Pernell Elvin Roberts died he was 81

Pernell Elvin Roberts died he was 81. Roberts was an American television actor and singer. He was best known for his roles as Ben Cartwright's eldest son, Adam Cartwright, on the western series Bonanza (a role he played from 1959 to 1965), and as chief surgeon, Dr. John MacIntyre, the title character on Trapper John, M.D. (1979-1986).
He was known for his activism, which included participation in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, and pressuring NBC to refrain from hiring whites to portray minority characters.

(May 18, 1928 – January 24, 2010)

During his high school years, Roberts sang in local USO shows. He attended, but did not graduate from, Georgia Tech then served for two years in the United States Marine Corps. He attended the University of Maryland but was not a stellar student. He began his acting career in off-Broadway and Broadway theatre in New York City. The young actor won a prestigious Drama Desk award in 1955 for his performance in an off-Broadway rendition of Macbeth. He then worked with the Arena Stage Company in Washington, D.C.
In 1958, Roberts guest-starred as Captain Jacques Chavez on the NBC adventure series Northwest Passage based on the life of Major Robert Rogers in the French and Indian War. He appeared with fellow guest star Fay Spain in the 1958 episode "Pick up the Gun" of Tombstone Territory. In 1959, he co-starred in the film Ride Lonesome.
He came to prominence playing Ben Cartwright's urbane eldest son, Adam, in the Western television series Bonanza. Despite the show’s success, he left after the sixth season in 1965 due to disagreements with the writers and a desire to return to legitimate theatre. Among other complaints, Roberts argued that a 34-year-old, educated, Eastern-born man would not be calling his father "Pa".

The writers tacitly agreed not to exceed three "Pa" references per episode. According to producer David Dortort in the February 2006 "Bonanza Gold" issue, Roberts also wanted to stop wearing his toupee. Since, in real life, there were fewer than thirteen years of age between Roberts and Lorne Greene, a bald Adam would not have translated well on screen.^{[citation needed]} Bonanza continued without Roberts for another eight seasons.
While performing in the series, Roberts recorded Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies, a folk music album which Allmusic calls "...the softer, lyrical side of folk music — pleasant and not challenging, but quite rewarding in its unassuming way."^[1] . The album has been released on RCA Victor LPM / LSP 2662 (1963), and was arranged by Dick Rosmini. The album presently is available on compact disc only as part of the fourth disc of the Bonanza 4-CD boxed set on Bear Family.^[2]
On the Bonanza box set albums, Roberts also sings "Early One Morning", "In the Pines", "The New Born King", "The Bold Soldier", "Mary Ann", "They Call the Wind Mariah", "Sylvie", "Lily of the West", "The Water is Wide", "Rake and a Ramblin Boy", "A Quiet Girl", "Shady Grove", "Alberta", and "Empty Pocket Blues". Roberts was the only trained/accomplished singer of the original Ponderosa clan. (However David Canary, who joined the cast in 1967, graduated as a voice major.) Blocker narrated intros and Landon held his own, while Lorne Greene's deep baritone voice scored big in songs such as "Ringo" (1964).


Roberts continued to do guest shots on TV shows such as The Big Valley, Mission: Impossible, The Wild Wild West, Gunsmoke, Mannix, The Odd Couple, Hawaii Five-O, and The Hardy Boys. His rich baritone voice was displayed when he played Jigger in an ABC television presentation of Carousel and Rhett Butler in the Los Angeles stage production of Scarlett.
He regained star status in the early 1980s while starring in the television series Trapper John, M.D. (1979-86). Roberts played the character almost twice as long as Wayne Rogers did (1972–1975) on the CBS M*A*S*H series.
In 1988, Roberts co-starred with Milla Jovovich in the TV movie The Night Train to Kathmandu. A guest appearance as Hezekiah Horn in the Young Riders episode "Requiem for a Hero" won a Western Heritage Award for Roberts in 1991.^[3]
In the 1980s/90s, playing off his Trapper John M.D. persona, Roberts was a TV spokesman for Ecotrin, a brand of analgesic tablets. He made his last TV appearance in 2001 on an episode of Diagnosis Murder, updating a Mannix character he had portrayed decades before.

Roberts married three times. His first marriage was in 1951 to Vera Mowry, a professor at Washington State University, with whom he had his only child (Jonathan Christopher Roberts); they later divorced.^[4] He married Judith Anna LeBreque on October 15, 1962^[5]; they divorced in 1971. His last marriage was to Kara Knack, whom he married in 1972; they divorced in 1996. Jonathan Roberts died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 38.
Roberts died of cancer at his home in Malibu, California on January 24, 2010, aged 81.^[6]
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Jean Simmons died she was 80.

Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE died she was 80. Simmons was an English actress who appeared predominantly in motion pictures, beginning with British-made films during and after World War II, followed mainly by Hollywood films from 1950.^[1]
Simmons appeared alongside many leading British and American male film stars during a long and successful career.

(31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010)

Born in Lower Holloway, London, England, to Charles Simmons and his wife Winifred (Loveland) Simmons, Jean Simmons began acting at the age of 14. During World War II, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe in Somerset.^[2] Her father, a physical education teacher (who had represented Great Britain in the 1912 Summer Olympics),^[3] taught briefly at Sidcot School, and sometime during this period Simmons followed her older sister on to the village stage and sang songs like "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow". Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, she was spotted by the director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood vehicle Give us the Moon.^[4] Prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946) and Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948). It was the experience of working on Great Expectations that caused her to pursue an acting career more seriously:

"I thought acting was just a lark, meeting all those exciting movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was lovely because we needed the money. But I figured I'd just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on."^[5]

Playing Ophelia in Olivier's Hamlet made her a star, though she was already well-known for her work in other British films, including her first starring role in the film adaptation of Uncle Silas and Black Narcissus (both 1947). Olivier offered her the chance to work and study at the Bristol Old Vic, advising her to play anything they threw at her to get experience; she was under contract to the Rank Organisation. In 1950 Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned the RKO studio in Hollywood.


In 1950, she married the English actor Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in several films, successfully making the transition to an American career. She made four films for Hughes, including Angel Face, directed by Otto Preminger. In 1953, she starred alongside Spencer Tracy in The Actress, a film that was one of her personal favourites. Among the many films she appeared in during this period were The Robe (1953), The Egyptian (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), (directed by her second husband, Richard Brooks), Spartacus (1960), and The Happy Ending (1969), again directed by Brooks and for which she received her second Oscar nomination.


By the 1970s, Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheim's well-reviewed musical A Little Night Music, then took the show to London, and thus originated the role of Desirée Armfeldt on the West End.^[6] Doing the show for three years, she said she never tired of Sondheim's music; "No matter how tired or off you felt, the music would just pick you up." For her appearance in the mini-series The Thorn Birds, she won an Emmy Award. In 1985 and 1986, she appeared in North & South. In 1988, she starred in The Dawning with Anthony Hopkins and Hugh Grant, and in 1989, she again starred in a miniseries, this time a version of Great Expectations, in which she played the role of Miss Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother. Simmons made a late career appearance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" as a witch-hunt-inspiring investigator named Admiral Norah Satie.

Jean Simmons was married twice: in 1950 to Stewart Granger, divorcing in 1960, and in 1960 to director Richard Brooks, divorcing in 1977. Both men were significantly older than Simmons but she has denied she was looking for a father figure. Her father had died when she was just sixteen but she said: "They were really nothing like my father at all. My father was a gentle, soft-spoken man. My husbands were much noisier and much more opinionated ... it's really nothing to do with age ... it's to do with what's there – the twinkle and sense of humour."^[7] And in a 1984 interview, given in Copenhagen at the time she was shooting the film Yellow Pages, she elaborated slightly on her marriages. "It may be simplistic, but you could sum up my two marriages by saying that, when I wanted to be a wife, Jimmy (Stewart Granger) would say: 'I just want you to be pretty.' And when I wanted to cook, Richard would say: 'Forget the cooking. You've been trained to act – so act!' Most people thought I was helpless – a clinger and a butterfly – during my first marriage. It was Richard Brooks who saw what was wrong and tried to make me stand on my own two feet. I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never be afraid to fail. Every time you get up in the morning, you are ahead." She had two daughters, Tracy Granger (born 1956) and Kate Brooks, one by each marriage – their names bear witness to Simmons' friendship with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Simmons moved to the East Coast in the late 1970s, briefly renting a home in the Litchfield County town of New Milford, Connecticut, and later to Santa Monica, California, where she lived until her death from lung cancer on the evening of Friday, January 22, 2010.^[8]
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Bobby Bragan died he was 92.

Robert Randall Bragan died he was 92. Bragan was a shortstop, catcher, manager, and coach in American Major League Baseball. He also was an influential executive in minor league baseball. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama.

(October 30, 1917 – January 21, 2010)

On August 16, 2005, Bragan came out of retirement to manage the independent Central League Fort Worth Cats for one game, making him — at 87 years, nine months, and 16 days old — the oldest manager in professional baseball annals (besting by one week Connie Mack, the manager and part owner of the Philadelphia Athletics). Always known as an innovator with a sense of humor — and an umpire-baiter — Bragan was ejected in the third inning of his "comeback", thus also becoming the oldest person in any capacity to be ejected from a professional baseball game. Bragan enjoyed the rest of the Cats' 11-10 victory from a more comfortable vantage point.
Bragan died on January 21, 2010, at his home in Fort Worth, Texas.^[1][2]
During his major league career, Bragan never skippered a game past his 49th birthday. He managed the Pittsburgh Pirates (1956-57), Cleveland Indians (1958)^[3], and Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves (1963-66)^[4], each time getting fired in the mid-season of his final campaign (in Cleveland, he lasted a total of only 67 games of his maiden season before his dismissal). His career record in the major leagues was below .500: 443-478 (.481).
But Bragan was highly respected as a minor league pilot, winning championships in 1948-49 at Fort Worth of the AA Texas League during a successful five-year run, and with the 1953 Hollywood Stars of the Open-Classification Pacific Coast League. A photograph of Bragan lying at the feet of an umpire who had ejected him, still arguing, was published in LIFE Magazine at the time. Bragan also was a major league coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Colt .45s.
Bragan was a protégé of Branch Rickey, the Hall of Fame front office executive, who hired him as an unproven young manager at Fort Worth when both were with the Brooklyn Dodgers and then brought Bragan to Hollywood and the Pittsburgh organization, where Rickey was general manager from 1951-55. Bragan started the 1948 season with Brooklyn, but Rickey wanted to bring up Roy Campanella from the minors. Rickey offered Bragan the managerial job with the Fort Worth Cats and he took over in July of ’48, remaining with the Cats for five years.
Ironically, Bragan had clashed with Rickey in 1947 over the Dodgers' breaking of the baseball color line after the major-league debut of Jackie Robinson. Bragan — the Dodgers' second-string catcher at the time — was one of a group of white players, largely from the American South, who signed a petition against Robinson's presence. He even asked Rickey to trade him. But Bragan quickly relented. "After just one road trip, I saw the quality of Jackie the man and the player," Bragan told mlb.com in 2005. "I told Mr. Rickey I had changed my mind and I was honored to be a teammate of Jackie Robinson." When Bragan attended Branch Rickey's funeral in 1965, he stated that he decided to attend because, "Branch Rickey made me a better man." [source: Baseball by Ken Burns] As a manager, Bragan earned a reputation for fairness and "color-blindedness." When he was the skipper of the Dodgers' Spokane Indians PCL farm club in 1959, Bragan played an influential role in helping Maury Wills, a speedy shortstop whose baseball career had stalled until he learned to switch hit under Bragan. Said former Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi, "Bobby would call six times a day and tell me over again how Wills had learned to switch-hit and how he was a great team leader, off and on the field, and how I was absolutely nuts if I didn't bring him up right away."^[5] Wills would fashion a 14-year MLB career and in 1962 set a new record for stolen bases in a season, with 104 thefts, breaking Ty Cobb's 47-year-old mark of 96.
Bragan began his seven-year (1940-44; 1947-48) major league playing career as a shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies, but by 1943, his first season with Brooklyn, he had learned how to catch and was for the most part a backup receiver for the Dodgers for the remainder of his MLB playing days. A right-handed batter, Bragan hit .240 in 597 games, with 15 career home runs.
In 1969, Bragan, a Fort Worth resident, began a new career chapter when he became president of the Texas League.^[6] He was so successful, in 1975 he was elected president of the minor leagues' governing body, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.
Upon completion of his three year term as president of the minor leagues, Bobby and his wife, Gwenn, returned home to Fort Worth, where they had lived since Branch Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers assigned him to manage the Fort Worth Cats in 1948. Bragan joined the Texas Rangers' front office in 1979 and continued to make appearances and speaking engagements on behalf of the ballclub well into his '80s.
After Gwenn Bragan’s death in 1983, Bobby married Roberta Beckman. It was Roberta who suggested to Bobby that he establish a scholarship foundation to encourage youth to do well in school and go on to college. With the financial seed money provided by Roberta, the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation [1] (BBYF) was established in 1991.
Roberta Beckman Bragan died in 1993. Bobby, being accustomed to a companion, married Betty Bloxom in 1995. Betty survives at this writing.
As he passed the 90 year mark, Bobby continued an active schedule, as the Chairman of the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation and making numerous appearances for civic organizations and businesses, including his beloved Fort Worth Cats as well as in schools, where he enjoyed entertaining and motivating students.
Each year, the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation honors outstanding athletes and executives for the achievements on and off of the playing field at the annual Bobby Bragan Gala to raise funds for the scholarships. Honorees have included Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, Larry King, Tommy LaSorda, Bobby Valentine, Bud Selig, Willie Mays, Lou Brock and Brooks Robinson.
Bragan came from a baseball family. Five of the six Bragan boys played baseball professionally. His late brother Jimmy was a minor league player and longtime coach and scout in major league baseball who himself was president of the AA Southern League during the 1980s. His brother Peter has owned and operated the Jacksonville Suns in the class AA Southern League for over 25 years and his late son, Bobby Bragan, Jr. operated the Elmira, NY ballclub in the New York-Penn League.
Robert Randall "Bobby" Bragan died at his Fort Worth home on January 21, 2010 at the age of 92 years, 2 months and 22 days.



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Jennifer Lyn Jackson died she was 40

Jennifer Lyn Jackson ^[3][1] died she was 40, Jackson was from Cleveland, Ohio, she was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for April 1989. She was also one of three finalists for the magazine's 35th Anniversary pictorial. Outtakes from her Playmate pictorial, which was shot by Arny Freytag,^[3] appeared in Playboy Special Editions

several times following her centerfold appearance.

(March 21, 1969 – January 22, 2010)

Jackson graduated from North Olmsted High School in 1986 and went on to study business and finance at Kent State University.^[4]

Jackson (age 38) in 2007 after she was arrested for disorderly conduct along with her husband James Thompson (52).

She was found dead by her husband, James Thompson, in her home in Westlake, Ohio on January 22, 2010 of an apparent drug overdose.^[1][2]


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Robert "Squirrel" Lester died he was 67

Robert "Squirrel" Lester has died he was 67.( first on the right) was the second tenor, in the Chicago based singing group, The Chi-Lites.

(August 16, 1942 – January 22, 2010)

Lester was born in McComb, Mississippi.He was included in the recent Chi-Lites line-up, along with group leader Marshall Thompson, lead vocalist Frank Reed, and backing vocalist, Tara Thompson.

An inductee at the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, Lester was 67 years old at the time of his death. The Chi-lites were originally called the Hi-Lites, but had to change their name as there was a similarity with another groups name at the time.

The Hi-Lites released material on the Dakar and Ja-Wes labels before the groups name change.

The 'C' in the groups 'Chi-Lites' name derived from their hometown's city, Chicago.

Prior to the first incarnation Eugene Record, Clarence Johnson and Robert Lester recorded with the group The Chanteurs, who released material on the Renee Records imprint in 1959.

Another band, during that period, entitled The Desidero's, featured Marshall Thompson and Creadel Jones within it's ranks and that duo departed that group and joined ranks with the other trio.

The five comprised the Hi-Lites, which later became the Marshall and the Chi-Lites.

The group released the single 'I'm So Jealous' under that new band title in 1964.

Clarence Johnson then departed the group and they then became the Chi-Lites.

By 1968, the group had been signed to the Brunswick Records imprint, where Eugene began his long and fruitful collaboration with, the singer / songwriter, Barbara Acklin.

In 1969 they acheived their first national hit with the song 'Give It Away' beginning a successful period that would reap many musical rewards throughout the Seventies.

In 1971, they released the song 'Have You Seen Her', which charted in the U.S. and the U.K. respectively, reaching the number 3 spot.

There then followed a series of chart entries, including 'Oh Girl' in 1972, 'Homely Girl' in 1974, 'It's Time For Love' in 1975 and 'You Don't Have To Go' in 1976.

In 1973, Creadel Jones left the group and Eugene Record departed in late 1976 for a short solo career at Warner Brothers (a period which included the excellent offering, 'Overdose Of Joy').

Eugene's departure was instigated by legal difficulties at Brunswick Records that meant the group could not be promoted in the way they previously were.

By 1980, Eugene, Lester, Creadel and Marshall reformed the group, whilst Carl Davis set up the Chi-Sound label, recruiting Gene Chandler as it's vice-President.

Albums:

I Like Your Lovin (Brunswick 1969)

Give It Away (Brunswick 1969)

(For God's Sake) Give More Power To The People (Brunswick 1971)

I Like Your Lovin, Do You Like Mine? (Brunswick 1971)

A Lonely Man (Brunswick 1972)

A Letter To Myself (Brunswick 1973)

The Chi-Lites (Brunswick 1973)

Toby (Brunswick 1974)

Half A Love (Brunswick 1975)

Happy Being Lonely (Mercury 1976)

Chi-Lite Time (London 1976)

The Fantastic Chi-Lites (Mercury 1977)

Heavenly Body (Chi-Sound 1980)

Me And You (Chi-Sound 1982)

Bottoms Up (Larc 1983)

Steppin' Out (Private I 1984)

Just Say You Love Me (Ichiban 1990)

Heart & Soul (Castle 1992)

Live! (Trace 1996)

Inner City Blues ( Brunswick 1996)

Help Wanted (Coppersun 1998)

Low Key (Mar-Ance 2003)

Solo: Eugene Record

The Eugene Record (Warners 1977)

Trying To Get To You (Warners 1978)

Welcome To My Fantasy (Warners 1979)

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Jack Parry died he was 86,

Brynley John "Jack" Parry ^[1] was a Welsh former professional footballer. During his career he made almost 100 appearances for Swansea Town and 138 appearances for Ipswich Town between 1951 and 1955.

(11 January 1924 – 20 January 2010)

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Robert B. Parker died he was 77,

Robert Brown Parker ^[1] died he was 77. Parker was an American crime writer. His most famous works were the novels about the private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series, Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the late 1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character were also produced. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area.^[4] Parker was 77 when he died of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts; discovered at his desk by his wife Joan, he had been working on a novel^[2][5][6]. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben and Dennis Lehane^[7] as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre.^[8].

(September 17, 1932 – January 18, 2010)

Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts.^[1][9] On August 26, 1956, Parker married Joan H. Parker,^[1] whom he claimed to have met as a toddler at a birthday party.^[10] (They spent their childhoods in the same neighborhood.^[11])

Parker and his wife had two sons, David and Daniel. Originally, Parker's character Spenser was to have the first name "David", but he didn't want to omit his other son. So Parker removed the first name completely and to this day, Spenser's first name remains unknown and rarely referred to.^[12]

After earning a BA degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Parker served in the US Army in Korea. In 1957, he earned his Master's degree in English literature from Boston University and then worked in advertising and technical writing until 1962.^[9] Parker received a PhD degree in English literature from Boston University in 1971.^[1][13] His dissertation, titled "The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality", discussed the exploits of fictional private-eye heroes created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.^[1][9]

Parker wrote his first novel^[13] in 1971 while at Northeastern University. He became a full professor in 1976, and turned to full-time writing in 1979 with five Spenser novels to his credit.^[9]

Parker's popular Spenser novels are known for his characters of varied races and religions. According to critic Christina Nunez, Parker's "inclusion of [characters of] other races and sexual persuasions" lends his writings a "more modern feel".^[14] For example, the Spenser series characters include Hawk and Chollo, African-American and Mexican-American, respectively, as well as his Jewish girlfiend, Susan, various Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, a gay cop, Lee Farrell,^[15], and even a gay mob boss, Gino Fish.^[16] The open homosexuality of both his sons gives his writing "[a] sensibility," Ms. Nunez feels, "[which] strengthens Parker's sensibility [toward gays]." In 1985 Spenser was made into a successful television series, Spenser for Hire which starred Robert Urich, Avery Brooks and Barbara Stock^[17].

Parker created female detective Sunny Randall at the request of actress Helen Hunt, who wanted him to write a part for her to play.^[1] He wrote the first book, and the film version was planned for 2000,^[9] but never materialized.^[13] However, his publisher liked the character and asked him to continue with the series.^[13]

Aside from crime writing, Parker also produced several Western novels, including Appaloosa, ^[18] and children's books. In 1994 he collaborated with Japanese photographer Kasho Kumagai on a coffee table book called Spenser's Boston, exploring the city through Spenser's "eyes" via high quality, 4-color photos. In addition to Parker's introduction, excerpts from several of the Spenser novels were included.^[19]

Parker and his wife created an independent film company called Pearl Productions, based in Boston. It is named after their German short-haired pointer, Pearl.^[13]

Note that there is another Robert B. Parker (1905-55) whose mystery novels of the 1950s are being reprinted by Hard Case Crime starting with Passport to Peril in July of 2009.

Parker received three nominations and two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. He received the first award, the "Best Novel Award" in 1977, for the fourth novel in the Spenser series, Promised Land.^[20] In 1990 he shared, with wife Joan, a nomination for "Best Television Episode" for the TV series B.L. Stryker; however, the award went to David J. Burke and Alfonse Ruggiero Jr. for Wiseguy.^[21]

In 2002 he received the Grand Master Award Edgar for his collective oeuvre.^[22]

In 2008 he was awarded the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award.

Parker died suddenly of a heart attack, sitting at his desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts on January 18th 2010. He was 77.^[2][5]

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