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.
Günter F. Wendt died on May 3, 2010 at his home in Merritt Island, Florida following congestive heart failure and a stroke.[2]
Wendt is a recipient of NASA's Letter of Appreciation award, the Silver Snoopy award[3] and several Group Achievement awards. He received a NASA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
In NASA documentary films, Wendt appears as the bespectacled, thin man in a bow-tie and white cap and coat, usually standing near the hatch, clipboard in hand; or bending over seated crew members, pulling their safety harnesses snug for launch.
(August 28, 1923 – May 3, 2010)
A native of Berlin, Germany, Wendt studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and served aboard Luftwaffe (air force) night fighters as a flight engineer during World War II. While there, he spent a four-year apprenticeship learning aircraft building.[1]
Immediately after the war there were few job opportunities for engineers in Germany, so Wendt decided to emigrate to the United States in 1949 and join his divorced father in St. Louis, Missouri. McDonnell Aircraft was interested in hiring Wendt as an engineer, but could not hire a German citizen since the company was working on U.S. Navy contracts. He found a job as a truck mechanic (though he had never worked on trucks) and within one year became shop supervisor. He obtained his U.S. citizenship in 1955 and was immediately hired by McDonnell.[1]
As a McDonnell engineer, Wendt supervised spacecraft launch pad preparations at Cape Canaveral during the Mercury and Gemini manned space programs beginning with the flight of Ham the chimpanzee in 1961. He came to be regarded as a welcomed good luck figure to the astronauts; always the last reassuring earth-bound face the crew members saw, kidding with them and wishing them a successful flight as he directed completion of the complex pad close-out procedures just prior to launch.
Wendt's was the final word for the launch tower white room team responsible for loading and securing the crewmen, ensuring that spacecraft instrumentation, switches and controls were correct for launch, and securing the hatch. Nobody touched anything without his permission.
"There is no reason to say I am narrow-minded. Just do it my way and you will have no problem at all." – Wendt[1]
Once a stubborn engineer intended to personally make a spacecraft change, with or without Wendt's permission. Wendt called security to have him removed.
"The [security] guy comes up on the elevator and he says [to the engineer], 'You like me to put handcuffs on you, or are you going to go by yourself?' The engineer dropped his jaw, but he left. Maybe this system is wrong, but I have had pretty good success with it. If I don't do a good job, I get out. I can't compromise." – Wendt[1]
Astronaut Pete Conrad, known for his sense of humor, once said of Wendt:
"It's easy to get along with Guenter. All you have to do is agree with him."[1]
Mercury astronaut John Glenn fondly nicknamed Wendt "der Führer of der Launch Pad" (from his German-accented English) for his efficient, disciplined, yet good-humored pad crew leadership. His strict approach to configuration control of the equipment and commitment to safety was welcomed by the astronauts, and earned him their respect.[1][2] Before Glenn's Mercury flight, Wendt tried to reassure Glenn's wife:
"Annie, we cannot guarantee you safe return of John. This would be lying. Nobody can guarantee you this – there is too much machinery involved. The one thing I can guarantee you is that when the spacecraft leaves it is in the best possible condition for a launch. If anything should happen to the spacecraft, I would like to be able to come and tell you about the accident and look you straight in the eye and say, 'We did the best we could.' My conscience then is clear and there is where my guideline is."[1]
In January of 1967, Wendt, still with McDonnell (soon to become McDonnell Douglas), was supervising the test range in Titusville, Florida. Since NASA changed contractors for the Apollo program to North American Aviation (soon to become North American Rockwell), he was not involved with the Apollo 1 spacecraft, in which a cabin fire caused the deaths of Gus Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger Chaffee. After the accident, several people expressed to him the wish that he had been there, as if he might have caught the fatal problem in time to prevent the tragedy. But Wendt himself did not presume to believe this:
"...maybe it was meant for me not to be there because I would have taken it very hard."[1]
Grissom's backup and replacement on the Apollo 7 flight, Mercury and Gemini veteran Wally Schirra insisted on having Wendt back in charge of the pad crew for his flight, and convinced chief astronaut Deke Slayton to get North American to hire him. Schirra personally convinced North American's vice-president and general manager for launch operations, Bastian "Buz" Hello, to change Wendt's shift from midnight to daytime so he could be pad leader for Apollo 7.[1]
During the Apollo 7 liftoff, crew member Donn Eisele said to the ground, "I vonder vere Guenter Vendt?" (The German language sometimes pronounces the letter w as a v.)[1]
Crew members of the other Apollo missions shared an equally high regard for Wendt, and he stayed on with the Pad Leader title through the Skylab and ASTP missions.
He continued to work at KSC into the early Space Shuttle flights until retiring in 1989.[3]
Wendt later served as a technical consultant for several TV and movie features, and co-authored his 2001 autobiography, The Unbroken Chain, with Russell Still (Apogee Books (ISBN 1-896522-84-X)). He remained a personal friend of many early astronauts.
Wendt has been portrayed in a number of movies and television shows about the US space program, including:
Apollo 13, 1995, played by Endre Hules – While being fit into his space suit, astronaut Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) chats with Wendt, playfully mocking and repeating Eisele's pun from Apollo 7: "I vonder vere Guenter Vendt?"
Robert Murray Gordon "Rob" McConnell, OC has died he was 75. McConnell was a Canadianjazzvalve trombonist, composer, arranger, music educator, and recording artist.[1]
(February 14, 1935 – May 1, 2010)
McConnell was born in London, Ontario and took up the valve trombone in high school, and began his performing career in the early 1950s, performing and studying with Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, and later, with fellow Canadian Maynard Ferguson. He also studied music
theory with Gordon Delamont. In 1968 he formed The Boss Brass, a big band that would become his primary performing and recording unit through the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1988, McConnell took a teaching position at the Dick Grove School of Music in California, but gave up his position and returned to Canada a year later. In 1997, McConnell was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and in 1998 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Since that time he has remained active, touring internationally both as a performer and educator, running clinics around the world and performing as both a leader and a guest artist. The newly formed Rob McConnell tentet has been quite successful, producing three major records, The Rob McConnell Tentet (2000), Thank You, Ted (2002), and Music of the Twenties (2003).
McConnell assembled the original Boss Brass from Toronto studio musicians. The instrumentation of the band was originally 16 pieces, consisting of trumpets, trombones, french horns, and a rhythm section, but no saxophones. McConnell introduced a saxophone section in 1970, and expanded the trumpet section to include a fifth trumpet in 1976, bringing the total to 22 members.
Over the years, Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass became one of Canada's most popular jazz ensembles, performing live and recording for Concord Jazz and a variety of other labels. Mel Tormé said, of his first recording session with the Boss Brass in 1987, "Making this record was one of the two or three greatest musical experiences in my long and checkered career."[citation needed] He died on May 1, 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, aged 75, from cancer.
Discography
Recordings made by Rob McConnell & the Boss Brass include:
The Boss Brass (1968)
Boss Brass Two (1969)
The Sound of the Boss Brass (1970)
Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass (1971)
Rob McConnell's Boss Brass 4 (1972)
The Best Damn Band In The Land (1974)
The Jazz Album (1976)
Nobody Does It Better (1977)
Big Band Jazz (1978)
Boss Brass Again, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (1978)
Singers Unlimited with Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass (with The Singers Unlimited) (1978)
Dennis Tinerino, Four-Time Mr. Universe, Passes Away at 64
Dennis Tinerino was a legendary bodybuilder who left a lasting impact on the sport. His impressive career included winning the Mr. Universe title four times (1968, 1975, 1980, and 1981), as well as securing the Mr. World title in 1971 and Mr. America in 1978. Tinerino's dedication and hard work in the gym led him to be inducted into the Bodybuilding Hall of Fame.
Beyond his bodybuilding career, Tinerino experienced a life transformation that led him to become a Christian evangelist with a global ministry. His journey from a life of crime, running a large escort service in California, to an international evangelist, is a testament to his determination and the impact of his faith.
Sadly, Dennis Tinerino passed away in 2010 at the age of 64, after an 18-month battle with stomach cancer. His legacy in the world of bodybuilding and his dedication to his faith continue to inspire people worldwide.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne died she was was an American singer, actress, and dancer.
Horne joined the mike chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Owing to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
(June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010)
Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs as well as on television, all while releasing well received record albums. Horne announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway, and earned her numerous awards and accolades, and she would continue recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s.
When Horne was five, she was sent to live in Georgia.[8] For several years, she traveled with her mother.[9] From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was the dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute in Fort Valley, Georgia[9] and who would later become an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[10] From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother; they returned to New York when Horne was 12 years old.[9] She then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn which has since become Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma.
In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade. A few years later she joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked the travel and left the band to work at the Café Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne left the show after only six months to headline a nightclub revue on the west coast; she was replaced by Linda Keene.
Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a 1938 musical feature called The Duke is Tops (later reissued with Horne's name above the title as The Bronze Venus); and a 1941 two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream, featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies. Horne was primarily a nightclub performer during this period, and it was during a 1943 club engagement in Hollywood that talent scouts approached Horne to work in pictures. She chose Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and became the first black performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. In 1945 and 1946 she sang with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.
She made her debut with MGM in Panama Hattie (1942) and performed the title song of Stormy Weather (1943), which she made at 20th Century Fox, on loan from MGM. She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (also 1943), but was never featured in a leading role because of her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be re-edited for showing in states where theaters could not show films with black performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline; a notable exception was the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, although one number was cut because it was considered too suggestive by the censors. "Ain't it the Truth" was the song (and scene) cut before the release of the film Cabin in the Sky. It featured Horne singing "Ain't it the Truth", while taking a bubble bath (considered too "risqué" by the film's executives). This scene and song are featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994) which also featured commentary from Horne on why the scene was deleted prior to the film's release.
In Ziegfeld Follies (1946) she performed "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne wanted to be considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but lost the part to Ava Gardner, a personal friend in real life, due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships in films. In the documentary That's Entertainment! III Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses. Ultimately, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Warren (Smith) for the theatrical release, though her voice was heard on the soundtrack album.
By the mid-1950s, Horne was disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused on her nightclub career. She only made two major appearances in MGM films during the decade, 1950's Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's film swan song), and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She was blacklisted during the 1950s for her political views.[11] She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda in The Wiz (1978), and co-hosting the 1994 MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III, in which she was candid about her treatment by the studio.
After leaving Hollywood, Horne established herself as one of the premiere nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, became the biggest selling record by a female artist in the history of the RCA-Victor label. In 1958, Horne was nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica).
In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour long Harry & Lena for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Tony Bennett in Tony and Lena. Horne and Bennett subsequently toured the U.S. and U.K. in a show together. A very memorable appearance was in the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, where she sang a lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several appearances on The Flip Wilson Show.
Additionally, Horne played herself on television programs such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, as well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 appearance on A Different World. In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from show business, embarked on a two month series of benefit concerts sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented as Horne's farewell tour, yet her retirement lasted less than a year.
On April 13, 1980 Miss Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, and host Gene Kelly were all scheduled to appear at a Gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to salute the N Y City Center's Joffrey Ballet Company. However, Mr. Pavarotti's plane was diverted over the Atlantic and was unable to appear. James Nederlander was an invited Honored Guest and noted that only three people at the sold out Metropolitan Opera House asked for their money back. He asked to be introduced to Lena following her performance. In May 1981, The Nederlander Organization, Michael Frazier, and Fred Walker went on to book Horne for a four week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre (formerly the Trafalgar, the Billy Rose, and the National) on West 41st Street in New York City. The show was an instant success and was extended to a full year run, garnering Horne a special Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. The 333 performance Broadway run closed on Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that same week, the entire show was performed again and videotaped for television broadcast and home video release. The tour began a few days later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during the July 4, 1982 weekend. The Lady and Her Music toured 41 cities in the U.S. and Canada through June 17, 1984. It played in London for a month in August and ended its run in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984.
In 1981, she received a Special Tony Award for her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which also played to acclaim at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984.[12] Despite the show's considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on the renewed interest in her career by undertaking many new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint recording project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to be produced by Quincy Jones) was ultimately abandoned, and her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joe Williams. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
The 1990s found Horne considerably more active in the recording studio - all the more remarkable considering she was approaching her 80th year. Following her 1993 performance at a tribute to the musical legacy of her good friend Billy Strayhorn (Duke Ellington's longtime collaborator), she decided to record an album composed largely of Strayhorn's and Ellington's songs the following year, We'll Be Together Again. To coincide with the release of the album, Horne made what would be her final concert performances at New York's Supper Club and Carnegie Hall. That same year, Horne also lent her vocals to a recording of "Embraceable You" on Sinatra's Duets II album. Though the album was largely derided by critics, the Sinatra-Horne pairing was generally regarded as its highlight. In 1995, a 'live' album capturing her Supper Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, Horne released another studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne essentially retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return to the recording studio in 2000 to contribute vocal tracks on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for groups in which GermanPOWs were seated in front of African American servicemen",[13] according to her Kennedy Center biography. Since the US Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black US soldiers and white German POWs. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws.[14] She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Tom Lehrer mentiones her on his song "National brotherhood week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek to cheek" refering (sarcastically) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clarke, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a violent attack on civil rights marchers in 1965.
In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biopic. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne's demand," according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.
In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note." Remixed by her longtime producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne in remarkably secure voice for a woman of her years, and include versions of such signature songs as "Something to Live For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather". The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life, was released on January 24, 2006.
In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena in the stage musical Stormy Weather staged at the Pasadena Playhouse in California (January through March 2009).
Horne married Louis Jordan Jones in January 1937 and lived in Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937 they had a daughter, Gail (later known as Gail Lumet Buckley, a best-selling author),[15] and a son, Edwin Jones (February 1940 - September 12, 1970[4] - kidney disease.[5]). Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and divorced in 1944. Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, a Jewish American and one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December 1947 in Paris.[16] They separated in the early 1960s, but never divorced; he died in 1971.
In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial married couple. She later admitted in an Ebony, May 1980 interview she had married Hayton to advance her career.[17]
Horne died on May 9, 2010, at the New York–Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. She is survived by her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, grandaughters Jenny and Amy Lumet, Lena Jones, and grandsons, William and Thomas Jones. The circumstances of her death were withheld.[19] To see more of who died in 2010 click here
Nyleptha Matilda Shell Roberts died she was 112. Roberts was the oldest living person in Tennessee at the time of her death. She was the 20th oldest living person in the world, and 9th oldest living person in the US.
(née Bryant; March 12, 1898 - May 5, 2010)
Nyleptha Bryant was born in White County, Tennessee in 1898. She was the oldest daughter of John Douglas Bryant, Sr. (1871–1932) and Molly Victoria Whitaker (1879–1957), and was their second child. They had 12 in all, and lived in Bon Air, Tennessee.
Nyleptha, who was named after the good queen in Henry Rider Haggard's adventure novels, loved to tell jokes and ice skate during her early years. She attended school in a small, country school house, and remembers seeing her first automobile in 1907, when she was 9 years old. At the age of 10, her mother taught her to sew, and she would make patterns and sew many of her own clothes for many years. In 1912, her father bought her an organ for $79, and she would learn to play by ear.
Growing up, Nyleptha's personality attracted the attention of many boys, but Aaron Shell stood out. On September 22, 1922, she married Shell, who was born on March 1, 1893 in Old Town, Tennessee. Their first child, Columbus Leon, was born the next year. Eventually, they moved to Stone, Kentucky, where Shell became the manager of a coal mine. As the Kentucky coal industry prospered, so did their family, adding Johnny Alvin and Juanita over the next few years. During that time, Nyleptha managed a grocery store in the town, and she purchased their first car, not telling Shell until she arrive home driving it that night. Shell died at age 62 on September 18, 1955.
In 1958, Nyleptha moved to Chicago, Illinois to start over. She worked at a clothing store, and also a manager of a laundry service. In 1964, her son Johnny became ill, and she returned to Tennessee, building a home in Sparta. In 1978, when Nyleptha was 80, she married Hubert H. Roberts, who was born on January 1, 1900. The two travelled all over the country, visiting 26 different states. Their family continued to expand, and Nyleptha became the grandmother to three grandsons and one granddaughter.
After only 8 years together, Hubert died in White County, Tennessee at age 86, on December 20, 1986. He was buried in Mt. Pisgah Cemetery, White County, Tennessee.
Nyleptha continued to live in her own home until she was 107 years old. At that time, she moved to Life Care Center of Sparta. There, she passed her time as the facility librarian and making soap fish, small statues of aquatic creatures made with a bar of soap, cloth, beads and other craft materials. She received a great deal of attention, as she was the oldest living person in Tennessee, and the oldest resident in all of the facilities managed by Life Care Centers of America, the largest privately-held nursing facility company in the U.S.
Veteran television comedy writer-producer Allan Manings died Wednesday as a result of cardiac arrest which occurred at his Beverly Hills oncologist’s office—according to his stepdaughter, actress Meredith Baxter. He was 86.
Manings' writing career began in the 1950s, and by the 60s he was contributing scripts to hit sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver, Petticoat Junction, McHale’s Navy, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and The Mothers-in-Law. As one of the writers on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, he received an Emmy in 1968 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Music or Variety.
He later went to work for producer Norman Lear, becoming the script supervisor and later executive producer on the television hit Good Times. His lasting contribution to the situation comedy, however, came in 1975 when he and his wife Whitney Blake (who passed away in 2002)—an actress best known for her role on the 1960s sitcom Hazel—created One Day at a Time, a series about a divorcee (Bonnie Franklin) raising her two teenage daughters (Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli) in Indiana. The CBS show was a phenomenal hit, lasting nine seasons on the network before being cancelled in 1984.
As a youngster who vegetated in front of a TV set watching both Good Times and One Day at a Time religiously, I am truly grateful for Manings’ contributions to television comedy. R.I.P, Allan…you will be missed.
Manings was the widower of actress/producer Whitney Blake (1926-2002) and the stepfather of actress Meredith Baxter. He passed away on May 12, 2010, aged 86.
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Giulietta Simionato has died she was 99. Simionato was an Italianmezzo-soprano and one of the great singers of the post-war operatic stage. Her career spanned from the 1930s until her retirement in 1966. Simionato was much admired for vibrant singing in a remarkably wide repertoire, excelling in both dramatic and comic roles and in lyric and heavier repertoire. She was in demand at every major opera house and worked with the greatest conductors of the time. She had a special rapport with both the reigning sopranos of her day, Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, and was widely admired by colleagues and audiences alike for her warmth, sense of humor and professionalism.
(May 12, 1910 – May 5, 2010)
Simionato was born in Forlì, Italy. She studied in Rovigo and Padua and made her operatic debut at Montagnana in 1928. The first fifteen years of her career proved a frustration as she was only given small parts, however she attracted growing attention in the late 1940s, and by the end of her career was recognised as one of the most respected singers of her generation. In 1936, she made her debut at La Scala and appeared there regularly between 1936 and 1966. She made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1953, where she likewise appeared regularly between 1963 and 1965. In 1959, Simionato made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Simionato also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival (1947), the San Francisco Opera (1953), the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (1954), the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1954-61), the Vienna State Opera (from 1956), and the Salzburg Festival.
She was a major recording artist, and in addition many of her performances were broadcast live on the radio and also captured on film. She retired in 1966 and has continued to inspire admiration through teaching and various directorial positions, with amazing vitality even in her 90s.
Günter F. Wendt died on May 3, 2010 at his home in Merritt Island, Florida following congestive heart failure and a stroke.[2] 
She was featured in numerous newspaper articles and in Life Care Leader Magazine. She was a registered celebrity on startiger.com and had resolutions honoring her passed in the Tennessee General Assembly. She had also received letters of congratulations on her birthdays from governors and presidents.
