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.
Harold W. McGraw Jr., the former chief executive officer of McGraw-Hill Cos. who fought off a hostile takeover of the family business, has died. He was 92.
McGraw Jr. died at his home this morning, New York-based McGraw-Hill said today in a statement. He was chairman emeritus of McGraw-Hill. His son Harold “Terry” McGraw III has led the company as CEO since 1998, adding the title of chairman in 2000.
“My father was a passionate and principled leader, who led McGraw-Hill with an educator’s heart and an insistence that the underlying principles guiding the company since its founding in 1888 -- integrity, quality, value and excellence -- would endure,” McGraw III said in the statement.
McGraw-Hill, founded in 1888 by McGraw Jr.’s grandfather James H. McGraw, owns Standard & Poor’s ratings service, an education publishing business and J.D. Power and Associates. McGraw Jr. joined the company as a book sales representative in 1947 after stints in advertising and book retailing.
McGraw Jr. ran the company as CEO from 1975 to 1983 and stayed on as chairman through 1988. During his tenure, he fought off a hostile takeover attempt by American Express in 1979. He retired in 1988 at 70 after being elected chairman emeritus.
He contributed to literacy organizations and established the Business Council for Effective Literacy. He received the Literacy Award in 1990 from President George H.W. Bush in recognition of his commitment to education.
McGraw Jr. was born in New York on Jan. 10, 1918. He graduated from Princeton University in 1940 and served as a captain in the Army Air Corps in World War II. In 1940 he married Anne Per-Lee, who died in 2002.
He is survived by three children: McGraw III, Robert P. McGraw, who is on the company’s board, and Suzanne McGraw. Another son, Thomas, died in 2006. He is also survived by eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Robert Martin Culp[1] died he was 79. Culp was an American actor and scriptwriter, perhaps best known for his work in television. Culp earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy (1965-1968), the espionageseries, where he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents.
(August 16, 1930 – March 24, 2010)
Culp was born in Oakland, California in 1930. He graduated from Berkeley High School. He also attended the University of Washington School of Drama and graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He was married five times and had three sons and two daughters. From 1967-1970, he was married to Eurasian actress France Nuyen, whom he met when she guest-starred on I Spy in 1966. She appeared in four episodes of the series, two of them written by Culp himself. During the series run, Culp wrote scripts for seven episodes, one of which he also directed. He also wrote scripts for several other television series, including Trackdown.
Culp came to national attention very early in his career as the star of the 1957-1959 Western television series Trackdown in which he played Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. Trackdown was a spin-off of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, also on CBS. Culp's character was introduced in an episode titled "Badge of Honor". Culp had previously appeared in two other episodes of Zane Grey Theater - "Morning Incident" and "Calico Bait" (both 1960) playing different roles. Trackdown then had a CBS spin-off of its own: Wanted: Dead or Alive, with Steve McQueen as bounty hunter Josh Randall.
Culp then played secret agent Kelly Robinson, who masqueraded as a professional tennis player, for three years on the hit NBC series I Spy (1965-68), with co-star Bill Cosby. Culp wrote the scripts for seven episodes, one of which he also directed. One episode earned him an Emmy nomination for writing. For all three years of the series he was also nominated for an acting Emmy (Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series category), but lost each time to Cosby.
In 1973 Culp almost took the male lead in the tv sci-fi series Space: 1999. Unfortunately, during negotiations with creator and executive producer Gerry Anderson, Culp expressed himself to be not only an asset as an actor, but also as a director and producer for the proposed series. The part went to Martin Landau.
In 1981 he starred in The Greatest American Hero as tough-as-nails FBI Agent Bill Maxwell, who teams up with a special education teacher who receives superpowers from extraterrestrials. That show lasted three years ending in 1983. He reprised the role in a voice-over on the stop-motion sketch comedy Robot Chicken.
In 1987, he reunited with Bill Cosby, this time on The Cosby Show, playing Dr. Cliff Huxtable's old friend Scott Kelly. The name was a combination of their I Spy characters' names.
When contract negotiations with Larry Hagman over his character, J.R. Ewing, on the TV series Dallas, it was widely reported[who?] that Culp was ready to step into the role.However, this turned out to be a false rumor. Culp said in interviews that he was never contacted by anyone from Dallas about the part. He was working on The Greatest American Hero at the time and stated that he would not have left his role as Maxwell even if it had been offered.
One of his most recent recurring roles was a part on Everybody Loves Raymond as Warren Whelan - Debra Barone's father and Ray's father-in-law.
Although primarily known from television, Culp also worked as an actor in many theatrical films, beginning with three in 1963: As naval officer John F. Kennedy's good friend Ensign George Ross in PT 109, as legendary gunslingerWild Bill Hickok in The Raiders and as the debonair fiance of Jane Fonda in the romantic comedy Sunday in New York.
He went on to star in the provocative Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in 1969, probably the height of his movie career. Another memorable role came as another gunslinger, Thomas Luther Price, in Hannie Caulder (1971) opposite Raquel Welch. A year later, Hickey & Boggs reunited him with Cosby for the first time since I Spy. Culp also directed this feature film, in which he and Cosby portray over-the-hill private eyes. In 1986, he had a primary role as General Woods in the comedy Combat Academy.
Culp played the U.S. President in Alan J. Pakula's 1994 murder mystery The Pelican Brief starring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. In all, Culp gave hundreds of performances in a career spanning more than 50 years.
Culp lent his voice to the digital character Doctor Breen, the prime antagonist in the 2004 computer gameHalf-Life 2. This was not his first video game role, however: he also appeared in the 1993 game Voyeur.
The video clip of "Guilty Conscience" features Culp as an erudite and detached narrator describing the scenes where Eminem and Dr Dre rap lyrics against each other. He only appears in the music video. In the album version, the narrator is Richard "Segal" Heredia.
On November 9, 2007 on The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly interviewed Culp about the actor's long career and awarded Culp with the distinction "TV Icon of the Week".
Culp died on March 24, 2010, after a fall that took place outside his Los Angeles home.[2] He was 79 years old.
Born in Gisborne, New Zealand as Margaret Wilson, to a homemaker and a man who made swimming pools, she got her first camera at age 8. She changed her name to Margaret Gipsy Moth reportedly because of her love for parachuting from Tiger Moth airplanes and her desire to have her "own" name.[1]
In July 1992, Moth was shot and severely wounded while filming in Sniper Alley in Sarajevo.[3] She underwent multiple surgeries that saved her life, but was left with permanent damage to her face and voice that, she said, left her sounding perpetually drunk. Despite her injuries, she returned to work in Sarajevo six months later, joking that she was going back to look for her missing teeth. [4]
She was the subject of the CNN documentary Fearless: the Margaret Moth Story, which aired in October 2009. It was the story of her reporting the news in dangerous war zones, without fear. In the documentary, she was quoted as saying, "I've gotten everything out of life."
In 2007, Moth was diagnosed with colon cancer. Two years later, she told a CNN documentary crew "I would have liked to think I'd have gone out with a bit more flair ... the important thing is to know that you've lived your life to the fullest... You could be a billionaire, and you couldn't pay to do the things we've done." [5]
Blanche Thebom made her concert debut in 1941, with the Metropolitan Opera, as Fricka in December 1941. She made her Met debut in November 1944 at the Philadelphia's Academy of Music as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde. She was the leading dramatic mezzo-soprano of the Metropolitan Opera for 22 years, created the American premiere performances of Baba the Turk in Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, the Mother in Strauss' Arabella, and Mére Marie in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. In her 22 seasons with the Met (1944-1959, 1960-1967) she appeared in 356 performances, 28 roles, and 27 works. She also sang in various opera houses in America and Europe, with increasing success. The first American to sing at the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow, Blanche Thebom is also remembered for her Dorabella in the historic production directed by Alfred Lunt of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte, and for her Brangäne on Flagstad/Wilhelm Furtwängler recording of Tristan und Isolde.
In 1967 Blanche Thebom was appointed head of the Southern Regional Opera Company in Atlanta. It folded in 1968. In 1968 she was appointed director of the opera workshop of San Francisco State University. Blanche Thebom founded the Opera Arts Training Program, a three-week workshop in conjunction with San Francisco Girls Chorus in 1988. She lives and teaches in San Francisco.
Upon her retirement from the Metropolitan ca. 1960, she taught and directed opera performance in Atlanta and Little Rock until around 1980. She appeared in summer theatre revivals of Broadway musicals such as The Sound of Music (as the Mother Abbess) in Atlanta.
Marva Wright, the New Orleans blues and gospel singer who left her job as a school secretary to sing around the world, died Tuesday of complications from two strokes suffered last summer. She was 62.
Ms. Wright died at the eastern New Orleans home of her eldest daughter, where she had been living since her health went into decline last year.
She sang traditional jazz and gospel standards but was better known for sultry, sometimes bawdy blues standards, including "Heartbreakin' Woman" and "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean."
She released a series of albums on local and international record labels, and frequently performed in Europe and at blues festivals around the country. With her band, the BMWs, she drew large crowds for performances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
"She truly was and will remain the Blues Queen of New Orleans," said Adam Shipley, Ms. Wright's manager. "I cherish all the time I spent with her. She was one of the highlights to ever grace the stage at Tipitina's."
Enormously popular among fellow musicians, Ms. Wright moved easily between gospel spirituals and bawdy blues romps. She released a series of albums on local and international record labels, and frequently performed in Europe and at blues festivals around the country. She drew large crowds for her performances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell. Her annual Christmas concerts at Tipitina's featured a broad range of singers and musicians.
Ms. Wright grew up on First Street in Central City alongside Jo "Cool" Davis and Sammy Berfect, also destined to impact the city's gospel community. As a child, she listened to her mother sing and play piano at Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church. Her mother had attended McDonogh 24 elementary school with future gospel legend Mahalia Jackson.
"My mother would go to the national Baptist convention," Ms. Wright once said. "When it convened in Chicago (where Jackson had moved), Mahalia would say, 'Girl, you don't need to get no hotel. Stay with me.' That's what my mother would do. I met Mahalia when I was 9 years old, but I never realized she was that popular until I got older."
As she considered leaving her secretarial post at Eleanor McMain Secondary School to embark on a career as a singer, she wrestled with the idea of performing sacred gospel music in secular clubs. She consulted with her old friend Davis, who urged her to make the leap.
Keith Spera / The Times-PicayuneMarva Wright, right, and guitarist Tab Benoit perform at the Democratic National Convention delegates welcoming party in Denver on August 24, 2008.
"You can only go so far in gospel," Davis said. "I'd put Marva in a category with Mavis Staples. People want to sing, they are inspired to sing. But not everybody has that raw, natural talent, like Marva. Somebody that talented has to go another route."
She nurtured her early career in Bourbon Street clubs, including the Old Absinthe Bar. In 1990, while working at the Bourbon Street Gospel and Blues Club, she met "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley. They became close friends; up until his death, Bradley introduced Ms. Wright for her Jazz Fest performances.
While some performers look down on Bourbon Street venues, Ms. Wright understood their role in launching her career. "I love Bourbon Street," she said in 2008. "If it wasn't for Bourbon Street, I wouldn't be where I'm at now. You meet a lot of people from all over the world."
In the 1990s, her audience at the Uptown club Muddy Waters occasionally included a daughter of then-Vice President Al Gore, and Gore's wife, Tipper. That led to an invitation to perform at the White House during the Clinton years.
Hurricane Katrina inundated her rented home near the intersection of Morrison and Crowder in eastern New Orleans with nearly 8 feet of water. She and her second husband, Anthony Plessy, moved to Bel Air, Maryland, near the homes of Plessy's adult children. During her year in Maryland, Ms. Wright was not impressed with the culinary sensibilities of her home-in-exile.
"I cooked gumbo without the essentials -- our crabs and shrimp," she recalled in 2008. "And they didn't have hot sausage. Somebody sent me some crab boil seasoning. I used that. I'll never forget, I cooked gumbo for Thanksgiving. I put in chicken and smoked sausage -- I don't do that here because I don't need to."
She finally returned to the New Orleans area and settled in Harvey. From January 2007 through March 2008, Ms. Wright was featured most weekends in the Ritz-Carlton's On Trois Lounge. After parting ways with the Ritz, she returned to Bourbon Street with her band, the BMWs - an acronym for the "Band of Marva Wright."
In August 2008, Ms. Wright was part of the delegation of Louisiana artists who performed at the Denver welcoming party for Democratic National Convention delegates. On a stage in a Colorado Convention Center ballroom, Ms. Wright sang "A Change Is Gonna Come," accompanied by guitarist Tab Benoit and others. Irma Thomas, Terence Blanchard and Randy Newman were also part of the show.
In 2009, Ms. Wright suffered two strokes. She was first hospitalized in mid-May after what was described as a "minor" stroke. She recovered sufficiently to start performing once again.
However, she returned to the hospital after another, more traumatic stroke on June 6. In the difficult weeks and months that followed, she underwent dialysis treatments and was fed via a feeding tube.
Fess Parker, whose star-making portrayal of frontiersman Davy Crockett on television in the mid-1950s made him a hero to millions of young baby boomers and spurred a nationwide run on coonskin caps, Parker died he was 85.
Parker, who played another pioneer American hero on television's "Daniel Boone" in the 1960s before
becoming a successful Santa Barbara hotel developer and Santa Ynez Valley winery owner, died of complications from old age at his home near the winery, said family spokeswoman Sao Anash.
In Tennessee, the series took on special meaning. Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, and "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" made it into many Nashville homes with its beloved lines: Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, Greenest state in the land of the free... Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded one of three popular versions of the song. A used copy of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" even made it into our home back in the days of the record player, compliments of an older cousin.
After playing Davy Crockett, Fess Parker donned his coonskin cap again to play neighboring Kentucky's heroic Christian frontiersman and hunter Daniel Boone from 1964 to 1970 in the somewhat faith-based series of the same name. There is little doubt that Boone spent time in Tennessee. A tree in Washington County, Tennessee reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar [killed a bear] on [this] tree in the year 1760." The Daniel Boone series co-starred actor and singer Ed Ames--whose Christmas songs are perennial radio favorites--as Boone's Indian friend, Mingo, for the first four seasons. Then Country-Western singer Jimmy Dean, whose first big hit (recorded in Nashville) was 1961's "Big Bad John," became Parker's sidekick, Josh Clements, from 1968 to 1970.
According to The American Christian Hall of Fame, Daniel Boone wrote in 1816: "The religion I have is to love and fear God, believe in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbor, and myself that I can, do as little harm as I can help, and trust on God's mercy for the rest."
Although he starred in other shows and movies, Fess Parker will always be remembered for his roles as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. He did much to popularize these early Tennessee and Kentucky frontiersmen and to make them part of America's pop culture in the 1950s and 1960s and even to this day through reruns and DVDs.
Alex Chilton died he was 59 . Chilton was an Americansongwriter, guitarist, singer and producer best known for his work with the pop-music bands the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial sales success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was not repeated in later years with Big Star and in his indie music solo career on small labels, but he did draw a loyal following in the indie and alternative music fields.
(December 28, 1950 – March 17, 2010)
Chilton grew up in a musical family; his father, Sidney Chilton, was a jazz musician. A local band recruited the teenager in 1966 as their lead singer after learning of the popularity of his vocal performance at a talent show at Memphis' Central High School; this band was The Devilles, later renamed Box Tops. At a conservative school in a largely conservative city, Alex and his band made a huge impression on the students who attended the talent show. He was different, and his style attractive. The new group recorded with Chips Moman and producer/songwriter Dan Penn at American Sound Studio and Muscle Shoals' FAME Studios.
As lead singer for the Box Tops, Chilton enjoyed at the age of 16 a number-one international hit, "The Letter." The Box Tops went on to have several other major chart hits, including "Cry Like a Baby" (1968) and "Soul Deep" (1969). The group's songs were written by Penn, Moman, Spooner Oldham and other top area songwriters, with Chilton occasionally contributing a song. By late 1969, only Chilton and guitarist Gary Talley remained from the original group, and newer additions replaced the members who had departed. The group decided to disband and pursue independent careers in February 1970.
Chilton then began performing as a solo artist, maintaining a working relationship with Penn for demos. During this period he began learning guitar by studying the styles of guitarists like Stax Records great Steve Cropper, recording his own material in 1970 at Ardent Studios with local musicians like producer Terry Manning and drummer Richard Rosebrough, and producing a few local blues-rock acts. His 1970 recordings and productions from that time frame were released years later in the 1980s and 1990s on albums like Lost Decade (New Rose Records) and 1970 (Ardent Records).
After a period in New York City, during which Chilton worked on his guitar technique and singing style (some of which was believed to have been influenced by a chance meeting with Roger McGuinn at a friend's apartment in New York, when Chilton was impressed with McGuinn's singing and playing), Chilton returned to Memphis in 1971 and joined the power-pop group Big Star, with Chris Bell, recording at engineer John Fry's Ardent Studios. Chilton and Bell co-wrote "In The Street" for Big Star's first album #1 Record, a track later known as the theme song of That '70s Show.
The group's recordings met little commercial success but established Chilton's reputation as a rock singer and songwriter; later alternative music bands like R.E.M. would praise the group as a major influence. During this period he also occasionally recorded with Rosebrough as a group they called The Dolby Fuckers; some of their studio experimentation was included on Big Star's album Radio City, including the recording of "Mod Lang." Rosebrough would occasionally work with Chilton on later recordings, including Big Star's Third album and Chilton's 1975 solo record Bach's Bottom.
Moving back to New York in 1977, Chilton performed as "Alex Chilton and the Cossacks" with a lineup that included Chris Stamey (later of The dB's) and Richard Lloyd of Television at venues like CBGB, releasing an influential solo single, "Bangkok" (b/w a cover of the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine"), in 1978. This period learning from the New York CBGB scene marked the beginning of a key change for Chilton's personal musical interests away from multi-layered pop studio recording standards toward a looser, animated punk performance style often recorded in one take and featuring fewer overdubs. There he made the acquaintance of punk band the Cramps. He brought them to Memphis, where he produced the songs that would appear on their Gravest HitsEP and their Songs the Lord Taught UsLP.
In 1979, Chilton released, in a limited edition of 500 copies, an album called Like Flies on Sherbert, produced by Chilton with Jim Dickinson at Phillips Recording and Ardent Studios, which featured his own interpretations of songs by artists as disparate as the Carter Family, Jimmy C. Newman, Ernest Tubb, and KC and the Sunshine Band, along with several originals. While criticized by some as a druggy mess, this album is considered by many to be a lo-fi masterpiece. Sherbert, which included backing work by Memphis musicians including Rosebrough, Memphis drummer Ross Johnson, and Lisa Aldridge, has since been reissued several times.
Beginning in 1979 Chilton also co-founded, played guitar with, and produced some albums for Tav Falco's Panther Burns, which began as an offbeat rock-and-roll group deconstructing blues, country, and rockabilly music.
Chilton moved to New Orleans in the early 1980s, while also touring regularly with Panther Burns and occasionally as a solo artist, as documented in his poorly received 1982 solo release Live in London.
After a six month span of working outside music at tree-trimming and dishwashing jobs in New Orleans, he resumed playing with Panther Burns in 1983. His new association with New Orleans jazz musicians (including bassist René Coman) marked a period in which he began playing guitar in a less raucous style and moved toward a cooler, more restrained approach, as heard in Panther Burns' 1984 Sugar Ditch Revisited album, produced by Jim Dickinson.
Immediately upon completing the recording in mid-1984, Chilton returned his focus to his own solo career. He stopped playing regular gigs with Panther Burns and took with him the group's bassist, Coman. Chilton then formed a trio with Coman and Memphis jazz drummer Doug Garrison. The trio immediately began touring intensely and recording at Ardent Studios, releasing in 1985 an EP, Feudalist Tarts, that featured his versions of songs by Carla Thomas, Slim Harpo, and Willie Tee, and releasing in 1986 No Sex. The latter EP contained three originals, including the extended mood piece, "Wild Kingdom," a song highlighting Coman's jazz-oriented, improvisational bass interplay with Chilton.
During this period, in his recordings Chilton began frequently to use a horn section consisting of Memphis veteran jazz performers Fred Ford, Jim Spake, and Nokie Taylor to imbue the soul-oriented pieces among his repertoire with a postmodern, minimalist jazz feel that distinguished his interpretative approach from that of a simple soul revivalist style. Chilton forged a new direction for his solo work, eschewing effects and blending soul, jazz, country, rockabilly and pop. Coman left Chilton's solo trio at the end of 1986 to pursue other projects, forming (with Garrison) The Iguanas, three years later, with other New Orleans musicians; both would record occasionally with Chilton after departing.
Touring and recording as a solo artist from the late-1980s through the 1990s with bassist Ron Easley and eventually drummer Richard Dworkin, Chilton gained a reputation for his eclectic taste in cover versions, guitar work, and laconic stage presence.
Chilton included on 1987's High Priest a cover of "Raunchy," his instrumental salute to Sun Records guitarist Sid Manker, a friend of his father from whom he'd once taken a guitar lesson; this song was also a standard in his early Panther Burns repertoire. Along with four upbeat originals, High Priest also included other covers like "Nobody's Fool," a song originally written and recorded in 1973 by his old mentor Dan Penn. His EP Black List contained a cover of Ronny & the Daytonas' "Little GTO," along with an original song, "Guantanamerika." He also produced albums by several artists beginning in the 1980s, including the Detroit group The Gories, occasionally producing Panther Burns albums well into the 1990s.
In the 1990s, Chilton recorded an acoustic solo record of jazz standards in New Orleans' Chez Flames studio with producer Keith Keller, entitled "Cliches", and continued with a live CD released in 2004, Live in Anvers.
Since the mid-1990s, he added to his schedule concerts and recordings with the reunited Box Tops and a version of Big Star that included two members of The Posies, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. A new Big Star album, entitled In Space, with songs penned by this lineup, was released September 27, 2005, on Rykodisc.
Chilton was present at his home in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and evacuated on September 4, 2005.
Chilton continued to perform live yearly, with sporadic solo, Box Tops and Big Star shows in theatres and at festivals around the world.
Chilton was taken to the hospital in New Orleans on March 17, 2010, complaining of health problems, and died the same day of a suspected heart attack. He is survived by his wife, Laura, and son, Timothy.[1][2]
Harold W. McGraw Jr., the former chief executive officer of McGraw-Hill Cos. who fought off a hostile takeover of the family business, has died. He was 92. 
He contributed to literacy organizations and established the Business Council for Effective Literacy. He received the Literacy Award in 1990 from President George H.W. Bush in recognition of his commitment to education.
