***The Official 2019 Celebrity Death Pool Thread***

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas, ‘American Gangster’ Drug Kingpin, Dead at 88


Harlem crime boss ran one of nation’s biggest heroin empires and was immortalized by Denzel Washington in 2007 film

Frank Lucas, the Harlem drug kingpin immortalized in 'American Gangster,' has died at the age of 88.

Nam Y Huh/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Frank Lucas, the Harlem drug kingpin immortalized in Ridley Scott’s 2007 crime film American Gangster, died Thursday at the age of 88. Lucas’ nephew Aldwan Lassiter confirmed his death to Rolling Stone, adding that Lucas died of natural causes.

Lucas, the “Original Gangster” who was known to confabulate his own criminal legacy, is credited as the architect behind the infamous “Golden Triangle” gambit of the early 1970s where he claimed to have imported heroin from Southeast Asia in the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam.

“Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier’s coffin,” Lucas said told New York in the 2000 article “The Return of Superfly.” “We had him make up 28 copies of the government coffins . . . except we fixed them up with false bottoms, big enough to load up with six, maybe eight kilos.” (Lucas’ coffin claim, however, came into question following the release of the movie.)



Related


Jay-Z The rapper on the 'American Gangster' lifestyle

American Gangster
A quasi-fictionalized version of Lucas’ life story was later the subject of American Gangster, with Denzel Washington portraying the drug lord. The film also inspired a Jay-Z album of the same name. As Jay-Z told Rolling Stone in 2007, “Frank Lucas, it’s something about when African-Americans reach somewhere, no matter what they’re doing, if they reach somewhere that no one has ever been before, you’re like ‘Go! Go!”

The North Carolina-born Lucas moved to Harlem after witnessing the Ku Klux Klan murder his cousin, an incident that Lucas said sparked his career in crime. Lucas would later become a protégé of sorts to Harlem mob boss Bumpy Johnson, who died of a heart attack in 1968. Lucas then took over as Harlem’s drug kingpin and fronted what became one of America’s biggest heroin empires.

“I bought Harlem, I owned Harlem, I ran Harlem,” Lucas bragged; his “Golden Triangle” scheme allowed Lucas to cut out the middle man – the Mafia – and smuggle the drug in directly. At its peak, Lucas’ drug empire was making $1 million per day, he claimed. Rather than quietly accumulating his wealth, however, Lucas lived lavishly, often donning a $100,000 floor-length chinchilla coat and matching $25,000 hat, an attention-grabbing ensemble that Lucas wore to the Ali-Frazier boxing match in 1971; Lucas’ presence at the fight and spending habits drew the attention of the authorities, including detective Richie Roberts, played by Russell Crowe in American Gangster.



The Drug Enforcement Agency and the New York Police Department ultimately ended Lucas’ reign in 1975, with Lucas receiving a 70-year prison sentence. However, Lucas later turned state’s witness and provided evidence that resulted in dozens of drug-related arrests. Lucas was released from prison in 1981 after his sentence was reduced to time served. Three years later, Lucas was again busted for a drug deal that violated his parole and spent seven years behind bars. Sterling Johnson, a former New York City special narcotics prosecutor, called Lucas’ operation “one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever . . . an innovator who got his own connection outside the U.S. and then sold the stuff himself in the street.”

Lucas’ wife Julianna Farrait-Rodriguez was convicted of drug-related charges, first spending five years in prison in the Seventies and, in 2010, receiving another five-year prison sentence after attempting to sell cocaine in Puerto Rico. In recent years, Lucas was confined to a wheelchair following a car accident. “Some call us the black Bonnie and Clyde because we have always stuck by one another,” she said in 2011. That same year, Lucas released his memoir Original Gangster: The Real Life Story of One of America’s Most Notorious Drug Lords.

In the 2000 interview with New York – which first attracted Hollywood to Lucas’ story – Lucas succinctly explained his cultural appeal and how he managed to survive in the crime game against all odds (including turning state’s witness).

“Look, all you got to know is that I am sitting here talking to you right now. Walking and talking – when I could have, should have, been dead and buried a hundred times,” Lucas said. “And you know why that is? Because: People like me. People like the fukk out of me.”

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

R.I.P. Bushwick Bill

Rapper Bushwick Bill passes away at age 52 after a battle with pancreatic cancer
By Dailymail.com Reporter

Published: 00:58 EDT, 10 June 2019 | Updated: 01:17 EDT, 10 June 2019

Rapper Bushwick Bill has passed away at age 52 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

The star's representative confirmed to TMZ that he had passed away at 9:35PM in Houston on Sunday.

Bill's son Javon revealed to the site that his father's last words were, 'I will love you forever.'

+6
Rapper Bushwick Bill has passed away at age 52 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Seen here in 2013

The confirmation comes after the rapper's family and friends publicly denied initial reports Bill had died.

The 3ft 8in rapper - whose real name is Richard Stephen Shaw - was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in February, according to TMZ.


He was undergoing undergoing intensive chemotherapy, and had hoped to get back on the road, says the website.

His publicist told TMZ a public memorial is planned.

The member of the pioneering Texas hip hop group Geto Boys said the rapper was 'still alive and fighting cancer' according to his publicist, who corrected TMZ's earlier report.

Bill's son also claimed his father was still with us, but 'fighting for his life' via social media Sunday.

+6
The star's representative confirmed to TMZ that he had passed away at 9:35PM in Houston on Sunday. Seen here back in 1992

Writing on Instagram, he shared: 'Contrary to what has been prematurely, insensitively, and inaccurately posted/reported - My dad IS NOT dead, he’s still alive and fighting for his life.

'He needs your continued prayers and support. Certain people have been so quick to write him off as dead so they can capitalize off it, and it’s messed up because yall really think these people care about him.

'There is no Geto Boys without Bushwick Bill. Please repost to help combat the fake news. Thank you @tmz_tv & @realdawn_p for the updated report.

+6
The confirmation comes after the rapper's family and friends publicly denied initial reports Bill had died. Here in 2011

'On behalf of the family we’re requesting privacy until further notice. #news #bushwickbill #chuckwick #getoboys'

Bill was absent from a gig on Saturday night in Dallas, and is reportedly being cared for by hospital staff.

Obituaries appeared for the rap star in a number of publications and fans paid tribute on-line after the erroneous report of his death caused confusion.

Geto Boys’ Scarface posted a picture of the rapper, mistakenly believing him to have passed away.

He wrote: 'RIP Bushwick Bill.....'

+6
Little guy big star: He wrote: 'RIP Bushwick Bill.....'

+6
Condolences: Tributes poured in on line

Rapper Bun B was also among the first to note Shaw’s death on social media.

He wrote: 'April 7. The last time I saw him. He was, is and will always be a legend. God bless his soul and his family. There will never be another. RIP Bushwick Bill.'

Juicy J, Questlove, Killer Mike and others also tweeted their condolences.

The Jamaican-American rapper recently had a falling out with tour organizers, it was reported that he felt that they were exploiting his cancer diagnosis to sell tickets.

In particular he was offended by the mini-tour's title, The Beginning of a Long Goodbye: The Final Farewell.

Bill Promoters pulled the plug on the tour on the eve of its launch, says TMZ.

Shaw, who was born with dwarfism and first performed under the moniker Little Billy, joined the Geto Boys in 1986 following a stint as the group’s dancer.

In the summer of 1991, Shaw shot himself in the eye during an argument with his girlfriend, losing his right eye in the process.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Bushwick Bill's publicist and had no response.

+6
Rap legacy: The Jamaican-born rapper posed in a casket to promote his album The Resurrection in 1996

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Gloria Vanderbilt

Gloria Vanderbilt, heiress, jeans queen, dies at 95
By ULA ILNYTZKYyesterday

1 of 6
FILE - In this April 4, 2016 file photo, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt attend the premiere of "Nothing Left Unsaid" at the Time Warner Center in New York. Vanderbilt, the "poor little rich girl" heiress at the center of a scandalous custody battle of the 1930s and the designer jeans queen of the 1970s and '80s, died on Monday, June 17, 2019, at 95, according to her son, Cooper. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Gloria Vanderbilt, the intrepid heiress, artist and romantic who began her extraordinary life as the “poor little rich girl” of the Great Depression, survived family tragedy and multiple marriages and reigned during the 1970s and ’80s as a designer jeans pioneer, died Monday at the age of 95.

Vanderbilt was the great-great-granddaughter of financier Cornelius Vanderbilt and the mother of CNN newsman Anderson Cooper, who announced her death via a first-person obituary that aired on the network Monday morning.

Cooper said Vanderbilt died at home with friends and family at her side. She had been suffering from advanced stomach cancer, he noted.

“Gloria Vanderbilt was an extraordinary woman, who loved life, and lived it on her own terms,” Cooper said in a statement. “She was a painter, a writer, and designer but also a remarkable mother, wife, and friend. She was 95 years old, but ask anyone close to her, and they’d tell you, she was the youngest person they knew, the coolest, and most modern.”

Her life was chronicled in sensational headlines from her childhood through four marriages and three divorces. She married for the first time at 17, causing her aunt to disinherit her. Her husbands included Leopold Stokowski, the celebrated conductor, and Sidney Lumet, the award-winning movie and television director. In 1988, she witnessed the suicide of one of her four sons.

Tributes online came from celebrities and fans of her clothes alike. Alyssa Milano called her “an incredible woman,” Dana Delany said she treasures one of Vanderbilt’s paintings and model Carol Alt hailed her as a “fashion icon and innovator.” And one Twitter user mourned by remembering the canary Vanderbilt jeans she wore in junior high school.

Vanderbilt was a talented painter and collagist who also acted on the stage (“The Time of Your Life” on Broadway in 1955) and television (“Playhouse 90,” ″Studio One,” ″Kraft Theater,” ″U.S. Steel Hour”). She was a fabric designer who became an early enthusiast for designer denim. The dark-haired, tall and ultra-thin Vanderbilt partnered with Mohan Murjani, who introduced a $1 million advertising campaign in 1978 that turned the Gloria Vanderbilt brand with its signature white swan label into a sensation.


In this undated file photo heiress and designer Gloria Vanderbilt walks down a New York street. Vanderbilt died on Monday, June 17, 2019, at 95, according to her son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. (New York Post via AP)
At its peak in 1980, it was generating over $200 million in sales. And decades later, famous-name designer jeans — dressed up or down — remain a woman’s wardrobe staple.

Vanderbilt wrote several books, including the 2004 chronicle of her love life: “It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir,” which drops such names as Errol Flynn, whom she dated as a teenager; Frank Sinatra, for whom she left Stokowski; Marlon Brando and Howard Hughes.

She claimed her only happy marriage was to author Wyatt Cooper, which ended with his death in 1978 at age 50. Son Anderson Cooper called her memoir “a terrific book; it’s like an older ‘Sex and the City.’”

“I’ve had many, many loves,” Vanderbilt told The Associated Press in a 2004 interview. “I always feel that something wonderful is going to happen. And it always does.”

Noting her father’s death when she was a toddler, she said: “If you don’t have a father, you don’t miss it, because you don’t know what it is. It was really only when I married Wyatt Cooper that I understood what it was like to have a father, because he was just an extraordinary father.”

In 2016, Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper appeared together in the HBO documentary “Nothing Left Unsaid.”

Gloria Laura Madeleine Sophie Vanderbilt was born in 1924, a century after her great-great-grandfather started the family fortune, first in steamships, later in railroads. He left around $100 million when he died in 1877 at age 82.

Her father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, was 43, a gambler and boozer dying of liver disease when he married Gloria Morgan, 19, in 1923. Their daughter was 1 when Vanderbilt died in 1925, having gone through $25 million in 14 years.

Beneficiary of a $5 million trust fund, Vanderbilt became the “poor little rich girl” in 1934 at age 10 as the object of a custody fight between her globe-trotting mother and matriarchal aunt.

The aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 59, who controlled $78 million and founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, won custody of her niece.

A shocked judge had closed the trial when a maid accused the child’s mother of a lesbian affair with a member of the British royal family. The fight was chronicled in the best-selling 1980 book “Little Gloria ... Happy at Last,” made into a TV miniseries in 1982 with Angela Lansbury playing Whitney.

The “poor little rich girl” nickname “bothered me enormously,” Vanderbilt told The Associated Press in a 2016 interview . “I didn’t see any of the press — the newspapers were kept from me. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t feel poor and I didn’t feel rich. It really did influence me enormously to make something of my life when I realized what it meant.”

After spending the next seven years on her aunt’s Long Island estate, Vanderbilt went to Hollywood. She dated celebrities and declared she would marry Hughes. Instead, the 17-year-old wed Hughes’ press agent, Pasquale di Cicco, prompting her aunt to cut Gloria out of her will.

Vanderbilt came into her own $5 million trust fund in 1945 at age 21. She also divorced di Cicco, whom she said had beaten her often, and the next day married the 63-year-old Stokowski. The marriage to the conductor lasted 10 years and produced two sons, Stanislaus and Christopher.

After her marriage broke up, Vanderbilt found herself embroiled in another custody case, this time as the mother. During the closed hearings, Stokowski accused Vanderbilt of spending too much time at parties and too little with the boys. She accused him of tyrannizing his sons and said he really was 85, and not 72 as he claimed.

Justice Edgar Nathan Jr. gave Vanderbilt full-time custody. But he commented that the court had wasted a month on “the resolution of problems which mature, intelligent parents should be able to work out for themselves.”

Vanderbilt married Lumet in 1956 and lived with him and her children in a 10-room duplex penthouse on Gracie Square. She divorced Lumet and married Cooper in 1963.

Their elder son, Carter, a Princeton graduate and editor at American Heritage, killed himself in 1988 at age 23, leaping from his mother’s 14th floor apartment as she tried to stop him. Police said he had been treated for depression and friends said he was despondent over a break-up with a girlfriend. Vanderbilt says in “Nothing Left Unsaid” that she contemplated following him out the window, but the thought of how it would devastate Anderson stopped her.

After her success in designer jeans, Vanderbilt branched out into other areas, including shoes, scarves, table and bed linens, and china, through her company, Gloria Concepts. In 1988 Vanderbilt joined the designer fragrance market with her signature “Glorious.”

By the late 1980s, Vanderbilt sold the name and licenses for the brand name “Gloria Vanderbilt” to Gitano, who transferred it to a group of private investors in 1993. More recently, her stretch jeans have been licensed through Jones Apparel Group Inc., which acquired Gloria Vanderbilt Apparel Corp. in 2002 for $138 million.

Vanderbilt became the target of a swindle in the late 1970s and early ’80s when she made her psychiatrist and a lawyer associates in her business affairs. A court held that the two had looted millions from Vanderbilt’s bank accounts.

Vanderbilt also made headlines in 1980 when she filed, but later dropped, a discrimination complaint against the posh River House apartments, which had rejected her bid to buy a $1.1 million duplex. She claimed the board was worried that black singer Bobby Short, who appeared with her on TV commercials, might marry her.

In 2009, the 85-year-old Vanderbilt penned a new novel, “Obsession: An Erotic Tale,” a graphic tale about an architect’s widow who discovers a cache of her husband’s letters that reveal his secret sex life.

In an interview with The New York Times, she said she wasn’t embarrassed about the explicitness of her new book, saying: “I don’t think age has anything to do with what you write about. The only thing that would embarrass me is bad writing, and the only thing that really concerned me was my children. You know how children can be about their parents. But mine are very intelligent and supportive.”

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Tyler Skaggs

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Jared Lorenzen

Former Giants quarterback Jared Lorenzen dead at 38
By Dani Mohr

July 3, 2019 | 4:21pm | Updated

Enlarge Image

Jared Lorenzen Getty Images
Former Giants quarterback Jared Lorenzen died Wednesday at the age of 38 after dealing with heart and kidney issues, as well as an infection.

Former Giants teammate Eli Manning said Lorenzen was a great teammate and friend.

“My thoughts and prayers go out to his family,” Manning said in a statement. “I will always remember his competitive spirit and his good nature. Jared left us way too soon.”

The Giants signed Lorenzen in 2004 as an undrafted free agent out of Kentucky. He eventually became Manning’s backup and earned a Super Bowl ring with the Giants in 2008.

Lorenzen was hospitalized last week, his family said.

“It is with heavy hearts that the family of Jared Lorenzen would like to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation for all your support and prayers over the past six days. We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Jared today,” the family said in a statement. “Please keep Jared’s family, and especially his children, in your thoughts and prayers.”

Lorenzen played at Kentucky from 2000-’03, and he is still the Wildcats’ career passing yards leader, with 10,354. He is second in career passing touchdowns and fourth in single-season passing yards.

“We lost a great one too soon today,” tweeted @UKFootball, the Kentucky football Twitter account. “Our hearts are with the Lorenzen family. We love you, 22.”

After his retirement from professional football, Lorenzen consistently struggled with his weight, at one point weighing 500 pounds.

Lorenzen eventually began the Jared Lorenzen Project, which detailed his journey toward losing weight, and he managed to lose 100 pounds with a strict diet and exercise.

“Jared was a special person and a beloved Giant,” tweeted @NYGiants, the team’s Twitter account.

“He was an important member of our 2007 team, one that created its own destiny. Our thoughts are with Jared’s family and friends who loved and appreciated him so much, just as our organization and fans did.”

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Cameron Boyce

Disney Channel star found dead at 20-years-old: Actor who starred with Adam Sandler in Grown Ups dies from a 'seizure' after suffering 'medical condition'

• Disney Channel Cameron Boyce has died at the age of 20, his family have said
• He starred in Disney's Descendants and Jessie and had big screen success
• In played the son of Adam Sandler and Salma Hayek in 2010 comedy Grown Ups
• His family said: 'His spirit will live on through the kindness and compassion'

Disney Channel star Cameron Boyce has died at the age of 20.

The actor, who also starred as Adam Sandler's and Salma Hayek's son in the Grown Ups movie series, died as a result of a seizure brought on by an 'ongoing medical condition' his family said.

'It is with a profoundly heavy heart that we report that this morning we lost Cameron,' they said in a statement.

+45
Tragic: Disney actor Cameron Boyce has passed away at the age of 20. Above the star is seen June 16 in Studio City, California

+45
Boyce, who had his first break-out role aged just nine in the horror movie mirrors, found further fame starring as Adam Sandler and Salma Hayek's son in Grown Ups, and Grown Ups Two (pictured with Hayek in a still from the film)

+45
Boyce played Keithie Feder (second from front) in the 2010 hit movie Grown Ups. It stared Adam Sandler (pictured), Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider as five lifelong friends who reunite for a July Fourth weekend with their families in a lakehouse

+45
Boyce starred as the son of Adam Sandler's character Lenny Feder. The film became Sandler's highest-grossing movie




'He passed away in his sleep due to a seizure which was a result of an ongoing medical condition for which he was being treated.

'The world is now undoubtedly without one of its brightest lights, but his spirit will live on through the kindness and compassion of all who knew and loved him.




'We are utterly heartbroken and ask for privacy during this immensely difficult time as we grieve the loss of our precious son and brother'.

Tributes have poured in for the star, as his colleagues and friends described him as a 'class act' with 'a heart of gold'.

+45

+45
Adam Sandler, who played his father in Grown Ups and Grown Ups too, said he 'loved' Cameron and he was 'gone too young'

+45
Cameron was invited the the White House in 2014 by President Obama. Here is pictured making a healthy drink during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll with former First Lady Michelle Obama and fellow Disney channel star Peyton List

+45
Boyce met former Vice President Joe Biden to the stage during The 2019 Biden Courage Awards

+45
Boyce's final Instagram post, a striking black and white profile shot, has been met with floods of tributes

+45
Star break: Boyce (above 2017) rose to fame as the character Luke on Disney Channel hit Jessie

+45
Cameron was no stranger to the young carpet and often graced them from a young age. Pictured at the Descendants Premiere, from left: Cameron Boyce, Boo Boo Stewart, Dove Cameron, Kristin Chenoweth and Kenny Ortega

+45

+45
Aged 11, Cameron Boyce was cast on the hit Disney Channel show Jessie, alongside Skai Jackson and Karan Barr (pictured)




Cameron had his first break-out role aged just nine in the horror movie Mirrors, after starring in General Hospital.

He found further fame starring as Adam Sandler and Salma Hayek's son in Grown Ups, and Grown Ups 2.

After his debut as a nine-year-old, he went on to star in Shia LaBeouf thriller Eagle Eye.

He then had his star break as the character Luke on Disney Channel hit Jessie, opposite Debby Ryan.

+45
Cameron with Salma Hayek " at Bing Theatre At LACMA on July 29, 2015, five years after he played he mother in Grown Ups

+45
Los Angles native Boyce, also starred in animated versions of Marvel's Spider-Man and was loved for his role as Carlos De Vil, the son of Cruella, in the Disney movie franchise the Descendants (pictured)

+45
Cameron (second left) stars alongside Dove Cameron (left), Booboo Stewart (second right) and Sofia Arson (right) in the Descendants 3, set to come out this summer

+45
After his debut as a nine-year-old, he went on to star in Shia LaBeouf thriller Eagle Eye. He then had his star break as the character Luke on Disney Channel hit Jessie, opposite Debby Ryan (pictured on set)

+45
Boyce and Rosario Dawson and Ethan Embry at the premiere of Eagle Eye in 2008




He played Luke Ross in the children's comedy, which ran for four seasons and is based around a nanny who looks after a wealthy family in New York.

Los Angles native Cameron, also starred in animated versions of Marvel's Spider-Man and was loved for his role as Carlos De Vil, the son of Cruella, in the Disney franchise The Descendants.

The first two made-for-TV films were huge hits with Disney's young fans. The third instalment is set to be released next month.

Cameron was born in May 1999 and grew up in Los Angles with his parents Libby and Victor Boyce as well as his actor sister Maya.

The star often spoke about his mixed ancestry, and made a short film for Black History Month in 2016, revealing that his paternal grandmother, Jo Ann Boyce, was one of the 'Clinton 12'.

+45
Cameron was born in May 1999 and grew up in Los Angles with his parents Libby and Victor Boyce and his actor sister Maya. He shared this touching picture of a FaceTime call with his parents to his Instagram page in June

+45
The star often spoke about his mixed ancestry, and made a short film for Black History Month in 2016, revealing that his paternal grandmother, Jo Ann Boyce, was one of the 'Clinton 12' (pictured together)

+45
Cameron's grandmother Jo Ann (left) was part of the group of 12 who were the first students to desegregate a state-supported high school in Tennessee after a US Supreme Court ruling banning segregation on racial grounds in 1954




The group were the first students to desegregate a state-supported high school in Tennessee after a US Supreme Court ruling banning segregation on racial grounds in 1954.

Despite the violent protest that followed, it was seen as a pivotal moment in civil rights in the US.

Cameron, who has Jewish ancestry on his mother's side, told Teen Vogue in 2017, 'There's a lot of people in Hollywood who don't look like me or don't have similar features like me' he told'.

+45
Cameron, who also has Jewish ancestry, told Teen Vogue in 2017, 'There's a lot of people in Hollywood who don't look like me or don't have similar features like me' he told'. Pictured with his sister Maya, also an actor

+45
'It's very important for people not only see in Hollywood and feel represented but also sort of even the playing field a bit' Cameron said. Pictured with his sister Maya and parents Libby and Victor

+45
+45
In a sweet video shared online, Cameron played chess with his young cousin

+45
Cameron's mother shared this adorable video of her son playing with his young cousin




'When it's a lead [role], it's very hard to come by. We sort of are working to change that. That is something that is important to everyone of colour, a minority.

'It's very important for people not only see in Hollywood and feel represented but also sort of even the playing field a bit.'

In the last interview before his death, published in May, he spoke about how he wanted to make the world a better place.

Had no idea that that little CAC was Black excellence

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

RIP Rip Torn

Rip Torn, Artie the Producer on 'The Larry Sanders Show,' Dies at 88
7:40 PM PDT 7/9/2019 by Mike Barnes

HBO/Photofest
Rip Torn as Artie on 'The Larry Sanders Show'
The respected Emmy winner and Oscar and Tony nominee always aimed for authenticity but had a reputation as a trouble-maker.
Rip Torn, the tenacious, temperamental Texan whose much-admired career was highlighted by his brilliant turn as Artie the producer on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Torn, who was nominated for an Oscar for portraying the hard-drinking father Marsh opposite Mary Steenburgen in the 1984 Martin Ritt drama Cross Creek, died peacefully at his home in Lakeville, Connecticut, his publicist announced.

His wife, Amy Wright — an actress known for Stardust Memories and The Accidental Tourist — and his daughters, Katie and Angelica, were by his side.

Torn wowed critics as the fiercely protective Artie (his last name was never mentioned during the series) on The Larry Sanders Show, which starred Garry Shandling as a neurotic late-night TV talk-show host.

The groundbreaking sitcom ran from 1992-98, and Torn received an Emmy nomination for every one of its six seasons, winning in 1996. His character was said to be based on Fred De Cordova, the longtime producer of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show.

The part "was written to be a straight man," he recalled in 2011, "but people were saying, 'God, Rip is getting all those laughs. Who ever thought that Rip could be funny? Just everybody that knows him.'"

"With Rip, he came in the first time, and his agent said he wouldn't read," Shandling, who died in March 2016, said in 2012. "Weeks later, it was just him and me in a room with no one else, and I said to Rip, 'Could we read half of this together?' And he said, 'I don't want to read.' I said, 'That's totally fine,' and I pushed it to the side of the table.

"We talked for less than another minute, and he reached over and took the page, and he starts the scene. It's like trying to describe a good date to a friend the next day. I had to say to HBO and everybody else, 'Honestly, this is the best sex I have had.'"

Torn said he took the job because he owed family members a lot of money. Producers thought Torn would be perfect as Artie after seeing him play a lawyer in the Albert Brooks film Defending Your Life (1991).

A few years after the end of Larry Sanders, Torn's unpredictability and intensity were smartly channeled on NBC's 30 Rock, where he played Don Geiss, the amped-up CEO of General Electric and Jack Donaghy's (Alec Baldwin) boss. He received another Emmy nom in 2008, the ninth of his career.

In other comedic turns, he portrayed Zed, the head of the top secret government organization, in the first two Men in Black films; had fun as Patches O'Houlihan, a legend of his sport, in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004); and played King Looney in the sword-and-sandals spoof The Legend of Awesomest Maximus (2011).

As good as he was in comedy, Torn was at his best in dark dramas. He earned a Tony nomination in 1960 for playing Thomas J. Finley Jr. in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth and was the shifty blackmailer William Jefferson Slade in The Cincinnati Kid (1965).

Onscreen debauchery was a specialty. He played a psychiatrist filming the women he sleeps with in the pornographic Coming Apart (1969); was a womanizing college professor who becomes David Bowie's confidant in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); and stood out as an egomaniacal record producer who seduces a young blonde in Forty Shades of Blue (2005).

Torn was married from 1963-87 to the acclaimed actress Geraldine Page, whom he met at the Actors Studio in New York. One of the leading acting couples of their era, they founded the off-Broadway Sanctuary Theater Workshop in 1976. They were separated when she died of a heart attack in 1987 at age 62.

Torn also helped launch the Oscar-winning career of his cousin, actress Sissy Spacek, who was the daughter of his Uncle Ed.

Torn was an "actor's actor," but he had a reputation as a trouble-maker.

Legend has it that he was all set for Jack Nicholson's career-making role in Easy Rider (1969) before things went awry. Dennis Hopper, the film's director, said years later on The Tonight Show that Torn had pulled a knife on him in a diner, costing him the job. Torn said it was Hopper that pulled the knife on him and sued for libel, winning $475,000 in damages.

In an improvised fight seen in Maidstone (1970), Torn attacked actor-director Norman Mailer with a tack hammer; Mailer then bit into Torn's ear during the ensuing scrum. The Criterion Collection described the movie as being "shot over the course of five drug-fueled days in East Hampton, New York."

"What do they say about all the guys that are tremendous actors?" he told The New York Times in a 2006 interview. "Don't they say they have a volatile temper and emotions? Yeah, sure they do! They're not saying they like a nice mild guy. Look at Sean Penn."

In January 2010, Torn, intoxicated and armed with a loaded revolver, was arrested after he broke into a Connecticut bank after closing hours. He pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence.

He was born Elmore Rual Torn Jr. on Feb. 6, 1931, in Temple, Texas. All the men in his family nicknamed themselves "Rip." He enrolled at Texas A&M to study agriculture but transferred to the University of Texas at Austin to pursue architecture. Soon, he “defected,” as he put it, to the drama department, where he was taught by Shakespearean scholar B. Iden Payne.

Torn then apprenticed at the Dallas Institute of Performing Arts, studying under Baruch Lumet, the father of director Sidney Lumet.

After a two-year stint in the Army, Torn moved to New York and trained under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, where he met Page during a speech class (he was separated from his first wife, Ann Wedgeworth, at the time). He drew the attention of director Elia Kazan, who regarded him as the next James Dean or Marlon Brando.

Kazan gave Torn his first big opportunity — as the understudy to Ben Gazzara as the booze-swilling Brick in the original 1955 production of Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Kazan later gave him small roles in Baby Doll (1956) and A Face in the Crowd (1957) and then cast him opposite Paul Newman and Page in Sweet Bird of Youth. (All three reprised their roles for the 1963 film.)

In these years, some producers objected to his “Rip” nickname and wanted him to use a more conventional stage name. He was billed as “Eric” for one production but vowed to head back to Texas if he were forced to use that name permanently.

Torn landed his first major movie role with Time Limit (1957), a court-martial drama in which he played a prisoner-of-war survivor who cracks on the witness stand. He went on to appear in another military-set drama, Pork Chop Hill (1959), and appeared as Judas in King of Kings (1961).

Also in the 1960s, Torn portrayed Ingrid Bergman's young lover in the CBS prestige project Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life and guest-starred on many top TV shows of the era, including The Untouchables, Route 66 and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., exuding what one reviewer described as an “air of menace.”

After Torn met with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in an attempt to start an integrated national theater in 1963, he was targeted by the FBI and found trouble finding work in major motion pictures. "I began to see things in gossip columns, stories about me," he once said.

In 1970, on the day after Torn spoke out against the Vietnam War on The dikk Cavett Show, a bullet was fired through the window of his Manhattan home.

He soldiered on, appearing on stage and in such films as Payday (1973), playing a mean, manipulative country singer, and the Italian import Crazy Joe (1974), as a gangster. Much later, he portrayed Louis XV for Sofia Coppola in Marie Antoinette (2006).

Torn is also survived by his sister, Patricia, and his grandchildren Elijah, Tana, Emeris and Hannah.

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Ross Perot

Ross Perot, billionaire tyc00n and 2-time presidential candidate, dies at 89
By Kate Sullivan, Marlena Baldacci and Karl de Vries, CNN

Updated 4:25 PM ET, Tue July 9, 2019

Washington (CNN)Ross Perot, the billionaire tyc00n who mounted two unsuccessful third-party presidential campaigns in the 1990s, died Tuesday, family spokesman James Fuller confirmed to CNN. He was 89.

Perot died after a five-month battle with leukemia, Fuller said.
A billionaire by his mid-50s after he sold a controlling interest in the data processing business he founded to General Motors for $2.5 billion, Perot's foray into presidential politics made him one of the more colorful political figures of the 1990s.
His Texas twang, populist platform -- he memorably railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement, warning of a "giant sucking sound" of American jobs to other countries if passed -- and frequent TV appearances brought him wide recognition, and his 1992 campaign, in which he garnered nearly 19% of the vote and finished third behind Bill Clinton and incumbent President George H.W. Bush, remains one of the most successful third-party bids in American history.

Watch Ross Perot and Al Gore spar over NAFTA in 1993 01:58
For years, Bush blamed Perot for his defeat, saying in a 2012 HBO documentary that he believed Perot "cost me the election." Election experts and scholarly research, however, has challenged that theory: The New York Times found Perot's effect on the outcome of the election "appears to have been minimal," and The Washington Post reported Clinton would have still won by a large margin if Perot hadn't run.
In 1995, Perot created the Reform Party, and the following year received 8% of the vote in the presidential election as the party's candidate.
Following his second and final bid for the presidency, Perot served as president and CEO of Perot Systems Corporation, which he founded in 1988. He was the head of the company until 2000, when he passed the title on to his son, Ross Perot Jr.
Nine years later, Dell Incorporated bought Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, which was a net gain of about $400 million for the Perot family.
Aside from his business and political careers, Perot also received national attention for his efforts during the Vietnam War to create better conditions for US prisoners of war. He traveled to Laos, where he met with ambassadors from Russia and North Vietnam, and was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the Department of Defense in 1974 for his efforts. In 1979, when two EDS employees were taken hostage during a revolution in Iran, he organized and paid for a successful private mission called Operation Hotfoot to rescue the men and bring them home.
"In business and in life, Ross was a man of integrity and action. A true American patriot and a man of rare vision, principle and deep compassion, he touched the lives of countless people through his unwavering support of the military and veterans and through his charitable endeavors," Fuller said in a statement. "Ross Perot will be deeply missed by all who loved him. He lived a long and honorable life."
Early success in business
Henry Ray Perot -- he later legally changed his name to Henry Ross -- was born on June 27, 1930, in Texarkana, Texas, where his father ran a cotton mill.
By the time he was 7 years old, Perot was an accomplished horseman and a budding businessman. His father was training him to make a profit by buying and selling bridles, Perot said.
Perot graduated from the Naval Academy in 1953 and spent four years at sea. After the Navy, Perot worked as a salesman at IBM before starting his own corporation, Electronic Data Systems, in 1962 with a $1,000 loan from his wife, Margot. The company grew quickly, and when the company went public in 1968, Fortune magazine put Perot on its cover, calling him the "fastest, richest Texan."
He later sold a controlling interest in EDS to General Motors, becoming a billionaire and GM's single largest stockholder and a director. He netted approximately $750 million in 1986 when he resigned from the General Motors board of directors as part of a buyout agreement and sold his GM shares.

Ross Perot Fast Facts
Although he had never held public office, by the early 1990s, Perot, sensing an opportunity for an outsider campaign with an anti-Washington message, was openly talking about a presidential run. Speaking to CNN's Larry King in 1992, he said that if he were to launch a campaign, he would run as an independent and "get both parties' heads straight."
"I was down in Texas taking care of business, tending to my family, (but) this situation got so bad that I decided I better get into it," he later said during a presidential debate.
At one point during the summer of 1992, Perot dropped out, stating he couldn't win and that staying in the race would only create problems for the electoral process. His withdrawal came shortly after he stumbled during a speech at the NAACP, where his comments on unemployment were interpreted as patronizing and insensitive.
But he later re-entered the race in October.
"Few people in this country have been able to live the American Dream to the extent that I have," Perot said when he re-entered, adding, "Neither political party has effectively addressed the issues that concern the American people."

 

[Clayton Endicott]

As usual we need Stevie to get all his vaccinations, check ups, prostate and the other important shyt.

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

All I know is that Stevie had better not go on us

 

[CASHAPP]

R Kelly

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

R Kelly

Yeah, that's actually a good pick, because that dude is fukked

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

Rutger Hauer

Rutger Hauer, 'Blade Runner' co-star and memorable bad guy, dies at 75
By Brian Lowry, CNN

Updated 2:31 PM ET, Wed July 24, 2019

Rutger Howard in 'Blade Runner'
(CNN)Rutger Hauer, a dashing Dutch actor who battled Harrison Ford in the science-fiction classic "Blade Runner" and excelled in bad-guy roles, died July 19 after a short illness, his longtime agent Steve Kenis told The Hollywood Reporter.

Hauer was 75.
An AIDS charity with which the actor was involved, the Rutger Hauer Starfish Foundation, said he died peacefully at his Dutch home. The charity said his wife, Ineke, will carry on its work.
Hauer was largely introduced to American audiences by "Blade Runner," which cast him as a murderous synthetic human, or replicant, named Roy Batty.
Hauer's closing monologue, in which the character discusses all the things he has seen, is especially memorable. Of working with director Ridley Scott, the actor later said, " I understood, on a very strong level, what he wanted, and by instinct I gave it to him."
The tall, blue-eyed actor frequently appeared in period pieces, subsequently playing an accursed knight opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie "Ladyhawke," and a villainous rogue in the medieval drama "Flesh + Blood."

Rutger Hauer in 2014 (Photo by Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)
The following year, Hauer portrayed a sadistic hitchhiker in "The Hitcher," a popular horror film. He worked steadily through the '80s, '90s and thereafter, including parts in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Sin City" and "Batman Begins," in which he played the corrupt executive running Bruce Wayne's family business.
In his later years the actor moved seamlessly between movies and television, including a role in the HBO vampire drama "True Blood."
Hauer launched his career working with director Paul Verhoeven in the 1970s, who cast him in the movies "Turkish Delight and "Soldier of Orange." (Verhoeven later considered him for the lead in the movie "RoboCop," which ultimately went to Peter Weller.)
Hauer also turned down a role in the memorable German movie "Das Boot," about a submarine during World War II, saying in a 2018 interview in regard to the scheduling, "If I'd done 'Das Boot' I would never have been in 'Blade Runner.'"
On Twitter, director Guillermo del Toro called Hauer "an intense, deep, genuine and magnetic actor that brought truth, power and beauty to his films."

 

[Batter Up]

I was gonna name Neil Armstrong but then I googled him to see what he's been up to and apparently he's been dead for 7 years

 

[The Amerikkkan Idol]

I was gonna name Neil Armstrong but then I googled him to see what he's been up to and apparently he's been dead for 7 years

I thought he was still alive too.

Hell, I just learned Mary Tyler Moore died.