Celebrity Death Thread

[Newbomb Turk]

LUMBERTON, Texas (AP) - Ernie "Arrowhead "Holmes, who won two Super Bowls as an anchor of Pittsburgh's famed "Steel Curtain" defense in the 1970s, died in a car crash. He was 59.


Holmes was driving alone Thursday night when his car left the road and rolled several times near Lumberton, about 80 miles from Houston, a Texas Department of Public Safety dispatcher said Friday.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7692482?MSNHPHMA

[Panoptes]

Dag!

RIP bro

[WingsFan]

Bobby Fisher, chess champion died. He had denounced his American citizenship several years ago.

I was just reading about him the other day, he sure was a Master and a lunatic.

I started at age nine and have played in tournaments, and for money (even in bars with people taking side bets). Never really got past that.... to being really good, but love the game, so I always had some interest in him.

RIP

[WingsFan]

[Drew]

A guy brought that up on the internet today, and at first I said, "He played for the Lions the last few years" That's when dude told me he was 59 years old. At that point, I figured that maybe it was a different Ernie Holmes.

[Sharkbait]

Georgia Frontiere, Rams owner who moved team to St. Louis, dies

By JOHN ANTCZAK, Associated Press Writer
January 18, 2008



LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Georgia Frontiere, the St. Louis native who became a hometown hero when she brought the NFL's Rams from Los Angeles in 1995, died Friday. She was 80.

Frontiere had been hospitalized for breast cancer for several months, the Rams said in a statement posted on their Web site.

"Georgia Frontiere was the first lady of sports in her native St. Louis," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement that also praised her philanthropy and concern for retired NFL players.

"Our mom was dedicated to being more than the owner of a football team," daughter Lucia Rodriguez and son Chip Rosenbloom said in the team's statement.

"She loved the Rams' players, coaches, and staff. The warmth and generosity she exuded will never be forgotten."



The one-time nightclub singer was married seven times, starting at age 15. Her sixth husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, owned the Los Angeles Rams at the time of his drowning death in 1979.

The Rams moved twice under Frontiere's leadership, first relocating from the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1980 to Anaheim, 35 miles away.

St. Louis' original NFL franchise, the Cardinals, had left for Arizona in 1988. After the city failed to land an expansion team, civic leaders built a $260 million, taxpayer-financed domed stadium anyway, in hopes of luring another team.

Frontiere, born in St. Louis, agreed in January 1995 to move, causing her to be demonized in Southern California but heralded in her hometown. At a downtown rally soon after the move was announced, thousands chanted "Georgia! Georgia!"

"You take my breath away," Frontiere told the crowd. "It's so good to be back in St. Louis, my hometown."

The Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000.

John Shaw, president of the Rams, said Frontiere was a "loyal, generous, and supportive owner who was totally committed" to the team.

"This is an enormous loss for me and for the Rams' organization. All of our prayers and sympathy go out to her family," Shaw said.

The Rams were the first major sports team to arrive in California when then they moved from Cleveland in 1946. They became the first football or baseball team to leave the state with the move to St. Louis.



Frontiere was a fixture at Rams games during the heyday of the "Greatest Show on Turf" teams that made the playoffs five out of six seasons from 1999 through 2004. Led by quarterback Kurt Warner, running back Marshall Faulk and receivers Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, the Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl 23-16 and lost the Super Bowl two seasons later on a last-second field goal.

Frontiere was born Georgia Irwin on Nov. 21, 1927, and attended Soldan High School before moving to California at age 15. She wed that year, though the marriage was eventually annulled, according to published reports.

Her second husband was killed when hit by a bus. She left her third husband to try to make it as a showgirl in Las Vegas. Her fourth marriage -- to a stage manager of the Sacramento Music Circus -- ended in divorce after three years. Husband No. 5 was a Miami television producer.

She married Rosenbloom in 1966, shortly after he took over the Baltimore Colts. He eventually swapped that franchise for the Rams, which his wife took control of after he drowned.

Frontiere remarried again after Rosenbloom's death. Her seventh husband, Dominic Frontiere, was an award-winning composer. They divorced in 1988 upon his release from prison after serving time on tax charges related to the scalping of more than 2,500 tickets to the 1980 Super Bowl in Pasadena.

Frontiere left day-to-day operation of her team to Shaw, both when the franchise was in Southern California and after the move to St. Louis.

Shaw continues to run the team from Los Angeles.

The team has missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.

Frontiere became involved in several philanthropic efforts in St. Louis after moving the team, including the creation in 1997 of the St. Louis Rams Foundation. According to the team's Web site, the Rams and the foundation have contributed more than $5 million to charities in the St. Louis area.

Frontiere also committed $1 million to the Fulfillment Fund, an organization that helps needy high school students pay for college.

She has served as a member of several boards, including the United Way of Greater St. Louis, Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club, Saint Louis Symphony, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

In addition to her two children, she is survived by six grandchildren, and Earle Weatherwax, her companion of 19 years.

Associated Press Writer Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.

[YT]

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced star best known for her role as Bob Newhart's sardonic wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died at age 70.

Pleshette, whose career included roles in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" and in Broadway plays including "The Miracle Worker," died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein, also a family friend.

Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.

"The Bob Newhart Show," a hit throughout its six-year run, starred comedian Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients and neighbors. Pleshette provided the voice of reason.
Four years after the show ended in 1978, Newhart went on to the equally successful "Newhart" series, in which he was the proprietor of a New England inn populated by more eccentrics.

When that show ended in 1990, Pleshette reprised her role -- from the first show -- in one of the most clever final episodes in TV history. It had Newhart waking up in the bedroom of his "The Bob Newhart Show" home with Pleshette at his side. He went on to tell her of the crazy dream he'd just had of running an inn filled with eccentrics.

"If I'm in Timbuktu, I'll fly home to do that," Pleshette said of her reaction when Newhart told her how he was thinking of ending the show.

Born January 31, 1937, in New York City, Pleshette began her career as a stage actress after attending the city's High School of the Performing Arts and studying at its Neighborhood Playhouse. She was often picked for roles because of her beauty and her throaty voice.

"When I was 4," she told an interviewer in 1994, "I was answering the phone, and (the callers) thought I was my father. So I often got quirky roles because I was never the conventional ingenue."

She met her future husband, Tom Poston, when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy "The Golden Fleecing," but didn't marry him until more than 40 years later.

Although the two had a brief fling, they went on to marry others. By 2000 both were widowed and they got back together, marrying the following year.

"He was such a wonderful man. He had fun every day of his life," Pleshette said after Poston died in April 2007. Among her other Broadway roles was replacing Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker," the 1959 drama about Helen Keller, in New York and on the road.

Meanwhile, she had launched her film career with Jerry Lewis in 1958 in "The Geisha Boy." She went on to appear in numerous television shows, including "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Playhouse 90" and "Naked City."

By the early 1960s, Pleshette attracted a teenage following with her youthful roles in such films as "Rome Adventure," "Fate Is the Hunter," "Youngblood Hawke" and "A Distant Trumpet."

She married fellow teen favorite Troy Donahue, her co-star in "Rome Adventure," in 1964 but the union lasted less than a year.

She was married to Texas oilman Tim Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000.

Pleshette matured in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and the Disney comedies "The Ugly Dachshund," "Blackbeard's Ghost" and "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin."

Over the years, she also had a busy career in TV movies, including playing the title role in 1990's "Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean."

More recently, she appeared in several episodes of the TV sitcoms "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter."

In a 1999 interview, Pleshette observed that being an actress was more important than being a star.

"I'm an actress, and that's why I'm still here," she said. "Anybody who has the illusion that you can have a career as long as I have and be a star is kidding themselves."

RIP Ms. Pleshette

[Drew]

Beautiful woman. Loved her on Newhart. RIP.

[bimmer84]

Was thinking the same thing. RIP

[dsred]

I was just reading about him the other day, he sure was a Master and a lunatic.

I started at age nine and have played in tournaments, and for money (even in bars with people taking side bets). Never really got past that.... to being really good, but love the game, so I always had some interest in him.

RIP

Tony Siragusa would revoke all of our man cards if he saw the discussion of chess on a football forum....

[Drew]

I had strawberries and cream for breakfast this morning.

[Dan V]

i ATE CAVIAR OFF MY PIANO

[Drew]

Drunk MFer.

[Newbomb Turk]

I had Brandy, Strawberries and Cream for breakfast this morning. And then I drove them back to the strip club to get their cars

man fixed that for you........

[King Cole]

Allan Melvin, a character actor best known for playing Sam the Butcher on "The Brady Bunch," has died. He was 84.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,324116,00.html