In Memory Of ...

[KDO]

Barrett Strong
February 5, 1941 – January 29, 2023

American Singer | Songwriter |
Grammy Award Winner | Songwriters Hall of Fame Inductee

Best Known for His Work as a Songwriter at Motown
Primarily working as a lyricist, in collaboration with producer Norman Whitfield

Partial List of Barrett Strong/Norman Whitfield Works:
Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through the Grapevine
Edwin Starr - War
The Temptations:
Cloud Nine | Ball of Confusion | Papa was a Rollin' Stone |
I Can't Get Next to You | Runaway Child, Running Wild
Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)

Barrett Strong Songs have been Recorded by:
The Rolling Stones | The Temptations | Marvin Gaye | Tom Jones |
Gladys Knight and The Pips | Love and Rockets | Savoy Brown |
The Slits | Al Green | Creedence Clearwater Revival |
and others

Barrett Strong, Motown Artist and Temptations Songwriter, Dead at 81 - RollingStone
Artist sang Motown’s first major hit "Money (That's What I Want)"

Barrett Strong, singer, songwriter and Motown’s first star, dies aged 81 - The Guardian
Strong sang on the label’s first hit "Money..." in 1960 and went on to co-write landmark songs including
Heard It Through the Grapevine and War

Barrett Strong, Motown Singer and Temptations Songwriter, Dies at 81 - Pitchfork
Strong’s 1959 hit “Money (That’s What I Want)” was covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin

Barrett Strong - Wikipedia

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[ghost2509]

Actor Cindy Williams, the optimistic Shirley of 'Laverne & Shirley,' dies at 75

LA TIMES
yahoo.com
Nardine Saad
January 30, 2023

Cindy Williams, who played sweet, wide-eyed Shirley Feeney on the “Happy Days” spinoff “Laverne & Shirley,” has died. She was 75.

Williams died in Los Angeles on Wednesday after a brief illness, her children, Zak and Emily Hudson, said in a statement released Monday to the Associated Press through a family spokeswoman.

“The passing of our kind, hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed,” the statement said. “Knowing and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was one of a kind, beautiful, generous and possessed a brilliant sense of humor and a glittering spirit that everyone loved.”

Williams was the optimistic foil to Penny Marshall’s wise-cracking Laverne DeFazio on the iconic sitcom, which starred two 1950s roommates working on the assembly line at Milwaukee’s Shotz Brewery.

“When you can find those characters with attitudes who are in sync, they are funny and charming to watch. You see aspects of yourself in the characters’ attitudes,” Williams told The Times in 1993. “Usually in sitcoms, the characters you play are close to you. They are beats within yourself that you really play well.”

Though she might have appeared an expert at pratfalls when the show debuted in 1976, Williams was a novice to the sitcom genre. Before that, she trained in theater in high school and at Los Angeles Community College, then honed her skills when she was accepted by the Actors Studio West alongside Sally Field and Robert De Niro.

The Golden Globe-nominated actress appeared in George Cukor’s “Travels With My Aunt” and starred in George Lucas’ 1973 nostalgic coming-of-age comedy “American Graffiti” and Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 film “The Conversation.” She also auditioned for Lucas’ “Star Wars” but lost the part of Princess Leia to Carrie Fisher.

It was a fateful meeting with producer Garry Marshall and Fred Roos that put her on the path to skipping down the street chanting “Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated” in “Laverne & Shirley’s” opening sequence.

Marshall, Williams recalled in her memoir, “Shirley, I Jest!,” turned to Roos and said, “I like her. She’s like a pudgy Barbara Harris,” the Tony-winning Broadway comic. They brought her on to their newly formed company, Compass Management; then, on her first audition, she booked the part of student Rhoda Zagor on James L. Brooks’ popular high-school comedy “Room 222,” one of the first shows featuring Black actors in lead roles.

Williams then became friends with Garry Marshall’s younger sister, Penny Marshall, whom she met through mutual friends. The two were out-of-work actresses when they were hired by Francis Coppola’s Zoetrope company to write a prospective TV spoof for the Bicentennial.

“They got a lot of comedy writers or people who wanted to be comedy writers,” Williams told The Times in 1995. “They wanted two women. We would be assigned a certain aspect of the history of America and write a spoof on that particular aspect of American history.”

They had been writing together for a few months when Garry Marshall called to ask if they would like to guest on his ABC series “Happy Days,” reuniting Williams with her “American Graffiti” co-star Ron Howard.

“Penny said yes and I said yes and we went and did it. The rest is kind of history,” she told The Times.

The women became household names after 1975, when their characters — two girls from the other side of the tracks — appeared on Marshall’s sitcom for a double date with Richie (Howard) and Fonzie (Henry Winkler).

Co-created by Garry Marshall, Lowell Ganz and Mark Rothman, the spinoff followed the escapades of the blue-collar gals. It launched on ABC in January 1976 and soared to the top of the ratings, becoming the No. 1-rated show for the 1977-78 and 1978-79 seasons.

Williams learned the genre on the job: The show's broad physical comedy was reminiscent of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz’s high jinks on “I Love Lucy.” Although the sitcom aired until 1983, Williams, who directed one episode, stayed on it only through 1982, when its final season began.

Garry Marshall told The Times in 2012 that “it was a tough show,” the opposite of the carefree set of "Happy Days," due to the headstrong actresses.

Amid some tension between the stars and her own pregnancy, Williams left the series before giving birth to her daughter, Emily, with then-husband Bill Hudson. (She married Hudson in 1982, they had two children and divorced in 2000.)

“When it came time for me to sign my contract for that season, they had me working on my due date to have my baby,” Williams told the “Today” show in 2015. “And I said, ‘You know, I can’t sign this.’ And it went back and forth and back and forth, and it just never got worked out.”

After she left, Williams sued Paramount TV and producer Garry Marshall for $20 million, claiming that they “welshed” on a promise to accommodate her pregnancy and still pay her $75,000 per episode plus a piece of the profits.

“The lawsuit is settled, and everything is copacetic,” Williams told The Times in 1985.

Williams and Penny Marshall, who died in 2018, also reconciled after the show went off the air. Appearing in a cast reunion on “Entertainment Tonight” in 2015, Williams spoke highly of her TV comrades.

“It’s like an Italian family at a dinner table on Sunday and somebody doesn’t pass the celery properly,” Williams said. “There’s always going to be arguments.”

Happiness “was everyone’s goal” on the show, she said, and such was the case for herself and her co-star: “I go to Penny’s house, I get in bed with her and we watch TV. She’s like my sister.”

The show still resonated for decades as the cast frequently reunited. In 2013, Williams and Marshall notably appeared on the Nickelodeon series “Sam and Cat,” a modern-day “Laverne & Shirley” that starred Jennette McCurdy and pop star Ariana Grande in the title roles. The appearances marked the first time the duo had worked together on a scripted series in more than 30 years.

“I went to see ‘Wayne’s World’ and suddenly they’re doing a parody of ‘Laverne & Shirley!’” Williams said in an archival interview with the Television Academy. “I called Penny to tell her. She asks, ‘How was it?’ And I said, ‘You will be simultaneously honored and humiliated.’ And that was the spirit that those two characters really embodied. That’s what I love about them.”

When the unpleasantness surrounding her departure had been laid to rest and after a 2½-year absence from prime-time television, Williams returned to ABC for a short-lived fish-out-of-water pilot, “Joanna” — her first work for television since she left “Laverne & Shirley.”

It was co-produced by Hudson and Gary Nardino for Paramount after the settlement, which gave the TV studio first dibs on a pilot for Williams.

She then starred in a slew of ill-fated pilots and a handful of TV movies, including the pilot for “Steel Magnolias” and the series “Getting By” and appeared on Broadway in “The Drowsy Chaperone” in 2007. She was also a successful movie producer, serving as an associate producer of the 1991 hit comedy “Father of the Bride” with Steve Martin.

Williams was born on Aug. 22, 1947, in Van Nuys, Calif., and was a self-proclaimed “Valley Girl.” Her father, Beachard “Bill” Williams, hailed from Texas and Louisiana, with Welsh, French and Cherokee origins, and was an affable man until he started drinking. That drove Williams and her mother, Frances, an Italian American, to move in with her grandmother in Texas. Her parents reconciled a year after they moved and had two more kids, Carol and Jimmy.

While her parents and grandmother worked, at age 4, Williams became “an underage home health aide” to a woman who rented a bedroom from her grandmother. And when her family bought a television set in 1951, Williams watched everything — even cigarette commercials — which she would “mimic, memorize and reenact,” according to her memoir.

The family moved back to Van Nuys when she was 10 and Williams began putting on shows in their garage that would attract the neighborhood kids. She then put on a whole talent show at the First Methodist Church in Reseda.

“I was a pretty funny kid,” she told The Times in 1993. “I could see the humor in things.”

Still, she suffered from anxiety as a little girl, bit her nails and was “painfully shy.” Ironically, she was punished in school for not being able to keep quiet and put in a corner with a dunce cap on her head.

“As much as I wanted to socialize and be a leader, a part of me resisted. Still, there was another ever-present part of me that longed to express the fantastic things I was imagining, share the fun of my shadow world — loudly and with exuberance,” Williams wrote in “Shirley, I Jest!”

In high school, she caught the eye of the drama teacher by performing Bob Newhart’s “The Driving Instructor” routine for the school talent show. She then enrolled in a play production course, which she took alongside Sally Field. She briefly dreamed of being an ER nurse but continued on the acting route by enrolling in L.A. City College’s theater arts program, where she befriended Lynne Stewart, who would play Miss Yvonne on “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.”

Williams, like Shirley, started out working-class. She held odd jobs at a law firm, a bank, IHOP and the Whisky a Go Go to pay for her college books. She was invited to join the Actors Studio after sharing a friend’s three-minute audition, which she regarded as one of the greatest honors in her life.

“I come from such a normal background,” she told The Times. “I’ve had bizarre times in my life. I was a hippie in the ’60s. But basically I’m real normal. I like to go around the house at bedtime and turn off all the lights. Sometimes I even take the hangers back to the dry cleaners so they can use them again.”

[pelham456]

which wayne's world did they spoof L&S? i do not recall that.

[pelham456]

i don't know bobby hull, nor have anything against him, but this is the oddest "obituary" i've ever read!

http://deadspin.com/bobby-hull-obituary-chicago-blackhawks-domestic-abuse-1850049811

[ghost2509]

R.I.P. Melinda Dillon

avclub.com
ByWilliam Hughes
Feb 2, 2023

Melinda Dillon has died. An Oscar and Tony-nominated actress whose most enduring part, for many audiences, was as doting (but soap-wielding) mom Mrs. Parker in 1983's A Christmas Story, Dillon was an institution both on Broadway and in ’70s and ’80s cinema. (Other high-profile roles from the era included Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Absence Of Malice, Harry And The Hendersons, and more.) Per THR, Dillon’s death actually happened last month, on January 9, 2023, with web site Giant Freakin Robot confirming her death after contacting family members today. Dillon was 83.

Born in Arkansas in the late 1930s, Dillon got her start in the theater in Chicago, where she studied at DePaul and worked with the Second City. Moving to New York, she quickly landed in the limelight when she was cast in the role of young wife Honey in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. Dillon ultimately left the part (opposite Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, and George Grizzard) after just nine months—citing the intensity of the material, the grueling schedule, and the sudden pressures of stardom for a subsequent stay in a psychiatric hospital—but not before picking up a Tony nomination for Best Performance By A Featured Actress.

Dillon transitioned into film in the 1970s, starting with an appearance in the Jack Lemmon romantic comedy The April Fools. Notable collaborators from the period include Hal Ashby, who cast her in his Woodie Guthrie biopic Bound For Glory, and Sydney Pollack, who filmed her alongside Paul Newman and Sally Field in 1981's Absence Of Malice. That was one of two roles Dillon would pick up an Oscar nomination for—the other had come back in 1977, when Ashby recommended her to Steven Spielberg to play the mother of a three-year-old abduction victim in Close Encounters. Cast just three days before filming began, Dillon anchors the film’s most harrowing scene, fighting to keep her young son safe from mysterious, seemingly malevolent invaders.

But, as we said: It’s hard to call any role of Dillon’s more enduring than A Christmas Story. As the mother to Peter Billingsley’s Ralphie, Dillon embodies a quintessential movie mom, but in a way that allowed her gifts as a comedian and dramatic actress to shine through. (The joy she brings to the moment when Mother Parker encourages her reluctant youngest son to eat from his plate like “a little piggy” is an especial highlight.) There are many reasons A Christmas Story has remained in near-permanent holiday rotation for the last 40 years; the authenticity and delight Dillon brought to the part is undeniably one of them.

Dillon continued to work regularly through the 1990s, appearing in films like The Prince Of Tides, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything!, and Magnolia; meanwhile, in TV, she showed up for single-episode stints on series like Picket Fences, The Client, and more. She slowed down in the 2000s before ultimately retiring; her final few roles include an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2005, and then a small part in 2007 Adam Sandler drama Reign Over Me.

[KDO]

Burt Bacharach
Burt Freeman Bacharach
May 12, 1928 – February 8, 2023

American Musician | Composer | Songwriter | Performer

Six-time Grammy Award Winner | Three-time Academy Award Winner

Mr. Bacharach composed many of his works in collaboration with lyricist Hal David

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Burt Bacharach, Whose Buoyant Pop Confections Lifted the ’60s, Dies - NYT
His collaborations with the lyricist Hal David and others evoked a sleek and gaudy era of airy romance.

Burt Bacharach, Master Pop Composer, Dead at 94 - RollingStone
Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter helped pen timeless singles like "What the World Needs Now Is Love," "Walk on By," "I Say a Little Prayer," and "Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head"

Burt Bacharach, Visionary Pop Composer, has Died at 94 - NPR

Burt Bacharach - Wikipedia

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[ghost2509]

Former Child Actor Austin Majors Dies In LA Shelter At 27: Report

Patch
msn.com
Story by Paige Austin
Feb. 13, 2023

LOS ANGELES, CA — Austin Majors, an actor with roles in hit shows such as "NYPD Blue" and "Desperate Housewives," died over the weekend in a Los Angeles temporary housing facility in what is being investigated as a possible drug overdose, TMZ reported.

An investigation into Majors' death is ongoing, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office confirmed. Majors, whose real name was Austin Setmajer died Saturday at 27 years old. The coroner's office listed his cause of death as "pending additional investigation."

The actor's family issued a statement to NBC commemorating his life.

“Austin Majors (Setmajer-Raglin) was an artistic, brilliant, and kind human being,” the statement said. “Austin took great joy and pride in his acting career.

“From the time he was little, he never knew a stranger and his goal in life was to make people happy.”

According to his family, Majors' life was full of promise. He had been an active Eagle Scout and graduated Salutatorian in high school before earning a degree from USC's School of Cinematic Arts.

In addition to his seven seasons on "NYPD Blue" as the son of Dennis Franz's character, Majors appeared in episodes of shows including "NCIS," "Desperate Housewives," "ER," “American Dad!" and "How I Met Your Mother."

During his career, he won the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Television Series for "NYPD Blue" and was nominated for Best Performance in a Voice Over Role for his work on "Treasure Planet," TMZ reported.

"Austin's younger sister, Kali, says her fondest memories with Austin were growing up on set with him, volunteering at events with `Kids With a Cause,' and backpacking together," the family wrote in a statement to TMZ. "Austin was the kind of son, brother, grandson, and nephew that made us proud and we will miss him deeply forever."

[KDO]

Huey "Piano" Smith
Huey Pierce Smith
January 26, 1934 – February 13, 2023

American Musician | Composer | Pianist | Performer | Band Leader

Rock and Roll | Rhythm and Blues | New Orleans R&B

"(Huey "Piano" Smith's)... sound was influential in the development of rock and roll. "
- Wikipedia

+++ +++ +++

Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, New Orleans R&B Great and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 89 - RollingStone
Boogie pianist recorded influential singles like
"Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" and "Don’t You Just Know It,"
penned the Freddie Ford hit "Sea Cruise"

New Orleans Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneer Huey 'Piano' Smith has Died - NOLAcom

Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, Songwriter and Pianist, has Died - OffBeatCom

Huey "Piano" Smith - Wikipedia

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[Lonewolf]

An immeasurable loss, to be sure...

Raquel Welch
September 5, 1940 - February 15, 2023

Jo Raquel Welch (née Tejada; September 5, 1940 – February 15, 2023) was an American actress.

Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became best-selling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970) and Hannie Caulder (1971). She made several television variety specials.

Through her portrayal of strong female characters, which helped in her breaking the mold of the traditional sex symbol, Welch developed a unique film persona that made her an icon of the 1960s and 1970s. Her rise to stardom in the mid-1960s was partly credited with ending Hollywood's vigorous promotion of the blonde bombshell. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance in The Three Musketeers. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Film for her performance in the film Right to Die (1987). In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History". Playboy ranked Welch No. 3 on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list. She was recently in Ice Spice’s new music video “In Ha Mood”.

Actress Raquel Welch, who rose to fame as a sex symbol of the 1960s, died Wednesday after a brief illness, TMZ reported.

source: wikipedia, ny post

[Pacy]

Stella Stevens
October 1, 1938 - February 17, 2023

Stella Stevens, Who Starred in ‘The Nutty Professor,’ ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ Dies at 84
Stella Stevens, who starred with Elvis Presley in “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and with Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor” as well as in disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure,” died Friday in Los Angeles. Her son, Andrew Stevens, said she had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 84.

“Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962) was one of the more generic Elvis films— there wasn’t all that much for Stevens to do — but Variety was keen on her performance in 1963’s “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” starring Glenn Ford and Shirley Jones in the story of a widower who’s romantically interested in one woman while his son wants him to marry another: “Stella Stevens comes on like gangbusters in her enactment of a brainy but inhibited doll from Montana. It’s a sizzling comedy performance of a kook.”

In “The Nutty Professor” (1963) or any other Jerry Lewis film, one might expect the female lead to blend into the background, but the New York Times praised her: “It’s about a shy gargoyle of a college chemist who brews a miracle mixture, becomes a bland Casanova (periodically) and finally reverts to his shy original self and a pert, smitten blonde student, neatly played by Stella Stevens.”

Assessing 1966’s “The Silencers,” the first of the Matt Helm spy spoofs, in a 2010 review, the Watching the Detectives website said: “The cast is also amusing to watch, with Dean Martin excelling in the part of the reluctant hero … and Stella Stevens as the clumsiest femme fatale to ever bumble her way across the screen.”

In “Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows” (1968), a sequel to keen Rosalind Russell-as-nun comedy “The Trouble With Angels,” Stevens played a hip, streetwise nun who spars with Russell’s not-to-be-trifled-with character, the Mother Superior of a girls’ school.

In Sam Peckinpah’s 1970 Western “The Ballad of Cable Hogue,” starring Jason Robards as the title character, Stevens put her own stamp on the material: “Cable pays no attention to his appearance until he meets the bountiful Hildy, the town prostitute,” Roger Ebert wrote. “But she’s not just any hooker, mind you, or even the proverbial one with the heart of gold. Stella Stevens makes Hildy an altogether individual woman, perhaps the first Women’s Libber west of the Pecos.”

Though she was part of a large ensemble in 1972 disaster-film classic “The Poseidon Adventure,” which also starred Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall, Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson, Stevens managed to make her mark in the film about an ocean liner that sinks. Despite the enormous success of “The Poseidon Adventure,” it ultimately did not boost Stevens’ feature-film career, and she was soon transitioning to B movies as well as to TV movies and guest appearances. She did, however, get to have fun as the villain in “Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold” (1975). Cleopatra, an undercover federal agent played by Tamara Dobson, is “on the trail of two other narcs who have either been killed or kidnapped by the dreaded Dragon Lady, who is played by Stella Stevens with such venomous relish you’d almost think she was enjoying herself.”

Stevens also had a supporting role in Peter Bogdanovich’s somewhat misbegotten “Nickelodeon” (1976). In 1982 she played the corrupt captain of the guards in the women’s prison exploitation picture “Chained Heat,” starring Linda Blair, and she subsequently appeared in a number of low-budget horror films and thrillers.

Stevens produced and directed two films, 1979 documentary “The American Heroine” and “The Ranch” (1989), which starred her son, actor-producer Andrew Stevens. She also appeared in movies featuring and or exec produced by Andrew Stevens, including “Popstar” in 2005.

Estelle Caro Eggleston was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi. When she was 4, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. She was married to electrician Noble Herman Stephens from 1954, when she was 18, until their divorce in 1957. (The union produced son Andrew.) She attended Memphis State College, where she became interested in acting and modeling; she was discovered while performing in a college production of “Bus Stop,” and 20th Century Fox offered her a contract.

Stevens made her film debut in 1959’s “Say One for Me,” starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds; she was named most promising newcomer – female (along with three others) at the Golden Globes as a result of this appearance, but Fox dropped her contract. Paramount picked her up after she was signed to play Appassionata Von Climax, a sexy siren alongside Julie Newmar’s Stupefyin’ Jones, in the feature adaptation of the Broadway musical “Li’l Abner,” and the part, though not requiring much talent, got her noticed.

In January 1960 Stevens was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month (she was later featured in Playboy pictorials in 1965 and 1968, and on the magazine’s list of the 100 Sexiest Stars of the 20th Century, Stevens appeared at No. 27).
Stevens saw her movie career begin to hit its stride when she starred opposite Elvis in “Girls! Girls! Girls!”

Her television work in the 1970s included the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” TV movie sequel “Wanted: The Sundance Woman” (1976), starring Katharine Ross. In 1980 Stevens tried series-regular television for the first time with the prime-time soap “Flamingo Road,” set in a small town in Florida and also starring Morgan Fairchild and Mark Harmon, among others, but the esteemed (for what it was) NBC series was finished after 38 episodes in 1980-82.

She subsequently guested on “Newhart,” “Hotel,” “Highway to Heaven,” “Night Court,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Commish,” “Highlander,” HBO’s “Arli$$” and “Nash Bridges.” Stevens also appeared in the TV movies “The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!” (1997) and “Tales From the Hollywood Hills: A Table at Ciro’s” and did a 66-episode run on daytime soap “Santa Barbara” in 1989-90 and recurred on “General Hospital” from 1996-99 as Jake.

She also worked on stage occasionally, including in a touring production of an all-female version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” in which Stevens played the Oscar Madison character and actress Sandy Dennis played the Felix Ungar character.

A supporter of animal rights, she contributed her time and resources towards cat adoptions. She also raised horses and llamas at her ranch in Twisp, Wash.
Her partner of nearly 40 years, rock guitarist Bob Kulick, died in 2020.
She is survived by her son, Andrew Stevens, a film producer, director and actor, and three grandchildren.

Source: variety.com