Celebrity Death Thread

[Jdoggie]

I couldn't pass up the value size box of Sweet and Salty Peanut Better bars and the Sunray Children Playground.

[JERRY F BOULDIN]

Guys,thanks for all the support and good words. You people are the salt of the earth !!

[DanO]

You're very welcome Jerry.

GO LIONS "07" !!!!!!!

[Daytona John]

Guys,thanks for all the support and good words. You people are the salt of the earth !!

Right! And we are all coming to your house to rub it in

[gjdodger]

kittycarlisle.jpg

Actress and T-V personality Kitty Carlisle Hart has died.

Her son says she died at her New York home at the age of 96. He says she'd been in and out of the hospital since she developed pneumonia over the Christmas holidays.

She had a long career on Broadway, and in opera, T-V and film. Her movies including the Marx Brothers classic ''A Night at the Opera.''

On T-V, she became known as a long-time game-show panelist on shows such as ''To Tell the Truth'' and ''What's My Line?''

She was also a tireless advocate for the arts, and served for 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts.

Her late husband was the playwright Moss Hart, who wrote ''You Can't Take It With You'' and ''The Man Who Came to Dinner'' with George S. Kaufman.

[Dan V]

Kitty reminds me of my Aunt Clair. I love my Aunt Clair, but she "puts on the dog" and you southern folk know what that means

[DanO]

Well explain that to us "nothern folk".

GO LIONS "07" !!!!!!!

[Dan V]

That means acting like you have class while pulling out a wedgie out of your wrangler jeans and picking your nose--in other words, acting snobbish when you really have more in common with Joe Bag-o-donuts than the caviar crowd.

[DanO]

OIC.

GO LIONS "07" !!!!!!!

[Guise Marino]

For all you Kitty fans - an interview she gave last year. Enjoy!

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2005/1/2005_1_40.shtml

[Dan V]

Thanks for the link

[calijawn]

Author David Halberstam Killed in Crash

April 24, 2007
By LISA LEFF, AP

San Francisco - David Halberstam, the journalist whose acclaimed books included a towering study of the Vietnam War and a poignant portrait of aging baseball stars, died while heading to an interview for a new work.

The 73-year-old writer was killed in a car crash Monday while working on a book about the legendary 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. He was on the way to interview Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle while researching "the greatest game ever played."

Halberstam was riding in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle in Menlo Park, about 25 miles south of San Francisco, authorities said. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and the cause appeared to be internal injuries, according to San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault.

"The world has lost one of our greatest journalists," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, where Halberstam won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his Vietnam coverage.

Halberstam's 1972 best-seller, "The Best and the Brightest" a critical account of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and especially Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, established him as one of the most committed journalists of his generation.

"He was the institutional memory of the Vietnam War. I think he understood it better than any other journalist," said former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, who won a Pulitzer for Vietnam coverage in 1966 while with The Associated Press.

By contrast, Halberstam's 2003 book "The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship" told the story of Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams and his decades-long relationship with teammates Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio.

Pesky, 87, remembered Halberstam as "spellbinding. He was just an outstanding man."

Halberstam's other books included "The Powers That Be," a 1979 undressing of the titans of the news media; "The Fifties," his 1993 chronicle of that decade's upheavals; "Summer of '49," his account of that year's Yankees-Red Sox rivalry; "The Reckoning," about the U.S. auto industry; and "The Children," a 1999 narrative about the civil rights movement.

His 2002 best-seller, "War in a Time of Peace" - an examination of how the lessons of Vietnam have influenced American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era - was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

His book "The Coldest Winter," an account of a key early battle of the Korean War, is scheduled to be published in the fall.

At the time of the accident, Halberstam was being driven to an interview with Tittle, who played with the San Francisco 49ers against the Colts two weeks before Baltimore defeated the Giants, 23-17, to win the 1958 championship.

The drivers of the two cars were injured, but not seriously. Halberstam was being driven by a graduate journalism student from the University of California at Berkeley, where he had visited over the weekend. The crash remained under investigation, and the Menlo Park police officer on duty early Tuesday said no further information was available.

Kevin Jones, 26, who was driving Halberstam, was devastated by the accident.

"It's like the ultimate failure, I had one easy thing to do - drive this man to his interview and I couldn't even do that," he told the San Jose Mercury News. "I'm still crying. I feel like my life's crumbling around me."

As word of Halberstam's death spread, tributes and remembrances poured in for the veteran reporter whose deep baritone matched the heft of his nonfiction narratives.

"The thing about David Halberstam was that he stayed the course and he kept the faith in the belief in the people's right to know," said George Esper, who spent 10 years in Vietnam with The Associated Press.

Neil Sheehan, former Saigon bureau chief for United Press International, said he had lost his best friend, a man of enormous physical and mental energy who had "profound moral and physical courage."

"We were in Vietnam at a time when we were being denounced by those on high," said Sheehan, who went on to write "A Bright Shining Lie," a Pulitzer-winning account of the Vietnam War. "There was tremendous pressure. David never buckled under it at all."

Author Gay Talese, who was at the Halberstams' home Monday night, said he had known Halberstam since the early 1960s, was best man at his wedding and shared Thanksgiving dinner in Paris last year.

"He was a dear friend," Talese said.

Halberstam's wife, Jean Halberstam, said Monday that she would remember him most for his "unending, bottomless generosity to young journalists."

"For someone who obviously was so competitive with himself, the generosity with other writers was incredible," she said by phone from their New York home. He also is survived by a daughter, Julia.

A brother, Washington cardiologist Dr. Michael Halberstam, was murdered in 1980 when he surprised a burglar upon returning to his District of Columbia home. His killer, Bernard Welch, was sentenced to life in prison.

Born April 10, 1934, in New York City, to a surgeon father and teacher mother, Halberstam attended Harvard University, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

After graduating in 1955, he started his career at the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Miss. He spent only a year there because the editor at the time thought Halberstam was too liberal, said Bill Minor, former Jackson bureau chief for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

He went on to The Tennessean, in Nashville, where he covered the civil rights struggle, and then The New York Times, which sent him to Vietnam. Halberstam quit daily journalism in 1967 and turned to books.

"He was a mentor, a companion and a very dear friend," said Horst Faas, a retired AP photographer who met Halberstam in the Congo in 1960 and later shared a house with him in Saigon. "As a journalist he was very different from the rest of us. Not everybody went along with him, but he believed it was his duty to change things."

Halberstam told journalists during a conference last year in Tennessee that government criticism of news reporters in Iraq reminded him of the way he was treated while covering the war in Vietnam.

"The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game," he said. "And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around and they've used up their credibility."

---
Associated Press writers Kim Curtis, Ron Harris and Brian Melley in San Francisco; Sofia Mannos in Washington; Richard Pyle and Dino Hazell in New York; and Chris Talbott in Jackson, Miss., contributed this report.

[-Deborah-]

I'm not familiar with his work, but it sounds like he was quite a writer and someone who sought to change the world.

[Larsky]

I've read some of his pieces, but never one of his books. I think my book club is going to read one of his books for our May selection (since I essentially pick the books, I'm pretty sure this will happen). Maybe that 2002 book would be apropos.

[-Deborah-]

This guy made me laugh a lot:

Tom Poston dead at 85

Posted May 1st 2007 6:15PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: TV Royalty, Celebrities, Obituaries


Tom Poston, one of the classic veterans of TV comedy, died earlier today at his home in Los Angeles. He appeared on The Steve Allen Show in the 1950s and Newhart in the 1980s.

Poston played handyman George Utley on Newhart, and was also a regular on another Bob Newhart series, Bob. And to keep the connection to Newhart going, he played Cliff "The Peeper" Murdock on The Bob Newhart Show in the 70s. Poston also appeared on Grace Under Fire, Mork & Mindy, The Simpsons, Will & Grace, Home Improvement, Murphy Brown, Get Smart, Coach, The Love Boat, Studio One, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Just Shoot Me, That 70s Show, and dozens of other shows over the years.

Poston was married to actress Suzanne Pleshette, who played Newhart's wife Emily on The Bob Newhart Show.

(I never knew that)