Celebrity Death Thread

[gjdodger]

I'm not saying it's logical to kill your loved ones at any time. But that makes more sense as a "trigger".

[Chuck Cunningham]

Charles Lane died at 102, you might not know his name, but he appeared on just about every sitcom in the '60's and '70's at one time or another:


Character actor Charles Lane dies

By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 10, 7:39 PM ET


SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Charles Lane, the prolific character actor whose name was little known but whose crotchety persona and roles in hundreds of films made him instantly recognizable to generations of moviegoers, has died. He was 102.
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His son, Tom Lane, said he was talking with his father at 9 p.m. Monday. "He was lying in bed with his eyes real wide open. Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing."
Lane, whose career spanned more than 60 years, appeared in such film classics as "It's a Wonderful Life," "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" and "Twentieth Century." He also had a recurring role as the scheming railroad man, Homer Bedloe, on the 1960s TV sitcom "Petticoat Junction" and appeared often on "I Love Lucy."
His crisp, stage-trained voice and no-nonsense appearance made him a natural for playing authority figures. He was a judge in "God Is my Partner," a prosecutor in "Call Northside 777," a priest in "Date With an Angel" and a member of Clark Gable's newspaper editorial board in "Teacher's Pet."
Although the roles provided a good living, Lane objected to being typecast.
"You did something that was pretty good and the picture was pretty good. That pedigreed you in that type of part, which I thought was stupid, and unfair, too," he told The Associated Press in a 100th birthday interview in 2005. "It didn't give me a chance, but it made casting easier for the studio."
He turned to the stage for variety, appearing in a wide range of roles in more than 100 plays, most of them at the storied Pasadena Playhouse.
Lane was working in the insurance business and dabbling in theater company productions at night when Irving Pichell, a well known actor of the time, advised him to study at Pasadena.
He was eventually spotted by a Warner Bros. scout and cast in his first movie, an Edward G. Robinson-James Cagney melodrama, "Smart Money," in 1931.
Lane remained at Warner Bros., sometimes working in three or four pictures a day. He would be rushed from one set to another and handed his few lines.
"I was being paid $35 a day," he recalled in 2005. "When the Screen Actors Guild was being organized, I was one of the first to join."
In 1934, Frank Capra, then on his rise to prominence, cast Lane in a horse-racing film, "Broadway Bill." Capra liked the actor's work so much he included him in nine more movies, including "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "You Can't Take It With You." In Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," he was a rent collector who shocks his boss, the evil Lionel Barrymore character, by telling him that hero James Stewart's character is a good businessman.
One of Lane's most cherished possessions, meanwhile, was a letter from the fabled director declaring, "Well, Charlie, you've been my No. 1 crutch."
Lane became good friends with Lucille Ball when she was a chorus girl and he was cast in RKO musicals, and she went on to cast him regularly in her 1950s TV show, often as an impatient bureaucrat at odds with the bumbling Lucy.
He was especially fond of his role in the "I Love Lucy" episode in which Lucy Ricardo gave birth to her son, Little Ricky. Papa Ricky (Ball's real-life husband, Desi Arnaz) was all nerves while Lane, as a fellow expectant father, was the picture of calm.
"This old guy was expecting his 10th child or something, and this nervous young man was expecting his first," Lane recalled in 2005. "It was a marvelous scene, and Desi was a fine actor."
The 1953 show attracted the biggest TV audience up to that time, no doubt aided by the news that Ball and Arnaz had their own son that same night.

Lane continued to act into his 90s, and when he accepted an award from cable television's TV Land channel in honor of his 100th birthday, he made a point of saying he was still available for work.
A widower with a son and daughter, Lane had no formula for his longevity, although he noted his mother lived to be nearly 100.
The weekend before he died, Lane was working on a celebration of his life, a project with former child star Jane Withers. The two had appeared in three movies together.
When it came to alcohol, he was a lifelong teetotaler. But his son noted that his father smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 70 years, quitting only when he became short of breath.
"I know that smoking kills people, and I must be the exception," Lane said then.
Tom Lane said there would be no funeral for his father. Besides his son and daughter, Lane is survived by a sister, Alice Dean, and granddaughter, Lucy Graves.

[-Deborah-]

I think the picture will jog some memories...

[SeattleLionsFan]

Jebus, that dude was still alive? Good for him!

GodSpeed Charles Lane.

[Chuck Cunningham]

He came up in conversation out of the blue about 2 years ago, and my father informed me he was still alive, and I thought no way, and sure enough I looked up IMDB and he certainly was....till now. He was in a classic Get Smart episode where he plays Max's Uncle Abner who comes to visit and keeps falling into Max's traps around the apartment.

[Guise Marino]

Not surprising there will be no funeral. He outlived all his friends.

[YT]

RIP MR. Lane!

[DanO]

WoW. He certainly lived a full life. RIP.

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

[Dan V]

Wow, 102. I had no idea he was alive

[Drew]

I remember the I Love Lucy episode where Ricky and he were in the waiting room. He wasn't expecting his 10th child like the article said, he was expecting his 7th, but he wanted a boy because he already had 6 girls. When the nurse came out to the waiting room with the fruit of his wife's labor, he looked down at the baby carrier, and then back up with disappointment, and complained "Nine girls." His wife had had triplet girls.

[Guise Marino]

RIP to LadyBird Johnson - 94 years old.

I don't know how any woman could be a politician's wife.

[YT]

RIP Mrs. Johnson

[Chuck Cunningham]

I'm surprised she was still alive. Probably this name means nothing to anyone on this forum but Local Entrepreneur Ed Mirvish died. He owned category stores prior to the Walmart days as well as some well known established restaurants and was quite involved in establishing toronto's Theatre District in downtown toronto.

[-Deborah-]

Talk show host Tom Snyder dies at 71

NBC 'Tomorrow Show' interviews included John Lennon, Charles Manson



SAN FRANCISCO - Talk show host Tom Snyder, whose smoke-filled interviews were a staple of late night television and an inspiration for Dan Ackroyd on ?Saturday Night Live?, has died after a struggle with leukemia. He was 71.

Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia, his longtime producer and friend Mike Horowicz told The Associated Press on Monday.

Known for his improvised, casual style and robust laughter, Snyder conducted a number of memorable interviews as host of NBC?s ?The Tomorrow Show.? Among his guests were John Lennon, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s, then moved into local television news. He anchored newscasts in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before moving to late night.

?He loved the broadcast business,? said Marciarose Shestack, who co-anchored a noontime newscast with Snyder at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the 1960s. ?He was very surprising and very irreverent and not at all a typical newscaster.?

In 1972, Snyder left news to host ?The Tomorrow Show,? which followed ?The Tonight Show? with Johnny Carson.

His catch phrase for the show was: ?Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air.? Snyder smoked throughout his show, the cigarette cloud swirling around him during interviews.

He gained more fame when Dan Ackroyd lampooned him in the early days of Saturday Night Live.

In 1995, he returned to late night television as the host of ?The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder? on CBS. The program followed David Letterman?s ?Late Show? until 1998, when Snyder was replaced by Craig Kilborn.

Snyder announced on his Web site in 2005 that he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

?When I was a kid leukemia was a death sentence,? he wrote then. ?Now, my doctors say it?s treatable!?

Horowicz met Snyder in 1982 and worked with him at WABC in New York before producing the ?Tom Snyder? television show.

?He was a great guy and very talented,? Horowicz said.

[Newbomb Turk]

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, the president of his foundation said. He was 89.

"It's an unbelievable loss for Sweden, but even more so internationally," Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which administers the directors' archives, told The Associated Press.

Bergman died at his home in Faro, Sweden, Swedish news agency TT said, citing his daughter Eva Bergman. A cause of death was not immediately available. Through more than 50 films, Bergman's vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070730/D8QMSIK00.html

Checkmate..........