Celebrity Deaths in 2022
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- Gary Burgess was born on 13 November 1975 in Manchester, England, UK. He was married to Alan Stirling. He died on 1 January 2022 in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK.
- Barbara Chilcott was born on 10 September 1922 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. She was an actress, known for Stop Me Before I Kill! (1960), BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950) and Danger Man (1960). She was married to Harry Somers and Max Helpmann. She died on 1 January 2022 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
- Producer
- Director
- Production Manager
David Cunliffe was born on 18 April 1935 in Cheam, Surrey, England, UK. He was a producer and director, known for The Sandbaggers (1978), The Inside Man (1969) and Timeslip (1985). He was married to Maureen Murphy. He died on 1 January 2022 in England, UK.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Julien began his career in New York's Off-Broadway circuit including Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park. Moving westward, he landed co-starring roles with Jack Nicholson in Psych-Out (1968) and Candice Bergen in Columbia's box-office hit, Getting Straight (1970).
In Uptight (1968), New York Times critic Judith Crist considered him a standout in a standout cast. The Santa Monica Evening Outlook's Raoul Gripenwaldt predicted that Julien's portrayal of Johnny Wells in Paramount's Uptight (1968) could well result in an Academy Award nomination. Julien was invited to Europe to discuss film possibilities. He went on to write the screenplay for and subsequently co-produce Warner Brothers' Cleopatra Jones (1973).
In a joint venture with Columbia Pictures, Julien wrote, produced, and starred in Thomasine & Bushrod (1974). Assuming responsibility for the final look of the film, he assisted in the direction, supervised the editing and created the design concept for the costumes. The New York Times declared it a western of considerable freshness. The film garnered him a NAACP Image Award Nomination for Best Writer of the year. He then took a sabbatical from film, landing on several other continents, exploring the political developments of their cultures and writing poetry. He completed a novel, Dark Clowns Kickin' Ass, and finished 13 pieces of sculpture exhibited in galleries throughout the United States including Los Angeles' prestigious Pacific Design Center. Julien was dubbed one of the most popular and important filmmakers in the United States (L.A. Times), and graced the covers of such magazines as Ebony and Jet.
A group of Nigerian businessmen commissioned Julien to do a feasibility study for the development of a West African Film Colony. He selected a crew from Europe, Australia and the United States, and for a two-month period trained local craftsmen in the art of filmmaking. As a tribute to his accomplishments and international profile, a year later he was invited to return to co-write and star in Bisi & The Sun God.
In the early 1990s, Julien wrote, directed and essayed the title role in the docudrama Sketches Of A Man/The Charles Drew Story, about the African-American doctor who invented blood plasma. The mid-1990s returned him to West Africa starring, writing, executive-producing and directing Sangu, The Silent One. Nigeria's Ibaden Tribune said "Max Julien's Sangu is a masterpiece, a must for every Third World human being; more appropriately, every spiritual, peace loving person on the globe. This gifted, connected thread (Julien) will do much to keep the continents from colliding." Nigeria's Daily Times echoed "The Silent One speaks loudly; Julien's wisdom has not tarnished, his eyes and his words address the inner feelings of the common man of color. He's a joy to look upon, he is to be cherished."
In the billion dollar consumer market of hip hop, Julien became a Brand Name in hot demand by Rap, R&B and Pop entertainers to write and deliver his uniquely lyrical expressions including: Do Or Die's CD featuring Kanye West and R. Kelly, and Houston blues singer Rue Davis's Legends Are Forever album in early 2007. Around the same time he was writing dialogue for a Warner Brothers video game based on Clint Eastwood's iconic "Dirty Harry" character that ended when the studio shelved the project. He was also a sought-after guest speaker.
On May 13, 2011, on Yahoo News, Nick Cannon was being interviewed for his upcoming Showtime comedy special Mr. Showbiz, which included poking fun at his then-wife, Mariah Carey. Earlier reviews indicate one of the most hilarious bits involved him accusing Mariah of pimping him like Julien ("Goldie" from The Mack (1973)).
Despite being notoriously reclusive, in 2012 Julien's popularity reached cult-like proportions. His face hangs in the lobby Walls of Fame in Magic Johnson's Theatres from L.A. to Atlanta to Harlem.
Stevie Wonder included Julien in the dedications on his classic album "Songs In The Key of Life". Dick Kleiner wrote a chapter about him in his book ESP & The Stars. In Miramax's book on 1970s films, What It Is & What It Was, Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson complimented the actor/filmmaker, saying "I always went to see whatever Max Julien was doing." In a February 2008 interview on Fadar-TV, mega Hip-hop star Rick Ross removed his t-shirt and revealed Julien's face tattooed on his body.
Ninety percent of the world's rappers have sampled his voice and the music from The Mack (1973) (Outkast, 50-Cents, Three 6 Mafia etc.) familiarizing him among the 75% male and female consumers between 15 and 25 years of age, who happen to be white.
Quentin Tarantino scripted a film, True Romance, that shows Julien in a clip while Christian Slater says "I know that film. It's The Mack (1973) starring Max Julien." Although he declined a writing credit, Julien co-wrote the script along with co-star Richard Pryor and director Michael Campus. He also made major contributions in designing the costumes. It remains one of the leading DVD rentals/sellers in the world, recently cited by Entertainment Weekly as the 20th top cult film of all times, on a list of 50.
Julien had a starring cameo and wrote his own role in Def Jam's comedy hit, "How To Be A Player", then wrote and performed the intro, 19 interludes and the final recording on the film's platinum selling soundtrack album. He wrote and performed on Rap-A-Lot artist Tela's Gold Now or Never CD; was highlighted throughout The Hughes Brothers' documentary "The American Pimp"; starred in Bradley Smith's award-winning film short film "Restore"; and featured in N.Y.'s 2002 Urban World Film Festival as well as on Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Channel.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Janusz Leski was born on 12 February 1930 in Radomsko, Lódzkie, Poland. He was a writer and director, known for Miasteczko (1960), Rodzina Lesniewskich (1983) and Janka (1989). He died on 1 January 2022 in Radomsko, Lódzkie, Poland.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Jarmo Jääskeläinen was born on 2 August 1937 in Viipuri, Finland. He was a producer and director, known for Coronation (1979), Famine Disease (1983) and Mass for the Homeland (1985). He died on 2 January 2022 in Helsinki, Finland.- Dorothy McGowan was born on 28 August 1939 in New York, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), Dim Dam Dom (1965) and Cinéma (1965). She died on 2 January 2022 in Mamaroneck, New York, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Traxamillion was born on 26 February 1979. He was an actor, known for Venom (2018), Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) and Traxamillion feat. Chenelle McCoy: Madness (2021). He died on 2 January 2022 in Santa Clara, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Igor Bogdanoff was born on 29 August 1949 in Saint-Lary, Gers, France. He was an actor and writer, known for Steps to the Future (2010), Robo Story (1985) and Chassé-croisé (1982). He was married to Amélie de Bourbon Parme and Ludmilla d'Oultremont. He died on 3 January 2022 in Paris, France.- Gina Cabrera was born on 28 May 1928 in Havana, Cuba. She was an actress, known for La mentira (1952), Estrella sin luz (1953) and La rosa blanca (1954). She was married to Helio Dutra and Roberto Garriga. She died on 3 January 2022 in Havana, Cuba.
- Director
- Writer
- Actor
After graduating from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Milan (Accademia dei Filodrammatici) in the early 1950s, and a few experiences directing plays and operas, Mario Lanfranchi was hired at RAI, at the onset of Italian television. He was therefore a pioneer of Italia television and the first one to bring opera to the small screen, in 1956, with "Madama Butterfly", which did rise Anna Moffo to the rank of diva in the brief space of one night. He was meanwhile very active in the theater as a director and producer. In the early Sixties Mario left the Italian Television (coming back occasionally for some inaugurations, like Rai-TV Channel 2, Eurovision, the new Naples studios) and returned to the stage, directing and producing several works by English and American playwrights, premiering a number of plays and musicals. He wrote and produced "Festa Italiana", a colossal show with 120 performers, which broke box-office records at the Madison Square Garden of New York. At that same time, Mario began his career as a film director with the western Death Sentence (1968), followed by several other movies of different genres. In 1980 he moved to London, where he lived for 25 years, staging big musicals like "Lust" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" or plays like David Beaird's "900 Oneonta" at London's Old Vic and Daphne du Maurier's "September Tide" with Susannah York, which ran for years in the West End and Broadway. In 2005 Mario moved back to Italy, where he lived in a 16th century villa near Parma. He still enjoyed staging plays and giving recitals in the little theatre of the villa, periodically opening the doors to anybody.- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Jay Wolpert was born on 29 January 1942 in Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). He was married to Roslyn Granowitter. He died on 3 January 2022 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Vladan Zivkovic was born on 15 December 1941 in Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia. He was an actor, known for Balkan Spy (1984), Covek u srebrnoj jakni (1987) and Beloved Love (1977). He died on 3 January 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia.
- Joan Copeland, the sister of famed playwright Arthur Miller, is a renowned actress in her own right. She made her name on Broadway, debuting there in 1945 to begin a career that lasted more than 60 years. She also had a long career on television, where she appeared in a number of that medium's most popular soap operas. She played scheming villain Andrea Whiting in Search for Tomorrow (1951), and also appeared in Love of Life (1951) and The Edge of Night (1956), among others. She occasionally worked in films, but made fewer than 20 of them in her career, preferring the stage and television, where she made her debut in 1950.
- María Mérida was born on 5 June 1925 in El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain. She was an actress, known for Talk Back and You're Dead (2014), Alma canaria (1947) and La Perla del Mar (2013). She died on 4 January 2022 in El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain.
- Henny Orri was born on 16 June 1925 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. She was an actress, known for Puppet on a Chain (1971), Dokter Pulder zaait papavers (1975) and Vroeger kon je lachen (1983). She was married to Theo Kling and Ton Lensink. She died on 4 January 2022 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Bill Bryden was born on 12 April 1942 in Greenock, Scotland, UK. He was a producer and director, known for Ill Fares the Land (1983), Aria (1987) and The Mysteries (1985). He was married to Angela Douglas and Deborah Morris. He died on 5 January 2022 in the UK.- Kim Mi-Soo was born on 16 March 1992 in South Korea. She was an actress, known for Into the Ring (2020), Kiss Sixth Sense (2022) and Snowdrop (2021). She died on 5 January 2022.
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Despite being born and raised in Scotland, George's roots were from Italy. He was fluent in Italian. The heavy-set Scot made his acting debut in Comfort and Joy (1984) and continued to work throughout the 1980s, which included featuring in the TV pilot Max Headroom (1985) and in The Singing Detective (1986).
In the 1990s, George worked in television and film. He was memorably featured in Crossing the Line (1990) as a fighter alongside Liam Neeson and he then returned to Italy to film For Roseanna (1997), where he portrayed a police sergeant. This would come in useful to George because he would then join the cast of popular police drama series The Bill (1984) in 1998 as Detective Duncan Lennox. Rossi portrayed a down-to-earth yet effective policeman and soon became a fan favorite. After four years, George left the series in January 2003, but he will be remembered for portraying one of the most popular faces on The Bill in the late '90s. During his career, he was featured alongside Jean Reno, Chris O'Donnell, and Sandra Bullock.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Peter Bogdanovich was conceived in Europe but born in Kingston, New York. He is the son of immigrants fleeing the Nazis, Herma (Robinson) and Borislav Bogdanovich, a painter and pianist. His father was a Serbian Orthodox Christian, and his mother was from a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. Peter originally was an actor in the 1950s, studying his craft with legendary acting teacher Stella Adler and appearing on television and in summer stock. In the early 1960s he achieved notoriety for programming movies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. An obsessive cinema-goer, sometimes seeing up to 400 movies a year in his youth, Bogdanovich prominently showcased the work of American directors such as John Ford, about whom he subsequently wrote a book based on the notes he had produced for the MOMA retrospective of the director, and the then-underappreciated Howard Hawks. Bogdanovich also brought attention to such forgotten pioneers of American cinema as Allan Dwan.
Bogdanovich was influenced by the French critics of the 1950s who wrote for Cahiers du Cinema, especially critic-turned-director François Truffaut. Before becoming a director himself, he built his reputation as a film writer with articles in Esquire Magazine. In 1968, following the example of Cahiers du Cinema critics Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer who had created the Nouvelle Vague ("New Wave") by making their own films, Bogdanovich became a director. Working for low-budget schlock-meister Roger Corman, Bogdanovich directed the critically praised Targets (1968) and the not-so-critically praised Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), a film best forgotten.
Turning back to journalism, Bogdanovich struck up a lifelong friendship with the legendary Orson Welles while interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichols' film adaptation of Catch-22 (1970) from the novel by Joseph Heller. Subsequently, Bogdanovich has played a major role in elucidating Welles and his career with his writings on the great actor-director, most notably his book "This is Orson Welles" (1992). He has steadily produced invaluable books about the cinema, especially "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors," an indispensable tome that establishes Bogdanovich, along with Kevin Brownlow, as one of the premier English-language chroniclers of cinema.
The 32-year-old Bogdanovich was hailed by a critics as a Wellesian wunderkind when his most famous film, The Last Picture Show (1971) was released. The film received eight Academy Award nominations, including Bogdanovich as Best Director, and won two of them, for Cloris Leachman and "John Ford Stock Company" veteran Ben Johnson in the supporting acting categories. Bogdanovich, who had cast 19-year-old model Cybill Shepherd in a major role in the film, fell in love with the young beauty, an affair that eventually led to his divorce from the film's set designer Polly Platt, his longtime artistic collaborator and the mother of his two children.
Bogdanovich followed up The Last Picture Show (1971) with a major hit, What's Up, Doc? (1972), a screwball comedy heavily indebted to Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), starring Barbra Streisand and 'Ryan O'Neal'. Despite his reliance on homage to bygone cinema, Bogdanovich had solidified his status as one of a new breed of A-list directors that included Academy Award winners Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin, with whom he formed The Directors Company. The Directors Company was a generous production deal with Paramount Pictures that essentially gave the directors carte blanche if they kept within strict budget limitations. It was through this entity that Bogdanovich's next big hit, the critically praised Paper Moon (1973), was produced.
Paper Moon (1973), a Depression-era comedy starring Ryan O'Neal that won his ten-year-old daughter Tatum O'Neal an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, proved to be the highwater mark of Bogdanovich's career. Forced to share the profits with his fellow directors, Bogdanovich became dissatisfied with the arrangement. The Directors Company subsequently produced only two more films, Francis Ford Coppola's critically acclaimed The Conversation (1974) which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1974 and garnered Coppola an Oscar nod for Best Director, and Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller (1974), a film that had a quite different critical reception.
An adaptation of the Henry James novella, Daisy Miller (1974) spelled the beginning of the end of Bogdanovich's career as a popular, critically acclaimed director. The film, which starred Bogdanovich's lover Cybill Shepherd as the title character, was savaged by critics and was a flop at the box office. Bogdanovich's follow-up, At Long Last Love (1975), a filming of the Cole Porter musical starring Cybill Shepherd, was derided by some critics as one of the worst films ever made, noted as such in Harry Medved and Michael Medved's book "The Golden Turkey Awards: Nominees and Winners, the Worst Achievements in Hollywood History" (1980). The film also was a box office bomb despite featuring Burt Reynolds, a hotly burning star who would achieve super-nova status at the end of the 1970s.
Bogdanovich insisted on filming the musical numbers for At Long Last Love (1975) live, a process not used since the early days of the talkies, when sound engineer Douglas Shearer developed lip-synching at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The decision was widely ridiculed, as none of the leading actors were known for their singing abilities (Bogdanovich himself had produced a critically panned album of Cybill Shepherd singing Cole Porter songs in 1974). The public perception of Bogdanovich became that of an arrogant director hamstrung by his own hubris.
Trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle that was his early success, Bogdanovich once again turned to the past, his own and that of cinema, with Nickelodeon (1976). The film, a comedy recounting the earliest days of the motion picture industry, reunited Ryan O'Neal and 'Tatum O'Neal' from his last hit, Paper Moon (1973) with Burt Reynolds. Counseled not to use the unpopular (with both audiences and critics) Cybill Shepherd in the film, Bogdanovich instead used newcomer Jane Hitchcock as the film's ingénue. Unfortunately, the magic of Paper Moon (1973) was not be repeated and the film died at the box office. Jane Hitchcock, Bogdanovich's discovery, would make only one more film before calling it quits.
After a three-year hiatus, Bogdanovich returned with the critically and financially underwhelming Saint Jack (1979) for Hugh Hefner's Playboy Productions Inc. Bogdanovich's long affair with Cybill Shepherd had ended in 1978, but the production deal making Hugh Hefner the film's producer was part of the settlement of a lawsuit Shepherd had filed against Hefner for publishing nude photos of her pirated from a print of The Last Picture Show (1971) in Playboy Magazine. Bogdanovich then launched the film that would be his career Waterloo, They All Laughed (1981), a low-budget ensemble comedy starring Audrey Hepburn and the 1980 Playboy Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten. During the filming of the picture, Bogdanovich fell in love with Stratten, who was married to an emotionally unstable hustler, Paul Snider, who relied on her financially. Stratten moved in with Bogdanovich, and when she told Snider she was leaving him, he shot and killed her, then committed suicide.
They All Laughed (1981) could not attract a distributor due to the negative publicity surrounding the Stratten murder, despite it being one of the few films made by the legendary Audrey Hepburn after her provisional retirement in 1967 (the film would prove to be Hepburn's last starring role in a theatrically released motion picture). The heartbroken Bogdanovich bought the rights to the negative so that it would be seen by the public, but the film had a limited release, garnered weak reviews and cost Bogdanovich millions of dollars, driving the emotionally devastated director into bankruptcy.
Bogdanovich turned back to his first avocation, writing, to pen a memoir of his dead love, "The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten (1960-1980)" that was published in 1984. The book was a riposte to Teresa Carpenter's "Death of a Playmate" article written for The Village Voice that had won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. Carpenter had lambasted Bogdanovich and Hugh Hefner, claiming that Stratten was as much a victim of them as she was of Paul Snider. The article served as the basis of Bob Fosse's film Star 80 (1983), in which Bogdanovich was portrayed as the fictional director "Aram Nicholas".
Bogdanovich's career as a noted director was over, and though he achieved modest success with Mask (1985), his sequel to his greatest success The Last Picture Show (1971), Texasville (1990), was a critical and box office disappointment. He directed two more theatrical films in 1992 and 1993, but their failure kept him off the big screen until 2001's The Cat's Meow (2001). Returning once again to a reworking of the past, this time the alleged murder of director Thomas H. Ince by Welles' bete noir William Randolph Hearst, The Cat's Meow (2001) was a modest critical success but a flop at the box office. In addition to helming some television movies, Bogdanovich has returned to acting, with a recurring guest role on the cable television series The Sopranos (1999) as Dr. Jennifer Melfi's analyst.
Bogdanovich's personal reputation suffered from gossip about his 13-year marriage to Dorothy Stratten's 19-year-old-kid sister Louise Stratten, who was 29 years his junior. Some gossip held that Bogdanovich's behavior was akin to that of the James Stewart character in Alfred Hitchcock's necrophiliac masterpiece Vertigo (1958), with the director trying to remold Stratten into the image of her late sister. The marriage ended in divorce in 2001.
Now in his early eighties, Bogdanovich has arguably imitated his hero Orson Welles, but in an unintended fashion, as filmmaker who never regained the acclaim bestowed on their first major success. However, unlike the widely acclaimed master Welles, the orbit of Bogdanovich's reputation has never recovered from the apogee it reached briefly in the early 1970s.
There has been speculation that Peter Bogdanovich's ruin as a director was guaranteed when he ditched his wife and artistic collaborator Polly Platt for Cybill Shepherd. Platt had worked with Bogdanovich on all his early successes, and some critics believe that the controlling artistic consciousness on The Last Picture Show (1971) was Platt's. Parting company with Platt after Paper Moon (1973), Bogdanovich promptly slipped from the heights of a wunderkind to a has-been pursuing epic folly, as evidenced by Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975).
In 1998 the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress named The Last Picture Show (1971) to the National Film Registry, an honor awarded only to the most culturally significant films.- Actor
- Production Designer
Raymond Cornelius Boyle, frequently credited as Dirk London, was an American small part character actor of the 1950s. Predominantly active on the small screen, he became best known for playing Morgan Earp (1851-1882) in fifteen episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), starring Hugh O'Brian as the eponymous gunfighter. Boyle found steady work in a staple of early western and police shows, including some recurring appearances in Gang Busters (1952), Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (1955), Highway Patrol (1955) and Gunsmoke (1955). A rare higher profile role saw him cast as a gangster colluding with Martians in Republic's hilarious serial Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952) (Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy -- then very much at the beginning of his career -- can be glimpsed as one of the zombies!).
After his retirement from acting, Boyle worked as production designer/art director on a couple of films in the 1970s. His second wife (from 1954) was the actress Jan Shepard.- F. Sionil Jose was born on 3 December 1924 in Rosales, Pangasinan, Philippine Islands. He was a writer, known for Waywaya (1982) and Francisco Sionil Jose - a Filipino Odyssey (1996). He was married to Tessie Jovellanos Jose. He died on 6 January 2022 in Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines.
- Maria Klenskaja was born on 29 January 1951 in Tartu, Estonian SSR, USSR [now Estonia]. She was an actress, known for Varastatud kohtumine (1989), Doktor Stockmann (1989) and Keskea rõõmud (1987). She was married to Aarne Üksküla. She died on 6 January 2022 in Estonia.
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
Mariano Laurenti was born on 15 April 1929 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a director and assistant director, known for Popcorn e patatine (1985), Fotoromanzo (1986) and Girls Will Be Girls (1980). He died on 6 January 2022 in Gubbio, Umbria, Italy.- Gloria Piedimonte was born on 27 May 1955 in Mantua, Lombardy, Italy. She was an actress, known for Insanlari Seveceksin (1979), Baila guapa (1979) and Violence for Kicks (1976). She was married to Tony. She died on 6 January 2022 in Mantua, Lombardy, Italy.