Our place to honor those actors, actresses and the many people behind the camera that have passed in 2021
December 31st – Betty White (1922-2021)
Betty White Movies
December 26th – Jean-Marc Vallée (1963-2021)
Jean-Marc Vallée Movies
November 29th – Arlene Dahl (1925-2021)
Arlene Dahl Movies
November 8th – Dean Stockwell (1936-2021)
Dean Stockwell Movies
September 29th – Tommy Kirk (1941-2021)
Tommy Kirk Movies
September 16th – Jane Powell (1929-2021)
Jane Powell Movies
September 14th – Norm MacDonald (1959-2021)
Norm MacDonald Movies
September 6th – Michael K. Williams (1966-2021)
Michael K. Williams Movies
September 6th – Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933-2021)
Jean-Paul Belmondo Movies
August 29th – Ed Asner (1929-2021)
Edward Asner Movies
August 19th – Sonny Chiba (1939-2021)
August 7th – Jane Withers (1926-2021)
We have 11 Jane Withers Movies in our database.
| Movie (Year) | UMR Score |
|---|---|
| Giant (1956) | 99.53 |
| Bright Eyes (1934) | 96.10 |
| The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) | 95.40 |
| Captain Newman, M.D. (1963) | 89.07 |
| The North Star (1943) | 87.85 |
| Pepper (1936) | 75.44 |
| The Mad Martindales (1942) | 72.00 |
| The Farmer Takes A Wife (1935) | 70.08 |
| Gentle Julia (1936) | 55.96 |
| Shooting High (1940) | 53.04 |
July 5th – William Smith (1933-2021)
William Smith Movies
July 5th – Richard Donner (1930-2021)
Richard Donner Movies
June 13th – Ned Beatty (1937-2021)
June 6th – Clarence Williams III (1939-2021)
May 29th – Gavin MacLeod (1931-2021)
May 18th – Charles Grodin (1935-2021)
May 11th – Norman Lloyd (1914-2021)
May 1st – Olympia Dukakis (1931-2021)
March 25th – Jessica Walter (1941-2021)
March 23rd – George Segal (1934-2021)
March 16th- Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)
February 5th – Christopher Plummer (1929 – 2021)
January 8th – Mike Henry (1936-2021)
January 23rd – Hal Holbrook (1925-2021)
January 28th – Cicely Tyson (1924-2021)
January 26th – Cloris Leachman (1926-2021)
January 4th – Tanya Roberts (1955-2021)
Rank Movie (Year) UMR Score
1st A View to a Kill (1985) 76.73
2nd Fingers (1978) 52.53
3rd The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) 27.46
4th The Beastmaster(1982) 18.08
5th Sheena (1984) 15.10
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Arlene Dahl has died at the age of 96. I know her best from Slightly Scarlet and Journey to the Center of the Earth. RIP
Hey Flora…. I just saw this….what a slacker I am ….but Arlene Dahl is finally on this page. Thanks for the information. RIP Arlene Dahl.
Art LaFleur, who was as high as # 681 on the 2005 Oracale of Bacon list, has passed. Below is from People.
The Sandlot Actor Art LaFleur Dead at 78
The actor has died following a 10-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, his wife said in a social media post Thursday
Art LaFleur, the actor known for playing Babe Ruth in The Sandlot, has died following a 10-year battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78.
LaFleur’s wife, Shelley, confirmed the news on social media on Thursday. TMZ was first to report the news.
“This guy… After a 10 year battle with A-typical Parkinson’s, Art LaFleur, the love of my life passed away,” she wrote in a Facebook post alongside a photo of the couple.
“He was a generous and selfless man which carried over to his acting but more importantly it was who he was for his family and friends,” she wrote, later adding, “I was so very lucky to have had a 43 year relationship with a man who cherished me and who I adored. Art was larger than life and meant the world to us.”
The Sandlot is not the only baseball film in LaFleur’s repertoire. Prior to that role, he played Black Sox ringleader Chick Gandil in Field of Dreams.
He is also well known for his role as the Tooth Fairy in The Santa Clause 2 and 3.
Additional credits of his include The Rig, House Hunting, Death Warrant, Man of the House, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
In addition to his respected film career, he also appeared in numerous television shows including M*A*S*H, Lou Grant, Soap, Webster, The A-Team, Hill Street Blues, Thirtysomething, Northern Exposure, Home Improvement, Malcolm in the Middle, Doogie Howser, Coach, The Incredible Hulk, Baywatch, ER, JAG, House and The Mentalist.
Through his roles, Shelley said her husband “brought laughter to so many people.”
Tommy Kirk, whose career as a young leading man in Disney films like Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog and Son of Flubber came to an end, he said, after the studio discovered he was gay, has died. He was 79.
Kirk lived alone in Las Vegas and was found dead Tuesday, actor Paul Petersen announced on Facebook. TMZ reported that he died at home, and no foul play is suspected.
Kirk first made his mark starring as sleuth Joe Hardy in a pair of Hardy Boys TV serials, “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure” and “The Mystery of the Ghost Farm,” offshoots of ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club that aired in 1956-57.
He also played the middle son, Ernst, in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) — James MacArthur and Kevin Corcoran were his brothers and John Mills and Dorothy McGuire his parents — and starred as college brainiac Merlin Jones opposite Annette Funicello in two more Disney movies.
Kirk brought many a tear to movie audiences’ eyes starring as country kid Travis Coates alongside a heroic Labrador retriever in Old Yeller (1957), then turned into a pooch himself — a sheepdog named Chiffonn — in The Shaggy Dog (1959), the first of four movies he made with Fred MacMurray.
After portraying Biff Hawk, the son of MacMurray’s chemistry professor, in The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and the sequel Son of Flubber (1963), Kirk had an unexpected hit with The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), which had been developed for television before Disney decided to place it in theaters instead.
While filming the movie, Kirk, then 21, started seeing a 15-year-old boy he had met at a swimming pool. Disney execs learned about the relationship through the boy’s mother, and Kirk was let go, though he did return for one more movie, Merlin Jones sequel The Monkey’s Uncle (1965).
“When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I finally admitted to myself that [I was gay and] wasn’t going to change,” he told Kevin Minton in an interview for a 1993 article titled “Sex, Lies, and Disney Tape: Walt’s Fallen Star” for Filmfax magazine. “I didn’t know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career and maybe my whole acting career.”
He added, “Disney was a family film studio and I was supposed to be their young leading man. After they found out I was involved with someone, that was the end of Disney.”
The circumstances behind his departure went unpublicized, and Kirk landed at American International Pictures, where he played a Martian in a reunion with Funicello in Pajama Party (1964).
However, his career was never the same after he appeared in several bad flicks, starting with Village of the Giants (1965) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). Like many former child actors in Hollywood, Kirk also had problems with drug abuse.
Tommy Kirk in the 1957 film ‘Old Yeller’ WALT DISNEY PICTURES / PHOTOFEST
One of four sons, Thomas Harvey Kirk was born on Dec. 10, 1941, in Louisville, Kentucky. He and his family moved to Downey, California, when he was an infant, and his father, Louis, went to work in the aircraft industry as a mechanic. His mother, Doris, was a stenographer.
In 1954, Kirk tagged along with his older brother Joe to an audition for Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness at the Pasadena Playhouse and wound up with a part (while Joe didn’t get one) opposite Will Rogers Jr. and Bobby Driscoll.
He was signed by an agent who saw him in that, and Kirk appeared in The Peacemaker (1956) and on TV in Lux Video Theatre, The Loretta Young Show, Gunsmoke and more than 30 episodes of Matinee Theatre before getting his first contract at Disney.
“He was one of the most talented people I ever worked with. Frighteningly talented,” his Hardy Boys onscreen brother, Tim Considine, said in a statement. “A friend of mine who was a casting director told me that when Tommy Kirk came in to audition, he had never seen a kid actor as good as he was, especially because he could instantly cry on cue. He was a great talent, and it was a privilege to work with him and call him a friend.”
In 1956, the studio sent him and Mouseketeer Judy Harriet to the Democratic and Republican national conventions for newsreel specials.
Talking about Old Yeller, film historian Leonard Maltin said, “One of the reasons people remember [the film] is not just the fate of a beloved dog, but the shattering grief expressed by his owner, so beautifully played by Tommy. I think his talent and range as an actor were taken for granted somewhat. He was really very versatile.”
Kirk was earning $1,000 a week but soon went through “a difficult stage,” he noted in 1962. “I was thin and gangly and I looked a mess. That was when the studio told me they didn’t have any future projects for me, so I was being dropped.
“I thought the whole world had fallen to pieces. But a short time later, the studio called me up and offered me a role in Swiss Family Robinson. I got a whole new contract, and I’ve been working ever since.”
An arrest for possession of marijuana cost him work in the 1965 films The Sons of Katie Elder and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, and he told Minton he “almost died of a drug overdose a couple of times.”
Kirk also appeared in such lamentable projects as It’s a Bikini World (1967), Catalina Caper (1967), Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967), Mars Needs Women (1968), Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995) and Billy Frankenstein (1998).
However, he said he got his life back on track and ran a San Fernando Valley-based carpet and upholstery cleaning company for years.
On the occasion of being named a Disney Legend in 2006, Kirk recalled bumping into Walt Disney at a hotel in Beverly Hills when the studio head with was a gossip columnist: “He put his arm around me and he said, ‘This is my good-luck piece here,’ to Hedda Hopper. I never forgot that. That’s the nicest compliment he ever gave me.”
On Facebook, Petersen — the Donna Reed Show star who launched the support group A Minor Consideration to lend a hand to former kid actors like himself — noted that Kirk was “estranged from what remains of his blood-family.”
“Please know that Tommy Kirk loved you, his fans,” he added. “You lifted him up when an Industry let him down in 1965. He was not bitter. His church comforted him. May God have mercy on his soul.”
Above is from the Hollywood Reporter
Actor, writer and director Melvin van Peebles has died at the age of 89. He was the father of Mario van Peebles. I am familiar with Watermelon Man and Boomerang. Rest in peace.
Willie Garson, who was on all the Oracle of Bacon Top 1000’s in the IMDB days has passed at 57. He was # 575 on the last list by IMDB stats and peaked at # 450 back in 2005.
From Variety.
Willie Garson, an actor best known for playing Stanford Blatch on “Sex and the City” and Mozzie on “White Collar,” has died. He was 57.
A family member of Garson’s confirmed his death to Variety. A cause of death has not been disclosed.
In HBO’s wildly popular “Sex and the City” series, Garson portrayed talent agent Stanford, the witty and stylish best male friend of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). Garson reprised the role in the franchise’s films, “Sex and the City” and “Sex and the City 2,” and had recently been filming HBO Max’s upcoming revival series, “And Just Like That.”
“The ‘Sex and the City’ family has lost one of its own. Our amazing Willie Garson,” Michael Patrick King, the executive producer of “SATC” and “And Just Like That,” said in a statement. “His spirit and his dedication to his craft was present every day filming ‘And Just Like That.’ He was there — giving us his all — even while he was sick. His multitude of gifts as an actor and person will be missed by everyone. In this sad, dark moment we are comforted by our memory of his joy and light.”
Beyond “Sex and the City,” Garson co-starred as cunning conman Mozzie on USA Network’s “White Collar” from 2009 to 2014. Garson was also known for playing the friendly doorman Ralph in the 2005 rom-com “Little Manhattan,” Gerald Hirsch in the “Hawaii Five-0” reboot from 2015 to 2020, and Henry Coffield on “NYPD Blue” in 1993.
Born William Garson Paszamant in Highland Park, N.J., Garson studied theater at Wesleyan University and received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale School of Drama. After graduating, Garson began to book small roles on some of the most popular television series of the day, including “Cheers” (1982), “Family Ties” (1982) and “L.A. Law” (1986). His other early television appearances included “Boy Meets World,” “The X-Files,” “Friends,” “Twin Peaks,” “Melrose Place,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Ally McBeal.” More recently, Garson has held roles on “Two and a Half Men,” “Hot in Cleveland,” “Stargate SG-1” and “Pushing Daisies.” He also dipped his toes in directing, having helmed episodes of “White Collar” and “Girl Meets World” for Disney Channel, in which he also guest starred.
Garson was also a persistent force in film, having worked with directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly on “KingPin” (1996), “There’s Something About Mary” (1998) and “Fever Pitch” (2005). His other film credits included “Soapdish” (1991), “Groundhog Day” (1993), “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and “Freaky Friday” (2003).
Most recently, Garson lent his voice to “Big Mouth” and had a recurring role on “Supergirl” from 2019 to 2020. Garson’s upcoming projects included “And Just Like That” and the series “Duke of the Valley.”
Garson adopted a son, Nathen, in 2009. He remained an active voice in the adoption community, having served twice as a spokesperson for National Adoption Day.
Nathen paid tribute to Garson on Instagram, writing: “I love you so much papa. Rest In Peace and I’m so glad you got to share all your adventures with me and were able to accomplish so much. I’m so proud of you. I will always love you, but I think it’s time for you to go on an adventure of your own. You’ll always be with me. Love you more than you will ever know and I’m glad you can be at peace now. You always were the toughest and funniest and smartest person I’ve known. I’m glad you shared you’re love with me. I’ll never forget it or lose it.”
Hey Dan….thanks for sharing the sad news on the passing of Willie Garson. Surprised he was that highly ranked on the Oracle list. I had to look him up to realize who he was. Lots of great information in your comment. Rest in Peace Mr. Garson.