Anne Pashley

Olympic athlete and operatic soprano -- via the Telegraph.

Martha Roth

Actress -- via Univison.

Bill Warren

Film historian and critic -- via newsfromme.com.

Gair Allie

Former MLB player -- via legacy.com.

Rene Aviles Fabila

Writer -- via Excelsior.

Phyllis Creore

Singer and radio host known to WWII G.I.'s as 'Canteen Girl' -- via the New York Times.

Mario Almada

Actor -- via Mundo Hispanico. A stalwart of action films and Westerns, he racked up an amazing 365 credits!

Ljupka Dimitrovska

Singer -- via b92.

Ian Liston

Actor -- via Jedi News.

Donald H. White

Composer -- via Depauw University.

Pierre Etaix

Clown, comedian, and filmmaker -- via The Stopru. A very interesting talent. A throwback to the silent-film days, due in part to his devotion to slapstick and visual humor, and iin part to his decades of experience as a live comic performer. His deadpan style and his physical agility makes him seem like a derivative of Keaton, and his precise, mannered, sometimes twee style may swiftly drive some viewers crazy. But there is more of Samuel Beckett than Billy Bevan in his work -- there is a patient despair that somehow fuels his hapless characters' efforts, instead of impeding them. And his images surreal and perverse present an anarchic alternative to the boring, impossible challenges reality presents.

Terry Dodd

Playwright, director, screenwriter, educator; much more to his friends and the people who knew him -- via John Moore at denvercenter.org. John will have the most and the latest information, as he really is the nerve center of the region's theater scene! Plus, he has seen far many more of Terry's plays than most. I am cribbing shamelessly from him.

Terry did so much; he started site-specific work decades before anyone else, in the old Storz Garage at 17th and Penn, and at the Barth for "Hot L Baltimore" -- yearly productions continue as a fundraiser for Senior Housing Options. He wrote 16 plays, and they were interesting and engaging! Every one of them! If you were a theater critic at the time, you knew Terry's work was going to be, at least, compelling. I remembering bawling during his "Vaughn, NM, Christmas Eve, 1956" --  and that was one of his funnier efforts! He could tell a story, the most basic and overlooked function of the writer for any medium. As a prolific director, he was always bringing out the best in people while serving the work -- another seemingly impossible double task.

For me, personally, a decade behind him, he was an inspiration. He just kept knocking it out, waxing and waning in the public eye as certain works were valued over others, and just doing the work, getting it up there on stage, making it happen, making a difference in a million different ways, large and small. Later, we got to be friends, and shamelessly indulged our love for Golden Age Hollywood, musing on the dubious attractions of Merle Oberon and Susan Hayward. It was a privilege to be able to thank him long ago on introduction, given that he died so suddenly. Dammit! A good guy.

Robert Bateman

Bateman at left

Songwriter ('Please Mr. Postman'); Motown's first engineer -- via the Detroit Free Press. He rote 'Postman' with co-wmany  others, and was the songwriter partner of Brian Holland, before Holland joined brother Eddie and Lamont Dozier.

Gonzalo Vega

Actor -- via the BBC.

Kathleen Miller

Actress -- via the Hollywood Reporter.

Dick Israel

Actor -- via philstar.com.

Walter Darby Bannard

Artist -- via ArtForum.

Jim Zapp

Overlooked baseball great -- via the Tennessean. AKA Zipper.

Toni Williams

Singer -- via newshub.co.nz. AKA Tony Williams, Henry Anthony Williams.

Edda Backman

Actress -- via the Iceland Review.

Yusuf Arrakal

Artist -- via The Hindu.

Brent Chambers

Animator -- via the New Zealand Herald.

Dario Fo

Nobel-winning playwright, performer, director, clown extraordinaire, subversive -- via the Guardian. A genius, and a hero of mine. A brilliant satirist who knew that revolution is potentially unleashed with every laugh, that people deserve better, that life must be loved no matter what. Forced out of the mainstream by his left-wing principles, he and wife Franca Rame endured assaults, death threats, blacklisting and more as they entranced the public with work such as "Mistero Boffo," "Can't Pay? Won't Pay!", "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," and "Tale of a Tiger." Such was his infamy that it was very hard to get his work or even work about him in America until he won his Nobel prize, and even then I treasure the few books by and about him I've scrounged from obscure bookstores worldwide.

Paul Osborne

Illusion designer and builder -- via the Magic Compass. Isn't that the best job description ever? And magician and producer. 

Angus R. Grant

Fiddler and bandleader; contributor to the creation of the sprightly musical genre "acid croft," a cross between Celtic and dance groove -- via the BBC. As leader of Shooglenifty, he helped create "acid croft" -- a sprightly musical subgenre that crosses Celtic and dance groove.

Don Ciccone

Singer and songwriter, guitarist and bassist; member of the Four Seasons, the Shondells, and the Critters -- via legacy.com.

Wolfgang Suschitzky

Photographer and cinematographer -- via the New York Times. Best known as the d.p. on "Get Carter," he also did extensive early documentary film work, doing much to establish the initial style and tone of the genre.

Austin 'Rocky' Kalish

Prolific TV writer with wife Irma -- via the Hollywood Reporter. His first writing credit is for the TV adaptation of "Meet Corliss Archer" in 1954. He and his wife wrote the heartbreak-y episodes of such series as "Maude" and "All in the Family." Did time on some classics -- "My Three Sons," "Gilligan's Island," "F Troop," "My Favorite Martian." You could look it up.

Peter Allen

Metropolitan Opera announcer for 29 seasons -- via the New York Times. AKA Harold Levy. His calm, friendly, intelligent, and mellifluous voice wafted me through many a Met broadcast. A model of diction, inflection, and pace.

Andrzej Wajda

One of history's great film directors -- via the BBC. Known best for his brilliant trilogy "A Generation," "Kanal," and "Ashes and Diamonds," which traced the brutal path of Polish history before, during, and after World War II. Unforgettable also are his "Man of Marble" and "Man of Iron," which concern heroism, truth, and memory. Any of this film I've been lucky to pick up and see -- "The Siberian Lady Macbeth," "Without Anaesthesia," "A Love in Germany," "Katyn" -- prove him just as subtle and complex in his observations of human life as his countryman and fellow director, Krzysztof Kieslowski.