In 2024, we've experienced the loss of several luminaries in the world of entertainment. These beloved figures—actors, comedians, musicians, singers, and coaches—have touched our lives with their talent, passion, and dedication. They've left an indelible mark on our hearts and shaped the world of entertainment in ways that will continue to inspire and influence generations to come.
Among the incredible actors who bid farewell this year, we mourn the loss of a true chameleon who effortlessly.
David Ferguson defended the moral rights of musicians, composers and creators. After the advent of the digital world and at a time when ideas about ownership, piracy and copyright started to be tested, he sought to make musicians aware of their rights and help them to speak to government with a coherent voice.
Underpinning all his political lobbying was a lifelong commitment to social justice and a passionate, often fiery belief in the importance of songwriters and composers to the multibillion-pound music industry.
David Ferguson was born in South London in 1953 and grew up in a fiercely political household. A love of debate ran in the family. Both his parents were Labour Party activists, although the most enduring influence on his beliefs was his maternal grandmother, Constance Lewcock. One of the original suffragettes, she had been imprisoned for plotting to blow up a railway arch at Durham in 1914. On her release she became a well-loved Labour Party councillor for Newcastle upon Tyne. Ferguson kept a picture of her with him until he died.
After attending Bessemer Grange school in Southwark, Ferguson was given a scholarship to Dulwich College in 1964. It was during this particularly liberal period in the school’s history that his interests in music, drama and political ideology really took shape.
On leaving Dulwich he took a degree in Slavonic studies at London University before taking a job with the Traverse Company in Edinburgh creating sound collages to accompany the plays. He then moved to the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, where his soundscapes with guitars, tapes and a modified Rolf Harris stylophone became integral to many of their productions of the early 1970s. Although lacking any formal musical training Ferguson began to explore early sound design through the use of synthesisers, keyboards, drones and tape effects. It was an imaginative approach that formed the basis of much of his later professional work.
It was a chance meeting with an old school friend, David Rhodes, at a concert by Brian Eno’s experimental rock troupe, the 801, in the autumn of 1976, that changed the course of his professional life.
The two shared a love of the esoteric sounds of Amon Düül, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Can and experimental French operatic rockers Magma. Their first band Manscheinen quickly morphed into Random Hold (named after Ferguson’s love of fruit machines) with the addition of Bill MacCormick of the 801, the singer Simon Ainsley and Michael Phips — the ex-drummer with the Glitter Band.
Early shows were edgy and exciting. At one, when he was supporting Adam and the Ants at the Rock Garden, a group of neo-Nazis stormed the stage. Ferguson emerged from behind his keyboards and invited them all to take him on one by one.
Word about Random Hold spread. A double-page spread in the Melody Maker in which he told the interviewer Allan Jones that they made “dark music for swinging suicides”, and the patronage of Peter Gabriel, ensured that the band soon became the subject of a bidding war among record companies.
The band signed to Polydor and recorded their debut album with Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator at John Lennon’s former home, Tittenhurst Park. The subsequent album was not as commercial as Polydor would have liked but the band got good reviews and toured to support its release with Peter Gabriel, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and XTC. During this period Ferguson also contributed keyboards to Peter Gabriel’s worldwide hit, Biko.
After three commercially disappointing albums, Random Hold disbanded. Rhodes joined Peter Gabriel’s band and Ferguson went into music for television. He built his own studio at his house in Waterloo and was taken on by the BBC Radiophonic workshop, which added him to its list of freelancers. His first big TV music assignment was for the 1987 Emmy and Baftawinning Granada documentary The Sword of Islam. Soon his haunting mood pieces were in demand. His work appeared on everything from thrillers to hard-hitting documentaries including Black Box, X Cars, Fire in the Blood and Under the Sun. Inspector Rebus, the much loved Auf Wiedersehen Pet and the cult Granada drama Cracker were his most notable successes.
It was while working on one high-profile commission that Ferguson took on the cause that would dominate the last 20 years of his life. He received a late-night call from an American lawyer who told him that he would “never work in this industry again” if he didn’t sign the publishing rights in his music over to the TV production company. The bullying practice of coercive publishing, where large media companies demand all rights in music compositions, including any future royalties, would become widespread.
Throughout it all, Ferguson’s passionate, often uncompromising advocacy won him the respect of even his fiercest adversaries,
In 2007 Ferguson had pancreatic cancer diagnosed. He underwent treatment and briefly entered remission. When the cancer returned late in 2008 he withdrew from public life, dedicating his remaining months to travel, gastronomy and working with his son Sam on a final music project. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios in Bath, the album features ex-members of Random Hold, Roxy Music and Peter Gabriel’s touring band.
In February 2009 he married Silvana, a fellow music rights activist whom he met while lobbying in France.
David Ferguson’s final public appearance was at the Ivor Novello Awards in May 2009, where he received Basca’s highest accolade, the Academy Fellowship. Typically, he chose this final platform to attempt to galvanise the industry one last time, “Get your bloody act together you lot,” he said, shaking a defiant hand at the audience.
He is survived by Sara, his formerpartner, their son Sam, and his wife Silvana.
David Ferguson, musician, composer and rights activist, was born on May 24, 1953. He died of pancreatic cancer on July 5, 2009, aged 56
Julian Hall was a flamboyant and controversial figure in Bermuda for three decades. Articulate, charming and charismatic, he was a man of great talent and ability, but these strengths were not always counterbalanced by coolness of judgment and political sagacity.
He enjoyed a shooting-star career as a defence lawyer, before becoming mired in financial problems and bitter political infighting which almost, but never entirely, extinguished his flame.
After his death The Royal Gazette newspaper remarked in an editorial that maybe he was simply too big for Bermuda — “which can be as small in mind as it is in scale”.
Julian Hall was born in Bermuda in 1950. His parents divorced when he was 4, and he and his sisters were brought up by their maternal grandmother. Hall won a scholarship to the Berkeley Institute, after which, with financial help from Clarence Terceira, chairman of the United Bermuda Party (UBP), he went to Mount Allison University, in New Brunswick, Canada, graduating in law in 1970.
In 1971-73 he studied at the London School of Economics. He was called to the Bermuda Bar in 1974 and joined Conyers, Dill and Pearman, becoming one of the first black lawyers to join a large Bermudian law firm. He was also active in the UBP, rising to be deputy chairman at the age of 27.
However, he fell out with the party in the acrimonious aftermath of the notorious murder of the Governor, Sir Richard Sharples, and his aide-de-camp, Captain Hugh Sayers, in 1973. Two men, Buck Burrows and Larry Tacklyn, were convicted of the murders — they also killed the Governor’s dog, Horsa — and they were hanged in 1977. It was claimed that they were associated with a Bermudian Black Power group, and their executions were followed by three days of rioting.
Hall was associated with their defence team, which had argued that certain aspects of the trial were unconstitutional. He switched his political allegiance to the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) in 1979.
The Burrows-Tacklyn case was a rare setback for Hall, who claimed to have lost only two jury trials in his career. One of his most famous courtroom successes was his defence of Michael Meredith, who had been accused of killing his wife — the case was dubbed “Bermuda’s OJ” by one Bermudian lawyer.
Despite his legal success Hall began to have money problems in the late 1970s. A festival which he organised in 1977, Summerfest, featuring such luminaries as Peter Tosh and Richie Havens — and remembered by many as the finest rock concert the island had seen — was a financial disaster.
In 1982 Hall was declared bankrupt, and in 1984 his legal career was effectively ended when a law was passed banning bankrupts from practising law in Bermuda. Hall claimed that the law was passed by the UBP to punish him for his “disloyalty”.
After a stint working in Canada, Hall returned to Bermuda and launched himself on a political career. He was elected to the House of Assembly for Hamilton Parish, but served only one term, from 1989 to 1993, before losing his seat. He acted as the PLP’s Shadow Justice Minister, and was always a fine speaker and a sometimes entertainingly outspoken parliamentarian.
Hall also won praise as a wordsmith. While unable to practise law, he wrote a regular column for the Bermuda Sun newspaper and was praised for the effectiveness of his critiques of the island’s administration.
He remained a controversial figure who attracted rumour and speculation. In 1991 it was suggested during a trial that Hall was somehow involved in the smuggling to Bermuda of 60kg of cannabis. He was also rumoured to figure in an abortive police investigation into drug trafficking and money laundering in 1993. Hall vehemently denied all insinuations, and on occasion imputed racist motives to those who made them.
And his financial problems continued to dog him — being unable to work he could not pay off his creditors, and in 2000 he was again declared bankrupt.
In 2005 he was acquitted of five charges of having stolen about US$500,000 from an elderly client a decade earlier.
Hall finally won the right to practise law in Bermuda in February this year when the 1984 Act was amended but he was by then too ill to return to work.
Hall married Isabella Beattie in 1981. They were divorced but remained close, and she and their three daughters survive him.
Julian Hall, lawyer, was born on March 4, 1950. He died after a long illness on July 18, 2009, aged 59
Author and radio host Alan Stang, a longstanding champion for conservativism and outspoken opponent of communism in the U.S., died yesterday. He was 77 years old.
Stang began his career in communications as an editor for Prentice-Hall before moving on to radio at NBC in New York City. The award-winning journalist also worked as one of Mike Wallace's first writers before Wallace became a fixture of "60 Minutes" and went toe-to-toe in the ratings against Larry King, when the two hosted competing radio shows in Los Angeles. Stang boasted that despite broadcasting on a station of significantly less power, his program drew twice as many listeners as King's.
Most recently, Stang hosted "The Sting of Stang" show on the Republic Broadcasting Network.
"My dad spent his whole life fighting for this country," Stang's son Jay told WND. "He saw something to fight for, just like every one of us. He never gave up, even when he had to fight for his own life instead. His treasure was truly in heaven. He loved Jesus Christ with all his heart, and he loved his family. He was able to hold his first two grandchildren in his arms and look them in the eye. He is happy now and has no more pain or sorrow. He is with his savior."
Francis "Frank" McCourt died he was 78, McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, best known as the author of Angela's Ashes.
His brother Malachy McCourt, a former radio host, is also an actor and autobiographical writer. Together they created the stage play A Couple of Blaguards, a two-man show about their lives and experiences.
(19 August 1930 - 19 July 2009)
Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children of Malachy (died 1985) and Angela McCourt (died 1981).[1]Unable to find work in the depths of the Depression, the McCourts returned to their native Limerick, Ireland in 1934, where they sank deeper into poverty. [2] McCourt's father, an alcoholic who was often without work, drank up what little money he earned. When McCourt was eleven, his father left with other Irishmen to find work in the factories of wartime Liverpool. He sent little money to the family, leaving Frank's mother to raise four surviving children. After quitting school at the age of thirteen, Frank alternated between odd jobs and petty crime in an effort to provide for his mother, and three surviving brothers, Malachy, Michael (who now lives in San Francisco), and Alphonsus ("Alphie") (who lives in Manhattan). The three other siblings died of diseases related to malnutrition and the squalor of their surroundings. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was ten.[citation needed] In Angela's Ashes, McCourt described an entire block of houses sharing a single outhouse, flooded by constant rain, and infested with rats and vermin.[citation needed]
At age nineteen, he left Ireland returning to the United States where, after a stint working in New York City's Biltmore Hotel, he was drafted and sent to Germany. Upon his discharge from the army, he returned to New York City, where he held a series of jobs.
He received the Pulitzer Prize (1997) and National Book Critics Circle Award (1996) for his memoirAngela's Ashes (1996), which details his impoverished childhood in Limerick. He also authored 'Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of the previous book and focusing on life as a new immigrant in America. Teacher Man (2005) detailed the challenges of being a young, uncertain teacher.
McCourt was a member of the National Arts Club and was a recipient of the Award of Excellence from The International Center in New York.
Frank McCourt lived with his wife Ellen in New York City and Connecticut. He had a daughter, Maggie, with his first wife, a granddaughter, Chiara, and two grandsons, Frank and Jack.
It was announced in May 2009 that he had been treated for melanoma and that he was in remission, undergoing home chemotherapy.[3] On 19 July 2009, he died from the disease, with meningeal complications, at a hospice in Manhattan.[4]
Tom Keylock, Aug. 9, 1926-July 2, 2009, chauffeur, bodyguard, cook, road manager and procurer for the Rolling Stones died at the age of 82.
Starting as a chauffeur, Keylock began driving the famous group on their tour of Britain in the fall of 1965. The band quickly recognized Keylock multiple talents as Keylock got them from hotel to venue without being mobbed by fans by using back stairways, fire escapes and other slick ploys to the delight of all the band members.
The Stones actually loaned Keylock to Bob Dylan when Dylan toured Britain, and, again, Keylock proved indispensible in "taking care of issues."
He didn't stop at just being an inside man for the rock groups. Keylock appeared in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary film of Dylan's 1966 tour, "Eat the Document" playing in a bizarre scene where he drives John Lennon and Bob Dylan who are high on drugs around the streets of London.
Keylock also acted as an adviser during the making of the 2005 film "Stoned." The film followed the events surrounding Rolling Stones band member, Brian Jones' mysterious 1969 death in his swimming pool in which Keylock was smack in the center being one of the first on the scene.
Keylock leaves behind his wife, Joan - married since 1951, and his four daughters.
Julius Shulman was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph "Case Study House #22[1], Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect." The house is also known as The Stahl House. Shulman's photography spread California modernism around the world. Through his many books, exhibits and personal appearances his work ushered in a new appreciation for the movement beginning in the 1990s. His vast library of images currently reside at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. His contemporaries include Ezra Stoller and Hedrich Blessing. In 1947, Julius Shulman asked architect Raphael Soriano to build a mid-century steel home and studio in the Hollywood Hills.
Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright's or Pierre Koenig's remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close friend, Richard Neutra, was first brought to light by Shulman's photography. The clarity of his work demanded that architectural photography had to be considered as an independent art form. Each Shulman image unites perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape. The precise compositions reveal not just the architectural ideas behind a building's surface, but also the visions and hopes of an entire age. A sense of humanity is always present in his work, even when the human figure is absent from the actual photographs.
Today, a great many of the buildings documented by Shulman have disappeared or been crudely converted, but the thirst for his pioneering images is stronger than ever before.
In 1987, the Shulman House was designated a Cultural Heritage Monument by the City of Los Angeles.
In 2000 Julius Shulman gave up retirement to begin working with his current business partner Juergen Nogai.
The Getty Research Institute held a 2005–2006 exhibition of Shulman's prints entitled "Julius Shulman, Modernity and the Metropolis"[2]. The exhibition included sections entitled "Framing the California Lifestyle," "Promoting the Power of Modern Architecture," "The Tools of an Innovator," and "The Development of a Metropolis"[2]. The exhibition traveled to the National Building Museum[3] and to the Art Institute of Chicago[4].
Julius Shulman and Juergen Nogai have had exhibitions at the Design and Architecture Museum in Frankfurt, Germany in Fall of 2005, as well as an exhibition at the Barnsdall Municipal Gallery in Los Angeles 2006, Craig Krull Gallery Bergamont station, Los Angeles, October 2007, and another up-coming show in Spring 2009. An exhibition of their work is also scheduled in Mannheim, Germany in 2010.
On December 16, 2007 Shulman attended a showing of his architectural photography at the Los Angeles Public Library[5]. The exhibit, organized by the Getty Research Institute, included one hundred fifty photographs documenting architectural changes in Los Angeles for the last eighty years. This progression includes the re-development of Bunker Hill, the growth of Century City, the avant-garde architectural designs in Los Angeles, such as Watts Towers, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and the Getty Villa, as well as the growth of Wilshire Boulevard. The exhibition features the industrial engines at the Port of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles International Airport that helped fuel the growth of Los Angeles Also, featured diverse residential fabric from Echo Park to South Los Angeles. The exhibit spot-lighted Shulman's unique role in capturing and promoting innovative, sleek Case Study Houses, as well as the contrasting tract housing developments with repeated floor plans.
In February, 2008, the Palm Springs Art Museum presented "Julius Shulman: Palm Springs," guest curated by Michael Stern. Containing over 200 objects, this is the largest Julius Shulman exhibition that has ever been presented to date. In addition to the Shulman photographs, renderings, illustrations and models of many of the buildings that Shulman photographed were presented to compliment Shulman's extensive documentation of a place that was so inspirational to him. Rizzoli published the accompanying catalog, "Julius Shulman: Palm Springs." Additionally, a documentary DVD was produced in conjunction with the exhibition "Julius Shulman: Desert Modern."
Selected Shulman works were included in the Annenberg Space for Photography's inaugural exhibit, L8S ANG3LES [6]. One of his last commissioned works was of the Space, which opened in March, 2009, with Shulman in attendance.
In the early 1960s, Pinkney was one of three young teenagers brought together by manager Richard Barrett to form The Three Degrees. She was a part of the group until 1976.
She worked as a counselor and vocal coach. In addition to singing with her church's inspirational choir, she traveled with a group called the Intermezzo Choir Ministry. She loved to spend time with her great nieces and nephews, and was lively at family parties, as she loved to spend time with family.
On January 15, 1994, Pinkney gave birth to a daughter, Ayana Alexandria, who died a few days later due to sudden infant death syndrome.
She died on June 27, 2009. She had been sick for two weeks beforehand, and in the hospital.
