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.
Born in Chillicothe, Missouri as Shirley Simpson, Caddell appeared as a member of the cast of ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in the late 1950s, and charted three singles on the Billboard country chart: "Dime a Dozen" at number 25 and "Why Baby Why" at number 23 (a duet with Warren Smith) in 1961; and "Willingly", a duet with Nelson, in 1962.[1] The Nelson duet was also his first chart single. In 1963, she divorced Biff Collie, pioneer country disc jockey, to marry Nelson.
Harold A. "Bud" Millikan died he was 89. Millikan was the head coach of the University of MarylandTerrapins men's basketball team from 1950 to 1967. He compiled a 243–182 record. The former coach died on January 28, 2010 at the age of 89.
(October 12, 1920 – January 28, 2010)
Millikan was born in Maryville, Missouri and played on the Maryville High School (Missouri) basketball team that won the 1937 Missouri State High School Basketball Championship at a time when there were no divisions in state tournament play. He married his high school sweetheart Maxine. He followed Henry Iba who had coached at Northwest Missouri State University while Millikan was growing up in Maryville to Oklahoma A&M. [1] At Oklahoma State He was an "All American", president of the student body and captain of the baseball and basketball teams. He was an assistant coach to Iba in its 1944 National Championship team.[2] Iba gave him the nickname of "Buddy" which was shortened to "Bud." Millikan who had been a member of the Oklahoma State ROTC did not serve in World War II because of asthma. He returned to coach at Maryville High School and later other schools in Iowa. Iba arranged the meeting that brought Millikan to Maryland. After Iba returned to Missouri after the interview it was announced on the radio that Millikan had accepted an offer from Southwest Missouri State University although in fact he had not formally accepted the offer but it prompted Maryland to tell him they could pay him more.[3]
Among his players at Maryland were Gary Williams and Joe Harrington. Williams in his autobiography “Sweet Redemption” wrote, “I played for a first-rate coach in Bud Millikan, but after that, nothing was first-rate in the Maryland basketball program…You couldn’t play for Bud Millikan unless you were willing to play hard on the defensive end of the court. In practice, we would practice two and half hours of defense and spend about ten minutes on offense.”[4] He coached the team to an NCAA Elite 8 appearance in 1958.[5] During his time Cole Field House was built. Millikan did not like the size of the field house saying at one point "It's like playing on a neutral court" with seats too far from the courts. His successor Lefty Driesell added a few thousand seats around the court raising the hometown decibel level.[6]
Every senior who played for him graduated from the school. He imposed a discipline where players were required wear the team blazer when traveling and in warm-ups players wore towels around their necks in an ascot-like manner.[7]
He died in Roswell, Georgia.
To see more of who died in 2010click here
Ralph Matthew McInerny died he was 80. McInerny was an American Catholic religious scholar and fiction writer, including mysteries and science fiction. Some of his fiction has appeared under the pseudonyms of Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey, Edward Mackin, and Monica Quill. As a mystery writer he is best known as the creator of Father Dowling. [1] He was Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Jacques Maritain Center, and Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in June, 2009.[2][3] He died of esophageal cancer on January 29, 2010.[4]
(February 24, 1929 – January 29, 2010)
Ralph McInerny was born Michael P. Grace on February 24, 1929 in Minnesota. Now a distinguished professor at Notre Dame, where he heads the Jaques Maritain Center, he's taught for the last 40 years in addition to his copious writing output.
Mr. McInerny first attended St. Paul's seminary, where he recieved his Bachelor's degree and went on to study at the University of Minnesota and the Universite Laval in Quebec where he got his Masters and Doctorate, graduating summa cum laude.
Mr. McInerny served in the Marine Corps between 1946 and 1947. In 1955, Ralph McInerny received a Fulbright Scholarship to Belgium from Notre Dame. He's been a professor at a number of universities, including Cornell. Loving St. Thomas Aquinas, Mr. McInerny has based a number of his writings on that famous personage, and his philosophy teachings are naturally seen through that Saint's eyes. It's probably obvious that Ralph McInerny writes from a Catholic point of view, which does limit his effectiveness to the general public, since it's based on an organized religion not shared by all.
Ralph McInerny's writings include about 67 books as well as numerous articles in Catholic magazines, and he's received a number of honorary degrees from Catholic colleges as well as the St. Thomas Aquinas medal from the American Catholic Philosophical Foundation. His first book was published in 1967, and his fictional writings include the now famous Father Dowling series, as well as the Andrew Broome mysteries. Father Dowling was made into a series on TV. Ralph McInerny has received the Achievement Award for his work from Boucheron of America.
RAPPER APACHE (original name Anthony Teaks) died of protracted illness on Friday. The rapper known for 1992 hit "Gangsta Bitch," had huge fan following across the world.
"Without Apache there would have been no Queen Latifah, no Naughty By Nature, no Chill Rob G., no anything" Shakim Compere, co-founder of Flavor Unit Records was quoted by boombox.com
"Apache was the string that tied all of Flavor Unit together. Without Apache none of this would be," he added.
The singer rose to same as he shared work with Queen Latifah and 45 King's Flavor Unit.
Apache's debut album Apache Ain't Shit was released in 1991 and peaked at 66 no. on the Billboard 200.
Nancy Kerrigan's brother, Mark Kerrigan, has had a turbulent history with his parents, and was once sued by them for $105,000 in 2008, according to the Boston Herold.
Even though Kerrigan was sued by his parents, the case was ultimately dismissed.
An unemployed plumber, Mark Kerrigan, 45, was charged with assaulting his 70-year-old father, who died over the weekend after a disturbance at the family's Massachusetts home.
Robert Kerrigan pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $10,000 cash bail after his arraignment Monday in Woburn District Court.
A police report said officers responding to a 911 call at 1:30 a.m. Sunday found Daniel Kerrigan lying on the floor unconscious. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. An autopsy was planned.
The report said Mark Kerrigan was found on a couch in the basement of the home in the middle-class Boston suburb of Stoneham and was "belligerent and combative" when questioned. Officers used pepper spray to subdue him and eventually arrested him.
Defense attorney Denise Moore said her client, an Army veteran who had served overseas, was on medication for post-traumatic stress syndrome and was seeing a psychiatrist.
Earl Wild[1][2] died he was 94. Wild was an American pianist widely recognized as a leading virtuoso of his generation. Harold C. Schonberg called him a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class".[3] He was known as well for his transcriptions of classical music and jazz. He was also a composer.
(November 26, 1915 – January 23, 2010)
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Wild was a musically precocious child and studied under Selmar Janson, Simon Barere and Egon Petri, among others. As a teenager, he started making transcriptions of romantic music and composition.
He was the first pianist to perform a recital on U.S. television, in 1939, as staff pianist for NBC. In 1997 he was also the first pianist to stream a performance over the Internet.[citation needed] In 1942, Arturo Toscanini invited him for a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was a resounding success and made him a household name. During World War II, Wild served in the United States Navy as a musician. A few years after the war he moved to the newly formed American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a staff pianist, conductor and composer until 1968. He performed three times for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston, in 1952[4], 1968[5], and 1971.[6] Wild is renowned for his virtuoso recitals and master classes held around the world, from Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo to Argentina, England and throughout the United States.
Earl Wild created virtuoso solo piano transcriptions of 12 songs by Rachmaninoff, and works on themes by Gershwin. His Grand Fantasy on Airs from Porgy and Bess, the first extended piano paraphrase on an American opera, was recorded in 1976 and had its concert premiere in Pasadena on December 17, 1977. He also wrote Seven Virtuoso Études on Popular Songs, based on Gershwin songs such as "The Man I Love", "Fascinating Rhythm" and "I Got Rhythm".[7] He also wrote a number of original works. These included a large-scale Easter oratorio, Revelations (1962), the choral work The Turquoise Horse (1976), and the Doo-Dah Variations, on a theme by Stephen Foster (1992), for piano and orchestra. His Sonata 2000 had its first performance by Bradley Bolen in 2003.[8]
Wild, who was openly gay,[9] lived in Palm Springs, California[10] with his partner, Michael Rolland Davis.
Wild recorded extensively for Ivory Classics, an American classical music record label.
Wild died aged 94 of congestive heart disease at home in Palm Springs, California.[11]
To see more of who died in 2010click here
James Mitchell died he was 90. Mitchell was an American actor and dancer. Although he is best-known to television audiences as Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children (1979 – 2009), theatre and dance historians remember him as one of Agnes de Mille's leading dancers. Mitchell's skill at combining dance and acting was considered something of a novelty; in 1959, the critic Olga Maynard singled him out as "an important example of the new dancer-actor-singer in American ballet", pointing to his interpretive abilities and "masculine" technique.[1]
(February 29, 1920 – January 22, 2010)
Mitchell was born in Sacramento, California. His parents emigrated from England to Northern California, where they operated a fruit farm in Turlock. In 1923, Mitchell's mother, Edith, left his father and returned to England with Mitchell's brother and sister; she and Mitchell had no further contact. Unable to run a farm while single-handedly raising his remaining son, Mitchell's father fostered him out for several years to vaudevillians Gene and Katherine King. After Mitchell's mother died, however, his father remarried and brought both of his sons, but not his daughter, back to Turlock. At age seventeen, Mitchell left Turlock for Los Angeles, where he remained close to the Kings.[2]
While studying drama at Los Angeles City College, Mitchell was introduced to modern dance at the school of the famed teacher and choreographer, Lester Horton. After receiving his associate's degree, he joined Horton's company, where he remained for nearly four years. While working with Horton, Mitchell became a close friend of dancer Bella Lewitzky; in the 1970s, he became President of the Board of Directors of her Dance Foundation, and afterwards remained a “major longtime […] supporter” of hers.[3] In 1944, Horton took Mitchell to New York with him to form a new dance company, but the venture abruptly collapsed.
As it happened, the failure of Horton's company was a significant turning point in Mitchell's career: while struggling to find either acting or dancing roles in New York, he successfully auditioned for Agnes de Mille, who was choreographing her first musical since Oklahoma!. Mitchell, who did not study ballet until he was in his mid-twenties[4], was at a loss when faced with de Mille's ballet combination. Much later, describing his approach to the audition, Mitchell said, "Well, I really hadn't too much familiarity with that but I threw myself across the floor and about the third or fourth pass, Agnes cried 'Stop' and summoned me over and said 'Where on earth did you get your dance training?'".[5] De Mille nevertheless offered Mitchell the dual position of principal dancer and assistant choreographer. Given the option between touring with Helen Hayes and dancing for de Mille, Mitchell chose de Mille.[6]Bloomer Girl (1944) began an important artistic partnership with de Mille that lasted from 1944 to 1969 and spanned theater, film, television, and concert dance. De Mille's biographer, Carol Easton, describes him as the “quintessential male de Mille dancer” and de Mille's “closest confidant” in her artistic life.[7] In one of her autobiographical volumes, de Mille herself said of Mitchell that he had "probably the strongest arms in the business, and the adagio style developed by him and his partners has become since a valued addition to ballet vocabulary."[8] When, nearly thirty years later, an interviewer asked Mitchell to respond to de Mille's comments, Mitchell offered a more modest assessment of his career: "I was primarily an actor [...] and I think what Agnes was referring to was my acting and regard for the woman I was partnering. Because in the end I really was a partner. When I look at today's dancers, or I look at the great dance movies, such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers--I couldn't do any of that! I know I was a dancer, but I didn't have the technique. At most I was an actor-dancer."[9]
Mitchell's work with de Mille:
Bloomer Girl (Broadway, 1944): principal male dancer; assistant choreographer
Brigadoon (Broadway, 1947): Harry Beaton; assistant choreographer
Paint Your Wagon (Broadway, 1951): Pete Billings; assistant choreographer
American Theatre Laboratory (1967-69): instructor and company member
Mitchell worked consistently on stage in both musicals and straight dramas until the late 1970s, including numerous regional theatre roles across the country. His other significant credits include Broadway appearances in Carousel, First Impressions, and The Deputy; off-Broadway appearances in Winkelberg, The Threepenny Opera, Livin' the Life, and The Father; L'Histoire du Soldat at New York City Opera; and national tours of The Rainmaker (with future All My Children co-star Frances Heflin), The King and I, Funny Girl, and The Threepenny Opera.
As a film performer, Mitchell had only moderate success. In the early 1940s, he did both chorus dancing and extra work in a number of minor musicals and westerns. On the strength of his award-winning performance in Brigadoon, Mitchell was scouted by producer Michael Curtiz and signed to a contract at Warner Brothers. Curtiz initially intended to put Mitchell in a picture with Doris Day that never materialized.[10] After several months, Mitchell eventually made two films for Warner Brothers, including Raoul Walsh's Colorado Territory, before following Curtiz to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At MGM, he played supporting roles in six films between 1949-55, most notably Anthony Mann's Border Incident, Jacques Tourneur's Stars in My Crown, and Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon — an experience he loathed so much that he refused to see the film[11] — but he did not work for the studio again after appearing in the infamously over-budgeted flop The Prodigal (1955). Mitchell's film career ended abruptly after he starred in Hal R. Makelim's Western The Peacemaker (1956), the only time he was ever billed above the title. After that, it took over two decades before he made his next and what proved to be his final appearance on the big screen, The Turning Point (1977). He also co-starred with Thelma "Tad" Tadlock in the famous sponsored filmA Touch of Magic presented by General Motors at the 1961 Motorama.
On television, Mitchell was considerably more active, especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to working regularly as a dancer, Mitchell played dramatic roles in a number of TV movies and prime-time series, as well as in the anthologies that were once so popular, such as Play of the Week, Gruen Guild Playhouse, and Armstrong Circle Theatre. In 1964, he took his first contract role on a soap opera in The Edge of Night, as the corrupt Capt. Lloyd Griffin; this was followed by the entire run of Where the Heart Is (1969-73), in which he played the male lead, Julian Hathaway. During the late 1970s, he was a guest star on Lou Grant and Charlie's Angels.
Besides performing, Mitchell occasionally worked as a director and choreographer, particularly in the late 1960s and 1970s. He staged musicals at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the Mark Taper Forum, and The Muny, among other theatres. In 1956, he and Katherine Litz co-staged The Enchanted for American Ballet Theatre. After Mack & Mabel flopped in 1974, Mitchell's performing career nearly ended altogether. He earned a BA from Empire State College and an MFA from Goddard College in order to teach full-time at the college level, and taught movement for actors at Juilliard, Yale University, and Drake University. In 1979, after several years of only occasional work, Mitchell was hired to play the villainous businessman Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children. Initially hired for only one year, Mitchell remained on contract through 2009. His final appearance as a contract player was September 19, 2008, although his retirement was not made official until September 30, 2009.[12] He made a guest appearance on January 5, 2010, as part of the show's fortieth anniversary.
A character based on Mitchell appears in Anderson Ferrell's biographical dance play, Dance/Speak: The Life of Agnes De Mille, which debuted at New York Theatre Ballet in 2009.
Mitchell's longtime partner was the Oscar award-winning costume designer Albert Wolsky.[13]
James Mitchell died on January 22, 2010, in Los Angeles, a matter of weeks before what would have been his 90th birthday. His death came after suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complicated by pneumonia.[14]
To see more of who died in 2010click here
Shirley Caddell , also known as Shirley Collie, was an American country music and rockabilly artist. She was the second wife of singer Willie Nelson, from 1963 to 1971. 
"Willingly", a duet with Nelson, in 1962.[1] The Nelson duet was also his first chart single. In 1963, she divorced Biff Collie, pioneer country disc jockey, to marry Nelson.
