By perfecting the art of the pie-in-the-face, Soupy Sales quickly became beloved by television viewers across America on The Soupy Sales Show, one of the rare children’s shows that parents loved to watch, too. Known for his old-school slapstick style, Sales originated the series in Detroit before it was picked up nationally by ABC. He once said that he had been hit with more than 25,000 pies over the years. Before his comedy career, he served in the Navy during World War II, where he kept his shipmates entertained with routines performed over the PA system. The Soupy Sales Show was briefly suspended in 1965 after a notorious gag where Sales told children in the audience to “get all the green pieces of paper with the pictures of guys in beards” out of their parents’ wallets and send them to him, eliciting more than $80,000 of mail-ins, most of it Monopoly money. Sales later became a radio host, as well as a staple on What’s My Line? in the 1970s, and is survived by his wife, Trudy Carson Sales.
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After reading an article about reporters in Boys Life magazine at the age of 14, Walter Cronkite embarked on a lifelong career in journalism that led him to become “the most trusted man in America.” From his first job as a paperboy to his longtime position as the anchor of CBS Evening News (he replaced the legendary Edward R. Murrow in 1962), Cronkite took his role as an objective newsman seriously, and was famously reticent about his own views, even with his family. This standard rendered it all the more effective when Cronkite did choose to speak out, as he did when he called for an end to the war in Vietnam, a move that perhaps inspired Lyndon B. Johnson not to run for reelection. Famous for his signoff, “And that’s the way it is,” Cronkite also played a key role in bringing news of the Watergate scandal to the American public. He retired from his anchor position in 1981 but kept busy with a variety of projects. He died from complications with dementia.
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No writer chronicled life in the 20th-century American South quite like Horton Foote, whom The New York Times’ Frank Rich once called “one of America’s living literary wonders.”: Foote was equally lauded for his original, literary works and his film adaptations, earning two Academy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize over the course of his career. He won his first Oscar for his screenplay of To Kill a Mockingbird, and earned praise from William Faulkner for his adaptations of the author’s stories for television. He later won a second Oscar for Tender Mercies. His Pulitzer came with his play The Young Man From Atlanta. Foote initially pursued acting, until he was encouraged by the choreographer Agnes de Mille to try his hand at writing after she witnessed his instinctive storytelling abilities during an improv session. “I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on,” Foote said of his inspiration.
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One of the definitive voices of the 1960’s, Mary Travers (the “Mary” of the folk-singing group Peter, Paul and Mary) lost a long battle with leukemia this year, closing yet another door to the era of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. The trio was largely responsible for the revival of folk music during that psychedelic period, with simple, three-voice arrangements of songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Their outspoken, liberal politics—pro civil rights, anti-war—made just as big an impression. Travers—tall, blond and willowy—was considered to be the group’s main draw. “She was obviously the sex appeal of that group, and that group was the sex appeal of the movement,” Elijah Wald, a folks-blues musician and music historian, told The New York Times. Even after Peter, Paul and Mary disbanded in 1970, Travers periodically played with the band, often performing benefit concerts in support of their pet political causes.
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With the creation of 60 Minutes in 1968, Don Hewitt created the hitherto unknown genre of news magazine, and launched the careers of a number of television journalists, such as Dan Rather and Mike Wallace. The show struck the perfect balance between old-fashioned journalism and television entertainment, and inspired a spurt of similar programs including 20/20 and Dateline—shows that, to this day, follow the same formula Hewitt created 41 years ago, and reflect his vision to “make the news entertaining without compromising our integrity.” Prior to 60 Minutes, Hewitt worked as a director and producer at CBS News (where he spent more than half a century), helping to craft the broadcasts of iconic newsman like Edward R. Murrow, Douglas Edwards, and Walter Cronkite, and shepherding CBS’ coverage of the first presidential debate between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, in 1963; and the NASA space missions, later in the decade.
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Known for her girl-next-door appearance, Marilyn Chambers became a household face when she appeared on an Ivory Snow detergent box, cradling a baby and flashing her radiant smile. But it was something a bit less pure that thrust her into a more lasting limelight: the 1972 erotic film Behind the Green Door. The film was the first hardcore pornographic film widely distributed in the U.S., and it was also the first to feature interracial sex (between Chambers and her African-American costar Johnny Keys). When Chambers revealed that she was the Ivory Snow girl, Proctor & Gamble said they were “scandalized” and dropped her, but the idea of a wholesome girl starring in a porno caused ticket sales to skyrocket. As an actress, Chambers tried to break away from the adult-film industry, but she found it difficult to shake her image, and only managed to score a few non-porn roles, such as a cameo in The Owl and the Pussycat.
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As Marlon Brando’s right-hand man, character actor Karl Malden’s garnered critical acclaim for his roles in On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire, the latter winning him an Academy Award. Malden also earned four Emmy nominations for his five-year stint on The Streets of San Francisco, though it wasn’t until the miniseries Fatal Vision that he finally won, in 1985. Younger generations may recognize the remarkably prolific Malden—his résumé is 70-projects long— not for his charming, bulb-nose countenance, but his voice. The actor was the voice of American Express for 21 years, advising viewers, “Don’t leave home without it.” Malden was aware that he wasn’t leading-man material, and wrote in his memoir, When Do I Start?: “God knows I didn’t have a pretty face to help me get parts, so in order to stay in this profession, I realized early on that I’d better know my business. I strived to be No. 1 in the No. 2 parts I was destined to get.”
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The quintessential “Latin Lover,” Ricardo Montalban brought elegance and charm to the film and TV screens he graced for nearly three decades. The actor helped improve the representation of Hispanic men in Hollywood, becoming a visible Mexican actor, most notably on the 1970s Aaron Spelling hit, Fantasy Island. Perpetually suited in head-to-toe white, Montalban’s role as the mysterious Mr. Roarke carried him through six seasons of the show and a lifetime of recognition. Though the sharply dressed island host became Montalban’s most well-known role, he played a wide range of characters, who didn’t have sidekicks shouting “Zee plane! Zee plane!” Another part close to Montalban’s heart was his 20-year position as president of Nosotros, an organization he founded for the advancement of Hispanics in the entertainment industry.
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First made famous by a photograph taken in 1976, with an old Navajo blanket that the photographer grabbed from his ’37 Chevy for a backdrop, Farrah Fawcett was the bird-like girl in the red bathing suit with the signature, leonine hair, and the toothpaste-commercial smile. That pin-up, which sold 12 million copies, led to Fawcett’s being cast in the hit TV show Charlie’s Angels, one of the “jiggle” series in the late 1970’s. Fawcett herself was a poster girl for the era’s emancipated femininity—in 1978, Playboy magazine called her ''the first mass visual symbol of post-neurotic fresh-air sexuality”— though some cultural commentators argued that the show’s skimpily dressed heroines weren’t doing the women’s movement any favors. Fawcett was taken more seriously as an actress with the TV movie The Burning Bed, in 1984, which won her three Emmy nominations, and the feature film Extremities.
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Ed McMahon’s booming voice, iconic laugh, and the catchphrase “Heeere’s Johnny!” defined his career and made him a television legend. Dubbed by Entertainment Weekly as one of the greatest “sidekicks,” McMahon worked beside Johnny Carson—more as Carson’s appreciative audience member than his announcer—for 30 years on The Tonight Show, and as Jerry Lewis’s longtime co-host on muscular dystrophy telethons. Conan O’Brien, Tonight’s current host, said of McMahon, “Alongside Johnny, Ed was an indelible part of what I think is the most iconic two-shot in broadcasting history.” His self-described “whiskey baritone” voice also snagged him a gig with Star Search, with he hosted on his own for 12 years. Off-screen McMahon became a ubiquitous spokesman for, in the early 1980s, no fewer than 37 banks around the country. He was also the face of American Family Publishers’ national sweepstakes, famously telling Americans that “You may already have won $10 million!”
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When Adam Goldstein survived a horrific plane crash in South Carolina, in 2008, the Los Angeles club-going community was deeply relieved. The DJ, promoter, and nightclub owner was a fixture in the city’s club scene, having gained national fame thanks to his high-profile DJ gigs, collaborations with former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker (as TRV$DJAM), and romantic dalliances with Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore. Goldstein had long battled with drugs, depression, and obesity, but he had turned things around by sobering up and undergoing gastric bypass surgery, resulting in a drastic transformation. In August, when he was found dead in his apartment, from a drug overdose, it was said that Goldstein—who had been sober 11 years and was working on a show about addiction with MTV—had returned to heavy drug use to deal with the trauma of the accident.
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Those living in glass houses likely commissioned Julius Shulman as their photographer. With his pictures, Shulman helped bring modern, architectural structures in Southern California to viewers far from those sunny plots. In a career spanning over half a century, Shulman produced images of buildings by pioneering architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and Pierre Koenig, helping to define postwar architecture. Shulman’s image of Koenig’s The Stahl House, titled “Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960,” remains one of the most imminent photographs of the time, encapsulating the glass-walled, cantilevered structure hovering high above Los Angeles street lights. Though Shulman retired by the time he passed away in July, his 260,000 negatives, prints and transparencies, now owned by the Getty Center, will continue to leave an impression on the worlds of art and architecture.
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He may have played Number Six, but Patrick McGoohan’s role on the sci-fi television series The Prisoner in the 1960s solidified his top position not just in the Village, but in American television. The show is frequently touted as one of the first masterpieces of television, and earned a cultish following, spawning a plethora of books, college courses, a quarterly magazine, and documentaries. Prior to The Prisoner, McGoohan played John Drake on Secret Agent, a role that was rumored to have inspired Number 6. He once famously said, “I will always be a number.” Yet McGoohan’s work took him far beyond the 17 episodes of the beloved series: He had success in London's West End, earned critical acclaim for his role in Braveheart, and won two Emmys for guest stints on Columbo. Although McGoohan passed away in January, his agent told The Los Angeles Times that he had two acting offers at the time. “He was excited to get back to work,” his agent said. “He had so much more to give.”
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One of the first personalities on MTV to drift the network away from the music genre its name advertised, Ken Ober became the host of Remote Control in 1987. The pop-culture game show was known not only for strapping contestants into Lay-Z-Boys and asking them to select from nine channels, but also for launching the careers of comedians like Adam Sandler, Denis Leary, and the show’s announcer, Colin Quinn. Growing up in Massachusetts, Ober idolized game-show hosts like Bob Barker before becoming one himself. But after five seasons, he left the show to pursue acting, earning bit parts on Who’s the Boss? and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Later, Ober moved behind the camera, producing Comedy Central’s Mind of Mencia and the CBS comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine before passing away in November. “He was fall-down funny from the moment he was born,” Leary told MTV News. “A smart, fast and hilarious human being who made many of us, including myself, laugh until we cried.”
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In an era when the line between gossip reporter and gossip subject is more and more difficult to discern (thanks, Perez), the death of longtime Variety columnist Army Archerd was all the more poignant. Archerd, who penned "Just for Variety" from 1953 until 2005, and whose Rolodex was filled with the personal phone numbers of dozens of actors, executives, and agents, attributed his longevity to avoiding the spotlight. He told the Los Angeles Times, "I don't burn out because I'm not part of the scene." Archerd was best-known to the wider public as the official red-carpet greeter at the Academy Awards. But his column was widely respected—and widely read—throughout Hollywood, thanks to its integrity and impeccable sourcing, not to mention the big stories it often broke, including the news that Rock Hudson was suffering from AIDS and the surprise marriage of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.
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Quick—who was the most influential person in the development of rock ‘n’ roll? Chuck Berry? Elvis? John Lennon? How about Les Paul? The guitarist and inventor—who may be less famous than the guitar model that bears his name—is generally credited as the inventor of the solid-body electric guitar, the instrument most associated with rock music—and the instrument without which we might never have had "Johnny B. Goode" or "Hound Dog." Paul played guitar with Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby, and began tinkering with electronic amplification in the 1930s. By 1941, he had his solid-body electric. In 1952, a guitar of his design, and bearing is name, debuted, courtesy of the Gibson company, which still produces the model, unchanged since 1958. He continued playing almost right up until his death, maintaining a Monday-night residency in New York City until June 2009.
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Not many people get a chance to provide the voice of a globally recognized cartoon character. Wayne Allwine, who provided Mickey Mouse's vocal cords for more than 30 years, was one. Only one step removed from Walt Disney—Mickey's first voice—Allwine fell into the job almost by accident, when he (at that point an employee in the Disney sound-effects department) was invited to take part in an open audition in 1977 when an actor didn't show. He was a natural fit, and began voicing the cartoon mouse in The New Mickey Mouse Club that year. Allwine’s later work as a sound-effects editor got him credited on Splash and Three Men and a Baby. In 1991, rather fittingly, he married Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse.
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Maurice Jarre’s five-decade film career began by composing music for short films in France. But it was when he moved to Hollywood and teamed up with director David Lean that he shone brightest, writing masterful scores that were dubbed “evocative” and “brilliant,” and that earned the recognition of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His score for Lawrence of Arabia became famous for its use of ethnic instruments and for Jarre’s ability to record captivating music using only three microphones. The score, Jarre said, “must give the film an added dimension. It must say things not seen on the screen or heard in the dialogue.” Which is what his music did not just in Lawrence of Arabia, but in Dr. Zhivago, and A Passage to India—all of which won Best Original Score Oscars. The composer also wrote more than 170 music and television scores, including The Dead Poets Society, Ghost, Fatal Attraction, and Gorillas in the Mist.
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Larry Gelbart had an aptitude for bringing words to life before actors even read them aloud. He used his comedic genius to help craft M*A*S*H, one of the longest running television shows, which mixed tragedy and laughter, and earned him and producer-director Gene Reynolds an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1974. He took a morbid situation—the lives of people involved in a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War of the early 1950s—and added comedic twists in every episode. “The man was one of the most gifted satirists who ever lived," said Carl Reiner, who worked with Gelbart on Caesar’s Hour (a comedy-variety show he wrote with Mel Brooks). His notable work also includes co-writing the book for the hit Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and co-writing the classic film Tootsie.
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He called himself the King of Pop, and that was putting it mildly. Michael Jackson, the youngest brother of the Jackson Five, ushered in the age of pop-culture celebrity and then presided over it throughout the 1980s and 1990s, selling more than 750 million albums—1982’s Thriller went platinum 28 times—and becoming one of the world’s biggest global icons, with his red jacket, sequined glove, and moonwalk. As Jackson’s fame escalated, he became more isolated in a strange bubble of celebrity, sequestered on his Neverland Ranch with exotic animals, and faced with child-molestation charges. He died just as he was in the act of returning to his music, and the stage, which is where his fans will remember him best. Fred Astaire, whose dance moves he studied, once called him “a wonderful mover.”
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A trained actor who started in theater—winning a Tony Award in 1966 for her turn as Mame Dennis's (Angela Lansbury) acid-tongued sidekick Vera Charles in Mame—Bea Arthur made her mark in television. First in the Norman Lear-created sitcom Maude, in which she played Maude Finely, a brassy, three-time divorcée. The show debuted in 1972, at the onset of the feminist movement, and took on relevant issues such as abortion, infidelity, depression, and death. As a result of the show, Arthur became a public icon for feminism. Between 1985 and 1992, the actress starred in another groundbreaking show, The Golden Girls, as Dorothy Zbornak, another droll, withering wit. In both roles, Arthur used her formidable stature—she was 5’9½”—and deep, husky voice, to effect sarcastic, wizened authority. She received 11 Emmy nominations, and won twice—in 1977, for Maude, and in 1988 for The Golden Girls.
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The son of character actor John Carradine, David Carradine had hundreds of TV and film credits, though he is best-known for the role of Kwai Chang Caine, a half-American monk and martial-arts master, in the hour-long series Kung Fu. The show ran from 1972 until 1975 and caught on, according to The New York Times, by “plugging into the battle-weary spirit of the waning years of the Vietnam War and, in its depiction of the ill treatment of Chinese immigrants, the indignant anguish of the civil-rights movement…” Kung Fu is also credited with popularizing martial arts and Eastern philosophy in the West. Carradine went on to have notable roles in Hal Ashby’s Oscar-nominated film Bound for Glory, and Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg. Later in his career, Quentin Tarantino cast him as the title character in his Kill Bill movies.
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Like his idol, Jackie Gleason, Dom DeLuise was a master of slapstick, physical humor, becoming a household name in the 1970s and '80s with small but memorable roles in films such as Blazing Saddles, Cannonball Run, and Spaceballs. The rotund actor got his start in the early 1960s as Dominick the Great, an inept magician, a role he created for The Garry Moore Show. He then brought the character to the variety series The Entertainers, where he performed alongside Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart, and The Dean Martin Summer Show. He was a favorite of Mel Brooks and Burt Reynolds, both of whom cast him in several movies. DeLuise also starred in and directed the 1979 comedy Hot Stuff, and starred in Fatso, written by Anne Bancroft, Brooks’ wife. Later in his career he wrote cookbooks and children’s books.
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A chronicler of high-profile criminal trials and high society for Vanity Fair, TV host, and bestselling novelist, Dominick Dunne was as much, if not more, of a celebrity than his subjects—impossible to miss with his trademark Turnbull & Asser shirts and round, tortoise-shell spectacles. He was also one of the greatest turnaround stories of the 20th century. Having begun his career as a Hollywood producer and bon vivant (he threw the original Black and White Ball, only to be copied by Truman Capote), his career was ruined by drugs and alcohol. Broke and divorced, he contemplated suicide, and, instead, at the age of 50, sobered up and started writing. Focusing on murders in the upper reaches of society, his two novels, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1985) and An Inconvenient Woman (1990), brought him acclaim, which only grew as a correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he most famously reported on the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
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A one-time ad man and National Lampoon writer, John Hughes made his name as the writer-director of such 1980s generation-defining films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, all of which presented outcast, geeky teenagers as whip-smart, self-aware, and more adult than their superiors. Hughes’ films gave birth to a genre—coming-of-age stories about disaffected youth—as well as a group of emerging actors that came to represent Reagan-era teenage angst: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, John Cusack, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, among them. In the early 1990s, following his most commercially successful film, Home Alone, Hughes dropped out of Hollywood and returned to his native Illinois, to the shock and dismay of his fans. His reclusiveness gave him a J.D. Salinger mystique, and inspired a 2009 documentary Don’t You Forget About Me, by four young filmmakers who go searching for the filmmaker in his hometown.
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Natasha Richardson was born into theater royalty—her grandfather was the tragedian Sir Michael Redgrave; her mother is actress Vanessa Redgrave; and her father was the late film director Tony Richardson—but she never used her lineage to further her own acting career. Known for her sensual vibrancy and for immersing herself in her roles, Richardson first rose to prominence in what became a legendary 1985 production of The Seagull in England. Her fame on this side of the pond came in 1993, when she played the title role in the Broadway revival of Anna Christie, for which she was nominated for a Tony. Her performance also sparked a relationship with co-star Liam Neeson, whom she went on to marry in 1994. Richardson won a Tony in 1998, when she played the broken, desperate expatriate, Sally Bowles, in Sam Mendes’ revival of Cabaret. Her Hollywood credits ranged from The Handmaid’s Tale to The Parent Trap.
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A classically trained dancer, Patrick Swayze started off on stage (he starred as the lead in the original Broadway production of Grease) before making the transition to Hollywood with films such as The Outsiders and the TV movie North and South. Swayze’s big break came in 1987 when he starred as Johnny Castle, a hunky dance instructor, in Dirty Dancing. His emotional intensity and pin-up good looks turned Swayze into a Hollywood leading man overnight. He won further acclaim with Ghost, in 1990, a film that proved he was much more than, as he once put it, a “dance dude” or an “action guy.” Swayze went on to star in dozens of films, but he always maintained a distance from Hollywood, spending time on his ranch with his longtime wife, Lisa Niemi, also a dancer. “Your horses don’t lie to you,” he once told the Associated Press.
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A prolific actor who won a Tony in 1988 for David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, Ron Silver played a number of real-life characters over a nearly four-decade career: defense attorney Alan Dershowitz ( Reversal of Fortune), boxing trainer Angelo Dundee ( Ali), former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (the TV movie Kissinger and Nixon), and middle-aged tennis champ Bobby Riggs ( When Billie Beat Bobby). He received Emmy nominations for his roles in the 1987 miniseries Billionaire Boys Club, and, in 2001, for The West Wing. Silver was just as active offstage as a vocal political activist who, unusual for a Hollywood star, supported both left- and right-wing causes. A longtime liberal who campaigned for Bill Clinton as president, was president of Actors’ Equity, and co-founded the Creative Coalition. Following 9/11, he supported President George W. Bush and was a featured speaker at the Republican National Convention, in 2004. “I’m an actor by calling but an activist by inclination,” he told The New York Times.
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The nephew of Walt Disney, Roy E. Disney rose up through the ranks of the Walt Disney Company, where he began as a producer of nature films—including the Academy Award-winning True-Life Adventure features The Living Desert and The Vanishing Prairie —and later oversaw the studio’s fabled animation division and its rebirth, in the mid-1980s, with blockbuster hits such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King. More reserved than his uncle and father, Roy O. Disney (Walt’s business partner), he was nonetheless a fierce protector of the family empire and twice orchestrated executive coups. The first, in 1984, brought in Chief Executive Michael Eisner; the second, in 2004, got rid of him. With lawyer Stanley Gold, Disney became a successful financier in his own right, amassing a fortune through his Shamrock Holdings, a company that invested in broadcasting and soybeans.
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Brittany Murphy first made waves when she was 17 in the 1995 comedy Clueless, in which she played Tai, Alicia Silverstone’s (Cher) ditsy blond BFF. But it was her role as Alex, Eminem’s romantic interest in the 2002 film 8 Mile, that earned her acclaim. “That changed a lot,” she told The New York Times. “That was the difference between people knowing my first and last name as opposed to not.” In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers wrote that she played Alex “with hot desperation and calloused vulnerability. She’s dynamite.” Murphy’s movie roles also included Girl Interrupted, Don’t Say a Word, Uptown Girls, and the animated film Happy Feet, to which she lent her voice. On TV, she voiced the character of Luanne Platter on King of the Hill. Murphy thought of herself above all else as an “entertainer” and she played in a band and released the dance-club single “Faster Kill Pussycat,” with DJ Paul Oakenfold. Her death, in December, at the age of 32 came as a sad shock to Hollywood.
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