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+--- Thread: Death pool 2007 (/showthread.php?tid=12494)
Re: Death pool 2007 - The Prodigal Son - 08-13-2007
Don't know if she's famous enough for your list, but I figured I would help out
NEW YORK (AP) -- Brooke Astor, the civic leader, philanthropist and high society fixture who gave away nearly $200 million to support New York City's great cultural institutions and a host of humbler projects, died Monday. She was 105.
Astor, who recently was the center of a highly publicized legal dispute over her care, died of pneumonia at Holly Hill, her Westchester County estate in Briarcliff Manor, family lawyer Kenneth Warner said.
"Brooke was truly a remarkable woman,'' longtime family friend David Rockefeller said. "She was the leading lady of New York in every sense of the word.''
"I have lost my beloved mother, and New York and the world have lost a great lady," said Astor's son Anthony D. Marshall in a statement Monday. "She was one-of-a-kind in every way. Her tombstone will be inscribed with the words she specifically asked for: 'I had a wonderful life.' I am thankful that she did. I will miss her deeply and always."
Although a legendary figure in New York City and feted with a famous gala on her 100th birthday in March 2002, Astor was mostly interested in putting the fortune that husband Vincent Astor left to use helping others.
Her efforts won her a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1998.
"Money is like manure, it should be spread around,'' was her oft-quoted motto. There has been a lot to spread in the family ever since Vincent Astor's great-great-grandfather, John Jacob Astor, made a fortune in fur trading and New York real estate.
Brooke Astor gave millions to what she called the city's "crown jewels'' -- among them the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Natural History, Central Park and the Bronx Zoo.
She also funded scores of smaller projects: Harlem's Apollo Theater; a new boiler for a youth center; beachside bungalow preservation; a church pipe organ; furniture for homeless families moving in to apartments.
It was a very personal sort of philanthropy. "People just can't come up here and say, 'We're doing something marvelous, send a check.' We say, 'Oh, yes, we'll come and see it,''' she said.
Papers filed in July 2006 alleged her final years were marred by neglect, and in a settlement three months later her son, Anthony Marshall, was replaced as her legal guardian with Annette de la Renta, wife of the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
Marshall's son Philip Marshall, a professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, had alleged that his father was looting his grandmother's estate and allowing her to live in filthy conditions at her Park Avenue duplex. Anthony Marshall, a former diplomat and sometime Broadway producer who won Tony awards in 2003 and 2004, denied any wrongdoing.
In December, a Manhattan judge ruled that claims "regarding Mrs. Astor's medical and dental care, and the other allegations of intentional elder abuse'' by Anthony Marshall were not substantiated.
Astor was born Brooke Russell in March 30, 1902, when Theodore Roosevelt was president, the U.S. had only 45 states and the Wright brothers had yet to make their first flight.
She was the only child of John H. Russell, a career Marine officer who rose to become commandant of the Corps from 1934 to 1936. She was fluent in Chinese after having spending her childhood in China and many other places, including the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Hawaii and Panama.
"I grew up feeling that the most important thing in life was to have good manners and to enhance the lives of others,'' Brooke Astor said in a 1992 interview with The Associated Press.
At age 16, she was pushed by her mother into marriage with J. Dryden Kuser, whom she had met at a Princeton prom. The marriage ended in divorce 10 years later.
Her second marriage was to stockbroker Charles "Buddie'' Marshall. Her son Anthony, from her marriage to Kuser, took Marshall's name. During her marriage to Marshall, Astor wrote articles for various magazines and joined the staff of House & Garden, where she was feature editor for several years.
Marshall died in 1952. A year later, she married Vincent Astor, the eldest son of John Jacob Astor 4th, who died in the sinking of the Titanic.
Vincent Astor, who had no children, died in 1959. He left his widow $2 million plus the interest off $60 million and endowed the Vincent Astor Foundation with an additional $67 million. It gave away approximately $200 million by the time it closed at the end of 1997.
"Vincent was a very suspicious man,'' Brooke Astor recalled. "The fact that he had total confidence in me to run the foundation made me want to vindicate him, show him -- wherever he is -- that I could do a good job.''
She decided that since the money was made in New York it should largely be spent there. She also persuaded the trustees to give away principal as well as interest so most of the money would be spent in her lifetime.
"I'm afraid that, to old John Jacob Astor, spending principal would seem like dancing naked in the streets,'' she acknowledged.
Hers was a hands-on approach, personally going over applications and then going out to meet the people who ran the programs.
"Even in the worst drug areas, I don't hesitate to go right in and see people,'' she once said.
Astor Foundation director Linda Gillies, several decades younger than Astor, once said Astor "wears us out.''
"Often,'' Gillies said, "we can't keep up with her.''
Astor wrote four books: "Patchwork Child,'' a 1962 autobiography; "The Bluebird is at Home,'' 1965, a novel; the autobiographical "Footprints,'' 1980; and "The Last Blossom on the Plum Tree,'' 1986, a period novel.
Re: Death pool 2007 - GonzoStyle - 08-14-2007
no one wanted the -5 points
Re: Death pool 2007 - Gooch - 08-14-2007
Scooter just died.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2974097">http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2974097</a><!-- m -->
Re: Death pool 2007 - drusilla - 08-14-2007
it's been a rough summer for the famous elderly
Re: - The Jays - 08-15-2007
bloody anus
-ed asner
-ike turner
-dr. jack ramsay
-kevin mitchell
-joan collins
-ernie harwell
-elaine stritch
-scott hall
-jack lalanne
-louie anderson
dig
-lee iacocca
-clint eastwood
-iron sheik
-howard zinn
-don imus
-richard dawson
-michael j fox
-joe frazier
-robert redford
-bb king
drusilla
-ronny turiaf
-ozzy osbourne
-pat cooper
-tony curtis
-leona helmsley
-eddie van halen
-angela lansbury
-shelly burman
-paris hilton
-steve-o
faceman
-lindsey lohan
-lady bird johnson
-robert downey jr.
-phil rizzuto
-kim jong ll
-donald rumsfeld
-wee man
-bobby brown
-danny bonaduce
Correct picks: 2
Points (100 minus): 6 + 11 = 17
gonzo
-fidel castro
-kirk douglas
-abe vigoda
-jerry lewis
-billy graham
-elizabeth taylor
-stephen hawking
-nancy reagan
-mickey rooney
-evel knievel
gooch
-ariel sharon
-gene wilder
-larry flynt
-albert hoffmann
-dick cheney
-ernest borgnine
-j. d. salinger
-tammy faye bakker
-walter cronkite
-zsa zsa gabor
Correct picks: 1
Points (100 minus): 35
hedcold
-john madden
-regis philbin
-woody allen
-lou holtz
-peter gammons
-prince henry [harry of wales]
-sophia loren
-pope benedict xvi
-julie andrews
-jimmy carter
hoon
-jan michael vincent
-paul newman
-margret thatcher
-loretta lynn
-mark felt [deep throat]
-don shula
-chuck berry
-nick nolte
-john goodman
-jerry lee lewis
jays
-karl malden
-patrick magoohan
-kurt angle
-abigail van buren
-rue mcClanahan
-bobby thomson
-jane wyman
-frankie valli
-roger ebert
-artie lange
keyser
-nicole richie
-oj simpson
-bea arthur
-henry kissinger
-shiloh nouvel jolie-pitt
-christopher lloyd
-verne troyer
-queen elizabeth II
-gary busey
-justice john paul stevens
lush
-shirley temple black
-fergie
-barbara bush
-patrick stewart
-tommy lee jones
-anna nicole smith
-jean-luc godard
-martin landau
-mikhail gorbachev
-pele
Correct picks: 1
Points (100 minus): 61
paper boy
-bobby murcer
-mohammed ali
-chuck yeager
-andy rooney
-john glenn
-keith richards
-steven tyler
-calvin deforrest [larry bud melman]
-tom wolf
-barac obama
Correct picks: 1
Points (100 minus): 15
sleeper
-ingmar bergman
-dick clark
-terrel owens
-john wooden
-clint howard
-osama bin laden
-betty white
-jerry stiller
-george h. w. bush
-joe paterno
Correct picks: 1
Points (100 minus): 11
virgingrrl
-joan rivers
-bob barker
-charlton heston
-zelda rubenstein
-wilford brimley
-judge wapner
-estelle getty
-betty ford
-phyllis diller
-ann b. davis
Re: Death pool 2007 - lush - 08-20-2007
Helmsley, 87, dies of heart of failure
Dubbed the 'queen of mean,' hotelier served time for tax evasion
August 20, 2007
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Leona Helmsley, the hotelier who went to prison as a tax cheat and was reviled as the “queen of mean,” died today at age 87.
Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn., said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.
Already experienced in real estate before her marriage, Helmsley helped her husband run a $5-billion empire that included managing the Empire State Building.
She became a household name in 1989 when she was tried for tax evasion.
The sensational trial included testimony from disgruntled employees who said she terrorized both the menial and the executive help at her homes and hotels.
That image of Helmsley as the “queen of mean” was sealed when a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
She denied having said it, but the words followed her for the rest of her life.
Helmsley clearly enjoyed the luxury of their private fortune, flying the globe in the couple’s 100-seat jet with a bedroom suite. The couple’s residences included a nine-room penthouse with a swimming pool overlooking Central Park atop their own Park Lane Hotel; an $8-million estate in Connecticut; a condo in Palm Beach, Fla., and a mountaintop hideaway near Phoenix.
Their money supported charities, including New York-Presbyterian Hospital and its affiliated Weill Cornell Medical College, which received tens of millions of dollars, including a $25-million gift in 2006 to improve its treatment of digestive diseases.
Yet Helmsley nickel-and-dimed merchants on her personal purchases, stiffed contractors who worked on her Connecticut home and terrorized both menial and executive help at her homes and hotels, detractors say.
When her husband died in 1997 at age 87, Helmsley said in a statement: “My fairy tale is over. I lived a magical life with Harry.”
Earlier this year, Forbes magazine ranked her as the 369th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.
She was 51, with the good looks of a former model and already a successful seller of residential real estate in a hot New York market, when she married Harry Helmsley in 1972.
He was 63 and one of the richest men in America.
In 1980, he made her president of Helmsley Hotels, a subsidiary that at the time operated more than two dozen hotels in 10 states, including the Park Lane, St. Moritz and Palace in New York and the Harley Hotels. Harley was a contraction of Harry and Leona.
For the better part of a decade, a glamorous Leona Helmsley smiled out of magazine ads dressed in luxurious gowns and tiara, advertising that the Palace was the only hotel in the world “where the Queen stands guard.”
The press portrayed them as an adoring couple, with Leona calling Harry “gorgeous one” and “pussycat.” Friends and acquaintances described her as generous, charming, playful and having a good sense of humor.
But the Helmsleys’ charmed life ended in 1988 when they were hit with tax-evasion charges.
Harry’s health and memory were so poor that he was judged incompetent to stand trial. His wife, after an eight-week trial, was convicted of evading $1.2 million in federal taxes by billing Helmsley businesses for personal expenses ranging from her underwear to $3 million worth of renovations to the Dunellen Hall estate in Connecticut.
Sentenced to four years in prison, she tried to avoid jail by pleading that Harry might die without her at his side. Her doctor said that prison might kill her because of high blood pressure and other problems. (At a March 1992 hearing, the judge rejected that argument and even ordered her to surrender on April 15 — tax day.)
Helmsley served a total of 21 months and was released in January 1994. She had 150 hours added to her 750 hours of community service because employees had done some of the chores for her.
Several top executives at Helmsley companies said their firings coincided with her release. She maintained she couldn’t have fired them because she had given up her management post — as a convicted felon she was barred from running enterprises with liquor licenses, such as hotels. The State Liquor Authority said it had no evidence that she was still in charge.
In 1996, two longtime partners of Harry Helmsley’s accused his wife of scheming to loot the main corporation, Helmsley-Spear Inc. They said she was stripping away company assets to avoid paying $11.4 million owed them and to make the company worthless, because Harry Helmsley had given them an option to buy Helmsley-Spear at a bargain price upon his death.
After he died a few months later, the dispute with the partners was eventually settled and control of Helmsley-Spear was turned over to them. The settlement freed Leona Helmsley to sell off other assets.
Helmsley was born Leona Mindy Rosenthal on July 4, 1920, the daughter of a Manhattan hat maker. She left college after two years to become a model.
She married a lawyer, Leo Panzirer, whom she divorced in 1959. Their only child, Jay Panzirer, later ran a Florida-based building supplies company that did extensive business with Helmsley properties. She later was briefly married to a garment industry executive, Joe Lubin.
Her son died of a heart attack in 1982.
Re: Death pool 2007 - drusilla - 08-20-2007
ooh i got one!
Re: Death pool 2007 - The Jays - 08-23-2007
Oh yeah, Eddie Griffin died. The basketball player, tho. He drove his SUV over some railroad tracks. I don't think anyone had him.
He will be missed.
Re: Death pool 2007 - Hoon - 09-06-2007
perezhilton.com is reporting that luciano pavaratti is on his last legs. but that doesn't do anyone any good here. just sayin'.
Re: Death pool 2007 - diceisgod - 09-06-2007
As they say, the only thing better than a dying big fat dying italian cocksucker is a dead big fat dead italian cocksucker.
Re: Death pool 2007 - diceisgod - 09-06-2007
By the way I totally butchered that line up there, had to edit twice - thank tis board's such a grave yard or I'd look the fool. Anyway, I get crazy when I think of those self-aggrandizing, gesticulating, posturing dego bastards.
Re: Death pool 2007 - diceisgod - 09-06-2007
So it's done - Pavratti, dead. Better, no? I'm feelin' it.
Re: Death pool 2007 - lush - 09-10-2007
Jane Wyman, Actress, Ronald Reagan's Ex-Wife, Dies
By Kathryn Harris
Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Jane Wyman, the Oscar-winning actress who was married in the 1940s to Ronald Reagan, then gained new fame starring in a television drama while he was in the White House, died today. She was at least 90.
Richard Adney, of Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary, told the Associated Press that Wyman died at her Palm Springs, California, home. AP gave her age as 93.
Wyman made almost 100 appearances in movies and television programs over seven decades, received four Oscar nominations as best actress and renewed her stardom in her late '60s on the television show ``Falcon Crest.''
She never shed her identity as the former wife of the late U.S. president. Her longtime agent, Robert Raison, told the New York Times in 1981 that Wyman had tired of being hounded for gossip about Reagan's personal life. Questions about Reagan were usually met with tight-lipped silence.
She broke that silence in 2004 after Reagan died, saying ``America has lost a great president and a great, kind and gentle man,'' according to AP.
By all accounts, it was Wyman who set her sights on marriage to Reagan in 1940 but wearied of his political zeal and initiated the divorce that was finalized in 1949. By then, her success in films had surpassed her husband's, with a best actress nomination for her 1946 role as Ma Baxter in ``The Yearling'' opposite actor Gregory Peck, and an Academy Award for her 1948 role as a deaf mute in ``Johnny Belinda.''
Move to TV
Wyman also received Academy nominations for her roles in ``Blue Veil'' in 1951 and ``Magnificent Obsession,'' the 1954 film that boosted Rock Hudson's career. She shocked the movie colony in 1955 with her move to television as host of ``Fireside Theatre,'' an NBC anthology series, which was later renamed ``The Jane Wyman Theatre.'' Reagan, by then her ex-husband, hosted the rival ``General Electric Theater'' on CBS in those years.
Biographers differ on the details of Jane Wyman's early life, except to agree that she was raised in St. Joseph, Missouri. Her birth date and parentage are matters of dispute that the actress -- who adopted her professional name in 1936 -- never publicly addressed.
Sarah Jane Mayfield
Anne Edwards, author of ``Early Reagan,'' concluded that Wyman was named Sarah Jane Mayfield and was born on Jan. 5, 1917, to Gladys Hope Christian and Manning J. Mayfield, a young couple that filed for divorce in 1921. Wyman was evidently placed in the care of a middle-aged couple, Richard and Emma Fulks. Following the death of Richard Fulks, his widow moved to Los Angeles with Sarah Jane to live with relatives.
Sarah Jane dropped out of Los Angeles High School by 1932, the same year she appeared in the chorus of ``The Kid From Spain.'' On April 8, 1933, she married Ernest Eugene Wyman, according to Edmund Morris, author of ``Dutch,'' the Ronald Reagan memoir.
Morris noted that she was barely 16, although she claimed to be three years older on the marriage certificate. She was divorced from Wyman in 1935, according to a Los Angeles Examiner clipping he found in archives at University of Southern California.
Warner Bros. Contract
Wyman adopted her professional name when she signed a contract with Warner Bros. in 1936 for $65 per week. By then, she had appeared in more than a dozen films without credit or identified as Sara Jane Fulks. Often cast as a fast-talking sidekick, Wyman's name appeared on screen for the first time for her role as a hatcheck girl in the 1937 ``Smart Blonde,'' the first in a series of girl reporter films.
On June 29, 1937, Wyman married Myron Futterman, a New Orleans clothing manufacturer. She divorced him on Dec. 5, 1938, several months after she first worked with Reagan in the film, ``Brother Rat.''
Reagan and Wyman were among the young actors invited to go on a vaudeville tour in 1939 with Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who took an interest in their romance and staged their wedding reception at her home on Jan. 26, 1940.
Reagan and Wyman were great favorites with fan magazines, as they permitted extensive coverage of their home life and first child, Maureen Elizabeth, born on Jan. 4, 1941. In 1945, the couple adopted an infant son, Michael Edward. Wyman went into premature labor with another daughter, Christine, who died nine hours after birth in 1947.
Boarding School
Wyman gradually won substantive roles that brought financial reward and acclaim. When she filed for divorce from Reagan, she sent 7-year-old Maureen to a Southern California boarding school, followed by son Michael when he turned 5.
In her 1989 memoir, ``First Father, First Daughter,'' Maureen Reagan described her mother as a person who could not be dissuaded once she made a decision. She cited Wyman's decision to have her children convert with her to Catholicism, and abrupt changes in Maureen's schooling.
Wyman married Fred Karger, a musical arranger and bandleader, in 1952, but divorced him in 1955. The two remarried in 1961, then divorced a second time.
Wyman took up landscape painting during the filming of ``Johnny Belinda'' on the northern California coast, and for a time sold her paintings in a gallery in Carmel, California, where she lived before she resumed fulltime work in 1981 as Angela Channing, the conniving and stylish vineyard owner on the CBS primetime drama, ``Falcon Crest,'' which aired until 1990.
Wyman's daughter Maureen died at age 60 in 2001. Survivors include son Michael, a radio talk show host.
The Jays gets 7
According to IMDB, she was born in 1914.
Re: Death pool 2007 - lush - 09-10-2007
.
Re: Death pool 2007 - Goatweed - 09-11-2007
she was old.
Re: Death pool 2007 - Goatweed - 09-17-2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/17/obit.somers.ap/index.html
'Match Game's' Brett Somers dies at 83
WESTPORT, Connecticut (AP) -- Actress and comedian Brett Somers, who amused game show fans with her quips on the "Match Game" in the 1970s, has died, her son said. She was 83.
Somers died Saturday at her home in Westport of stomach and colon cancer, Adam Klugman said Monday.
Hosted by Gene Rayburn, "Match Game" was the top game show during much of the 1970s. Contestants would try to match answers to nonsense questions with a panel of celebrities; much of the humor came from the racy quips and putdowns.
Shows from the 1973-79 run, featuring regulars like Somers, Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly, are still seen on cable TV's GSN (formerly Game Show Network).
Somers married actor Jack Klugman, the future star of the television shows "Quincy" and "The Odd Couple," in 1953. The two separated in 1974, but never divorced.
They made many television appearances as a couple. Somers appeared on several episodes of "The Odd Couple," playing the ex-wife of Klugman's character.
In the summer of 2003, she appeared in a one-woman cabaret show, "An Evening with Brett Somers," which she wrote and co-produced. She continued to perform after being diagnosed with cancer.
She was born Audrey Johnston in New Brunswick, Canada, and grew up in Portland, Maine. She ran away from home at age 17 and headed for New York City, where she settled in Greenwich Village. She changed her first name to Brett after the lead female character in the Ernest Hemingway novel "The Sun Also Rises." Somers was her mother's maiden name.
Her son said she was caustic, irreverent and a self-declared bohemian.
"She maintained her independence till the end, and her irreverence," Adam Klugman said. "She died very much at peace."
In addition to Adam Klugman, Somers is survived by another son, David, and a daughter, Leslie.
Re: Death pool 2007 - Hoon - 09-30-2007
The Match Game reminds me of mashed potatos.
One of my earliest memories is sitting at the table playing with my toys and pestering my mother to feed me until she finally broke down and made me some potatos but by the time they were done, I wasn't hungry. So she flipped out and smashed them into my face.
Pretty horrifying for a five year old. As I look back now, I don't blame her much. I mean we were living in a single wide trailer in the woods and that box of instant potatos was probably the better part of her measly paycheck at that point.
So I say, good riddance Brett Somer's. Good riddance!
Re: Death pool 2007 - drusilla - 10-31-2007
LOS ANGELES — Robert Goulet, the handsome, big-voiced baritone whose Broadway debut in "Camelot" launched an award-winning stage and recording career, has died. He was 73.
The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant, said Goulet spokesman Norm Johnson.
He had been awaiting a lung transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being found last month to have a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis.
Goulet had remained in good spirits even as he waited for the transplant, said Vera Goulet, his wife of 25 years.
"Just watch my vocal cords," she said he told doctors before they inserted a breathing tube.
The Massachusetts-born Goulet, who spent much of his youth in Canada, gained stardom in 1960 with "Camelot," the Lerner and Loewe musical that starred Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as his Queen Guenevere.
Goulet played Sir Lancelot, the arrogant French knight who falls in love with Guenevere.
He became a hit with American TV viewers with appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other programs. Sullivan labeled him the "American baritone from Canada," where he had already been a popular star in the 1950s, hosting his own show called "General Electric's Showtime."
i'm gonna miss his wacky peanut commercials.
Re: Death pool 2007 - drusilla - 11-30-2007
DAREDEVIL DIES:
Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.
Re: Death pool 2007 - diceisgod - 11-30-2007
drusilla Wrote:DAREDEVIL DIES:
Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.
Is this a confession?