R.I.P.

James Gandolfini (1961-2013) died aged 51, in Rome. best known of course as crime boss Tony Soprano in the long-running THE SOPRANOS, yes I too have a few box sets of the series still to see... movie roles included TRUE ROMANCE and I have just got THE MEXICAN to watch soon ...

Slim Whitman (1923-2013), aged 90. I remember Slim being very popular and on the radio a lot when I was a kid in '50s Ireland. Once known as America's favourite folk singer, he was very popular in the UK and Europe with those hits like "Rose Marie" (Number One in the charts for 11 weeks)  and "Indian Love Call". He was also quite useful in the film of MARS ATTACKS!

Diane Clare (1938-2013) charming British actress, has died aged 74. Her career just spanned a decade from 1958 to '68, her best known roles being the other nurse in ICE COLD IN ALEX and Angela Lansbury's debutante daughter in one of our favourite Minnelli's THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE - Lansbury was actually only 12 years older than her. Right with fellow debutante Sandra Dee, and Kay Kendall and Rex Harrison, and below with Angela Lansbury and cast. . She was also in THE HAUNTING, THE WRONG BOX, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES etc, and various tv roles in series like Z CARS. A second string female leading lady then, but she had retired when she married writer Barry England.

Bert Stern (1929-2013) - Photographer Bert Stern, most known for his library of Marilyn Monroe photographs, and who helped redefine advertising and fashion art in the 1950s and ’60, has died at age 83.

“It was a one-time-in-a-lifetime experience, to have Marilyn Monroe in a hotel room,” Mr. Stern said in the 2010 documentary “Bert Stern: Original Madman,” “even though it was turned into a studio, where I could do anything I wanted.”  
Many of the photos showed Monroe unclothed, or posing behind transparent scarves. “She was so beautiful at that time,” Mr. Stern told Newsday. Stern certainly packaged and re-packaged his Monroe photographs from that LAST SITTING. He also directed the marvellous jazz film JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY, a record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. His death and that of Eve Arnold last year leaves George Barris as the last great Monroe photographer ...(of course Arnold and Barris repackaged their Monroe prints several times too with those various books and posters I like). He also shot that iconic shot of Sue Lyon in the red sunglasses used to publicise Kubrick's LOLITA.