Notable deaths last week

KOLKATA, India — Suchitra Sen, a legendary Indian actress known for her memorable roles in both Bengali-language and Hindi Bollywood films, has died at 82.

Sen started acting in 1952 and reigned supreme for 26 years. She won fame in Bengali films, especially co-starring with actor Uttam Kumar. The two become icons for Bengali melodramas and romantic movies through the 1960s and the 1970s. Her most memorable Bengali films included “Agnipariksha,” “Devdas” and “Saat Paake Bandha.”

Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese imperial soldier to emerge from hiding in a jungle in the Philippines and surrender, 29 years after the end of World War II, has died. He was 91.

After the initial sensation of his return home wore off, Onoda bought a ranch in Brazil. He later was head of a children’s nature school in northern Japan.

Ruth Robinson Duccini, the last of the original female Munchkins from the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz,” has died. She was 95.

With her death, only one actor who played one of the original 124 Munchkins in the movie remains alive.

She worked as a “Rosie the Riveter” in Santa Monica, Calif., during World War II, using her short stature to squeeze into hard-to-reach parts of planes. She also appeared in the spoof “Under the Rainbow” starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher.

Comic actor Dave Madden, who played the child-hating agent on the hit 1970s sitcom “The Partridge Family,” has died in Florida at age 82.

Madden was born in Ontario, Canada, and grew up in North Terre Haute, Ind. He began show business as a nightclub comic and then landed his first acting job on the short-lived sitcom “Camp Runamuck” in the mid-1960s.

During his career, he also appeared on such series as “Bewitched,” “Barney Miller,” “Happy Days,” “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island.”

Jose Sulaiman, the longtime head of the World Boxing Council who promoted renowned fighters and introduced rules to protect boxers, has died at 82.

Actor Russell Johnson, who became known to generations of TV fans as “The Professor,” the fix-it man who kept his fellow “Gilligan’s Island” castaways supplied with gadgets, has died. He was 89.

Johnson was a busy but little-known character actor when he was cast in the slapstick 1960s comedy about seven people marooned on an uncharted Pacific island.

He played high school science teacher Roy Hinkley, known to his fellow castaways as The Professor. There was seemingly nothing he couldn’t do when it came to building generators, short-wave radios and other contraptions from scraps of flotsam and jetsam he found on the island. But, as Russell would joke years later, the one thing The Professor never accomplished was figuring out how to patch the hole in the bottom of the S.S. Minnow so the group could get back to civilization.

Before “Gilligan’s Island,” Johnson had appeared in dozens of films and television shows. His TV credits included “77 Sunset Strip,” “Gunsmoke,” “Rawhide,” “Wagon Train,” “The Lone Ranger,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Ben Casey,” “Hawaiian Eye” and “Death Valley Days.”

He also appeared in more than two dozen feature films, including “MacArthur,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and cult science fiction favorites such as “It Came From Outer Space.” In the 1953 Western “Law and Order,” he took part in a gunfight with the film’s star, Ronald Reagan.

British actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, best known for playing dim-witted street-sweeper Trigger on the sitcom “Only Fools and Horses,” has died at the age of 69.

Agent Maureen Vincent said the actor had pancreatic cancer and died Wednesday at his home in London.

The son of an actor and graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Lloyd-Pack appeared in many films and TV series, including sitcom “The Vicar of Dibley,” on which he played farmer Owen Newitt.

But — like everyone in the cast — he was indelibly associated with “Only Fools and Horses.” The sitcom recounted the get-rich-quick schemes of London market trader Del Boy Trotter, played by David Jason. It ran from 1981 to 1991 and has been voted one of the nation’s favorite comedies

Anne Pfeiffer, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. managing director for real estate who led the bank’s $23 billion Strategic Property Fund until retiring in October, has died. She was 61.

She died on Jan. 12 in her Manhattan home following a 20- month battle with pancreatic cancer, according to her husband, Paul Pfeiffer.

A member of JPMorgan’s real-estate financing unit for almost 35 years, Pfeiffer managed a seven-person portfolio- management team as head of the New York-based bank’s commingled property funds, which are pension trusts catering to retirement and governmental plans. Under her leadership, the Strategic Property Fund, JPMorgan’s core real-estate portfolio, was the largest of its kind.

“Anne was a friend and mentor to so many people she worked with at the firm,” her husband said, summarizing the e-mails he had received since her death. “She was dearly loved and revered among her co-workers.”

Anne Shultz Pfeiffer was born on Aug. 10, 1952, in Aurora, Ill. Her father, Robert Shultz, was a Dartmouth College-educated businessman who had a manufacturing firm in the Chicago area. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a registered nurse.

She attended Naperville Central High School in Naperville before completing a Bachelor of Business Administration degree at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. A certified public accountant, Pfeiffer began her career at Coopers & Lybrand, where she was a supervising accountant, before the firm merged with Price Waterhouse in 1998.

Juan Gelman, a renowned Argentine poet and left-wing activist who was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Prize, has died in Mexico. He was 83.

Joe Cipiti, the grandfather of NFL coaching brothers Jim and John Harbaugh, has died. He was 98.

A teenager whose battle with a rare genetic condition that accelerates the aging process became the subject of an HBO documentary has died. Sam Berns was 17.

Berns, of Foxborough, died after complications from Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, commonly known as progeria. The Progeria Research Foundation, which was founded by his parents, announced his death.

Berns was diagnosed with progeria when he was 22 months old. His parents founded the nonprofit foundation after encountering a lack of information and research on the condition, whose victims live an average of 13 years.