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.
Mike "Cinq" Cinqmars was quite literally a pioneer of freestyle motocross. In 1999, he finished just below Travis Pastrana, taking home the silver medal at the X Games' first year of freestyle competition. Unlike some of his competitors, Mike preferred to ride for fun, rather than compete. From an interview in 1999, "Films sit in people's homes forever, and people watch them all the time. Contests are cool but I'd rather go shoot a vid. In contests, sometimes you do well, sometimes you don't. Your talent doesn't always show. And there's a lot of pressure, and I'm kind of over that. I want to just go ride and have fun." Mike did do many films, including MTV's "Senseless Acts of Video" where he most famously jumped over his own two-story home. Unfortunately, it was during the filming of his own movie, "35/01 My Trip" that he broke his back and ended his motocross career. Recently Mike had expressed interest during an interview in making a comeback.
It has been rumored that Mike was battling with demons after his career crushing injury. Despite the obstacles that befall many of the talented and gifted, he was always proud of his life and accomplishments. "Once I started making money, my biggest goal was to have a nice house that I could call my own, and have all nice stuff in it, and to have a car and a truck, bikes and all that. I've got all that. I've got land, and it's good to be able to have all that. It was a big goal of mine and I've done it." Sounds like the words of a true champion at heart.
Yes, it is a sad day in the motocross world indeed. Mike never got the chance at his comeback but his talent will forever be remembered in the memories of his fans. My condolences to his friends, family and thousands of fans.
He designed the current U.S. flag in 1958 while living with his grandparents. He was 17 years old at the time and did the flag design as a class project. He unstitched the blue field from a family 48-star flag, sewed in a new field, and used iron-on white fabric to add 100 hand-cut stars, 50 on each side of the blue canton.[1]
He originally received a B- for the project. After discussing the grade with his high school teacher, Stanley Pratt, it was agreed that if the flag was accepted by Congress, the grade would be reconsidered. Heft's flag design was chosen and adopted by presidential proclamation after Alaska and before Hawaii was admitted into the union in 1959. According to Heft, his teacher did keep to their agreement and changed his grade to an A for the project.
Heft has also stated he had copyrighted designs for 51- through 60-star American flags.[2]
When Alaska and Hawaii were being considered for Statehood, more than 1,500 designs were spontaneously submitted to President Dwight D. Eisenhower by Americans. Although some of them were 49-star versions, the vast majority were 50-star proposals. At least three, and probably more, of these designs were identical to the present design of the 50-star flag. These designs are in the Eisenhower Presidential Archives in Abilene, Kansas. Only a small fraction of them have ever been published.
After graduating from college, Heft became a high school teacher and later a college professor, and he also served as mayor of Napoleon, Ohio for 28 years. After retiring from teaching, he became a motivational speaker. Heft was a longtime member of the Harvey Spaulding Toastmasters club in Saginaw. He earned the nickname "father time" as he often filled the role of timer during meetings. While he was seen as one of their own, other members of the club were always honored when Heft would deliver a speech at a meeting.
Heft died from complications of a heart attack on December 12, 2009.
More than any other contemporary economist, Samuelson has helped to raise the general analytical and methodological level in economic science. He has simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory. He has also shown the fundamental unity of both the problems and analytical techniques in economics, partly by a systematic application of the methodology of maximization for a broad set of problems. This means that Samuelson's contributions range over a large number of different fields.
Robert Holdstock, the oldest of five children, was born in Hythe, Kent. His father, Robert Frank Holdstock, was a police officer and his mother, Kathleen Madeline Holdstock, was a nurse. At the age of seven years, Robert started attending the Gillingham Grammar School in the Medway Towns. As a young adult he had jobs including banana boatman, construction worker, and slate miner.[1]
Holdstock's works have been subject to much literary analysis. The majority of this analysis is of Mythago Wood.
David Pringle describes Eye Among the Blind, Holdstock's first science fiction novel, as a "dogged, detailed, somewhat slow-moving planetary mystery."[10] Regarding the same novel Ursula K. Le Guin remarked "As strong a treatment of a central theme of science fiction – alienness, and the relation of the human and the alien – as any I have read."[11]
According to Michael D. C. Drout, a modern J. R. R. Tolkien scholar, Holdstock's fantasy is a significant part of the fantasy literature genre. This is because (in the Ryhope wood series) Holdstock has created literary arts containing the power and aesthetic standards of Tolkien’s fantasy without being either a "close imitation of" or a "reaction against" Tolkien. Drout considers Holdstock, along with Ursula K. Le Guin, a worthy inheritor of the fantasy tradition created by Tolkien. [12] According to a study of Tolkien's works by Partrick Curry, Holdstock is placed in a quartet of noteworthy fantasy authors including Ursula K. Le Guin, John Crowley and Marion Zimmer Bradley for writing fantasy books that come close to Tolkien's breadth and depth of imagination, and "in some respects surpass Tolkien."[13]
One essayist states "Robert Holdstock's gift for evoking landscapes and weaving mythic patterns is outstanding."[14] Accordingly, the covers of his books have been produced by a variety of notable Science Fiction and Fantasy illustrators. The original UK and US covers of Mythago Wood were illustrated by Eddi Gornall and Christopher Zacharow, respectively; Geoff Taylor illustrated the original UK covers for the Mythago Wood sequels Lavondyss, The Bone Forest, The Hollowing and Merlin's Wood. Illustrators of subsequent covers and editions include Jim Burns, Tom Canty, John Howe, Alan Lee, John Jude Pallencar, Larry Rostant, and Ron Walotsky. John Howe stated "Holdstock is to me one of the best Celtic fantasy authors alive today."[15]
David Langford offers praise for most of Holdstock's work, but regarding Merlin's Wood he states "the overall narrative is flawed, distorted by its weight of undeserved loss and inaccessible healing."[16]
Bob Keane was born Robert Kuhn in Manhattan Beach, California in 1922. He was a clarinet player, and his ambition was to front a big band like his idol, Benny Goodman. He did so, and in 1938, at age 17, he was setting up to play his first show, at Glendale Junior College and was approached by an employee of KFWB, a Los Angelesradio station, who wanted to broadcast the concert on air to replace a canceled scheduled show. The next day Keane received a phone call from an agent at MCA who had heard the broadcast on KFWB, and who wanted to sign Keane to the label. MCA billed him as "The World's Youngest Bandleader".
MCA dropped Keane from the label in 1941 as they felt he was likely to be drafted. Keane decided to enlist in the Army Air Force, and was retired from active service due to a lung infection. He returned to Los Angeles and continued to play clarinet in several bands. In 1950, he was offered a job as a conductor on The Hank McCune Show, a new radio show. After the first episode, the producer approached Bob and told him that he would have to change his name, as the announcer was pronouncing Kuhn as "Coon". A band colleague suggested Keen, after a popular Woody Herman song, "Peachy Keen", to which Bob decided to add an 'e'. Later on in life he changed this to Keane.
By 1955 Keane was playing clarinet in several bars and clubs around Los Angeles, and one evening met businessman John Siamas, who persuaded Bob to set up a record label with him. The label would be known as Keen Records, with Bob working as an A&R man. He was given an acetate of two songs by Sam Cooke, who at the time using his original surname, Cook, and singing in a gospel group called The Soul Stirrers. On the acetate was "Summertime" and "You Send Me". Sam Cook was signed to a three-year contract with Keen, his surname changed just as Bob's had been, and the songs were subsequently pressed and released as the first single on Keen Records. Originally "Summertime" was intended to be the A-side, and sold moderately. It was only when a DJ played the B-side that the record took off, and by November 25 1957, it reached #1 on the Billboard chart.
At this point, despite Keen Records having earned over $1,000,000 from sales of "You Send Me", Bob only had an oral contract with Siamas. Upon asking when the corporation was to be formed and when he was likely to receive stock certificates for the company, he received a letter asking for him to invest $5000 (which, of course, he did not have) into his own company should he wish to remain a partner. He realized that he had been tricked into finding a hit record and then pushed out of the company.
While waiting for legal proceedings against Siamas to begin, Bob's wife suggested that he set up another label, and approach someone else who had also been duped by Siamas to put up the money to do so. Taking its name from Delphi, the Greek god of music and inspiration, the new label was named Del-Fi Records. The first release was "Caravan" by Henri Rose, which sold well, and led to Warner Bros. Records offering Keane $8000 for Henri Rose's contract, which he accepted, and which enabled him to buy out his business partner. Another early Del-Fi release was "Chicken Grabber" by The Nite Hawks, which although not a success at the time, was featured in John Waters' film Pink Flamingos.
In May 1958, Keane discovered Ritchie Valens performing a Saturday matinee show in a movie theatre in Pacoima and invited Valens to audition in the basement of his home, where he had set up a small recording studio. A formal contract was signed, and Valens and Keane spent hours in the basement working on songs together. Among the songs was "Come On Let's Go", which was recorded in Gold Star Studios in July 1958, and released as Valens' first single soon after. This single, and the follow-up, "Donna" b/w "La Bamba", were smash hits. Keane served as Valens' manager as well as producer, booking shows for him across America and several TV performances. In the film La Bamba, the story of Ritchie Valens, Bob Keane was played by Joe Pantoliano.
After Valens' death in February 1959, Del-Fi records continued, and one of the next signings was eden ahbez, best known for his song "Nature Boy." By this point, and totally unlike the rest of the major labels in Hollywood, Del-Fi had an "open door" policy - anybody with music they wanted to be released could approach the Del-Fi offices and get it played to Bob Keane. In an interview, he remarked "I'll listen to anyone, even if they bring 'em in on a stretcher."
In 1964 he signed Bobby Fuller and his band, the Bobby Fuller Four, to Del-Fi, and released several singles and two albums under a subsidiary label just for the band called Mustang Records. Their biggest song, "I Fought the Law" was released in October 1965 and was a hit in the United States and the United Kingdom. The band's career was brought to an abrupt end when the corpse of Bobby Fuller, in his mother's car, was found in the parking lot of his Hollywood apartment on July 18, 1966. In 1965, Keane also set up a subsidiary label for R&B music, called Bronco, and employed Barry White as an in-house producer, musician and A&R man for the new label.
By 1967, with Del-Fi's biggest band, the Bobby Fuller Four, disbanded, Del-Fi was closed down. Keane embarked upon a career selling burglar alarm systems, mainly to celebrities, and oversaw the music career of his two sons, known professionally as The Keane Brothers.
Ritchie Valens' life and music came back into the public eye with the release of the film La Bamba in 1987, and seven years later, two of Del-Fi's surf records by The Lively Ones and The Centurions were used in the film Pulp Fiction. Del-Fi was resurrected and released numerous CDs of its original material, and signed some new acts to the label as well. In September 2003, Keane sold the Del-Fi catalog to the Warner Music Group.
Gene Barry died he was 90. Barry was an Americanactor. His 60-year career included playing the well-dressed man of action in TV series Bat Masterson, Burke's Law and The Name of the Gam
(June 14, 1919 – December 9, 2009)
Barry was born as Eugene Klass in New York City, the son of Eva (née Conn) and Martin Klass;[1] all of his grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia.[2] He exhibited early skills with his singing and violin playing. He married Betty Claire Barry (née Kalb; b. 12 February 1923 - d. 31 January 2003), whose stage name was Julie Carson, on October 22, 1944. She died two weeks before her 80th birthday, after more than 58 years of marriage, on January 31, 2003. Gene and Betty Claire Barry had three children - two biological sons, Michael (b. 1946) and Frederick (b. 1953), and an adopted daughter, Elizabeth.
Barry adopted his professional name in honor of John Barrymore. He was trained in violin and voice and spent two years at the Chatham Square School of Music on a singing scholarship. He made his Broadway debut as Captain Paul Duval in the 1942 revival of Sigmund Romberg's The New Moon. He returned to Broadway numerous times over the next decade, portraying Falke in Rosalinda (1942), Nova Kovich in The Merry Widow (1943), Lieutenant Bunin in Catherine Was Great (1944), Dorante and Comte De Chateau-Gaillard in The Would-Be Gentleman (1946), The Doctor in Happy as Larry (1950), and a variety of roles in the musical revue Bless You All (1950). He later returned to Broadway twice more, the role of Paul in the 1962 play The Perfect Setup and his Tony Award nominated portrayal of Georges in the 1983 musical La Cage aux Folles with George Hearn as his life partner/spouse. The latter production was based on the French film of the same name about a gay couple with a straight son. For his contribution to live theater, Gene Barry has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6555 Hollywood Blvd.
Known for his suave manner, Barry was featured on television in a recurring role in Our Miss Brooks and as the star of three of his own popular TV series -- Bat Masterson, The Name of the Game, and Burke's Law. He won the 1965 Golden Globe for Burke's Law. The series, featuring homicide investigations by a millionaire police captain, returned in 1993-94 with Barry once again in the title role.
Barry portrayed the murderer in the original two-hour pilot for the television mystery series Columbo, a psychiatrist who kills his wife in Prescription: Murder.
Kerri Lee Tucker–Kerri Lee Tucker aka “Miss Box Of Junk” girl on VH1 Classic’s television program “That Metal Show“, was reportedly found dead in her apartment early today. She was only 25 years of age. No further details are currently available.
Eddie Trunk, who co-hosts “That Metal Show” with Jim Florentine and Don Jamieson, writes on his web site, “Kerri was a great part of the show and we had fun with her on the days we shot. I did not know her well outside of our working relations but she was fun to have as part of ‘That Metal Show’ in seasons 2 and 3. We featured her prominently in our final skit [see video below] of season 3 which just aired and featured [original KISS drummer] Peter Criss. A fun day at Le Cirque.
Mike "Cinq" Cinqmars was quite literally a pioneer of freestyle motocross. In 1999, he finished just below Travis Pastrana, taking home the silver medal at the X Games' first year of freestyle competition. Unlike some of his competitors, Mike preferred to ride for fun, rather than compete. From an interview in 1999, "Films sit in people's homes forever, and people watch them all the time. Contests are cool but I'd rather go shoot a vid. In contests, sometimes you do well, sometimes you don't. Your talent doesn't always show. And there's a lot of pressure, and I'm kind of over that. I want to just go ride and have fun." Mike did do many films, including MTV's "Senseless Acts of Video" where he most famously jumped over his own two-story home. Unfortunately, it was during the filming of his own movie, "35/01 My Trip" that he broke his back and ended his motocross career. Recently Mike had expressed interest during an interview in making a comeback.
