Notable deaths last week
There is no more beautiful sound than the voices of siblings swirled together in high harmony, and when Phil and Don Everly combined their voices with songs about yearning, angst and loss, it changed the world.
Phil Everly, the youngest of the Everly Brothers who took the high notes, has died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 74.
He left a towering legacy that still inspires half a century after The Everly Brothers’ first hit. Their hit records included the then-titillating “Wake Up Little Susie” and the era-identifying “Bye Bye Love,” each featuring their twined voices with Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s lyrics that mirrored the fatalism of country music and the rocking backbeat of modern pop music.
Listen to the Everlys’ “Cathy’s Clown,” for instance, then the Fab Four’s “Please Please Me.” You’ll hear it right away. Simon & Garfunkel also were strongly influenced by the Everlys and recorded live versions of “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie.”
In all, the brothers’ career spanned five decades, although they performed separately from 1973 to 1983. In their heyday between 1957 and 1962, they had 19 top 40 hits.
Saul Zaentz, a music producer whose second career as a filmmaker brought him best-picture Academy Awards for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Amadeus” and “The English Patient,” has died. He was 92.
Zaentz died at his San Francisco apartment after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Paul Zaentz, the producer’s nephew and longtime business partner said.
Zaentz was never a prolific movie producer, but he took on classy productions, specializing in complex literary adaptations that Hollywood studios generally find too intricate to put on film.
Since moving into film at age 50 with 1972’s low-budget country-music drama “Payday,” Zaentz made just 10 movies, giving him a remarkable three-for-10 batting average on best-picture wins at the Oscars.
Among Zaentz’s other films were the 1978 animated version of “The Lord of the Rings,” which later paved the way for the blockbuster live action trilogy.
He also brought out the 1986 Harrison Ford drama “The Mosquito Coast”; 1998’s acclaimed “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which co-starred “English Patient” Oscar winner Juliette Binoche; and 1991’s “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” a critical and commercial flop despite a cast that included Kathy Bates, Tom Berenger and John Lithgow.
Alicia Rhett, an actress who played one of the sisters of Ashley Wilkes in “Gone with the Wind,” has died at 98.
Rhett was the oldest surviving cast member of the 1939 film starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
Actress Barbara Lawrence, who played Gertie Cummings in the 1955 movie “Oklahoma!”, has died. She was 83.
Her movies include “The Street with No Name,” “A Letter To Three Wives,” and the 1957 sci-fi cult classic “Kronos.”
Her TV work included episodes of “Perry Mason” and “Bonanza.”
George Goodman, a journalist, business author and award-winning television host who under the pseudonym “Adam Smith” made economics accessible to millions of people, died Friday at age 83.
Starting in the 1950s, the elder Goodman had a long, diverse and accomplished career, whether as a founder of New York Magazine, as a best-selling business author or as the personable host of “Adam Smith’s Money World.”
“Adam Smith’s Money World” was a multiple Emmy winner that aired on PBS stations from 1984-1996, with guests including Warren Buffett and then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker.
Elizabeth Jane Howard, whose saga of a wealthy English family living in the shadow of war enchanted readers a generation ahead of “Downton Abbey,” has died at age 90.
Howard’s whirlwind life saw her write 15 novels, leave three marriages, model, act, broadcast, and much more. Many of her books were critical successes, but she was best known for “The Cazalet Chronicles,” which followed the tangled lives and loves of several generations of an aristocratic household in the run-up to World War II.
Carter Camp, a onetime activist with the American Indian Movement who was a leader in the Wounded Knee occupation in South Dakota, has died in Oklahoma. He was 72.
World War II fighter pilot William Overstreet Jr., who gained fame for flying beneath the Eiffel Tower’s arches in pursuit of a German aircraft, has died. He was 92.
Overstreet’s famous flight in Nazi-occupied Paris has been credited with lifting the spirits of French Resistance troops on the ground. In a 2009 ceremony at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, the French ambassador to the United States presented Overstreet with France’s Legion of Honor.
A Roman Catholic priest who was censured by the Vatican for his ministry to gays and lesbians has died ay age 76.
The Rev. Robert Nugent, a co-founder of New Ways Ministry, had been suffering from lung cancer.
James Avery, the bulky character actor who laid down the law at home and on the job as the Honorable Philip Banks in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” has died at 68 from open-heart surgery complications.
Avery, who stood more than 6 feet tall, played the family patriarch and a wealthy attorney and judge on the popular TV comedy that launched the acting career of Will Smith as Banks’ troublemaking nephew.
Former New York Newsday and Village Voice editor Donald Forst has died. He was 81.
Renowned bluesman Tabby Thomas has died at his home in Baton Rouge, La. He was 84.
Tabby Thomas is best known for his Louisiana-style blues, a hard-driving blues influenced by the Chicago bands.
Juanita Moore, a groundbreaking actress and an Academy Award nominee for her role as Lana Turner’s black friend in the classic weeper “Imitation of Life,” has died at age 99.
Moore was only the fifth black performer to be nominated for an Oscar, receiving the nod for the glossy Douglas Sirk film that became a big hit and later gained a cult following. The 1959 tearjerker, based on a Fannie Hurst novel and a remake of a 1934 film, tells the story of a struggling white actress’ rise to stardom, her friendship with a black woman and how they team up to raise their daughters as single mothers.
Known as a master of his craft, longtime Associated Press photographer Dave Martin collapsed on the field of the Georgia Dome after taking one of his signature photos: the coach getting doused by his players.
The 59-year-old Martin suffered an apparent heart attack while working the sidelines at Texas A&M’s 52-48 win over Duke in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl.
Film, television and stage actor Joseph Ruskin has died of natural causes at the age of 89.
Ruskin garnered 124 television credits, including “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Trek,” and appeared in 25 films, namely “The Magnificent Seven,” “Prizzi’s Honor” and “Smokin’ Aces.”
His last performance was on the stage this year in the Anteus Theatre Company’s production of “The Crucible.”
Chuck DeVoe, part of a group of businessmen who founded the Indiana Pacers, has died. He was 83.
Mike O’Connor, a veteran war correspondent who became a tough advocate and counselor for threatened journalists in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the press, has died. He was 67.
Local journalists and colleagues remembered O’Connor as a man with an unparalleled grasp of the perils and complexities of working as a journalist in Mexico.
Dr. John W.V. Cordice, a surgeon who was part of the medical team that saved Martin Luther King Jr. from a nearly fatal stab wound in 1958, has died at age 95.
Benjamin Curtis, guitarist and co-founder of the popular indie-rock band School of Seven Bells, has died of cancer. He was 35.
Johnny Orr, the fist-pumping basketball coach who led Michigan to the national title game and Iowa State into national prominence, has died. He was 86.
Orr spent 29 seasons as a Division I coach. Twelve were at Michigan, where he guided the Wolverines to four NCAA tournament berths, the national title game in 1976 and 209 wins, the most in the school history.
Dr. Kenneth Edelin, a Boston physician at the center of a landmark abortion case in the 1970s, died Monday morning in Sarasota, Florida. He was 74.
Edelin made national headlines when he was convicted of manslaughter in 1975 for performing an abortion. That was two years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the procedure with its decision on Roe v. Wade.
According to NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Massachusetts Supreme Court later overturned Edelin’s guilty verdict, in a case that helped legally define what an abortion is and when human life begins.
Connie Dierking, a former University of Cincinnati star and longtime NBA player who was part of the trade that brought Wilt Chamberlain to Philadelphia, has died. He was 77.
Eero Mantyranta, a three-time Olympic cross-country skiing champion from Finland, has died at 76.
Dallas billionaire and heavyweight GOP political donor Harold Simmons, who has given tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has died. He was 82.
Andy Granatelli, the former CEO of STP motor oil company who made a mark on motorsports as a car owner, innovator and entrepreneur, has died. He was 90.
Vernon “Bud” Lyons, a lineman on Tennessee’s 1951 national championship team, has died. He was 84.
Wojciech Kilar, a Polish pianist and composer of classical music and scores for many films, including Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning “The Pianist” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” has died. He was 81.
Longtime conservative radio host Bob Grant, whose combative style became the template for broadcasters such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, has died at age 84.
Grant was born Robert Ciro Gigante in Chicago in 1929. He began his broadcasting career in the 1940s at WBBM in Chicago. He moved on to radio and television jobs in Los Angeles and was named afternoon drive time host at WABC in 1984.
Over the years, Grant, who was white, offended some listeners by referring to former New York Mayor David Dinkins, who’s black, as a “washroom attendant,” calling Clinton a “sleazebag” and suggesting women on welfare should be sterilized.