THE PASSING SCENE OF 2013

With every passing year there are great talents that sadly have to leave us. Their passing remind of how quick life goes, and even though their deaths are sad to us fans, their memories live on in their wonderful bodies of work. Here are some of the entertainers of classic Hollywood that left us in 2013...

Patty Andrews

PATTY ANDREWS
Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the singing Andrews Sisters trio whose hits such as the rollicking "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" and the poignant "I Can Dream, Can't I?" captured the home-front spirit of World War II, died in January. She was 94. Patty was the Andrews in the middle, the lead singer and chief clown, whose raucous jitterbugging delighted American servicemen abroad and audiences at home. She could also deliver sentimental ballads like "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time" with a sincerity that caused hardened GIs far from home to weep.

PETER O'TOOLE
Peter O'Toole achieved stardom playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. He received seven further Oscar nominations – for Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win. He died on December 14 at the age of 81.

JONATHAN WINTERS
Best known for his improv work and characters like Mearth on Mork & Mindy, Winters died on April 11 of natural causes. He was 87. He is survived by two children and five grandchildren. He never made many films, but he had a memorable role in the 1963 comedy classic, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World. His last role was as the voice of Papa Smurf in the cartoon film
Smurfs 2.

MARTA EGGERTH
Marta Eggerth was a singer/actress from "The Silver Age of  Operetta". Many of the 20th century's most famous operetta composers, including Oscar Straus composed works especially for her. She made two movies at MGM, appearing opposite Judy Garland in For Me And My Gal (1942) and Presenting Lily Mars (1943). She died on December 26 at the age of 101.

ROGER EBERT
The famed movie critic died in Chicago on April 4, just two days after announcing on his website that he was taking a "leave of presence" from his career. His death, at age 70, followed years of health problems, including a thyroid cancer diagnosis in 2002 that led to the loss of his voice.

JULIE HARRIS
Julie Harris was a famed icon of the American stage. She won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955) with James Dean, whom she became friends with, and Requiem For A Heavyweight (1962) with Paul Newman. She remained active despite failing health. She died on August 24 of heart failure.

JEANNE COOPER
Soap opera fans were devastated on May 8 when Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless for nearly four decades, died after a brief, unspecified illness. Her son was actor Corbin Bernsen.

Jean Stapleton

JEAN STAPLETON
The Emmy-winning All in the Family actress, who played Archie Bunker's wife on the series, died of natural causes on May 31. She was 90 years old. Survived by her two children, John and Pamela, she was described by Roseanne Barr as "a great actor whose range was unbelievable, deep, and majestic."

ANNETTE FUNICELLO
The beloved former Mouseketeer passed away at age 70 in early April, after more than two decades of living with multiple sclerosis. She is survived by her second husband, Glen Holt, and kids Gina, Jack Jr., and Jason, her children with first husband Jack Gilardi.

GEORGE JONES
The "He Stopped Loving Her Today" singer died on April 26 at age 81 after a brief hospitalization in Nashville. "My friend, the greatest singer of all time, has passed," country star Brad Paisley said of Jones, survived by his wife and four grown children. "To those who knew him, our lives were full. To those of you who don't: discover him now."

DEANNA DURBIN
One of the most famous child stars of her time, Durbin died at age 91 in late April. Known for box office smashes like Three Smart Girls, First Love, and Spring Parade, she is survived by her son, Peter David, and daughter Jessica.

BONNIE FRANKLIN
The One Day at a Time star died on March 1 at age 69 after a months-long battle with pancreatic cancer. A veteran theater actress and two-time Golden Globe nominee, Franklin is survived by her mother, Claire, and stepchildren Jed and Julie Minoff.

JAMES GANDOLFINI
The Sopranos star died of an apparent heart attack while vacationing with his son Michael in Rome on June 19. Though he was rushed to the emergency room, efforts to resuscitate him failed. Gandolfini is also survived by his wife, Deborah, and their daughter, Liliana. "He was a special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person.

Eleanor Parker

ELEANOR PARKER
The stunning Eleanor Parker was an actress of patrician beauty nicknamed “the woman of a thousand faces” for the range of parts she played, from a terrified prisoner in “Caged” to the icy baroness in “The Sound of Music. She died on December 9 at the age of 91. On a personal note, my Grandfather always said my Grandmother looked like Eleanor Parker.

PATSY SWAYZE
Dancing instructor and mother of Patrick Swayze, Patsy Swayze died in September at the age of 87. Patsy taught dance for decades, and her students included Tommy Tune and Debbie Allen.

SLIM WHITMAN
Country singer Slim Whitman, the high-pitched yodeler who sold millions of records through ever-present TV ads in the 1980s and 1990s and whose song saved the world in the film comedy "Mars Attacks!," died in June at a Florida hospital. He was 90.

FRAN WARREN
Fran Warren, whose 1947 recording of "A Sunday Kind of Love" was one of the classic hits of the big band era died on March 4 of natural causes. She was 87. Warren's career spanned more than 50 years with hits that included the Tony Martin duet "I Said My Pajamas (and Put On My Prayers)," the Lisa Kirk duet "Dearie" and "It's Anybody's Heart." Her films roles included "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd."

JOHN KERR
John Kerr, the stage and film actor whose credits include the movie "South Pacific," the thriller "The Pit and the Pendulum" and a Tony Award-winning turn in "Tea and Sympathy," died in February. He was 81. He was perhaps best known for playing a sensitive prep school student who is bullied for being a suspected homosexual in Elia Kazan's 1953 Broadway production of "Tea and Sympathy." He went on to reprise the role in a 1956 film version.

PATTI PAGE
Unforgettable songs like "Tennessee Waltz" and "(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window?" made Patti Page the best-selling female singer of the 1950s and a star who would spend much of the rest of her life traveling the world. That singing rage Miss Patti Page died on New Year's Day in Encinitas, Calif., according to publicist Schatzi Hageman, ending one of pop music's most diverse careers. She was 85 and just five weeks away from being honored at the Grammy Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Recording Academy.

Conrad Bain

CONRAD BAIN
One of the most popular sitcoms of the early 1980s was Different Strokes. Actor Conrad Bain played the wonderful role of Mr. Drummand for the series entire run. He was 89. With the exception of a one-off appearance on the TV series Unforgettable in 2011, Bain has not acted since 1996, when he parodied his Diff'rent Strokes character on an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Bain was also a starring player on Norman Lear's 1970s sitcom Maude, playing the uptight Dr. Harmon, a foil to Bea Arthur's title character.

JANE HARVEY
Jane Harvey, who recorded with the Benny Goodman orchestra in the 1940’s and later sang with Desi Arnaz, died at her home in Los Angeles Aug. 15. The cause was cancer. She was 88. She did not stay with the Goodman band long, but one of her most enduring hits with them was "Close As Pages In A Book".

EYDIE GORME
Concert and recording superstar Eydie Gormé, who – performing everything from ballads to bossa nova with singing partner and husband Steve Lawrence – made an indelible impression on American audiences during the swingin' '60s, died August 10. She was 84.

DENNIS FARINA
Dennis Farina, a Chicago native and police officer who turned to acting, died in July at the age of 69 in Arizona. Farina, best known as detective Joe Fontana on the long-running TV series "Law & Order," suffered a blood clot in his lung, publicist Lori De Waal said.

JOAN FONTAINE

Joan Fontaine was a true legend of classic Hollywood.  In 1941, she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in Rebecca directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The following year, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) making Fontaine the only actress to ever win an Academy Award in a film directed by Hitchcock. Her sister is equally good actress Olivia DeHavilland, with whom she had a lifelong feud with. Fontaine made her last movie in 1994. She died on December 15 at the age of 96.

PAUL TANNER
Paul Tanner, a trombonist with the Glenn Miller Orchestra who later played a space-age instrument on the Beach Boys hit "Good Vibrations," died at the age of 95 in February. Tanner performed with Miller from 1938 to 1942. During his long career he also worked as a movie studio and ABC musician in California, and performed with stars that included Tex Beneke, Henry Mancini and Arturo Toscanini.

Esther Williams

ESTHER WILLIAMS
Her talent was more than just her swimming ability. Her beauty and her screen prescene made her a favorite of a generation of film goers. Esther Williams was one of MGM's greatest stars. She was 91.  Williams's died in June in her sleep, according to her longtime publicist Harlan Boll. Following in the footsteps of Sonja Henie, who went from skating champion to movie star, Williams became one of Hollywood's biggest moneymakers, appearing in spectacular swimsuit numbers that capitalized on her wholesome beauty and perfect figure" in such films as "Easy to Wed," "Neptune's Daughter" and "Dangerous When Wet".

Rest in peace...

 

RIP: ELEANOR PARKER

Eleanor Parker, an actress of patrician beauty nicknamed “the woman of a thousand faces” for the range of parts she played, from a terrified prisoner in “Caged” to the icy baroness in “The Sound of Music,” died Dec. 9 at a medical facility near her home in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 91.

The cause was complications from pneumonia, said her son Paul Clemens.

Ms. Parker was nominated three times for an Academy Award. But if she is not remembered with the instant recall of a Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, it may be because she was not entirely comfortable with film-star stereotyping.

“I'm primarily a character actress,” she told the Toronto Star in 1988. “I've portrayed so many diverse individuals on the screen that my own personality never emerged.”
In more than 45 films, she often used wigs, makeup and convincing accents to play characters who were sad, flawed or downright despicable.

A ravishing brunette, then blond and later a redhead with a husky, sultry voice, she exuded sex appeal in such films as “Pride of the Marines” (1945) with John Garfield, “Scaramouche” (1952) with Stewart Granger, and “Escape From Fort Bravo” (1953) with William Holden.

In “The Naked Jungle” (1954), she is the mail-order bride who intimidates a virginal South American plantation owner (Charlton Heston) with sex-charged repartee.

“The piano you're sitting at was never played before you came here,” Heston says at one point.

“If you knew more about music,” she says, “you'd know that a piano is better when it's played.”

She was the sluttish waitress Mildred Rogers in a remake of “Of Human Bondage” (1946), winning raves even if the film tanked. In “The Man With the Golden Arm” (1955), she played the needy and ultimately deceitful wife of a former drug addict (Frank Sinatra) struggling to stay clean.

One of her most heralded but least seen performances was in “Lizzie” (1957), a film about a woman with multiple personalities. The movie had the misfortune of being released the same year as “The Three Faces of Eve,” which was heavily promoted to advance the career of newcomer Joanne Woodward.

Still, “Lizzie” remained a powerful and convincing portrayal of three separate identities in one body — a pathologically shy museum worker, a lusty barfly and a well-adjusted woman.

Instead of relying on film-editing tricks, Ms. Parker showed subtle but convincing shifts in character in view of the camera. The movie critic Judith Crist once called “Lizzie” a “neglected but fascinating” film that “boasts a stunning performance” by Ms. Parker.

To play the polio-stricken opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in “Interrupted Melody” (1955), Ms. Parker had to memorize 22 arias in 10 days. She locked herself in mountain cabin to do it. Although the soundtrack did not feature her voice — soprano Eileen Farrell dubbed the vocals — Ms. Parker needed to mimic convincingly in a foreign tongue. She said later she had no idea what she was singing.

Eleanor Jean Parker was born June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, and raised in Cleveland Heights. She was a veteran stage actress by her late teens and turned down early screen test offers, once to finish high school and another time to study at the Pasadena Playhouse in California...

SOURCE

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: ELEANOR PARKER

Growing up I can remember my grandfather saying that my grandmother looked like Eleanor Parker. Although I can not see the resemblance, both women were extremely beautiful. Parker was an actress that could change her look with every role or every movie she made. It is sad that she left Hollywood so soon, and she has not made hardly any appearances since. Now at the age of 89, Parker is a mysterious figure of Hollywood history - a beautiful woman who has lived her post-Hollywood life on her own terms.

Eleanor's first role was Nurse Ryan in Soldiers in White in 1942. By 1946, she had starred in Between Two Worlds, Hollywood Canteen, Pride of the Marines, Never Say Goodbye, and Of Human Bondage. She broke the champagne bottle on the nose of the California Zephyr train, to mark its inaugural journey from San Francisco, California on March 19, 1949.

In 1950, she received the first of three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Caged, in which she played a prison inmate. For this role, she won the 1950 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. She was also nominated for the Oscar in 1951 for her performance as Kirk Douglas's wife in Detective Story and again in 1955 for her portrayal of opera singer Marjorie Lawrence in the Oscar-winning biopic Interrupted Melody. She followed Detective Story by playing a fiery actress in love with Stewart Granger's swashbuckling nobleman in Scaramouche. Parker then performed with Charlton Heston as a 1900s mail-order bride in George Pal's The Naked Jungle.

That same year, Parker appeared in Otto Preminger's film adaptation of the National Book Award-winner The Man With The Golden Arm, in which she plays Zosh, the supposedly invalid wife of a morphine addicted, would-be jazz drummer Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra). In 1956, she was billed above the title alongside Clark Gable for the Raoul Walsh-directed western comedy The King and Four Queens. A year later, she starred in another W. Somerset Maugham novel, a remake of a The Painted Veil in the role originated by Greta Garbo, released as The Seventh Sin. She also appeared in Home from the Hill, A Hole in the Head and Return to Peyton Place. Possibly her most famous screen role is as Baroness Elsa Schraeder, the second female lead in the 1965 Oscar-winning smash hit The Sound Of Music.

She played an alcoholic widow in Warning Shot in 1966; a love-starved talent scout in the all-star but unsuccessful The Oscar; and a rich, alcoholic estranged wife in An American Dream. From then on, her big screen roles were fewer, and television would occupy more of her energies.

In 1963, Parker appeared in the NBC medical drama about psychiatry The Eleventh Hour in the episode "Why Am I Grown So Cold?" for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. In 1964, she appeared in the episode "A Land More Cruel" on the ABC drama about psychiatry, Breaking Point. In 1968, she portrayed a sultry spy in How to Steal the World -- a film originally shown as a two-part episode on NBC's The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In 1969-70 she starred in the television series Bracken's World, for which she was nominated for a 1970 Golden Globe Award as Best TV Actress - Drama. She also appeared in several made-for-television movies, including "Ghost Story: Half a Death," (1973) where she plays a wealthy matron who must reconcile the lives of her two daughters in a suspense-thriller.

Parker has also starred in a number of theatrical productions, including the Lauren Bacall role in musical Applause. In 1976, she quit the Circle in the Square Theatre revival of Pal Joey during previews. She wrote the preface to the book "How Your Mind Can Keep You Well," a meditation technique developed by Roy Masters.

By the mid 1980s Eleanor was completely leaving Hollywood behind. She made an appearance on "Murder She Wrote" in 1986 and one final movie called "Dead on the Money" in 1991. Now twenty years later, Eleanor Parker lives in quiet retirement in Palm Springs. She has done a few radio interviews in 2009 and 2010, but she refuses to make public appearances. Eleanor left the Hollywood scene years ago to live the life she wanted. Doing that is more important than any Hollywood party or movie premiere...

UPDATE: Eleanor Parker passed away at the age of 91 on December 9, 2013. You can read more about it here.
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