RIP Rob Gibbs

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

4/28/2020

He spent more than 20 years with the company, working on films from 'Toy Story 2' to 'Onward.'

Rob Gibbs, a story artist, writer and director who contributed to many Pixar films, from Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo to Up, Wall-E, Inside Out and Onward, has died, a company spokesman confirmed. He was 55.

A cause of death was not immediately available.

Gibbs' credits also included the short film Tokyo Mater (2008) and the series Mater's Tall Tales and Tales From Radiator Springs, all emanating from the Cars franchise; Brave (2012); Monsters University (2013) and the upcoming Monsters at Work series for Disney+; and Incredibles 2 (2018).

Gibbs, a resident of San Rafael, California, was co-directing and in preproduction on Hump, featuring the voices of Simon Pegg, Gaten Matarazzo, Ramy Youssef and others, at the time of his death.

Born in Escondido, California, Gibbs was inspired by Looney Tunes and Popeye cartoons as a kid. He said he began to appreciate short films after attending a Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation in La Jolla, California.

Gibbs attended Palomar College and CalArts and did animation for FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) and Cool World (1992) before spending five years in story and visual development at Walt Disney Feature Animation, working on Pocahontas (1995), The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1998) and Fantasia 2000 (1999).

He joined Pixar in February 1998 and served as a storyboard artist on Toy Story 2 (1999).

Survivors include his daughter Mary, the voice of Boo in several Monsters, Inc. projects.

GIBBS, Rob

Born: 10/17/1964, Escondido, California, U.S.A.

Died: 4/24/2020, San Rafael, California, U.S.A.

Rob Gibb’s westerns – writer: 
Pocahontas - 1995

RIP Cis Corman

Cis Corman, Casting Director on 'Death Wish,' 'Raging Bull' and 'The Deer Hunter,' Dies at 93

Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

4/29/2020

She worked with Barbra Streisand on films including 'Nuts' and 'The Prince of Tides' and served as the longtime president of her production company.

Cis Corman, a casting director on films including Death Wish, Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter who later served as Barbra Streisand's "surrogate mother" and president of her production company, has died. She was 93.

Corman died Monday at her home in New York City, her son, photographer Richard Corman, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Corman collaborated with Martin Scorsese on Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982) — she hired stand-up comedian Sandra Bernhard for that — and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988); with Michael Cimino on the best picture Oscar winner The Deer Hunter (1978) and Heaven's Gate (1980); and with Michael Winner on Death Wish (1974), The Sentinel (1977) and Firepower (1979).

She also cast two films for Irvin Kershner — 1972's Streisand-starring Up the Sandbox and 1978's Eyes of Laura Mars — and one for Karel Reisz (1974's The Gambler), Michael Wadleigh (1981's Wolfen), Arthur Hiller (1982's Author! Author!) and Sergio Leone (1984's Once Upon a Time in America).

A native of Brookline, Massachusetts, Corman served as president of Streisand's Barwood Films (and Barwood Television) for about two decades since its inception in 1984.

She and Streisand first met when both were in an acting class at the Curt Conway Studio in New York.

Streisand, then 15 and a student at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, "had come to the house and my husband and I were sitting around eating in the kitchen," Corman recalled in a 1991 profile for Vanity Fair. "She said, 'Ya know, I'm going to enter a contest for singing.' I said, 'Why would you do that? You don't know how to sing.' She said, 'Yeah, I do.' 'Well, sing for us,' I said. It was rather a silly thing to say.

"She said, 'I'm too embarrassed. Well, all right, I'll sit on the table and look toward the wall.' So she sat down and faced the wall and sang Harold Arlen's 'A Sleepin' Bee.' She turned around when she got through and we were drenched in tears. It was something I'll never forget."

Alongside Streisand, Corman appeared as a Ziegfield Girl in Funny Girl (1968), served as her casting director on Yentl (1983), Streisand's directing debut, and earned her first producing credits on a 1987 installment of CBS Summer Playhouse and the Streisand-starring Nuts, both from Barwood.

Corman also produced Streisand's The Prince of Tides (1991) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), as well as the 1995 NBC telefilm Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (she and Streisand shared an Emmy nomination) and 2001's Streisand-hosted Reel Models: The First Women of Film (Corman won a Daytime Emmy).

In a statement released Wednesday, Streisand noted that Corman was "32 and had four children" when they first met.

"She remained my best friend and surrogate mother since then," she continued. "I treasured our lifelong friendship, her intelligence, her taste and her integrity. I loved Cis dearly and will miss her forever. She was also Auntie Cis to my son, Jason.

"We shared the conviction that a film has to serve some key social purpose, and the issues addressed in our television projects included the significant and disregarded history of women in film, the importance of gun control legislation [1998's The Long Island Incident], gay adoption and one about non-Jewish rescuers who saved Jews during the Holocaust."

Richard Corman is a portrait photographer known for his work with Madonna in the early 1980s. His mom insisted that he photograph the singer after she had auditioned for the role of Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ.

Survivors also include son Jeffrey and grandchildren William, Kimberly, Lily and Olivia.

CORMAN, Cis

Born: 1927, Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Died: 4/27/2020, New York City, New York, U.S.A.

Cis Corman’s western – casting director:

Heaven’s Gate - 1980

RIP Goffredo Matassi

GOODBYE TO GOFFREDO MATASSI

Enciclopedia del Doppiaggio

4/28/2020

The actor Goffredo Matassi died today in Rome. During his career he had voiced Morgan Freeman's caliber actors in "The Ruthless", Paul Brooke in "Bridget Jones Diary", Donnelly Rhodes in "Tron Legacy" and David Bradley in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "Harry Potter and the Gifts of Death Part II". On TV Eddie Jones as Jones as Jonathan Kent in the first season of "Lois & Clark - The New Adventures of Superman" and Peter Vaughan in those of Master Aemon in "The Thrones". He was the voice of Droopy in the series "Droopy Chief Detective" and Amphitrion in the Disney movie "Hercules". Among his latest works were the dubbing of Dr. Teeth in "The Muppet" and "Muppets 2-Wanted". Matassi was also a film actor and appeared in two Euro-westerns: “The Hills Run Red” (1966) as a croupier and “Pray and Kill” (1967) as a gambler.

MATASSI, Goffredo

Born: 11/8/1933, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Died: 4/28/2020, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Goffredo Matassi’s westerns actor, voice actor:

The Hills Run Red – 1966 (croupier)

Pray and Kill – 1967 (gambler)

Davy Crockett (TV) – 1994 [Italian voice of Bradley]

RIP Gil Baroni

Facebook

Luca Pernisco

April 26, 2020

Actor and voice actor Gil Baroni left us today. As part of a number of Batman films he voiced actor Michael Gough as Alfred in Batman - The Return, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin. In the spotlight of artist s' paradise, unfortunately another soul is added.

Gil was the voice of Tom Bosley on the TV series Happy Days.

Condolences to the family from all Batman Crime Solver staff.

BARONI, Gil (Gianfranco Baroni)

Born: 3/13/1937, Como, Lombardy, Italy

Died: 4/26/2020, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Gil Baroni’s western – voice dubber;

One Little Indian – 1975 [Italian voice of Pat Hingle]

RIP Peter H. Hunt

Peter H. Hunt, Director of 1776, Dies at 81

Broadway World

April 26, 2020  
     
BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that Peter H. Hunt, director and lighting designer for the theatre, has died. He was 81 years old. Hunt was best known as the director of both the stage and screen versions of the musical 1776.

The news was reported by Howard Sherman on Twitter.

I am reading that Peter H. Hunt, director of the stage and screen version of 1776, has passed away. He began his career as a lighting designer, and was artistic director of @WTFest from 1989 to 1995.
- Howard Sherman (@HESherman) April 26, 2020

Hunt began his career as a lighting designer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1958. He served as Artistic Director in 1989 until 1995. In 1969, he helmed the Broadway musical 1776, winning the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for his efforts. Following 1776, he directed Georgy, which closed after just 4 performances.

In 1975, Hunt received his second Tony nomination for Goodtime Charley. His most recent Broadway credit was The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1997. He has gone on to direct multiple benefit shows for the Actors Fund, including staged readings of Sunset Boulevard and Casablanca.

In addition to the screen adaptation of 1776, he worked on the film Give 'em Hell, Harry! Hunt has directed multiple movies made for television, including four based on the Hart to Hart series, Dead Man's Island, and episodes of Baywatch, Baywatch Nights, and Touched by an Angel. He was producer-director of four of the feature adaptations in the Mark Twain Series on PBS.

HUNT, Peter H. (Peter Huls Hunt)

Born: 12/19/1938, Pasadena, California, U.S.A.

Died: 4/26/2020, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Peter H. Hunt’s western – director:

Sawyer and Finn - 1983

RIP Otto Mellies

Otto Mellies is dead: actor at the Deutsches Theater Berlin

Der Spiegel

April 27, 2020

An old, embittered former GDR judge who now, decades later, is supposedly practicing justice – it was one of his last roles that Otto Mellies played in Berlin's “crime scene” at the end of last year. Grandly reserved, with a charisma that conveys all the anger and sadness of the figure without big words. Now the actor Otto Mellies has died, the artist agency Merten and Tatsch said, citing his family.

Otto Mellies was born in 1931 in the then German town of Schlawe in Pomerania. His mother, older sister and their children died shortly before the end of the war. His father was still a soldier at that time. His brother Eberhard, who later also worked as an actor, was drafted in the war, so that Mellies was on his own when he was 14 and worked as a groom for Russian soldiers.

After attending school interrupted by the turmoil of the Second World War, Mellies applied to the Schwerin Theater at the age of 16 and received from the well-known actress

Lucie Höflich taught acting for two years.

In 1956 the director Wolfgang Langhoff brought him to the German Theater in Berlin, where he had been a member of the ensemble for 50 years. His leading role was Nathan in Lessing's “Nathan the Wise” – he played this role a total of 325 times and wrote stage history with it.

Mellies became known to a wide audience as “Der Arzt von Bothenow” (1961), but especially four years later in the TV multi-part “Dr. Schlüter” in the role of a German chemist, who was ultimately leading a chemical plant with concentration camp inmates escapes and decides against a career under the Nazis. For this he also received the GDR National Prize. For his role in Andreas Dresden's film “Halt auf Freiloute”, he received the German Film Award in 2012 as the best male actor in a supporting role.

Many know his voice from radio play and audio book productions. He was also the voice actor for Paul Newman, Christopher Lee and Sean Connery.

In an interview with the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” Mellies said in 2017. “For me, theater was the mother of art. I did everything else, film, television, radio, on the side. But I enjoyed everything.” Otto Mellies died on Monday. He was 89 years old.

MELLIES, Otto (Otto Ewald Ernst Mellies)

Born: 1/19/1931, Slupsk, Poland

Died: 4/26/2020, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Otto Mellies’ westerns – voice dubber:

Colt .45 – 1950 [German voice of Stanley Andrews]

The Big Sky – 1952 [German voice of Arthur Hunnicutt [2010 DVD]

White Apache – 1985 [German voice of Alberto Farnese]

Colt 45 – 1995 [German voice of Stanley Andrews 1950]

Texas Rangers – 2001 [German voice of James Coburn]

Open Range – 2003 [German voice of Michael Gambon]

The Big Sky – 2010 [German voice of Arthur Hunnicutt 1952]

Rango – 2011 [German voice of mayor]

RIP Aarón Hernán

Aaron Hernán, actor in The Shadow of the Past, dies

The actor died at the age of 89 in Mexico City, as reported by the National Association of Interpreters. Aarón Hernán participated in successful soap operas such as 'Sortilegio', 'De que te quiero, te quiero' and 'Un refugio para el amor'', among many others.

Univision

April 26, 2020

The actor lost his life after suffering a heart attack, according to information from the newspaper El Universal. 

Actor Aarón Hernán, famous for his work in film, theater and television, passed away this Sunday, April 26, as reported by the National Association of Actors.

On April 7, Aarón Hernán had a sharp fall that fractured his femur. The accident occurred while he was walking in the Actor's Home, where he lived for the past few years. At first he thought that it had not been serious, however, he had to undergo surgery, as reported by Yucita Furlong, director of the residence for elderly actors, for the program 'Ventaneando' on April 17. The first actor was fitted with a prosthesis and released two days later in good health.

Aarón Hernán made his television debut in the soap opera 'La mentira', in 1965, alongside Julissa, Fanny Cano and Enrique Lizalde. Later he acted in other successful melodramas such as ' Muchacha italiana viene a casarse', 'El carruaje' and 'Leona Vicario'. In 2009, he joined the cast of 'Sortilegio', a soap opera starring Jacqueline Bracamontes and William Levy. In this story, he gave life to the character Don Porfirio Betancourt. Later we saw him in 'Llena de amor' and ' Un refugio para el amor'. His most recent performances on television were made in 'De que te quiero, te quiero' and 'La sombra del pastor'. In the latter, he played Father Sixto and shared credits with Michelle Renaud and Pablo Lyle. Aarón Hernán also participated in series such as 'Mujeres Asesinas', Vecinos and 'Los simuladores'. 

HERNAN, Aarón

Born: 11/20/1931, Camargo, Chihuahua, Mexico

Died: 4/26/2020, Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico

Aarón Hernán’s westerns – actor:

El secreto del texano – 1966

El indomable – 1966 (Ignacio Jiménez)

Una horca para Texano – 1969 (Adam)

Manuel Saldivar, il texano – 1972

Revoltoso - 2016

RIP Bob McCubbin

Facebook

The Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid

April 9, 2020

Robert G. "Bob" McCubbin passed away, peacefully in his sleep, Thursday morning, April 9, 2020, in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 83. Bob was the founding president of Wild West History Association and known world-wide for his two important collections: photographs of Wild West and frontier characters, and his one-of-a-kind collection of first edition books and pamphlets. Born February 17, 1937 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, he was the father of four children, Cody, Julie, Tacey, and Bobby, and several grandchildren. He is also survived by a dear brother, Don and wife Mary Ann, and their daughter, Cheryl.

Due to the current situation with COVID 19, no funeral service will be held at this time. A memorial service will be conducted in Lincoln, New Mexico at the first opportunity. Long-time friend, Roy B. Young, will deliver the eulogy. Further notice of arrangements will be announced as soon as they are known.

Bob McCubbin (Robert Gale McCubbin)

Born: 1937, El Paso, Texas, U.S.A.

Died: April 9, 2020, Santa Fe New Mexico, U.S.A.

Bob McCubbin – publisher, photo collector:

True West Magazine – 1999 [publisher]

The Shootis: The Legend Lives On – 2001 [photographs]

Wild West Tech (TV) – 2004 [stills]

The Assassination of Jesse James: Death of an Outlaw – 2008 [stills]

The Wild West: 365 Days - 2011 [co-author]

Gunslingers (TV) – 2015 [stills]

RIP Claudio Risi

NJ MMA news

April 26, 2020

Dead Claudio Risi, son of Dino Risi and director of “The Boys of the 3rd C”

He died in Rome, at 71 years, after two months of hospitalization. In the cinema, he took his first steps in the seventies and arrived on television in 1987, with the show that earned him two Telegatti.

He died in the days of the Coronavirus, without the Coronavirus playing any role in his departure. Claudio Risi, son of Dino Risi and older brother of Marco Risi, disappeared in Rome, at 71 years, frpm the consequences suffered due to a heart attack.

Claudio Risi was hospitalized two months ago, after an initial illness. Seventy-one, he started working in the early seventies, as assistant director for the first, then independent directors. The art, the precious one of Italian cinema, learned it in the family, but went out to practice it.

Risi, his first engagement, got it in 1972, as assistant director of Mario Monicelli for the film We want the Colonels. The directorial debut took place twelve years later, in 1984, with the film Windsurf – The wind in your hair, the point of arrival of a long and complex path. After working alongside Monicelli, the young man helped his father to make various films. The Priest's Wife, Perfume of Woman , We women are made like this. “Dad was a nuisance on set. But he also had that proverbial sense of humor that made everything lighter. He loved to laugh, he loved to have fun”, he told several years later, before finding his father on television, on the occasion of the dated special 2005 Rudolf Nureyev Alla Scala.

Risi, the last two of which date back to 2007 and 2011, for cinepanettoni Wedding in the Bahamas and Wedding in Paris , on television it got there well before 2005, gaining fame and success. In 1987, he directed, in fact, The Boys of the 3rd C, of which he directed all three seasons. Then, his name began to circulate among the general public and, twice, in the 1987 and in 1988, he was awarded the Telegatto for the best Italian television show.

The family, who gave news of his untimely death, which took place on the same day as the journalist and MEP Giulietto Chiesa, made it known that in compliance with the rules of the Dpcm there will be no funeral.

RISI, Claudio

Born: 11/12/1948, Bern, Switzerland

Died: 4/26/2020, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Claudio Risi’s western – cameraman:

Life is Tough Eh Providence? - 1972

RIP Gene Dynarski

Gene Dynarski, Actor on 'Seinfeld' and 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' Dies at 86

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

4/24/2020

He also appeared on 'Star Trek,' 'Batman' and 'The X-Files' and ran a small theater in L.A.

Gene Dynarski, a character actor who appeared in Steven Spielberg's Duel and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and played Izzy Mandelbaum Jr., the son of Lloyd Bridges' character, on Seinfeld, has died. He was 86.

Dynarski died Feb. 27 in a rehabilitation center in Studio City, playwright Ernest Kearney announced.

The Brooklyn native also worked twice on the original Star Trek, as the miner Ben Childress on the 1966 episode "Mudd's Women" and as Krodak, who represents a city up for Federation membership, on the 1969 installment "The Mark of Gideon."

Dynarski was seen as Benedict, one of Egghead's (Vincent Price) henchmen, on Batman in 1966, and on a 2000 episode of The X-Files, his character fell victim to a monstrous bat creature.

His résumé also included Earthquake (1974), Airport 1975 and All the President's Men (1976) and Hill Street Blues, The A-Team, Little House on the Prairie, Starsky and Hutch, Kung Fu, Kojak, Bonanza and The Monkees, among other TV series.

In 1979, he opened The Gene Dynarski Theatre near Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue in Los Angeles, with Ed Harris starring in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth as its first production. Elisabeth Shue and Tom Hanks were among others who performed there before it shuttered in the mid-1990s.

Born on Sept. 13, 1933, Dynarski worked as a "pin monkey" at a bowling alley, served in the U.S. Navy and, after coming to L.A., began getting acting jobs through noted casting director Lynn Stalmaster. In 1965, he made his onscreen debut on an episode of the ABC medical drama Ben Casey.

In the 1971 telefilm Duel, Dynarski was a trucker confronted in a roadside café by Dennis Weaver, who thinks he's the murderous big-rig driver on his tail, and in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), he played the supervisor who sends out Richard Dreyfuss to investigate those mysterious blackouts. 

On the 1997 Seinfeld episode "The English Patient," Dynarski's character and his equally competitive dad and grandfather (Earl Schuman) all throw out their backs, then blame Jerry for it. (He and Bridges returned for another episode the following season.)

Dynarski also portrayed Josef Stalin in the 1996 videogame Command & Conquer: Red Alert and won a Los Angeles Drama Critics' Award for his performance in Among the Vipers, produced by Kearney at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.

Survivors include his two daughters.

Dynarski, Gene (Eugene Dynarski)

Born: 9/13/1933, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.

Died: 2/27/2020, Studio City, California, U.S.A.

Gene Dynarski’s westerns – actor:

The Big Valley (TV) – 1965 (Pollick)

Iron Horse (TV) – 1967 (Jaster)

The Outcasts (TV) – 1968 (posseman)

Bonanza (TV) – 1969, 1972 (Wheeler, Hostler)

Kung Fu (TV) – 1975 (Fred)

Little House on the Prairie (TV) – 1979 (Jedediah)

Father Murphy (TV) - 1982

RIP Dimitri Diatchenko

Chernobyl Diaries actor Dimitri Diatchenko is found dead inside his Florida residence at age 52 after his family asks for a wellness check

Daily Mail

By Heidi Parker

April 24, 2020

The actor had not been heard from for several so his family called police

Officers went to his home in Daytona Beach, Florida where they found him dead

The family believes Dimitri died late Monday night or early Tuesday morning

His brother has also said that the star was in good health and doing fine 

Dimitri Diatchenko was found dead at age 52 inside his Florida residence.

The actor had not been heard from for several days so on Wednesday his family asked police to do a wellness check, according to a Friday report from TMZ. The site claims to have talked to his brother.

The star, who was born in San Francisco, is best know for his role in the 2012 movie Chernobyl Diaries. 

The site added that 'the family believes Dimitri died late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.'

His body was found inside his home in Daytona Beach, Florida, after the family had tried many times to contact him.

The star's brother told the site that Dimitri's death was not related to the novel coronavirus. There have been over 800 deaths in Florida from COVID-19.

Dimitri was in good shape and healthy, his brother told the site, so the family is 'blindsided' by his passing.

There also were reportedly no signs of foul play. 

His body is in the coroner's office and the cause of death is 'pending the medical examiner's investigation,' the site also claimed. 

He was born in San Francisco to a Ukranian father and Swedish mother.

The star attended Newton North High School in Massachusetts and graduated from Florida State University in 1996.

His first tole was in the 1997 film GI Jane which starred Demi Moore and was directed by Ridley Scott.

After the film he moved to Los Angeles, landing a role with Jennifer Garner in Alias.

He was also in the films Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Get Smart. 

The 2012 thriller Chernobyl Diaries is what he is best known for. The actor played Yuri, a Ukrainian tour guide.

The movie was about a group of tourists who follow Yuri to the town of Pripyat, Ukraine, once home to workers at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant but abandoned after the 1986 nuclear disaster. 

They then find out that they are not alone in the ghost town.

He also did voice work for the video game Medal of Honor: European Assault. His last on camera acting role was as Janko Kolar on the show Murder In The First with Taye Diggs. 

In 2017 he voiced the character of Vulko on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

DIATCHENKO, Dimitri

Born: 4/11/1958, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Died: 4/20/2020, Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Dimitri Diatchenko’s western – actor:

Walker, Texas Ranger (TV) – 1999 (Robert Jackson)

RIP Joel Rogosin

Joel Rogosin, Producer on 'The Virginian,' Ironside' and 'Magnum, P.I.,' Dies of COVID-19 Complications at 87

The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes

4/22/2020

He is the fifth resident of the Motion Picture & Television Fund's Country House and Hospital to succumb to the virus.

Joel Rogosin, an Emmy-nominated writer and producer on such shows as The Virginian, Ironside, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider, has died. He was 87.

Rogosin died Tuesday at the Motion Picture & Television Fund's Country House and Hospital. He is the fifth resident to die of complications from the coronavirus, a spokeswoman for the MPTF said.

Rogosin started out in Hollywood in 1957 as a messenger at Columbia Pictures, and by 1961 he was producing ABC's 77 Sunset Strip, then the No. 1 show on television. He also worked on other series in the Warner Bros. Television stable, including Hawaiian Eye and Surfside 6.

He went on to produce and/or write for The Blue Knight, The Bold Ones: The New Doctors, The New Lassie and a pair of Jerry Lewis telethons.

Rogosin received his first two Emmy nominations in 1970 and '71 for producing Ironside and his third in 1983 for producing Magnum, P.I.

"Joel's era demanded a man knew how to work with every person in the process, and by doing so, became partner in the endeavor with them rather than simply their boss," his friend and TV producer Peter Dunne said in a statement. "One of the great benefits of hiring Joel … his crews loved him, would follow him and bust their asses to get it done right for him. Bottom line: Joel was more than a writer and producer. He was a mentor, a big brother and the ultimate filmmaker."

At the MPTF campus, Rogosin was a pioneer member of the Grey Quill Society, a group of residents who meet every week in a workshop setting to share memories, poetry, fiction and drama. He also pushed for a "dignified" name change for the home of the facility's most frail and vulnerable; it's now called The Mary Pickford House.

Survivors include Deborah, his wife of 67 years, and their three daughters, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Among those who have died at the MPTF home from the virus are actor Allen Garfield and former Disney animator Ann Sullivan.

ROGOSIN, Joel

Born: 1933, Boston Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Died: 4/21/2020, Woodland Hills, California, U.S.A.

Joel Rogosin’s westerns – producer, director, writer:

Pony Express (TV) – 1959 [writer]

The Virginian (TV) – 1964-1969 [producer, director, writer]

Bad Men of the West (TV) – 1974 [producer]

RIP Shirley Knight

Shirley Knight, Adventurous Actress and Two-Time Oscar Nominee, Dies at 83

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

4/22/2020

A winner of a Tony and three Emmys, the Kansan was memorable in 'The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,' 'Sweet Bird of Youth,' 'Dutchman' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire.'

Shirley Knight, the daring actress and darling of Tennessee Williams who received Oscar nominations for her work in her third and fourth films, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth, has died. She was 83.

Knight died Wednesday of natural causes at the home of her daughter, actress Kaitlin Hopkins, in San Marcos, Texas.

Knight was known for taking bold chances during her career — as when she portrayed a promiscuous woman who confronts a young black male (Al Freeman Jr.) on the New York subway in the incendiary 1966 independent film Dutchman (1966) or when she played a pregnant Long Island housewife who gets involved with an ex-football player (James Caan) in The Rain People (1969), a film Francis Ford Coppola wrote just for her.

The Kansas native received a Tony Award in 1976 for her turn as an alcoholic actress who channels Marilyn Monroe in Kennedy's Children, and she was nominated again in 1997 for portraying the sorrowful wife of a Houston businessman (Rip Torn) in Horton Foote's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Young Man From Atlanta.

In Delbert Mann's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) — an adaptation of another Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this one written by Kansan William Inge and directed on Broadway by Elia Kazan — Knight made her first big splash as Reenie, the conflicted teenage daughter of a laid-off salesman (Robert Preston) and his wife (Dorothy McGuire) in 1920s Oklahoma.

She landed her first supporting actress nom for that, then received another one for her next film, Richard Brooks' gripping Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), in which she portrayed Heavenly Finley, the daughter of the crooked town boss (Oscar winner Ed Begley) and childhood sweetheart of a Hollywood wannabe, Chance Wayne (Paul Newman). The film was based on a 1959 play by Williams that was directed on Broadway by Kazan as well.

At the height of her powers in 1964, Knight asked for and was granted a release from her contract at Warner Bros. so she could move to New York to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. "When I was doing Sweet Bird of Youth, Geraldine Page and Paul and the whole cast were so experienced," she said in 2014. "I felt like there's something they knew that I didn't."

One of her favorite stage personas was Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire: "I was absolutely born to play that role," she said in a 2010 interview for the Classic TV blog. After one performance, she recalled, "Tennessee came backstage and said, 'Finally, I have my Blanche. My perfect Blanche.' " He then wrote A Lovely Sunday at Creve Coeur for her.

Talking about the actress in a 1982 interview with James Grissom, Williams said: "People talk about talent, but everybody has some talent. Everybody also has a heart. But talent, like one's heart, is almost always badly or rarely used. You don't take a talent or a heart out for a walk or an adventure without a great deal of courage, and I look for courage.

"There are talented people — brilliant people — who have courage, and those you want to keep around you … Shirley Knight has incredible courage: She'll take her talent wherever it needs to go to get the job done well, and she has no fear about sharing it with anyone ready for it. I like daring people, bold people. Shirley is daring and bold."

She was born on July, 5, 1936, in Goessel, Kansas, the daughter of an oil-company executive. Raised in nearby Mitchell, a town with 13 houses, a two-room schoolhouse and a church, Knight began training at age 11 to be an opera singer.

When director Josh Logan brought Picnic (1956), an adaptation of another Inge play, to film at Sterling Lake, Knight, her sister, brother and mom served as extras for a day on the film, watching William Holden and Kim Novak at work.

After her junior year at Wichita State University, Knight came to Southern California for a six-week summer acting course at the Pasadena Playhouse. That led to her getting a role as a 15-year-old unwed mother opposite Michael Landon in NBC Matinee Theater in 1957.

"I guess I had kind of natural talent," she said. "I looked very young; I was 19 but looked 15."

Knight wasn't going back to Kansas. She enrolled at UCLA and took acting lessons from Jeff Corey (her classmates included former child stars Robert Blake and Dean Stockwell, Jack Nicholson, Sally Kellerman and Millie Perkins), and while in a play was spotted by Ethel Winant, the famed head of casting at CBS.

"Ethel really was the person who, more than anyone else, championed my career," she said. "She would put me in everything. Anything she could possibly put me in that was at CBS, she did. She also was responsible for my going with the Kurt Frings Agency. If you don't know who that is, he was the most important Hollywood agent for women. He handled Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint. Every star at that time was his client.

"I was taken in to meet him, and I was this skinny little thing with glasses. He took one look at me and said to the agent who brought me in, 'Why do we want her?' And the agent said, 'Well, she's really good.' This is with me in the room. And he said, 'Well, OK.' "

Knight landed a contract ($400 for six months) at Warner Bros. and wound up appearing on the studio's TV dramas like Bourbon Street Beat, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye and Maverick.

She also portrayed a woman whose husband was killed during World War II on a live October 1958 episode of CBS' Playhouse 90 that was directed by Mann. He had her in mind when he was searching for someone to portray Reenie in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

In 1963, Knight starred with Martin Landau in "The Man Who Was Never Born," a memorable episode of The Outer Limits. (Landau and his wife, actress Barbara Bain, stood up for her at her first wedding, to Broadway producer Gene Persson.)

At the Academy Awards, Knight lost to Shirley Jones of Elmer Gantry and then to Patty Duke of The Miracle Worker. "My father was my date for my first Oscar nomination," she said in the 2014 interview. "When I didn't win, Dad said, 'You know, you can always come home.' I think he thought that the fact I didn't win meant that was [the end of] it."

Knight did Dutchman on stage and then starred in and produced the film version, directed by Anthony Harvey. The movie won a critics prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and she took the best actress honor at the Venice festival.

Coppola was at Cannes with You're a Big Boy Now when Dutchman was there. "He came up to me said, 'Look, I really want to write a film for you,' " Knight recalled in her Classic TV conversation. "At the time, people often said that sort of thing, but you never really took it totally seriously.

"I was living in London, in a little cottage in Hampstead, and six months later he was on my doorstep with the script. He said, 'Do you mind if I stay here while you read it?' So I gave him some food and read the script and I said, 'Let's do it.' "

Knight collected two Emmys in 1995, one for playing Peggy Buckley, the real-life owner of a day-care center who's tried for child molestation, in the telefilm The McMartin Trial, the other for a guest stint on NYPD Blue. She picked up a third Emmy in 1988 for playing the mother of Mel Harris on Thirtysomething and was nominated eight times during her career.

Knight also portrayed the meddling mother-in-law of Marcia Cross on Desperate Housewives and Faith Ford's small-town mom on the short-lived 1998-99 comedy Maggie Winters. She could have played the wife of J.R. Ewing on Dallas but turned that down. (The part, of course, wound up going to Linda Gray.)

On the big screen, Knight was the mother of Kevin James in the two Paul Blart: Mall Cop films and also appeared in The Group (1966), Petulia (1968), The Counterfeit Killer (1968), Secrets (1971), Juggernaut (1974), Endless Love (1981) — as Brooke Shields' mom — Color of Night (1994), Diabolique (1996), As Good as It Gets (1997), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), Grandma's Boy (2006), Our Idiot Brother (2011), Redwood Highway (2013) and Mercy (2014).

She was married to Persson (You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown) from 1959 until their 1969 divorce and to British writer-playwright John R. Hopkins from 1969 until his death in 1998.

She also is survived by daughter Sophie Jacks, a screenwriter, and a stepdaughter, Justine. Her daughter Kaitlin said Knight in recent years had been working on a memoir, traveling with her family and doting over her rescue dog, Minnie.

A memorial service will be held in early 2021 in Los Angeles. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to The Shirley Knight Memorial Fund at Texas State University.

Knight was admired for her craft but never really famous. "Well, I have a whole theory about fame," she said in a 2012 interview.

"I always say [fame] isn't really something to aspire to in the sense that many, many people who are very famous are ridiculous. I mean, look at the Kardashians. There are people walking around who don't know who The Beatles were.

"So something I [say], 'If you think your food is you want to be famous, you're going to starve to death.' Your food has to be that you want to do good work and you want to become better at what you do."

KNIGHT, Shirley (Shirley Enola Knight)

Born: 7/5/1936, Goessel, Kansas, U.S.A.

Died: 4/16/2020, San Marcos, Texas, U.S.A.

Shirley Knight’s westerns – actress:

Buckskin (TV) – 1958 (Mrs. Newcombe)

Bronco (TV) – 1959, 1961 (Molly Durrock, Cathy Ryker)

Rawhide (TV) – 1959 (Jennie Cooper)

The Restless Gun (TV) – 1959 (Heide Ritter)

The Texan (TV) – 1959 (Lily Atkins)

Lawman (TV) – 1961 (Tendis Weston)

Maverick (TV) – 1961 (Nancy Powers)

The Virginian (TV) 1962, 1965 (Clara Malone, Susan Marrow)

Alias Smith and Jones (TV) - 1972 (Amy Martin)

Friendly Persuasion (TV) – 1975 (Eliza Birdwell)

Children of the Dust (TV) – 1995 (Aunt Bertha)

RIP Jack Wallace

Chicago Tribune

By Rick Kogan

April 21, 2020

Jack Wallace may not have attained the flashy stardom and big money success of some of his contemporaries from the formative days of our now legendary local theater scene. But he managed, against considerable odds, to have a very fruitful stage, TV and film career. You might likely recognize his face and if you’d ever met him, or talked to those who did, you’d know he was as colorful and unforgettable as any of the hundreds of characters he played.

“I had the pleasure to have him as a friend and fellow actor for close to 50 years,” saysthe Chicago-born Joe Mantegna. “From the student film ‘Medusa Challenger’ we did together in the mid-70s, through the run of Dave Mamet’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ in 80s, to a multitude of films together, including the film ‘Lakeboat’ which I directed in 1999. That’s where Jack met his dear wife Margot, who was at his side when he passed.

“He was a huge fixture not just in my life, but in so many others. Damon Runyon would have built a statue of him. He was a man-child the likes of which we may seldom see again.”

Wallace died on April 16 in Los Angeles, his home only a few blocks from that in which Mantegna lives with his wife Arlene. He was 86 and had suffered much of this century from a variety of health woes, including most recently cancer.

His death comes in the wake of that of director Stuart Gordon. It was Gordon who tapped Wallace to become a member of his Organic Theatre Company and there Wallace joined a group of young actors that included Mantegna, Dennis Franz, William J. Norris and Andre DeShields.

In a lovely Facebook post, another Organic pal, Bruce Hickey, who directed Wallace in five plays, wrote, “He never saved it or held back, never left it behind, never phoned it in, or was waiting for opening night. Every night was opening night to him. Every audience, be it 1,000 on Broadway or 15 in a pub theater, were all special to him and gave them a ‘performance.’ That was his gift.”

Wallace came to the stage by a most unusual route.

Born on Aug. 10, 1933, as an only child in Pekin, Ill., he grew up on some of Chicago’s tougher streets, attended Wells High School, served three years in jail for armed robbery, got married, fathered two children, drank often and hard, worked a series of blue collar jobs such as window washer and, with no formal training but an interest sparked as a child — “I never thought acting was a sissy thing,” he once said — started to perform in small theaters around town.

Walking down Lincoln Avenue one afternoon in 1969, he wandered into a doorway where he found a group of actors in rehearsal for a play. Thinking he was there to audition, Chicago City Players director June Pyskacek asked him to join in. He did and sometime later, when the group was tossing around various new names for their company, Wallace suggested Kingston Mines, a small town in Illinois where his grandfather and father had once worked. It stuck and the Kingston Mines, in addition to launching the mega hit “Grease,” was an essential part of the off-Loop theater landscape in its formative years.

That story, among many, is included in Mark Larson’s recent book, “Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater” (Agate Midway). He recalled his interview with the actor: “When I talked with him, I remember his frequent refrain was, ‘Wait, wait! I got another one for you!’

From his first Kingston Mines encounter, Wallace focused on theater and roles came steadily.

A major one — and the reason he stopped drinking for keeps — came when he was cast in 1973 in the lead role of Randall Patrick McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” It ran for months here and during that time Wallace found himself sharing a couch with film director Dino DeLaurentiis on Irv Kupcinet’s late night TV talk show.

On the spot, DeLaurentiis offering him a role in his upcoming film, “Death Wish,” obviously taken with what one writer referred to as Wallace’s “huge and felonious eyes … the fierce gaze and the rocky build of an urban samurai, not someone you’d be comfortable meeting in a deserted subway station.”

Wallace would over the next decades appear in more than 100 movies (“Mad Dog and Glory,” “Nixon,” “Medusa Challenger,” "Boogie Nights”), TV shows (“Law & Order,” “Six Feet Under,” “Criminal Minds”) and dozens of plays.

He was admired by audiences and the theater crowd, many of whom referred to him as “the lion” because, as one said, “his heart was so strong and big.” The Goodman Theatre’s artistic director Robert Falls, a frequent Wallace collaborator, wrote that, “He was magnificent. As gonzo a Chicago actor as any. … An utter original … one of Chicago’s greats.”

Wallace’s most frequent collaborator in stage and screen was playwright/director David Mamet. He appeared in virtually all of Mamet’s plays and movies.

Asked about his friend, Mamet wrote to me, in part:

“He was the nonpareil tough guy, beloved of all of us, audience and actors, of the ‘70s Chicago Theatre; Jack, always referred to by Richard Christiansen of the Tribune, the dean of Chicago critics, as ‘The Great Jack Wallace.’

“Like all actual tough guys there was no bluster about him; like the true, tough cops and soldiers, the actors who portray them all have a simplicity and sadness. Jack could make you cry by picking up a cup of coffee.

“We were doing my play ‘Edmond,' about a stockbroker who picks up a young waitress and kills her. Colin Stinton was playing Edmond. He’s in a police station, having been arrested, he thinks, for screaming at some woman on the El platform. He explains to the detective, played by Jack, ‘I was just going home, I’d had a fight with my wife, I spoke out of hand. I’m so sorry.’ Pause.

“DETECTIVE: ‘Why’d you kill that girl?’

“EDMOND: ‘What girl?’

“DETECTIVE: ‘That girl you killed.’

“Pause: The audience sits there stunned.

“There was no moment, in the near fifty years we worked with him, that we were not delighted and grateful to be in his presence. None of us ever knew, met, or saw a better actor.

"In this sad time of social distancing, and, for the moment, we can’t get together to celebrate him, and might say, as Hamlet said of the unburied Ophelia, ‘No further obsequies …?”

"Which line Jack might have approved, with his ultimate accolade, ‘… Yeah, yeah, that’s good.’”

WALLACE, Jack

Born: 8/10/1933, Pekin, Illinois, U.S.A.

Died: 4/16/2020, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Jack Wallace’s western – actor:

The Chisolms (TV) – 1979 (Ambrose Miller)

RIP Andrew J. Fenady

Andrew J. Fenady, 'Branded' Producer and 'Terror in the Wax Museum' Writer, Dies at 91

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

4/21/2020

In the 1950s, he partnered with future 'Empire Strikes Back' director Irvin Kershner on 'The Rebel' and 'Stakeout on Dope Street.'

Andrew J. Fenady, the writer, producer and novelist who worked on such TV shows as Branded and The Rebel and films including Terror in the Wax Museum and The Man With Bogart's Face, has died. He was 91.

Fenady died Thursday of natural causes at the home in Los Angeles that he owned for 60 years, his son Duke Fenady, a producer and writer, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Fenady and Nick Adams created ABC's The Rebel, which ran for two seasons (1959-61) and starred Adams as Johnny Yuma, an aspiring writer and former Confederate soldier who wanders through the American frontier in the wake of the Civil War. 

"My conception of The Rebel was Jack London in the West," Fenady said in 1992. Yuma "was adventurous, he wanted to be a writer, and he couldn't write unless he lived it. That's what set him apart from all the other [television] pistoleros. He went to war, learned the value of life and learned what it was like to be licked. A lot of his identity was due to that [Rebel] cap he was wearing."

The show was produced by Fen-Ker-Ada, a company formed by Adams, Fenady and Irvin Kershner, future director of films including Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Fenady also wrote the lyrics for The Rebel's theme song, "Johnny Yuma," which was recorded by Johnny Cash.

Fenady also produced the Larry Cohen-created NBC series Branded, which aired for two seasons (1965-66) on NBC, with Chuck Connors portraying a disgraced officer unjustly drummed out of the cavalry for cowardice.

He also wrote the features Broken Sabre (1965) and Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966), both starring Connors; developed the 1967 ABC series Hondo, starring Ralph Taeger in an adaptation of the 1953 John Wayne movie; and wrote and produced the Wayne-starring Chisum (1970) and Terror in the Wax Museum (1973), starring Ray Milland.

Fenady wrote several plays and 20 novels, including The Man With Bogart's Face, published in 1977 and the recipient of an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He also penned the screenplay for the 1980 film adaptation that starred Robert Sacchi as a private eye who undergoes plastic surgery to look like the star of The Maltese Falcon.

Born on Oct. 4, 1928, Fenady graduated from the University of Toledo in his hometown, then worked as an actor with the Priscilla Beach Theatre in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and with Clare Tree Major's National Classic Theatre in Pleasantville, New York, followed by a cross-country tour.

He came to Los Angeles in 1953 and wrote and produced for the syndicated 1950s TV series Confidential File, which investigated hot-button issues as a kind of forerunner to 60 Minutes.

Kershner was a director on that program, and the two borrowed $21,000 to make Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), a story about three teenagers who stumble on a stash of heroin worth a quarter-million dollars. Co-written by Fenady, it became a hit for Warner Bros. 

Fenady also wrote and/or produced such telefilms as 1971's Black Noon, starring Roy Thinnes; 1974's The Hanged Man, toplined by Steve Forrest; and 1991's Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus, starring Richard Thomas and Charles Bronson.

His brother, the late Georg Fenady, directed Terror in the Wax Museum as well as episodes of such shows as Combat!, Quincy M.E. and Baywatch. His wife, Mary Frances, his college sweetheart whom he married in June 1956, died of cancer in May.

Survivors include his children, Gena, Duke, Sean, Andrew and Thomas; grandchildren Jonathon, James, Megan, Jack, Griffin and Parker; and a great-grandson, Nicholas.

FENADY, Andrew J. (Andrew John Fenady)

Born: 10/4/1928, Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A.

Died: 4/18/2020, Sherman Oaks, California, U.S.A.

Andrew J. Fenady’s westerns – producer, writer, composery, lyricist, actor:

The Rebel (TV) – 1959-1961 (General Phil Sheridan, District Marshal Hondo Payne, producer, composer, song writer]

The Yank (TV) – 1960 [producer, writer]

Branded (TV) – 1965-1966 (General Phil Sheridan) [producer, writer, lyricist]

Broken Sabre – 1965 [producer[

Blade Rider, Revenge of the Indian Nations – 1966 [producer]

Hondo – 1967 [producer, writer]

Hondo and the Apaches (TV) – 1967 [producer, writer]

Chisum – 1970 [producer, lyricist]

Black Noon – 1971 [producer, writer]

The Hanged Man – 1974 [producer, writer]