_____________
A late addition. no pun intended (the problem in compiling a list starting with the most recent and working backwards:
PIERRE CARDIN
About:
Italian-born naturalised-French fashion designer known for his avant-garde style and Space Age designs. He preferred geometric shapes and motifs, often ignoring the female form. Cardin advanced into unisex fashions, sometimes experimental, and not always practical. He founded his fashion house in 1950 and introduced the "bubble dress" in 1954. He was designated a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 1991 and a United Nations FAO Goodwill Ambassador in 2009.
In a career spanning more than 60 years, Cardin drew scorn and admiration from fellow fashion designers for his brash business sense. He maintained that he built his business empire without ever asking a bank for a loan.
Cardin was the first designer to sell clothes collections in department stores in the late 1950s, and the first to enter the licensing business for perfumes, accessories and even food — now a major profit driver for many fashion houses. "It's all the same to me whether I am doing sleeves for dresses or table legs," he once said.
Hard as it may be to imagine decades later, Armani chocolates, Bulgari hotels and Gucci sunglasses are all based on Cardin's realisation that a fashion brand's glamour had endless merchandising potential. Over the years his name has been stamped on razor blades, household goods, and tacky accessories — even cheap boxer shorts. He once said it would not bother him to have his initials etched into rolls of toilet paper, and he was also the inspiration for a phallus-like perfume flask.
His detractors accused him of destroying the value of his brand and the notion of luxury in general. But he seemed largely unaffected by criticism.
"I had a sense for marketing my name," Cardin told Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in 2007. "Does money spoil one's ideas? I don't dream of money after all, but while I'm dreaming, I'm making money. "It's never been about the money."
Date of death: December 29, 2020
Age at death: 98
Cause of death: Not disclosed
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. . . and an inclusion:
Byter Tim B has drawn my attention to someone who passed away this year that I had not included in my list. Tim's email reads:
I'd like to share a link with youMorning Otto,If you remember, I mentioned Walter Williams recently in an email to you. This article came in this morning and maybe you will find it interesting.Happy New Year to you my friend…who I have never met.Tim B
Thanks Tim.
Here is the listing, a man not afraid to call it as he saw it, albeit out of step with modern PC views and standpoints . . .
WALTER WILLIAMS
About:
American economist, commentator, and academic who was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author. Known for his classical liberal and libertarian views, Williams's writings frequently appeared in Townhall, WND, and Jewish World Review.
From Wikipedia:
As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention. Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism to be the most moral, most productive system humans have ever devised.In the mid-to-late 1970s, Williams conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. His research led him to conclude the government's interventional programs are harmful. Williams was critical of state programs, including minimum wage and affirmative action laws, stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help. He published his results in his 1982 book The State Against Blacks, where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. Subsequently, Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment.Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today. He pointed to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family." Although in favor of equal access to government institutions such as court houses, city halls, and libraries, Williams opposed anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the people's right of freedom of association.Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals, and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime. Williams also made the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. Taking this argument to its conclusion, he supported legalization of selling one's own bodily organs. He argued that government prohibiting the selling of one's bodily organs is an infringement upon one's property rights.Williams praised the views of Thomas DiLorenzo, and wrote a foreword to DiLorenzo's anti-Abraham Lincoln book, The Real Lincoln. Williams maintained that the American states are entitled to secede from the union if they wish, as the Confederate states attempted to do during the Civil War, and asserted that the Union's victory in the Civil War allowed the federal government "to run amok over states' rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today."In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a "certificate of amnesty and pardon" to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks – and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry." It is still offered to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.Williams was opposed to the Federal Reserve System, arguing that central banks are dangerous.In his autobiography, Williams cited Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian. Williams praised Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal as "one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read."
Date of death: December 2, 2020
Age at death: 84
Cause of death: Williams died in his car shortly after teaching a class at George Mason University. His daughter said that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension.
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KELLY PRESTON
About:
American actress and model who appeared in more than 60 television and film productions, including Mischief (1985), Twins (1988), Jerry Maguire (1996) and For Love of the Game (1999). She was married to John Travolta, with whom she collaborated on comedy film The Experts (1989), and the biographical film Gotti (2018). She also starred in the films SpaceCamp (1986), The Cat in the Hat (2003), What a Girl Wants (2003), Sky High (2005) and Old Dogs (2009).
Date of death: July 12, 2020
Age at death: 57
Cause of death: breast cancer
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CARL REINER
Carl Reiner (right) with Dick van Dyke
About:
American actor, comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. During the early years of television comedy from 1950 to 1957, he acted on and contributed sketch material for Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, starring Sid Caesar writing alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen. Reiner teamed up with Brooks and together they released several iconic comedy albums beginning with the 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (1960). Reiner was best known as the creator, producer, writer, and actor on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1965).
Date of death: June 29, 2020
Age at death: 98
Cause of death: natural causes.
________________
NOEL KELLY
About:
Australian professional rugby league footballer and coach, who played at club, state and national levels. He was named among the country's finest footballers of the 20th century. Kelly played as a hooker, prop forward or lock for much of his top-grade career with the Western Suburbs Magpies, whom he played for in three consecutive NSWRFL grand finals from 1961 to 1963. Kelly was named at hooker of the Western Suburbs Magpies, Queensland and Australian teams of the 20th century.
For the benefit of overseas readers:
Hooker is one of the positions in a rugby league football team. Usually wearing jersey number 9, the hooker is one of the team's forwards. During scrums the hooker plays in the front row, and the position's name comes from their role of 'hooking' or 'raking' the ball back with the foot. For this reason the hooker is sometimes referred to as the rake.
A Rugby League scrum
For the benefit of local readers:
I used to watch him play when I was young. He was known as "Ned" Kelly.
Date of death: June 14, 2020
Age at death: 84
Cause of death: heart attack-induced stroke
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MAGGIE FITZGIBBON
About:
Australian actress and singer. Coming from a show-business family, she was the older sister of musician Smacka Fitzgibbon.
Fitzgibbon took her talent as a singer from Australia to Britain to become a star of West End musicals and a popular guest on television light-entertainment shows of the 1960s – but she was also memorable for two acting roles on the small screen. Starting in October 1965, as the strong, independent-minded Vivienne Cooper she was the linchpin of The Newcomers, one of the BBC’s early attempts to take on ITV’s Coronation Street and Crossroads in the soap opera stakes; and in 1970 she landed a supporting role in Manhunt, a compelling ITV thriller series set in occupied France during the second world war.
Fitzgibbon moved back to Australia in 1978 and made her final acting appearance on screen as a shopkeeper in A Place to Call Home (1987).
In 2002, she was awarded an Order of Australia medal for her community work, which included setting up a refuge for boys from broken families on her farm in Wahgunyah, Victoria.
Date of death: June 8, 2020
Age at death: 91
Cause of death: not disclosed.
________________
JERRY STILLER
About:
American comedian, actor, and author who spent many years as part of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara with his wife, Anne Meara, to whom he was married for over 60 years until her death in 2015. Stiller saw a late-career resurgence starting in 1993, playing George Costanza's father Frank on the sitcom Seinfeld, a part which earned him an Emmy nomination. The year Seinfeld went off the air, Stiller began his role as the eccentric Arthur Spooner on the CBS comedy series The King of Queens, another role which garnered him widespread acclaim. Stiller is the father of actor Ben Stiller, and the father and son appeared together in films such as Zoolander, Heavyweights, Hot Pursuit, The Heartbreak Kid, and Zoolander 2.
He may be remembered, however, as the creator (in the character of Frank Costanza in Seinfeld) of Festivus, a secular holiday celebrated on December 23 as an
alternative to the pressures and commercialism of the Christmas season. The
Festivus holiday includes:
- a Festivus dinner;
- an unadorned aluminium Festivus pole;
- practices such as the "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength"; and
- the labelling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles.”
The holiday’s phrase is “Festivus for the rest of us.”
Festivus holiday includes:
- a Festivus dinner;
- an unadorned aluminium Festivus pole;
- practices such as the "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength"; and
- the labelling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles.”
The holiday’s phrase is “Festivus for the rest of us.”
Date of death: May 11, 2020
Age at death: 92
Cause of death: natural causes
________________
LITTLE RICHARD
About:
Richard Wayne Penniman, known as Little Richard, was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Nicknamed "The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock and Roll", Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding back beat and raspy shouted vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll. Richard's innovative emotive vocalizations and uptempo rhythmic music also played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. He influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip hop; his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations.
"Tutti Frutti" (1955), one of Richard's signature songs, became an instant hit, crossing over to the pop charts in both the United States and overseas in the United Kingdom. His next hit single, "Long Tall Sally" (1956), hit No. 1 on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart, followed by a rapid succession of fifteen more in less than three years. His performances during this period resulted in integration between White Americans and African Americans in his audience. In 1962, during a five-year period in which Richard abandoned rock and roll music for born again Christianity, concert promoter Don Arden persuaded him to tour Europe. During this time, Arden had the Beatles open for Richard on some tour dates, capitalizing on his popularity. Richard advised the Beatles on how to perform his songs and taught the band's member Paul McCartney his distinctive vocalizations.
Richard is cited as one of the first crossover black artists, reaching audiences of all races. His music and concerts broke the color line, drawing blacks and whites together despite attempts to sustain segregation. Many of his contemporaries, including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, recorded covers of his works. Taken by his music and style, and personally covering four of Richard's songs on his own two breakthrough albums in 1956, Presley told Richard in 1969 that his music was an inspiration to him and that he was "the greatest".
Date of death: May 9, 2020
Age at death: 87
Cause of death: a cause related to bone cancer
________________
BRIAN DENNEHY
With Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood, in which he played Sheriff Will Teazle
About:
American actor of stage, television, and film. He won two Tony Awards, an Olivier Award, and a Golden Globe, and received six Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Dennehy had roles in over 180 films and in many television and stage productions. His film roles included First Blood (1982), Gorky Park (1983), Silverado (1985), Cocoon (1985), F/X (1986), Presumed Innocent (1990), Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Knight of Cups (2015). Dennehy won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film for his role as Willy Loman in the television film Death of a Salesman (2000).
According to Variety, Dennehy was "perhaps the foremost living interpreter" of playwright Eugene O'Neill’s works on stage and screen. He had a decades long relationship with Chicago's Goodman Theatre where much of his O'Neill work originated. He also regularly played Canada's Stratford Festival, especially in works by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. He once gave credit for his award-winning performances to the play's authors: "When you walk with giants, you learn how to take bigger steps." Dennehy was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010.
Date of death: April 15, 2020
Age at death: 81
Cause of death: cardiac arrest due to sepsis
________________
JAMES DRURY
About:
American actor best known for having played the title role in the 90-minute weekly Western television series The Virginian, which was broadcast on NBC from 1962 to 1971.
Date of death: April 6, 2020
Age at death: 85
Cause of death: natural causes
________________
KENNY ROGERS
With Dolly Parton.
About:
American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, record producer, and entrepreneur. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres, and topped the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold more than 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His fame and career spanned multiple genres: jazz, folk, pop, rock, and country. He remade his career, and was one of the most successful cross-over artists of all time.
Rogers had acting roles in movies and television shows, including the title roles in Kenny Rogers as The Gambler and the MacShayne series for The NBC Mystery Movie, and the 1982 feature film Six Pack. He was a co-founder of the restaurant chain Kenny Rogers Roasters in collaboration with former Kentucky Fried Chicken CEO John Y. Brown Jr. Although the stores closed in the United States, they are still a fixture in Asia.
Date of death: March 20, 2020
Age at death: 81
Cause of death: natural causes
________________
STUART WHITMAN
Whitman in The Longest Day (962)
About:
American actor, known for his lengthy career in film and television in a large variety of genres. Some of these credits include Highway Patrol (1955–1957) The Mark for which he was nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards, The Comancheros (1961), Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Night of the Lepus (1972), Cimarron Strip (1967), and Superboy (1988–1992).
Date of death: march 16, 2020
Age at death: 92
Cause of death: skin cancer
________________
MAX VON SYDOW
About:
Swedish actor who had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages. He became a French citizen in 2002, and lived in France for the last decades of his life.
Von Sydow was best known for playing the 14th-century knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), which features iconic scenes of his character challenging Death to a game of chess. He made his American film debut as Jesus Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and went on to star in films such as The Exorcist (1973), Flash Gordon (1980), Dune (1984), Minority Report (2002), Shutter Island (2010), Robin Hood (2010), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He also had a supporting role in HBO's Game of Thrones as the Three-eyed Raven, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Date of death: March 8, 2020
Age at death: 90
Cause of death: no cause given.
________________
ROBERT CONRAD
About:
American film and television actor, singer, and stuntman. He is best known for his role in the 1965–1969 television series The Wild Wild West, playing the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West. He portrayed World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep (later syndicated as Black Sheep Squadron). In addition to acting, he was a singer and recorded several pop/rock songs in the late 1950s and early 1960s as Bob Conrad. He hosted a weekly two-hour national radio show (The PM Show with Robert Conrad) on CRN Digital Talk Radio beginning in 2008.
Date of death: February 8, 2020
Age at death: 84
Cause of death: heart failure
___________
KIRK DOUGLAS
About:
American actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).
Douglas became an international star through positive reception for his leading role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. His other early films include Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole opposite Jan Sterling (1951), and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama. He received his second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and his third for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), which also landed him a second Golden Globe nomination.
In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960). In those two films, he collaborated with the then-relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick, taking lead roles in both films. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit.[2] He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), considered a classic, and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas, who turned it into an Oscar-winning film.
As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas received three Academy Award nominations, an Academy Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an author, he wrote ten novels and memoirs. He is No. 17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema, the highest-ranked living person on the list until his death. After barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lived with his second wife (of 66 years), Anne Buydens, a producer, until his death on February 5, 2020, aged 103. A centenarian, he was one of the last surviving stars of the film industry's Golden Age.
Date of death: February 5, 2020
Age at death: 10
Cause of death: kept private
________________
KOBE BRYANT
About:
American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Bryant won five NBA championships, and was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth on the league's all-time regular season scoring and all-time postseason scoring lists.
Bryant is the all-time leading scorer in Lakers franchise history. He was also the first guard in NBA history to play at least 20 seasons. His 18 All-Star designations are the second most all time, while it is the record for most consecutive appearances as a starter. Bryant's four All-Star Game MVP Awards are tied with Bob Pettit for the most in NBA history. He gave himself the nickname "Black Mamba" in the mid-2000s, and the epithet became widely adopted by the general public. At the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics, he won two gold medals as a member of the U.S. national team. In 2018, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for his 2017 film Dear Basketball.
Bryant died at age 41, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others, in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. A number of tributes and memorials were subsequently issued, including renaming the All-Star Game MVP Award in his honour.
Date of death: January 26, 2020
Age at death: 41
Cause of death: plane crash 6y5y25ertg4515
________________
TONY BILSON
About:
Celebrated chef and restaurateur often referred to as the "godfather of Australian cuisine". In 1972, he moved to Sydney with partner Gay Morris (later Gay Bilson) and the couple opened Tony's Bon Gout on Elizabeth Street. The restaurant introduced diners to the intricacies of French gastronomy. "Many food lovers maintain that modern Sydney dining was born in Tony's Bon Gout," said The Sydney Morning Herald chief restaurant critic Terry Durack. "When Gough Whitlam came to power, it became a sort of unofficial Labor Party clubhouse - they even left Chinatown for it." At the height of its popularity, Bon Gout was booked out six months in advance with a $9.50 fixed-price meal that might have included duck's neck "en brioche", live local lobster and lemon souffle.
In 1976 they turned the homely Berowra Waters Inn teahouse into a fine-dining temple. "Berowra Waters Inn will stay in my mind forever as the epitome of Australian dining," said Good Food columnist and former Good Food Guide editor Jill Dupleix. "Tony and Gay were determined to throw out the rule book and create a new Australian way of doing things. By commissioning Glenn Murcutt to do the building, they said, 'This is Australia, this is our nation. We are the bright young things; let's speak food in a new Australian vernacular.' "
Speaking to the Herald in 2009, Bilson said he regarded food and wine as essential elements of a nation's culture. "Cooking at the top level is not an art; it is art."
By the time Berowra Waters Inn was awarded three hats in the first Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide in 1984, Bilson had separated from Gay and left the Hawkesbury to focus on other venues. In partnership with property developer Leon Fink, Bilson transformed an old Taylor Square funeral parlour into Kinselas, a theatre, bar and brasserie that became the centre of Sydney's nightlife in 1982.
Date of death: January 23, 2020
Age at death: 76
Cause of death: complicated set of many illnesses
________________
TOM LONG
About:
Australian film and television actor. Long played court official and avid surfer Angus in the late 1990s TV series SeaChange and Brenden Abbott in the 2003 Australian TV movie The Postcard Bandit.
Date of death: January 4, 20202
Age at death: 51
Cause of death: Encephalitis
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