Notable deaths last week

• Even as the Chicago Cubs lost one game after another, Ernie Banks never lost hope.

That was the charm of "Mr. Cub."

Banks, the Hall of Fame slugger and two-time MVP who always maintained his boundless enthusiasm for baseball despite decades of playing on miserable teams, has died at 83.

Banks hit 512 home runs during his 19-year career and was fond of saying, "It's a great day for baseball. Let's play two." In fact, that sunny finish to his famous catchphrase adorns his statue outside Wrigley Field.

"Words cannot express how important Ernie Banks will always be to the Chicago Cubs, the city of Chicago and Major League Baseball. He was one of the greatest players of all time," Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts said in a statement. "He was a pioneer in the major leagues. And more importantly, he was the warmest and most sincere person I've ever known."

Banks was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues when the Cubs discovered him in 1953, and purchased his contract for $10,000. He made his major league debut at shortstop on Sept. 17 that year, and three days later hit his first home run.

Banks' best season came in 1958, when he hit .313 with 47 homers and 129 RBIs. Though the Cubs went 72-82 and finished sixth in the National League, Banks edged Willie Mays and Hank Aaron for his first MVP award. He was the first player from a losing team to win the NL MVP.

Banks won the MVP again in 1959, becoming the first NL player to win it in consecutive years, even though the Cubs had another dismal year. Banks batted .304 with 45 homers and a league-leading 143 RBIs.

He led the NL in homers again in 1960 with 41, his fourth straight season with 40 or more. His 248 homers from 1955-60 were the most in the majors, topping even Aaron and Mays.

Banks retired after the 1971 season. He owned most of the Cubs' career slugging records, some of which still stand today.

• His changes looked minute to the outside world. But in a kingdom where ultra-conservative Muslim clerics long have held a lock on all aspects of society, King Abdullah's incremental reforms echoed mightily.

When Abdullah took the unprecedented step of opening a new university where men and women could mix in classrooms, part of his gradual campaign to modernize Saudi Arabia, grumbling arose among the hard-liners who form the bedrock of the powerful religious establishment. One sheikh dared to openly say that the mingling of genders at the king's university was "a great sin and a great evil."

Abdullah sent a tough signal: He fired the critic from the state-run body of clerics who set the rules for Saudi life.

Abdullah, who died at the age of 90 after nearly two decades in power, acted at times with unusual forcefulness for a Saudi monarch. At home, the results were reforms, including advancements for women, that were startling for the kingdom at least and a heavy crackdown against al-Qaida militants. Abroad, his methods translated into a powerful assertion of Saudi Arabia's influence around the Middle East.

Backed by the kingdom's top ally, the United States, the king was aggressive in trying to put up a bulwark against the spreading power of Saudi Arabia's top rival, mainly Shiite Iran, thus shaping the Arab world along new lines an anti-Iran camp and a pro-Iran camp.

• Toller Cranston, a bronze medalist at the 1974 world championships and 1976 Olympics, died at his home in Mexico, Skate Canada said Saturday.

He was 65.

Cranston won national titles from 1971 to '76 and placed second at the 1971 North American championships in Peterborough, Ontario. He won Skate Canada International events in 1973 and '75.

He finished fourth at the 1975 world championships in Colorado Springs, and was fourth again a year later in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Cranston was 26 when he reached the Olympic podium at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

• Stan Irwin, a Las Vegas producer and manager for such celebrities as Johnny Carson, has died at age 94.

Irwin guided the careers of such celebs as Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Pearl Bailey. He was credited for bringing artists like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Paul Anka, Bobby Darin, Brenda Lee, Bob Newhart and the Beatles to perform in Las Vegas.

• Peggy Charren, the founder of Action for Children's Television who waged a decades-long fight to improve the quality of children's programming, has died. She was 86.

Charren founded Action for Children's Television in 1968 because she was so frustrated by the poor quality of programming - which she called "wall-to-wall monster cartoons" - available to her daughters.

ACT lobbied Congress, helping get the Children's Television Act passed in 1990. The act established programming standards, including advertising limits.

ACT disbanded in 1992, but Charren continued to lobby until retirement in 2005.

• The legacy of former apartheid activist and member of parliament, Jackie Selebi, who died Friday, may be overshadowed by his disgrace as national police commissioner.

The former top police official, who also was president of Interpol from 2004 to 2008, was convicted of corruption in 2010, accused of accepting bribes from a drug smuggler in exchange for tipoffs into police investigations.

During his sentencing, Judge Meyer Joffe described Selebi as "an embarrassment" and quoted the former commissioner's own words to him, in which Selebi promised to stop police corruption and "fight crime with clean hands."

• Legendary women's footwear designer Vince Camuto, who co-founded shoe company Nine West Group, has died in Connecticut at age 78.

The designer is best known for co-founding Nine West Group in 1978. He served as creative director there for two decades and was named CEO in 1993. Nine West was sold in 1999 to Jones Apparel Group.

Camuto founded the Camuto Group, which owns his namesake footwear line, in 2001. The company also licensed products for Tory Burch, BCBG and others.

• Marcus J. Borg, a prominent liberal theologian who attracted praise and controversy by helping to lead efforts to analyze Jesus as a historical figure, has died at age 72.

A popular speaker, frequent television commentator and the author or co-author of more than 20 books, Borg was among a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar that emerged in the 1980s and offered a skeptical look at the accounts of his life in the Gospels.

• Running back Tommy Mason, the first draft pick in Minnesota Vikings history, has died. He was 75.

No cause of death was given, but Mason sustained multiple concussions during his playing career, MacNeil said, and was part of the "88 Plan." That's the program created in the honor of former NFL player John Mackey, who wore No. 88 for the Baltimore Colts and died in 2011 after a long fight with dementia. The "88 Plan," part of the NFL labor agreement in 2006, was devised to provide up to $88,000 annually for care for former players with dementia or Alzheimer's.

The Vikings took Mason out of Tulane with the first overall selection in 1961. The native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, played six of his 11 NFL seasons with the Vikings and became their first All-Pro player in 1963. He also was picked for three Pro Bowls.

• Former U.S. Sen. and Kentucky Gov. Wendell Ford, an unapologetic smoker whose unfiltered chats and speeches endeared him to voters in a state that once thrived on tobacco and coal, has died at age 90.

Best known for his 25 years in the U.S. Senate and for helping to define a generation of Kentucky Democrats, Ford never identified with sweeping issues or great crusades. Instead, constituents knew he would always take time to stop by neighborhood corner stores to "buy a pack of cigarettes and chat a little."

• Frank Mazzola, the real-life tough guy who taught James Dean how to stage an authentic-looking knife fight for the classic 1955 film "Rebel Without a Cause," has died at age 79.

He was by his own account a child actor turned street-tough when he sneaked onto the set of "Rebel Without a Cause" after appearing in a small part in Dean's previous film, "East of Eden."

Mazzola so impressed director Nicholas Ray with his attitude and knowledge of youth culture that he was hired as a consultant and given a small role.

He helped scriptwriter Stewart Stern work dozens of street slang expressions into the film, and Mazzola took Dean to meet the Athenians, the Hollywood street gang he hung with.

Mazzola's group would teach the actor how to fight and walk tough. When it came time to choreograph the famous fight scene, Mazzola showed Dean how to hold a knife in one hand and wrap his jacket around the other like a real street fighter would to keep from being stabbed.

When it came to driving, however, Mazzola once said it was Dean who terrified him, taking him on a wild, reckless ride over LA's steep, winding Laurel Canyon. The actor would make one more film, "Giant," before dying in a high-speed car crash on Sept. 30, 1955.

• Former Iowa and Utah head football coach Ray Nagel has died at age 87.

The Los Angeles native played quarterback for UCLA and began his coaching career there as an assistant.

Nagel coached and played for the NFL's Chicago Cardinals in 1953 and worked as an assistant coach at Oklahoma from 1954 to 1957.

He was head coach at Utah from 1958 to 1965 and at Iowa from 1966 to 1970.

• Melvin Gordon, who helped turn the enduring popularity of the humble Tootsie Roll into a candy empire, has died. He was 95.

Gordon ran the Chicago-based confectioner for 53 years, overseeing the manufacture of 64 million Tootsie Rolls a day and other sweets including Junior Mints, Charleston Chews and Tootsie Pops.

The penny candy patriarch worked a full schedule until last month, the company said. He was the oldest CEO of a company trading on a major U.S. stock exchange, according to S&P Capital IQ.

• The Vienna State Opera says that famed Austrian tenor Waldemar Kmentt has died at age 85.

Kmentt sang 1,480 performances at Vienna' State Opera alone. Among his most popular roles were Tamino in "The Magic Flute," Jenik in "The Bartered Bride," and the title role in "The Tales of Hoffmann."

• Robert Manzon, the last surviving driver of Formula One's inaugural season in 1950, has died. He was 97.

Manzon, a member of the 24 Hours of Le Mans hall of fame, took part in the famed endurance race six times, and drove in 28 F1 races from 1950-56.

• A Romanian inventor who claimed he beat the Americans to make the world's first jetpack and went on to design and build dozens of vehicles, calling the modern-day car "a disgrace," has died aged 81.

Propelled by poverty and curiosity, Justin Capra began inventing gadgets in childhood, and graduated as an engineer. He crafted unconventional flying machines and dozens of prototypes of fuel-efficient vehicles in his lifetime, including in 2011 a single-seater car that did 470 miles to the gallon, running on a mixture of gasoline and water. He blamed "social, political, and economic reasons" for his belief that it would never be built on a mass scale.

• Reies Lopez Tijerina, a Pentecostal preacher turned activist who led a violent raid of a northern New Mexico courthouse nearly 50 years ago, died Monday. He was 88.

While admired by some students, his activism was steeped in violence and his legacy remained controversial. He also drew criticism for his treatment of women and comments largely viewed as anti-Semitic.

• Actress Anne Kirkbride, a star of British soap opera "Coronation Street" for more than 40 years, has died at the age of 60.

Set in the fictional working-class community of Weatherfield, "Coronation Street" has been chronicling its characters' lives since 1960, with an enduringly popular mix of social realism, melodrama and humor. Kirkbride's character - renowned for her oversized spectacles and romantic travails - was at the heart of some of the soap's most dramatic story lines for decades.

• Robert E. White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and strong critic of U.S. policy in the region during the Central American wars, has died from cancer at age 88, according to the Washington-based Center for International Policy where he was a senior fellow .

Appointed to the El Salvador post by former President Jimmy Carter, White was probably best known for defying the U.S. government on the Salvador killing of three nuns and a fourth lay church worker in 1980, just before President Ronald Reagan took over in Washington.

"I did what I could to oppose policies that supported dictators and closed off democratic alternatives," White wrote in 2013. "In 1981, as the ambassador to El Salvador, I refused a demand by the secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran military's responsibility for the murders of four American churchwomen. I was fired and forced out of the Foreign Service."

• Peter Wallenberg, the former head of a Swedish financial dynasty sometimes compared to the Rockefellers, has died. He was 88.

From 1982 to 1997 Wallenberg was chairman of Investor AB, the holding company through which the family controls large stakes in major Swedish companies. He also served on the board of wireless equipment maker Ericsson, appliance maker Electrolux, engineering firm Atlas Copco and other Swedish companies.

• Tony Verna, a television director and producer who invented instant replay for live sports 51 years ago, has died. He was 81.

CBS used instant replay for the first time in the Dec. 7, 1963 Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia, after Verna developed a method to cue the tape to pinpoint the play he wanted to immediately air again. He said he was looking for a way to fill those boring gaps between plays during a football telecast.

The concept was so new that when Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh scored a touchdown, announcer Lindsey Nelson had to warn viewers: "This is not live! Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!"

• Alan Hirschfield, a former entertainment executive who helped make the 1970s movies "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Taxi Driver," has died. He was 79.

SHirschfield held the post at Columbia from 1973 to 1978 and was chairman of Twentieth Century Fox from 1982 to 1986.

• A member of the New York-based rap collective that includes A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg has died.

RCA Records and Polo Grounds Music confirmed the death of A$AP Yams, whose real name is Steven Rodriguez.

RCA Records said Yams would be remembered for his "vision, humor and dedication" to the members of the A$AP Mob collective.

• Faten Hamama, a pillar of Middle Eastern cinema, has died at 83.

Hamama starred in dozens of films and worked alongside Egypt's most lauded movie director, Youssef Chahine, as well as actor Omar Sharif, to whom she was married for 10 years. She was known as the "Lady of the Arab Screen."

Her 1975 film "I Want a Solution" gave a scathing critique of divorce and marriage laws in Egypt, while 1965's "The Sin" focused on the oppression of struggling peasants.

The Egyptian Organization of Critics and Writers gave her their Star of the Century award in 2000.