Hollywood Memoir

Ronald Silver (July 2, 1946  – March 15, 2009) was an American actor, director, producer and political activist.

Death of Ron Silver
Ron Silver died of esophageal cancer,  after battling the disease for two years
Ron Silver was 62 years old at the time of his death.

Silver made his film debut in Tunnel Vision in 1976. Additional screen roles include Lovesick (1983), the devoted son of Anne Bancroft in Garbo Talks (1984), an incompetent detective in Eat and Run (1986), and the lead in Paul Mazursky’s Oscar-nominated Enemies: A Love Story (1989). He also portrayed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune (1990), based on the trial of Claus von Bülow.

Silver has been featured in such diverse films as Billy Crystal’s Mr. Saturday Night (1992), Timecop (1994) with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and as Muhammad Ali’s boxing cornerman Angelo Dundee in Michael Mann’s Ali. From 2001 to 2002 and 2005 to 2006, Silver portrayed presidential campaign advisor Bruno Gianelli on The West Wing.

From 1991 to 2000, Silver served as president of the Actors’ Equity Association.

Jack Lawrence (April 7, 1912 – March 15, 2009) was an American Academy Award-nominated songwriter who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Death of Jack Lawrence
Lawrence died following a fall in his home in Redding, Connecticut on March 16, 2009

One of the first major songs he wrote upon getting out of the service was "Yes, My Darling Daughter", introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor’s radio program, which was Shore’s first record. Another Jack Lawrence song that introduced a new artist was "If I Didn’t Care", which introduced the world to The Ink Spots. And, although Frank Sinatra was already a well-known big band singer, Lawrence’s "All or Nothing at All" was Sinatra’s first solo hit.

"Linda", a popular song, was written by Jack Lawrence and published in 1946. The song was actually written when Lawrence was in the service during World War II, taking its name from the then five-year-old daughter of his attorney, Lee Eastman. (His daughter was Linda Eastman, future first wife of the Beatle Paul McCartney.)

Lawrence wrote the lyrics for "Tenderly", Rosemary Clooney’s trademark song (in collaboration with composer Walter Lloyd Gross), as well as the English language lyric to "Beyond the Sea" (based on Charles Trenet’s French language song "La mer"), the trademark song for Bobby Darin. Another French song for which Lawrence wrote an English lyric was "La goualante de pauvre Jean", becoming "The Poor People of Paris".

Together with Richard Myers he wrote "Hold My Hand", which was nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Song.

Rosemary Clooney – Tenderly – Written by Jack Lawrence
Yes, Rosemary was George Clooney’s Aunt

Betsy Blair (December 11, 1923 – March 13, 2009) was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London.

Born as Elizabeth Winifred Boger, Blair pursued a career in entertainment from the age of eight, and as a child worked as an amateur dancer, performed on radio, and worked as a model, before joining the chorus of Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe in 1940. There she met Gene Kelly; they were married the following year, when she was 17 years old; they divorced 16 years later in 1957.

Death of Batsy Blair
Batsy Blair died in London after a bout with cancer. Batsh Blair was 85 years old at the time of her death. She is survived by a daughter, three stepchildren and several grandchildren.

After work in the theatre, Blair began her film career playing supporting roles in films such as A Double Life (1947) and Another Part of the Forest (1948). Her interest in Marxism led to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Blair was blacklisted for some time, but resumed her career with a critically acclaimed performance in Marty (1955), winning a BAFTA Award and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She continued her career with regular theatre, film and television work until the mid 1990s.

Batsy Blair as Clara – "Marty" with Ernest Borgnine
(Ernest Borgnine is still alive)

On March 11, 2009 Charles "Mask" Lewis was killed in his Ferrari in a high-speed automobile collision. A female companion was ejected from the car and taken for medical treatment but Lewis was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of a second car, a white Porsche, which was believed to have been traveling alongside Lewis’s car, was arrested on charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

TapouT is an American business enterprise specializing in producing clothing and miscellaneous gear targeted at the mixed martial arts community, as well as a magazine devoted to mixed martial arts fighting (formerly Bodyguard Magazine). Charles Lewis, Jr. (also known as "Mask") and Dan Caldwell (also known as "Punkass") founded the company in 1997 in San Bernardino, California. The company is currently based in Grand Terrace.

In 2007, TapouT launched a reality television series, also called TapouT, on Versus. Each episode follows Mask, Punkass and their third partner, "Skyskrape", as they scout fighters to add to their sponsorship roster.

Jimmy Boyd (born January 9, 1939 in McComb, Mississippi; died March 7, 2009) was an American singer, musician, and actor.

Death of Jimmy Boyd
On March 7, 2009, he passed away from cancer.
Jimmy Boyd was 70 years old at the time of his death

Jimmy recorded the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" for Columbia Records, when he was 12 years and 11 months old. Even in those days of limited media, it became a record industry phenomenon, selling over two and a half million records in its first week’s release. Jimmy’s name became an international household word, and he skyrocketed to the status of a major star. Columbia Records execs were baffled at the song’s popularity. They had already presented Jimmy with two gold records. (In the days before the Grammy Award existed, gold records were effectively the Grammys, and they were actually real gold). Jimmy’s record went to number one on the charts again the following year at Christmas, and went on to sell again and again every Christmas. Today on the internet it sells worldwide to new generations, and has reportedly sold over 60,000,000 records since its initial release.

Jimmy Boyd – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Playing on original 78 rpm record

 

Horton Foote (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his screenplay for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he received an Academy Award. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta.

Cause of death was not released

Sydney Earle Chaplin (March 31, 1926 – March 3, 2009) was an award winning film and theatre actor. The third son of film legend Charlie Chaplin and the second by his second wife, actress Lita Grey.

Sydney Chaplin won the 1957 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for Bells Are Ringing, opposite Judy Holliday, and received a Tony nomination for his performance as Nicky Arnstein, the gambling first husband of Fanny Brice, opposite Barbra Streisand, in the Broadway musical Funny Girl in 1964.

Death of Sydney Chaplin
Sydney Earle Chaplin died aged 82. He was survived by his wife, Margaret, a son (by his first marriage) and a granddaughter.

Breaking News

Ernie Ashworth (December 15, 1928 – March 2, 2009) was an American country music singer and longtime star of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ernie Ashworth recently undergone heart bypass surgery. But we don’t know the official cause of death.

Paul Harvey Aurandt (September 4, 1918 – February 28, 2009), better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcasted News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated at 22 million people a week. Harvey liked to say he was raised in radio newsrooms

Harvey died on February 28, 2009, at the age of 90 after being taken to a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. He died while surrounded by family and friends. His son, Paul Harvey Jr., said "millions have lost a friend" in response to his father’s passing.  The cause was not immediately known.

On February 27, 2009 it was reported that Ed McMahon has been in an undisclosed Los Angeles hospital for almost a month. He is currently listed in serious condition and is in the intensive care unit. His publicist told reporters that he was admitted for pneumonia, but could not confirm reports that McMahon has been diagnosed with bone cancer.

In March 2008, it was announced McMahon was recovering from a broken neck and two subsequent surgeries. He was injured in 2007 in a fall. He later sued Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and two doctors, claiming fraud, battery, elder abuse and emotional distress and accusing them of discharging him with a broken neck after his fall in 2007 and later botched two neck surgeries.

Edward "Ed" Leo Peter McMahon, Jr. (March 6, 1923) is an American comedian, game show host, announcer, and television personality most famous for his work on television as Johnny Carson’s announcer on Who Do You Trust? from 1957 to 1962 and on the Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992, and as the host of the talent show Star Search from 1983 to 1995.