Charles Elmer “Rip” Taylor Jr. (January 13, 1931 – October 6, 2019) was an American actor and comedian, known for his exuberance and flamboyant personality, including his wild moustache, toupee, and his habit of showering himself (and others) with confetti. The Hollywood Reporter called him “a television and nightclub mainstay for more than six decades” who made thousands of nightclub and television appearances.
Taylor died on October 6, 2019, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, having been hospitalized after suffering an epileptic seizure the week prior.
At the time of Taylor’s death, he had been in a long-term relationship with Robert Fortney.
Robert Wallace Forster Jr. (born Robert Wallace Foster Jr.;[1] July 13, 1941 – October 11, 2019) was an American actor, known for his roles as John Cassellis in Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969), Lebanese terrorist Abdul Rafai in The Delta Force (1986), and Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Forster’s varied filmography further includes titles such as Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Black Hole (1979), Alligator (1980), Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001), The Descendants (2011), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), London Has Fallen (2016) and What They Had (2018).
He also had prominent roles in television series such as Banyon (1971–1973), Heroes (2007–2008), and Twin Peaks (2017). He won the Saturn Award for Best Guest Starring Role on Television for his performance in Breaking Bad’s “Granite State” (2013), reprising his role in the series’ sequel film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which premiered the day of his death.
Robert Forster cause of death
Forster died on October 11, 2019 at the age of 78 from brain cancer.
Jackie Brown – Robert Forster as Max Cherry, bail bondsman
Diahann Carroll (July 17, 1935 – October 4, 2019) was an American actress, singer, model and activist. She rose to prominence in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts, including Carmen Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess (1959). In 1962, Carroll won a Tony Award for best actress, a first for a black woman, for her role in the Broadway musical No Strings.
Her 1968 debut in Julia, the first series on American television to star a black woman in a non-stereotypical role, was a milestone both in her career and the medium. In the 1980s, she played the role of Dominique Deveraux, a mixed-race diva, in the prime time soap opera Dynasty. Carroll was the recipient of numerous stage and screen nominations and awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress In a Television Series in 1968. She received an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for the film Claudine (1974). She was also a breast cancer survivor and activist.
Carroll was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997. She said the diagnosis “stunned” her, because there was no family history of breast cancer, and she had always led a healthy lifestyle. She underwent nine weeks of radiation therapy and had been clear since. She frequently spoke of the need for early detection and prevention of the disease. She died on October 4, 2019, in Los Angeles, aged 84.
Sammy Davis Jr. & Diahann Carroll – Porgy & Bess-Medley (1976)
Marshall Efron (February 3, 1938 – September 30, 2019) was an American actor and humorist originally known for his work on the listener-sponsored Pacifica radio stations WBAI New York and KPFK Los Angeles, and later for the PBS television show The Great American Dream Machine (the original showcase of Chevy Chase).
Efron died at the age of 81 on September 30, 2019 at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey.
Richard Theodore Otcasek (March 23, 1944 – September 15, 2019), known as Ric Ocasek, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer and painter. He was best known as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and songwriter for the rock band the Cars. In 2018, Ocasek was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Cars. That same year, he revealed a number of his paintings in a national tour which included an exhibit at the Wentworth Galleries in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
Ocasek’s breakout success was as a founding member of the Cars, recording numerous hit songs from 1978 to 1988. He played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals for a majority of songs (bassist Benjamin Orr was lead vocalist on the remaining tracks). After splitting writing duty with Orr in the 1970s, Ocasek became the principal songwriter of the band, and wrote nearly all of the Cars’ material, sharing credit on only a few songs with bandmate Greg Hawkes as co-writer. In 2010, Ocasek reunited with the surviving original members of the Cars to record their first album in 24 years, titled Move Like This, which was released on May 10, 2011.
Ric Ocasek cause of death
Ocasek was found dead in his New York City apartment on September 15, 2019. Early reports said he had died of natural causes, and had been found by his estranged wife Paulina Porizkova.
Edward Joseph Mahoney (March 21, 1949 – September 13, 2019), known professionally as Eddie Money, was an American rock singer and songwriter who had success in the 1970s and 1980s with 11 Top 40 songs including “Baby Hold On”, “Two Tickets to Paradise”, “Think I’m in Love”, “Shakin'”, “Take Me Home Tonight”, “I Wanna Go Back”, “Walk on Water”, and “The Love in Your Eyes”. Money was known as a working-class rocker with a husky voice. In 1987, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for “Take Me Home Tonight”.
In July 2019, Money underwent heart valve surgery and contracted pneumonia, causing him to cancel tour dates. Money had been a cigarette smoker for years. On August 24, 2019, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer. Complications from the cancer resulted in his death in a Los Angeles hospital on September 13, 2019, at age 70.
Jessica Combs (July 27, 1980 – August 27, 2019) was an American professional racer, television personality, and metal fabricator. She set a women’s land speed class record (four wheels) in 2013 and broke her own record in 2016. She was known as “the fastest woman on four wheels”.
She co-hosted the Spike TV show Xtreme 4×4 for more than 90 episodes from 2005 to 2009. Other television shows she appeared on included Overhaulin’, Mythbusters, The List: 1001 Car Things To Do Before You Die, All Girls Garage, and Science Channel’s How to Build… Everything in 2016.
Combs died during a land speed record attempt as part of the North American Eagle Project on August 27, 2019, in the Alvord Desert, Oregon.
Richard Edmund Williams (March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019) was a Canadian–British animator, voice actor, director, and writer, best known for serving as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and for his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field included the title sequences to What’s New Pussycat? (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.
Richard Williams cause of death.
He died of cancer on August 16, 2019, at his home in Bristol, England.
Harold Smith Prince (born Harold Smith; January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019) was an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the 20th century.
Over the span of his career, he garnered 21 Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year’s Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.
Prince died on July 31, 2019, in Reykjavík, Iceland, at the age of 91 following a brief illness.
The marquee lights of Broadway theatres were dimmed on July 31, 2019, in the traditional gesture of honor.
Russi Taylor (May 4, 1944 – July 26, 2019) was an American voice actress, who voiced many characters throughout her career. She provided the voices of Minnie Mouse from 1986 and The Simpsons character Martin Prince from 1990 until her death in 2019.
Many Voices of Russi Taylor
She voiced Huey, Dewey and Louie and Webby Vanderquack in the television series DuckTales, the video game Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers and in other appearances such as in the holiday movies Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas and Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas. In appearances where the three young ducks appear at an older age, such as in Mickey Mouse Works and Disney’s House of Mouse, Tony Anselmo, the voice of Donald Duck, reprises Taylor’s role as their voice actor. In Mickey’s Boo to You Halloween Parade at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Mickey Mouse Works and in Disney’s House of Mouse, she plays Clara Cluck.
Taylor provided the voices of numerous characters in the animated series The Simpsons, including fourth-grade nerd Martin Prince, purple-haired twins Sherri and Terri, and German exchange student Üter. On occasions, she voiced Martin’s friend, Wendell. In addition, she participated in two anime dubbing projects. The first is Daisy Nohara, Max, Cheetah and Shin’s Grandmother (Tsuru Nohara) in the English Vitello dub of Crayon Shin-chan, while the other is the voice of Otama in Disney’s re-dubbing of Pom Poko.
She was the original voice of Strawberry Shortcake in the six 1980s television specials.
She voiced Pebbles Flintstone in The Flintstone Comedy Show for Hanna-Barbera in 1980. Taylor was also the voice of Baby Gonzo in Muppet Babies, Nova in Twinkle, the Dream Being, Pac-Baby in the television series Pac-Man, the high-pitched Nurses that were mice in The Rescuers Down Under, Melissa in the Pound Puppies episode Garbage Night: The Musical, Queen Rosedust in My Little Pony, and her last non-Disney role was Birdie the Early Bird in McDonaldland commercials. She was also the voice of Drizella and the Fairy Godmother in the Cinderella sequels, Cinderella II: Dreams Come True and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time.
Taylor also provided the voice of the main hero Widget in Widget the World Watcher and Hard Luck Duck in a What-a-Cartoon! short.
She also appeared in Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams, playing Fauna and Sofia the First, alongside her Simpsons castmates, Tress MacNeille and Frank Welker. She was nominated for an Emmy for her voice work in PBS’ series Jakers! in 2006. She also voiced a witch in her second Scooby-Doo movie, Scooby-Doo! and the Goblin King.
Taylor also replaced Jeanette Nolan (who died in 1998) as Widow Tweed in The Fox and the Hound 2.
Russi Taylor Cause of Death
Taylor died from colon cancer on July 26, 2019, at her home in Glendale, California, at the age of 75.
