Notable deaths last week

From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show "Mork & Mindy," through his standup act and numerous hit films, the short, barrel-chested Robin Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement.

Loud, fast and manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.

Williams died this week at age 63 of an apparent suicide.

He was a riot in drag in "Mrs. Doubtfire," or as a cartoon genie in "Aladdin."

He could do drama, too, winning his Academy Award as an empathetic therapist in the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting."

He won Golden Globes for "Good Morning, Vietnam," ''Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Fisher King."

Other film credits included Robert Altman's "Popeye" (a box office bomb), Paul Mazursky's "Moscow on the Hudson," Steven Spielberg's "Hook" and Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry."

"Robin was a lightning storm of comic genius and our laughter was the thunder that sustained him. He was a pal and I can't believe he's gone," Spielberg said.

More recently, he appeared in the "Night at the Museum" movies, playing President Theodore Roosevelt in the comedies in which Ben Stiller's security guard has to contend with wax figures that come alive and wreak havoc after a museum closes. The third film in the series is in post-production, according to the Internet Movie Database.

In April, Fox 2000 said it was developing a sequel to "Mrs. Doubtfire" and Williams was in talks to join the production.

Williams also made a short-lived return to TV last fall in CBS' "The Crazy Ones," a sitcom about a father-daughter ad agency team that co-starred Sarah Michelle Gellar. It was canceled after one season.

As word of his death spread, tributes from inside and outside the entertainment industry poured in.

"Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. But he was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien - but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams would remember himself as a shy kid who got some early laughs from his mother - by mimicking his grandmother. He opened up more in high school when he joined the drama club, and he was accepted into the Juilliard Academy, where he had several classes in which he and Christopher Reeve were the only students and John Houseman was the teacher.

Encouraged by Houseman to pursue comedy, Williams identified with the wildest and angriest of performers: Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin. Their acts were not warm and lovable. They were just being themselves.

"You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear," he said in 1989. "Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it's going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you've laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That's what I do when I do my act."

Lauren Bacall was a movie star from almost her first moment on the silver screen.

A fashion model and bit-part New York actress before moving to Hollywood at 19, Bacall achieved immediate fame in 1944 with one scene in her first film, "To Have and Have Not." Leaving Humphrey Bogart's hotel room, Bacall - a lanky figure with flowing blond hair and a stunning face - murmured:

"You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

With that cool, sultry come-on, not only was a star born, but the beginning of a legend, her title burnished over the years with pivotal roles, signature New York wit, and a marriage to Bogart that accounted for one of the most famous Hollywood couples of all time.

Bacall died Tuesday at the age of 89 in New York, according to the managing partner of the Humphrey Bogart Estate, Robbert J.F. de Klerk.

The Academy-Award nominated actress received two Tonys, an honorary Oscar and scores of film and TV roles. But, to her occasional frustration, she was remembered for her years with Bogart and treated more as a star by the film industry than as an actress. Bacall would outlive her husband by more than 50 years, but never outlive their iconic status.

They were "Bogie and Bacall" - the hard-boiled couple who could fight and make up with the best of them. Unlike Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall were not a story of opposites attracting but of kindred, smoldering spirits. She was less than half Bogart's age, yet as wise, and as jaded as he was. They starred in movies like "Key Largo" and "Dark Passage" together, threw all-night parties, palled around with Frank Sinatra and others and formed a gang of California carousers known as the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, which Sinatra would resurrect after Bogart's death.

She appeared in movies for more than a half-century, but none brought her the attention of her early pictures.

Peter Scholl-Latour, whose reporting from far-flung places made him one of post-war Germany's most famous foreign correspondents, has died at 90.

Jay Adams, the colorful rebel who helped transform skateboarding from a simple street pastime into one of the world's most spectacular sports with hair-raising stunts and an outsized personality to match, has died at age 53.

Adams died of a heart attack Thursday during a surfing vacation in Mexico with his wife and friends, his manager, Susan Ferris said Friday.

With his flowing, sun-bleached hair, explosive skating style and ebullient personality, Adams became one of the sport's most iconic figures during the years it moved from empty backyard swimming pools to international competition.

"He was like the original viral spore that created skateboarding," fellow skateboarder and documentary filmmaker Stacy Peralta said. "He was it."

James Schiro, who led Zurich Financial Services AG through the credit crisis and became Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s lead independent director, has died. He was 68.

George Hansen, a former Idaho Republican congressman, has died of natural causes at a medical center in Pocatello, Cornelison Funeral Home said. He was 83.

Known for his colorful antics as well as his time in federal prison, Hansen represented Idaho's 2nd Congressional District for a total of seven terms in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

A decorated retired Marine whose career as a sniper was derailed by a video that showed him urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters has died, his attorney said Friday.

Cpl. Robert Richards, 28, was found dead Wednesday by his wife at their Jacksonville home, Attorney Guy Womack said. Neither foul play nor suicide is suspected.

The death was most likely from Richards changing medications he took because of injuries he suffered in a roadside bomb during one of his three tours in Afghanistan, Womack said.

Gordy MacKenzie, the longtime minor league manager and coach and scout who had a short stint in the majors as a catcher with the Kansas City Athletics, has died. He was 77.

Emigdio Vasquez, whose bold use of color, exacting brush skills and uncanny ability to capture everyday people in dramatic moments made him one of the most influential pioneers of the Chicano art movement, has died in California. He was 75.

Incredibly prodigious, Vasquez created more than 400 paintings and nearly two dozen murals. Many of the latter dot buildings throughout Orange County, where he lived most of his life.

Arguably his most famous work, "Legacy of Cesar Chavez," graces the lobby of the computer center at Santa Ana College, where Vasquez once studied art and later taught the subject. It shows the labor leader surrounded by everyday people at a United Farm Workers event.

Simone Camilli was a consummate storyteller - a passionate, talented newsman with an eye for detail and the ability to convey events with powerful video images that touched people around the world.

As an Associated Press video journalist, he covered popes in the serene splendor of the Vatican and the horrific violence on battlefields from the former Soviet republic of Georgia to the Middle East.

But he could also capture the simple joy of a smiling child.

Camilli once said a favorite story of his was about a group of clowns performing for young Syrian refugees, bringing moments of happiness to the lives of the boys and girls who fled the civil war.

The 35-year-old newsman was killed Wednesday in the Gaza Strip when leftover ordnance believed to have been dropped in an Israeli airstrike blew up - the first foreign journalist to die while covering the Gaza conflict that began last month.

Also killed was freelance Palestinian translator, Ali Shehda Abu Afash, and four Gaza police engineers. Four people, including AP photographer Hatem Moussa, were badly injured.

"He was a very good cameraman and editor and a lot of his best work was not from the battlefield. He was passionately interested in art and music, and it was in these areas that he turned in some of his best work," said Chris Slaney, former senior producer in Jerusalem.

Charles Keating, a British-born Shakespearean actor who was amused by the fame that came with being an American soap opera star on "Another World," has died, his son, Sean Keating, said. He was 72.

Keating, who in the 1980s was on the daytime serials "All My Children" and "As the World Turns," won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1996 for his role as villainous Carl Hutchins on NBC's "Another World."

President Obama's great-uncle, World War II veteran Charles T. Payne, has died at 89.

Payne helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp during the war, and he later became a pioneer in library science at the University of Chicago.

Vladimir Beara, the Yugoslavian star who is considered one of soccer's greatest goalkeepers, has died. He was 85.

Raymond Berthillon, the founder of the celebrated Paris ice cream parlor that bears his name, has died at age 90.