Ron O’Neal, a stage and film actor who rode the wave of blaxploitation movies in the early 1970s starring as the sartorially resplendent Harlem drug dealer in the 1972 hit “Superfly,” has died. He was 66. “Superfly,” director Gordon Park Jr.'s gritty, low-budget film about a cocaine dealer who beats the system and leaves the drug world a wealthy man, was a surprise box-office success in the summer of 1972.“He makes Shaft look like Little Jack Horner,” one girl, who had seen the film three times because the tall, handsome O’Neal was so “yummy,” told a reporter.
After moving to New York City in the mid-1960s, he taught acting in Harlem and performed in summer stock and off Broadway. He first gained recognition in 1970, starring in the Joseph Papp Public Theatre production of Charles Gordone’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “No Place To Be Somebody.” O’Neal’s work earned him the Obie, the Clarence Derwent, the Drama Desk and the Theater World awards. Among O’NeaI’s post-“Superfly” credits were the 1975 western “The Master Gunfighter,” co-starring Tom “Billy Jack” Laughlin; the 1979 thriller “When a Stranger Calls”; and the 1979 Chuck Norris action film “A Force of One.” Over the next two decades, he appeared in television miniseries and was a regular on the 1982-83 adventure TV series “Bring 'Em Back Alive.” He appeared for a year on the 1985-'89 series “The Equalizer” and returned to the stage, including playing Othello at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada.
Olivia Goldsmith, author of the popular comic novel ``The First Wives Club,’’ died late yesterday afternoon at Lenox Hill Hospital from complications related to anesthesia, said her literary agent, Nicholas Ellison. She was 54. On Wednesday she entered the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospitals for elective surgery to remove loose skin under her chin, Mr. Ellison said. As she went under anesthesia, she had a heart attack and the doctors were unable to get oxygen into her system, he said. She went into a coma, was transferred to Lenox Hill Hospital, and never recovered.
Her debut novel was The First Wives Club'' (Arrow, 1992), which playfully imagined the revenge of three women who had been dumped by their husbands for younger second wives. A best seller, that book was also made into a successful movie in 1996, starring Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler. Ms. Hawn played a flashy Hollywood diva who had plastic surgery to retain her youthful looks, but wound up with a decidedly comic outcome. Ms. Goldsmith wrote more than a half dozen humorous novels, including Switcheroo’’ (HarperCollins, 1998) and ``Young Wives’’ (HarperCollins, 2000).