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Jackie Cooper, Former Child Star, 'Superman' Actor, Dies at 88

He rose to prominence in the ’30s in movies like “The Champ” and then found a second career as a director.


Jackie Cooper, who went from Oscar-nominated child star to TV executive and director while amassing scores of acting credits — including playing Perry White in the four Christopher Reeve Superman films — has died. He was 88.

Cooper died Tuesday at a convalescent home in Santa Monica. “He just kinda died of old age,” his attorney Roger Licht told Reuters. “He wore out.”

Cooper enjoyed a 60-year acting career. Before Shirley Temple won the world’s hearts, he was the most popular and widely recognized child star of the early 1930s and the first kid to shine in “talkies.” His pug nose, crinkly smile and pouty lip endeared him to a nationwide audience, first as Jackie in Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. Cooper was so popular, he was known as “America’s Boy.”

Born John Cooperman Jr. on Sept. 15, 1922, in Los Angeles, he broke in as a bit player in silent films. Cooper acted in 15 Our Gang shorts between 1929 and 1931 before his uncle, director Norman Taurog, cast him in the title role of Skippy, which was based on a comic strip. Cooper earned a best actor Academy Award nomination for the film — the first child actor to do so and still the youngest to receive an Oscar nom for a leading role. A sequel, Sooky, followed that year.

The films launched Cooper to stardom, and he went on to star opposite Wallace Beery in three films: The Champ (1931), playing the son of Beery’s fallen boxer; The Bowery (1933), as Beery’s foe; and Treasure Island (1934), in which he limned Jim Hawkins to Beery’s Long John Silver. Although their onscreen chemistry was magical, Beery resented the child actor and was coarse with him.

Cooper, whose feisty manner won him underdog appreciation, also co-starred in such 1930s films as When a Feller Needs a Friend, Peck’s Bad Boy, The Devil Is a Sissy, Boy of the Streets, Gangster’s Boy and Streets of New York, as well as the serial Scouts to the Rescue.

Like most child stars, Cooper hit a difficult period during adolescence, both professionally and personally. As he entered his teens, other young stars including Roddy McDowall and Freddie Bartholomew took over the tyke roles.

Based on his experiences, Cooper later opposed children growing up as actors. None of his four children went on to perform. The title of his 1981 autobiography, Please Don’t Shoot My Dog, came from Taurog’s threat during the filming of Skippy that he would shoot the boy’s dog because he was not performing adequately.

As a teen, he showed his maturity and acting skills in 1940’s Seventeen and gave an inspiring performance as a trumpeter in Syncopation (1942) before joining the Navy during World War II. During his tour of duty, Cooper attained the rank of captain.

After the war, Cooper found movie roles harder to come by, enduring such low-budget pictures as Stork Bites Man, Kilroy Was Here and French Leave. The experiences soured him, and he left Hollywood, touring in stock companies and performing on Broadway.

He landed his first New York stage role in Magnolia Alley in 1949. While in New York, he worked in live TV, starring in many of the top anthology series of the day. Cooper also produced, directed and starred in two series: The People’s Choice, on which he played a nature lover elected to the city council who had a talking basset hound, and Hennesey, playing a naval medical officer.

For a period during the 1960s, Cooper thrived as a TV executive. He served as vp program development at Columbia Pictures Television. During a five-year stint, he packaged series including Bewitched and sold them to the networks.

He parlayed that experience into another phase of his career: He began to direct episodic TV, and during the ’70s he was active in tackling tricky social issues like runaway teens. Based on his experiences, he couldn’t resist attacking the hypocrisy of show business: After his executive tenure, he returned to acting in the 1971 film The Love Machine, playing an obsequious and smarmy TV programming exec.

He continued to direct for TV throughout the 1970s and ’80s, winning a pair of Emmys for helming M*A*S*H andThe White Shadow. He directed multiple episodes of those shows along with such series as Black Sheep Squadron, Quincy, M.E., Cagney & Lacey and Sledge Hammer! He also helmed two telefilms that centered on show business figures: Rainbow (1978), based on the life of Judy Garland, and Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story in 1982.

Cooper acted in spurts from the 1950s through the ’80s. He guested on dozens of TV series including Suspense, The Twilight Zone, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Columbo, The Rockford Files, St. Elsewhere and Murder, She Wrote. He was most recognizable to latter-day audiences for playing Daily Planet editor Perry White in the four Superman films starring Reeve from 1978-87.

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Cooper virtually retired from show business in 1989, saying, “I’m 67 and worked 64 years.” He had mostly stayed out of the industry limelight since, forgoing tributes and retrospectives. In recent years, he raised horses in San Diego.

He was divorced twice: from June Horne, with whom he had a child, and Hildy Parks. In 1954, Cooper married Barbara Kraus, and the couple had three children. He is survived by two of this children.

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Ed McMahon: Television's singular sidekick signs off

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

Now, Tonight truly feels like an irretrievable yesterday.
The show's era as an icon ended with the death of Johnny Carson, but as long as his "hi-yo" sidekick, Ed McMahon, was still with us, some part of the era was as well. Tuesday, at age 86, McMahon died, taking what was left of the old Tonight Show with him.

McMahon put himself through college pitching products on the Atlantic City boardwalk, which may have been a more useful education than college itself. In a way, that's what McMahon did with startling success for 30 years: He pitched Carson to the public. His laugh made Carson's jokes seem funnier; his straight-man cluelessness in the Carnac routines made Carson seem smarter; and his booming, much-imitated "Here's Johnny" made Carson seem like the most important person on American TV.





On his own, McMahon was not a great talent. As a sidekick, he made the star not just brighter but better. His gregariousness was a perfect complement to the notoriously private Carson's button-down approach, providing a reflected warmth the host might have otherwise lacked.

And indeed, much of what we learned about Carson as a person on air came from his exchanges with McMahon. Fans knew about the pair's divorces, not because they gave interviews to the tabloids but because they discussed them with each other — rarely, but with revealing frankness.

McMahon first worked with Carson as his announcer on the game show Who Do You Trust in the late '50s. The pair obviously clicked, because they moved together to The Tonight Show when Carson took it over in 1962.

McMahon set the sidekick mold most all would follow, and indeed for years made a sidekick seem essential. He mostly served to flatter the star, laughing with sometimes exaggerated gusto even when the joke didn't particularly merit a laugh. (McMahon did honestly what Paul Shaffer now does ironically.) But at crucial times, he could also serve as a foil, puncturing pomposity before it could grow.

In his later years, McMahon's appearances on TV were less fortunate — and often tied to a how-the-mighty-have-fallen fascination with his financial woes. But today, we can remember him young and laughing, welcoming us to the greatest night-time party TV has ever thrown.

Goodnight, Ed. We had a blast.

Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkok

BANGKOK (AP) -- Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.





The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room.

It said Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot a movie and had been staying at the hotel since Tuesday.

The newspaper said Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew on Wednesday, and that his body was found by a hotel maid at 10 a.m. Thursday morning. The name of the movie was not immediately available.

It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the room's curtains. It cited police as saying he had been dead at least 12 hours and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

A police officer at Bangkok's Lumpini precinct station would not confirm the identity of the dead man, but said the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel had reported that a male guest killed himself there.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his prominent early film roles was as singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby's 1976 biopic "Bound for Glory."

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series "Kung Fu," which aired in 1972-75.

He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine's grandson in the 1990s syndicated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues."

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino's two-part saga "Kill Bill."

The character, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003's "Kill Bill - Volume One" In that film, one of Bill's former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates.

In "Kill Bill - Volume Two," released in 2004, Thurman's character comes face to face again with Bill himself. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.

Bill was a complete contrast to his TV character Kwai Chang Caine, the soft-spoken refugee from a Shaolin monastery, serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West. He left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.

After "Kung Fu," Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick "Death Race 2000." He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman's "The Serpent's Egg" in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western "The Long Riders."

But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films. Tarantino's films changed that.

"All I've ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago ... is just to be in one," Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004.

"There isn't anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn't do," he said. "All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin's courage to take and put me in the spotlight."

One thing remained a constant after "Kung Fu": Carradine's interest in Oriental herbs, exercise and philosophy. He wrote a personal memoir called "Spirit of Shaolin" and continued to make instructional videos on tai chi and other martial arts.

In the 2004 interview, Carradine talked candidly about his past boozing and narcotics use, but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes.

"I didn't like the way I looked, for one thing. You're kind of out of control emotionally when you drink that much. I was quicker to anger."

"You're probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions," Carradine said. "Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.

"It's time to do nothing but look forward."

R.I.P.: The voice of Mickey Mouse

The voice of Minnie Mouse has reported the death of her husband — the voice of Mickey Mouse since 1976.

Wayne Allwine died Monday of complications from diabetes, said his wife, Russi Taylor, a voice-over artist who has put words in Minnie's mouth since 1986. He was 62.

Allwine, an Emmy Award-winning former sound effects editor, was only the third man to give voice to Mickey. Walt Disney was the first, in 1928.

"Wayne was my hero," Taylor told the Los Angeles Times. "He really loved doing Mickey Mouse and was very proud that he did it 32 years."

Allwine was hired by Jimmy Macdonald, who succeeded Disney.

Dom DeLuise dies at age 75

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Dom DeLuise, the U.S. comic actor who gained fame on television and in movies such as "Blazing Saddles" and "Smokey and the Bandit II," has died at age 75.

DeLuise died Monday night at a hospital in the Los Angeles community of Santa Monica, his agent Robert Malcolm said.



 

"It's easy to mourn his death, but easier to remember a time when he made you laugh," DeLuise's family said in a statement issued by Malcolm.

No cause of death was given, but Malcolm said DeLuise had health problems including high blood pressure and diabetes.

In December 2008 the actor told TV show "Entertainment Tonight" that he had been fighting prostate cancer. "I'm still here. I'm 75 and here. I feel very blessed," he said.

Dominick "Dom" DeLuise was born August 1, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. He began his career in movies and on TV in the 1960s, and he gained widespread fame on the Dean Martin Show as "Dominick the Great," a magician whose act routinely went wrong.

For a brief period in 1968, he was given his own TV program, "The Dom DeLuise Show," and he later proved to be appealing as a guest star in sketch comedy and other shows.

"I loved him from the moment we met. Not only did we have the greatest time working together, but I never laughed so hard in my life as when we were together," Doris Day, who starred with DeLuise in the 1966 movie, "The Glass Bottom Boat," said in a statement.

WORKED WITH BURT REYNOLDS

In the 1970s, DeLuise became a regular actor in Mel Brooks' comedies. He appeared in the wildly popular Western spoof "Blazing Saddles," as well as "Silent Movie," "History of the World Part I," and "Robin Hood - Men in Tights."



He also made films with Burt Reynolds, a major star at the time, including "The Cannonball Run" and its sequel "Cannonball Run 2."

"Dom always made everyone feel better when he was around. I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. I will miss him very much," Reynolds told "Entertainment Tonight."

In the 1980s and 1990s, DeLuise worked on a wide range of movies and TV shows such as "Beverly Hills 90210" and "3rd Rock from the Sun," and he hosted a version of "Candid Camera" from 1991 to 1992.

His voice was used in animated programs such as "All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series."

An avid cook, DeLuise wrote several cookbooks including "Eat This" and "Eat This Too!" In recent years, he appeared on the home improvement radio show "On the House with The Carey Brothers."

He is survived by his wife, Carol Arthur, and three sons, Peter, David and Michael, who work in the entertainment industry.

Golden Girls' star Bea Arthur dies at 86

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" and who won a Tony Award for the musical "Mame," died Saturday. She was 86.

Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.

"She was a brilliant and witty woman," said Watt, who was Arthur's personal assistant for six years. "Bea will always have a special place in my heart."




Arthur first appeared in the landmark comedy series "All in the Family" as Edith Bunker's loudly outspoken, liberal cousin, Maude Finley. She proved a perfect foil for blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), and their blistering exchanges were so entertaining that producer Norman Lear fashioned Arthur's own series.

In a 2008 interview with The Associated Press, Arthur said she was lucky to be discovered by TV after a long stage career, recalling with bemusement CBS executives asking about the new "girl."

"I was already 50 years old. I had done so much off-Broadway, on Broadway, but they said, `Who is that girl? Let's give her her own series,'" Arthur said.

"Maude" scored with television viewers immediately on its CBS debut in September 1972, and Arthur won an Emmy Award for the role in 1977.

The comedy flowed from Maude's efforts to cast off the traditional restraints that women faced, but the series often had a serious base. Her husband Walter (Bill Macy) became an alcoholic, and she underwent an abortion, which drew a torrent of viewer protests. Maude became a standard bearer for the growing feminist movement in America.

The ratings of "Maude" in the early years approached those of its parent, "All in the Family," but by 1977 the audience started to dwindle. A major format change was planned, but in early 1978 Arthur announced she was quitting the show.

"It's been absolutely glorious; I've loved every minute of it," she said. "But it's been six years, and I think it's time to leave."

"Golden Girls" (1985-1992) was another groundbreaking comedy, finding surprising success in a television market increasingly skewed toward a younger, product-buying audience.

The series concerned three retirees — Arthur, Betty White and Rue McClanahan — and the mother of Arthur's character, Estelle Getty, who lived together in a Miami apartment. In contrast to the violent "Miami Vice," the comedy was nicknamed "Miami Nice."

As Dorothy Zbornak, Arthur seemed as caustic and domineering as Maude. She was unconcerned about the similarity of the two roles. "Look — I'm 5-feet-9, I have a deep voice and I have a way with a line," she told an interviewer. "What can I do about it? I can't stay home waiting for something different. I think it's a total waste of energy worrying about typecasting."

The interplay among the four women and their relations with men fueled the comedy, and the show amassed a big audience and 10 Emmys, including two as best comedy series and individual awards for each of the stars.

In 1992, Arthur announced she was leaving "Golden Girls." The three other stars returned in "The Golden Palace," but it lasted only one season.

Arthur was born Bernice Frankel in New York City in 1922. When she was 11, her family moved to Cambridge, Md., where her father opened a clothing store. At 12 she had grown to full height, and she dreamed of being a petite blond movie star like June Allyson. There was one advantage of being tall and deep-voiced: She was chosen for the male roles in school plays.

Bernice — she hated the name and adopted her mother's nickname of Bea — overcame shyness about her size by winning over her classmates with wisecracks. She was elected the wittiest girl in her class. After two years at a junior college in Virginia, she earned a degree as a medical lab technician, but she "loathed" doing lab work at a hospital.

Acting held more appeal, and she enrolled in a drama course at the New School of Social Research in New York City. To support herself, she sang in a night spot that required her to push drinks on customers.

During this time she had a brief marriage that provided her stage name of Beatrice Arthur. In 1950, she married again, to Broadway actor and future Tony-winning director Gene Saks.

After a few years in off-Broadway and stock company plays and television dramas, Arthur's career gathered momentum with her role as Lucy Brown in the 1955 production of "The Threepenny Opera."

In 2008, when Arthur was inducted in the TV Academy Hall of Fame, Arthur pointed to the role as the highlight of her long career.

"A lot of that had to do with the fact that I felt, `Ah, yes, I belong here,'" Arthur said.

More plays and musicals followed, and she also sang in nightclubs and played small roles in TV comedy shows.

Then, in 1964, Harold Prince cast her as Yente the Matchmaker in the original company of "Fiddler on the Roof."

Arthur's biggest Broadway triumph came in 1966 as Vera Charles, Angela Lansbury's acerbic friend in the musical "Mame," directed by Saks. Richard Watts of the New York Post called her performance "a portrait in acid of a savagely witty, cynical and serpent-tongued woman."

She won the Tony as best supporting actress and repeated the role in the unsuccessful film version that also was directed by Saks, starring Lucille Ball as Mame. Arthur would play a variation of Vera Charles in "Maude" and "The Golden Girls."

In 1983, Arthur attempted another series, "Amanda's," an Americanized version of John Cleese's hilarious "Fawlty Towers." She was cast as owner of a small seaside hotel with a staff of eccentrics. It lasted a mere nine episodes.

Between series, Arthur remained active in films and theater. Among the movies: "That Kind of Woman" (1959), "Lovers and Other Strangers" (1970), Mel Brooks' "History of the World Part I" (1981), "For Better or Worse" (1995).

The plays included Woody Allen's "The Floating Light Bulb" and "The Bermuda Avenue Triangle," written by and costarring Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. During 2001 and 2002 she toured the country in a one-woman show of songs and stories, "... And Then There's Bea."

Arthur and Saks divorced in 1978 after 28 years. They had two sons, Matthew and Daniel. In his long career, Saks won Tonys for "I Love My Wife," "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Biloxi Blues." One of his Tony nominations was for "Mame."

In 1999, Arthur told an interviewer of the three influences in her career: "Sid Caesar taught me the outrageous; (method acting guru) Lee Strasberg taught me what I call reality; and ('Threepenny Opera' star) Lotte Lenya, whom I adored, taught me economy."

In recent years, Arthur made guest appearances on shows including "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Malcolm in the Middle." She was chairwoman of the Art Attack Foundation, a non-profit performing arts scholarship organization.

Arthur is survived by her sons and two granddaughters. No funeral services are planned.

Robert Quarry

The tall, raven-haired Quarry was billed as "Dashing, Dark and Deadly", and relished the description. "Actors always wanted to play the good guys first," he once reflected. "I was different, and, boy, I did have a lot of fun drinking the blood of the lovely DJ Anderson. I always tried to play villains like the heroes. Vincent Price always over-egged the pudding. I played Count Yorga straight."



 

Robert Walter Quarry was born on November 3 1925 at Santa Rosa, California, the son of a doctor. His grandmother, a frustrated actress, introduced him to the world of theatre and cinema. Although academically gifted, he left school at 14 and by the 1940s he was working on radio in juvenile roles. He then won a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse, where he was spotted by Alfred Hitchcock and cast as Teresa Wright's boyfriend in Shadow of a Doubt(1943) – only to be replaced by Charles Bates and given a smaller role instead.



Quarry joined the Army in November 1943 and formed a theatrical group which put on a hit production of the play The Hasty Heart. After the war he returned to filmmaking, landing a contract with RKO and then MGM, where he befriended Katharine Hepburn and taught her to play tennis. She chose him to star opposite her in the Broadway production of As You Like It (1950), and the next year he played Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew.

Little came of Quarry's time at MGM. He appeared in Soldier of Fortune (1955) and House of Bamboo (1955), then played Dwight Powell opposite Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward and Mary Astor in A Kiss Before Dying(1956). His other films included Crime of Passion(1957), Winning (1969) and WUSA (1970), the last two starring Paul Newman.

Quarry's role as Count Yorga made him one of the industry's most bankable horror stars. Although groomed as the "new Vincent Price", he never quite justified this accolade; but horror movie fans enjoyed his roles as the vampire hippie guru Khorda in The Deathmaster(1972); as the scientist Darius Biederbeck in Dr. Phibes Rises Again!(1972), opposite Vincent Price; and as the evil mob boss Morgan in the "zombie flick" Sugar Hill(1974).

On television Quarry appeared in The Lone Ranger, The Rockford Files, Perry Mason and Ironside.

In 1980 he was run down by an uninsured truck driver, and the resulting medical bills left him broke. Soon afterwards he was mugged in Hollywood and left for dead on the street. Quarry then became something of a recluse, until the film director Fred Olen Ray – an admirer of his work – successfully persuaded him to return to the screen in Cyclone(1987). He subsequently made a string of horror films for Ray, including Mind Twister(1994), with Telly Savalas, and The Prophet (1999).

Robert Quarry was a highly proficient bridge player and a Cordon Bleu-trained cook – he wrote a best-selling cookbook entitled Wonderfully Simple Recipes for Simply Wonderful Food.

Natasha Richardson dies at 45 after ski accident

NEW YORK (AP) -- Natasha Richardson, a gifted and precocious heiress to acting royalty whose career highlights included the film "Patty Hearst" and a Tony-winning performance in a stage revival of "Cabaret," died Wednesday at age 45 after suffering a head injury from a skiing accident.

Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson's husband Liam Neeson, confirmed her death in a written statement.

"Liam Neeson, his sons (Micheal and Daniel), and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha," the statement said. "They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."

The statement did not give details on the cause of death for Richardson, who suffered a head injury when she fell on a beginner's trail during a private ski lesson at the luxury Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec. She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal and later flown to a hospital in New York.

Family members had been seen coming and going from the New York hospital where Richardson was taken.




Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson's mother, arrived in a car with darkened windows and was taken through a garage when she arrived at the Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side about 5 p.m. Wednesday. An hour earlier, Richardson's sister, Joely, arrived alone and was swarmed by the media as she entered through the back of the hospital.

It was a sudden and horrifying loss for her family and friends, for the film and theater communities, for her many fans and for both her native and adoptive countries. Descended from at least three generations of actors, Richardson was a proper Londoner who came to love the noise of New York, an elegant blonde with large, lively eyes, a bright smile and a hearty laugh.

If she never quite attained the acting heights of her Academy Award-winning mother, she still had enjoyed a long and worthy career. As an actress, Richardson was equally adept at passion and restraint, able to portray besieged women both confessional (Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois) and confined (the concubine in the futuristic horror of "The Handmaid's Tale").

Like other family members, she divided her time between stage and screen. On Broadway, she won a Tony for her performance as Sally Bowles in a 1998 revival of "Cabaret." She also appeared in New York in a production of Patrick Marber's "Closer" (1999) as well as 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which she played Blanche opposite John C. Reilly's Stanley Kowalski.

She met Neeson when they made their Broadway debuts in 1993, co-starring in "Anna Christie," Eugene O'Neill's drama about a former prostitute and the sailor who falls in love with her.

"The astonishing Natasha Richardson ... gives what may prove to be the performance of the season as Anna, turning a heroine who has long been portrayed (and reviled) as a whore with a heart of gold into a tough, ruthlessly unsentimental apostle of O'Neill's tragic understanding of life," The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote. "Miss Richardson, seeming more like a youthful incarnation of her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, than she has before, is riveting from her first entrance through a saloon doorway's ethereal shaft of golden light."

Her most notable film roles came earlier in her career. Richardson played the title character in Paul Schrader's "Patty Hearst," a 1988 biopic about the kidnapped heiress for which the actress became so immersed that even between scenes she wore a blindfold, the better to identify with her real-life counterpart.

"Natasha Richardson ... has been handed a big unwritten role; she feels her way into it, and she fills it," wrote The New Yorker's Pauline Kael. "We feel how alone and paralyzed Patty is — she retreats into being a hidden observer."

Richardson was directed again by Schrader in a 1990 adaptation of Ian McEwan's "The Comfort of Strangers" and, also in 1990, starred in the screen version of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."

She later co-starred with Neeson in "Nell," with Mia Farrow in "Widows' Peak" and with a pre-teen Lindsay Lohan in a remake of "The Parent Trap." More recent movies, none of them widely seen, included "Wild Child," "Evening" and "Asylum."

She was born in London in 1963, the performing gene inherited not just from her parents (Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson), but from her maternal grandparents (Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson), an aunt (Lynn Redgrave) and an uncle (Corin Redgrave). Her younger sister, Joely Richardson, also joined the family business.

Friends and family members remembered Natasha as an unusually poised child, perhaps forced to grow up early when her father left her mother in the late '60s for Jeanne Moreau. (Tony Richardson died in 1991).

Interviewed by The Associated Press in 2001, Natasha Richardson said she related well to her family if only because, "We've all been through it in one way or another and so we've had to be strong. Also we embrace life. We are not cynical about life."

Richardson always planned to act, apart from one brief childhood moment when she wanted to be a flight attendant — "wonderful irony now since I hate to fly and have to take a pill in order to get on a plane. I'm so terrified."

Her screen debut came at age 4 when she appeared as a flower girl in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," directed by her father, whose movies included "Tom Jones" and "The Entertainer." The show business wand had already tapped her the year before, when she saw her mother in the 1967 film version of the Broadway show "Camelot."

"She was so beautiful. I still look at that movie and I can't believe it. It still makes me cry, the beauty of it. I could go on and on — in that white fur hooded thing, when she comes through the forest for the first time. You've never seen anything so beautiful!" Richardson said.

She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and was an experienced stage actress by her early 20s, appearing in "On the Razzle," "Charley's Aunt" and "The Seagull," for which the London Drama Critics awarded her most promising newcomer.

Although she never shared her mother's fiercely expressed political views, they were close professionally and acted together, most recently on Broadway to play the roles of mother and daughter in a one-night benefit concert version of "A Little Night Music," the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical.

Before meeting up with Neeson (who called her "Tash") Richardson was married to theater and producer Robert Fox, whose credits include the 1985 staging of "The Seagull" in which his future wife appeared.

She sometimes remarked on the differences between her and her second husband — she from a theatrical dynasty and he from a working-class background in Northern Ireland.

"He's more laid back, happy to see what happens, whereas I'm a doer and I plan ahead," Richardson told The Independent on Sunday newspaper in 2003. "The differences sometimes get in the way but they can be the very things that feed a marriage, too."

She once said that Neeson's serious injury in a 2000 motorcycle accident — he suffered a crushed pelvis after colliding with a deer in upstate New York — had made her really appreciate life.

"I wake up every morning feeling lucky — which is driven by fear, no doubt, since I know it could all go away," she told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2003.

Actor Ron Silver dies at age 62

Actor Ron Silver, who won a Tony Award as a take-no-prisoners Hollywood producer in David Mamet's ``Speed-the-Plow'' and did a political about-face from loyal Democrat to Republican activist after the Sept. 11 attacks, died Sunday at the age of 62.

``Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him early Sunday morning'' in New York City, said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped found. ``He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years.''

Silver, an Emmy nominee for a recurring role as a slick strategist for liberal President Jed Bartlet on ``The West Wing,'' had a long history of balancing acting with left-leaning social and political causes.

But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, longtime Democrat Silver turned heads in Hollywood with outspoken support of President George W. Bush over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Silver spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention, began referring to himself as a ``9/11 Republican'' and reregistered as an independent.

In an interview with The Associated Press a month later, Silver said his support for the war on terror was costing him work in liberal-minded Hollywood.

``It's affected me very badly. I can't point to a person or a job I've lost, but this community is not very pluralistic,'' Silver told the AP. ``I haven't worked for 10 months.''

His switch to a more conservative image threatened to overshadow an esteemed career on stage, television and film, along with his long history of activism, which included co-founding the nonpartisan Creative Coalition, an advocacy group for entertainers.

``He was a talented actor, a scholar and a great believer in participatory democracy,'' Bronk said Sunday evening. ``He was an activist who became a great artist and his contributions will never be forgotten.''

His big-screen credits included ``Ali,'' ``Reversal of Fortune,'' ``Enemies, A Love Story,'' ``Silkwood'' and ``Semi-Tough.''

Besides ``The West Wing,'' Silver was a regular or had recurring roles on such TV shows as ``Veronica's Closet,'' ``Chicago Hope'' and ``Wiseguy.'' He directed and costarred in the 1993 TV movie ``Lifepod,'' a science-fiction update of Alfred Hitchcock's ``Lifeboat.''

Silver's Tony for ``Speed-the-Plow'' came in 1988, a year after he earned his first Emmy nomination, for the murder thriller ``Billionaire Boys Club.''

Silver still found work despite his conservative shift, appearing in episodes of ``Law and Order'' and ``Crossing Jordan'' and such movies as ``Find Me Guilty'' and the Ten Commandments comedy ``The Ten.''

He continued his recurring role on ``The West Wing,'' joking that he faced some taunting over his views from co-workers on the show which took place in a fiercely liberal White House administration.

``Often when I walked onto the set of 'The West Wing' some of my colleagues would greet me with a chanting of 'Ron, Ron, the neo-con.' It was all done in fun but it had an edge,'' Silver wrote in a Nov. 15, 2007, entry of his blog on the Pajamas Media Web site.

Silver's on-screen work rankled liberals, too. He narrated 2004's ``Fahrenhype 9/11,'' a deconstruction of Michael Moore's Bush-bashing hit documentary ``Fahrenheit 9/11.''

``Michael Moore and that faction of the party was one of the factors that did not let me support the Democratic nominee this year,'' Silver told the AP in 2004. ``He is a charlatan in a clown suit.''



Born July 2, 1946, in New York City, he was the son of Irving and May Silver. His father worked in New York's garment industry and his mother was a teacher.

Earning a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master's degree in Chinese history from St. John's University, Silver studied drama at the Herbert Berghof Studio and the Actors Studio.

In the 1970s, he gradually moved from theater work in New York City into television and film. His early credits included ``The Mac Davis Show,'' ``Rhoda'' and ``The Stockard Channing Show.''

Silver and ex-wife Lynne Miller had a son, Adam, and daughter, Alexandra.

Whichever end of the political spectrum his activism fell, Silver viewed such involvement as something of a duty for entertainers.

``I think there's almost an obligation,'' he said in a 1991 interview with the AP. ``Many of us are very well compensated for work which a lot of people would love to do. And we also have a lot of leisure time in between jobs. ...

``They say that Hollywood is sex without substance, and Washington is substance without sex, so maybe the marriage of the two is mutually intriguing.''