Notable deaths last week

Hal David, who along with partner Burt Bacharach penned dozens of timeless songs for movies, television and a variety of recording artists in the 1960s and beyond, has died. He was 91.

Bacharach and David wrote many top 40 hits including “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” “Close to You” and “That’s What Friends Are For.”

David and Bacharach met when both worked in the Brill Building, New York’s legendary Tin Pan Alley song factory where writers cranked out songs and attempted to sell them to music publishers. They scored their first big hit with “Magic Moments,” a million-selling record for Perry Como.

British entertainer Max Bygraves, a veteran singer and comedian known for his old-fashioned charm, has died. He was 89.

Bygraves won fame in Britain’s music halls and theaters after World War II, becoming one of the country’s best known variety performers and releasing dozens of popular records.

Lucimarian Roberts, 88, the mother of “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts, has died a day after the anchor announced she was taking a medical leave for a bone marrow transplant.

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a rare liberal within the highly conservative Catholic Church hierarchy who was nevertheless considered a papal contender in the last conclave, died Friday. He was 85.

Writer Shulamith Firestone, who published her influential “The Dialectic of Sex” at age 25 and then retreated into isolation and mental illness, has died at age 67.

“The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution” was published in 1970 during the height of the women’s liberation movement.

Firestone applied Marxist analysis to the status of women and argued that true liberation would come only when women were freed from childbearing. In Firestone’s utopian future, babies would be gestated outside the womb and raised by both sexes.

Sergei Sokolov, the Soviet defense minister fired by the Politburo after a German teenager landed his plane on Moscow’s Red Square in the 1980s, died in Moscow on Friday. He was 101

Chris Lighty, a hip-hop mogul who helped the likes of Sean “Diddy” Combs, 50 Cent and Mariah Carey attain not only hit records, but also lucrative careers outside music, was found dead in his New York City apartment in an apparent suicide. He was 44.

Steve Franken, 80, who starred in the 1960s TV series “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” and as the drunken waiter in the film “The Party,” has died.

He appeared in dozens of roles, ranging from guest appearances in TV series “Bewitched” and “Seinfeld” to film roles in “Nurse Betty” and 2009’s “Angels and Demons.” He was also a stage actor.

David F. Young, former Associated Press chief of communications in Kansas City, Chicago and Des Moines, has died. He was 71.

Malcolm W. Browne, whose reporting during the early stages of the Vietnam War won a Pulitzer Prize and whose photograph of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire became an indelible image of the intractable conflict, has died at age 81.

Browne went to Vietnam in 1961 as the Saigon bureau chief of the Associated Press and was one of the first reporters to cover the growing conflict that would ultimately claim more than 50,000 U.S. lives.

Juan Valdez, a land grant activist who fired the first shot during a 1967 New Mexico courthouse raid that grabbed international attention and helped spark the Chicano Movement, has died. He was 74.

Art Heyman, the captain of the Duke Blue Devils’ first Final Four team, has died at 71.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski says Heyman was “one of the elite players to ever wear a Blue Devil uniform.”

Heyman led Duke to a 69-14 record from 1960-63 and averaged 25 points and nearly 11 rebounds. He was the most outstanding player of the 1963 Final Four.

Veteran Indian actor A. K. Hangal, whose Bollywood career spanned nearly five decades, has died. He was 95.