Merl Saunders (February 14, 1934 – October 24, 2008) was an American multi-genre musician who played piano and keyboards, favoring the Hammond B-3 console organ.
Born in San Mateo, California, Saunders gained notice in the 1970s when he began collaborating with Jerry Garcia, with the Grateful Dead and with Garcia's bands The Legion of Mary and Reconstruction.
Death of Merl Saunders Merl Saunders died in San Francisco, California on the morning of October 24, 2008, after fighting infections as a result of complications related to the stroke which he suffered in 2002. Merl Saunders was 74 years old at the time of his death.
Biography He led his own bands, as Merl Saunders and Friends, playing live dates with Garcia, as well as Mike Bloomfield, David Grisman, Tom Fogerty, Vassar Clements, Kenneth Nash, John Kahn and Sheila E.
He has worked with musicians Paul Pena, Bonnie Raitt, Phish, Miles Davis, and B. B. King. Merl also recorded with The Dinosaurs, a "supergroup" of first-generation Bay Area rock musicians.
Levi Stubbles (June 6, 1936 - October 17, 2008), better known by the stage name, Levi Stubbs, was an American baritone singer, best known as the lead vocalist of the famed Motown R&B group The Four Tops.
Death of Levi Stubbles Levi Stubbles died October 17, 2008 at his home in Detroit after a long serious illness including cancer and a stroke -- that forced him to stop performing in 2000. Levi Stubbles was 72 years old at the time of his death
The Four Tops Stubbs began his professional singing career with friends Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton to form the Four Aims in 1954. Two years later, the group changed their name to the Four Tops. The group began as a supper-club act before finally signing to Motown Records in 1963; by the end of the decade, The Four Tops had over a dozen hits to their name.
Levi Stubbs' biography continues next page
Four Tops - I'll be there. Lead singer is Levi Stubbs
Jo Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008), born Jo Elizabeth Stafford, in Coalinga, California, was an American pop singer whose career spanned the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Stafford is greatly admired for the purity of her voice and was considered one of the most versatile vocalists of the era. She was also viewed as a pioneer of modern musical parody, having won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album in 1961 (with husband Paul Weston) for their album Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris.
Death of Jo Stafford Jo Stafford is died of congestive heart failure. Jo Stafford was 90 years old at the time of her death
I'll be seeting You
You Belong To me
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Robert Anthony "Tony" Snow (June 1, 1955 – July 12, 2008) was a White House Press Secretary, the third under President George W. Bush. Snow also worked for President George H. W. Bush as chief speechwriter and Deputy Assistant of Media Affairs. Snow served as White House Press Secretary from May 2006 until his resignation effective September 2007.
Between his two White House stints, Snow was a broadcaster and newspaper columnist. After years of regular guest-hosting for The Rush Limbaugh Show and providing news commentary for National Public Radio, he launched his own talk radio program, The Tony Snow Show, which went on to become nationally syndicated. He was also a regular personality on Fox News Channel since 1996, hosting Fox News Sunday, Weekend Live, and often substituting as host of The O'Reilly Factor. In April of 2008, shortly before his death, Snow joined CNN as a commentator.
Death of Tony Snow On the early morning of July 12, 2008, Tony Snow died at Georgetown University Hospital as a result of colon cancer that had spread to his liver Tony Snow was 53 years old at the time of his death
Tony Snow on Comey and FISA
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Roy Richard Scheider (November 10, 1932 - February 10, 2008) was an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-nominated American actor.
Death of Roy Scheider In 2004, Roy Scheider was diagnosed with myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells. In June 2005, he underwent a bone marrow transplant to successfully treat the cancer which was classified as being in partial remission. He died February 10, 2008 in Little Rock, Arkansas of complications from a staph infection Roy Scheider was 75 years old at the time of his death.
Biography Scheider was born in Orange, New Jersey. As a child Scheider was an athlete, participating in organized baseball and boxing competitions. He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 1985. He traded his boxing gloves for the stage, studying drama at both Rutgers University and Franklin and Marshall College, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. After three years in the United States Air Force, he appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won an Obie Award in 1968
Tom Snyder (May 12, 1936 - July 29, 2007) was an American television personality, news anchor, and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows The Tomorrow Show, on the NBC television network in the late 1970s and '80s, and The Late Late Show, on the CBS television network in the 1990s.
Snyder was also the pioneer anchor of the primetime "NBC News Update", in the 1970s and early 1980s, which was a one-minute capsule of news updates in primetime; later in the mid 1980s, local affiliates took over these news update timeslots for local headlines which also served as promos for the local late newscasts
Death
Snyder died on July 29, 2007 in San Francisco from complications of leukemia. He was 71 years old at the time of his death.
Snyder had one child, Anne Mari Snyder, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, and two grandchildren.
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Joel Siegel (July 7, 1943 – June 29, 2007) was an American film critic for the ABC morning news show Good Morning America for over 25 years. Born to a Jewish family and raised in Los Angeles, California, he graduated cum laude from UCLA. During college, he worked to register black voters in Georgia, and he spoke frequently of having met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also worked as a joke writer for Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was at the Ambassador Hotel the night the senator was assassinated.
Death Joel Siegel died of complications from colon cancer on June 29, 2007, in New York
Joel Siegel was 63 years old when he died.
In 1981 he joined "Good Morning America" as a film critic. While Siegel worked at his reviewing, he wrote the book for The First, a Broadway musical based on the story of Jackie Robinson, for which he received a Tony Award nomination in 1982.
Gordon Scott (August 3, 1926 - April 30, 2007) was an American actor known for his portrayal of Tarzan in five films (and one compilation of three made-as-a-pilot television episodes) from 1955 to 1960.
Death
Scott died on April 30, 2007 in Baltimore, Maryland of lingering complications from multiple heart surgeries earlier in the year. Gordon Scott was 80 years old.
Early life
Scott was born Gordon Merrill Werschkul in Portland, Oregon, one of nine children of advertising man Stanley Werschkul and his wife Alice. Scott was raised in Oregon and attended the University of Oregon for one semester. Upon leaving school, he was drafted into the United States Army in 1944 and was honorably discharged in 1947. He then worked at a variety of jobs until 1953, when he was spotted by a talent agent while working as a lifeguard at the Las Vegas Sahara Hotel.
Career and Personal Life
Due in part to his muscular frame and 6'3" height, he was quickly signed to replace Lex Barker as Tarzan. Scott's Tarzan films ranged from rather cheap re-edited television pilots to larger scale epics. Two of them, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure and Tarzan the Magnificent are generally considered to be among the very best Tarzan films ever made. Scott's (and his writers') particular gifts to the series included returning Tarzan to his former status as a literate, well-spoken character. Following his departure from the Tarzan films, he moved to Italy and became a popular star of what were known as "sword and sandal" epics, featuring handsome body-builders as various characters from Greek and Roman myth. Scott was a friend of Hercules star Steve Reeves, and collaborated with him as Remus to Reeves' Romulus in Duel of the Titans (1961). Scott also played Hercules in a couple of low-budget productions during the mid-1960s. His final film appearance was in The Tramplers, filmed in 1966, released in the U. S. in 1968. Scott was married apparently three times, including once to his Tarzan co-star, actress Vera Miles, from 1954 to 1959. He had one son, Michael, born 1957, with Miles, and possibly several more children. For the last two decades of his life, he was a popular guest at film conventions and autograph shows. His manner of making a living the last forty years of his life is unclear, for aside from autograph shows and selling occasional souvenir knives, he does not seem to have been employed. He spent much of his final years living with fans who remembered him from his Tarzan days.
Vickie Lynn Marshall (November 28, 1967 – February 8, 2007), better known under the stage name of Anna Nicole Smith,[1] was an American model and television personality. She first gained popularity in Playboy, becoming the 1993 Playmate of the Year. She modeled for clothing companies, including Guess jeans. She starred in her own reality TV show, The Anna Nicole Show.
Anna Nicole Smith's Death
On February 8, 2007, Smith was found unresponsive in room 607 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. According to Seminole Police Chief Charlie Tiger, at 1:38 p.m. (18:38 UTC) Smith's friend and bodyguard, Maurice "Big Moe" Brighthaupt, who was a trained paramedic, called the hotel front desk from her sixth floor room. The front desk in turn called security, who then called 911. At 1:45 p.m. the bodyguard administered CPR before she was rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital at 2:10 p.m and pronounced DOA at 2:49 p.m.
Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an American writer who won awards in three careers—a Broadway playwright, a Hollywood TV and movie screenwriter, and a best-selling novelist. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70), Hart to Hart (1979-84), and The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), but it was not until after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980) that he became most famous.
Death of Sidney Sheldon: Sheldon died from complications arising from pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California Sidney Sheldon was 89 years old at the age of his death.
He was cremated and buried in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
He struggled with bipolar disorder for years; he contemplated suicide at 17 (talked out of it by his father who discovered him), as detailed in his autobiography published in 2005, The Other Side of Me.
Claydes Charles Smith (September 6, 1948 – June 20, 2006) was an American musician best known as co-founder and lead guitarist of the group Kool & the Gang.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he was introduced to jazz guitar by his father in the early 1960s.
Later in that decade he was in a group of New Jersey jazz musicians, including Ronald Bell (later Khalis Bayyan), Robert "Kool" Bell, George Brown, Dennis Thomas and Robert "Spike" Mickens, who became Kool & the Gang. Other members would include lead singer James "JT" Taylor.
Kool & the Gang grew from jazz roots in the 1960s to become one of the major groups of the 1970s, blending jazz, funk, R&B, and pop. Despite their popularity waning briefly, the group enjoyed a return to stardom during the 1980s.[1]
Illness forced Smith to stop touring with the group in January 2006. He died in Maplewood, New Jersey.
Smith, who was known professionally as Charles Smith, wrote the hits "Joanna" and "Take My Heart," and was a co-writer of others, including "Celebration," "Hollywood Swinging," and "Jungle Boogie."
Smith is survived by his six children -- Claydes A. Smith, Justin Smith, Aaron Corbin, August Williams, Uranus Guray, and Tyteen Humes -- and nine grandchildren.
Aaron Spelling (April 22, 1923 – June 23, 2006) was an American film and television producer. As of 2007, Spelling holds the record for most prolific television producer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits
Illness, lawsuit, and death In 2001, Spelling was diagnosed with oral cancer.
On January 28, 2006, Spelling was sued by his former nurse, who sought unspecified damages for 10 claims, including sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, sexual battery, assault, wrongful termination and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
On June 18, 2006, Spelling suffered a severe stroke at his estate in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California. He died there on June 23, 2006, from complications of the stroke, at the age of 83. A private funeral was held several days later, and Spelling was entombed in a mausoleum in Culver City's Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.
Notable productions Spelling worked in some capacity on almost 200 productions beginning with the Zane Grey Theatre in 1956. His most recognizable contributions to television include Charlie's Angels, Dynasty, Starsky and Hutch, Family, Hotel, The Rookies, Beverly Hills 90210 and its adult spin-off Melrose Place, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Vega$, Hart to Hart, The Colbys, T.J. Hooker, Nightingales, Kindred: The Embraced, 7th Heaven, Charmed, Burke's Law, Honey West, The Mod Squad, and S.W.A.T.. His company also co-produced the David Lynch series Twin Peaks (although Spelling himself was not directly involved in its production).
He also produced the HBO miniseries And the Band Played On, based on Randy Shilts's bestseller. The miniseries won an Emmy Award, Spelling's first.
Lois Maureen Stapleton (June 21, 1925 - March 13, 2006) was an Academy Award-, Emmy- and two-time Tony Award-winning American actress in film, theater and television. She was also elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Death of Maureen Stapleton Maureen Stapleton suffered from anxiety and alcoholism for many years and once told an interviewer, "The curtain came down and I went into the vodka." She also said that her unhappy childhood contributed to her insecurities. In 2006, Maureen Stapleton, who was a heavy smoker, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, at the age of 80
A Tribute to Maureen Stapleton
Maureen Stapleton's awards & filmography continues next page
Roebuck "Pops" Staples (December 28, 1914 – December 19, 2000) was a Mississippi-born Gospel and R&B musician. He was an accomplished songwriter, guitarist and singer. He was the patriarch and member of singing group The Staple Singers, which included his son Pervis and daughters Mavis, Yvonne, and Cleotha.
Biography Roebuck Staples was born on a cotton plantation near Winona, Mississippi, the youngest of 14 children. When growing up he heard, and began to play with, local blues guitarists such as Charlie Patton, who lived on the nearby Dockery Plantation, Robert Johnson, and Son House.. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade, and sang with a gospel group before marrying and moving to Chicago in 1935.
Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) was a 20th-century American cartoonist best known worldwide for his Peanuts comic strip.
Charles M. Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Saint Paul. He was the only child of Carl Schulz, who was German, and Dena, who was Norwegian. His uncle nicknamed him "Sparky" after the horse Spark Plug in the Barney Google comic strip.
Schulz attended St. Paul's Richard Gordon Elementary School, where he skipped two half-grades. He became a shy and isolated teenager, perhaps as a result of being the youngest in his class at Central High School.
Charles Schulz's death. Charles Schulz died in Santa Rosa of complications from colon cancer at 9:45 p.m. on February 12, 2000. Charles Schulz was 77 years old at the time of his death. He was interred in Pleasant Hills Cemetery in Sebastopol.
Clarence Eugene Snow (May 9, 1914 – December 20, 1999), better known as Hank Snow, was a Hall of Fame country music singer and songwriter.
Death of Hank Snow Hank Snow was 85 years old at the time of his death.
The cause of death is unspecified
Recording Achievements Total Singles Charted – 85
Top 40 Chart Hits – 65
Top 10 Chart Hits – 43
No.1 Chart Hits – 7
Total Number of Weeks on Charts – 876
Total Number of Weeks at #1 – 56
Total Albums Released – 120 (Est.)
Jean Parker Shepherd (July 26, 1921 - October 16, 1999) was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep.
With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is best-known to modern audiences for narrating the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he co-wrote, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories.
Death of Jean Shepherd Jean Shepherd died on Sanibel Island in 1999 of "natural causes." at Lee Memorial Hospital near his home on Sanibel Island, Fla. Jean Shepherd was 78 years old at the time of his death.
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Jean Shepherd - "Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss"
Share your memory on famous dead actors celebrities, Recently deceased celebrities. Singers, actors died recently. Hollywood Death and Cause of death. Share your memory, talk about your favorite dead Hollywood celebrities.
Jo Stafford (November 12, 1917 – 
Robert Anthony "Tony" Snow (June 1, 1955 – 
Roy Richard Scheider (November 10, 1932 - 
Tom Snyder (May 12, 1936 - 
Joel Siegel (July 7, 1943 – 
Gordon Scott (August 3, 1926 - 
Vickie Lynn Marshall (November 28, 1967 – 
Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an American writer who won awards in three careers—a Broadway playwright, a Hollywood TV and movie screenwriter, and a best-selling novelist. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70), Hart to Hart (1979-84), and The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), but it was not until after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980) that he became most famous. 
Aaron Spelling (April 22, 1923 – 
Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – 
Clarence Eugene Snow (May 9, 1914 – 
Jean Parker Shepherd (July 26, 1921 - 
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