[DeadCelebrityAlert] Legendary Actor Mickey Rooney Dead at 93

 

PHOTO: Film actor Mickey Rooney poses with the "Lifetime Achievement" Academy Award backstage, following his acceptance speech, at the 1982 Academy Awards in Los Angeles, California.


Legendary Actor Mickey Rooney Dead at 93

Film Star Frequently Appeared Alongside Judy Garland

By DAN GOOD

April 7, 2014—


Mickey Rooney, one of the longest-tenured actors in movie history, died Sunday at the age of 93, KABC reports.

Los Angeles Police Commander Andrew Smith told the Associated Press that Rooney was with his family when he died at his North Hollywood home.

News of Rooney's death was first reported by TMZ.

Rooney appeared in more than 300 films, from silent films in the 1920s to recent blockbusters such as "The Muppets" and "Night at the Museum."

The actor – who stood just over five feet tall – reached his greatest film successes with MGM during the 1930s and 1940s, singing and dancing, his boyish effervescence carrying him to box office heights.

He appeared in 15 movies as All-American boy Andy Hardy, and he frequently starred alongside Judy Garland in musical films such as "Babes in Arms."

Rooney was married eight times, including to Ava Gardner from 1942 to 1943. He married Jan Chamberlain in 1978, and they consistently performed together.

"My partners weren't what we call in horse racing parlance routers," he told People Magazine in 1993. "They were sprinters. They went out of the gate, but then they stopped. They couldn't go the distance."

His final marriage lasted longer than his other seven marriages combined.

Rooney was born Sept. 23, 1920 as Joseph Yule, Jr. His parents were vaudeville actors, and he first appeared on-stage as a toddler.

He gained childhood stardom in the Mickey McGuire film shorts – from which he derived his stage name – before signing with MGM. One of his breakout roles came in 1938's "Boys Town," a drama based on Father Edward J. Flanigan's work with underprivileged boys.

During the period of 1939 to 1941, Rooney was Hollywood's biggest box office draw.

His career languished following World War II, and Rooney was relegated to bit roles and TV spots. Those roles – such as 1954's "The Bridges at Toko-Ri," 1962's "Requiem for a Heavyweight" and "The Black Stallion" in 1979 – showcased his acting chops and triggered his long second career arc.

Rooney's later years were marred by elder abuse accusations against his stepson and stepdaughter, leading the actor to testify before Congress in 2011.

"I felt trapped, scared, used and frustrated," he told a special Senate committee at the time. "But above all, when a man feels helpless, it's terrible."

Rooney's career honors include the Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy. He received a "Lifetime Achievement" Academy Award in 1982.

He is survived by nine children.

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[DeadCelebrityAlert] Comedian John Pinette, 50, dies at Pa. hotel

 

Comedian John Pinette, 50, dies at Pa. hotel

FILE - In this Wednesday, Nov 5, 2008, file photo, John Pinette arrives to the 2nd annual...


Mon Apr 7, 1:10 AM UTC

PITTSBURGH (AP) — John Pinette, the chubby stand-up comedian who portrayed a hapless carjacking victim in the final episode of "Seinfeld," has died. He was 50.

Pinette died of natural causes Saturday at a hotel in Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office said Sunday evening. Pinette's agent confirmed his death.

The portly Pinette was a self-deprecating presence on stage, frequently discussing his weight on stand-up specials "Show Me the Buffett," "I'm Starvin'!" and "Still Hungry."

Pinette had been working on another stand-up project when he died, his agent, Nick Nuciforo, said.

"He should be celebrated for the amazing comedian he was," Nuciforo said.

The Boston native appeared in movies including "The Punisher" and had a trio of stand-up shows released on DVD but was perhaps best known as the portly carjacking victim whose plight lands the "Seinfeld" stars before a judge for failing to help under a "good Samaritan" law. Pinette also appeared in the television series "Parker Lewis Can't Lose."

Pinette also appeared on state in a national tour of "Hairspray" as Edna Turnblad, the mother of the play's heroine.

The medical examiner's office said no autopsy was performed and Pinette's own physician signed off on the cause of death.

Pinette had been preparing for a stand-up tour of the U.S. and Canada, Nuciforo said.

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[DeadCelebrityAlert] Writer-environmentalist Peter Matthiessen dies

 

Writer-environmentalist Peter Matthiessen dies


HILLEL ITALIE, AP
Sun Apr 6, 2:11 AM UTC

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Matthiessen, a rich man's son who spurned a life of leisure and embarked on extraordinary physical and spiritual quests while producing such acclaimed books as "The Snow Leopard" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," died Saturday. He was 86.

His publisher Geoff Kloske of Riverhead Books said Matthiessen, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, was ill "for some months." He died at a hospital near his home on Long Island.

"Peter was a force of nature, relentlessly curious, persistent, demanding — of himself and others," his literary agent, Neil Olson, said in a statement. "But he was also funny, deeply wise and compassionate."

Few authors could claim such a wide range of achievements. Matthiessen helped found The Paris Review, one of the most influential literary magazines, and won National Book Awards for "The Snow Leopard," his spiritual account of the Himalayas, and for the novel "Shadow Country." A leading environmentalist and wilderness writer, he embraced the best and worst that nature could bring him, whether trekking across the Himalayas, parrying sharks in Australia or enduring a hurricane in Antarctica.

He also was a longtime liberal who befriended Cesar Chavez and wrote a defense of Indian activist Leonard Peltier, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," that led to a highly publicized, and unsuccessful, lawsuit by an FBI agent who claimed Matthiessen had defamed him.

"In Paradise," which he had expected to be his last novel, will be published next week. The book was inspired by a visit in the 1990s he made to Auschwitz.

"The gas chambers were all blown up at the end of the war, so they are simply these grim-looking pale ruins out in the distance," he told NPR during a recent interview. "It's a very grim scene. And so it's the enormity of it that just stuns you the first time."

Matthiessen became a Zen Buddhist in the 1960s, and was later a Zen priest who met daily with a fellow group of practitioners in a meditation hut that he converted from an old stable. The granite-faced author, rugged and athletic into his 80s, seemed to live out a modern version of the Buddhist legend, a child of privilege transformed by the discovery of suffering.

Matthiessen was born in New York in 1927, the son of Erard A. Matthiessen, a wealthy architect and conservationist. "The Depression had no serious effect on our well-insulated family," the author would later write.

While at Yale, he wrote the short story "Sadie," which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, and he soon acquired an agent. After graduation he moved to Paris and, along with fellow writer-adventurer George Plimpton, helped found The Paris Review. (Matthiessen would later acknowledge he was a CIA recruit at the time and used his work with the Review as a cover).

The magazine caught on, but Paris only reminded Matthiessen that he was an American writer. In the mid-1950s he returned to the United States, moved to Long Island's Sag Harbor (where he eventually lived on a six-acre estate), socialized with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other painters, operated a deep-sea fishing charter boat — and wrote.

Matthiessen's early novels were short, tentative efforts: "Race Rock," ''Raditzer" and "Partisans," which features a wealthy young man who confides "his ignorance of human misery." In need of money, Matthiessen also wrote for such magazines as Holiday and Sports Illustrated.

In 1961, Matthiessen became a major novelist with "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," his tale of missionaries under siege from both natives and mercenaries in the jungles of Brazil. Its detailed account of a man's hallucinations brought him a letter of praise from LSD guru Timothy Leary. The book was later adapted into a film of the same name, starring John Lithgow and Daryl Hannah.

He wrote many other books, including "Far Tortuga," a novel told largely in dialect about a doomed crew of sailors on the Caribbean; "The Tree Where Man Was Born," a highly regarded chronicle of his travels in East Africa.

In the 1980s and '90s, Matthiessen published a trio of novels — "Killing Mr. Watson," ''Lost Man's River" and "Bone by Bone" — about a community in Florida's Everglades at the turn of the 20th century and a predatory planter. Unhappy, especially with "Lost Man's River," he spent years revising and condensing all three books into "Shadow Country," published in 2008 and a surprise National Book Award winner.

Although an explorer in the Hemingway tradition, Matthiessen didn't seek to conquer nature, but to preserve it. In 1959, he published his first nonfiction book, "Wildlife in America," in which he labels man "the highest predator" and one uniquely prone to self-destruction.

Much of his fiction, from "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" to "Bone by Bone," bestowed a lion-like aura upon nature — grand when respected, dangerous when provoked, tragic when exploited.

"There's an elegiac quality in watching (American wilderness) go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before our eyes," he once wrote. "I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen, and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look at nature now."

Matthiessen was married three times, most recently to Maria Eckhart, whom he wed in 1980. He had four children, two each from his first two marriages, and two stepchildren from his third marriage.

Associated Press

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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section
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distributed under fair use without profit or
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interest in receiving the included
information for non-profit research and
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