Monday, May 2, 2011

Peter Moss

Travel writer, broadcaster, comedian and novelist -- via Sky News.

Jonathan Rands

Actor -- via Times Live.

Denis Mahon

Art collector and scholar -- via the Telegraph.

Bill Blackbeard

"Author, editor, anthologist and ardent accumulator" -- via the New York Times. He did much to preserve and analyze comic strips.

Joanna Russ

Science fiction writer, critic and scholar -- via locusmag.com.

Emilio "Millito" Navarro

Former Negro League player -- via the Latin American Herald Tribune.

Richard Holmes

Historian -- via Digital Spy.

Roger Gimbel

TV producer -- via the L.A. Times.

Apoostolos Santas

Resistance hero -- via the Sydney Morning Herald. He and another tore down the Nazi flag atop the Acropolis in December of 1941.

Ernesto Sabato

Writer, painter and  physicist -- via the New York Times.

Anita Valkki

Soprano -- via http://en.yle.mobi/w/news.

Sidney Michaels

Playwright and screenwriter -- via the New York Times.

Friday, April 29, 2011

William Campbell

Character actor par excellence -- via Memory Alpha. Starting with small roles in big pictures such as "The High and the Mighty" and bigger roles in a score of B-movies, including Westerns, war films, prison movies and the like, he made a run in a number of grade-Z horror flicks that later became cult favorites -- "Dementia 13," "Blood Bath" and "Portrait in Terror."

He scored big with two distinctive roles in the original "Star Trek" TV series -- as Trelane in "The Squire of Gothos"
and Koloth in "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Yolande Palfrey

Actress -- via Doctor Who Online. May be best remembered for her role as The Blind Girl in the original BBC TV production of "Pennies from Heaven."

Islwyn Morris

Actor -- via BBC Wales.

Ira Cohen

Poet, photographer, filmmaker, editor and countercultural figure -- via iracohen.org.

Mark McLaughlin aka Slewfoot

Street musician -- via Offbeat.

Harry Jackson

Artist -- via AP.

Elmer Lynn Hauldren

Advertising copywriter and spokesperson -- via the Chicago Tribune. Forever memorable as the "Empire Carpet guy."

John Cossette

Producer -- via the L.A. Times.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Eldon Davis

Architect -- via the L.A. Times. He refined and perfected the Space-Age, Californian, car-culture-friendly "Googie" style.

Matt Cranch aka Matt "the Manx" Crank aka Wiggles

Human cannonball -- via the Guardian.

Phoebe Snow aka Phoebe Ann Laub

Singer, guitarist and songwriter -- via MSNBC. Her absolutely unique and beautiful voice is unforgettable. Her biggest hit was "Poetry Man"; she gave up music full-time in order to take care of her disabled child for more than three decades.

Poly Styrene aka Marian Joan Elliott-Said

Musician, songwriter and lead singer for X-Ray Specs -- via contactmusic.com. Her complete unconventionality and straight-ahead lyrical attack made her a prototypical punk. Like the rest of us, she grew up and went through changes (she was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and later still became an adherent of Hare Krishna). Still, the album "Germ Free Adolescents" is a perfect artifact of its time, and a musical milestone. Thanks, Marian!