Deaths

Deaths

Berenice Abbott, 93, photographer, best known for her portraits of American expatriates in Paris during the 1920s and her documentary photographs of New York life during the 1930s and 1940s, 9 December 1991.

Gene Autry, 91, singer and actor, who starred in a series of musical-western movies, including Singing Cowboy (1936), Red River Valley (1936), and Rhythm in the Saddle (1938), 2 October 1998.

Pearl Bailey, 72, recording artist and actress, whose Broadway appearances included a part in House of Flowers (1954) and the lead in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly (1967) and whose screen credits include Carmen Jones (1954), St. Louis Blues (1958), and Porgy and Bess (1959), 7 August 1990.

Leonard Bernstein, 72, conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (1957—1969) and composer whose best-known works were the scores for Jerome Robbins's ballet Fancy Free (1944) and the Broadway musicals Candide (1956) and West Side Story (1957), 14 October 1990.

Sonny Bono, 62, singer who was part of the pop-music duo Sonny & Cher during the late 1960s and early 1970s and then went on to become a successful restaurateur and a member of the House of Representatives, 5 January 1998.

George Burns, 100, actor who teamed with his wife, Gracie Allen, on comedy shows on radio in the 1930s and television in the 1950s, and performed in movies such as Oh, God (1977), 9 March 1996.

John Cage, 80, avant-garde composer of works such as Imaginary Landscape #4 (1951) and 4'33 (1952), in which he claimed to have liberated "nonmusical sounds" to demonstrate that "everything we do is music," 12 August 1992.

Cab Calloway, 86, jazz musician best known for the song "Minnie the Moodier," 18 November 1994.

John Candy, 41, comedy actor, best known for his work on the television show Second City Television, 4 April 1994.

Frank Capra, 94, movie director who expressed an unshakable belief in the American dream in movies such as It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), 3 September 1991.

James Clavell, 70, popular novelist whose books include Tai-Pan (1966) and Shogun (1975), 7 September 1994.

Kurt Cobain, 27, founding member of the alternative rock band Nirvana, by suicide, 8 April 1994.

Claudette Colbert, 92, actress who won an Oscar for her performance opposite Clark Gable in It Happened One Night (1934), 30 July 1996.

Aaron Copland, 90, classical composer who combined modern tonal music, jazz, and folk tunes in works such as scores for the ballets Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944) and the movies Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), The Red Pony (1948), and The Heiress (1949), 2 December 1990.

Joseph Cotten, 89, actor who started out with Orson Welles's Mercury Theater and later had roles in Welles's movies Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and The Third Man (1949), 6 February 1994.

Miles Davis, 65, jazz trumpeter who played in Charlie Parker's bebop quintet in the late 1940s and later became known for his of cool jazz, hard bop, and fusion, 28 September 1991.

Sammy Davis Jr., 64, singer, dancer, actor, and member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack," whose hit songs include "Hey There" (1954), "What Kind of Fool Am I?" (1962), and "Candy Man" (1972) and whose screen credits include Porgy and Bess (1959), The Threepenny Opera (1963), Sweet Charity (1969), and Tap (1989), 16 May 1990.

Willem de Kooning, 92, abstract expressionist artist who helped to put New York City at the center of the international art world after World War II, 1 March 1997.

John Denver, 53, recording artist whose hit singles include "Country Roads," "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," "Rocky Mountain High," and "Annie's Song," 12 October 1997.

James Dickey, 74, poet and novelist, who won a National >Book Award for his verse collection Buckdancers Choice (1965) and earned popular and critical acclaim for his novel Deliverance (1970), 19 January 1997.

Allen Drury, 80, author and journalist, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Advise and Consent (1959), 2 September 1998.

Ralph Ellison, 80, author of the groundbreaking Invisible Man (1952), and the posthumously published Juneteenth (1999), novels about the African American experience in the United States, 16 April 1994.

Tom Ewell, 85, character actor who had supporting roles in movies such as Adams Rib (1949) and The Seven Year Itch (1955), 12 September 1994.

Ella Fitzgerald, 78, jazz singer known for her ability sing in scat, swing, bebop, and improvisational styles and whose first and best-known hit was "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" (1938), 14 June 1996.

Jerry Garcia, 54, founding member and lead guitarist in the Grateful Dead, who helped create the psychedelic-rock sound of the 1960s and later pioneered "country rock," 9 August 1995.

Greer Garson, 91, actress whose screen credits include Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942), and Madame Curie (1943), 6 April 1996.

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, 76, jazz trumpeter and composer who created the bebop sound with Charlie "Bird" Parker, 6 January 1993.

Allen Ginsberg, 70, poet, whose long poem Howl (1956) is one of the most notable works by a member of the Beat Generation, 5 April 1997.

Martha Graham, 96, pioneering modern dancer best known for her choreography of Letter to the World (1940). Appalachian Spring (1944), Clytemnestra (1958), and Circe (1963), 1 April 1991.

Alex Haley, 70, coauthor of Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), the best-selling chronicle of seven generations of his family, going back to their ancestors in Africa, 10 February 1992.

Armand Hammer, 92, industrialist and art patron who left his private collection, valued at $250 million, to the new Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in Los Angeles, 10 December 1990.

Keith Haring, 31, artist who turned grafitti into fine art, of an AIDS-related illness, 16 February 1990.

Joseph Heller, 76, novelist whose World War II Catch-22 (1961) became a favorite of antiwar activists during the Vietnam War, 10 December 1999.

Jim Henson, 54, creator of the puppet characters featured on the educational television series Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, as well as in the movies The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), 16 May 1990.

Audrey Hepburn, 63, actress who won an Academy Award for her role in Roman Holiday (1953) and received Oscar nominations for Sabrina (1954), The Nuns Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and Wait Until Dark (1967), 20 January 1993.

John Hersey, 78, journalist and fiction writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, A Bell for Adano (1944), which portrays a megalomaniacal American general during the Allied occupation of Italy; he went on to write two more World War II novels, Hiroshima (1946) and The Wall (1950), before he was forty, 24 March 1993.

Al Hirt, 76, jazz trumpeter who won a 1963 Grammy for Java and played at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, 21 April 1999.

Burl Ives, 85, folk singer and actor who won an Academy Award for his performance in The Big Country (1958), 14 April 1995.

Raul Julia, 54, versatile actor whose screen credits include Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and The Addams Family (1991), 24 October 1994.

Madeline Kahn, 57, actress and comedienne, whose screen credits include Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974), 3 December 1999.

Garson Kanin, 86, playwright, screenwriter, and director, who wrote the Broadway hit Born Yesterday (1946), and joined with his wife, Ruth Gordon, to write screenplays for successful movies such as A Double Life (1947), Adams Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and It Should Happen to You (1954), 13 March 1999.

Gene Kelly, 83, dancer and actor who starred in, choreographed, and codirected movies such as On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), and Singin in the Rain (1952), 2 February 1996.

Richard Kiley, 76, actor who won a Tony for his portrayal of Don Quixote in the Broadway production of Man of La Mancha, 5 March 1999.

Howard Koch, 92, Hollywood screenwriter, who helped to write movies such as Sergeant York (1941), Casablanca (1943), and Rhapsody in Blue (1945) and was blacklisted during the 1950s for alleged communist leanings, 17 August 1995.

Stanley Kubrick, 70, director, screenwriter, and producer, whose screen credits include Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999), 7 March 1999.

Burt Lancaster, 81, Hollywood actor who won an Oscar for his lead role in Elmer Gantry (1960), 20 October 1994.

Jonathan Larson, 35, composer who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Rent, which opened on Broadway to rave reviews a few weeks after his death on 25 January 1996.

Ida Lupino, 77, actress who starred in movies such as High Sierra (1941), On Dangerous Ground (1952), and The Big Knife (1955) and became the first successful woman movie director during the 1950s, 3 August 1995.

Andrew Lytle, 92, the last of the Vanderbilt Agrarian writers, best known for his biography of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (1931) and his novels The Long Night (1936), At the Moons Inn (1941), A Name for Evil (1947), and The Velvet Horn (1957), 12 December 1995.

Fred MacMurray, 83, actor who appeared in the movies Double Indemnity (1944), The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Shaggy Dog (1959), and The Absent Minded Professor (1961), as well as the 1960s television series My Three Sons, 5 November 1991.

Dean Martin, 78, singer, movie actor, and member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack," who teamed with Jerry Lewis for screwball comedies from 1949 into the early 1950s and then went on to play straight roles in movies such as The Young Lions (1958), 25 December 1995.

Mary Martin, 76, actress and singer well known for her acting in Broadway musicals such as South Pacific (1949), Peter Pan (1954), and The Sound of Music (1959), 3 November 1990.

Victor Mature, 86, actor whose screen credits include My Darling Clementine (1946), Samson and Delilah (1949), and After the Fox (1966), 4 August 1999.

Butterfly McQueen, 84, who played Prissy in Gone with the Wind (1939), 22 December 1995.

James Michener, 90, novelist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book, Tales of the South Pacific (1947) and wrote best-selling novels such as The Bridge at Toko-Ri (1953), Hawaii (1959), Centennial (1974), and Caribbean (1989), 16 October 1997.

Robert Mitchum, 79, actor who played tough guys in nearly one hundred movies, most notably The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Cape Fear (1962), 1 July 1997.

Robert Motherwell, 76, Abstract Expressionist artist known for his Spanish Elegies series, 16 July 1991.

Maureen O'Sullivan, 87, actress who starred as Jane in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s, 22 June 1998.

Alan J. Pakula, 70, director of movies such as All the President's Men (1976) and Sophie's Choice (1982) and producer of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), 19 November 1998.

George Peppard, 65, actor who starred opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), 8 May 1994.

Anthony Perkins, 60, who started out as a juvenile actor in Broadway plays such as in Tea and Sympathy (1953) and as an adult became famous for his portrayal of the psychotic Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), 21 September 1992.

River Phoenix, 23, actor whose screen credits include Stand by Me (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and My Own Private Idaho (1991), of a heart attack induced by a drug overdose, 31 October 1993.

Walker Percy, 73, Southern writer whose first novel, The Moviegoer (1961), earned him a National Book Award and established his reputation as an important philosophical fiction writer, 10 May 1990.

Selena Quintanilla Perez, 24, Latin-American Taguan singer shot to death by her fan-club president, 31 March 1995.

Mario Puzo, 78, novelist and screenwriter, best known for his novel The Godfather (1969) and the screenplays he wrote with Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), 2 July 1999.

Jose Quintero, 75, notable stage director and founder of the Circle in the Square acting company, 26 February 1999.

Jerome Robbins, 79, choreographer best known for his work on musicals such as The King and I (1951), Peter Pan (1954), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof '(1964), 29 July 1998.

Ginger Rogers, 83, actress who danced with Fred Astaire in movies such as Top Hat (1935) and Shall We Dance? (1937) and won an Academy Award for Kitty Foyle (1940), 25 April 1995.

Miklos Rozsa, 88, composer who won Oscars for his movie scores for Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959), 27 July 1995.

George C. Scott, 71, actor who won an Oscar for his leading role in Patton (1970) and was praised for his powerful performances in movies such as Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Hustler (1961), and Dr. Strangelove (1964), 22 September 1999.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), 87, writer and illustrator of popular children's books such as Horton Hatches the Egg (1940), The Cat in the Hat (1957), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), and The Lorax (1971), 24 September 1991.

Tupac Shakur, 25, gangsta rapper, 13 September 1996, six days after he was shot four times in a drive-by shooting.

Frank Sinatra, 83, popular singer and actor, whose best-selling songs included "Dream" (1945), "Strangers in the Night" (1966), and "My Way' (1969) and whose movie credits include parts in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Guys and Dolls (1956), and The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and an Oscar-winning supporting role in From Here to Eternity (1953), 14 May 1998.

Gene Siskel, 53, movie critic for the Chicago Tribune, who appeared with Roger Ebert on the influential television show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies, 20 February 1999.

The Notorious B.I.G. "Biggie Smalls," 24, the Billboard magazine Rapper of the Year for 1995, killed in a drive-by shooting, 9 March 1997.

Barbara Stanwyck, 82, actress best known for her roles in the movies Stella Dallas (1937), The Lady Eve (1941), and Double Indemnity (1944), 20 January 1990.

James Stewart, 89, actor, who won an Academy Award for his performance in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and starred in movie classics such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Harvey (1950), Rear Window (1954), and Vertigo (1958), 2 July 1997.

Jessica Tandy, 85, actress who won Tony Awards for her stage performances in A Streetcar Named Desire (1948), The Gin Game (1978), and Foxfire (1987), and an Academy Award for her lead role in the movie version of Driving Miss Daisy (1989), 11 September 1994.

Mel Torme, 73, singer known as the "Velvet Fog" and composer of "The Christmas Song," 5 June 1999.

Lana Turner, 75, actress whose screen credits include The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Peyton Place (1957), 29 June 1995.

Sarah Vaughan, 66, jazz vocalist nicknamed the "Divine One" who was credited with popularizing the bebop sound, 4 April 1990.

Tammy Wynette, 55, country singer best known for her ballad "Stand By Your Man," 5 March 1998.

Frank Zappa, 52, rock musician-composer and founder of the Mothers of Invention, 14 December 1993.