Believe It Or Not, I'm Walking On Air....

(Props to Phil)

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Guess he was typing his obit...
(Kudos to Phil)

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Hardcastle and McDeadmick
(Can I Get a Whoop Whoop for Phil)

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They said no one died in an A-Team episode...
(Cap tip to Phil, president of the Stephen J. Cannell fan club)

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In 2010, Stephen J. Cannell died from complications from melanoma. His soul promptly escaped the corporeal body to the Limbo Angeles Underground. Today, still wanted by the devil, he survives as a soul of fortune. If you have a problem, and no one on earth can help, maybe you should call... THE PRAYER TEAM
(Further fanfare for Phil)
Stephen J. Cannell, supplier of at least 2 hours of programming a day on most of the nation’s UHF channels, has died of melanoma at the age of 69. With more than 1,500 episodes as writer, producer or executive producer, he ranks as one of TV’s most prolific creators, most notably with The Rockford Files, which helped shift TV crime dramas from dry by the numbers affairs, and The A-Team, a hit when NBC desperately needed one in the mid-1980s. He helped launch Kevin Spacey’s career with an extended run as a villain on Wiseguy and made Johnny Depp a Teen Beat cover boy with 21 Jump Street. He introduced lovable lug Michael Chiklis as The Commish, a character light years from Vic Mackey on The Shield. He was less successful with William Katt and The Greatest American Hero. Other creations included Riptide, Hunter, Renegade, Silk Stalkings, Hardcastle and McCormick, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe and Booker. Most recently, he appeared as a poker buddy on Castle, though unfortunately, not as a writer.

The Not So Sweet Smell of Curtis

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Would Settle for Room Temperature at This Point

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May the Schwartz Be With You
(Props to Monty)

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I Love You, Spartacus
(Additional accolades to Monty)

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OH at the Pearly Gates: "Yondah Lies Da Castle of my Heavenly Foddah."
(Unapologetically lifted from the Facebook update of TV’s Frank [Frank Conniff])
Tony Curtis, best remembered for The Producers-esque Lobster Man from Mars, has died at 85 of cardiac arrest. The pretty boy actor scored an Oscar nomination as Joker Jackson, racist prisoner with a heart of gold in The Defiant Ones, but is best remembered as the It’s Just Pat of his day, with sexually ambiguous roles in Spartacus as the apple of Laurence Olivier’s eye, in Some Like it Hot as the be-drag-gled Valentine’s Day Massacre spectating musician with the better ass than Marilyn Monroe, in Goodbye Charlie as a man attracted to a mysterious blond who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend, and in the Great Race, as The Great Leslie. Other roles included Burt Lancaster’s twisted Broadway columnist J. J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, Kirk Douglas’ boat mate in The Vikings, serial killer Albert DeSalvo in the comically exploitative The Boston Strangler in a last-ditch attempt at a serious career, a playboy vigilante opposite Roger Moore in The Persuaders!, the excruciating Mae West comeback Sextette and filling in on the trip to Japan when both Walter Matthau and William Devane had had enough of the Bad News Bears. While stockpiling conquests like Monroe, Natalie Wood and Yvonne DeCarlo, plus countless starlets whose names he couldn’t remember, Curtis also picked up 6 wives, most notably Janet Leigh, with whom he sired Jamie Lee Curtis.

A Commitment to Expiration

Former Oakland Raiders placekicker and quarterback George Blanda, who retired more often than Brett Favre, has died at the age of 83, thwarting his planned comeback to dig the Raiders out of their current 2-4 hole. Blanda played 26 years– the longest career in pro football history. Starting his career at left bench with George Halas’ Chicago Bears in 1949, Blanda did not get along with the coaching legend. In one game with the Bears getting stomped, fans in the stands starting chanting “We want Blanda.” Halas told Blanda to come off the bench. After putting on his helmet and running to the sideline, Halas motioned to the stands and told him, “Get up there. They’re calling for you.” Tiring of being relegated to kicking, he retired after the 1958 season, but a year later, the American Football League came calling, and he led the Houston Oilers to the league’s first two championships, winning player of the year honors in 1961, before the Oilers decided he should retire in 1967. Instead, he went to the Raiders and played 9 more seasons. Though not known for his arm strength, passing accuracy, agility or foot speed, he nonetheless had a knack for clutch performances - in one 5-game stretch in 1970 replacing the Raiders injured quarterback, the 43-year-old Blanda guided the team to 5 4th quarter comebacks with his passing and kicking. Elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981, he was the first QB with 7 TD passes in a game, set the record for TDs in a season with 36 that stood for 23 seasons, still holds the record for interceptions in a season with 42, held the record for career interceptions until Brett Favre surpassed him, and finally retired in 1976 with more points scored and games played than anyone in pro football history.

Her Heart Will Not Go On

(An epitaphany shared with Monty)

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It Was Great to Be Alive
(Kudos to Kirsti)

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Laughter in Hell
(Props to Kirsti)

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Island in the Sky
(Additional accolades for Kirsti)

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It Could Happen to You
(Further fanfare for Kirsti)

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Tragically, Celine Dion is Still with Us…
(Terry, giving us something to look forward to)
Gloria Stuart, the only Academy Award nominee ever to appear on Manimal, has died at the age of 100. Stuart was a beautiful blonde and an active contract player in Hollywood’s Golden Age, appearing in 46 movies from 1932 to 1946, ranging from girlfriend to cousin to girl reporter to fiancé to girl detective, most notably opposite Boris Karloff in The Old Dark House and Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. She then became an invisible woman, spending the next 50 years looking for a good role, with occasional cameo appearances, such as a dance with Peter O’Toole in My Favorite Year, and a guest spot on Enos. Eventually she met James Cameron’s strict criteria for the role of Old Rose in Titanic: “someone who could be aged to 101 without much trouble and still remember her lines and stand up straight.” Stuart parlayed her 10 minutes of doddering into a surprise Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, before losing to Kim Basinger, another surprising nomination for an actress who ironically has significant trouble remembering her lines and has spent more time in her career on her back than standing up straight. At the time of her death, Stuart was 13 years into her latest 50-year sabbatical.

Playing Out the Fisher String

Eddie Fisher, the real life Anakin Skywalker, has died of complications of hip surgery at the age of 82. A teen idol as a singer in the 1950s, Fisher sold millions of records with such hits as "Thinking of You," ''Oh, My Pa-pa," ''Lady of Spain" and "Count Your Blessings," and with wife Debbie Reynolds made up America’s favorite couple, producing 2 children, including eventual Princess Leia and memoirist Carrie Fisher. In 1958, Fisher’s best friend, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash, and Fisher rushed to be at the side of his widow, Elizabeth Taylor. He soon moved around to the front, and divorced Reynolds to marry Taylor in 1959, effectively ruining his career, as his TV show was cancelled and his record sales plummeted. Within 5 years, the worm turned, as Taylor left Fisher for her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton. The celebrity marriage musical chairs continued as Fisher married Connie Stevens, had 2 more kids, then racked up 2 more divorces and 2 more ex-wives. He tried making a comeback in the 1980s, but hadn’t outlived his notoriety, and instead tried to cash in on it, with two scathing autobiographies, accusing Reynolds of being self-centered and controlling and Taylor of being crazy, with a blow by blow of his Hollywood sex life that led Carrie Fisher to say, “I'm having my DNA fumigated."

All That Breathes is not Gould

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He's Not Glenn Gould, But He's As Dead as Gould

(Cryptic commentary from Mark)

Harold Gould, the man who could have been Mr. C, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 86. His best known role was in The Sting as Twist, the grifter who worked the telegraph office end of the con. He appeared in countless sitcoms and dramas over the last 40 years, most recently as an ex-SS officer hiding in the United States as a Holocaust survivor on Nip/Tuck, more than 30 years after playing 4 different Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes, and 50 years after fighting Nazis in World War II. On Soap, he shared a hospital room with Jody when his quarterback boyfriend dumps him, prompting a suicide attempt. On Night Court, he played a car salesman who sold cars for $1 a piece while grieving for his late wife and got arrested for grand theft auto, but Harry and the gang get him sprung for one last New Year’s Eve in Times Square. On The Golden Girls, he was a widowed college professor who dates Rose Nylund. Occasionally, his wife survived, and he played Rhoda’s father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, although being married to Nancy Walker couldn’t have been that much of a treat. On Dallas, he ran the asylum J.R. gets himself committed to in order to get Clayton Farlow’s insane sister to sign over voting rights to her Westar Oil stock in J.R.’s bid to take over that company after losing Ewing Oil. He missed his big break after he played Howard Cunningham in the Love, American Style skit that launched Happy Days, but was replaced by Tom Bosley. Similarly, he lost the role of Marlo Thomas’s father in That Girl after appearing in the pilot.

Body Snatched

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Long Live Walter Jameson
(Mad props for the Don for the deep dive)

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Snatched
(Kudos to Don)

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YOU'RE NEXT! YOU'RE NEXT!
(Accolades for conspiracist Greg)
Kevin McCarthy, enemy of the UHF, has died at the age of 96. He had almost 200 roles in his 70-year career, even scoring an Oscar nomination as Biff in the 1951 movie “Death of a Salesman,” but he’ll always be Doctor Miles Bennell running through the streets of Santa Mira, California warning a disbelieving populace about the subtle infiltration of Communists, I mean aliens. He was so identified with the role, he recreated the closing scene of the original on Donald Sutherland’s car in the 1978 remake. He fulfilled his Twilight Zone obligation in Long Live Walter Jameson, a history professor who masters eternal life, then played Uncle Walt in the Twilight Zone: The Movie segment remake of It’s a Good Life. In recent years, most of his roles were powerful dishonest men, like the industrial spy in Innerspace, the mad scientist breeding killer fish in Pirahna, the evil TV station owner in UHF, the best father ever, who hires a prostitute for his virgin son in My Tutor and a smarmy political operative in The Distinguished Gentleman. Although his time in sci-fi was limited, he had a brilliant cameo in the film within the film in Matinee, playing General Ankrum, a reference to B-movie staple Morris Ankrum, who frequently played military and police types.

You'll Go Down in His-tor-y... About Six Feet Down, To Be Precise

(Merit for Mark)
Billy Richards has abdicated her seat in any subsequent reindeer games, dying of complications from a series of strokes at the age of 88. Richards is best remembered as the clogged nosed voice of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in all three Rankin-Bass specials: the original, Rudolph's Shiny New Year and the 1979 summertime sequel Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July. Well-attuned ears will also recognize her as the voice of Tenderheart Bear in the first two Care Bears movies and all the female characters in The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo and The Toothbrush Family with Len Carlson. She made rare appearances in live action films, most notably in the 1998 horror film Bram Stoker's Shadow Builder, in which her character was attacked with an axe by Paul Soles, who had played Hermey the elf in the original Rudolph special.