The RIP Thread

[Frothy Afterbirth]

The Star Wars Galaxy Says Goodbye to Peter Mayhew, the Original Chewbacca
By MARISSA MARTINELLI
MAY 03, 20193:29 PM



Peter Mayhew, the actor who originated the role of Chewbacca in the Star Wars franchise, died on Tuesday at his home in Texas. A spokesperson for the family told ABC News that the cause of death was a heart attack. At 7 feet, 3 inches tall, Mayhew towered over castmates Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher in the original Star Wars in 1977, and he continued to play the role on film and television for nearly 40 years. He “studied bears, monkeys, gorillas and other animals with traits reminiscent of a Wookiee” to prepare to play the furry alien.

Finnish basketball player Joonas Suotamo, who worked as Mayhew’s body double on The Force Awakens, officially took over as Chewbacca beginning with The Last Jedi. “Studying the character he helped create was always a daunting task, but one that was made easier by his tutelage and kindness as we sought to bring Chewbacca to life for a new generation,” he said in a statement after news of Mayhew’s death broke. “He was an absolutely one-of-kind gentleman and a legend of unrivaled class and I will miss him […] Rest assured his legacy will live on and the spirit that he gave the character when he first donned the suit will never be forgotten.”

Star Wars creator George Lucas said, “Peter was a wonderful man. He was the closest any human being could be to a Wookiee: big heart, gentle nature—and I learned to always let him win. He was a good friend, and I’m saddened by his passing.” Harrison Ford, who as Han Solo often played hero to Mayhew’s sidekick, also issued a statement to the Hollywood Reporter:

Peter Mayhew was a kind and gentle man, possessed of great dignity and noble character. These aspects of his own personality, plus his wit and grace, he brought to Chewbacca. We were partners in film and friends in life for over 30 years and I loved him. He invested his soul in the character and brought great pleasure to the Star Wars audience.

Chewbacca was an important part of the success of the films we made together. He knew how important the fans of the franchise were to its continued success and he was devoted to them. I and millions of others will never forget Peter and what he gave us all. My thoughts are with his dear wife Angie and his children. Rest easy, my dear friend.

Other actors and filmmakers throughout the Star Wars galaxy took to social media to remember Mayhew. We’ve rounded up the best tributes below and will update this post with additional ones as they come in.

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[Vodkaman]

After a classmate pulled out a gun in class, Kendrick Castillo couldn't just stay still. He was surrounded by the friends he considered family and they were all in danger.
Kendrick died when he lunged at the shooter, giving other students at STEM School Highlands Ranch enough time to hide, his family and a classmate said.
"I know that because of what he did, others are alive, and I thank God for that. I love him. And he is a hero and he always will be," his dad, John Castillo, said.
"He just loved people that much."
The 18-year-old was watching "The Princess Bride" in his British literature class when the shooter pulled out a gun, demanding that nobody moved. After Kendrick lunged at the shooter, three other students also tackled the gunman and tried to subdue him while the rest of the class fled the room.
Kendrick was an only child, but his friends, including the members of the school's robotics team, were like his siblings, his father said. They would host holiday gift exchanges at his home, shared his toys as a child and would pay for a friend's movie tickets if someone didn't have money.
"Be selfless, that's what my son was, and it got him killed, but he saved others," Castillo said.
'He was extraordinary'
Kendrick grew up speaking English and Spanish in suburban Denver and first attended Catholic school. He would also spend time fishing and camping with his late grandfather -- who had been in the Marines.
"Kendrick was proud of him, proud that his grandfather was a hero," Castillo said. "Part of me knows that Kendrick wanted to live that legacy."

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Actress Peggy Lipton, star of ‘The Mod Squad’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 72
By JOSH ROTTENBERG
MAY 11, 2019 | 6:10 PM



Actress and former model Peggy Lipton, who rose to stardom in the late 1960s on the counterculture police series “The Mod Squad” and later starred on TV’s “Twin Peaks,” has died. She was 72.

Her death from cancer was announced Saturday by Kidada and Rashida Jones, her daughters from a marriage to famed music producer Quincy Jones.

“She made her journey peacefully with her daughters and nieces by her side,” Lipton’s daughters said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “We feel so lucky for every moment we spent with her.”

Born in New York on Aug. 30, 1946, Lipton began modeling at age 15 and quickly found herself in demand. At age 19, she made her television debut on the sitcom “The John Forsythe Show,” going on to make appearances on such series as “Bewitched,” “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” and “The Virginian.”

The waifish, blond Lipton had just turned 21 when she rocketed to fame in 1968 as the street-smart flower child Julie Barnes, one of a trio of Los Angeles undercover “hippie cops” on the ABC crime series “The Mod Squad.”

One of pop culture’s first efforts to reckon seriously with the counterculture — and one of the first TV shows to feature an interracial cast — the series, which costarred Michael Cole and Clarence Williams III, dealt with issues such as domestic violence, abortion, police brutality, the Vietnam War and drugs. Over five seasons, the series earned Lipton, one of the “it” girls of her time, four Emmy nominations and a 1971 Golden Globe award for best actress in a TV drama.

Her role and later marriage to Jones, who is black, put Lipton at the center of the passions of a restive America dealing with racism and a post-World War II generation who were breaking free from their parents. The “Mod Squad’s” edgy music and hip slang marked a significant shift from “Gunsmoke” and “Leave It to Beaver.” But while the show turned the mini-skirt-and-bell-bottoms-clad Lipton into a fashion icon, she found the spotlight uncomfortable.

“I never saw myself as trend-setting,” Lipton told The Times in 1993. “We were always working. Fame really drove me into my house. I was very paranoid. I didn’t like going out. I had no idea how to be comfortable with the press. I was very young. It was really hard for me.”
Lipton parlayed her role on “The Mod Squad” into a singing career, enjoying chart success with her cover versions of “Stoney End” and “Lu” by Laura Nyro and “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” by Donovan.

In 1974, Lipton married Jones and, with the exception of a 1979 “Mod Squad” reunion TV movie, stepped away from her career to focus on raising a family. The pair’s daughters, Kidada and Rashida, would both become actors, the latter gaining fame on the comedy series “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.”

After Lipton and Jones divorced in 1989, Lipton decided to return to acting, landing the role of Norma Jennings on the cult TV series “Twin Peaks.”

“It was very scary,” Lipton told The Times in 1993. “I had a push-pull thing inside me that I wanted to do it…. I had become so insulated in my world as a mother, that I didn’t know how to pick up the phone and call anybody to put myself out there.”

She and Clarence Williams III made cameo appearances in a 1999 big-screen version of "The Mod Squad" that starred Claire Danes, Omar Epps and Giovanni Ribisi. In her 2005 memoir, “Breathing Out,” Lipton wrote of her struggles with fame and the racism she and Jones faced as an interracial couple and revealed that she had been diagnosed with and treated for colon cancer the previous year.

In recent years, Lipton continued to appear in occasional supporting roles in films such as “When in Rome” and “A Dog’s Purpose” and TV series including “Alias,” “Crash” and 2017’s “Twin Peaks” revival.

“We can’t put all of our feelings into words right now, but we will say: Peggy was and will always be our beacon of light, both in this world and beyond,” her daughters said in a statement Saturday. “She will always be a part of us.”

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

Doris Day, actress who honed wholesome image, dies at 97
By JULIA RUBIN
May 13, 2019



Doris Day, the sunny blond actress and singer whose frothy comedic roles opposite the likes of Rock Hudson and Cary Grant made her one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1950s and ’60s and a symbol of wholesome American womanhood, died Monday. She was 97.

In more recent years, Day had been an animal rights advocate. Her Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed her death at her Carmel Valley, California, home.

Day “had been in excellent physical health for her age” but had recently contracted pneumonia, the foundation said in a statement. She requested that no memorial services be held and no grave marker erected.

With her lilting contralto, fresh-faced beauty and glowing smile, Day was a top box-office draw and recording artist known for comedies such as “Pillow Talk” and “That Touch of Mink,” as well as songs like “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” from the Alfred Hitchcock film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

Over time, she became more than a name above the title. Right down to her cheerful, alliterative stage name, she stood for the era’s ideal of innocence and G-rated love, a parallel world to her contemporary Marilyn Monroe. The running joke, attributed to both Groucho Marx and actor-composer Oscar Levant, was that they had known Day “before she was a virgin.”

Day herself was no Doris Day, by choice and by hard luck. Her 1976 tell-all book, “Doris Day: Her Own Story,” chronicled her money troubles and three failed marriages.

“I have the unfortunate reputation of being Miss Goody Two-Shoes, America’s Virgin, and all that, so I’m afraid it’s going to shock some people for me to say this, but I staunchly believe no two people should get married until they have lived together,” she wrote.

A.E. Hotchner, who collaborated with Day on her memoir, said she had a “sweet and sour” existence and never let her personal difficulties “change her attitude toward people.”

“She was such a positive, absolutely enchanting woman,” he told The Associated Press on Monday. “And she was so loved.”

Day received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. Although mostly retired from show business since the 1980s, she still had enough of a following that a 2011 collection of previously unreleased songs, “My Heart,” hit the top 10 in the United Kingdom. The same year, she received a lifetime achievement honor from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

The Humane Society of the United States, of which The Doris Day Animal League is an affiliate, praised Day as a pioneer in animal protection.

In 1987, Day “founded one of the first national animal protection organizations dedicated to legislative remedies for the worst animal abuse,” said the league’s executive director, Sara Amundson. Her foresight “led to dozens of bills, final rules and policies on the federal level,” which helped end abusive videos, protect chimpanzees from invasive research and regulate the online sale of puppies.

“She is an icon in the animal protection world and will be sorely missed for her singular advocacy,” Amundson said.

Paul McCartney, a friend, called Day “a true star in more ways than one.”

“Visiting her in her Californian home was like going to an animal sanctuary where her many dogs were taken care of in splendid style,” he said in a statement. “She had a heart of gold and was a very funny lady who I shared many laughs with.”

He cited films like “Calamity Jane,” ″Move Over, Darling” and others and said he would “always remember her twinkling smile and infectious laugh.”

Day “was kind and decent, onscreen and off; she maintained her friendship with Rock Hudson after his AIDS diagnosis, in a climate of fear and abandonment — one of his last appearances was on a TV show with her,” playwright Paul Rudnick tweeted.

Born to a music teacher and a housewife in Cincinnati, Day dreamed of a dance career but at age 12 broke her leg badly when a car in which she was traveling was hit by a train. Listening to the radio while recuperating, she began singing along with Ella Fitzgerald, studying the singer and the subtleties of her voice.

Day began singing at a Cincinnati radio station, then a nightclub, then in New York. A bandleader changed her name to Day after the song “Day after Day” to fit it on a marquee.

A marriage at 17 to trombonist Al Jorden ended when, she said, he beat her when she was eight months’ pregnant. She gave birth to her son, Terry, in early 1942. Her second marriage also was short-lived. She returned to Les Brown’s band after the first marriage broke up.

Her Hollywood career began after she sang at a Hollywood party in 1947. After early stardom as a band singer and a stint at Warner Bros., Day won the best notices of her career with 1955′s “Love Me or Leave Me,” the story of songstress Ruth Etting and her gangster husband-manager. She followed with “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” starring with James Stewart as an innocent couple ensnared in an international assassination plot. She sang “Que Sera, Sera” just as the story reached its climax.

But she found her greatest success in slick, stylish sex comedies, beginning with 1959′s Oscar-nominated “Pillow Talk,” in which she and Hudson played two New Yorkers who shared a telephone party line. It was the first of three films with Hudson.

In “That Touch of Mink,” she turned back advances from Grant and in “The Thrill of It All” played a housewife who gains fame as a TV pitchwoman to the chagrin of obstetrician husband James Garner.

The nation’s theater owners voted her the top moneymaking star in 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964.

Her first singing hit was the 1945 smash “Sentimental Journey,” when she was barely in her 20s. Among the other songs she made famous were “Everybody Loves a Lover,” ″Secret Love,” and “It’s Magic,” a song from her first film, “Romance on the High Seas.”

Critic Gary Giddins called her “the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow-ballads in movie history.”

Day was cast in “Romance on the High Seas” after Judy Garland and Betty Hutton bowed out. Warner Bros. cashed in on its new star with a series of musicals, including “My Dream Is Yours,” ″Tea for Two” and “Lullaby of Broadway.” Her dramas included “Young Man with a Horn” and “Storm Warning.”

Her last film was “With Six You Get Eggroll,” a 1968 comedy about a widow and a widower who blend families.

In the 1960s, Day discovered that failed investments by her third husband, Martin Melcher, left her deeply in debt. She eventually won a multimillion-dollar judgment against their lawyer.

With movies trending toward more explicit sex, she turned to television to recoup her finances. “The Doris Day Show” was a moderate success in its 1968-1973 run on CBS.

Day had married Melcher in 1951. He became her manager, and her son took his name. In most of the films following “Pillow Talk,” Melcher was listed as co-producer. He died in 1969.

In her autobiography, Day recalled her son telling her the $20 million she had earned had vanished and she owed around $450,000, mostly for taxes. Terry Melcher, who died in 2004, became a songwriter and record producer, working with such stars as the Beach Boys. He was also famous for an aspiring musician he turned down, Charles Manson. When Manson and his followers embarked on their murderous rampage in 1969, they headed for a house once owned by Melcher and instead came upon actress Sharon Tate and some visitors, all of whom were killed.

Day married a fourth time at age 52, to businessman Barry Comden in 1976.

Her wholesome image was referenced in the song “I’m Sandra Dee” in the 1971 musical “Grease,” which included the lyrics: “Watch it, hey, I’m Doris Day/ I was not brought up that way/ Won’t come across/ Even Rock Hudson lost/ His heart to Doris Day.”

The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los Angeles and AP writer Shawn Marsh in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

Tim Conway, Star of The Carol Burnett Show, Dies at 85
NATALIE STONE AND MICHELE CORRISTON
Posted on May 14, 2019 12:09PM



Tim Conway has died at the age of 85.

He passed away at 8:45 a.m. in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday, his rep Howard Bragman confirms to PEOPLE.

Prior to his death, he suffered complications from Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) and had no signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Conway is survived by his wife of 35 years, his stepdaughter, his six children and two granddaughters. In lieu of flowers or gifts, the family would like donations to be made to The Lou Ruvo Brain Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The beloved actor is best known for his work on The Carol Burnett Show, winning viewers over with characters like the Oldest Man and Mr. Tudball, whose accent he has said was inspired by his Romanian mother. He was known to ad-lib his sketches — even surprising his scene partners — and won a Golden Globe Award for the series in 1976, along with Emmys in 1973, 1977 and 1978.

At a 2013 event promoting his memoir, What’s So Funny? My Hilarious Life, Burnett, now 86, painted her collaborator as an on-set prankster.

“Tim’s goal in life was to destroy [costar] Harvey Korman,” she told the crowd, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“Harvey wet his pants,” Conway bragged.

It’s an anecdote he also recalled in a 2013 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“Harvey never saw what I was going to do until he was actually doing the sketch,” he said. “As a matter of fact in the dentist sketch you can actually see Harvey wet his pants from laughing.”

Before making his mark in Hollywood, Conway studied TV and radio at Bowling State University and enlisted in the Army, where is goofiness already shone through. In the L.A. Times interview, he remembered misplacing his rifle before a 4 a.m. drill.

“I looked in the garbage and there was this long neon tube,” he remembered. “So I took that. As the lieutenant came around the corner. I said, ‘Halt.’ I am pointing this bulb at him and he said ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘It’s a light bulb and if you come any closer, I’ll turn it on.’ He had very little sense of humor. I spent an extra two weeks [in the service] painting rocks in Seattle.”

After his military service, he worked at a local station in Cleveland.

“I had no professional training. I had a sense of humor and had been in front of a microphone,” Conway said of his show business beginnings on an episode of The Interviews: An Oral History of Television in 2004.

He appeared as a guest star on The Carol Burnett Show for eight seasons before becoming a regular in 1975.

“They used to do 33 shows a year on Burnett,” he told the L.A. Times. “She said why don’t you just be a regular on the show? I said I will tell you what. I will do 32 shows and leave one week open at the end, so I can guest on somebody’s show. I always guested on her show, but I did have the right to go somewhere else. My job on every show was to break everybody up.”

His own sitcom, The Tim Conway Show, had lasted one season in 1970. His variety show of the same name aired from 1980-81.

Conway also starred on McHale’s Navy, voiced Barnacle Boy on Spongebob Squarepants and even made a special appearance on the second season of 30 Rock, for which he received an Emmy.

Conway’s death comes after his daughter Kelly and wife Charlene had been fighting over his care.

Kelly filed court documents asking to be appointed conservator of her father in order to be in charge of his medical treatments in in August 2018. She alleged that Charlene was “planning to move him out of the excellent skilled nursing facility he is currently at” and place him into a lesser quality home. She claimed her father could not “properly provide for his personal needs for physical health, food, and clothing” and is “almost entirely unresponsive.”

Days later, Kelly sought a temporary restraining order to stop the move. But in March, Charlene was appointed conservator of her husband.

Before his wedding to Charlene in 1984, Conway was married to Mary Anne Dalton from 1961-78. Together they share seven children: sons Jaime, Tim Jr., Pat, Corey and Shawn and daughter Jackie and Kelly.

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[MadamMeow]

And that makes 3.

[amtronic]

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Chewbacca was first wasn't he? One free with three.



~!

[Frothy Afterbirth]

I.M. Pei, Architect Of Some Of The World's Most Iconic Structures, Dies At 102
Ted Robbins and Edward Lifson
May 16, 20196:46 PM ET



Crowds around the world flow through the buildings designed by architect I.M. Pei; in Paris, they stream into the Louvre's Pyramid entrance. In Cleveland, they wander through the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And in Hong Kong, they travel up and down the soaring Bank of China Tower.

Pei's death was confirmed by Thomas Guss, his press contact. He was 102.

His designs were widely praised — but not always at first. When his large glass pyramid opened at the entrance to the Louvre museum in 1988, it was not well received.

"I would say the first year and a half was really hell," the architect said in a PBS documentary. "I couldn't walk the streets of Paris without people walking looking at me and saying, There you go again. What are you doing here? What are you doing to us? What are you doing to our great Louvre?"

Two decades passed and, in 2009, NPR's Susan Stamberg paid a visit to the Pyramid. Henri Loyrette, the Louvre's director at the time, called it a masterpiece. He said that when you ask visitors why they are at the Louvre, they generally give three answers: for the Mona Lisa, for the Venus de Milo and for the Pyramid. It was not the first time shock has given way to admiration in architecture.

Pei didn't like labels. He said there's no such thing as modern, postmodern or deconstructivist architecture. But he was considered a modernist. Back in 1970, he defined his approach in an interview for a documentary on one of his buildings — the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

"If the problem is a complicated problem, then the building will result just that way," Pei said. "But then after that we have to simplify it. We have to eliminate the inessential."

That is pretty much the definition of modernism in architecture — eliminate the inessential, leaving clean lines and spare geometric forms. But, he said, his architecture was not just geometry.

"There are many other elements that come into play to create a form," said Pei. "Space, which is what architecture really is. You have to have light. ... Light is terribly important."

What are shapes without light, he asked — and added, "The light of the sun is magical."

Pei was born in Suzhou, China, in 1917. He grew up in a house where gardens and airy pavilions merged with the landscape. Pei biographer Carter Wiseman says that the natural world deeply influenced Pei.

"Having come from China, where he was exposed to garden architecture, he had a very different concept of time," Wiseman explains. "He was interested in the sculptural properties of rocks. There was an affinity for nature and for history that most Americans do not get, no matter how hard we try."

Pei's father was a banker, his mother an artist. He came to the U.S. as a teenager in 1935, went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was influenced by the work of pioneering modernists Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Pei's privileged upbringing helped him navigate the alpha-male world of architecture and real estate. He was able to schmooze with the powerful, which led to projects like the apartments on Manhattan's East Side called the Kips Bay Towers, the Kennedy Library in Boston and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Pei didn't get everything right. His 1980s design for New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, for instance, is still less than loved.

His Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing, completed in 1982, uses a traditional Chinese design. In 1990, the Bank of China Tower opened — and his modern, soaring design instantly became one of the most recognizable skyscrapers in Hong Kong.
Pei inspired younger Chinese architects, like Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Wang Shu; he says Pei "awakened" him. Wang believes Pei figured out a way to bridge East and West, old and new, and he thinks of Pei as a teacher — someone who came before him and whose successes and mistakes he learned from.

From the Macao Science Center to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, Pei continued building through 2009. His name, I.M., stands for Ieoh Ming, which means, roughly, "to make an indelible mark."

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

Grumpy Cat internet legend dies
BBC News



Grumpy Cat, the feline famous on the internet for her permanent scowl, has died aged seven, her owners say.

A statement says she died on Tuesday following complications from a recent urinary tract infection.

The cat from Arizona had "helped millions of people smile".

Grumpy, whose real name was Tardar Sauce, went viral in 2012 after photographs of her sour expression emerged online. Her image quickly spread as a meme.

According to owner Tabitha Bundesen, her facial expression was caused by feline dwarfism and an underbite.

Grumpy Cat travelled the world making television appearances and in 2014 even starred in her own Christmas film.

Madame Tussauds in San Francisco unveiled a waxwork of her in 2015.



Her Instagram account has more than two million followers.

Grumpy's face has starred in thousands of memes with many people choosing to share them again after hearing the news of her death.

Grumpy Cat Limited sued the owners of the US coffee company Grenade for exceeding an agreement over the cat's image.

The company only had rights to use the cat to sell its "Grumppuccino" iced drink, but was also selling other Grumpy products.

Ms Bundesen previously worked as a waitress before her beloved pet gained internet stardom. She told the Express newspaper that she quit her job "within days" of Grumpy's first appearance on social media.

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[amtronic]

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I guess that makes a second three.


~!