Posted Feb 4th 2010 3:27PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Video, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
If you've been a soap watcher, you've probably seen the work of
Frances Reid. Best known as
Alice Horton on 'Days of Our Lives,' Frances Reid died yesterday at the age of 95.
For more than 40 years, Frances was the matriarch of the Horton family, Grandma Alice, one the wisest, wittiest and most charming oldster on daytime. She was
'Days of Our Lives' Rock of Gibralter, her character was the center of her family, the heart that kept it all together even when bizarre circumstances threatened to tear the Hortons apart.
Continue reading 'Days of Our Lives' Matriarch, Frances Reid, Dies At 95
Posted Feb 1st 2010 5:28PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Sports, OpEd, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
If you're old enough to remember before the merger between the NFL and the AFL, or if you're a Philly football fan, the name Tom Brookshier is a familiar one for you. Philly fans will remember Tom as a hard-hitting defensive back and part of the 1960 Philadelphia Eagle championship team.
But for the mainstream
NFL fan, Tom Brookshier was the sideman to Pat Summerall before John Madden. That was when the NFC was on CBS, and Summerall and Brookshier were the top broadcasting team.
On Friday night,
January 29, Tom Brookshier succumbed to cancer at the age of 78. At his hospital bedside when he died were his wife, Barbara, and his partner for so many years, Pat Summerall.
Continue reading NFL Pro and CBS Broadcaster Tom Brookshier Dead at 78
Posted Jan 26th 2010 9:00AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Depending on your age, Pernell Roberts was either western hero Adam Cartwright or grumpy surgeon Trapper John to you. Pernell Roberts starred in two long-running television series,
Bonanza and
Trapper John, M.D. But despite his success as a TV star and personality, he was never happy being a celebrity and had a reputation for being difficult and demanding.
Pernell Roberts passed away on Sunday, January 24, succumbing to pancreatic cancer. He was 81.
Roberts was probably most famous as Adam, the eldest son of Ben Cartwright, brother of Hoss and Little Joe on NBC's mega-hit
Bonanza. For six years, beginning in 1959, Roberts was Ben's smartest and most accomplished son. Roberts got the most serious story lines and carried a lot of the show. But Roberts chaffed under the formulaic structure of the western hit. He was frustrated that the quality of the writing wasn't better. He questioned why three grown men continued asking their father's permission to do anything.
Continue reading Bonanza star Pernell Roberts dies at 81
Posted Jan 23rd 2010 10:09AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Daytime, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
One of the most famous stars of daytime,
All My Children's James Mitchell, died Friday, January 22 in Los Angeles. He was 89 and suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, complicated by pneumonia. He hadn't been on the show much of the past couple of years, but he did make it back for the
AMC 40th anniversary episode on January 5, and that turned out to be his last professional appearance.
James Mitchell was a man with two great careers. To soap fans, he was the indomitable Palmer Cortlandt, a brilliant tycoon and businessman, but also a man obsessed with his family and not above manipulation to get his way.
Continue reading All My Children's James Mitchell passes away
Posted Jan 19th 2010 2:00PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Just last week I posted one of my favorite episodes of
the 80s ABC series Spenser: For Hire, and now comes word that the author of the novels, Robert B. Parker, has died at the age of 77.
No details yet, but
Parker died at his desk in his Cambridge, MA home. When you're a writer that's probably the way to go.
If you only know Spenser from the TV series that starred Robert Urich (which was great), you should pick up the novels, too. He's been writing them since the 70s and they're quite good, very engaging first person mystery stories set in Boston. He started a new series of book based around the Jesse Stone character (who happens to live my neck of the woods), and while I've never read those novels I have seen the TV movies featuring Tom Selleck as Stone and they are very good. There's a new Jesse Stone novel coming out in May. Not sure if Parker had finished a new Spenser novel or not (his latest is
The Professional).
I think it's time for a
Spenser: For Hire marathon.
Posted Dec 25th 2009 9:05AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Sports, Obituaries, Reality-Free
One of television's biggest sports names long before people cared about the people who talked about sports on television has died.
George Michael, the sportscaster and longtime host of the nationally syndicated
George Michael's Sports Machine, succumbed to a long battle with cancer on Thursday.
To call him ahead of his time would be an understatement. He basically invented the hyper clip style format of shows like ESPN's
SportsCenter, brought a great deal of personality to TV sports reporting and sportscasting and even inspired and mentored the likes of
Pardon the Interruption's Tony Kornheiser and
Michael Wilbon.
Posted Dec 24th 2009 3:18PM by Isabelle Carreau
Filed under: Video, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
As a fan of music from the 80's and the early 90's, I didn't believe it at first when one of my friends told me that
Michael Jackson died. Since TVs were rare where I was at the time, my first instinct was to check
CNN.com. As soon as I got confirmation, I found a TV and was glued to one of the news-only channels to get all the latest updates on
the death of one of my music idols.
TV coverage of Michael Jackson's death was worldwide and every source of media. The news of his death, the coroner's investigation, the rumors that his death may have been faked (see the video after the jump), the news of where he would be buried, the details of the
various tributes, as well as coverage of the special funeral ceremony, etc., made Michael Jackson's death one of the 2009 events that got the most air time around the world. Even as huge an MJ fan I am -- I do have about 30 of his hits on my MP3 -- I can admit that this event got too much air time.
Continue reading Top TV Stories of 2009: TV coverage of Michael Jackson's death
Posted Dec 23rd 2009 7:01PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Video, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
When I was a kid, I loved the cartoon
Top Cat. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the cool music or the fact it was set in New York City. I also really loved Top Cat's voice.
Arnold Stang, the voice of the clever feline, died earlier this week at the age of 91. Stang was in 75 gazillion TV shows and movies over the years (you'd know the face and/or the voice even if you couldn't place the name), including
The Jonathan Winters Show, Broadside, Batman, Bonanza, The Red Skelton Show, December Bride, The Steve Allen Show, The Milton Berle Show, Emergency, and
Mathnet.
He was also in several movies, including
Hercules in New York,
Dennis The Menace, and
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He was also the original voice of Buzz Bee in Honey-Nut Cheerios commercials.
After the jump, an episode of
Top Cat.
Continue reading Arnold Stang, voice of Top Cat, dead at 91
Posted Dec 21st 2009 8:40AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Another celebrity death has hit the world of the small screen.
Actress Alaina Reed Hall, probably best remembered for playing Rose on the sitcom
227 and Olivia on
Sesame Street from the late 70s to the late 80s,
passed away last week after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 63
Of course,
her career stretches far beyond those two shows with parts on just about every major show in the last few decades including
Friends, ER and
Ally McBeal, but she was always Olivia to me. She was on the show and even the big screen spinoff
Follow That Bird during my formative years, so her sweet and endearing demeanor performance as Olivia pretty much stuck her with the role.
I'm sure if I met her in person, I would accidentally call her Olivia at least four times and something tells me she would not have minded a bit.
Posted Dec 20th 2009 5:11PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
You may have heard that
Brittany Murphy died suddenly today at the young age of 32. Some of you may not know how connected she was to TV, considering most of her best-known work was on the big screen. She had a few roles in some short-lived TV series, but she's probably best known to TV fans for her work as Luanne on
King of the Hill.
The role always seemed to be a perfect fit for her and it seems in the wake of her tragic passing that to her, the role was more than just a job.
She once told
USA Today that the character was a mix of "Juliette Lewis in
Kalifornia and Jessica Lange in
Blue Skies." She also said that despite Luanne's ditziness and naive ways, she served as a great source of inspiration for her.
Continue reading Remembering Brittany Murphy as King of the Hill's Luanne
Posted Dec 14th 2009 1:02PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on DVD, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free, British TV
Most American TV viewers know Edward Woodward from his run as Robert McCall as
The Equalizer. But, British TV aficionados know he trained in backside-kicking on the dark, gritty British spy series,
Callan.
Written by James Mitchell, the show featured David Callan -- a spy working for an ultra-secret arm of the British Intelligence service specializing in assassinations. Unfortunately, the former soldier and convict was cursed with a conscience that led him to hate his job, his superiors and himself.
Woodward was perfect in the role -- blending haunted humor with genuine menace to create an intelligent, tortured man who you believed could kill anyone without having to look like Rambo while he did it.
Continue reading Remember the great Edward Woodward with Callan
Posted Dec 13th 2009 4:03PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
So we come to that time of year when we list all of the TV celebrities that have died over the past year. We hear about these people passing away at various points of the year (sometimes a few the same week), but it's really odd to see them all listed together at once like you'll see after the jump.
It's like 40% of pop culture dies every year.
Continue reading Top TV Stories of 2009: People we lost
Posted Dec 11th 2009 2:29PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
"It's Burke's Law." That was the opening tag for one of three successful TV series that starred Gene Barry, one of the classiest actors to appear on screen. On
Wednesday, TV star Gene Barry died at at 90 of undetermined causes. He was living in an L.A. rest home, but I will remember Gene Barry as the man who made
Burke's Law, Bat Masterson and
The Name of the Game memorable TV entertainment.
Barry was also well-known as the original star of the 1953 version of
The War of the Worlds, and when Steven Spielberg remade the film in 2005 with Tom Cruise, he gave Gene a quick cameo. In addition to being a versatile leading man -- capable of playing a bad guy, a bon vivant, cops, spies, gentlemen, gunslingers, and magazine publishers -- Gene Barry also was a song and dance man. In 1984, he was one of the toasts of Broadway in
La Cage aux Folles. Currently Kelsey Grammer is about to play Gene's role in a 2010 spring revival.
Continue reading TV star Gene Barry passes away at 90
Posted Nov 17th 2009 2:28PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Obituaries, Game Show, Reality-Free
The sudden and shocking of passing of TV writer, producer and host
Ken Ober turned a lot of heads. Here's one of Ober's head (ahem) getting turned, for a change.
Collin Quinn, Ober's longtime friend and
Remote Control co-host, posted a hilarious picture on his
Twitter page of himself, Ober and the uber-cute Kari Wuhrer on the set of their equally hilarious game show.
I'm tempted to let Bob use this for our weekly Subtle Subtitles post, but am worried the funniest of the comments will get us banned from every library in the country assuming, of course, that reading is still going on in America's libraries.
Continue reading Colin Quinn remembers Ken Ober in his special way
Posted Nov 16th 2009 5:27PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Wow, it's one thing to write about the death of someone like
Edward Woodward, someone who was older and not in good health, but it's another thing to write about the death of someone only 52.
Ken Ober, who hosted the classic (well, in my mind it's a classic) MTV game show
Remote Control in the late 80s, died yesterday of unknown causes.
If you've never seen
Remote Control, it was a wacky pop culture trivia game show that supposedly was filmed in Ober's basement. Besides being a really fun game show (especially for someone raised on television), it costarred a lot of people who later became household names, such as Adam Sandler, Denis Leary, and Colin Quinn.
Continue reading Remote Control host Ken Ober dead at 52
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