We've already enjoyed a hearty laugh at Variety's expense for confounding the two crazy Tracys. A slightly gaucher gaffe, however, comes to us via EW.com, who accidentally went live with Lena Horne's pre-written obit.
Sad News: 37-year-old actor Guillaume Depardieu (son of Gerard) has died from complications linked to a sudden case of pneumonia. The younger Depardieu was a French movie star in his own right (though he may be best-known to U.S. audiences for his unsimulated sex scenes in the controversial import Pola X); he snagged…
Uh-oh—don't let that crying kid on YouTube see this, lest we prepare for a tsunami of waterworks that could very well short-out the entire internet: None of the surviving Golden Girls showed up to Estelle Getty's funeral. Not even her own daughter. Inside Edition tracked down two of the three to find out where they…
We'll admit to not having yet fully absorbed yesterday's news that Estelle Getty had shuffled off this mortal coil to the 1912-Sicily-in-the-sky. Stalled as we are in the early, "Why couldn't it have been someone from Empty Nest?!"-stages of the Kübler-Ross model, we hand you over now to YouTube video diarist…
Estelle Getty, best known for playing The Golden Girls's stroke-disinhibited Shady Pines-escapee Sophia Petrillo, has passed away at 5:30 a.m. after a long bout with Lewy body dementia. She was 84. Her son told reporters earlier today, "She was loved throughout the world in six continents, and if they loved sitcoms…
Carlin was a social commentator, an aggravator, and an etymologist, but first and foremost, he was funny. The routine to which he'll be forever associated was "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," (full text here), which wasn't necessarily his best, but would wind up getting him arrested in Milwaukee in 1972…
A rumor circulating today that Paul Newman has died (gah!) is debunked by Hollywood's Original Blogger™ Army Archerd: "NEWS FLASH: After hearing reports of Paul Newman's death from Associated Press and CNN, I found out that acting legend Paul Newman is doing just fine, according to Joanne Woodward. In fact, he's…
Die-hard Will Ferrell fans who endured Semi-Pro will recall a set-piece in which Will's farm-league basketball team owner Jackie Moon wrestles a bear as a ploy to fill seats. That bear, a 700-lb grizzly named Rocky, fatally attacked a trainer at an exotic animal training facility in Big Bear yesterday. From the LAT:
More grim news from the week's obituary pages: Producer Bill Hayward, one of the unheralded principals who got Easy Rider on the road to cult immortality (and about $40 million in box office on a $400,000 budget), reportedly committed suicide March 9 in "a trailer where he lived" in Los Angeles County. A coroner's…
Sad news from London notes the death of Paul Scofield, the British stage and screen legend who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1966 for his performance as Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. He was 86. Having first earned acclaim for his transcendent theater work in the '50s and '60s, Scofield won a Tony Award for…
· "Fabian is my music," Marlee Matlin said, just moments after playing grab-ass with her mambo-champion Dancing with the Stars partner. This suggests to us that her gaydar is about as finely tuned as her hearing. [DWTS]
· Set your alarms, everyone: Your first glimpse of J.Lo's twins comes at 7 a.m. sharp! [People]
·…
One of the last things Heath Ledger left us with is a video for Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog." An admitted obsession of the actor, Drake was a British folk music prodigy in the '70s who suffered from debilitating depression, eventually O.D.ing on an antidepressant at age 26. Until now, the video managed to avoid…
A belated notice of passing: Ben Chapman, a 6'5" former Marine best known for playing the title character in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, died Thursday of congestive heart failure in a Honolulu hospital. "The Creature suit was a one-piece outfit that zipped down the back with dorsal fins, hands that were…
We were so preoccupied looking for Charles Nelson Reilly in the In Memoriam segment (who never materialized, by the by), that we completely missed the fact that Brad Renfro was absent from the montage. Usmagazine.com asked the Academy what happened, and a rep offered, "It was really an editing decision because we…
Roy Scheider, the square-jawed, broken-nosed guy's guy in whose capable hands Amity Island residents and vacationers entrusted their lives, passed away yesterday in Little Rock at age 75, after a three-year fight with blood cancer. While he will forever be associated with Chief Brody, a man with a good sense for…
On February 8, 2007, a devastated Defamer was glued to CNN, following Dr. Sanjay Gupta and the rest of AnnaDeath 360° team as they offered breathless updates on the not-entirely-shocking (yet still pretty traumatic) loss of Anna Nicole Smith. And yet here we are, a full year later, and Hollywood seems doomed to…
Heath Ledger's family has issued a statement in reaction to the autopsy findings: "While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication,…
In a shocking development in the Heath Ledger tragedy, the NY Post is reporting that an unidentified con man has been making calls pretending to be Heath's father. Not only did he convince the Manhattan funeral home that held Ledger's body to book him multiple rooms at the Carlysle hotel for him and his "family," he…
And so, with two days to let the devastating news sink in, Variety now asks the inevitable question of what's to be done with Heath Ledger's final projects—the wrapped The Dark Knight, and Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Morbidly running through the history of productions faced with surprise…
