Here are last year’s losses that saddened me most:
Conrad Bain. He was last generation’s Angelina Jolie.
Bonnie Franklin. She starred in “One Day At A Time,” and now she’s gone. So much for living in the moment.
Roger Ebert. His review of North etched in his tombstone.
Jonathan Winters. Responsible for one of my favorite quotes: “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.”
Jean Stapleton. She rolled the dice – turning down the roll of Mike Teevee’s mom in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to shoot the pilot of “All in the Family” – and won.
James Gandolfini. Losing a fellow Jets fan hurts more than anything.
Gary David Goldberg. From a story I read about him: Gary created “Family Ties and “Spin City,” and was so thankful that someone had mentored him when he was a young writer that at the 2001 Austin Film Festival “he offered the audience – chock full of hungry writers desperate for an opportunity to be recognized – his personal telephone number. He instructed everyone to write it down so that they would have someone to encourage them not to quit in those hours of solitude and doubt so common to our constituency.”
Dennis Farina. Saw him in an LAX bathroom once, and got serious stage fright.
Hal Needham. He directed Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper, Death Car on the Freeway, Smokey and the Bandit II, The Cannonball Run, Stroker Ace and Cannonball Run II, which makes him the Scorsese of white trash.
Marcia Wallace. When her character, Mrs. Krabapple, the teacher on “The Simpsons,” was asked to control Bart, she replied: “I tried, but he’s uncontrollable. Frowny stickers mean nothing to him.”
Paul Walker. I always root extra hard for charitable celebrities to do well so they can keep giving their money away. (Keanu Reeves is amazing at this.) He’ll be extra missed.
Peter O’Toole. If Lindsay Lohan’s liver could speak, it would sound like Peter O’Toole in the 70s.
