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Feego wrote:

hearthesilence wrote:Christine Cavanaugh

My gosh! I was very familiar with Christine Cavanaugh's work, having grown up with both Rugrats and Dexter's Lab. I also remember her guest spot on Salute Your Shorts. I'm ashamed to say that I have still never seen Babe.

Yeah, this is a shock to me. I recognize her voice from Babe, but she was closest to my heart for her appearance in the 4th Season episode of The X-Files, "Small Potatoes" (written by Vince Gilligan) and being the voice of Jay Sherman's son in The Critic.

Feego wrote:I think the only film I've seen her in is The Great Ziegfeld, and that was about 12 or 13 years ago when I was in high school. All these years later, she's about all I remember about the movie, particularly her musical number in which she repeatedly pronounces the word "jolly" as "zholly," much to Ziegfeld's (William Powell) chegrin.

Her Oscar win for that film is notoriously unmerited, but she deserved her award the next year for the Good Earth, and it's a film well worth watching when the inevitable TCM tribute pops up

hearthesilence wrote:Christine Cavanaugh

Jesus, so young!

Seems based on a Twitter post days ago (two days after her death, far prior to the information being made public), which I won't link to here, the cause of death was a drug overdose.

One of the most distinct voices of my childhood, and I am far from alone there. Here's the fantastic The Critic episode "Marty's First Date" in its entirety.

colinr0380 wrote:Luise Rainer at 104, the first winner of consecutive Oscars. She won best actress for The Great Ziegfeld in 1936 and The Good Earth in 1937.

I was in the audience for the tribute the BFI held for her in January 2010, a few days after her hundredth birthday, with a Q & A following a screening of The Good Earth. She walked with the aid of a stick and had a man supporting one arm, and was clearly fairly deaf (and spoke with a strong German/Austrian accent) but seemed mentally sharp. She was obviously of the school of "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all" as this was her response to what it was like to work with Paul Muni on The Good Earth:

*silence*
*bows head*
*raises head again*
"I have answered!"

I agree that she deserved the Academy Award for The Good Earth, though it would have been amazing to see what Anna May Wong could have done in the role. But according to the twisted logic of the Hays Code era, having a Jew (Muni) playing a Chinese man opposite a Chinese-American (Wong) playing a Chinese woman would violate anti-miscegenation conventions, so the only answer was to prevent any appearance of "race-mixing" by having consistently "white" actors in the Chinese parts. A white actor could "be" Chinese in a film, but couldn't be "married to" another actor of Chinese descent on screen. Makes complete sense. 8-[
But Rainer was great in the part not only because of her clear acting talent but because she wasn't the kind of star personality like Garbo or Swanson who would have stuck out as out of place in every scene.

mfunk9786 wrote:Seems based on a Twitter post days ago (two days after her death, far prior to the information being made public), which I won't link to here, the cause of death was a drug overdose.

TMZ says leukemia.

Where?

colinr0380 wrote:Luise Rainer at 104, the first winner of consecutive Oscars. She won best actress for The Great Ziegfeld in 1936 and The Good Earth in 1937.

I remember my initial exposure to Rainer, as a boy watching "The Great Ziegfeld" on TV with my family one afternoon, and her first appearance, a half-hour or so into the movie. Who was this florid, actress-y, foreign-accented young woman, and what was she doing in a rather stuffy, frothy, old-fashioned musical, I wondered.

For the next hour or two, this teary-eyed, porcelain doll-like creature somehow seemed to jump off the screen in a way that nothing else in the movie quite did (and she had some pretty good competition in that one). Apparently, movie audiences of the time -- especially Academy members -- thought along the same lines. Amazing that her film career would be virtually over just two years later.

Born on January 12, Rainer almost made it to 105. Turner Classic Movies already has a line-up of seven of her films -- plus the 2010 TCM Film Festival appearance -- scheduled for that date.

mfunk9786 wrote:Where?

This article cites her Wikipedia page.

Where that isn't anywhere to be found. Nice work, USA Today.

Edward Herrmann

His voice was burned into my brain from an early age as the voice of Dodge, whenever the ads aired my dad would talk about his portrayal of FDR. I love his Tom Goes To The Mayor appearance

Definitely one of my favorite "That guy"s. RIP Lorelai Gilmore's Dad

Bummer. He emceed the Auburn Cord Dusenberg festival at least once, an annual event which takes place in the place of my birth.

PfR73 wrote:Edward Herrmann

Who is going to narrate all those History Channel shows now?

domino harvey wrote:Definitely one of my favorite "That guy"s. RIP Lorelai Gilmore's Dad

He has a great appearance in Homicide too!

Edward Herrmann completely brought to life the writing that made Richard Gilmore a complex human with a multitude of qualities and moods. He was aristocratic but never genuinely stuffy, and likeable without being predictable—kind, arrogant, fair, stubborn, distant, loving, passive-aggressive, whimsical, loyally siding with his wife in one scene but then drawing a line against her bullheaded "keeping-up-appearances" tendencies in the next. He was so believable as the father figure that a headstrong daughter would love, cut ties with, but keep coming back to, even as this led back to familiar conflicts and frustrations.
It was amazing to watch a TV series and find a character like this who was so nuanced he could've been written by Henry James. Bravo.

Stuart Scott.

A staple of my childhood, waking up every morning between 1994-1998 and watching Sportscenter before school, Stuart was a constant presence. Can't think of a celebrity I grew up with quite like Scott, and this one stings a lot. Didn't realize just how bad his cancer was, but it will be weird to never see him on ESPN again.

As cool as the other side of the pillow. Man. I had a similar childhood relationship with SportsCenter, and this, while expected every time he disappears from the spotlight, is awful.

Rememberances from colleagues. Rich Eisen's really tore me up.

René Vautier (link in French).

Gerry Fisher, somehow the only prominent British cinematographer not to live well past 95.