TVSquad

(Part 1 of 5) It's the time of year when we talk about what happened over the past year, and that unfortunately includes the deaths of many notable personalities. After the jump is a list of the celebrities and other TV-related people we lost in 2006, in no particular order. (Note: it's not easy to compile a list like this and I'm sure I forgot someone. Let me know in the comments and I'll try to add them.)

Not sure if younger readers will remember Tony Franciosa. Not only was it several decades ago that he was a star, he really hadn't done anything in recent years, except for an appearance on Larry King Live in 2001, a documentary last year, and the movie City Hall 10 years ago. But he was in everything in the 60s and 70s. His many roles include The Name of the Game (a private eye show I really liked when I was a kid), Matt Helm (the series, not the Dean Martin flicks), Search (another show I loved as a kid), Finder of Lost Loves, as well the movies The Long Hot Summer, Death Wish II, The Drowning Pool, Earth II, Assault on a Queen, A Hatful of Rain, and A Face in the Crowd.

Franciosa died yesterday after suffering a massive stroke.     

Actress Shelley Winters, whose long career ranged from sexpot showgirl, to serious dramatic actress, to playing Roseanne's outspoken, poker-playing grandmother on Roseanne in the 1990s, passed away today at the age of 85 of heart failure. Winters had been hospitalized in October after a heart attack.  Winters won Oscars in 1959 for The Diary of Anne Frank and again in 1965 for A Patch of Blue, in which she played a hateful mother who tries to end her blind daughter's friendship with a black man, played by Sidney Poitier. Winters, a serioius actress who once said "it takes twenty years to become an actor", was a devotee of The Actors Studio.

I really loved Winters in her recurring role on Roseanne, which is still one of my favorite television shows ever. Winters and Roseanne Barr had such similar delivery styles, she was completely believable as Roseanne's grandmother. What really made Winters stand out, though, was her willingness to continually reinvent herself. She began her career as a voluptous sex kitten, but later in life when she gained weight she became the butt of many comedians' jokes.