Isaac Hayes, the pioneering singer, songwriter and musician whose relentless “Theme From Shaft” won Academy and Grammy awards, died today, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said. He was 65. (READ MORE)
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Bernie Mac, the actor and comedian who teamed up in the casino heist caper Ocean’s Eleven and gained a prestigious Peabody Award for his sitcom The Bernie Mac Show, died Saturday at age 50. (click on ‘Continue Reading’ for more)
Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV’s The Golden Girls, has died. She was 84.
Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman of Santa Monica.
“She was loved throughout the world in six continents, and if they loved sitcoms in Antarctica she would have been loved on seven continents,” her son said. “She was one of the most talented comedic actresses who ever lived.”
The Golden Girls, featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff’s belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.
Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in Maude, Betty White in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rue McClanahan in Mama’s Family. The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur’s character.
When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein’s play Torch Song Trilogy. In her early 60s, she flunked her Golden Girls test twice because it was believed she didn’t look old enough to play 80.
“I could understand that,” she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. “I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast.”
She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, “To you this is just a job. To me it’s my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80.” The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.
It culminated a long struggle for success during which Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress.
“I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I’d say, ‘Don’t promote me, please,’” she recalled.
She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including Tootsie, Deadly Force and Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story.
After her success in The Golden Girls, other roles came her way. She played Cher’s mother in Mask, Sylvester Stallone’s in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Barry Manilow’s in the TV film Copacabana. Other credits included Mannequin and Stuart Little (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).
The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.
Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Getty would hurl at the other three. When McClanahan’s libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, “Your life’s an open blouse.”
Getty had gained a knack for one-liners in her late teens when she did standup comedy at a Catskills hotel. Female comedians were rare in those days, however, and she bombed.
Undeterred, she continued to pursue a career in entertainment, and while her parents were encouraging, her father also insisted that she learn office skills so she would have something to fall back on.
Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4.
She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in The Golden Girls.
Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was “under 5 feet and under 100 pounds.”
In addition to her son Carl, Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.
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Jo Stafford, a singer who was a favorite of GIs during World War II and whose recordings made the pop music charts dozens of times in the 1950s, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at her home in Century City. She was 90. READ MORE
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Former Writers Guild Foundation Executive Director Patricia Rees Cummings died in Bristol, England, on July 8, 2008, after a long battle with lung cancer. She was 76.
Born and educated in the United Kingdom, Cummings began her professional career as press secretary to several British Members of Parliament, worked briefly for Peter Sellers, then headed the PR agency team which opened the first overseas U.S. Trade Center in London and promoted its initial exhibitions for the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture. In New York, at the same agency’s Madison Avenue headquarters, her clients included the European Common Market and the Bordeaux Wine Information Bureau.
For a two-year period after her stay in New York, Patricia worked as marketing director and sales manager at a dude ranch near Casper, Wyoming, a time in her life which she always remembered with much fondness.
Moving to Los Angeles, Patricia worked with Disney, Cal Arts, KCET, and other non-profit clients before becoming vice president at the prestigious Art Center College of Design in 1971. Around this time she married screenwriter and producer Irving Cummings, Jr., with whom she shared a major in interest in horses and horse racing.
For Arts Center College she helped to raise $10 million for the college’s new Pasadena campus, opened in 1976, and also staged Carrozzeria Italiana, a major international automotive design exhibition sponsored by Fiat. In 1980, she was appointed to head the planning, funding, marketing, and establishment of Art Center’s European campus in Vevey, Switzerland. There she successfully raised $5 million in start-up sponsorship funds from major corporations throughout Europe and persuaded local authorities to spend 8.6 million Swiss francs to renovate the campus site, an existing chateau overlooking Lake Geneva.
Returning to London from Switzerland in 1986, Patricia was development/marketing consultant for the opening of Sir Terrance Conran’s new Design Museum and was appointed Director of the 12,000-member Chartered Society of Designers, the world’s largest professional design organization. She represented the Society at design conferences in Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Japan and was elected a Fellow of the elite Royal Society in 1988. She was a past VP of the PR Society of America.
Patricia and her husband returned to Los Angeles in 1991, where she began working with the Writers Guild Foundation in March 1993. As Executive Director, she oversaw the development of a large slate of foundation programs, including the Words into Pictures Conference, as well as the fundraising for and building of the Shavelson-Webb Library, which opened in June 2005. Irving Cummings Jr. died in 1996, and Patricia retired to return to live in the UK in August 2005.
She is survived by her stepdaughter, Caroline Fawcett of Chicago, IL, and her sister, Jenny Millbank, her nephew Ben, and niece Hannah, all of Bristol.
The family has requested that memorial donations be made to the Writers Guild Foundation, 7000 West Third Street, Los Angeles, CA 90048 (in the U.S.), or to St Peter’s Hospice, Charlton Road, Brentry, Bristol BS10 6NL (in the UK).
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Jimmy and Pat
I first met Pat Cummings about eight or nine years ago (I think) when Jimmy Bangley worked at the Writers Guild Foundation and she was his boss. Many times I would pick Jimmy up at the Guild and during that time I got the chance to visit with Pat and the other “girls” and enjoyed their interactions. Jimmy had a talent for impersonations and one of his best was of Pat Cummings. All he had to say was “Good heavens,” and everyone knew who it was. Once when one of my books was published, I went to the guild and Pat had them open a bottle of champagne to celebrate; I always remembered that. Pat was a very interesting, amusing and fun lady. Tidge it up Pat!
– Allan Ellenberger
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Evelyn Keyes, one of the last surviving co-stars of Gone With the Wind and a popular film actress in the 1940s, died on July 4 at an assisted-living home in Montecito, Calif. She was 91. READ MORE
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NEW YORK - Dody Goodman, the delightfully daffy comedian known for her television appearances on Jack Paar’s late-night talk show and as the mother on the soap-opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, has died at 93. READ MORE
George Carlin, the acerbic, Grammy-winning comedian whose career spanned more than 50 years, died of heart failure Sunday evening after being admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pains, his spokesman said. He was 71. READ MORE
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June 20, 2008
Funeral services for Hollywood dancer and actress Cyd Charisse are scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary, 6001 W. Centinela Ave., Los Angeles, publicist Gene Schwam said. Charisse died Tuesday at age 86.
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Cyd Charisse, who brought sizzle and sophistication to dance in such classic movie musicals as Singin’ in the Rain and Silk Stockings, died today. She was 86. READ MORE
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