Soap Opera Actor Clint Ritchie Dead at 70

Actor Clint Ritchie, who played newspaper editor Clint Buchanan on One Life to Live for two decades, has died in Roseville, Calif., ABC said. He was 70. It is reported that he died last Saturday, following a brief illness. He had been living on a horse ranch in Grass Valley. Ritchie played small roles in the 1960s and '70s on TV shows such as The Wild, Wild West, Batman and Thunder, and had bit parts in movies before becoming a fixture on One Life to Live, starting in 1979. He retired from the show in December 1998, but made appearances on the daytime drama in 1999, 2003 and 2004.

Folk Singer Martyn Dead at Age 60

Scottish singer John Martyn, known as much for his folk sound as his hard-drinking image, has died at the age of 60, singer Phil Collins said.

Collins, who had worked alongside Martyn during his musical career and had known him since the 1970s, remembered him as a great friend, The Scotsman said Friday. His albums were representative of what was taking place in his life at the time.

After first appearing in the music scene in the 1960s, Martyn created such albums as 1973's Solid Air and 1977's One World.

The Times of London said Martyn's substance abuse caused the singer numerous health problems and even resulted in him losing a leg to septicaemia.

Barack Obama: Man of History

Millions of American and world citizens witnessed history Tuesday when Barack Obama became the 44th -- and the first black -- president of the United States.

Obama didn't lose sight of the import of the moment, repeating themes he voiced during his presidential bid and honoring the struggles of previous generations that enabled him to become the United States' commander in chief.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord, Obama told the in-person and broadcast audiences, proclaiming later, The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

His day began with a 45-second car ride from Blair House to St. John's Episcopal Church, where Obama and his wife Michelle met running mate Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, for the traditional inauguration day service.

Meanwhile, the National Mall filled with people as an estimated 1 million to 2 million people were expected to witness Obama's swearing in. Fashion statements were scrapped for ear muffs, woolen caps, gloves and heavy coats as temperatures were in the 20s, but brisk conditions made it feel more like 10 degrees.

The world is watching today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said. We gather to etch another line in the solid stone of history.

While Obama took the oath of office after noon, he already was president because of a constitutional provision directing that the president-elect becomes president at noon, Jan. 20.

Obama, 47, gave his full name -- Barack Hussein Obama -- when repeating the oath administered by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who muffed his lines by misplacing the word faithfully.

Both he and Obama recovered, with Roberts being the first to recognize him as Mr. President.

As Obama basked in adulation, George and Laura Bush bade farewell to city they called home for eight sometimes-rocky years.

At an Andrews Air Force Base hangar, Bush told about 2,000 aides, supporters and their families he was thankful, grateful and... joyful for the opportunity to be president, adding that his administration led with conviction.

The energy in what should have been the power lunch of all power lunches with congressional leaders, former presidents and vice presidents, and Cabinet nominees was dampened when Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., suffered a seizure doctors later said was brought on by fatigue. Kennedy, D-Mass., who has been battling brain cancer, was removed from the Capitol by stretcher and hospitalized overnight.

In remarks after he and Biden received gifts and a commemorative photograph, Obama said, I would be lying to you if I did not say that right now a part of me is with him (Kennedy).

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the oldest member of the Senate, reportedly was so distressed, he was removed from the luncheon in a wheelchair.

By the time the Obamas and first daughters Malia and Sasha reached the reviewing stand for the inaugural parade, night began to fall on the nation's capital. The Obamas and the Bidens kept with the tradition of walking part of the parade route, with cheers erupting from the sardine-packed crowd lining the route when the Obamas emerged from their fortified vehicle.

With a look both to the present and the future, Obama ended his inaugural address by saying, Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

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Actor Ricardo Montalban Dead at 88

Ricardo Montalban, a Mexican actor best known for his work on the iconic TV series Fantasy Island, died Wednesday, said a Los Angeles city official. Montalban's death at the age of 88 was announced by City Council President Eric Garcetti, an official of the city where the actor lived and worked for more than six decades. No cause of death was immediately disclosed.

In addition to his starring role on Fantasy Island, Montalban's other professional accomplishments included winning an Emmy Award for his performance in the TV miniseries How the West Was Won and earning a Tony Award nod for his work in the Broadway musical, Jamaica. He was honored with the Screen Actors Guild's lifetime achievement Award in 1994, as well.

Montalban also memorably co-starred in the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, lent his distinctive voice to a character in the animated series Kim Possible and appeared in episodes of Bonanza, Star Trek and Murder, She Wrote.

In his younger years, he shared the screen with Esther Williams in movies like Fiesta, On an Island with You and Neptune's Daughter.

Eartha Kitt Dies at 81

Eartha Kitt, the U.S. singer-actress who learned to pick cotton before the age of 8, died in New York with her daughter at her side, her publicist said. She was 81.

She was being treated for colon cancer, publicist Patty Freedman told CNN Thursday.

Kitt said she got her unusual first name because she was born on a small farm in South Carolina during an abundant harvest.

I was named Eartha to thank the earth for that fine crop, the tawny singer-actress said during an interview with UPI in 1981.

The singer was born Jan. 16, 1928, the daughter of John and Anna Kitt, and she was in the fields picking cotton before she was 8 years old.

She and her mother moved to New York after her father died, but her mother died shortly thereafter and Kitt was placed in custody of an aunt.

Honesty became almost a mania with the young woman and her outspoken manner often startled people around her. It even followed her into the White House in later years when, as a guest at the White House, she angrily told the first lady at that time, Lady Bird Johnson, that American youth was in rebellion because of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Kitt was one of more than 50 guests invited to the White House to discuss the president's proposals to combat crime in the streets.

Kitt became a member of the Dunham dancers and toured the world for almost five years before she struck out on her own as a nightclub chanteuse in Paris, where she wore slit-to-the-hip gowns and sang with a purr in her voice.

Kitt appeared in a number of films including New Faces (1953), St. Louis Blues (1957), Anna Lucasta (1958) and The Saint of Devil's Island (1961).

Kitt told her life story in a book, Thursday's Child, published in 1956.

She married William O. McDonald in 1960. They separated in 1963 and later divorced. They had one child, a girl, Kitt.

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Model Sahar Daftary Killed in Fall

Model and former Face of Asia winner Sahar Daftary, 24, fell to her death from the 12th floor of an apartment building in England, police say. Witnesses have said there was no shouting or ranting -- just a single scream. It is being looked at as either suicide or a horrible accident, a police source told The Daily Mail. She died during the weekend after falling 150 feet at the building where she had gone to pick up her belongings from an apartment she shared with her ex-boyfriend, a property developer who hasn't been named to the media, the newspaper reported. The model's former beau reportedly was arrested and interviewed by police, then released on bail. She met (the boyfriend) in Manchester and they were very happy. Then she won the Face of Asia competition and got several big contracts. She seemed to have the world at her feet. But she discovered that he was married and became very unhappy. The stress changed her and she had stopped eating properly. When she came up on Saturday she was very distracted and preoccupied with collecting her things from the apartment, but he didn't want to see her.

1950s Pinup Model Bettie Page Dies in LA at 85

Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.

Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.

"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."

Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.

Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.

"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."

Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.

After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.

"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."

The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.

Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."

Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."

Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.

Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."

Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."

In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.

"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.

Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.

Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.

She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.

Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.

In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.

After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.

A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.

She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.

A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.

"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."

Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.

He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.

"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.

Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."

The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.

After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.

In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.

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Odetta Holmes Dies at 77; Folk Singer Championed Black History, Civil Rights

Odetta, the classically trained folk, blues and gospel singer who used her powerfully rich and dusky voice to champion African American music and civil rights issues for more than half a century starting in the folk revival of the 1950s, has died. She was 77.

She was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City for a checkup in mid-November but went into kidney failure. She died there Tuesday of heart disease, her manager, Doug Yeager, told the Associated Press.

With a repertoire that included 19th century slave songs and spirituals as well as the topical ballads of such 20th century folk icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Odetta became one of the most beloved figures in folk music.

She was said to have influenced the emergence of artists as varied as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Tracy Chapman.

"The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta," Dylan once said. "From Odetta, I went to Harry Belafonte, the Kingston Trio, little by little uncovering more as I went along."

Her affinity for traditional African American folk songs was a hallmark of her long career, along with a voice that could easily sweep from dark, husky low notes to delicate yet goose bump-inducing high register tones.

"The first time I heard Odetta sing," Seeger once said, "she sang Leadbelly's 'Take This Hammer' and I went and told her how I wish Leadbelly was still alive so he could have heard her."

She was born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 31, 1930. Her father died when she was young and she moved to Los Angeles at age 6 with her mother, sister and stepfather. She took the surname of her stepfather Zadock Felious, but throughout her career she used just her given name.

And although Los Angeles wasn't as overtly racist as the Deep South, she suffered some of the same indignities that came with being black.

"We lived within walking distance of Marshall High School," Odetta told The Times some years ago, "but they didn't let colored people go there, so we had to get on the bus and go to Belmont High School."

She attended Los Angeles City College after high school and earned a degree in music.

Trained as a classical vocalist as a child, she won a spot with a group called the Madrigal Singers in junior high school. She also realized early that despite her classical training, her options in that area were going to be limited because of the racism at the time.

By 19, Odetta had turned her attention to other forms of music and landed a part in a production of "Finian's Rainbow" as a chorus member. When the musical went on the road to San Francisco, she went with it.

The trip marked an important crossroads in her emergence as a folk singer.

She met an old friend from school who had settled in the city's North Beach neighborhood, and during a visit Odetta was exposed to a late-night session of folk songs.

"That night I heard hours and hours of songs that really touched where I live," she told The Times. "I borrowed a guitar and learned three chords, and started to sing at parties."

The traditional prison songs that she learned in her early days hit home the hardest and helped her come to terms with what she called the deep-seated hate and fury in her.

"As I did those songs, I could work on my hate and fury without being antisocial," she recalled. "Through those songs, I learned things about the history of black people in this country that the historians in school had not been willing to tell us about or had lied about."

Odetta left the theater company in 1950 and took a job at a folk club in San Francisco. She soon began to tour and recorded her first album, "The Tin Angel," in 1954. She soon caught the attention of such folk-music icons as Guthrie, Seeger and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. She was a fixture on the folk music scene by the time the genre's commercial boom came in the late 1950s and early '60s.

She played at the Newport Folk Festival, the showcase event for folk music, four times between 1959 and 1965. She also had a recording contract with Vanguard Records, which at the height of the folk music craze was the genre's leading label.

Over the years, Odetta branched into acting, with dramatic and singing roles in film and television including "Cinerama Holiday," "Sanctuary" and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman."

But traditional folk music remained her forte.

"The folk repertoire is our inheritance. Don't have to like it, but we need to hear it," she said. "I love getting to schools and telling kids there's something else out there. It's from their forebears, and its an alternative to what they hear on the radio. As long as I am performing, I will be pointing out that heritage that is ours."

In 1999, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. In 2004, she was a Kennedy Center honoree. A year later, the Library of Congress honored her with its Living Legend Award.

Information on survivors and funeral services was not immediately available.

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Tony Melendez A Life Example

I was touched by an inspirational video. It is about an amazing armless guy named Tony Melendez. He is a Nicaraguan guitar player, singer and Christian rock songwriter who was born without arms. His mother took Thalidomide while pregnant, which caused his disability. Melendez has learned to play the guitar with his feet.

Here is an inspirational video of Tony Melendez:

Hendrix Drummer Mitch Mitchell Dead at 61

Officials say Mitch Mitchell, the drummer for the iconic Jimi Hendrix Experience, was found dead in his Portland, Ore., hotel room Wednesday. The (Portland) Oregonian said Mitchell, 61, was in town performing with a Hendrix tribute band and was found dead at around 3 a.m. at the Benson Hotel. The Multnomah County Medical Examiner's office said the cause of death was unknown pending further examination later Wednesday. The British-born Mitchell played for the Jimi Hendrix Experience in the late 1960s and did session work in the years following the guitar legend's death in 1970.

Famed Ballerina Hightower Dead At 88

Ballerina Rosella Hightower, known for her varied and versatile repertoire, has died in Cannes, France, at the age of 88, the Los Angeles Times said.

The U.S. newspaper noted Sunday the native American dancer, who was born in Oklahoma, gained worldwide fame after performing with notable ballet dancers as Eric Bruhn and Andre Eglevsky.

After becoming one of the world's elite dancers, Hightower worked with Marquis George de Cuevas ballet company, the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.

She parlayed her fame with the noted company to create her own dance school after Cuevas' death in 1961.

Sylvia Fawlofski, a former pupil of Hightower's, told the Times the U.S. dancer was a strict, yet fun, teacher who had a unique eye for talent.

Once in a blue moon, she would appear and give us a fun class with high kicks, jazzy arrangements and spirited footwork. At the end she would tell us: 'Now you are ready to go dance on Broadway,' Fawlofski said.

The Times said survivors of the twice-married Hightower, who died Monday after suffering a series of strokes, include her daughter, dancer Dominique Monet Robier.

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'Jurassic Park' Author Dies Unexpectedly

Michael Crichton, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of NBC's ER, has died. He was 66. In a statement, his family calls his death unexpected, but said he had been privately battling cancer.

"While the world knew him as a great storyteller that challenged our preconceived notions about the world around us -- and entertained us all while doing so -- his wife Sherri, daughter Taylor, family and friends knew Michael Crichton as a devoted husband, loving father and generous friend who inspired each of us to strive to see the wonders of our world through new eyes," his family tells ET. "He did this with a wry sense of humor that those who were privileged to know him personally will never forget."

Crichton's books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. His most recent novel, Next, about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.

He has won an Emmy, a Peabody and a Writer's Guild of America Award for ER.

Comedian Rudy Ray Moore Dead At 81

Comedian Rudy Ray Moore has died at the age of 81 in Akron, Ohio, of apparent complications due to diabetes, his record label said. He is survived by his daughter, Yvette; sister, Geraldine; brother, Gerald, and his 98-year-old mother, Lucille. Rudy was an entertainer's entertainer and a self-made man that fans of all generations embraced, Donald H. Randell, Moore's producer, said in a statement. In the 1960s and '70s, he broke new ground and paved the way for comedians that followed like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Lisa Lampanelli. Rudy's cult comedy continues to break through into today's mainstream. Excerpts of Moore's comic recordings have been sampled by the likes of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eazy-E, Eric B. and Rakim, Ice-T, Big Daddy Kane, 2 Live Crew, ODB, Busta Rhymes, and dozens of other platinum-selling rap artists, Warrior Records said in a news release. Moore also produced and starred in seven films during Hollywood's Blaxploitation era of the 1970s, including Human Tornado, Monkey Hustle, Petey Wheatstraw, Disco Godfather, Penitentiary, Rude, and most notably, Dolemite.

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Former Royal Ballet Star Nerina Dead At 80

Nadia Nerina, who once earned fame as a dancer in the Royal Ballet, has died in France at the age of 80, the London dance troupe has confirmed.

The Royal Ballet said Nerina, whose technical skills and charming presence earned her principal ballerina honors in the dance company, died of unspecified causes last Monday in the French commune of Beaulieu-sur-Mer after a prolonged illness, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The pinnacle of Nerina's fame came in 1960 when the South African-born dancer performed with Leningrad's Kirov Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, the newspaper said.

During her career, Nerina had a noted rivalry with fellow Royal Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

That rivalry between the dance partners culminated in a noted Swan Lake performance by Nerina in which she completed 32 continuous whip-like turns known as fouettees. That act, which came shortly after a similarly impressive dance maneuver by Nureyev, caused the Russian to storm off the stage.

The Times said Nerina is survived by her husband, Charles Gordon.

Soap Star Irene Dailey Dead At 88

Soap opera star Irene Dailey has died of colon cancer at the age of 88 in Santa Rosa, Calif., her friend Arleen Lorrance said. Lorrance told the New York Times Dailey died Sept. 24.

The Daytime Emmy Award-winning actress portrayed Liz Matthews on Another World from 1974 to 1986 and then again from 1988 to 1994. The New York native also played the role of Nettie Cleary in Frank D. Gilroy's 1964 stage drama The Subject Was Roses, and made appearances on TV's The Edge of Night, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, The Twilight Zone and The Defenders. Her film credits include No Way to Treat a Lady, Five Easy Pieces and The Amityville Horror.

Pink Floyd Musician Wright Dead at 65

Pink Floyd founding member and keyboardist Rick Wright has died of cancer at the age of 65, his family said Monday.

The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness that Richard died today after a short struggle with cancer, Wright's spokesman told Rolling Stone magazine. The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this difficult time.

Wright was one of the rock band's original members, along with Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Nick Mason.

The London-born musician played with the group until a falling out with Waters after The Wall in 1979. Wright later rejoined the band when David Gilmour took over after Waters departed in the early 1980s.

Wright also played with the band when it reunited in 2005 for the Live 8 concert in London and had recently performed with David Gilmour on his solo tour, Rolling Stone said.

NME.com noted he worked on all but one of the band's 14 studio releases, including The Dark Side Of The Moon in 1973.

He was such a lovely, gentle, genuine man and will be missed terribly by so many who loved him, the BBC said Gilmour wrote on his Web site. And that's a lot of people. Did he not get the loudest, longest round of applause at the end of every show in 2006?

Wright is survived by his wife Millie and three children, NME.com said.

Man Behind 'Jaws' Character Dead at 82

New York fisherman Frank Mundus, reputed to be the inspiration for a key character in the novel Jaws, has died at the age of 82, a business owner says.

Dick Gosman said he remembered operating Gosman's Dock in Montauk, N.Y., when the popularity of Jaws drew tourists to the town in hopes of meeting the alleged inspiration for the book's character Captain Quint, the New York Post reported Sunday.

I remember tourists running down to the boat ... when he'd come in with a shark, Gosman said of Mundus, who died Wednesday, five days after suffering a heart attack in Hawaii. It was a show every day.

While Jaws author Peter Benchley never officially credited Mundus with being the inspiration for the grizzled fisherman in his novel, Mundus repeatedly took credit. He mentioned on his Web site how he always saw part of himself in the character made famous by the 1974 novel and 1975 movie, the Post said.

He (Quint) knew how to handle the people the same way I did. He also used similar shark-fishing techniques based on my methods, wrote Mundus, who leaves no reported survivors.

Performer Jerry Reed Dead at 71

Jerry Reed Hubbard (March 20, 1937-August 31, 2008), known professionally as Jerry Reed, was an American country music singer, country guitarist, session musician, songwriter, and actor who appeared in over a dozen films. As a singer, he may be best known for Amos Moses, and When You're Hot, You're Hot, for which he received the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1972 and East Bound and Down, the theme song to the film Smokey and the Bandit in which he portrayed the Snowman, Cledus Snow.

Reed was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Robert and Cynthia Hubbard. Reed's grandparents lived in Rockmart, Ga. and he would visit them from there from time to time. He was quoted as saying as a small child, while running around strumming his guitar, "I am gonna be a star. I'm gonna go to Nashville and be a star." Reed's parents separated four months after his birth, and he and his sister spent seven years in foster homes or orphanages. Reed was reunited with his mother and stepfather in 1944. Music and impromptu performances helped ease the stressful times the new family was under.

By high school, (O'Keefe High School, Atlanta, Georgia) Reed was already writing and singing music, having picked up the guitar as a child. At age 18, he was signed by publisher and record producer Bill Lowery to cut his first record, "If the Good Lord's Willing and the Creeks Don't Rise." At Capitol Records, he recorded both country and rockabilly singles to little notice, until label mate Gene Vincent covered his "Crazy Legs" in 1958. By 1958, Lowery signed Reed to his National Recording Corporation, and he recorded for NRC as both artist and as a member of the staff band, which included other NRC artists Joe South and Ray Stevens.

Reed married Priscilla "Prissy" Mitchell in 1959. They have two daughters, Charlotte Elaine "Lottie" Reed Stewart, and Seidina Ann Reed Hinesley, born April 2, 1960.

Reed died at the age of 71 in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 31, 2008, of complications from emphysema. The Associated Press wire service and CNN, however, reported the date of his death as September 1.

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Bernie Mac Biography (1958-2008)

In The News:
Actor and comedian Bernie Mac died August 9, 2008, in a Chicago area hospital due to pneumonia, his publicist, Danica Smith, said in a statement from Los Angeles. He was 50.

Mac suffered from sarcoidosis, a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation in tissue (most often the lungs), but had said the condition went into remission in 2005. The pneumonia was unrelated to the disease, the publicist said.

More than 6,000 people attended a memorial service for Mac on August 16 at the House of Hope Church on Chicago's South Side.

Biography:
Born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough on October 5, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up in a large family on Chicago's South Side, his grandfather was the deacon of a Baptist church.

Mac performed his first standup routine at the age of eight, impersonating his grandparents at the dinner table for the church congregation.

After losing his mother to cancer (his brother, father and grandmother died not long after), Mac realized the healing power of laughter. He began telling jokes for spare change in the Chicago subway. While working various odd jobs, he eventually established his own weekly variety show at Chicago's Regal Theatre and joined the comedy club circuit in 1977.

Mac's acting career started with a role as a club doorman in the comedy Mo' Money (1992) and also appeared as Pastor Clever in Friday (1995). Mac's frequent appearances on HBO's Def Comedy Jamin the early 1990s also helped put him on the map.

Mac's edgy comedy seemed an unlikely fit for television, but after frequent appearances on the series Moesha and gaining wide acclaim for his starring role in Spike Lee's The Original Kings of Comedy in 2000, Mac was primed to create a sitcom on his own terms.

Based on family experiences that shocked audiences into laughter in Kings, The Bernie Mac Show enjoyed a strong debut on Fox in 2001. The series ran through 2006 and starred Mac as a reluctant dad to three adopted kids. The show nabbed both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

Mac's film career also took off. In 2001, he joined an all-star cast in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven, playing a smooth con-artist who assisted co-stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt in high-profile heists.

In 2001, he also co-starred with Chris Rock in Head of State, then replaced Bill Murray's Bosley in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) and shared billing with John Ritter in director Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa (2003).

In 2004, he took on his first starring role as an aging baseball hero in Mr. 3000 and then starred again in the race relations comedy Guess Who? (2005). Mac also reunited with the cast for the sequels Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).

Before his death, Mac completed work on the film Soul Men with Isaac Hayes, who, coincidentally, died the same weekend as Mac. It is scheduled for release in November 2008.

Besides his work in film and television Mac also authored two books, 2001's I Ain't Scared of You: Bernie Mac on How Life Is and his 2003 memoir, Maybe You Never Cry Again. The latter described Mac's impoverished childhood, strict upbringing and his mother's belief in him.

In 1977 at age 19, Mac married his high school sweetheart, Rhonda, whom he credits with much of his success, particularly as the young couple struggled through the early years of Mac's fledgling career. They had a daughter, Je'Niece, and a granddaughter.

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Co-founder of Dallas Opera dies at 92 in Italy

The co-founder of the Dallas Opera has died at a hospital in Viterbo, Italy. Nicola Rescigno was 92.

Jonathan Pell, the Dallas Opera director of artistic administration, says he received a phone call Monday afternoon from Rescigno's nephew, who had been informed of his uncle's death by the hospital.

Pell says Rescigno had been in the hospital to have surgery for a broken leg. He says Rescigno "went to sleep and didn't wake up."

Rescigno and the late Lawrence V. Kelly founded the Dallas Opera in 1957. Pell says the pair attracted well-known performers such as Maria Callas.

He says plans to honor Rescigno by the Dallas Opera will be announced later.

Biography

Nicola Rescigno was an Italian-American conductor, particularly associated with the Italian opera repertory.

Born in a musical family, he studied with Pizzetti, Giannini and Polacco. He made his debut in 1943, conducting La traviata, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He then toured the USA with the San Carlo Opera Company and served as music director for the Connecticut Opera and Havana Opera.

In 1953, he co-founded the Chicago Lyric Opera, where he was music director from 1954 to 1956, and conducted the American debut of Maria Callas there. In 1957, he co-founded the Dallas Opera where he served as artistic director and principal conductor from 1957 to 1990. While at the Dallas Opera, he conducted the U.S. debuts of such singers as Montserrat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Dame Joan Sutherland, Teresa Berganza, Magda Olivero, Jon Vickers, and stage director Franco Zeffirelli. He presented there the American premieres of Handel's Alcina and Vivaldi's Orlando furioso. He also conducted the world premieres of Virgil Thomson's Fantasy in Homage to an Earlier England (1966) and Dominick Argento's The Aspern Papers (1988).

He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1978, conducting Don Pasquale (with Beverly Sills, in John Dexter's production), followed by L'elisir d'amore (1980), L'italiana in Algeri (with Marilyn Horne and Rockwell Blake, 1981), and La traviata (1981-82). Rescigno also conducted at the San Francisco Opera. He conducted at most of the major opera houses of Italy, and made guest appearances at Glyndebourne, London, Paris, Vienna, Zurich, Buenos Aires, etc.

He was closely associated with Callas, having been one of her favourite conductors, and recorded several albums of operatic arias with her for EMI, from 1958 to 1969. He also recorded an album of Verdi arias with Robert Weede (in 1953), excerpts from Francesca da Rimini (with Mario del Monaco and Olivero, 1969), and complete sets of Tosca (with Mirella Freni, 1978) and Lucia di Lammermoor (with Edita Gruberova, 1983). Also available, on DVD, are a 1959 concert from Hamburg with Callas, and a 1981 performance of L'elisir d'amore from the Met, with Judith Blegen and Luciano Pavarotti.

He was the uncle of the conductor Joseph Rescigno.

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Estelle Getty of 'Golden Girls' Dies At 84

FILE** In this Dec. 25, 1985 file photo, four veteran actresses, from left, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, Bea Arthur and Betty White, from the television series 'The ' Golden Girls' are shown during a break in taping in Hollywood. Actress Estelle Getty has died at the age of 84. Her son, Carl Gettleman, says she died early Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at home in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, file)

Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV's The Golden Girls, has died. She was 84.

Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.

"Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams," former Golden Girls co-star Rue McClanahan told The Associated Press. "Don't feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia."

"The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in Maude, Betty White in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and McClanahan in Mama's Family. The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.

"Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her," Arthur said in a statement.

When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play Torch Song Trilogy. In her early 60s, she flunked her Golden Girls test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80.

"I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast."

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

"The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us," White said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The Golden Girls culminated a long struggle for success during which Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.

"I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I'd say, 'Don't promote me, please,'" she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including Tootsie, Deadly Force and Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story.

After her success in The Golden Girls, other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in Mask, Sylvester Stallone's in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Barry Manilow's in the TV film Copacabana. Other credits included Mannequin and Stuart Little (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan's libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open blouse."

"I always told her she should be a standup comic. She was so funny in person," McClanahan recalled. "She would always say, 'Why couldn't we make these characters Jewish? Why am I Sicilian?'"

Getty had gained a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did standup comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were rare in those days, however, and she bombed.

Undeterred, she continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that she learn office skills so she would have something to fall back on.

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.

She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in The Golden Girls.

Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was "under 5 feet and under 100 pounds."

McClanahan said her nickname for Getty was Slats.

"Because she was so short, itty-bitty," she said.

In addition to her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.

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Olive Riley, 'World's Oldest Blogger,' Dies At 108

Olive Riley (October 20, 1899 – July 12, 2008) was an Australian woman, believed to have been the world's oldest blogger. She began her blog The Life of Riley in February 2007 at the age of 107 and made her final post on June 26, 2008 from a nursing home in Woy Woy, New South Wales, complaining of a cough about two weeks before she died at the age of 108. She had posted over 70 entries, as well as several video posts on YouTube.

Olive Riley died at the age of 108, according to the Associated Press. Her final days were spent at a nursing facility in Woy Woy, New South Wales, Australia where she continued to chronicle her life growing up in the Outback, raising kids, and working as a bartender and farm cook on a her blog, The Life of Riley. Upon news of her death, her blog received a flurry of hits and experienced technical difficulties. You may view her temporary blog - http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com/

Here's an excerpt of one of her final posts:

Hello again to all my friends.

You 21st century people live a different life than the one I lived as a youngster in the early 1900s. Take Washing Day, for instance. These days you just toss your dirty clothes into a washing machine, press a few switches, and it's done.

I remember scratching around to find a few pieces of wood to fire the copper for Mum. Sometimes I'd find a broken wooden fruit box that I'd split with a tommyhawk. Sometimes I'd gather some twigs and dead branches, and use them for firewood.

When the water in the copper began to boil, Mum would add a cupful of soap chips, and throw in a cube of Reckitt's Blue wrapped in a muslin bag to whiten the clothes. Then she put in all the dirty clothes, first rubbing out the stains with a bar of Sunlight soap. She used a corrugated washing board for that.

It's nice to see an older generation take hold of technology to share their own stories. Plus, Olive Riley showed everyone that you're never to old to blog! May she rest in peace.

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Actress Dody Goodman Dead At 92

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Biography:

Dody Goodman is more than an actress. She is a comedienne, a dancer, a producer and a writer! Born in Columbus, Ohio, the red-haired Dody began dance lessons at the tender age of eight, and headed to New York City after graduating High School. She was soon dancing for ballet companies for the reputable Radio City Music Hall and the Metropolitan Opera. These experiences naturally led to opportunies to dance in Broadway productions, which Dody did. She danced in four hit musicals: High Button Shoes, Call Me Madam, Miss Liberty, and A Wonderful Town.

Dody Goodman admits that she's not really sure when the transition from ballerina to comedienne began. Always a backstage clown, one of the first to take notice of Dody's antics was Wonderful Town director, George Abbot, who was so delighted with Dody's performance as Violet, had an extra scene written for her. It was during the touring production of this mucical that Imogene Coca persuaded Dody to put her dancing shoes aside and concentrate on her natural comedic talents. So it began, Dody started with small parts on television variety shows, remember the "resident zany" on Jack Parr's, Tonight? Around this time Dody also entered the nightclub circuit and enjoyed some off Broadway Revues such as Julie Monk's Four Below and the Shoestring Revue Of 1957.

Dody Goodman says that she was influenced most by Lucille Ball, Gracie Allen, and Spring Byington but developed her own unique brand of comedic style which has entertained audiences far and wide in all genre's of performing. Broadway shows like, Grease, My Daughter, Your Son, Period Of Adjustment, Rainy Day In Newark, and the revival of The Front Page. National Tours include Nunsence; for two years Dody entertained audiences with her characterization of Sister Mary Regina.

Television credits include appearances on the Dinah Show, NBC's Bandstand, The Merv Griffin Show, Girl Talk, Liars Club, The Stan Kahn Show, and Search For Tomorrow, as well as sit-com shows in which Dody guest starred, including, Punky Brewster, Different Strokes, The Mary Tyler Show and Mary Hartman where Dody performed with the ensemble cast for three full seasons. Motion Picture credits include Grease, Grease II,Cool As Ice, Frozen Assets, and Samantha. Dody Goodman is enjoying the resurgence of the successful film production, Grease which is celebrating it's 20th anniversary and is currently being shown on wide screens nation wide.

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In The Headlines:

Stage, film and television actress Dody Goodman has died at the Actors Fund Home in New Jersey, a representative for the fund has confirmed.

Playbill.com said Goodman was believed to have been 92 when she died Sunday (22nd June 2008).

Her stage credits as Dolores Goodman included performances in the Broadway musicals Viva O'Brien, Something for the Boys, One Touch of Venus, Laffing Room Only and Miss Liberty.

She later went by the name Dody Goodman and starred in Broadway shows like Call Me Madam, Wonderful Town, My Darlin' Aida, as well as the Off Broadway productions of Shoestring Revue and Parade, Playbill.com said.

Goodman was a regular player on The Tonight Show when Jack Paar was host and earned an Emmy Award nomination in 1957 for Best Continued Performance in a Series by a Comedienne.

Although her gift for upstaging Paar reportedly led to her departure from the series, Playbill.com said she frequently appeared on the shows like Toast of the Town, The Phil Silvers Show and The Merv Griffin Show in the 1960s and 1970s.

She also had supporting roles in the TV shows Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Diff'rent Strokes, as well as in the movie musical Grease.

Goodman also appeared in numerous productions of the musical Nunsense and its sequels, the theater industry trade magazine said.

George Carlin Biography (1937-2008)

In The Headlines:

Comedian, actor and writer George Carlin died Sunday (June 22, 2008) of heart failure, according to spokesman Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain, and died at 5:55 p.m. PT.

He performed as recently as the previous weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

Carlin suffered his first heart attack in 1978. In the years after he suffered a second heart attack in 1982 while watching a game at Dodger Stadium, he underwent two open heart surgeries. Still, he suffered a third attack in 1991.

Funeral arrangements and memorial services are pending, according to publicist Jeff Abraham.

Biography:

George Denis Patrick Carlin was born May 12, 1937, in the Bronx, New York. Carlin and his younger brother, Pat, were primarily raised by their mother in Manhattan's Morningside Heights section. Mary Carlin, a devout Irish Catholic, worked as a secretary to support her children. She had left Carlin's father Patrick, a national advertising manager for the New York Sun, when he was an infant.

Carlin attended parochial school and much of his negative religious sentiment stems from his experience as a Roman Catholic altar boy. Carlin completed two years of high school before dropping out in the ninth grade.

In 1954, at age 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a radar technician and was stationed at Shreveport, Louisiana. Over the next three years, Carlin earned his high school equivalency and moonlighted as a disc jockey at a local radio station. He also received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site. After a general discharge in 1957, he took radio jobs in Boston and Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1959, Carlin teamed up with Texas newscaster, Jack Burns. The pair collaborated on a morning radio show in Fort Worth before relocating to Hollywood, where they attracted the attention of the legendary Lenny Bruce. Bruce helped Burns and Carlin secure appearances on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar (Carlin would make a total of 130 appearances on The Tonight Show).

Burns and Carlin eventually split up, and over the next few years Carlin continued to make numerous appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, as well as 29 appearances on The Merv Griffin Show.

In the early 1960s, Carlin got his start as a stand-up comic by performing on the Las Vegas circuit and entertaining TV audiences. Carlin enjoyed moderate success until the mid-70s when he re-invented his image and adopted a less conventional, somewhat vulgar comedy routine. Carlin's scripted monologues began to represent his disillusioned attitude toward the world in which explored the highly sensitive issues of Vietnam, politics, religion, American culture, drugs, the demise of humanity and the right to free speech.

In July of 1972, Carlin was arrested for violating obscenity laws in Milwaukee after his infamous routine Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.

When a radio station played a recording of Carlin's Seven Words routine, it sparked a legal case over obscenity regulations. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the government's right to penalize stations that broadcast such material on public airwaves during hours (6 a.m. and 10 p.m.) when young people may typically tune in.

As a self-professed atheist and avid cocaine user, his adversaries deemed him anti-religious and disrespectful of society. However, the comedian's new material brought him success from the younger counterculture. Carlin illustrated his anti-establishment views by being the first host of the risque TV show Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975.

In 1977, Carlin starred in his first of HBO comedy specials, On Location: George Carlin at USC. In all, he did 14 such specials, including 2008's It's Bad For Ya!

In 1990, Carlin compiled a multi-CD set that highlighted his work from the 70s, titled George Carlin: The Little David Years (1971-77) (1990). The collection included the albums: FM & AM, Class Clown, Occupation: Foole, Toledo Window Box, An Evening With Wally Londo Featuring Slaszo, and On the Road. Carlin received two Grammy Awards for FM & AM (1990) and Jammin' in New York (1992), for which he won a Grammy. You Are All Diseased (1999) is abundant with his trademark satire and profanity about American family life.

Carlin published Brain Droppings in 1997. The book included his comedic take on life, society and politics. It spent 18 weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list. Two years later, syndicated columnist Mike Barnicle was suspended from the Boston Globe, after he had plagiarized passages from Carlin's book. To Carlin's benefit, the widely publicized controversy led to an increase in book sales.

Throughout his career, Carlin took on a number of comedic roles in films such as 1987's Outrageous Fortune and as Rufus, an emissary from the future, in 1990's Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. He took a more dramatic turn in The Prince of Tides (1991). He also was featured in Kevin Smith's film Dogma (1999), in which he played Cardinal Glick, a fame-seeking religious figure. In 2006, he provided the voice of Fillmore, a hippie Volkswagen bus, in the animated Cars.

Carlin was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987.

In the 1990s, Carlin enjoyed success with series television. Starting in 1991, he provided the voice of the train conductor on PBS' kid-friendly Shining Time Station for two years and narrated Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends through 1998. He also starred as a cab driver in The George Carlin Show from 1993 to 1995.

In addition to his acting, writing and recording, Carlin continued to perform about 150 dates a year on the road. In 2004, he placed second behind Richard Pryor on Comedy Central's list of Top 100 Comics of All Time. On June 17, 2008, just five days before his death, it was announced that he was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. It will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

Carlin first wife, producer Brenda Hosbrook, died on May 11, 1997 of complications from liver cancer. Their 35-year marriage produced a daughter, Kelly. He is survived by his second wife of ten years, Sally Wade.

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Bob Marley Biography (1945 - 1981)

Singer, musician, songwriter. Born on February 6, 1945, in Jamaica. Bob Marley helped introduce reggae music to the world and remains one of its most beloved artists to this day. The son of a black teenage mother and much older, later absent white father, he spent his early years in the rural village known as Nine Miles in the parish of St. Ann.

One of his childhood friends in St. Ann was Neville "Bunny" O'Riley Livingston. Attending the same school, the two shared a love of music. Bunny inspired Bob to learn to play the guitar. Later Livingston's father and Marley's mother became involved, and they all lived together for a time in Kingston, according to Christopher John Farley's Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley.
Arriving in Kingston in the late 1950s, Marley lived in Trench Town, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. He struggled in poverty, but he found inspiration in the music around him. Trench Town had a number of successful local performers and was considered the Motown of Jamaica. Sounds from the United States also drifted in over the radio and through jukeboxes. Marley liked such artists as Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, and the Drifters.

Marley and Livingston devoted much of their time to music. Under the guidance of Joe Higgs, Marley worked on improving his singing abilities. He met another student of Higgs, Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh) who would play an important role in Marley's career.

A local record producer, Leslie Kong, liked Marley's vocals and had him record a few singles, the first of which was "Judge Not" released in 1962. While he did not fare well as a solo artist, Marley found some success joining forces with his friends. In 1963, Marley, Livingston, and McIntosh formed the Wailing Wailers. Their first single, "Simmer Down," went to the top of the Jamaican charts in January 1964. By this time, the group also included Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso, and Cherry Smith.

The group became quite popular in Jamaica, but they had difficulty making it financially. Braithewaite, Kelso, and Smith left the group. The remaining members drifted a part for a time. Marley went to the United States where his mother was now living. However, before he left, he married Rita Anderson on February 10, 1966.

After eight months, Marley returned to Jamaica. He reunited with Livingston and McIntosh to form the Wailers. Around this time, Marley was exploring his spiritual side and developing a growing interest in the Rastafarian movement. Both religious and political, the Rastafarian movement started in Jamaica in 1930s and drew its beliefs from many sources, including Jamaican-born black nationalist Marcus Garvey, the Old Testament, and their African heritage and culture.

For a time in the late 1960s, Marley worked with pop singer Johnny Nash. Nash scored a hit with Marley's song, "Stir It Up," around the world. The Wailers also worked with producer Lee Perry during this era and some of their successful songs together included "Trench Town Rock," "Soul Rebel," and "Four Hundred Years."

The Wailers added two new members in 1970—Aston "Family Man" Barrett on bass and his brother Carlton "Carlie" Barrett on drums. The next year, Marley spent time with Johnny Nash in Sweden to work on a movie soundtrack.

The Wailers got their big break in 1972 when they landed a contract with Island Records, which was started by Chris Blackwell. For the first time, the group hit the studios to record a full album. The result was the critically acclaimed Catch a Fire. To support the record, the Wailers toured Britain and the United States in 1973. They performed as an opening act for Bruce Springsteen and for Sly & the Family Stone. That same year, the Wailers released their next album, Burnin, which featured the song "I Shot the Sheriff." Rock legend Eric Clapton released a cover of the song in 1974, which became a number one hit in the United States.

Before the release of their next album, 1975's Natty Dread, two of the three original Wailers left the group. McIntosh and Livingston decided to pursue solo careers as Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer respectively. The new album reflected some of the political tensions in Jamaica between the People's National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Violence sometimes erupted because of these conflicts. "Rebel Music (3 O'clock Road Block)" was inspired by Marley's own experience of being stopped by the army late one night before the 1972 national elections. Furthermore, the song "Revolution" was interpreted by some as Marley's endorsement for the PNP.

For their next tour, the remaining group was enhanced by the addition of I-Threes, a group of female vocalists was comprised of Marley's wife Rita, Marcia Griffiths, and Judy Mowatt. Now called Bob Marley & the Wailers, the group toured extensively and helped increase reggae's popularity abroad. In Britain, they scored their first top 40 hit with "No Woman No Cry" in 1975.

Already a much-admired star in his native Jamaica, Marley was on his way to becoming an international music icon. He made the U.S. music charts with the album Rastaman Vibration in 1976. One track stands out as an expression of his devotion to his faith and his interest in political change. The lyrics of "War" were taken from a speech by Haile Selassie, the twentieth-century Ethiopian emperor who is seen as a type of a spiritual leader in the Rastafarian movement. A battle cry for freedom from oppression, the song discusses a new Africa, one without the racial hierarchy enforced by colonial rule.

Back in Jamaica, Marley continued to be seen as a supporter of the People's National Party. And his influence in his native land was seen as a threat to the PNP's rivals. This may have led to the assassination attempt on Marley in 1976. A group of gunmen attacked Marley and the Wailers while they were rehearsing on the night of December 3, 1976, two days before a planned concert in Kingston’s National Heroes Park. One bullet struck Marley in the sternum and the bicep and his wife Rita was hit in the head by another bullet. Fortunately, the Marleys were not severely injured, but manager Don Taylor was not as lucky. He was shot five times and underwent surgery to save his life. Despite the attack, Marley still played at the show after much deliberation. The motivation behind the attack was never uncovered, and Marley fled the country the day after the concert.

Living in London, Marley went to work on Exodus (1977). The title track draws an analogy between the biblical story of Moses and the Israelites leaving exile and his own situation. The song also discusses returning to Africa. The concept of Africans and descendents of Africans repatriating their homeland can be linked to the work of Marcus Garvey. Released as a single, "Exodus" was a hit in Britain as were "Waiting in Vain" and "Jammin." The entire album stayed on the charts there for more than a year and is considered to be one of the best albums ever made.

During 1977, Marley had a health scare. He sought treatment in July on a toe he had injured earlier that year. Discovering that there were cancerous cells on his toe, Marley underwent surgery to remove them in Miami, Florida.

At the same time as making Exodus, Marley and the Wailers recorded the songs that were released on another album, Kaya (1978). With love as its theme, the recording featured two hits "Satisfy My Soul" and "Is This Love." That same year, Marley returned to Jamaica to play the One Love Peace Concert and got Prime Minister Michael Manley of the PNP and opposition leader Edward Seaga of the JLP to shake hands on stage.

Also in 1978, Marley made his first trip to Africa and visited Kenya and Ethiopia. Ethiopia was especially important to him as the place is viewed as the spiritual homeland of Rastafarians. Perhaps inspired by his travels, his next album Survival (1979) was seen as a call for greater unity on the African continent and the end of oppression there. Bob Marley & The Wailers even played in official independence ceremony for the new nation of Zimbabwe in 1980.

A huge international success, Uprising (1980) featured "Could You Be Loved" and "Redemption Song." The pared down folk-sounding "Redemption Song" was an illustration of Marley's talents as a songwriter, crafting poetic lyrics with social and political importance. The line "emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds" is just one example of his artistry.

On tour to support the album, Bob Marley & The Wailers traveled throughout Europe, playing to large crowds. The group also planned a series of concerts in the United States, but the tour soon fell apart. In New York City, they played two concerts at Madison Square Garden before Marley became ill. It was discovered that the earlier cancer discovered in his toe had spread throughout his body.

Traveling to Europe, Marley underwent unconventional treatment in Germany. He was able to fight off the cancer for months. But as it became clear that he did not have much longer to live, Marley tried to return to his beloved Jamaica one last time. He was not able to finish the journey, dying in Miami, Florida, on May 11, 1981.

Shortly before his death, Marley had received the Order of Merit from the Jamaican government. He had also been awarded the Medal of Peace from the United Nations in 1980. Adored by the people of Jamaica, Marley was given a hero’s sendoff. More than 30,000 people paid their respects to him while his body was lying in state at the National Arena. As a part of his memorial service, his wife Rita, Marcia Griffiths, and Judy Mowatt sang and the Wailers played.

During his lifetime, Marley served as a world ambassador for reggae music. He sold more than 20 million records, making him the first international superstar to emerge from the so-called Third World. In 1994, Marley was inducted into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame.

Marley's music still remains popular, more than 25 years after his passing. And his musical legacy is being continued by his widow and some of his children. Rita continues to perform with the I-Threes, the Wailers, and the Marley children. Bob Marley fathered at least nine children (reports vary). Sons David "Ziggy" and Stephen and daughters Cedella and Sharon (Rita's daughter from a previous relationship who was adopted by Bob) played for years as Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers and later as the Melody Makers. Ziggy and Stephen have also had solo successes. Sons Damian "Gong Jr.," Ky-Mani, and Julian are also talented recording artists. Some of the other Marley children are involved in related family businesses, such as the Tuff Gong record label, which Marley started in the mid-1960s.

Marley's commitment to fighting oppression is also being carried on by an organization established in his memory. Created by Rita and the Marley family, the Bob Marley Foundation helps people and organizations in the developing world.

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Anna Jarvis Biography

Anna Jarvis was the name of two women, mother and daughter.

Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis (September 30, 1832 - May 9, 1905) was born in Culpeper, Virginia. Jarvis worked around what is now West Virginia to promote worker health and safety concerns. During the American Civil War she organized women to tend to the needs of the wounded of both sides. After the war she became active in the promotion of Mother's Day, a holiday at that time involved with the causes of pacifism and social activism. She organized meetings of mothers of soldiers of both sides of the late war.

Her daughter Anna Marie Jarvis (May 1, 1864 - November 24, 1948) was born in Webster, Taylor County, West Virginia. Her family moved to Grafton, West Virginia in her childhood. A year after her mother's death she held a memorial to her mother on May 12, 1907, and then went on a quest to make Mother's Day a recognized holiday. She succeeded in making this nationally recognized in 1914. Later in life she fought against commercialization of the holiday, with less success.

Anna Maire Jarvis died in West Chester, Pennsylvania, recognized as the mother of the Mother's Day holiday in the United States of America.

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Guitarist Leo Jackson dead at 74

Longtime guitarist George "Leo" Jackson died Sunday 4th May 2008 in his Goodlettsville home from an apparent suicide, according to police and family members.

Jackson, 73, was best known for playing with musician Jim Reeves and other artists such as Alabama and Hank Williams Jr.

Family members say Jackson "wasn't in his right mind" when he pulled the trigger and shot himself in bed Sunday afternoon. He had undergone minor surgery last week, but had only taken his prescription of Mepergan, a potent pain medicine, after longtime back problems flared up Sunday, according to family members.

"On top of the operation, I guess it was just too much for him," said Jackson's son, Leo, 42.

Jackson's family fears the medication affected his mental state.

Jackson began to act irrationally, he said, and made comments that he would rather die than live with his pain. His son was called to remove weapons from the house, but he got there too late. He found his father fatally wounded in bed.

"That's a picture I'll never get out of my mind," he said.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been made.

"He led a good life," Leo Jackson said. "He would do anything for anybody. He never would have done this to himself."

Those who knew Jackson said the loss would be hard-felt in the music industry.

"He had such a wonderful personality and he was such a wonderful commercial guitar player," said Harold Bradley, president of The Nashville Association of Musicians, Local 257, of which Jackson was a member. "It happened so suddenly. It's extremely sad. He had a marvelous career and it's not the way we want people's careers to end."

An elegant stylist known for his clean, nimble guitar lines, Jackson joined Reeves' band as a teenager, first appearing on the Louisiana Hayride with him and, later, on the Grand Ole Opry.

Besides his work on guitar, which was integral to "Gentleman Jim's" country-pop sound, Jackson contributed harmony vocals to hits such as "Mexican Joe," the 1953 novelty that became Reeves' first number country single.

Larry Jordan, a biographer for Jim Reeves who spent time interviewing Jackson, said Jackson was never the kind of man who would take his own life.

"He was too conscientious about his own state of health and worried about himself to the point that you couldn't think he'd turn around and inflict grievous injury on himself," Jordan said.

He remembered Jackson as introverted on stage, but enthusiastic and charismatic in more personal settings.

"With the camera focused on Leo he would turn three shades of red - he was such a shy person," Jordan said. "But if you asked Leo a question, you better be prepared for the answer because he would not sugar coat anything. He called a spade a spade."

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Charlton Heston Biography (1924–2008)

Academy Award-winning actor Charlton Heston died Saturday night (April 5, 2008) at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia was at his side.

The cause of death was not released, but Heston said in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease.

Heston was born John Charles Carter (Heston was his stepfather's name) on October 4, 1923, in Evanston, Illinois.

He made his film debut in an amateur production of Peer Gynt (1941) and, after air force war service and further theatre experience, his Broadway debut in Antony and Cleopatra (1947).

With his deep voice and noble physique, Heston portrayed historic or heroic roles in several epics.

He parted the Red Sea as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956) and won an unforgettable chariot race in Ben Hur (1959), which won 11 Oscars, including best actor for Heston.

He also played an 11th-century Spanish warrior in El Cid (1961), British Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon fighting an Islamic warrior priest in Khartoum (1966) and an astronaut held captive by a society of intelligent gorilla rulers in Planet of the Apes (1968).

He displayed his potential as a character actor, playing a Mexican narcotics officer in the thriller Touch of Evil (1958), an 11th-century Norman authority figure in The War Lord (1965), and as an aging, illiterate cowboy in Will Penny (1967).

Frequently returning to the stage, he also directed for film and television, including Antony and Cleopatra (1972, film), and A Man for All Seasons (1988, television). Later film appearances include The Awakening (1980), as the boss of spy Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994) and Any Given Sunday (1999).

Heston also was president of the Screen Actors Guild (1965-71), helped create the American Film Institute and actively supported the National Endowment for the Arts.

A champion of civil rights (he participated in Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 civil rights march in Washington, D.C.), Heston also served as president of the U.S. National Rifle Association (1998-2003).

Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease, saying, "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."

In 2003, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, for his accomplishments in movies and politics. He was also awarded by the American Film Institute to honor acting talent.

Heston married Lydia Marie Clarke in 1944. They have a son, director Fraser Clarke Heston and an adopted daughter, Holly Ann Heston.

Anthony Minghella (06/01/1954 - 18/03/2008)

Oscar winning film director, producer and writer, Anthony Minghella CBE was born in Ryde on the Isle of Wight to master gelatiero Edward Minghella and his wife Gloria. His ancestors are from the Lezio region of central Italy.

Minghella and Wife, Carolyn Choa

He is one of five children. His brother Dominic and sister Edana are both television writers. Minghella is married to Hong Kong born, choreographer, Carolyn Choa; they have a son Max, who is an actor and Hannah, their daughter who works as a production assistant.

Max

At grammar school he gained praise for his part in productions of Admirable Crichton and 1066 and All That. Minghella graduated from the University of Hull in 1975 with a First Class Honours Degree in English Drama; returning there to lecture for seven years whilst studying for his doctorate.

As a post-graduate, back on the Isle of Wight, Minghella shot his first film, about his Italian grandmother. It never saw the light of day and it took him nine years to repay the loan for its budget. Minghella claimed: "It gave me the bug for making films and I realised that making movies was the opportunity to lasso everything that I love doing into one job. It's a pretty good way to live!"

His outstanding career started off as a humble TV script editor on Grange Hill during the 1980s. He progressed to writing on Inspector Morse, the BAFTA and Emmy award-winning Storyteller series and 1991’s International Emmy Award-winning Living with Dinosaurs.

Straddling genres concurrently, Minghella also leant his pen to theatre. In 1984 he won the London Theatre Critics' Most Promising Playwright Award for A Little Like Drowning; in 1989 Cigarettes and Chocolate won the Giles Cooper Award and the Sony Award and in 1998 his original play Hang Up won the Prix Italia.

Whilst working on Inspector Morse, Minghella declined an offer to direct because he didn’t want his first directing job to be high-profile - instead, ironically, he opted to make his debut on a film he wrote for the BBC: Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991). It went on cinema release and won several awards including a BAFTA for Best Screen Play.

The English Patient (1996) is another defining project on his CV. Minghella adapted and directed this film from the novel of the same name - it won a staggering nine Oscars including Best Director. Minghella has directed five actors to Oscar nominations: Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, Renee Zellweger, Juliette Binoche and Kristin Scott Thomas.

His direction and adaptation of the novel, The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) was nominated for five Oscars and went on to win eight other awards including a BAFTA for Jude Law's supporting role.

"I realised that making movies was the opportunity to lasso everything that I love doing into one job."

Since December 2002, Minghella has been the Chairman of the British Film Institute. He also holds three Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Hull, Southampton and Bournemouth and was awarded a CBE in The Queen's birthday honours list of 2001.

Not one to be pigeon holed, Minghella directed a party election broadcast for the Labour Party in 2005 and in the same year took flight with another debut, staging the Puccini opera Madama Butterfly; which his wife choreographed.

On 18 March 2008, Minghella suffered a fatal haemorrhage in London just days after having surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck. He was 54.

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Oprah Winfrey Biography

Talk show legend Oprah Winfrey said she would dedicate a show investigating abuses at puppy mills to her cocker spaniel, Sophie, who died in March 2008 from kidney failure.

"Sophie gave me 13 years of unconditional love. She was a true love in my life," Winfrey says on the broadcast, which was scheduled to air Friday, April 4 (advance remarks from the show were released April 1).

Although Sophie was not adopted from a puppy mill and Winfrey's three current dogs were adopted from breeders, she said in the future she will adopt a dog from a shelter.

"I would never, ever adopt another pet now without going to a shelter to do it. I am a changed woman after seeing this show," Winfrey says.

The show will feature special correspondent Lisa Ling, who calls the investigation "horrific" and "haunting."

Winfrey added that the show is "for anybody anywhere who loves a dog, has ever loved a dog, or just cares about their basic right to humane treatment."

Oprah Gail Winfrey was born January 29, 1954 , in Kosciusko, Mississippi. After a troubled adolescence in a small farming community, where she was sexually abused by a number of male relatives and friends of her mother, Vernita, she moved to Nashville to live with her father, Vernon, a barber and businessman. She entered Tennessee State University in 1971 and began working in radio and television broadcasting in Nashville.

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore , where she hosted the TV chat show, People Are Talking. The show became a hit and Winfrey stayed with it for eight years, after which she was recruited by a Chicago TV station to host her own morning show, A.M. Chicago. Her major competitor in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey's open, warm-hearted personal style had won her 100,000 more viewers than Donahue and had taken her show from last place to first in the ratings. Her success led to nationwide fame and a role in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film, The Color Purple, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Winfrey launched the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986 as a nationally syndicated program. With its placement on 120 channels and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the end of its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of the program from ABC, drawing it under the control of her new production company, Harpo Productions ('Oprah' spelled backwards) and making more and more money from syndication.

In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and exploitative, Winfrey pledged to keep her show free of tabloid topics. Although ratings initially fell, she earned the respect of her viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in popularity. Her projects with Harpo have included the highly rated 1989 TV miniseries, The Women of Brewster Place, which she also starred in. Winfrey also signed a multi-picture contract with Disney. The initial project, 1998's Beloved, based on Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison and starring Winfrey and Danny Glover, got mixed reviews and generally failed to live up to expectations.

Winfrey, who became almost as well-known for her weight loss efforts as for her talk show, lost an estimated 90 pounds (dropping to her ideal weight of around 150 pounds) and competed in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC , in 1995. In the wake of her highly publicized success, Winfrey's personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Greene, both published best-selling books.

The media giant contributed immensely to the publishing world by launching her "Oprah's Book Club," as part of her talk show. The program propelled many unknown authors to the top of the bestseller lists and gave pleasure reading a new kind of popular prominence.

With the debut in 1999 of Oxygen Media, a company she co-founded that is dedicated to producing cable and Internet programming for women, Winfrey ensured her place in the forefront of the media industry and as one of the most powerful and wealthy people in show business. In 2002, she concluded a deal with the network to air a prime-time complement to her syndicated talk show. Her highly successful monthly, O: The Oprah Magazine debuted in 2000, and in 2004, she signed a new contract to continue The Oprah Winfrey Show through the 2010-11 season. The show is seen on 212 U.S. stations and in more than 100 countries worldwide.

According to Forbes magazine, Oprah was the richest African American of the 20th century and the world's only Black billionaire for three years running. Life magazine hailed her as the most influential woman of her generation. In 2005, Business Week named her the greatest Black philanthropist in American history. Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $51,000,000 for charitable programs, including girls' education in South Africa and relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Winfrey is a dedicated activist for children's rights; in 1994, President Clinton signed a bill into law that Winfrey had proposed to Congress, creating a nationwide database of convicted child abusers. She founded the Family for Better Lives foundation and also contributes to her alma mater, Tennessee State University. In September, 2002, Oprah was named the first recipient of The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

Winfrey campaigned for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in December 2007, attracting the largest crowds of the primary season to that point. Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary/caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It was the first time Winfrey had ever campaigned for a political candidate.

The biggest event was at the University of South Carolina football stadium, where 29,000 supporters attended a rally that had been switched from an 18,000-seat basketball arena to satisfy public demand.

"Dr. (Martin Luther) King dreamed the dream. But we don't have to just dream the dream any more," Oprah told the crowd. "We get to vote that dream into reality by supporting a man who knows not just who we are, but who we can be."

Winfrey also confronted Obama's chief perceived weakness: his lack of experience.

"Experience in the hallways of government isn't as important to me as the experience on the pathway of life," Winfrey said, citing the Illinois senator's achievements outside Washington.

The power of Winfrey's political endorsement was unclear (Obama won Iowa and South Carolina, but lost New Hampshire). But she has a clear track record of turning unknown authors into blockbuster best-sellers when she mentions their books on her program.

For Oprah, the campaign swing provided a much-welcomed respite from some controversies that put her in the news.

Recently, she was criticized by the victim of a vicious sexual attack in Central Park. Trisha Meili, then a 28-year-old investment banker, nearly died in the April 19, 1989, attack. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and spent five months at a rehabilitation hospital.

Meili broke her silence 13 years later and published a book, I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility. But while still concealing her identity, she was interviewed by Winfrey for the April 2002 edition of O, the talk show host’s magazine. Winfrey asked Meili why she was running alone in the park at night (shortly before 10 p.m.). Meili told Winfrey she realized it was "not a smart thing to do," but that didn't justify the attack in which she was raped and severely beaten.

Fast forward five years.

Meili told New York1 Nov. 14, 2007, that if she were asked the question again, she would say "If that isn't a blame the victim question, I don't know what is."

"It's like, 'Okay, so it's my fault that I was out there?'" said Meili, who has become an advocate for victims of sexual violence. "I think that's still one of the most difficult battles that sexual assault survivors and those who support them need to fight."

Five men convicted in the assault served prison time before DNA evidence confirmed the confession of another man, Matias Reyes, in 2002. He was already serving a life sentence on unrelated convictions.

A representative for Winfrey said the magazine was sorry to hear Meili's sentiments about the interview, saying that Winfrey "is and has always been an advocate for victims of sexual abuse of any kind."

Meili's criticism immediately followed "one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating," experience of Oprah's life. Winfrey told reporters on Nov. 5, 2007, that she cried when she heard allegations that a dormitory matron was abusing students at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.

The matron, 27-year-old Virginia Makopo, was freed Nov. 5 on $450 bail. She faces 13 charges of indecent assault, assault and criminal injury committed against at least six students aged 13-15 and a 23-year-old at the school.

Winfrey said the woman's contract with the school wouldn't be renewed, and that the academy's screening process will be revised. Though she wasn't directly in charge of the screening process, Oprah said "the buck always stops" with her.

Winfrey had recently flown to South Africa for an emergency meeting with parents and school administrators at the campus near Johannesburg. A tearful Winfrey asked parents to forgive her for letting them down.

"I've disappointed you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she said, according to numerous South African media reports.

The $40 million academy has been dogged by controversy since it opened in January 2007 with a star-studded launch attended by actor Sydney Poitier, singers Mariah Carey, Tina Turner and Mary J. Blige, comedian Chris Rock and filmmaker Spike Lee.

In March 2007, some parents complained the school was too strict and access was comparable to prison rules. Two months later, some parents complained that when they visited the school they had to go through a security gate.

Winfrey hand-selected the first class of 152 poor, mostly black pupils to attend the posh school, where tuition and board is free. The academy also provides its 450 students with textbooks, uniforms and meals.

Since 1992, Winfrey has been engaged to Stedman Graham, a public relations executive. The couple lives in Chicago, and Winfrey also has homes in Montecito, California, Rolling Prairie, Indiana, and Telluride, Colorado.

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Steve Irwin Biography (1962-2006)

Wildlife expert, conservationist, television show host. Born on February 22, 1962, in Essendon in Victoria, Australia. Part wildlife expert and part entertainer, Irwin became world famous for his television series, The Crocodile Hunter, and other nature programs. While he had no scientific degree, he grew up studying and caring for animals at his parents' wildlife park, which is now known as the Australia Zoo. He first learned how to catch and handle his beloved crocodiles from his father and once received a python as a birthday present.

Irwin met American-born Terri Raines, who was in Australia on vacation, in 1991. The couple later married and spent part of their honeymoon filming crocodiles. This footage became part of their 1992 Australian television show, The Crocodile Hunter, and the two worked together on the program. Four years later, the series was picked up by the American cable network Animal Planet. At the peak of its popularity, the show aired in more than 200 countries.

In each program, audiences were often spellbound by Irwin's dangerous encounters with animals. He thought nothing of tangling with deadly snakes, spiders, lizards, and, of course, crocodiles. In addition to his hair-raising adventures, Irwin considered himself a wildlife educator, sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm for animals with his viewers.

Always in his trademark khaki shirt and shorts, Irwin became a well-known figure in popular culture. He even had his own catchphrase-"Crikey!"-an Australian expression of surprise or excitement. There have been countless parodies and spoofs of the famed adventurer-even The Simpsons and South Park featured send-ups of Irwin. He wasn't afraid to poke fun at his image as an energetic naturalist and showman. Irwin appeared as himself in the 2001 film Dr. Dolittle 2 with Eddie Murphy. The next year Irwin and his wife starred in their own film The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course.

Irwin occasionally drew criticism for his stunts. Some said that he was exploiting the animals that appeared on his shows. He stirred up even greater controversy in 2004 for feeding a crocodile while holding his infant son. Many were shocked by the images of Irwin and his son Bob with the snapping crocodile and accused Irwin of child endangerment. Irwin was never charged in regard to this incident and stated that his son was never in harm's way. He grew up in a zoo environment and wanted the same for his son and his daughter Bindi Sue.

On September 4, 2006, Irwin was working on a new program, filming at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Snorkeling near a stingray, he was pierced in the chest by its barb, which hit his heart. Irwin died of cardiac arrest shortly after being stung. Stunned by the news of his sudden death, people around the world mourned his passing. Many left flowers and notes at the Australia Zoo, which he and his wife ran, taking over for his parents. Others posted messages expressing their grief on the Web. Wildlife experts, such as Jack Hanna, noted that Irwin was a great conservationist.

Moving speech given by Bindi Irwin about her Dad
at his Tribute 20 sep 2006

Irwin made many contributions to the field of wildlife education and conservation during his life. He ran an organization to rescue and protect crocodiles and supported numerous other animal charities. Many of nature's dangerous creatures lost their greatest champion the day Irwin died.

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French Singer Henri Salvador Dies

Henri Salvador, the French musician and singer credited with helping inspire both the bossa nova and the music video, has died in Paris aged 90.

Renowned for his booming laugh, elegant crooning and durability, he had planned to record a new album in 2008 and last performed on stage in December.

At the time, he said he was "the only one who can bow out while still alive".

In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Salvador's death was a cause of "infinite sadness".

"For more than a half-century, with humour and elegance, Henri was the incarnation of the art of song 'a la Francaise,'" he added.

Influence
A legend in his native France, Salvador was also a star in Latin America - particularly in Brazil.

His 1957 song Dans Mon Ile was thought to have inspired Brazilian jazz musician Antonio Carlos Jobim to conceive bossa nova's distinctive rhythm.

Henri Salvador Dans mon île

"When I recorded that little tune, holed up in my apartment in Paris, I could never have imagined it would change musical history," said Salvador said.

And he was among the first performers to set his songs to televised images, prompting some in France to call him the father of the music video.

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Jeff Healey Biography (March 25, 1966 – March 2, 2008)

A rare form of cancer called retinoblastoma left Jeff Healey blind in both eyes by the age of 1. But a mere two years later the Ontario native had his first guitar and immediately began emulating his blues heroes, such as John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton. At 14 he was admitted to Etobicoke Collegiate and soon after began playing in local jazz & blues coffee houses. He met drummer Tom Stephen and bassist Joe Rockman one night in 1986 while at an open jam-session. Doubling as the band's business manager, Stephen began sending out demos to every agent and record producer in the land, but originally got nothing. In '82 they released "Adrianna" asa single (only release) on their own indie label, Forte Records - with what would be the title-track to their debut as the 'b' side. It gained enough exposure to send Healey and company on the road, more so than they already were. But the big deal they sought still eluded them. They eventually scored a deal with BMG in '87. Seeing something fresh on the scene, Arista also picked up the band stateside.

While still in the Toronto studios working on their debut, an old demo was handed to Jimmy Iovine, who happened to be working on the upcoming ROADHOUSE BLUES movie, starring Patrick Swayze. The band was cast in the film as the bar band 'Double Deuce', as well as supplying the soundtrack. Their first album SEE THE LIGHT was released in 1988, produced by Iovine and Greg Labany. Backed by the title-track, it was widely considered by the critics to be one of the freshest albums on the scene in years. John Hiatt's "Confidence Man", the tender "Angel Eyes" - which peaked at #5 on The Billboard Charts & also co-written by Hiatt, "My Little Girl - and the ZZ Top cover "Blue Jean Blues" all made SEE THE LIGHT an instant hit, eventually selling 2 million copies.

See The Light (Live)

Riding high, ROADHOUSE BLUES opened at the theatres across North America less than a year later and further showed The Jeff Healey Band's immense talent. "Blue Jean Blues", the title-track (a Doors cover) helped prep the audience for their second lp, HELL TO PAY. Produced by Ed Stasium, again the record was made up of covers of Healey's influences, as well as songs which were directly spawned by his love for the blues. Ex-Beatle George Harrison guested on thefirst single, actually released before the album. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was quickly followed by "I Think I Love You Too Much" - written and featuring Mark Knopfler. By the time "Full Circle" was issued as the third single, the album was already another million-seller, thanks in part to their supporting role on Bonnie Raitt's world tour. Other cameos on the record included Harrison's Traveling Wilburys-mate Jeff Lynne of ELO, Paul Shaffer (Blues Brothers Band, SNL & David Letterman) and Sass Jordan.

1992 saw FEEL THIS hit the stores, produced by Joe Hard, whose resume included the likes of other blues/rockers Colin James & ZZ Top. 'Meatier & ballsier' than the first two and capturing the band's live presence more so - this unfortunately didn't exactly translate as well in sales. Despite 6 singles over a year and a half, it 'only' sold 100,000 copies. Gold in Canada, worthy of contract dismissal in the US. They returned in '95 with COVER TO COVER. 14 tracks strong, it featured their interpretations of classics by The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and others. Three singles were released, with the remake of Steeler's Wheel's "Stuck In The Middle With You" cracking the Top 40 in Canada.

Healey then stepped back to work on his own label, Forte Records - which was home to Amanda Marshall, Lilith and The Phantoms. Arista and BMG both released 'greatest hits' packages before the end of the decade. BMG's THE VERY BEST OF JEFF HEALEY in '98 and Arista's THE MASTER SERIES shortly afterwards. It wasn't until 2000 that any new material appeared. With the release of GET ME SOME it was well-established Healey was in control of his own career and destiny - releasing it on Forte. Again it consisted almost entirely of covers. Unfortunately it went almost completely unnoticed by the critics and the fans. Another pair of 'best of' packages were released shortly thereafter. Jeff Healey has become world-renown for his no-nonsense approach of fusing rock with his blues influences in a way no one else has, or probably could. He's worked with a stunning array of musicians spanning all corners of the musical gamut, including a tribute to The Dorsey Brothers & one to Benny Goodman, Rube Bloom, Colin Bray and a dozen or so others - and an all-new album is currently in the works.

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Louis (Daniel) Armstrong Biography (1901–71)

Jazz trumpeter and singer, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Raised by his mother in extreme poverty, at age 12 he served a term for delinquency at the Colored Waifs Home, where he learned to play the cornet. By 1919 he was playing with Kid Ory's band in New Orleans, and also with Fate Marable on Mississippi riverboats. In 1922 he joined his mentor, King Oliver's trailblazing Creole Jazz Band, in Chicago, and spent 1924 with Fletcher Henderson's pioneering big band in New York, where he also recorded with Bessie Smith and other leading blues singers.

His melodic inventiveness, expressed with uninhibited tone and range on the trumpet, established the central role of the improvising soloist in jazz, especially in a series of recordings known as the 'Hot Fives' and 'Hot Sevens' (1925–8). Thereafter, every jazz musician emulated Armstrong's melodic style and rhythmic sense. In 1930 his recording of the pop song 'Ain't Misbehavin' became his first show-business hit, and for the next 17 years he appeared as a star soloist with various big bands in an increasingly commercial context. In 1947 he formed his All Stars, a Dixieland-style sextet with which he maintained a constant international touring schedule until his death.

He appeared in over 50 films as a musician and entertainer, including Pennies from Heaven (1936), New Orleans (1947), Cabin in the Sky (1943), High Society (1956), Paris Blues (1961), and Hello, Dolly! (1969). He was also a popular singer, his hit recordings including 'When It's Sleepy Time Down South', 'Mack the Knife', and 'Hello Dolly!' , but he remained primarily a jazz musician. His autobiography, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, was published in 1954.

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Heath Ledger Biography (1979-2008)

"I'm not good at future planning. I don't plan at all. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't have a day planner and I don't have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future." - Heath Ledger

A brief memorial service was held for Heath Ledger Saturday night (Jan. 26, 2008) at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles.

The service was attended by Heath's immediate family and Ledger's ex-fiancée, Michelle Williams, mother of his only child, 2-year-old Matilda.

Ledger's body was flown from New York to Los Angeles Jan. 25, accompanied by his father, Kim Ledger. The actor's body was to be flown to his native Perth, Australia, on Jan. 27, where he will be laid to rest later this week.

Ledger, nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Brokeback Mountain (2005), was found dead Jan. 22 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills nearby.

A two-hour autopsy on Jan. 23 proved inconclusive. Blood and tissue tests results weren't expected for 10 days to two weeks, the medical examiner’s office said.

Earlier, police said the death was caused by a possible drug overdose and appeared to be accidental. There was no evidence of foul play and no note or any other obvious evidence pointing toward suicide.

Two law enforcement officials (who asked not to be named) said six types of prescription drugs, including an antihistamine and pills to treat anxiety and insomnia, were found in the apartment, according to the Associated Press.

A publicist for Ledger said the actor was suffering from the flu and had been prescribed antibiotics during recent filming for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in London .

Ledger himself told The New York Times in November 2007 that he taking Ambien, a prescription medication used for the short-term treatment of insomnia. He discussed the difficulty he was having with portraying The Joker in Batman sequel The Dark Knight, a character he described as a "psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy."

"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told the Times. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going."

Police estimate Ledger died between 1 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. on Jan. 22

His housekeeper , Teresa Solomon, had arrived at the apartment (located at 421 Broome Street) at around 12:30 p.m. Approximately 30 minutes later, she entered the actor's bedroom to change a light bulb in an adjacent bathroom and found him lying in bed, face down, with a sheet pulled up to his shoulders. Solomon told police she heard Ledger snoring and left the room, thinking nothing was wrong.

A massage therapist, Diana Wolozin, arrived at 2:45 p.m. for a scheduled appointment. When Ledger failed to emerge or answer his bedroom door by 3 p.m., Wolozin said she called his cell phone. There was no answer.

Wolozin told police she then entered Ledger's bedroom, went to the closet and began setting up her massage table near his bed. Wolozin twice attempted to stir the actor from his sleep but he was unresponsive. She told police that Ledger's body was cold to the touch.

At 3:17 p.m., Wolozin reportedly grabbed Ledger's cell phone and called Full House actress Mary-Kate Olsen, who she knew was a friend of Ledger's, seeking advice.

"Mary-Kate and Heath were casually dating for three months before Heath's death," a source told People.com. "They were hooking up, but neither were particularly interested in making it exclusive."

But Olsen released a statement Jan. 25, saying: "Heath was a friend. His death is a tragic loss. My thoughts are with his family during this very difficult time"

Wolozin's first call to Olsen lasted 49 seconds. At 3:20 p.m., Wolozin called Olsen back and talked 1 minute and 39 seconds. At 3:24 p.m., a third call to Olsen was made, lasting only 21 seconds.

At some point during the frenzy, Olsen, 21, who was in California, summoned private security guards to the apartment, police said.

Wolozin finally called 911 at 3:26 p.m. and told them Ledger was not breathing. The emergency operator on the other end instructed Wolozin on how to perform CPR and urged her to revive Ledger.

Paramedics arrived at the scene at 3:33 p.m., as did the security guards summoned by Olsen. In fact, they went up the building's elevator together, but Paramedics did not allow the security guards into the bedroom where Ledger died.

Ledger's body was moved to the floor as medical workers used a defibrillator and CPR, to no avail. He was pronounced dead at 3:36 p.m., 19 minutes after Wolozin first called Olsen.

The masseuse had called Olsen a final time at 3:34 p.m. for an unknown length of time.

Police who responded to the scene believe Ledger was already dead while his masseuse was dialing Olsen due to the lividity of the body (the manner in which blood settles after a person dies).

Published reports had suggested that Wolozin had called Olsen to hatch a plan to hide illegal drugs in Heath’s apartments. But that was not the case.

"There is absolutely no indication that investigators were going to speak to Mary-Kate Olsen," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference on Jan. 27. "They determined that they had all the information needed, by the witnesses who were on the scene: That's the cleaning woman, the masseuse."

Shocked fans set up a makeshift memorial on the sidewalk in front of his loft in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. By Jan. 24, it had grown to more than 100 bouquets of tulips, daisies, carnations and tropical flowers, along with candles, signs and notes.

Heathcliff Andrew Ledger was born on April 4, 1979, in the western Australian city of Perth. Heath and his sister Katherine were named after two main characters in Emily Bonte's Wuthering Heights. His parents Kim, a race car driver and mining engineer, and Sally, a French teacher, divorced when he was 11.

Ledger attended Guildford Grammar School and landed his first acting role playing Peter Pan in a school production at age 10. He was also an extra in the movie Clowning Around (1992). And a year later he appeared in the TV series Ship To Shore, a kind of Australian version of Happy Days. Then in 1996, Ledger played a gay cyclist hoping to land a spot on an Olympic team in the television show, Sweat.

At age 16, Ledger made the cross-country move to Sydney to pursue an acting career. He made his real film debut in Blackrock (1997), where a schoolboy witnesses a rape and murder but must not to betray his friends.

Next up, Ledger starred in Roar , a U.S.-financed mediaeval fantasy, filmed in Queensland and costarring Keri Russell. The television series introduced him to co-star Lisa Zane (sister of Billy), with whom he would begin a relationship. With Fox heavily hyping the series, Ledger found himself an American agent and followed Zane back to Los Angeles at age 19.

After struggling a bit, he got a big break by landing the role opposite Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You, a reworking of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

But instead of accepting more offers to do teen flicks, Ledger preferred independent films. He appeared in The Patriot (2000) with Mel Gibson, Billy Bob Thornton in Monster's Ball (2001) and A Knight's Tale (2001).

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in Brokeback Mountain, a 2005 film about two cowboys who fall in love directed by Ang Lee and co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

In Candy (2006), Ledger played a poet wrestling with a heroin addiction along with his girlfriend. He also played an incarnation of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007).

Ironically, his final role was in an anticipated summer blockbuster, The Dark Knight, playing Batman's nemesis, the Joker. The sequel to 2005's Batman Begins is due in U.S. theaters on July 18, 2008.

People magazine named Ledger one of its "50 Most Beautiful People" in 2001.

Ledger seemed to have a thing for older women. After Lisa Zane (18 years his senior), he dated Melbourne model Christina Cauchi and actress Heather Graham (nine years his senior) for a year (2000-01). He also had a relationship with actress Naomi Watts (11 years his senior) for two years (2002-04). They had met on the set of Ned Kelly (2003). She attended Ledger’s memorial service in Los Angeles on Jan. 26, 2008.

Ledger then met actress Michelle Williams (she was a year younger than Heath) on the set of Brokeback Mountain. The couple was engaged and moved into Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighborhood. They had a daughter, Matilda Rose Ledger (born October 28, 2005 in New York City).

After he split with Williams in the summer of 2007, Ledger moved to SoHo and was often spotted at clubs and bars with actresses and models.

Williams, who was in Trollhattan, Sweden, shooting scenes for the upcoming film Mammoth, was reportedly "devastated" when got the news of Ledger's death at her hotel late Tuesday night (Jan. 22).

She and Matilda, 2, left Sweden early Wednesday on a plane for New York , arriving at the Brooklyn home she shared with Ledger shortly before 8:30 p.m. Williams' mother, Carla, and actress (and Matilda's godmother) Busy Phillips were waiting to console her, according to published reports.

Ledger's family placed a death notice Jan. 25 in The West Australian, a newspaper based in Perth , remembering him as "the most amazing 'old soul' in a young man's body."

"As a close knit and very private family we have observed you so determined yet quietly traveling in your self-styled path in life," said the notice. "Our hearts are broken."

In a separate notice, Ledger's father Kim wrote: "Heatho, Beef ... my beautiful boy, so loving, so talented, so independent ... so no more chess games mate ... this is it, couldn't beat you anyway.

"We were one, in soul and commitment, just ... father and son."

Ledger's mother, Sally Ledger-Bell, said the family would always be there for his 2-year-old daughter, Matilda.

The actor's sister, Kate, said she could "hardly breathe" as she tried to write her tribute.

"We were the ultimate soul mates," she said. "You were so many things to so many people, but to me you were just my little brother. You will never leave my thoughts, 'Roast', ever."

"It is tragic that we have lost one of our nation's finest actors in the prime of his life," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a statement. "Heath Ledger's diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the great performances by an Australian actor."

Jimi Hendrix Biography (1942 - 1970)

Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington, on November 27, 1942. His mother named him John Allen Hendrix and raised him alone while his father, Al Hendrix, was off fighting in World War II.

When his mother became sick from alcoholism, Hendrix was sent to live with relatives in Berkeley, California. When his father returned from Europe in 1945 he took back Hendrix, divorced his wife, and renamed him James Marshall Hendrix.

When Jimi was 13 his father taught him to play an acoustic guitar. In 1959 Jimi dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, but soon became disenchanted with military service.

After he broke his ankle during a training parachute jump, he was honorably discharged. He then went to work as a sideman on the rhythm-and-blues circuit, honing his craft but making little or no money.

Jimi got restless being a sideman and moved to New York City hoping to get a break in the music business. Through his friend Curtis Knight, Jimi discovered the music scene in Greenwich Village, which left indelible impressions on him. It was here that he began taking drugs, among them marijuana, pep pills and cocaine.

In 1966, while Jimi was performing with his own band called James & the Blue Flames at Cafe Wha?, John Hammond Jr. approached Jimi about the Flames playing backup for him at Cafe Au Go Go. Jimi agreed and during the show's finale, Hammond let Jimi cut loose on Bo Diddley's "I'm the Man." Linda Keith, girlfriend of The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, was one of Jimi's biggest fans and it was she who told friend Chase Chandler, a band manager, about Jimi.

When Chandler heard Jimi play, he asked him to come to London to form his own band, and while there Chandler made the simple change in Jimi's name by formally dropping James and replacing it with Jimi.

Jimi Hendrix performing Hey Joe at Monterey HQ 1967.
Great performance.

Having settled in England with a new band called the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which consisted of Jimi as guitarist and lead singer, bass player Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, Jimi took the country by storm with the release of his first single "Hey, Joe."

In the summer of 1967 Jimi performed back in the USA at the Monterey Pop Festival, a mix-up backstage forced Jimi to follow The Who onstage, where after a superb performance Jimi tore up the house by trashing his guitar in a wild frenzy.

Afterwards, Jimi's career skyrocketed with the release of the Experience's first two albums, "Are You Experienced?" and "Axis: Bold as Love," which catapulted him to the top of the charts.

However, tensions, possibly connected with Jimi's drug use and the constant presence of hangers-on in the studio and elsewhere, began to fracture some of his relationships, including Chas Chandler, who quit as manager in February 1968.

In September 1968 the Experience released their most successful album, "Electric Ladyland." However, in early 1969 bassist Redding left the Experience and was replaced by Billy Cox, an old army buddy who Jimi had jammed with. Jimi began experimenting with different musicians. For the Woodstock music festival Jimi put together an outfit called the Gypsies, Sun and Rainbows, with Mitchell and Cox as well as a second guitarist and two percussionists.

Their one and only performance in August 1969 at Woodstock took place near Bethel, New York, where Hendrix and his band were to be the closing headline act. Because of the delay getting there and the logistical problems, Jimi performed on the morning of the fourth and final day. Only 25,000 people of the original 400,000 stayed to watch Jimi and his band as the closing music number, where Jimi's searing rendering of "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the anthem for counterculture. After Woodstock, Jimi formed a new band with Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums with the May 1970 release of the album "The Band of Gypsys."

Jimi's last album, "Cry of Love", featured Cox on bass and former Experience drummer Mitchell on drums. However, Jimi's drug problem finally caught up with him.

On the night of September 17, 1970, while living in London, Jimi took some sleeping pills, which were prescribed for his live-in girlfriend Monika Danneman. Sometime after midnight, Jimi threw up from an apparent allergic reaction to the pills and then passed out. Danneman, thinking him to be all right, went out to get cigarettes for them. When she returned, she found him lying where he collapsed, having inhaled his own vomit, and and she couldn't wake him.

Danneman called an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital, but Jimi Hendrix was pronounced dead a short while later without regaining consciousness. He was 27 years old. Jimi Hendrix's life was short, but his impact on the rock guitar is still being heard which set the course for a new era of rock music.

Ozzy Osbourne Biography

Full Name: John Michael Osbourne
Date of Birth: December 3rd 1948
Place of Birth: Birmingham, England
Parents: Jack and Lillian Osbourne
Siblings: 2 brothers, Paul and Tony - 3 sisters Jean, Iris and Gillian

Anyone who listens to rock and roll today has at least heard of Ozzy Osbourne. The contribution he has made to music is undeniable. From the days with Black Sabbath, where it all began for "The Madman", to his immense solo career, Ozzy has continued to produce music of high quality and intensity. The late sixties and early seventies were a turning point for music, when bands were bringing forth a new, raw sound, and finding that it was excepted with enthusiasm unequaled in the industry. "Heavy Metal" began a reign that would last into the 80's, when the label became too easily used to describe any rock and roll band that liked electric guitars with an edge or distortion...

Black Sabbath, with Ozzy at the helm, paved the way into the era of Metal. They are among the handful of the early pioneers of the then new sound of Rock.

Osbourne grew up in a working-class family and left school at fifteen to work a series of low-paying jobs, before being imprisoned for burglary.

On his release, he joined a friend’s band, which he quickly outgrew, joining another outfit called Earth (later to become Black Sabbath).

Black Sabbath released their self-titled debut album on Friday 13th February, 1970 and almost immediately, developed a cult following in both Britain and America. Unfortunately, Ozzy and the rest of the band became seriously dependent on alcohol and cocaine, and gained a reputation for trashing cars and hotel rooms.

In 1977, Osbourne's father passed away, causing him to leave the band for a period before the release of their next album ‘Never Say Die’. Osbourne became increasingly disinterested in Black Sabbath and, at the end of the ‘Never Say Die’ tour, the band replaced him.

After months of despair and drug abuse, Osbourne met Sharon Arden, who helped him turn his life around. Sharon encouraged Osbourne to launch a solo career, and he joined forces with guitarist, Randy Rhoads, to begin work on his 1980 solo debut, ‘Blizzard of Ozz’. The album was a resounding success, reaching platinum status.

In 1981, Ozzy released his follow-up, 'Diary of a Madman', which eventually sold more than five million copies and firmly established him as a solo artist in his own right.

Unfortunately, the infamous ‘Diary of a Madman’ tour was one of the most troubled outings in rock history, with misfortune, bad publicity and protests dogging Osbourne the whole way.

After a series of tragedies and bizarre incidents (including the death of Rhoads in a plane crash) Osbourne sobered up and released a softer, more personal album, ‘No More Tears’, in 1991. He had announced that the 1992 tour would be his swansong, but decided to put his retirement on hold and returned with ‘Ozzmosis’ in late 1995. In 1996 he headlined the Ozzfest festival tour.

At the end of the 1990s Ozzy also rejoined the original line-up of Black Sabbath, for a series of highly successful live shows. His first studio album of the new millennium, ‘Down To Earth’, was released in 2001.

He became a household figure the following year when his bizarre family life was featured on the MTV reality TV show, ‘The Osbournes’. The show became an overnight hit, and helped lauch the singing career of Ozzy's daughter, Kelly.

In December 2003, Osbourne was rushed to hospital in Slough, England after he was involved in an accident whilst driving an all-terrain vehicle on his estate in Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. The singer broke his collar bone, eight ribs, and a neck vertebra. An operation was performed to lift the collarbone, which was believed to be resting on a major artery and interrupting blood flow to the arm. Sharon later revealed that Osbourne had stopped breathing following the crash and was resuscitated by Osbourne's then personal bodyguard, Sam Ruston.

Kelly Osbourne ft. Ozzy Osbourne - Changes

While in the hospital, Osbourne actually achieved his first ever UK number one single, a duet of the Black Sabbath ballad, "Changes" with daughter Kelly. In doing so, he broke the record of the longest period between an artist's first UK chart appearance (with Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", number four in August 1970) and their first number one hit; a gap of 33 years.

Ozzy made a full recovery and headlined at Ozzfest for the next three years before announcing his retirement from the event. In May 2007, Osbourne released Black Rain, his first new studio album in almost six years.

Dame Julie Andrews Biography

Singer and actress. Born Julia Elizabeth Wells on October 1, 1935, in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England. Julie Andrews has been a popular stage and film actress and singer for many decades. She came from a musical family-her mother was a pianist and her stepfather was a singer. She first found success on the English stage in the late 1940s. Andrews came to America in the 1950s, starring in the musical The Boyfriend from 1954 to 1955. The next year she starred in My Fair Lady as Eliza Doolittle, a role earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She followed that stellar performance with another lead role in the musical Camelot in 1960. Andrews received her second Tony Award nomination for this production.

Julie Andrews made the leap to film stardom in 1964 with lead roles in The Americanization of Emily opposite James Garner and Mary Poppins. It was as the lovable, magical nanny in Mary Poppins that Andrews won her first Academy Award for Best Actress. The next year she was nominated for her part in another musical, which featured her in a care-giving role to the von Trapp family. Both films were hugely successful, winning Andrews fans around the globe. These films remain popular, having grown quite a following over the years.

Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music "Do Re Mi"
In the 1980s, Julie Andrews seemed ready for new challenges. She starred in 1981's S.O.B., which provided a satirical look at Hollywood and was directed by her second husband Blake Edwards. The next year, Andrews took gender-bending to new heights as a woman who pretends to be man pretending to a woman in Victor/Victoria—opposite James Garner and marking another collaboration with Edwards. Over the years, she has worked on many projects with her husband, including Darling Lili (1970), The Man Who Loved Women (1983), and That's Life (1986). In 1996, Andrews returned to Broadway in the stage musical production of Victor/Victoria, winning her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Julie Andrews experienced a huge personal setback in the late 1990s when her vocal chords were damaged during an operation. While she never regained her powerful, sharp singing voice, she continued to act in films and television movies. Andrews also received a special distinction around this time-being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II of England. As befitting as an English dame, she played royalty in The Princess Diaries (2001) and its 2004 sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.

Recently Julie Andrews has been heard as the voice of Queen Lillian in the second and upcoming third installments of the Shrek animated film series. She also has written several children's books with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton from her first marriage to Tony Walton. Andrews has two daughters from her marriage to Edwards: Amy and Joanna.

For five decades, she has been entertaining and delighting audiences all over the world. In 2007, Julie Andrews received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild for all of her professional accomplishments.

Films
1964 Mary Poppins
1964 The Americanization of Emily
1965 The Sound of Music
1966 Hawaii
1967 Thoroughly Modern Millie
1968 Star!
1981 S.O.B
1982 Victor/Victoria
1983 The Man Who Loved Women
1987 Duet for One
1990 Chin-Chin
1992 A Fine Romance
2000 Relative Values
2001 The Princess Diaries
2004 Shrek 2 (voice)
2004 The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

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Joan Sutherland (Soprano)

Born: November 7, 1926 - Sydney, Australia

The celebrated Australian soprano, Joan Sutherland, was taught piano and voice by her mother until she was nineteen, when she trained formally in Sydney with John and Aida Dickens.

Joan Sutherland sang in concerts, oratorios and broadcasts throughout Australia and in August 1947 made a significant concert debut in Sydney as Purcell's Dido. In 1951 she sang the title role in the world premiere of Eugene Goosen's Judith at the Sydney Conservatiorium. The same year, having won Australia's foremost vocal competition, she came to London and studied with Clive Carey at the Opera School of the RCM. She then joined the Covent Garden company where she made her debut on 28 October 1952, as the First Lady in Die Zauberflote.

Some wonderful memories of Joan Sutherland´s life, and how she started her carreer, narrated by herself.

As a company soprano at Covent Garden, Joan Sutherland sang of roles encompassing a broad range of the repertoire from Weber (Agathe in Der Freischutz) and Wagner to Tippett by way of Offenbach, Georges Bizet, Mozart and Verdi. Her career was influenced from this time by her collaboration with (and marriage to) Richard Bonynge, who was convinced that her future lay in the coloratura repertoire. Her long apprenticeship (something that she feels many singers today could benefit from) came to fruition in the famous production of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1959; conducted by the veteran Italian Tullio Serafin and produced by Franco Zeffirelli.

Joan Sutherland’s international career was launched as she embarked upon a series of triumphant debuts at the world's leading opera houses singing Lucia; (Paris - April 1960; La Scala - May 1961, and the Metropolitan - November 1961). A worthy exponent of Händel, she sang the title role in Alcina for her debut at La Fenice, Venice in February 1960 and at Dallas in November 1960 (her USA debut).

Joan Sutherland’s repertoire of roles continued to grow throughout her career. She sang Amina (La Sonnambula), Violetta (La Traviata) and Elvira (I Puritani) alongside Semiramide, Marguerite de Valois (Les Huguenots), Marguerite (Faust), Lakme, Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare) and Norma. Amongst her other roles, a great favourite for herself and the public was Marie, the tomboy soldier in "The Daughter of the Regiment". Later in her career, she added roles such as Tales of Hoffmann (singing all four roles), Lucrezia Borgia, Anna Bolena, Esclarmonde and Adriana Lecouvreur. Her final performances were in Sydney (1990) as Marguerite de Valois in Les Huguenots. Her final Covent Garden appearance was as guest performer in the New Year's Eve performance of of Die Fledermaus in 1990, when she sang duets with Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne, as well as"Home, Sweet Home", a favourite encore item (as it was of Dame Nellie Melba).

Joan Sutherland received many international honours, among them , the award of Dame of the British Empire in 1979 and the much prized Order of Merit (limited in number, and very rarely awarded to musicians; Edward Elgar was a previous recipient) in 1991.

In retirement, Joan Sutherland has been in demand as an adjudicator at major singing competitons, together with Marilyn Horne, she is a regular member of the panel at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.

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Santa Claus Biography (Also known as St. Nicholas)

Bishop, Roman Catholic saint. Nicholas of Myra was born sometime around AD 280 in Patara, Lycia, an ancient area that is part of present-day Turkey. He lost both of his parents as a young man and reportedly used his inheritance to help the poor and sick. He later served as bishop of Myra, a city that is called now Demre.

There are many legends about Saint Nicholas. One story tells how he helped three poor sisters. Their father did not have enough money to pay their dowries and thought of selling them into servitude. Three times, Saint Nicholas secretly went to their house at night and put a bag of money inside. The man used the money so that one of his daughters could marry. On the third visit, the man saw St. Nicholas and thanked him for his kindness. He also reportedly saved three men who were falsely imprisoned and sentenced to death.

Several sources state St. Nicholas is believed to have died on December 6, 345. Over the years, stories of his miracles and work for the poor spread to other parts of the world. He became known as the protector of children and sailors and was associated with gift-giving. He was a popular saint in Europe until the time of the Reformation in the 1500s, a religious movement that led to the creation of Protestantism, which turned away from the practice of honoring saints. St. Nicholas, however, remained an important figure in Holland.

The Dutch continued to celebrate the feast day of Saint Nicholas, December 6. It was a common practice for children to put out their shoes the night before. In the morning, they would discover the gifts that Saint Nicholas had left there for them. Dutch immigrants brought St. Nicholas—known to them as Sint Nikolaas or by his nickname Sinter Klaas—and his gift-giving ways to America in the 1700s.

In America, St. Nicholas went through many transformations and eventually Sinter Klaas became Santa Claus. Instead of giving gifts on December 6, he became a part of the Christmas holiday. In the 1820 poem “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore, he is described as a jolly, heavy man who comes down the chimney to leave presents for deserving children and drives a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. The cartoonist Thomas Nast added to the St. Nicholas legend with an 1881 drawing of Santa as wearing a red suit with white fur trim. Once a kind, charitable bishop, St. Nicholas had become the Santa Claus we know today.

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Martha Stewart Biography

Lifestyle guru and businesswoman. Born Martha Kostyra, on August 3, 1941, in New Jersey. The second of six children, Stewart grew up in Nutley, New Jersey, a working-class community near New York City. She worked as a model from the age of 13, appearing in fashion shows as well as television and print advertisements. She attended Barnard College in Manhattan, where she earned a degree in European and architectural history in 1962. While at Barnard, she met Andy Stewart, a Yale law student, and the two married in 1961. Six years later, after the birth of their daughter, Alexis, Stewart went to work as a stockbroker for the boutique firm of Monness, Williams, and Sidel. She worked on Wall Street until 1972, when the family moved to Westport, Connecticut.

After the Stewarts restored the 19th century farmhouse they had bought, Martha decided to focus her energy on gourmet cooking, having trained herself from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She started a catering business in the late 1970s, and soon became known for her gourmet menus and unique, creative presentation. Within a decade, Martha Stewart, Inc., had grown into a $1 million business serving a number of corporate and celebrity clients. Stewart expanded into the world of publishing with her first book, Entertaining, which became a bestseller and was followed in quick succession by such publications as Martha Stewart's Quick Cook Menus, Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres, Martha Stewart's Christmas, and Martha Stewart's Wedding Planner. Her newfound fame took its toll on her personal life, as her marriage to Andy Stewart ended in divorce in 1990, after a bitter three-year separation.

In 1991, Martha Stewart, Inc., became Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., with the release of her magazine, Martha Stewart Living. Stewart's lifestyle empire soon grew to include two magazines, a checkout-size recipe publication, a popular cable television show, a syndicated newspaper column, a series of how-to books, a radio show, an Internet site, and $763 million in annual retail sales.

Part of Martha Stewart Show video

On October 19, 1999, America's most famous homemaker returned to Wall Street to see her company through its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. At the end of the day, the price of each of 72 million shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. had jumped more than 95 percent and raised almost $130 million. Stewart herself controls 96 percent of the voting shares in her company and is worth $1.2 billion.

In June 2002, Stewart again made financial headlines, this time for rumors of insider trading. Stewart was under investigation for selling hundreds of shares of ImClone Systems just prior to the Food and Drug Administration's refusal to approve the company's new cancer drug. The value of the stock dropped markedly after the FDA's announcement. Due to the investigation, Stewart resigned from the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange in October, just four months after she had joined. In June 2003, a 41-page indictment charged Stewart with securities fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and making false statements to prosecutors and the FBI. She pleaded innocent to all charges and stepped down as chair and CEO of her Omnimedia empire. In February 2004, a judge dismissed the securities fraud charge, but a jury found her guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and two counts of making false statements.

In July 2004, Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and fined $30,000. She served the first part of her sentence at a minimum-security prison in Alderson, West Virginia, in October 2004. Stewart was released on March 4, 2005, just after NBC announced she will host two new shows: a daytime talk and how-to show and a spin-off of the reality show The Apprentice produced by Mark Burnett and Donald Trump. Stewart finished her sentence by serving five months of house arrest at her home in Bedford, New York.

While Martha Stewart's version of The Apprentice failed to attract enough viewers, her self-titled syndicated daytime program has been on the air since 2005. The company she established, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, has continued to grow in new directions. The business now includes several new non-Martha Stewart publications: Everyday Food, Body + Soul, and Blueprint.

Also visit her websites www.marthastewart.com

John Lennon (October 9th, 1940 - December 8th, 1980)

Pop star, composer, songwriter, and recording artist. John Winston Lennon was born October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, Merseyside, NW England, UK, during a German air raid in World War II. When he was four years old, Lennon's parents separated and he ended up living with his Aunt Mimi. John's father was a merchant seaman. He was not present at his son's birth and did not see a lot of his son when he was small. Lennon's mother, Julia, remarried, but visited John and Mimi regularly. She taught John how to play the banjo and the piano and purchased his first guitar. John was devastated when Julia was fatally struck by a car driven by an off-duty police officer in July 1958. Her death was one of the most traumatic events in his life. As a child, John was a prankster and he enjoyed getting in trouble. As a boy and young adult, John enjoyed drawing grotesque figures and cripples. John's school master thought that he could go to an art school for college, since he did not get good grades in school, but had artistic talent. At sixteen, Elvis Presley's explosion onto the rock music scene inspired John to create the skiffle band called the "Quarry Men," named after his school. Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church fete on July 6, 1957. John soon invited Paul to join the group and they eventually formed the most successful songwriting partnership in musical history.

McCartney introduced George Harrison to Lennon the following year and he and art college buddy Stuart Sutcliffe also joined Lennon's band. Always in need of a drummer, the group finally settled on Pete Best in 1960. The first recording they made was Buddy Holly's That'll be the Day in mid-1958. In fact, it was Holly's group, the Crickets, that inspired the band to change its name. John would later joke that he had a vision when he was 12 years old - a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them "from this day on you are Beatles with an 'A.'" The Beatles were discovered by Brian Epstein in 1961 at the Cavern Club, where they were performing on a regular basis. As their new manager, Epstein secured a record contract with EMI. With a new drummer, Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), and George Martin as producer, the group released their first single, Love Me Do in October 1962. It peaked on the British charts at number 17. Lennon wrote the group's follow-up single, Please Please Me, inspired primarily by Roy Orbison but also fed by John's infatuation with the pun in Bing Crosby's famous "Please, lend your little ears to my please." The song topped the charts in Britain. The Beatles went on to become the most popular band in Britain with the release mega-hits like She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. In 1964, The Beatles became the first band to break out big in the United States, beginning with their appearance on TV's The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Beatlemania launched a "British Invasion"' of rock bands into the U.S., which included The Rolling Stones and The Kinks. After 'Sullivan,' The Beatles returned to Britain to film their first movie, A Hard Day's Night and prepare for their first world tour.

Marilyn Monroe Biography

Actress. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson (later baptized as Norma Jeane Baker) on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, California. During her all-too-brief life, Marilyn Monroe overcame a difficult childhood to become of the world’s biggest and most enduring sex symbols. She never knew her father, and her mother Gladys developed psychiatric problems and was eventually placed in a mental institution. Growing up, Monroe spent much of her time in foster care and in an orphanage. In 1937, a family friend and her husband, Grace and Doc Goddard, took care of her for a few years. But when Doc’s job was transferred in 1942 to the East Coast, the couple could not afford to bring Monroe with them.

Once again, Monroe faced life in foster care. But she had one way out—get married. She wed her boyfriend Jimmy Dougherty on June 19, 1942. A merchant marine, Dougherty was later sent to the South Pacific. Monroe went to work in a munitions factory in Burbank where she was discovered by a photographer. By the time Dougherty returned in 1946, Monroe had a successful career as a model. She dreamt of becoming an actress like Jean Harlow and Lana Turner.

Her marriage fizzled out as Monroe focused more on her career. The couple divorced in 1946—the same year she signed her first movie contract. With the movie contract came a new name and image, she began calling herself “Marilyn Monroe” and dyed her hair blonde. But her acting career didn’t really take off until the 1950s. Her small part in John Huston’s crime drama The Asphalt Jungle (1950) garnered her a lot of attention. That same year she impressed audiences and critics alike as Claudia Caswell in All About Eve, starring Bette Davis.

In 1953, Monroe made a star-making turn in Niagara, starring as a young married woman out to kill her husband with help from her lover. The emerging sex symbol was paired with another bombshell, Jane Russell, for the musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The film was a hit and Monroe continued to find success in a string of light comedic fare, such as How to Marry a Millionaire with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall, There’s No Business like Show Business (1954) with Ethel Merman and Donald O’Connor, and The Seven Year Itch (1955). With her breathy voice and hourglass figure, Monroe became a much-admired international star.

Tired of bubbly, dumb blonde roles, Monroe moved to New York City to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors’ Studio. She returned to the screen in the dramatic comedy Bus Stop (1956), playing a saloon singer kidnapped by a rancher who has fallen in love with her. She received mostly praise for her performance.

In 1959, Monroe returned to familiar territory with the wildly popular comedy Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. She played Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, a singer who hopes to marry a millionaire in this humorous film in which Lemmon and Curtis pretend to be women. They are on the run from the mob after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and hide out with an all-girl orchestra featuring Monroe. Her work on the film earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy.

Reunited with John Huston, Monroe starred opposite Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in The Misfits (1961). Set in Nevada, this adventure drama features Monroe who falls for Gable’s cowboy, but battles him over the fate of some wild mustangs. This was her last completed film.

In 1962, Monroe was dismissed from Something’s Got to Give—also starring Dean Martin—for missing so many days of filming. According to an article in The New York Times, the actress claimed that the absences were due to illness. Martin declined to make the film without her so the studio shelved the picture.

Her professional and personal life seemed to be in turmoil. Her last two films, Let’s Make Love (1960) and The Misfits (1961) were box office disappointments, and she got herself fired from her last project. In her personal life, she had a string of unsuccessful marriages and relationships. Her 1954 marriage to baseball great Joe DiMaggio only lasted nine months, and she was wed to playwright Arthur Miller from 1956 to 1961. There have also been rumors that she was involved with President John F. Kennedy and/or his brother Robert around the time of her death.

At only 36 years old, Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962, at her Los Angeles home. An empty bottle of sleeping pills were found by her bed. There has been some speculation over the years that she may have been murdered, but it was officially ruled as a drug overdose.

During her career, Monroe’s films grossed more than $200 million. She still remains popular today as an icon of sex appeal and beauty.

Source

James Dean Biography

Name: James Dean
Date of birth: 8 February 1931
Place of birth: Marion, Indiana, USA
Date of death: 30 September 1955
Place of death: Cholame, California, USA. (road accident)
Birth name: James Byron Dean
Nickname: Jimmy Dean
Height: 5' 8

James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 - September 30, 1955) was an American actor, born in Marion, Indiana and raised in Fairmount, Indiana. Dean began his career on the New York stage, and did several episodes of such early-1950s episodic television progams such as Kraft Television Theater, Danger, and General Electric Theater. His rave reviews in Andre Gide's The Immoralist led to his being called to Hollywood and film stardom.

He appeared in several uncredited bit roles in such forgettable films as Sailor Beware, but finally gained recognition and success in 1955 in his first starring role, that of Cal Trask in East of Eden, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He followed this up in rapid succession with two more starring roles, in Rebel Without a Cause, also in 1955, and in the 1956 production of Giant, for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award.

Dean died in a road accident in a Porsche Spyder 356, before Giant was released. He is buried in Park Cemetery in his home town of Fairmount. He is one of only five people to be nominated for Best Actor for his first feature role, and the only person to be nominated twice after his death.

Dean epitomized the rebellion of 1950s teens, especially in his role in Rebel Without a Cause. Many teenagers of the time modeled themselves after him, and his death cast a pall on many members of his generation. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed James Dean into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.

James Dean is interred in the Park Cemetery, Fairmount, Indiana.

Frank Sinatra Biography

Frank Sinatra has been called the greatest popular singer of the century. Whether that is true, in a century that also offers us Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and many others is, of course, a matter of personal emotional choice and, therefore, unknowable. What can be said is that under the intense and fickle scrutiny of the pop marketplace for nearly two-thirds of a century, Sinatra's music was in the air the world breathed and fell out of fashion only long enough for the deserters either to grow up or recognize that what was offered in its place was almost always trash by comparison.

Sinatra was born Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J., and as a schoolboy nursed ambitions to be a journalist. The earliest known example of Sinatra on record come from his 1935 performance on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, in which he was matched with three other aspirants to sing "Shine." After the program they were sent out as a group, the Hoboken Four, on a Major Bowes road show.

Sinatra touched the big time in 1939 when Harry James, fresh out of the Benny Goodman band and not yet a major star in him own right, hired him to be vocalists in his new band. In August he recorded "All Or Nothing At All" with James, but the record would not become a major hit until Columbia reissued it during the recording ban in 1943. Sinatra was on a fast trajectory to the top himself. He left James to take an offer from Tommy Dorsey, with whom he recorded more than 90 songs before he left. The Dorsey years connected him to Axel Stordahl, who would arrange and conduct the first four Sinatra records under his own name in 1942 and become his chief musical architect for the next decade. He also made two movies with Dorsey, Las Vagas Night at Paramount and Ship Ahoy at MGM. But aside from two pictures with Gene Kelly, Sinatra's film career would be of passing interest until the 1950s.

The band singer period ended in September 1942. When Sinatra went out on as a soloist, it was to join the stock company of vocalists on the weekly "Lucky Strike Hit Parade." But there was buzz in the air about Sinatra, and it burst wide open when in 1943 when he was booked as a supporting act to Goodman at the Paramount Theater. Goodman introduced him, turned to kick off his band, and before he could lower his arm heard an ear-shattering scream of 3,000 mostly female fans explode behind him. "What they hell is that?" Goodman muttered.

During the bobby-sox years, Sinatra recorded for Columbia and turned out a steady flow of romantic ballads backed by Stordahl's tasteful orchestrations. But nothing as intense as the Sinatra phenomenon of the '40s could sustain indefinitely. The energy ran out of the Sinatra boom and by the 1952, it is said, he was washed up.

With the '40s behind him, however, the stage was set for his golden age. Capitol Records signed him up and concentrated on marketing him to young adults through carefully planned long playing albums organized around a mood, an idea, a feeling, a concept. In the Wee Small Hours, crafted by Nelson Riddle, became the matrix for his recording career from then on. Among the ballad albums, All Alone, arranged by Gordon Jenkins in 1962, stands in a class by itself for its stark sense of melancholy.

After Wee Small Hours, Sinatra turned to develop a side of his musical personality that had never been exploited -- the swinging Sinatra doing upbeat tempos against jazz-styled big band charts that caught some of the feeling that the new Count Basie band was generating on the instrumental side.

The albums and a string of successful films took Sinatra into the '60s at the top of his fame and form. He played the Newport Jazz Festival in the '60s, recorded with the Basie and Ellington, and played the Chairman to a colorful Clan that included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis and other chums. Talent was the admission ticket.

Yet, the force of youth movement and rock music in the late '60s and early '70s seemed to shake his own confidence in his own hipness, and he tried to embrace some of the new material. But after a period of retirement and a few false starts in the recording studio, he returned to form doing the kind of music that told stories worth telling. In the '90s his stubbornness paid off. The youth icons of the '60s and '70s finally came to him to sing his song on his terms. Duets may have received mixed critical reaction, but once again Sinatra was king of the hill, scoring the largest album sales of his career.

Sinatra received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983. He died May 14, 1998, at the age of 82.

In 1998, Sinatra was elected by the Readers into the Down Beat Hall of Fame.

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Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong (1918 – 23 October 2007)

Lim Goh Tong, who built a hilltop casino in Malaysia and turned it into Asia's biggest publicly traded gaming company, died on 23rd October 2007. He was 90. He was a prominent wealthy Malaysian Chinese businessman.

The founder of Kuala Lumpur-based Genting Bhd. and Malaysia's third-richest person with a net worth estimated to be 4.2 billion USD making him the 204th richest person in the billionaire list compiled by Forbes, died peacefully after a short illness.

Early Life

Born in 1918 in Anxi, a mountainous county in South Eastern Fujian province, China, Lim Goh Tong was the fifth child in his family. His father was Lim Shi Quan and his mother Goh Ban. He has an elder brother, three elder sisters, a younger sister and a younger brother. Lim was born into a rustic environment in a village, during that time, China was in a period of turmoil and unrest after the Xinhai Revolution, but life was relatively sheltered for Lim in the village. He grew up peacefully and had the opportunity of studying in school. However, disaster struck and his father passed away when he was 16. Lim was forced to leave school and being the eldest son, he had to take over the heavy burden of feeding his family.

As China's situation was becoming worse, Lim Goh Tong decided to take the plunge in venturing out to Malaysia (known as Malaya at that time) following his cousin's footstep. He left China through Xiamen in early February 1937 at the age of 19. He worked for his uncle as a carpenter in the first two years, learning the Malay language in the meantime. After gaining experience he went on to become a building sub-contractor and completed his first job of building a two-storey school. He returned to Anxi in 1940, but went back to Malaya the next year amidst a deteriorating war environment.

Career and Business

The Japanese invaded Malaya in 1942 and caused Lim to have a few near-death experiences. During the early Japanese Occupation, he earned a living as a vegetable farmer, but decided to switch to petty trading for a better living. Later on Lim ventured into scrap-metal and hardware trading. When the Japanese Occupation ended, there was an urgent demand for heavy machinery for resumed operations in mines and rubber plantations, Lim seized the opportunity and engaged in second-hand machinery trading, making his first fortune.

From used machinery trading, Lim strayed into iron mining fortuitously. Lim joined as a partner in an iron mining company which couldn't settle the outstanding payment of two bulldozers with him, and this proved to be a successful venture as he earned a substantial amount of profit from the mining industry, including forming a joint-venture tin mining company which was one of the first Chinese tin companies to utilize dredges in mining tin.

While dealing in heavy machinery, Lim accumulated a wide range of reconditioned machines as well as a substantial amount of cash to move into construction and related industries. In the name of his family construction company, Kien Huat Private Limited, Lim began taking on several contracting jobs with help and guidance from his uncles. Kien Huat won accolades and became recognized as one of the leading construction companies after successfully completing many major projects. Among the biggest projects completed was the Ayer Itam Dam, the first time a local contractor had been given a construction job of such magnitude.

Lim faced the brink of bankruptcy when construction work was facing problems in the Kemubu Irrigation Scheme, but managed to overcome the obstacles and completed the project.

Developing Genting Resort

The idea of building a hilltop resort was first conceived when Lim Goh Tong was having a dinner in the Cameron Highlands. As he was enjoying the soothing cool breeze of the Cameron Highlands, an idea struck him that as the standard of living rose steadily in Malaysia, more and more people would visit mountain resorts for relaxation and recreation, but Cameron Highlands was too far away from the capital city Kuala Lumpur, therefore building a mountain resort nearer to Kuala Lumpur would have great business potential.

After doing some research, Lim found Gunung (mountain in Malay) Ulu Kali at a place called Genting Sempah to be an ideal location for his plan. He formed an expedition and explored the place, collecting a wealth of data on the topography, drainage, soil conditions and other relevant aspects of the region, this proved to be very useful in drawing up plans for developing the resort.

Upon conceiving this idea, many naysayers were skeptical of Lim turning a wilderness into a tourist resort. Most thought it was really risky and reckoned Lim who was financially comfortable to be foolish to invest heavily in money and time to develop Genting, but Lim brushed off all these negativities and went ahead firmly with his plan.

After getting approvals from the Federal and State governments, Lim began the project in the face of a colossal task. Among the problems were building the access road towards the hilltop, water and electricity supplies, sewerage system and fire safety. Lim managed to build the access road towards the summit in three years when it was estimated to take fifteen years. Several sources of water in the mountain were identified, water supply was secured by building water-collection stations and water filtration plants with treated water stored in reservoirs. Electricity is supplied through a central electricity generation system with 12 big generators.

During the construction, Lim survived six close brushes with death. Meanwhile, Lim had to administer another major project in Kelantan, the Kemubu Irrigation Scheme at the same time. This stretched his physical endurance to the limits as he had to shuttle between Kuala Lumpur and Kelantan and he worked seven days a week.

During the Genting project, Lim spent all he had without earning any income. He sold an 810-hectare rubber estate to raise RM2.5 million. In addition, he invested all the money he had made from iron mining, sub-contracting and hardware businesses. The project was a heavy drain on Lim's finances. When asked to invest in this project, Lim's friends turned him down and counselled him to drop the entire scheme instead.

Genting was granted the only casino licence after Tunku Abdul Rahman, the prime minister of Malaysia then, visited Genting Highlands and commended Lim's effort to develop a resort contributing to Malaysia's tourism industry without government help.

Lim managed to obtain a pioneer status for Genting Highlands and tax incentives despite its resort development not qualifying for it. He did so by convincing the government that tax incentives in the early stage of development of Genting Highlands were not only vital for them but also profitable to the government later on.

The whole Genting project was completed in January 1971, but prior to officially commencing business, Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding areas were hit by the worst rainstorms in a century, the road to Genting was closed by landslides at 180 locations, the damaged sections took four months to repair. Genting opened its door for business on 8 May 1971.

In the next 30 years, Lim continued to develop and expand Genting Highlands beyond its original idea of a hotel with basic tourist facilities. Among the projects were the construction of more hotels, indoor and outdoor theme parks, and a convention centre. A new road was built to shorten the journey to Genting from the northern states, and RM120 million was invested to widen a 10 km stretch of the access road to reduce congestion. Another RM128 million was spent on constructing a cable car system to provide visitors with an alternative mode of transportation.

In 1993, at the suggestion of Tun Mahathir, the prime minister of Malaysia then, a township was developed on an 81-hectare piece of land around the site of the Genting Skyway cable car station. It was named Gohtong Jaya after Lim as a token of remembrance for his efforts in the development of Genting Highlands.

As of now, Genting Highlands is one of the most successful Casino resorts in the world and is one of the primary tourist attractions in Malaysia. Lim's company, Genting Group operates Genting Highlands and has diversified into many other industries such as plantations, property, paper, power generation, oil and gas exploration and cruise boat industries. In the process new company brands were created that have become distinctive names in their respective fields, namely Asiatic, Genting Sanyen (paper manufacturing) and Star Cruises.

On 31 December 2003, Lim handed his chairmanship of Genting Group over to his son, Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay.

Personal Life

Lim Goh Tong was married to Lee Kim Hua, together they had six children and nineteen grandchildren.The six children are Lim Siew Lay, Siew Lian, Siew Kim, Tee Keong, Kok Thay and Chee Wah.

Throughout his life Lim has had a few medical crises, among them were a malignant tumour and cardiovascular problems, which he pulled through after several surgeries.

Lim wrote his autobiography "My Story - Lim Goh Tong" and it was published in 2004. In the book he wrote about his early life, how he started off with nothing to building a world-class casino resort through hard work and perseverance confounding skeptics, and the people he acknowledges.

Achievement and Awards

Lim Goh Tong had won many awards together with his company Genting Group for his entrepreneurship and his contribution, among them were:

Malaysian Entrepreneurs Award 1985

Manager of the Year Award 1986

Business Achiever of the Year Award 1994

Number 1 ranking of 10 Malaysian Leading Companies 1996

The Best Employer Award 1996

He was conferred the title "Tan Sri" by the government of Malaysia on 6 June 1979 in recognition to the contribution he has made to the country.

In 1978, Lim Goh Tong set up Yayasan Lim, a family foundation that donates regularly to educational and medical institutions, old folk's homes, various organisations for the physically handicapped and other charitable causes.

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Ritchie Valens

Name: Ritchie Valens
Variant Name: Richard Steven Valenzuela
Birth Date: May 13, 1941
Death Date: February 3, 1959
Place of Birth: Pacoima, California, United States
Place of Death: Clear Lake, Iowa, United States
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Hispanic American
Gender: Male
Occupations: performer, songwriter

In a recording career that spanned less than two years and produced only one album released during his lifetime, Ritchie Valens (1941-1959), born Richard Steven Valenzuela, has had an enduring influence on rock 'n roll music despite the fact that he died before his eighteenth birthday in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of rockers Buddy Holly and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper). Valens's music is admired for his gritty proto-punk, garage-rock guitar style, lack of sentimentality, and embracement of his Hispanic heritage, which are apparent in his most successful hit single "La Bamba."

With the concurrent deaths of Holly and Valens, it has been argued that the evolution of the rock 'n roll genre stalled until the Beatles (a band whose name was inspired by the name of Holly's band, the Crickets) took up where the two American performers left off. Valens, inspired by Holly and Eddie Cochran to write and play guitar on his own compositions, displayed a tremendous degree of potential as a songwriter, guitarist, and showman as evidenced by the performances captured on his two studio albums, Ritchie Valens (1959) and Ritchie (1959), and a live recording, Ritchie Valens in Concert at Pacoima Junior High (1960). These recordings inspired such later guitarists and songwriters as diverse as The Ramones's Johnny Ramone, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, and Los Lobos's David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas. Such was Valens's influence on Los Lobos that the band re-recorded two of his biggest hits for the soundtrack of the Valens's biographic motion picture La Bamba (1987), which revitalized interest in Valens's life and music.

Born in East Los Angeles

Valens was raised in the Los Angeles suburb of Pacoima, the son of Joseph "Steve" Valenzuela, who worked at times as a tree surgeon, miner, and horse trainer. Valens's mother, Concepcion "Connie" Valenzuela, worked in a munitions plant and had one son, Robert, from a previous marriage. The parents separated when Valens was three years old, and the young man spent much of his time with his father who introduced his son to blues, flamenco, and other traditional Mexican music and taught his son how to play guitar. The heavy ethnicity of the Los Angeles area also exposed him to the rhythm and blues music of such acts as the Drifters, the Penguins, Bo Diddley (Elias McDaniel), and, perhaps most importantly, Little Richard, as well as the rock 'n roll music of Holly, Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley.

When Joseph Valenzuela died of diabetes-related complications, Valens lived for a while with his uncle, Henry Felix, in Santa Monica, California, before moving back to stay with his mother, step-brother and two younger step-sisters in Pacoima. He continued to pursue his musical interests, studying guitar and listening to recordings by Chuck Berry, Richard, Presley, and others, while learning traditional Mexican songs from his relatives. He practiced and entertained his friends at Pacoima Junior High during lunch hours, refining the guitar skills and vocal prowess that led to an invitation to join The Silhouettes.

The Silhouettes

When he was sixteen years old, Valens accepted The Silhouettes's invitation to join the band as guitarist and singer. The racially integrated group included African American and Japanese American musicians who played local high-school dances, church social functions, and neighborhood parties. Other members of the band included vibes player Gil Rocha, who was twenty-one years old and often credited with instilling a sense of professionalism within the band. Valens shared vocal responsibilities with female vocalists Emma Franco and Phyllis Romano. His tenure with The Silhouettes is credited with assisting him overcome stage fright and shyness and led him to be nicknamed "The Little Richard of Pacoima" for one of his chief stylistic influences. His stage demeanor, however, was reportedly far more reserved than Little Richard's. Other writers claim that Valens's exhibited more of a Bo Diddley "shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits" rhythmic influence, but in either instance, it is clear that Valens was pioneering the use of rhythmic guitar as a lead rock 'n roll instrument, a style that is also used to good effect by guitarists Pete Townshend, Robbie Robertson, and Johnny Ramone as well as hundreds of guitarists in lesser-known garage and punk bands.

Bob Keane and Del-Fi Records

In May 1958, Valens auditioned for Bob Keane, the owner of Del-Fi Records. Recording at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, Valens cut his first single, "Come On, Let's Go." Although it is recognized by contemporary critics as a classic rock 'n roll song, it failed to chart in the top-40 upon its release.

Valens's second recording session yielded a two-sided hit single, "Donna" and "La Bamba." The first song was written by Valens for his high-school girlfriend and was rush-released after Los Angeles's most popular radio station, KFWB, broadcast a test-pressing of the song to overwhelming positive response. A softly sung guitar ballad with simple lyrics and guitar-chord changes, "Donna" inspired a whole generation of feminine-named songs from Neil Sedaka's "Oh, Carol!" to Randy and the Rainbows "Denise."

Rock critic Lester Bangs summed up the appeal of "Donna" in this way: "Valens sang with an unassuming sincerity that made him more truly touching than any other artist from his era. 'Donna' is one of the classic teen love ballads, one of the few which reaches through layers of maudlin sentiment to give you the true and unmistakable sensation of what it must have been like to be a teenager in that strange decade." Bangs continued: "The agonizing sense of frustration which is so crucial to adolescent life is never very far from his lyrics, and in his best songs, like 'Donna' and 'Come On Let's Go,' it is right up front, just as it is in Eddie Cochran's classic 'Summertime Blues.'" "Donna" entered the pop-music charts on December 29, 1958, and became a number 2 hit with fourteen weeks on the Billboard American charts; it climbed to number 20 in Great Britain.

The single's flipside, however, may have contributed significantly to the success of "Donna." "La Bamba" was a huapango--a traditional Mexican folksong of celebration that is often sung at wedding receptions. Reputedly taught to Valens by his cousin, Dickie Cota, "La Bamba" is the song that became most closely associated with the singer, guitarist, and songwriter. While it rose to only Number 22 on the Billboard American charts, the song combines a flamenco-influenced lead guitar riff to a more visceral garage-band rhythm, resulting in one of rock 'n roll's seminal records of the 1950s.

All three singles were collected on the album Ritchie Valens, which was released February 12, 1959, slightly more than one week after Valens's death. In October 1959, however, Del-Fi Records released a second album of Valens's recordings, Ritchie, which yielded no hit singles but remains essential to fans of 1950s rock, proto-punk, and garage rock. Del-Fi also released Ritchie Valens in Concert at Pacoima Junior High, which included live concert versions of "Come On, Let's Go," and "Donna" and cover versions of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" and the Mexican folksong "Malaguena." Reviewing the record, Bangs wrote: "Richie Valens was a quiet, underrated yet enormously influential member of that handful of folk visionaries who almost single-handedly created rock and roll in the Fifties.... It is a dignified, sincere memorial and a beautiful document out of the Fifties, but it is also a great rock and roll recording in its own right, because Richie Valens himself was a great artist." Numerous repackages of Valens's music have been released since his death.

Played with the Big Boys

Capitalizing on the success of "Donna," the upcoming release of his first album, and the forthcoming release of "La Bamba" as a single in its own right, Valens was asked to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand and Alan Freed's Christmas Show in New York in December 1958. He also filmed an appearance in the 1959-released film, Go, Johnny, Go, in which he appears with Freed alongside performances by Cochran and Jackie Wilson.

In January 1959, Valens joined Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Big Bopper, and Dion and the Belmonts on a package-concert tour organized by Clark, called "The Winter Dance Party." Such package shows were popular during the 1950s and 1960s and typically featured two shows every evening that allowed each act fifteen minutes to one-half hour to perform their hits. After a performance on February 2, 1959, several of the performers elected to fly in a plane chartered by Holly rather than ride on the tour bus with a broken heater in sub-zero temperatures.
Valens earned a seat on the plane by winning a coin toss with Crickets guitarist Tommy Allsop and was killed along with Holly, the Big Bopper, and the twenty-one-year-old pilot when the plane crashed in a cornfield.

Enduring Popularity

Since his death in 1959, Valens's music and life have enjoyed renewed interest through the song "American Pie" by Don McLean, which presents the fatal plane crash as an allegory for lost innocence, and through the heavily fictionalized film biography La Bamba, featuring actor Lou Diamond Phillips as Valens. The film's title track, performed by the band Los Lobos, became a number one hit single the same year. Valens's name also appeared in music news when Led Zeppelin songwriter and guitarist Jimmy Page was sued for plagiarizing Valens's "Ooh! My Head" for the British band's song "Boogie with Stu." Page, who acknowledged Valens as "my first guitar hero," settled the suit for an undisclosed sum in 1978.

Brooke Ellison

Brooke Ellison and her mother, Jean.











Brooke Ellison (20 October 1978) is the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard University. In 2000, she was selected by her fellow students to speak at the University's commencement ceremonies.

Ellison was struck by a car in 1990 at age 11, while crossing a street on her first day of junior high school, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down and ventilator-dependent. Brooke and her mother, Jean Ellison, live with their family in Stony Brook, New York.

Ellison graduated from Ward Melville High School in 1996 with high honors, and was accepted by Harvard. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor of science in cognitive neuroscience in 2000, and a masters degree in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2004. Ellison is currently a doctoral candidate in political psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Ellison's struggles are depicted in The Brooke Ellison Story directed by fellow quadriplegic Christopher Reeve.

Brooke Ellison ran for State Senate in 2006 but was defeated by 60% vote against the Republican incumbent John Flanagan who has become a favorite among his constituents. It has been speculated that Ms. Ellison's limited experience in public policy was a big factor with swing voters, and many in the sentorial district felt she had poorly grounded reasons for replacing John Flanagan, who has dutifully served the majority Republican district for 6 years. Ms. Ellison has not commented on whether or not she intends to run for office again.

One of Ellison's principal issues is her support for embryonic stem cell research. She serves on the advisory board of the Genetics Policy Institute.

See also Brooke Ellison Website.

The Brooke Ellison Story (2004)

Based on the true life story of Brooke Ellison, this moving drama was directed for A&E by Christopher Reeve, and was the last film he made before his tragic and untimely death. Lacey Chabert (MEAN GIRLS) stars as the title character, who at the age of 11 was hit by a car, an accident that would change the life of the previously active child. Suffering severe head trauma and an injury to her spinal cord, Lacey was not expected to survive, yet she emerged from the hospital triumphant and determined to live a life that was as close to normal as possible. Returning to school, Lacey was accompanied every day by her mother, Jean (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, THE PERFECT STORM, MY LIFE SO FAR), who attended classes with her daughter throughout her accomplished academic career. Lacey ultimately graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, and delivered a heart wrenching and inspiring speech to commemorate the occasion. This is a warm family saga about the strength of the mother-daughter bond, and the power of courage and determination in the face of adversity.

Overview: Walk The Line (2005)

Synopsis

The early years in the life and career of music legend Johnny Cash, whose work transcended musical boundaries to reach out to everyone. A testament to making art and music and being young, the film explores the world he came from and his experiences beginning a career during the birth of rock and roll. It also is a love story detailing Cash’s burgeoning relationship with June Carter.

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Patrick, Ginnifer Goodwin, Dallas Roberts, Ridge Canipe, Frank Hoyt Taylor, Tyler Hilton

Director: James Mangold

Genre: Drama

Release Date: November 18, 2005

Johnny Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003)

The son of Southern Baptist sharecroppers, Cash began playing guitar and writing songs at age 12. He performed frequently on radio station KLCN in Blytheville, Arkansas.

Cash moved to Detroit in his late teens and worked there until he joined the Air Force as a radio operator in Germany. He left the Air Force and married Vivian Liberto in 1954; the couple settled in Memphis, where Cash sold appliances and attended radio announcers' school.

With the Tennessee Two -- guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant -- he began recording for Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1955. The trio recorded "Cry, Cry, Cry" #14 in 1955, and followed it with "Folsom Prison Blues" #5 in 1956. Later in 1956 came Cash's most enduring hit, the million-seller: "I Walk the Line" #17 in 1956.

Cash moved near Ventura, California in 1958, and signed with Columbia. He released a number of successful country and pop hits, among them "Ring of Fire" #1 in 1963, written by June Carter of the Carter Family and Merle Kilgare. By then, he had left his family and moved to New York's Greenwich Village. After a serious auto accident and a near fatal overdose, his wife divorced him. By then Cash had moved to Nashville, where he became friends with Waylon Jennings.

Not long after his arrival in Nashville, Cash began a liaison with June Carter, who helped him get rid of his drug habit by 1967 and reconverted him to fundamentalist Christianity. By the time Cash and Carter married in early 1968, they had begun working together regularly. They had hit duets with "Jackson" #2 in 1967, "Long-Legged Guitar Pickin' Man" #6 in 1967, and versions of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me,"Babe" #4 in 1964 and Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter" #2 in 1970. Cash's 1968 live album, "At Folsom Prison" #13, became a million-seller in 1968. Cash had a 1969 hit with Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue" #2, a track from Johnny Cash at San Quentin, his bestselling album. The live LB was #1 for four weeks.

In 1970 Cash performed at the Nixon White House. He and June Carter traveled to Israel in 1971 to make a documentary, "Gospel Road." Cash continued to tour and make hits including "A Thing Called Love" #2 in 1972 and "One Pieceat a Time" #1 in 1976. He also became active in benefit work, particularly on behalf of prisoners, Native American rights, and evangelist Billy Graham's organization.

Three years later Cash hooked up with three other campadres -- Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson -- to form the Highwaymen, releasing Highwayman in 1985. The Highwaymen performed together sporadically throughout the late Eightiesand Nineties, recording Highwayman 2 in 1990. They released The Road Goes On Forever produced by Don Was, in 1995. Throughout these years, Cash turned to acting, in a slew of Western-themed movies and TV shows. He also suffered from health problems, and underwent heart surgery and drug treatment for an addiction to painkillers.

Already a member of the Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame Cash has more than 400 songs to his credit and the Country Music Hall of Fame. Cash was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Also later that year came the release of the critically acclaimed boxed set, "The Essential Johnny Cash."Johnny passed away in 2003 due to health complications only a few months after his beloved soul mate June died.

Overview: Aviator (2004)

Synopsis
The Aviator is about the early life of Howard Hughes. It begins as a young Hughes directs one of Martin Scorsese's favorite films, "Hell's Angels". Hughes was so obsessed with perfection in the aerial sequences that he waits forever for perfect conditions, right down to cloud formations. The film ends in 1946, when Hughes was still a dashing young man and romancing actresses like Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: John Logan (written by)

Release Date: 30 December 2004 (Malaysia)

Genre: Biography/Drama

Producers: Michael Mann, Sandy Climan, Graham King and Charles Evans Jr.

Executive Producer: Chris Brigham

Director of Photography: Robert Richardson

Production Designer: Dante Ferretti

Costume Designer: Sandy Powell

Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker

Cast: Howard Hughes - Leonardo DiCaprio, Katherine Hepburn - Cate Blanchett, Ava Gardner - Kate Beckinsale, Glenn Odekirk - Matt Ross, Errol Flynn - Jude Law, Noah Dietrich - John C Reilly, Jean Harlow - Gwen Stefani, Juan Trippe - Alec Baldwin, Senator Owen Brewster - Alan Alda, Kit, Katherine Hepburn's Mother - Frances Conroy, Jack Frye - Danny Huston, Faith Domerque - Kelli Garner, Johnny Meyer - Adam Scott, Professor Fitz - Ian Holm

Howard Hughes

"I am determined to elect a president of our choosing this year and one who will be deeply indebted, and who will recognize his indebtedness. Since I am willing to go beyond all limitations on this, I think we should be able to select a candidate and a party who knows the facts of political life.... If we select Nixon, then he, I know for sure knows the facts of life." -- from handwritten memos by Howard Hughes, early in the 1968 presidential campaign.

Best known for
Aviator, movie producer, billionaire, hypochondriac.

Born
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr., December 24, 1905, in Houston.

Family
Mother: Allene (Gano) Hughes (died March 29, 1922); Father: Howard Robard Hughes, Sr., founder of Hughes Tool Company (died January 14, 1924); Uncle: father's brother Rupert, a writer for Samuel Goldwyn's movie studios; Wives: Houston socialite Ella Rice (married June 1, 1925, divorced in 1929); Actress Jean Peters (married 1957, divorced 1970); Hughes often dated Hollywood actresses in the 1930s, especially Katherine Hepburn.

Education
Hughes attended private school in Boston, where he was better at golf than classwork. He was attending Thacher School in California when his mother died. In California, Hughes spent time with his uncle, Rupert, who inspired his later interest in filmmaking. Hughes never graduated from high school. Nonetheless, his father arranged for him to sit in on classes at Cal Tech by donating money to the school. Afterward, Howard returned to Houston and enrolled at Rice Institute (now Rice University). Howard, Sr. died suddenly a few weeks after his son turned eighteen. Young Howard inherited much of the family estate and dropped out of Rice.

Profession
Family business: Uncle Rupert supervised Howard's part of the estate and interests in the Hughes Tool Company until he was twenty-one. Family quarrels led Howard to have company lawyers buy out his relatives. A Houston judge and friend of his late father's granted Howard legal adulthood on December 26, 1924, allowing him to take over the tool company.

Career
Movies:
Following the summer of 1924, Howard and Ella moved to Hollywood to pursue Howard's interest in making movies. When his first attempt failed, he hired Noah Dietrich to head the movie subsidiary of his tool company, and Lewis Mileston as director. The new team won an academy award for Two Arabian Nights (1928). Their next film, Hell's Angels (1930), written and directed by Hughes and starring Jean Harlow, was the most expensive movie of its time at a cost of $3.8 million. This movie, about World War I aviators, lost $1.5 million at the box office but allowed Hughes to indulge his interest in flying. While shooting Hell's Angels, Hughes earned his pilot's license. Two later Hughes films tested the limits of public morality. Scarface (1932) was censored until Hughes sued to allow its release, and The Outlaw (1941) became controversial for its sexually explicit advertising and content, both featuring a sensational décolletage worn by a busty Jane Russell. Inspired by the excitement over The Outlaw, Hughes later took a break from airplane fuselage design to create the half-cup bra, modelled of course by his Hollywood discovery, Jane Russell. It was in the '30s that Hughes built the Texas Theater, the movie house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas in which Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in 1963. The closeness of both men to the CIA makes it all but certain that the Texas Theater would have become a clandestine meeting place for spies. Such use of movie theaters had long been a staple of espionage tradecraft, and other Hughes properties were put to similar use. Hughes owned the RKO movie studio from 1948 to 1955.

Aviation:
In 1932, Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company division of Hughes Tool. The company has pioneered many innovations in aerospace technology. But its origin was an attempt to finance the expensive conversion of a military plane into a racing plane. The next year, he achieved a false status by lobbying the Commerce Department to lower his pilot's license number from 4223 to 80. Charles Lindbergh's number was 69. The only real job Hughes ever had also came in 1933. He signed on as a co-pilot for American Airways. He applied under the name Charles W. Howard. The ruse was quickly discovered, however, and Hughes resigned. After entering and winning the 1934 All-America Air Meet in Miami, Hughes built and personally test-piloted the world's most advanced plane, the H-1. On September 13, 1935, he set a new speed record, taking the plane to 352 mph. Over the next two years, he set two new records with transcontinental flights. Between July 10 and 14, 1938, Hughes piloted a special Lockheed 14 with a crew of four on a flight around the world. He cut Lindbergh's New York to Paris record in half, and finished the trip in three days, nineteen hours and seventeen minutes. Houston's airport was renamed in his honor. As World War II approached, Hughes turned his full attention to building military aircraft. But his regard for secrecy and disregard for military protocol and standardized materials kept him from getting contracts. Henry J. Kaiser, the famous shipbuilder, helped Hughes get a contract to build three "flying boats" for $18 million in three months. Those terms proved impossible for Hughes. In the end, he produced only one of the planes after the war ended. It was flown only once on November 2, 1947, by Hughes himself. The public ridiculed him by calling the plane "The Spruce Goose." Another wartime contract for reconnaissance planes went similarly unfulfilled, and caused the deaths of two people when Hughes crashed during a test flight at Lake Mead. In 1947, the Senate investigated Hughes failure to meet his wartime contracts. In the 1950s and beyond, Hughes manufactured spy satellites.

Military-Industrial Complex:
Throughout the 1950s, as the power of three entities grew -- the Hughes empire, organized crime, and the new Central Intelligence Agency -- it became all but impossible to distinguish between them. By the end of the decade, Hughes' chief of staff, Robert Maheu, had orchestrated the CIA's dirtiest secret -- plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro with the help of two heads of organized crime. Vice President Richard Nixon was the White House action officer in the clandestine attempts to oust Castro. Zapata Off-Shore, the oil company owned by future CIA director and U.S. president George Bush after he split it off from Zapata Oil partner Hugh Liedtke in 1954, had a drilling rig on the Cay Sal Bank in 1958. These islands had been leased to Nixon supporter and CIA contractor Howard Hughes the previous year and were later used as a base for CIA raids on Cuba. Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy largely because of a scandal over a never repaid $205,000 "loan" Nixon's brother received from Hughes. As attorney general, Robert Kennedy secretly investigated the Hughes-Nixon dealings.

After Bobby Kennedy's assassination in 1968, Maheu and Hughes hired long-time Kennedy advisor Larry O'Brien along with other political insiders to protect their interests in Washington. In 1953, Hughes had founded the Hughes Medical Institute in Delaware as his sole act of philanthropy. By turning over all of the stock of Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, he made his billion-dollar-a-year weapons factory a tax-exempt charity. By 1969, that scam was about to be shut down by a Senate bill, which followed an investigation by fellow Texan Wright Patman, the powerful chairman of the House Banking Committee. But O'Brien lobbied his allies and got a loophole creating an exemption for "medical research organizations" like the Hughes Medical Institute.

President Nixon's downfall began when he ordered burglars to break into Larry O'Brien's office in 1972. At the time, O'Brien was both a Hughes employee and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, headquartered in the Watergate Hotel. The Watergate burglars happened to have been heavily involved in the covert anti-Castro operations (which Nixon oversaw as vice president). They were also deeply involved in the conspiracies which grew out of those operations; conspiracies which prevented any major political future for the Kennedy family, and led directly to Nixon's resurrection from political obscurity. The purpose of the break-in was never revealed because the Watergate scandal's investigations were sidetracked, likely on purpose, into a focus on multiple other high crimes by Nixon. Whatever the purpose of the break-in, Hughes was right in the middle of the major forces linking the conspiracies that resulted in the murders and character assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, and the Watergate scandal that toppled the Nixon administration.

During all of these political intrigues, arguments between Hughes and his employees continued to threaten military contracts and resulted in his firing his long-time associate Noah Dietrich in 1957. As a stockholder in Trans World Airways, Hughes lobbied for the airline's purchase of sixty-three jets in 1956. He sold his TWA stock in 1966 for $546 million when the company faced numerous lawsuits. That same year, Hughes moved to Las Vegas and began doing business there. Las Vegas organized crime interests were actively transferring casino ownership to frontmen with less tainted reputations.

Hughes took over Air West in 1970. (He was later indicted in the Air West takeover, but the case was dismissed.) Hughes was increasingly reclusive and decreasingly in control of his business dealings. Not even Nixon could contact him directly. Maheu's power was also declining. The CIA assassination plots had begun to leak to the press, requiring the government to distance itself from Maheu. Not only did he know too much, it was one of his associates, attorney Ed Morgan, who had leaked the story to columnist Jack Anderson. It was now Chester Davis, Raymond Holliday, and Bill Gay, the Hughes Tool Company executives who ran Hughes Nevada properties, who were contacted by the CIA when they wanted to build a CIA ship, the Glomar Explorer, to recover a sunken Soviet submarine.

In 1972, Hughes sold Hughes Tool Company's stock and renamed his company Summa Corporation, ending any remaining role in his business. His health deteriorated and his entourage of aids carted him to Panama, Canada, London and Acapulco. On June 5, 1974, a break-in occurred at Hughes' Romaine Street headquarters in Los Angeles. The theft of secret documents sent shockwaves through the U.S. intelligence community.

Death
Hughes died April 5, 1976, en route by private jet to a hospital in Houston. His drastically changed appearance and the fact that he had been seen by so few people for so long forced the Treasury Department to use fingerprints to identify his body. He left an estate estimated at $2 billion. Four hundred prospective heirs tried to inherit it but it eventually went to twenty-two cousins on both sides of his family. Texas, Nevada and California claimed inheritance-tax in disputes reviewed by the Supreme Court three times. Hughes Aircraft ended up in the hands of Hughes Medical Institute, which sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5 billion. Four hotels and six casinos in Las Vegas and Reno remained with Summa Corporation.

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