one for Mr. Ramirez. “Satanists don’t wear gold,” he had explained to her.

Information about other survivors was not available.

Six weeks after they had voted to convict Mr. Ramirez, the jury returned to ask that he be put to the death.

“Big deal,” Mr. Ramirez said. “Death always went with the territory.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/night-stalker-killer-richard-ramirez-dies-at-53.html?hpw&_r=0

Just found out an old substitute teacher has passed on. Top bloke, was always good for a laugh.

Jiroemon Kimura: was the last man alive to have been born in the 19th century.

Tokyo: Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest man in recorded history, has died at the age of 116.

Kimura died of natural causes in the hospital in his hometown of Kyotango, western Japan, at 2.08am on Thursday, the local government said.

A date for his funeral is yet to be set.

Born on April 19, 1897, when Queen Victoria still reigned over the British Empire, Kimura dodged childhood killers such as tuberculosis and pneumonia that kept life expectancy in Japan to 44 years around the time of his birth. He became the oldest man in recorded history on December 28, 2012, at the age of 115 years and 253 days. The oldest woman in recorded history, France's Jeanne Calment, died in 1997 at the age of 122.

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"He has an amazingly strong will to live," Kimura's nephew Tamotsu Miyake, 80, said in an interview in December. "He is strongly confident that he lives right and well."

Kimura was also the world's oldest living person. That title now goes to Misao Okawa of Japan, who was born on March 5, 1898, according to a list of the world's oldest people compiled by the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group at UCLA. The previous record-holder for male longevity, Christian Mortensen of California, died in 1998 at the age of 115 years and 252 days.

Kimura was among 20 Japanese on the research group's list of 56 people verified to be age 110 or older, highlighting the challenges facing Japan as its population ages. A combination of the world's highest life expectancy, the world's second-largest public debt and a below-replacement birthrate is straining the nation's pension system, prompting the government to curb payouts, raise contributions and delay the age of eligibility.

Japan's average life expectancy at birth is 83 years, a figure projected to exceed 90 for women by 2050. The number of Japanese centenarians rose 7.6 percent from a year earlier to 51,376 as of September, and there are 40 centenarians per 100,000 people in the country, which has the world's highest proportion of elderly, according to Japan's health ministry.

Born in the 30th year of Japan's Meiji era, Kimura was only the third man in history to reach 115 years of age, according to Guinness. He was one of just four male supercentenarians, or people 110 years or older, known to be alive as of December, Guinness said at the time.

The third of six children, Kimura was born as Kinjiro Miyake in Kamiukawa, a fishing and farming village sandwiched between the mountains and the Sea of Japan. His parents, Morizo and Fusa Miyake, were farmers who grew rice and vegetables.

Only two years earlier, Japan's success in the First Sino-Japanese War had established the nation as the dominant power in East Asia. Kimura was 6 years old when Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic first flight in a powered aircraft in North Carolina.

According to Kimura's nephew Tamotsu Miyake, the 115-year- old's birthday is actually March 19. Records say he was born April 19 because an official misprinted the month when records from merging towns were consolidated in 1955, the nephew said.

After finishing school at the age of 14 as the second-best student in his class, Kimura worked at local post offices for 45 years until his retirement in 1962 at the age of 65. He also worked at a government communication unit in Korea in the 1920s, when the peninsula was under Japanese rule, and returned to marry his neighbour Yae Kimura.

As his wife's family didn't have a male heir, he changed his name to Jiroemon Kimura, making him the ninth person in the family to bear the name. After retiring, he enjoyed reading newspapers and watching sumo wrestling on television. He sometimes helped his son farm until he was about 90 years old, his grandson's widow, Eiko Kimura, said in an interview in December.

Kimura was a disciplined, serious man when he was younger, Miyake said. Even when he drank with his brothers, he would sit straight and keep quiet, Miyake said.

His wife, Yae, died in 1978 at the age of 74. Four of Kimura's five siblings lived to be more than 90 years old, and his youngest brother, Tetsuo, died at 100, Miyake said.

Kimura lived with Eiko in a two-story wooden house he built in the 1960s. He never suffered from serious diseases, was still able to communicate and spent most of his time in bed, Eiko said in December.

"Grandpa is positive and optimistic," she said. "He becomes cheerful when he has guests. He's well with a good appetite."

Kimura's living descendants as of December included five children, 14 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and 13 great- great-grandchildren.

Bloomberg



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/oldest-man-in-history-dies-at-age-116-20130612-2o35e.html#ixzz2W0VXpCFO

Germany mourns two football legends

Published: 17 Jun 13 11:25 CET

Two legendary German footballers died this weekend - Ottmar Walter, one of the 1954 World Cup winners, and Heinz Flohe, described as "the best German player of his time."

Walter was born in the town of Kaiserslautern in south-western Germany in 1924. As a child he dreamed of becoming a boxer and following in the footsteps of Max Schmeling, the world heavyweight champion of 1930 and 1932. However the pull of his local football club, which launched the stellar career of his brother Fritz Walter, proved decisive.

His early career at Kaiserslautern was interrupted by the World War II, during which, as a navy soldier, he narrowly escaped death when his ship was attacked by a British torpedo.

In 1947 he rejoined Kaiserslautern, returned to the field and made his debut on the national team against Switzerland in 1950. The highlight of his career was undoubtedly his performance as a striker in the World Cup final against Hungary in 1954, where West Germany emerged victorious, despite entering as the underdogs.

During his time at Kaiserslautern, the goals Walter scored outnumbered the games he played. Having clocked 336 goals in 321 games, he remains the club's record-holder.

Later Walter suffered from Alzheimer's and moved into a care home in Kaiserslautern, where he passed away at the age of 89 on Sunday.

Two decades after Walter retired from the sport, Heinz Flohe was at the height of his career, playing on the Cologne side which clinched the Bundesliga title in 1978.

Former star player and media personality Franz Beckenbauer described him as "the best German football player of his time."

Flohe made brief appearances on the pitch during the World Cup in 1974 and goes down in history as the player to score Germany's 1,000th goal - against the Soviet Union in 1976.

Flohe's health deteriorated in 2010, which left him in a vegetative state until he died in his sleep at the age of 65 on Saturday evening. Announcing the news, his son said ""Of course we're sad but it's a consolation for us that he died peacefully."

The Local/kkf

http://www.thelocal.de/sport/20130617-50345.html?

Every time I click this thread I pray it isn't Nelson Mandela :(

Past his expiry date by almost a decade.