65 thoughts on “2021 UMR In Memoriam – RIP Betty White”

1. Yaphet Kotto, # 928 on the Oracle of Bacon list has passed.

   From Extra

   Yaphet Kotto — ‘Alien,’ Bond, ‘Homicide’ Star — Dead at 81

   Yaphet Kotto, a searing presence in such films as “Alien,” died Sunday near Manila, his wife confirmed. He was 81.
   No details of Kotto’s sudden death were provided, but his wife, Thessa “Tessie” Sinahon, posted a lengthy tribute on Facebook, writing, “I’m saddened and still in shocked of the passing of my husband Yaphet of 24 years… This is a very painfall moment for me to inform you all fans, friends and family of my husband.”
   She went on to reveal how full Kotto’s plate was at the time of his death: “We still have a lot of plans honey that we discussed you have a lot of interviews waiting and you have movie offers like G.I. Joe and the movie of Tom Cruise and others. You still have plan to release your book and build a religious organization based on Yogananda’s Teachings.”

   Summing up how many fans and peers viewed the imposing actor, “You played a villain on some of your movies but for me you’re a real hero.”
   Kotto was born November 15, 1939, in Harlem into a diverse family — his mother, an American nurse, was of West Indian and Panamanian descent, and his Jewish father came from Cameroonian royalty. He was raised by his grandparents.
   As a teen, he studied acting, including at the fabled Actors Studio, making his debut in “Othello” in the ’50s. He first appeared on Broadway in 1967’s “The Great White Hope,” and in film in 1963.
   One of his breakthrough movie roles was in the classic “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968), but he established himself as a credible villain in the James Bond thriller “Live and Let Die,” in which he played both bad-guy drug trafficker Mr. Big and a corrupt Caribbean dictator.

   He drew raves for playing one of history’s greatest villains, the “Butcher of Uganda” Idi Amin, in the TV movie “Raid on Entebbe” (1988).
   In spite of his knack for playing men up to no good, he may be best remembered as honorable engineer Parker in the sci-fi movie “Alien” (1979).

   “This movie means so much to me — I can not tell you. And to the world, because it’s a classic,” he said in 2003 of “Alien.” Recalling being present at the March on Washington and listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talking about his dream, Kotto said he had returned to D.C. in the ’90s and being confronted by a busload of Japanese schoolchildren chanting, “Alien!”
   “It was so spooky because I realized that the dream had come true,” he continued, also praising the film for its depiction of an African-American and a woman (Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley) in heroic roles.
   Other big-screen roles followed, including in “Brubaker” (1980), “The Star Chamber” (1983), “The Running Man” (1987), “Midnight Run” (1988), “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” (1991), and his final film, “Witless Protection” (2008), but his longest-running role came on TV, as Lt. Al Giardello on “Homicide: Life on the Street” (1993-2000), which earned him several NAACP Image Award nominations.
   Kotto is survived by his wife of over 20 years and by six children.

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   1. Thanks for posting Dan.

      RIP Yaphet Kotto.

      Live and Let Die, Midnight Run and Alien are big favorites of mine.

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      1. Hey Steve….we agree on his top 3….as Live and Let Die, Midnight Run and Alien are the three movies I immediately though of when I heard about his passing. Thanks for the feedback. RIP Mr. Kotto.

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   2. I don’t know a lot of Kotto’s movies, but I am very fond of The Thomas Crown Affair and I know Live and Let Die well. RIP

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      1. Hey Flora….The Thomas Crown Affair and To Live And Let Die are ones I watch pretty regular. I will probably re-watch Crown as a mini-tribute to him. Good feedback. RIP.

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   3. Hey Dan….awesome information on Mr. Kotto. Sad sad news about his passing. I have since written an UMR page on him. Good stuff as always.

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2. Ronald Pickup, # 769 on the 2020 Oracle list has passed. From the New York Daily News.

   Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ star Ronald Pickup dead at 80
   Storm Gifford, New York Daily News 5 hrs ago

   Ronald Pickup, the renowned British stage actor, who starred in the successful films “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “Darkest Hour,” has died at the age of 80.

   Ronald Pickup wearing a suit and tie: English actor Ronald Pickup poses for photographers on the red carpet ahead of the Royal and World Premiere of the film’ The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ in central London on Feb. 17, 2015.© JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/TNS English actor Ronald Pickup poses for photographers on the red carpet ahead of the Royal and World Premiere of the film’ The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ in central London on Feb. 17, 2015.
   Pickup passed away Wednesday after a long illness surrounded by his wife and family, his agent confirmed.

   “We’re very sad to hear that Ronald Pickup has died,” tweeted the National Theatre on Thursday. “Ronald was an exceptional actor and had a long history with the (National Theatre), starting with 1964′s ‘The Royal Hunt of the Sun.’ He went on to feature in 36 of our productions, and was a regular at The Old Vic under Laurence Olivier.”

   Born in Chester, England, in 1940, the actor accrued more than 150 TV and film appearances during his prodigious five-plus-decade career.

   During the 1970s, Pickup appeared on the big screen in “Joseph Andrews” and the Burt Lancaster war drama “Zulu Dawn.”

   He is probably best known in the 1980s for starring as Albert Einstein in the miniseries “Einstein” and Prince Yakimov in “Fortunes of War.”

   Throughout the 1990s, he made numerous TV appearances, notably “Black Hearts in Battersea” and “Ivanhoe.”

   On stage, Pickup appeared opposite Judi Dench in the David Hare play “Amy’s View.” He originated the role of Frank Oddie in the West End and received an Olivier nomination for his performance before reprising the role in 1999 for his Broadway debut, according to Internet Broadway Database.

   He would partner with Dench again as ladies’ man Norman Cousins in the 2011 film comedy “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and its sequel four years later.

   In 2016, he appeared on four episodes of “The Crown” as the Archbishop of Canterbury and portrayed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the 2017 Oscar-winning film “Darkest Hour.”

   Pickup was to co-star with Ian McKellen in the upcoming film “Schadenfreude,” according to IMDb.

   He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Lans Traverse; daughter, Rachel; and son, Simon.

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   1. Hey Dan. Thanks for the heads up on Ronald Pickup. I am sure I have read his name many times on your Oracle lists….but have to say I am not too aware of him. Rest in peace Mr. Pickup.

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3. From the Hollywood Reporter

   Lynn Stalmaster, Legendary Casting Director, Dies at 93

   He impacted hundreds of films and jump-started the careers of unknowns including Dustin Hoffman, Christopher Reeve, LaVar Burton and Ned Beatty.
   Lynn Stalmaster, the canny casting director who pushed relative unknowns Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate, Christopher Reeve for Superman and John Travolta for Welcome Back, Kotter, has died. He was 93.

   Stalmaster, who at the Governors Awards in November 2016 became the first casting director in history to receive an Academy Award, died Friday morning at his home in Los Angeles, Laura Adler of the Casting Society of America told The Hollywood Reporter.

   “A pioneer of our craft, Lynn was a trailblazer with over half a century of world-class film and television casting credits,” CSA co-presidents Russell Boast and Rich Mento said in a statement. “He was a friend and mentor to many of us. … Thank you, Lynn, for showing us the way.”

   After he accepted his honorary Oscar, Stalmaster said that the key to his success was keeping an opening mind. “‘Open’ is one of my favorite words,” he noted. “Because as I’ve said many times, you never know where or when you will find the answer [to casting a part]. And I’ve found the answer in some very strange places.”

   On Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the heist classic that starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, Stalmaster became the first casting director to receive a single-card credit in the titles.

   “There was my name in the main titles on a separate card: ‘Casting by Lynn Stalmaster’ … it was one of the most moving moments of my life,” the onetime actor recalled in Casting By …, the 2012 documentary directed by Tom Donahue.

   For years, Hollywood refused to acknowledge the integral role played by casting directors like Stalmaster and his legendary East Coast counterpart, Marion Dougherty. Said director Taylor Hackford in the documentary: “The reality is, you’re not a director; you’re a casting, uh, person, you’re ‘casting by’ …

   Nicknamed “The Master Caster,” Stalmaster has more than 400 casting credits listed on IMDb, with the too-many highlights to mention including I Want to Live! (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), The Great Escape (1963), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Harold and Maude (1971), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Onion Field (1979), Tootsie (1982), Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Battlefield Earth (2000).

   During the course of his remarkable six-decade career, the amiable Stalmaster found new faces and consistently cast against type. “Never compromise,” he said at the Governors Awards, “no matter what the size of a role, even if it’s just a reaction.”

   For John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), Stalmaster set up a casting call at a Georgia elementary school and found Billy Redden to play the quirky youngster in the movie’s famous banjo scene. And he suggested that Ned Beatty (making his film debut) play one of the businessmen who takes that fateful canoe trip down the river.

   Stalmaster also was instrumental in the career of William Shatner (Judgment at Nuremberg); discovered LeVar Burton, then a sophomore at USC, for the landmark ABC miniseries Roots; cast country singer Mac Davis to play a pro quarterback in North Dallas Forty (1979); and insisted that eventual Oscar nominee Sam Shepard portray Chuck Yeager in 1983’s The Right Stuff (“It’s the only time I thought the film couldn’t be made without one specific actor,” he once said). He cast more than 100 roles for that movie alone.

   Stalmaster saw “an innate sense of truth” in Jeff Bridges and cast the twentysomething actor (and youngest son of Lloyd Bridges) in his first movie, Halls of Anger (1970). He came back to him again for The Iceman Cometh (1973), and Bridges’ experience on that film convinced him to make acting his career.

   “I gotta thank you, man, for heading me down that road,” Bridges said at the Governors Awards.

   Stalmaster took notes on every actor he saw and saved them, knowing that someday, a more suitable part might come along. “I want to look into their eyes. That’s the key,” he told THR’s Scott Feinberg in 2014. He would often visit the stages of New York in search of new talent; that’s where he first encountered a skinny Reeve.

   “I’d seen him in a play in New York with Katharine Hepburn,” he told Back Stage magazine in 2013. “I brought him out [to Los Angeles] to do a small role in Gray Lady Down. Then, of course, he flashed into my mind when [director] Richard Donner said, ‘We can’t find Superman.’”

   Stalmaster had Travolta try out for Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail (1973), but when Randy Quaid got the part of young Navy prisoner Meadows (on the way to an Oscar nom), he arranged for Travolta to audition for the ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, jump-starting his career.

   “Lynn gave me the support that I could play anything,” Travolta has said.

   Stalmaster brought little-known theater actor Hoffman to the attention of director Mike Nichols for The Graduate (1967), and he got Richard Dreyfuss a line (en route to the lead in 1974’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) in the film as well.

   “With some actors you sense an intangible quality. You can’t explain it. You just feel there’s something special, something magical here,” Stalmaster said.

   The son of a lawyer, Stalmaster was born on Nov. 17, 1927, in Omaha, Nebraska. After he and his family moved to L.A., he attended Beverly Hills High School and UCLA, where he earned a master’s in theater arts. He started out as an actor, appearing in such films as The Steel Helmet (1951), written and directed by Samuel Fuller, and Flying Leathernecks (1951), starring John Wayne.

   As a backup plan, Stalmaster worked as an assistant to a pair of producers and was asked to cast their shows after their casting director retired. He went independent a few years later and cast the detective series The Lone Wolf and the legendary CBS Western Gunsmoke; he would be listed as the casting director on more than 300 episodes of the latter through 1964.

   Stalmaster also was casting director on such TV shows as My Living Doll, The Untouchables, Have Gun — Will Travel, Ben Casey, My Favorite Martian, Hogan’s Heroes, Three’s Company, Family and Hart to Hart.

   “Lynn gave me and my entire generation the opportunity to dare to dream that we could make a difference or matter,” actor Bruce Dern said at the Governors Awards. “He saw some kind of light in our eyes or something. He dared us to go out on the edge, dared us to take parts that nobody else would take.

   “I remember John Frankenheimer told me while we were making [1977’s] Black Sunday, ‘If you’ve got Lynn Stalmaster to cast your movie, you have a damn good chance of having a good movie.'”

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   1. Hey Dan. Good information on Lynn Stalmaster. Sounds like he had an awesome career. Rest in Peace Mr. Stalmaster.

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4. Bruce – Christopher Plummer has died. He was one of my favourite Canadian actors. He was 91.

   Rest in peace

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   1. Thanks for letting me know….

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   2. This is such sad news. Thanks for the heads up on his passing. RIP Mr. Plummer.

      FYI. That first response was from WoC.

      FYI2 – I have had to update this page way too much lately.

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5. Hal R.I.P.

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