Last week's deaths of note: Master of horror genre; wholesome Disney star

• It's hard enough to redefine a genre once in a career, but horror virtuoso Wes Craven managed to do it twice.

The prolific writer-director, who died at age 76, ushered in two distinct eras of suburban slashers, first in the 1980s with his iconic "Nightmare on Elm Street" and its indelible, razor-fingered villain Freddy Krueger. He did it again in the 1990s with the self-referential "Scream."

Both reintroduced the fringe genre to mainstream audiences and spawned successful franchises.

Perhaps it was his perfectly askew interpretation of the medium that resonated with his nail-biting audiences.

"Horror films don't create fear," Craven said. "They release it."

Robert Englund, the actor who brought Freddy Krueger to life, wrote on Twitter that Craven was a "rare species ... brilliant, kind, gentle and very funny man. It's a sad day on Elm St and everywhere."

"Wes will forever be remembered for keeping generations of moviegoers on the edges of their seats, defining and redefining the horror genre with each passing decade," said Directors Guild of America President Paris Barclay.

Craven didn't solely deal in terror. He also directed the 1999 drama "Music of the Heart," which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination. But his name and his legacy will always be synonymous with horror.

"He was a consummate filmmaker and his body of work will live on forever," said Weinstein Co. co-chairman Bob Weinstein, whose Dimension Films produced "Scream."

"He was truly an old school director," Craven's genre contemporary John Carpenter said on Twitter. "Wes was a great friend, fine director and good man."

Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven was born in Cleveland on Aug. 2, 1939, to a strict Baptist family. He earned a master's degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins University and briefly taught as a college professor in Pennsylvania and New York. He was a graduate of Wheaton College. His start in movies was in pornography, where he worked under pseudonyms.

Craven's feature debut under his own name was 1972's "The Last House on the Left," a horror film inspired by Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring," about teenage girls abducted and taken into the woods. Made for just $87,000, the film, though graphic enough to be censored in many countries, was a hit. Roger Ebert said it was "about four times as good as you'd expect."

"Nightmare on Elm Street," however, catapulted Craven to far greater renown in 1984. The Ohio-set film is about teenagers, including a then unknown Johnny Depp, who are stalked in their dreams. Craven wrote and directed, starting a franchise that has carried on, most recently with a 2010 remake.

• Dean Jones, whose boyish good looks and all-American manner made him Disney's favorite young actor for such lighthearted films as "That Darn Cat!" and "The Love Bug," has died of complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 84.

Jones' long association with The Walt Disney Co. began after he received an unexpected call from Walt Disney himself, who praised his work on the TV show "Ensign O'Toole," noting it had "some good closing sequences." Jones, himself a former Navy man, played the title role in the 1962 sitcom.

Jones puzzled over Disney's remark until it occurred to him that "Ensign O'Toole" preceded Disney's own Sunday night show on NBC, and he realized Disney probably only watched each episode's ending.

Two years later, Jones heard from Disney again, calling this time to offer him a role in "That Darn Cat!" opposite ingénue Hayley Mills. His FBI agent Zeke Kelso follows a crime-solving cat that leads him to a pair of bank robbers.

Released in 1965, it would the first of 10 Disney films Jones would make, most of them in the supernatural vein.

"I see something in them that is pure form. Just entertainment. No preaching," he told the Los Angeles Times. "We're always looking for social significance but maybe people just like to be entertained."

"The Love Bug" (1969) was the most successful of the genre, with Jones playing a struggling race-driver who acquires a Volkswagen that wins races for him. The Bug, named Herbie, has hidden human traits, and when it feels unappreciated it disappears. Jones must rescue Herbie from the hands of his nefarious rival and issue the car an apology before it wins the big race for him.

After "The Love Bug," Jones returned to the stage, winning the lead role of Robert in "Company," Stephen Sondheim's now-classic musical about marital angst, Manhattan-style. He withdrew from the 1970 production after a short time, citing family problems, but he is heard on the Grammy-winning Broadway cast album.

Over the course of his career, he'd appear in 46 films and five Broadway shows. In 1995, Jones was honored by his longtime employers with a spot in the Disney Legends Hall of Fame.

• There was the blind man who had the disastrous experience of regaining his sight. The surgeon who developed a sudden passion for music after being struck by lightning. And most famously, the man who mistook his wife for a hat.

Those stories and many more, taking the reader to the distant ranges of human experience, came from the pen of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Sacks, 82, died at his home in New York City.

As a practicing neurologist, Sacks looked at some of his patients with a writer's eye and found publishing gold.

In his best-selling 1985 book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," he described a man who really did mistake his wife's face for his hat while visiting Sacks' office, because his brain had difficulty interpreting what he saw. Another story in the book featured twins with autism who had trouble with ordinary math but who could perform other amazing calculations.

Discover magazine ranked it among the 25 greatest science books of all time in 2006, declaring, "Legions of neuroscientists now probing the mysteries of the human brain cite this book as their greatest inspiration."

Sacks' 1973 book, "Awakenings," about hospital patients who'd spent decades in a kind of frozen state until Sacks tried a new treatment, led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks was portrayed by Robin Williams. It was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Still another book, "An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales," published in 1995, described cases like a painter who lost color vision in a car accident but found new creative power in black-and-white, and a 50-year-old man who suddenly regained sight after nearly a lifetime of blindness. The experience was a disaster; the man's brain could not make sense of the visual world. It perceived the human face as a shifting mass of meaningless colors and textures.

After a full and rich life as a blind person, he became "a very disabled and miserable partially sighted man," Sacks recalled later. "When he went blind again, he was rather glad of it."

Among his other books were "The Island of the Colorblind" (1997) about a society where congenital colorblindness was common, "Seeing Voices" (1989) about the world of deaf culture, and "Hallucinations" (2012), in which Sacks discussed his own hallucinations as well as those of some patients.

• Ruth Newman was just a child living on an outlying ranch when the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck, but her memory of that day never faded, her daughter said.

Newman was the oldest remaining survivor of the earthquake before her death earlier this summer. She was 113.

Newman was 4 years old when the quake struck, shaking her home on a Healdsburg, California, ranch about 70 miles north of San Francisco the early morning of April 18, 1906.

Her death leaves only one known earthquake survivor still living. William Del Monte, 109, was 3 months old when the earthquake hit, said Lee Houskeeper, an organizer of the quake's commemoration events.

• Tom Scott, a two-time Pro Bowl linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles, has died, team officials said Tuesday. He was 84.

A Pro Bowl selection in 1957 and 1958, Scott played 12 years in the NFL. He played for the Eagles from 1953-1958 and the New York Giants from 1959-1964. He played on Giants teams that reached NFL title games in 1961, 1962 and 1963.

• German actress Barbara Brecht-Schall, the daughter and main heir of playwright Bertolt Brecht, has died. She was 84.

Brecht-Schall was an actress with the Berliner Ensemble theater founded by her father from 1951 to 1972. She also was the administrator of his estate.

• A colorful and complex figure in Maryland politics, Marvin Mandel was seen by some as an innovator who reorganized state government to be more efficient. For others, he was forever stained by his conviction for selling the powers of office.

Mandel died afternoon after spending two days with family celebrating his stepson's 50th birthday. He was 95.

Mandel, a Democrat who spent 19 months in federal prison until President Ronald Reagan commuted the sentence to time served in 1981, steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and insisted he was vindicated when his conviction was overturned.

• Celebrated Romanian baritone Dan Iordachescu, who sang at Milan's La Scala and the Vienna State Opera during a half-century career, has died at 85, the Bucharest Opera said Monday.

• Nelson Shanks, a painter renowned for his portraits of prominent figures ranging from presidents to a pope to royalty, has died. He was 77.

Shanks painted well-known subjects such as Princess Diana, Pope John Paul II, presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and a group portrait of the first four women to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was called "the most talented contemporary traditional portraitist" by D. Dodge Thompson, chief of exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The artist and his Clinton portrait made waves earlier this year when he told the Philadelphia Daily News that he included a subtle reference to Monica Lewinsky in the work. He said a shadow beside Clinton is a literal reference to Lewinsky's infamous blue dress and a symbolic nod to the shadow the affair cast on his presidency.

• Bart Cummings, one of Australia's most successful racehorse trainers who won the Melbourne Cup a record 12 times, has died at the age of 87.

He won his first Melbourne Cup with Light Fingers in 1965 and his last with Viewed in 2008. In 1965, 1966, 1974, 1975 and 1991, Cummings trained both the first- and second-place horses in Australia's richest and most prestigious race.

• Jim Young, a member of the only Santa Clara University basketball team to reach the Final Four in 1952, has died. He was 82.