Irv Robbins (December 6, 1917 – May 5, 2008) founded the Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor chain in 1945 with his partner and brother-in-law Burt Baskin. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, his father, Aaron Ernie, owned a dairy and ice cream business in Tacoma. The ice cream store was called The Olympic Store and was located at 954 Court C in Tacoma.
He resided in Rancho Mirage, California, until his death on May 5, 2008, at Eisenhower Medical Center in the desert community of Rancho Mirage, according to his daughter, Marsha Veit of Mount Kisco, N.Y. He had been in ill health for some time, she said.
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Biography.
Irv Robbins attended the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington). After serving in the U.S. Army, he was discharged August 1945, and was able to follow up on a dream of many years, and opened up his own ice cream store — one that sold nothing but ice cream, with an inventory of 31 flavors. It opened Dec. 7, 1945 in Glendale California. Burton Baskin owned a men’s store in the Palmer House, Chicago, IL, and married Irv’s sister in 1942. He had enlisted in the Navy and was released from service early 1946 and came to California, where Irv convinced him that selling ice cream was more fun than selling men’s ties & shirts, and within a couple of months he opened a store in Pasadena at 561 So. Lake.
Once they were growing rapidly with the franchising concept, they joined forces, and became Baskin Robbins 31 Ice Cream Co. 25 years later it had become the world’s largest chain of ice cream stores, eventually having over 5500 outlets around the world.
Irv and his wife Irma (the former Irma Gevurtz) had three children: Marsha, John and Erin. (John Robbins is a renowned author of diet books and a Veganism advocate.) Burton and his wife Shirley had two children, Edie & Richard. Burton Baskin died in December 1967. Irvine Robbins retired in 1978, having sold the business to United Fruit Co.
Fredric J. Baur (14 June 1918 – 4 May 2008) was a United States chemist and food storage technician notable for designing and patenting the Pringles packaging. Baur filed for a patent for the tubular Pringles container and for the method of packaging the curved, stacked chips in the container in 1966, and it was granted in 1970. In later life, Baur enjoyed attending games at St James Park in England to watch his beloved Newcastle United FC play.
Some of Baur’s ashes were buried in a Pringles can at his request. Baur’s children said they honored his request to bury him in one of the cans by placing part of his cremated remains in a Pringles container in his grave in suburban Springfield Township. The rest of his remains were placed in an urn buried along with the can, with some placed in another urn and given to a grandchild.
Motion picture of his story to be release in 2009 – starring Tom Cruise. He has a facinating biography. Comment Closed (We don’t talk about politics).
Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager (6 September 1917 – 1 May 2008) was the last surviving member of the July 20 Plot, a conspiracy among high-ranking Wehrmacht officers to assassinate German dictator Adolf Hitler in 1944.
Biography
Boeselager was born at Burg Heimerzheim near Bonn.
When Boeselager was a 25-year-old field lieutenant, he was part of Operation Walküre, which was a plan developed to re-take control of Germany once Hitler had been assassinated. Boeselager’s role in the plan was to order his troops (who were unaware of the plot) to leave the front lines in Eastern Europe and ride on commandeered horses all the way back to Berlin to seize crucial parts of the city in a full-scale coup d’état after Hitler was dead.
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Boeselager’s opinion turned against the Nazi government in June 1942, after he received news that five Roma people had been shot in cold blood, solely because of their ethnicity. Together with his commanding officer Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, he joined a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. The first attempt was in March 1943, when both Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were coming to the front to participate in a strategy meeting with Kluge’s troops.
Boeselager was given a Walther PP, with which he was to shoot both Hitler and Himmler at a dinner table in the officers’ casino. However, nothing ever became of this plan, because at the last minute, Himmler left Hitler’s company, and the risk of leaving him alive to succeed Hitler was too great.
The second assassination attempt was in summer 1944. No longer caring about Himmler, the conspiracy planned to kill Hitler with a bomb when he was attending another strategy meeting in a wooden barracks. When the assassin’s bomb failed to kill the Führer, Boeselager was informed in time to turn his unexplained cavalry retreat around and return to the front before suspicions were unduly raised. Because of Boeselager’s fortuitous timing, his involvement in the operation went undetected and he was not executed along with the majority of the other conspirators. Philipp’s brother Georg was also a participant in the plot, and likewise remained undetected; however, he was subsequently killed-in-action on the Eastern Front.
After the war, Boeselager’s part in the failed attempt became known and he was regarded as a hero by Germany and France, receiving the highest military medals both countries could provide. He studied economics and became a forestry expert. Even in his old age, Boeselager still had nightmares about the conspiracy and the friends he lost in the war, and urged young people to become more involved in politics, as he felt apathy and the political inexperience of the German masses were two of the key reasons Hitler was able to come to power. The entrance to his residence in Kreuzberg bears the Latin motto "Et si omnes ego non — even if all, not I."
Boeselager was a member of K.D.St.V. Ripuaria Bonn, a Catholic student fraternity that belong to the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen. Up until his death on 1 May 2008, he still had the Walther PP pistol he was supposed to use to shoot Hitler.
On April 18, 2008, just two weeks before his death, Philipp von Boeselager gave his last videotaped interview. It was conducted by Zora Wolter for the feature documentary, The Valkyrie Legacy. It will be televised on History (a.k.a. The History Channel) in Spring 2009 to coincide with the release of Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Bryan Singer. The documentary was produced by Singer and directed by Kevin Burns.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey (March 18, 1956 – May 1, 2008) (dubbed the D.C. Madam by the news media) operated Pamela Martin and Associates, an escort agency in Washington, D.C.. Although she argued that the company’s services were legal, she was convicted on April 15, 2008 of racketeering and money laundering. Slightly over two weeks later, facing a long prison sentence, she was found dead. Authorities have described her death as a suicide. However, concerns have been raised about possible foul play.
On May 1, 2008, Palfrey died in Tarpon Springs, Florida, from what authorities have called a suicide. She was staying with her mother at the time. Palfrey’s body was found in a small storage shed attached to her mother’s mobile home. She had apparently hanged herself from a beam inside the shed. Tarpon Springs police reported finding handwritten suicide notes near the body. According to Palfrey biographer Dan Moldea, “She wasn’t going to jail, she told me that very clearly. She told me she would commit suicide." Palfrey had appeared on the Alex Jones radio show in July 2007, saying "No, I’m not planning to commit suicide. I’m planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government
Daniel Paul Danny Federici (January 23, 1950 – April 17, 2008) was an American musician, most known as the longtime organ, glockenspiel, and accordion player for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.
On November 21, 2007, it was announced that Federici would take a leave of absence from Springsteen and the E Street Band’s ongoing Magic Tour to pursue treatment for melanoma, and was temporarily replaced by veteran musician Charles Giordano. Springsteen stated at the time: "Danny is one of the pillars of our sound and has played beside me as a great friend for more than 40 years. We all eagerly await his healthy and speedy return." Federici made his only return to the stage on March 20, 2008, when he appeared for portions of a Springsteen and E Street Band performance at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Federici died on April 17, 2008 in New York after a three-year battle with melanoma
Charlton Heston (October 4, 1924 – April 5, 2008) was an Academy Award-winning American film actor. In a long career, Heston was known for playing heroic roles, such as Harry Steele in Secret of the Incas , Moses in The Ten Commandments, Colonel George Taylor in Planet of the Apes and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur. Early in his career, he was one of a handful of Hollywood stars to publicly speak out against racism and was active in the civil rights movement. During the latter part of his movie career, he starred in films such as The Omega Man and Soylent Green that had a strong environmental message. He was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.
Death of Charlton Heston Heston died on April 5, 2008 at his home in Beverly Hills, California with his wife by his side. Charlton Heston was 84 years old at the time of his death. He had Alzheimer’s disease since 2002 but the cause of death is not known.
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Peer Gynt (1941) (student film) Dark City (1950) Introducing Charlton Heston (1950) Julius Caesar (1950 film) (1950) Ruby Gentry (1952) The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) The Savage (1952) Arrowhead (1953) Bad for Each Other (1953) Pony Express (1953) The President’s Lady (1953) Three Lives (1953) Secret of the Incas (1954) The Naked Jungle (1954) Lucy Gallant (1955) The Far Horizons (1955) The Private War of Major Benson (1955) The Ten Commandments (1956) Three Violent People (1957) The Big Country (1958) The Buccaneer (1958) Touch of Evil (1958) Ben-Hur (1959) The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) El Cid (1961) The Fugitive Eye (1961) (hosted by Fred Astaire)[19] The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) 55 Days at Peking (1963) Diamond Head (1963) The Five Cities of June (1963) Major Dundee (1965) The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) The War Lord (1965) The Egyptologists (1965) Khartoum (1966) Think Twentieth (1967) Maugli (1967) (narrator in English version) All About People (1967) The American Film: 1966 White House Festival of the Arts (1967) While I Run This Race (1967) Counterpoint (1968) Planet of the Apes (1968) Rowan & Martin at the Movies (1968) Will Penny (1968) The Movie Experience: A Matter of Choice (1968) Number One (1969) The Heart of Variety (1969) Rod Laver’s Wimbledon (1969) Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) Julius Caesar (1970) The Hawaiians (1970) The Festival Game (1970) King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis (1970) The Last Man Alive (1971) The Omega Man (1971) Antony and Cleopatra (1972) Skyjacked (1972) The Call of the Wild (1972) Our Active Earth (1972) A Look at the World of Soylent Green (1973) Soylent Green (1973) The Three Musketeers (1973) Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1973) Airport 1975 (1974) Earthquake (1974) The Four Musketeers (1974) The Fun of Your Life (1975) Midway (1976) The Last Hard Men (1976) They Were There (1976) Two-Minute Warning (1976) America at the Movies (1976) Crossed Swords (1977) Gray Lady Down (1978) The Awakening (1980) The Mountain Men (1980)[20] Mother Lode (1982) Chiefs (1983) (mini-series) The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1985) Directed by William Wyler (1986) Proud Men (1987) Call from Space (1989) (voice) Almost an Angel (1990) Solar Crisis (1990) Treasure Island (1990) Genghis Khan (1992) (unfinished) A Thousand Heroes (1992) (TV) Tombstone (1993) Wayne’s World 2 (1993) SeaQuest DSV (1993) (TV) True Lies (1994) A Century of Cinema (1994) In the Mouth of Madness (1995) Friends (1995) (Guest as Himself) The Avenging Angel (1995) (TV) Alaska (1996) Hamlet (1996) (1 Player) Ben Johnson: Third Cowboy on the Right (1996) The Dark Mist (1996) Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s (1997) Alaska: Spirit of the Wild (1997) Hercules (1997) Armageddon (1998) Any Given Sunday (1999) Gideon (1999) Planet of the Apes (2001) The Order (2001) Town & Country (2001) Last Party 2000 (2001) Cats & Dogs (2001) (voice) My Father, Rua Alguem 5555 (2003)
Biography
Early life Heston was born John Charles Carter in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Lilla (née Charlton) and Russell Whitford Carter, a mill operator.[3] When he was ten, his parents divorced. Shortly thereafter, his mother married Chester Heston. The new family moved to well-off Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. Heston (his new surname) attended New Trier High School.
He enrolled in the school’s drama program, where he performed with such outstanding results that he earned a drama scholarship to Northwestern University from the Winnetka Community Theatre in which he was also active. While still in high school, he played in the silent 16 mm amateur film adaptation of Peer Gynt made by David Bradley. Several years later the same team produced the first sound version of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Heston played Mark Antony.
In 1944, Heston left college and enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. He served for two years as a B-25 radio operator/gunner stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the Eleventh Air Force, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant.
While in the service, he married fellow Northwestern student Lydia Marie Clarke in 1944. After the war, the two lived in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, where they worked as models. They have a son, Fraser Clarke Heston and an adopted daughter, Holly Ann Heston.
Seeking a way to make it in theater, Charlton and Lydia Heston decided in 1947 to manage a playhouse in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1948, they went back to New York where Heston was offered a supporting role in a Broadway revival of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, starring Katharine Cornell. He also had success in television, playing a number of roles in CBS’s Studio One, one of the most popular anthology dramas of the 1950s.
Acting career Heston’s most frequently played roles on stage include the title role in Macbeth, Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, and Mark Antony in both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. He also cited Mister Roberts as one of his favorite roles, and tried unsuccessfully to revive the show in the early ’90s.
He was unable to use his birth name, John Carter, as an actor because it bore too close a resemblance to the name of the hero in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first novel A Princess of Mars, which was in development at the time although the production fell through. In 1950, he earned recognition for his appearance in his first professional movie, Dark City. His breakthrough came in 1952 with his role of a circus manager in The Greatest Show on Earth. Heston was Billy Wilder’s first choice to play JJ Sefton in Stalag 17 (1953). The role was eventually given to Oscar winner William Holden. But the muscular, 6 ft 3 in, square jawed Heston became an icon by portraying Moses in The Ten Commandments, a part he was chosen for reportedly because director Cecil B. DeMille thought that he bore an uncanny resemblance to the statue of Moses by Michelangelo.
He played leading roles in a number of fictional and historical epics—such as Ben-Hur, El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Agony and the Ecstasy (as Michelangelo himself), and Khartoum—during his long career. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1959 performance in the title role of Ben-Hur, one of 11 earned by that film. Heston accepted the role in Ben-Hur after Burt Lancaster, another similarly tall, muscular, square jawed, blonde, blue eyed actor, turned it down. Many years later, Lancaster charged that if Heston became typecast in heroic roles it was his own fault, because "he accepted the limitation." And although Lancaster later took on the role of Moses in a TV version of Moses’ life, it was Heston who would be identified with the Biblical epic more than any other actor, voicing the role of Judah Ben-Hur for a cartoon version of the Lew Wallace novel as late as 2003.
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Sean Levert (September 28, 1968 – March 30, 2008).
I grew up in the 80’s and I was a DJ at that time. I vaguely remember the name Levert (singing group). And I absolutely don’t remember a single song from them. His father was a member of O’Jays.
Levert died at Cleveland hospital March 30, less than an hour after he was taken there from jail. We don’t know the cause of his sudden death. Searn Levert was 39 years old at the time of his death.
Levert had been in the jail since March 24 (6 days earlier) awaiting transfer to a state prison for being $80,000 behind in child support payments.
Herb Peterson (1919 – March 25, 2008) is most known for being the inventor of the Egg McMuffin, in 1971. The breakfast business that he pioneered with this grew to an estimated $4-5 billion dollars of annual revenues for the fast food restaurant chain McDonald’s, by 1993.
As a vice president at D’Arcy Advertising in Chicago, Peterson coined McDonald’s first national advertising slogan, "Where Quality Starts Fresh Every Day." He later became franchise co-owner and operator of six McDonald’s restaurants in and around Santa Barbara, California.
He died peacefully in Santa Barbara, aged 89, on March 25, 2008
Peterson is survived by his wife, son and three daughters.
A public memorial service will be held April 23 at All Saints by the Sea church in Montecito.
Richard Widmark (December 26, 1914 – March 24, 2008) was an Academy Award-nominated American film actor.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Widmark has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6800 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2002, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Death of Richard Widmark Richard Widmark was 93 years old at the time of his death. Richard’s wife stated that he had a fractured a vertebra recently which worsened his condition. We don’t know the exact cause of his death. But Richard Widmark had an illness for a long time.
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Biography Widmark grew up in Princeton, Illinois, and attended Lake Forest College, where he studied acting. He taught acting at the college after graduation, before debuting on radio in 1938 in Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories. He appeared on Broadway in 1943 in Kiss and Tell. He was unable to join the military during World War II because of a perforated eardrum.
Widmark’s first movie appearance was in 1947’s Kiss of Death, as the giggling, sociopathic villain Tommy Udo. His most notorious scene in the film found Udo pushing a wheelchair-bound old woman (played by Mildred Dunnock) down a flight of stairs to her death. Kiss of Death was a commercial and critical success, and started Widmark’s seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year – Actor for his performance. Widmark’s character was also the inspiration for the song, "The Ballad of Tommy Udo", by the band Kaleidoscope.
In 1950, Widmark co-starred with Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jack Palance and Zero Mostel in Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets, and with Gene Tierney in Jules Dassin’s Night and the City, which are considered classic examples of film noir. Two years later, in 1952, Widmark had his handprints cast in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. During his stint at Fox, he appeared in The Street with No Name and Don’t Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe among other projects. His later filmography includes Vincente Minnelli’s 1955 cult film The Cobweb with Lauren Bacall.
Personal Life Widmark was married to his first wife, Jean Hazlewood, a writer, for almost 55 years, from April 5, 1942 until her death on March 2, 1997. Their daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author, married baseball legend Sandy Koufax on January 1, 1969 (but divorced in 1982). In September 1999, Widmark married Susan Blanchard, who earlier was Henry Fonda’s third wife. From the 1950s until his death on March 24, 2008, Widmark resided in Roxbury, Connecticut.
Filmograpny:
Kiss of Death (1947) The Street with No Name (1948) Road House (1948) Yellow Sky (1948) Down to the Sea in Ships (1949) Slattery’s Hurricane (1949) Night and the City (1950) Panic in the Streets (1950) No Way Out (1950) Halls of Montezuma (1950) The Frogmen (1951) Red Skies of Montana (1952) Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) O. Henry’s Full House (1952) My Pal Gus (1952) Destination Gobi (1953) Pickup on South Street (1953) Take the High Ground! (1953) Hell and High Water (1954) Garden of Evil (1954) Broken Lance (1954) A Prize of Gold (1955) The Cobweb (1955) Backlash (1956) Run for the Sun (1956) The Last Wagon (1956) Saint Joan (1957) Time Limit (1957) The Law and Jake Wade (1958) The Tunnel of Love (1958) The Trap (1959) Warlock (1959) The Alamo (1960) The Secret Ways (1961) Two Rode Together (1961) Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) How the West Was Won (1962) The Long Ships (1964) Flight from Ashiya (1964) Cheyenne Autumn (1964) The Bedford Incident (1965) Alvarez Kelly (1966) The Way West (1967) Madigan (1968) A Talent for Loving (1969) Death of a Gunfighter (1969) The Moonshine War (1970) Murder on the Orient Express (1974) To the Devil a Daughter (1976) The Sell-Out (1976) Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977) The Domino Principle (1977) Rollercoaster (1977) Coma (1978) The Swarm (1978) Bear Island (1979) National Lampoon Goes to the Movies (1982) Hanky Panky (1982) Who Dares Wins (1982) Against All Odds (1984) True Colors (1991) Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1996) (documentary)
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (December 16, 1917 – March 19, 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name.
In December 2007, the occasion of his 90th birthday, Clarke recorded a video message to his friends and fans, bidding them good-bye.
Clarke died in Sri Lanka at 1:30am on March 19, 2008 local time, after suffering from breathing problems, according to Rohan de Silva, one of his aides
Irv Robbins (December 6, 1917 – May 5, 2008) founded the Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor chain in 1945 with his partner and brother-in-law Burt Baskin. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, his father, Aaron Ernie, owned a dairy and ice cream business in Tacoma. The ice cream store was called The Olympic Store and was located at 954 Court C in Tacoma.
Motion picture of his story to be release in 2009 – starring Tom Cruise. He has a facinating biography. Comment Closed (We don’t talk about politics).
Deborah Jeane Palfrey (March 18, 1956 – 
Daniel Paul Danny Federici (January 23, 1950 – 
Charlton Heston (October 4, 1924 – 
Herb Peterson (1919 – 
Richard Widmark (December 26, 1914 – 
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (December 16, 1917 –