John le Carré
David Cornwell (October 19, 1931 – December 12, 2020), more known as John le Carré, told “Sunday Morning” correspondent Mark Phillips in 1996, “Joseph Conrad wrote about the sea because he was born to the sea. I was recruited very early into the secret world. I would copy Conrad in that request; the secret world was my natural element, I was in it for those years, and I understand its workings as he understands the sea.”
John Le Carré
Ann Reinking
Born on November 10, 1949, The Seattle-born Reinking, a trained ballet dancer, earned a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet in San Francisco but chose to pursue musical theater at the instigation of Robert Joffrey. She appeared in “Cabaret,” “Coco,” “Pippin,” and “Over Here!” when she arrived in New York City. She then starred as Joan of Arc in the musical “Goodtime Charley.” She earned a Tony nomination for performing in the 1978 revue “Dancin’.” She died on December 12, 2020, at the age of 71.
Ann Reinking
Charley Pride
Charley Pride (March 18, 1934-December 12, 2020), the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, was best known for his 1971 hit “Kiss an Angel Good Morning.” In a career that produced hundreds of albums and won him three Grammy Awards, Pride sold more than 25 million records. Pride received the Top Male Vocalist and Entertainer of the Year Honors from the Country Music Association in 1972. He received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Country Music Association last month.
Charley Pride
Chuck Yeager
Before the groundbreaking flight, on October 14, 1947, in his Bell X-1 rocket plane, test pilot Charles “Chuck” Yeager (February 13, 1923-December 7, 2020) had no idea if it would be possible to fly faster than the speed of sound, Mach 1. But the sound barrier had a “beyond,” and Yeager got there before any other human being. His achievement was crucial to the development of supersonic flight and helped start the race into space.
Chuck Yeager
David Prowse
He was the guy behind the mask and a dominating presence. In the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, British actor and bodybuilder David Prowse (July 1, 1935-November 28, 2020) introduced Darth Vader’s character, giving the Dark Lord of the Sith a menacing yet graceful appearance. A three-time U.K. heavyweight champion in competitive weightlifting circles, the 6’6″ Prowse got to play Frankenstein’s monster and used his heft as a bodyguard in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.”
David Prowse
Tony Hsieh
Internet businessman Tony Hsieh (December 12, 1973-November 27, 2020) never dreamed that he would become the head of the Zappos online shoe retailer located in Las Vegas. In 2010, he told Sunday Morning, “I used to wear one pair of shoes for two years until there were holes in it and it was falling apart, and then buy another pair.” But Zappos was elevated to one of the most popular online distribution companies ever by his creative business practices.
Tony Hsieh
Diego Maradona
Diego Maradona (October 30, 1960-November 25, 2020) captivated fans worldwide with a bewitching style of play that was entirely his own. Maradona was a master of attack, brave, fast, and completely unpredictable, juggling the ball effortlessly from one foot to the other as he ran upfield. Dodging and spinning with his low center of gravity, he brushed off countless opponents and always scored with his most powerful weapon, his destructive left foot.
Diego Maradona
Pat Quinn
Pat Quinn (February 10, 1983-November 22, 2020) was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), in 2013, one month after his 30th birthday. A progressive neurodegenerative disease, ALS, leads to paralysis in the spinal cord and brain due to motor neurons’ death. As of now, there is still no known cure for this disease.
Pat Quinn
Jan Morris
Born James Humphrey Morris in Wales, Jan Morris (October 2, 1926-November 20, 2020), a journalist, historian, novelist, and globetrotting travel writer, started a second middle-age journey pioneer of the transgender movement. A prolific and accomplished author, Morris wrote hundreds of books in a range of genres and witnessed history first-hand. Morris accompanied a 1953 expedition to Asia led by Sir Edmund Hillary. On the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, the news broke that Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first climbers to scale Mount Everest.
Jan Morris
Alex Trebek
For more than four decades, the unruffled voice of authority for quiz show viewers, “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek (July 22, 1940-November 8, 2020), stood out from his game-show contemporaries, with brainpower, poise, and a mustache for several years. In Sudbury, Ontario, Trebek grew up and majored in philosophy at the University of Ottawa. Before NBC called in 1973 about a game show job, “The Wizard of Odds.” he worked at CBC and other broadcasting companies.
Alex Trebek
Ken Hensley
Ken Hensley (August 24, 1945-November 4, 2020) was keyboardist and guitarist for the British rock band Uriah Heep, as well as the writer for many of the band’s songs in the 1970s, including “Easy Livin’,” “Free Me,” “July Morning” “Lady in Black,” “Look At Yourself,” and “Stealin’.” Hensley also worked with the bands Blackfoot, Cinderella, Head Machine, and W.A.S.P, on top of co-writing several of Uriah Heep’s songs. He also recorded solo and other bands named Visible Faith, Free Spirit, and Live Fire.
Ken Hensley
Sean Connery
Sean Connery (August 25, 1930-October 31, 2020) played the role of Ian Fleming’s secret agent James Bond, which he first played in the 1962 film “Dr. No.” Suave, quick-witted, aggressive, and a smooth operator with the ladies, he repeatedly saved the world from Iron Curtain operatives and power-mad oligarchs. The Scottish actor has certainly set the shaken-not-stirred big-screen prototype for Bond. There is no doubt that he was the best.
Sean Connery
Cecilia Chiang
When Cecilia Chiang (September 18, 1920-October 28, 2020) arrived in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1960, authentic Chinese food was difficult to find. What was seen in the United States as Chinese food (dishes like moo goo gai pan and chop suey) was completely foreign to her. Even after retiring, the imperial Chiang still commanded authority. “I don’t like to follow, I like to do something different,” Chiang said.
Cecilia Chiang
Leanza Cornett
When she entered the Miss Florida pageant in 1992, Leanza Cornett (June 10, 1971-October 28, 2020) had already volunteered for Serenity House, a pediatric foster home for children with AIDS in Orlando. She proposed AIDS prevention when asked what cause she wanted to support if she were to win. Local pageant directors asked if she would reconsider the cause she would be supporting, to which she replied that she wouldn’t. In 1993, she was named Miss America after winning Miss Florida and became the first pageant winner to make her platform conscious of AIDS.
Leanza Cornett
Billy Joe Shaver
Billy Joe Shaver (August 16, 1939-October 28, 2020) was one of the original outlaws and maverick country singers in the 1970s, writing songs for Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Bobby Bare, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan. Similarly, his guitar playing was hard scrabbled; Shaver had lost parts of two fingers in a sawmill accident as a young man.
Billy Joe Shaver
Diane di Prima
Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934-October 25, 2020), an author, activist, and teacher, was one of the Beats’ last remaining members and one of the few women writers in the Beat movement. Moving to California, while raising five children, di Prima studied Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sanskrit, and alchemy. She told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2014 that “Memoirs of a Beatnik” was just a part of her life that she magnified, writing the book to benefit a 14-room group in Haight-Ashbury on Oak Street.
Diane Di Prima
Ed Benguiat
Hundreds of typeface designs (including those that bear his name, such as Benguiat, Benguiat Gothic, and Benguiat Caslon) were developed by font designer Ed Benguiat (October 27, 1927-October 15, 2020) and created logos for corporations, magazines, motion pictures, and advertisement. Some of his clients include AT&T, Coca-Cola, Ford, Estee Lauder, Esquire, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times. Title treatments for films and TV included “The Guns of Navarone,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Super Fly,” “Star Trek: Generations,” and “Stranger Things.”
Ed Benguiat
Conchata Ferrell
A native of Charleston, West Virginia, Conchata Ferrell (March 28, 1943-October 12, 2020), a three-time Emmy-nominated actress, received plaudits for her early Off-Broadway work, including Lanford Wilson’s “The Hot L Baltimore,” and won a Drama Desk Award for her performance in “The Sea Horse.” She repeated her role as a prostitute in “Hot L Baltimore” in the 1975 TV series adaptation produced by Norman Lear.
Conchata Ferrell
Joe Morgan
Joe Morgan (September 19, 1943-October 11, 2020), also known as the greatest second baseman in history, was a cornerstone to the National League’s domination of the Cincinnati Reds 1970s when they won two World Series championships. In a classic match against the Boston Red Sox, Morgan’s tiebreaking single with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 7 in 1975 won the Reds the title, and the following year he spurred a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees.
Joe Morgan
Whitney Ford
Whitey Ford (21 October 1928-8 October 2020) was born on the East Side of Manhattan, about 100 blocks south of Yankee Stadium. He grew up playing sandlot ball in Astoria, Queens’s highest winning percentage of any pitcher in the 20th century. In Yankee pinstripes, he would spend his entire baseball career during which he would help the Bronx Bombers win six World Series championships in the 1950s and ’60s, posting the most wins in the history of the Yankees. He also holds World Series records for wins in the World Series (10), matches and starts (22), pitched innings (146), and strikeouts (94).
Whitney Ford
Johnny Nash
Singer-songwriter Johnny Nash rose from pop crooner to early reggae star (August 19, 1940-October 6, 2020). He was best known for the “I Can See Clearly Now,” which had millions of sales, topping the charts in 1972. It came during just one incarnation of his multi-faceted career. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he peaked commercially, when he had hits with “Hold Me Tight,” “You Got Soul,” an early version of Marley’s “Stir It Up,” and his signature song, “I Can See Clearly Now.”
Johnny Nash
Eddie Van Halen
Born in the Netherlands, Eddie Van Halen was the son of a multi-instrumentalist (January 26, 1955-October 6, 2020), one of the top 20 bestselling artists of all time. Before taking up the drums, then the guitar, he performed classical piano recitals after moving to California as a child. When they attended Pasadena City College together, he formed a group with his older brother Alex and two rival high school bands, vocalist David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony. Their original choice for a band name, “Mammoth,” was already taken, which is why they went for Van Halen.
Eddie Van Halen
Thomas Jefferson Byrd
Actor Thomas Jefferson Byrd (June 25, 1950-October 3, 2020) was best known for his roles in many of Spike Lee’s films, including “Clockers,” “Girl 6,” “Get On the Bus,” “Chi-Raq,” “Bamboozled,” “He Got Game,” “Red Hook Summer,” and “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” as well as “She’s Gotta Have It.” “Bulworth,” “Ray,” “MacArthur Park,” and “Never Get Outta the Boat.” are some of his other movie appearances. He recently completed the Civil War drama, “Freedom’s Path.”
Thomas Jefferson Byrd
Bob Gibson
At 6’2 “, Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson (November 9, 1935-October 2, 2020) looked so much more prominent on the mound and spent the 1957-58 season with the Harlem Globetrotters before turning his full attention to baseball. During his 17 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, Gibson dominated the game. He struck out more than 200 batters nine times and led the National League four times in shutouts, ending with 56 in his career.
Bob Gibson
Helen Reddy
On her debut album in 1971, the feminist anthem ‘I Am Woman,’ co-written by Australian singer Helen Reddy (October 25, 1941-September 29, 2020), appeared. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earned her a Best Female Vocal Pop Performance Grammy Award. The powerful tribute to female empowerment would become Reddy’s biggest hit. Still, her Top 40 roster also included “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady,” “Delta Dawn,” “Peaceful,” “Angie Baby,” “You and Me Against the World,” and “Somewhere in the Night.”
Helen Reddy
Mac Davis
Scott Mac Davis was an American country music singer, songwriter, and actor (January 21, 1942 – September 29, 2020). Born in Lubbock, Texas, he enjoyed success as a crossover artist and wrote for Elvis Presley throughout his early career. He wrote the hits “Memories,” “In the Ghetto,” “Don’t Cry Daddy,” and “A Little Less Conversation.” A subsequent solo career in the 1970s produced hits such as “Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me.” Davis has appeared in a Broadway musical, his variety show, and numerous movies and TV shows.
Mac Davis
Gale Sayers
A two-time All-American at Kansas, running back Gale Sayers (May 30, 1943-September 23, 2020) played with the Chicago Bears for seven seasons, where his speed dazzled the Offensive Rookie of the Year. He set an NFL record with 22 touchdowns in his first season and tied another record with six touchdowns in one game. He was named five times as an All-Pro and was the youngest player ever inducted into the Hall of Fame at 34.
Gale Sayers
Tommy DeVito
Tommy DeVito (June 19, 1928-September 21, 2020) was a founding member as well as the vocalist and guitarist of The Four Seasons, a band whose hits included “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Dawn (Go Away),” “Rag Doll,” “Let’s Hang On!” “Working My Way Back to You,” and “Tell the Rain of It.” Burned out from touring, in 1970, DeVito left the group. Saddled with debts, he did manual labor in Las Vegas until he returned to music as a record producer.
Tommy DeVito
Michael Chapman
Cinematographer Michael Chapman (November 21, 1935-September 20, 2020) received an education as the camera operator on classics such as “The Godfather,” “Klute,” and “Jaws,” as well as gritty indie films such as “Husbands.” of John Cassavetes. As director of photography on “The Last Detail,” Hal Ashby brought to his wistful story of military police escorting a prisoner a documentary-style realism.
Michael Chapman
Rev. Robert Graetz
The Rev. Robert Graetz (May 16, 1928-September 20, 2020), pictured right, was the White pastor of a Black congregation at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Montgomery, Ala. in the 1950s, when, after the arrest of Rosa Parks, the African American group organized a boycott of public buses in the area. In his 2006 memoir, “A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation,” Rev. Graetz wrote, “I have always contended that the absence of fear is not the point. What you do when you are afraid is what makes the difference.”
Rev. Robert Graetz
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (March 15, 1933-September 18, 2020) was diminutive, but as a strong liberal voice on the country’s highest court, she loomed largely. Despite several bouts of cancer, her standing as one of the most important liberal voices on the court and her persistence inspired generations of women. It earned her comic portrayals on “Saturday Night Live” and a tongue-in-cheek moniker: “The Notorious RBG.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Winston Groom
Winston Groom (March 23, 1943-September 17, 2020), a journalist and author, was best known for his picaresque 1986 book, “Forrest Gump,” about a slow-witted mathematical scholar whose life trajectory placed him directly at the core of some of the most significant events in America, crossing paths with the wealthy, famous and infamous.
Winston Groom
Stanley Crouch
One of the most ferocious and powerful voice for jazz and a vocal advocate for progressives in the arts, and a cantankerous detractor of genres he considered fads, was the critic and essayist Stanley Crouch (14 December 1945-16 September 2020). A self-taught drummer, he played at Lincoln Center as part of a jazz combo, Black Music Infinity, and co-founded Jazz (with Wynton Marsalis).
Stanley Crouch
Toots Hibbert
Toots Hibbert (December 8, 1942-September 11, 2020) is a five-time Grammy nominee who was a beloved reggae star, gave his name to the music genre, and helped make it an international phenomenon. An ex-boxer, bandleader, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and showman, Hibbert was the frontman of Toots & the Maytals. Their concerts often ended with hundreds of audience members dancing on stage with him.
Toots Hibbert
Diana Rigg
Acting is the only career Dame Diana Rigg (July 20, 1938-September 10, 2020) ever wanted, but did you know that she wasn’t confident of her acting skills? “Never. God, no. You see, I came from a Yorkshire family, and compliments were never given. Their way of loving you was telling you what was wrong with you.” She told the Sunday Morning correspondent in 2018.
Diana Rigg
Shere Hite
Shere Hite (November 2, 1942-September 9, 2020) revised several previously held views and taboos regarding marriage, sex, and female empowerment in her 1976 book “The Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality.” A former model and doctoral student at Columbia University who grew up in a conservative Midwestern family, Hite deigned to study female orgasm (not a subject of much research) and used anecdotes that she gathered into a genuine testimonial to female sexuality from surveys of 3,500 women regarding their sex lives. Her discovery that women were not necessarily sexually fulfilled by men alone, which demanded more than intercourse, increased her feminist standing.
Shere Hite
Ronald “Khalis” Bell
Ronald “Khalis” Bell (November 1, 1951-September 9, 2020) was a co-founder of the group Kool & the Gang, whose blend of jazz, funk, R&B, and pop brought it a #1 pop single, “Celebration,” and a Grammy for their contributions to the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. With his brother, Robert “Kool” Bell, and Dennis “D.T.” Thomas, Robert “Spike” Mickens, Charles Smith, George Brown, and Ricky West, Bell founded the group.
Ronald ‘Khalis’ Bell
Forrest Fenn
Forrest Fenn (Aug. 22, 1930-September 7, 2020) honed a sense of adventure as a boy while camping in Yellowstone National Park with his family. The Air Force veteran made a career out of collecting artifacts, such as the Sitting Bull pipe, the Indian chief who beat George Custer and his men at Little Big Horn. Fenn gained renown late in life for launching other adventure lovers on a quixotic quest.
Forrest Fenn
Lou Brock
Lou Brock (June 18, 1939-September 6, 2020) (who later went on to become a Hall of Famer) would help the St. Louis Cardinals win three league championships and two World Series during the 1960s. Base Stealing was an art form and a kind of warfare for Brock. He was one of the first players to study opposing pitchers’ films and relied on ability and psychology once on base.
Lou Brock
Tom Seaver
Tom Seaver (November 17, 1944-August 31, 2020), who won the Rookie of the Year Award for the National League in 1967, earned a lot of nicknames such as “Tom Terrific,” or – given his ability to raise the New York baseball club from ignominy to mastery – “The Franchise.” After retiring in 2012 to run a vineyard in California, Seaver was interviewed by The New York Times as to what he was most proud of in his career, in which he answered, “Pitching well consistently over long periods. And I love what I did. I adored what I did.”
Tom Seaver
John Thompson
In the 1970s, basketball coach John Thompson (September 2, 1941-August 30, 2020) took over a moribund Georgetown basketball program and shaped it into a perennial contender in his unique style, culminating with a national championship team anchored in 1984 by center Patrick Ewing. He became the first Black coach to lead a team to the basketball men’s NCAA title.
John Thompson
Chadwick Boseman
Actor Chadwick Boseman (November 29, 1976-August 28, 2020) did a great job in depicting several real-life, as well as imagined heroes, from baseball great Jackie Robinson, to “Godfather of Soul” James Brown, to Wakandan King T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther, in the Marvel superhero films, to crusading attorney Thurgood Marshall. The last completed role of Boseman was in August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” co-starring Viola Davis, in a soon-to-be-released Netflix film version.
Chadwick Boseman
Gail Sheehy
Gail Sheehy (November 27, 1936-August 24, 2020) examined the myriad challenges facing adults facing mid-life crises, marital failures, changing gender roles and cultural shifts, and the questioning of identity in her 1976 bestselling book “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life.” To examine familiar patterns in aging and express a hopeful message, she drew on more than 100 interviews, research, and personal stories that happiness can be found beyond youth.
Gail Sheehy
Frankie Banali
The “Metal Health” Quiet Riot album of 1983 was the first heavy metal album to top the Billboard 200 chart, displacing The Police’s “Synchronicity.” “Metal Health” later sold over 10 million copies worldwide, driven in no small part by Frankie Banali’s Drumming (November 14, 1951-August 20, 2020). The Queens-born, L.A.-bred drummer played with several bands, opening up for himself as David Bowie and Faces before he formed Quiet Riot with longtime bandmates Rudy Sarzo, Kevin DuBrow, and Carlos Cavazo.
Frankie Banali
Ben Cross
For more than a decade before his most popular appearance, as Olympic runner Harold Abrahams, in the 1981 Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, British actor Ben Cross (December 16, 1947-August 18, 2020) had appeared in films and TV and on the stage. In 2009 he portrayed Sarek, the father of Spock, in the J.J. Abrams reboot of “Star Trek.”
Ben Cross
Dan Budnik
In the 1960s, photographer Dan Budnik (May 20, 1933-August 14, 2020) was noted for his portraits of New York musicians and documenting the civil rights movement. In 1957, he was admitted into the prestigious Magnum Photos category and, the following year, photographed massacres in Cuba. His Cuba pictures have been featured in several magazines such as Life, Sports Illustrated and Vogue. The 1963 March on Washington, he photographed (including striking portraits of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just moments after giving his “I Have a Dream” speech).
Dan Budnik
Julian Bream
Julian Bream (July 15, 1933-August 14, 2020) took his love for the guitar to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied piano and cello as a young fan of Django Reinhardt and Andrés Segovia. Professors were there attempting to dissuade him from even taking a guitar to the school grounds. But amid the misgivings of his father, his extracurricular jobs playing guitar in bars, films and radio helped him pluck out a future.
Julian Bream
Linda Manz
Linda Manz (August 20, 1961-August 14, 2020) was described by director Terrence Malick as “a sort of street child we had discovered in a laundromat.” Apart from her impressive screen presence, her narration gave the romantic drama on the sweeping Great Plains an even greater air of haunted tragedy and distorted innocence lines she almost invented in reaction to rushes after the shooting ended.
Linda Manz
Trini López
Singer-guitarist Trini López (May 13, 1937-August 11, 2020) became an international sensation performing in English and Spanish. In the 1960s, he gained fame for his versions of “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer.” In the rock and folk world of the time, the unusual Latino would also talk of fighting pressure from record managers to change his name and probably cater to white audiences more.
Trini López
Konrad Steffen
Glaciologist Konrad Steffen (January 2, 1952-August 8, 2020) was a leading expert on the impacts of climate change on the Arctic, including Greenland’s ice sheet, which over the past four decades has undergone accelerated summer melting. Its melting has been a major contributor to sea levels rising. A camp was established in Greenland by Dr. Steffen to track ice and snowmelt levels (rebuilding it over time as ice underneath it disappeared).
Konrad Steffen
Sumner Redstone
At the age of 28, Sumner Redstone (May 27, 1923-August 11, 2020), born in Boston, left a lucrative law career to take over his family’s company, a chain of drive-in movie theatres. Redstone will turn National Amusements into one of the largest movie theater chains in America. He sued the major Hollywood studios overbooking practices as the first Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Theatre Owners of America.
Sumner Redstone
Brent Scowcroft
The only person to serve as a national security adviser in two separate administrations was Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft (March 19, 1925-August 6, 2020), who played a prominent role Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush in American foreign policy. After earning a doctorate in international relations, he was appointed military assistant to President Richard Nixon in 1972. He became deputy assistant for national security under Henry Kissinger.
Brent Scowcroft
Pete Hamill
New York City newspaper Pete Hamill (June 24, 1935-August 5, 2020) applied his storytelling craft and his poetry to the New York Post, New York Herald Tribune, New York Daily News, Newsday, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, and Esquire to make sense of a great city. As a sheet metal worker at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hamill worked with his hands before entering the Navy, completing high school, immersing himself in Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and attending Mexico City College.
Pete Hamill
Wilford Brimley
Utah born and former Marine Wilford Brimley (September 27, 1934-August 1, 2020) spent two decades moving across the West, working at ranches and racetracks. During the 1960s, he drove into film work, riding in “True Grit” and appearing in TV series such as “The Waltons,” “How the West Was Won,” “The Oregon Trail” and “Kung Fu.” Brimley also made recordings as a jazz vocalist. He has starred in advertisements in recent years for Quaker Oats oatmeal and Liberty Medical.
Wilford Brimley
Sir Alan Parker
Sir Alan William Parker CBE was an English filmmaker. His early career was spent as a copywriter and director of television commercials, starting in his late teens. He started screenwriting and directing films after about ten years of making adverts, many of which received creativity awards. As part of a planned series of World War II-themed stories, Parker mortgaged his house to fund his first movie as a director, “No Hard Feelings,” a tale of a London couple during the Blitz.
Sir Alan Parker
Herman Cain
The dreams of businessman Herman Cain (December 13, 1945-July 30, 2020) appeared to be beyond those of a man’s son who worked in the segregated South as a janitor, a barber, and a chauffeur. Cain would later graduate from Morehouse College and receive a Purdue University Master’s degree. Although the U.S. Navy hired him as a civilian mathematician, he would write that he wanted to be president of “something … somewhere.”
Herman Cain
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland (July 1, 1916-July 25, 2020) was perhaps the last remaining star of Hollywood’s Golden Era at 104. Born in Tokyo, the daughter of a British patent attorney, de Havilland moved to California as a child with her niece, Joan Fontaine, after her parents divorced. While at school, she was cast in the theater production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” by Max Reinhardt, and then hired to repeat her part in the Warner Bros. movie.
Olivia De Havilland
John Saxon
Actor John Saxon (August 5, 1936-July 25, 2020) had almost 200 film and TV credits to his name, starting in the mid-1950s as an extra and working up to a teen heartthrob and then becoming a familiar face in the franchise of ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’
John Saxon
Regis Philbin
During a show business career spanning more than six decades, the Guinness World Record holder for most hours on television (more than 15,000 in all), TV personality Regis Philbin (August 25, 1931-July 24, 2020), won over generations of fans with his charm and clever repartee. Philbin also hosted stage shows and recorded music and hosting game shows such as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and “America’s Got Talent.” as an easy-going partner for morning TV viewers and a bracing, funny guest for late-night audiences.
Regis Philbin
Kansai Yamamoto
The fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto (February 8, 1944-July 21, 2020) was known for his avant-garde work, mixing brilliant, bold colors with typical Japanese motifs. For David Bowie, he also developed flamboyant outfits, including the rock icon’s alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. He also planned venues, including the 2008 Japan G-8 summit, and received awards for his interior and exterior designs for the Keisei Skyliner train from Tokyo-to-Narita International Airport.
Kansai Yamamoto
John Lewis
John Lewis (February 21, 1940-July 17, 2020) Grew up poor in rural, segregated Alabama. As an acolyte of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he pursued “good trouble” to combat Jim Crow laws and push for a more equitable society. During the 1970s, before winning a seat on the Atlanta City Council in 1981, he served as director of the Voter Education Project and then in the Carter Administration.
John Lewis
Kelly Preston
In a richly diverse roster of films, actress Kelly Preston (October 13, 1962-July 12, 2020) starred alongside such Hollywood heavyweights as Tom Cruise (“Jerry Maguire”), Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Twins”), and Kevin Costner (“For the Love of the Game”). But it was a dance floor encounter, a movie dance floor, that is, which led to her marriage to John Travolta, another movie star.
Kelly Preston
Naya Rivera
At the age of four, singer and actress Naya Rivera (January 12, 1987-July 8, 2020) started acting in television series such as “The Royal Family,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Family Matters” and “The Bernie Mac Show.” But on the hit musical comedy series “Glee.” she rose to national attention playing a gay cheerleader. At first, her part, the mean girl Santana Lopez, was a secondary character, but as she struggled with her sexual identity, she became a series regular. A lot of fans credited her with helping them be confident of their sexuality.
Naya Rivera
Charlie Daniels
In the 1960s, Charlie Daniels (October 28, 1936-July 6, 2020), a resident of Wilmington, N.C., was an in-demand Nashville session musician appearing on many Bob Dylan records, as well as on recordings with Marty Robbins, Claude King, the Marshall Tucker Band, Flatt & Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Leonard Cohen, Al Kooper, and Ringo Starr. Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016, he also played gospel music and co-founded The Journey Home Project, a veterans charity.
Charlie Daniels
Ennio Morricone
The Academy Award-winning composer Ennio Morricone (November 10, 1928-July 6, 2020) left an indelible musical mark on film genres as diverse as spaghetti westerns, gangster dramas, historical epics, and horror. Over the past six decades, his music has been used in more than 500 films and TV productions, none more famous than the Italian director Sergio Leone’s 1960s trilogy of westerns starring Clint Eastwood as the “Man With No Name.”
Ennio Morricone
Nick Cordero
For his show-stopping role in “Bullets Over Broadway,” a musical version of the Woody Allen comedy about gangsters on the Great White Way, actor Nick Cordero (September 17, 1978-July 5, 2020) was a tap-dancing rough guy on stage, winning Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations. After being diagnosed with COVID-19, including mini-strokes, blood clots, and sepsis, Cordero experienced a series of life-threatening complications starting in March. He had a leg amputated while in a coma on a ventilator. On social media, his partner, dancer Amanda Kloots (announced his months-long ordeal, promulgating the #wakeupNick viral hashtag.
Nick Cordero
Saroj Khan
Saroj Khan (November 22, 1948-July 3, 2020) was a legendary Bollywood film choreographer. She choreographed more than 2,000 songs in more than 300 films in a career lasting more than four decades. She collaborated with leading Indian actresses such as Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai, and Sridevi. She started as an actress at the age of three but switched to dance, gaining her first major film credit for choreography in 1974.
Saroj Khan
Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922-June 29, 2020) was an American actor, comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. He acted on and contributed sketch material for Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour during the early years of television comedy from 1950 to 1957, starring Sid Caesar, writing alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen.
Carl Reiner
Milton Glaser
Graphic artist Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929-June 26, 2020) has created innovative designs for organizations and corporations, books and magazines, album covers and posters, grocery stores and restaurants, and even a state! Glaser, the son of Hungarian immigrants, studied at New York’s Cooper Union and worked for Vogue magazine before entering the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy. He helped set up a design shop, Push Pin Studios, which introduced ads and magazines to new graphics and illustrations.
Milton Glaser
Ian Holm
Sir Ian Holm (September 12, 1931-June 19, 2020) was five-foot-five. Still, in the time-travel comedy “Time Bandits,” his comical depiction of the French emperor was only one of many, many times when he played vivid characters of concealed complexity, combining character defects and mystery with a puckish wit. (No wonder he played Puck in two film versions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”) He was a star in supporting roles in more than 100 films and hundreds of stage appearances, seemingly appearing out of nowhere to provide a jolt of laughter, terror, or endearing humanity.
Ian Holm