Lew Anderson, who was the final portrayer of Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody TV show, has died at the age of 84. Anderson was also known as a musician and bandleader.
Frankie Thomas, who played the title role in the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series of the 1950’s, was 85 when he passed away last week.
This page features short obituaries of Lou Carrol, who gave Richard Nixon the dog immortalized in Nixon’s “Checkers speech” of 1952; George Crile III, a producer for the 60 Minutes TV newsmagazine; Joan Diener, a Broadway actress famous for her roles in Kismet and Man of La Mancha; Sue Kunitomi Embrey, who was interned at Manzanar during World War II and later fought to have the relocation camp for Japanese-Americans declared a National Historic Site; Bill Strode, who won two Pulitzer Prizes as a photographer for the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky; and Johnnie Wilder Junior, who recorded such hits as Boogie Nights and Always and Forever as lead singer of the R&B band Heatwave in the 1970’s.
Dan Ross, who set a Super Bowl record for receptions by catching 11 passes (two for touchdowns) in the Cincinnati Bengals’ 1982 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, has died at the age of 49. Ross also played for the National Football League’s Seattle and Green Bay franchises after starring as a collegian at Boston’s Northeastern University.
Andrew Martinez, who gained some measure of fame in the 1990’s as the school’s “Naked Guy” while a student at the University of California’s flagship Berkeley campus, has died at the age of 33. Martinez, who was in the Santa Clara County Jail after a January fight at a halfway house where he had been living, apparently committed suicide while awaiting trial on two counts of battery and one count of assault with a deadly weapon.
I’ve been mulling over in my mind a new pool for 2007 - Celebrity Relationship Death Pool - point system based on how many months the couple was together before the tabloids broke the news of “trouble” - I’ll have the details ironed out in plenty of time
