Global RIP thread

[cavanami]

Boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter dies at 76

 

http://news.yahoo.com/boxer-rubin-hurricane-carter-dies-76-151058124--spt.html

 

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the boxer whose wrongful murder conviction became an international symbol of racial injustice, died Sunday. He was 76.

 

He had been stricken with prostate cancer in Toronto, the New Jersey native's adopted home. John Artis, a longtime friend and caregiver, told The Canadian Press that Carter died in his sleep.

Carter spent 19 years in prison for three murders at a tavern in Paterson, N.J., in 1966. He was convicted alongside Artis in 1967 and again in a new trial in 1976.

 

Carter was freed in November 1985 when his convictions were set aside after years of appeals and public advocacy. His ordeal and the alleged racial motivations behind it were publicized in Bob Dylan's 1975 song "Hurricane," several books and a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington, who received an Academy Award nomination for playing the boxer turned prisoner...

[Flashermac]

Huber Matos, Comrade of Castro, Then Adversary, Dies at 95

 

 

Huber Matos, a top commander in Fidel Castro’s army who broke from the Cuban revolution in 1959 over its tilt toward Communism, endured a harsh imprisonment for 20 years and became a leader of anti-Castro exiles in Florida, died in Miami on Thursday. He was 95.

 

The cause was a heart attack, his family said.

 

A longtime opponent of the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, Mr. Matos, a former country schoolteacher, was one of a handful of men in the inner circle of Castro’s revolutionary organization, the 26th of July Movement.

 

In 1958 he traveled to Costa Rica and organized a large and crucial delivery of weapons to Cuban rebels in the Sierra Maestra. A year later he helped capture Havana, entering the city by Mr. Castro’s side, and he was named military commander of Camagüey Province.

 

But as Mr. Castro moved covertly toward Marxism in his first year in power, Mr. Matos expressed displeasure with the shift and, as he recounted in his autobiography, “How the Night Arrived,†appealed to Mr. Castro to stay true to the goals of the revolution, including re-establishing democratic government.

 

Increasingly disillusioned, Mr. Matos sent a letter of resignation to Mr. Castro alleging Communist infiltration in the government. In response, in October 1959, Mr. Castro ordered his arrest, a directive carried out by Camilo Cienfuegos, a central figure in the revolutionary movement.

 

In December, Mr. Matos and other prisoners were tried for treason in an army movie theater before a crowd of about 1,500 soldiers and members of the world press. Mr. Castro was the principal witness.

 

Removing his army jacket and placing a microphone on a cord around his neck, Mr. Castro turned to the audience and gave a seven-hour speech, which was broadcast on Cuban radio, accusing Mr. Matos and other officers of trying to set off a crisis with their resignations and of indirectly promoting the agenda of United States vested interests, large Cuban landowners and remnants of the Batista government.

 

Mr. Matos, 40, wearing a long, dark beard, spoke briefly, declaring that the charges were false.

 

The military court sentenced him to 20 years in prison, rejecting the prosecutors’ call for death by firing squad.

 

It was not until 1961 that Mr. Castro publicly declared Cuba a socialist nation.

 

“He was one of the first to really break with Fidel Castro openly because he felt that this revolution was actually becoming a Communist movement,†said Andy S. Gomez, a former senior fellow on Cuba issues at the University of Miami and now a senior policy adviser at Poblete Tamargo, a law firm.

 

In an interview with Worldview magazine in 1980, Mr. Matos said: “I differed from Fidel Castro because the original objective of our revolution was ‘Freedom or Death.’ Once Castro had power, he began to kill freedom.â€

 

In prison, Mr. Matos endured severe beatings, illness and long periods in solitary confinement, including three years in a hot, windowless cell partly underground and infested with insects. In protest he staged, by his count, six hunger strikes, the longest for 165 days, during which he was force-fed through his nose.

 

“Huber said that psychologically, the worst was to be in his cell and to have to listen to others being tortured or executed against a wall,†Mr. Gomez said.

 

Mr. Matos’s detention drew sustained calls for his release by human rights groups, the United States government and Roman Catholic officials, and in newspaper editorials, including one in The New York Times in 1962 that criticized his treatment.

 

He was freed at the end of his sentence in 1979 and handed over to Costa Rica, and its government officials flew him to San José, the capital, where he was reunited with his wife, Maria Luisa, and four grown children and met by a large crowd of well-wishers.

 

In Costa Rica, one of his sons was seriously wounded near his home by gunmen, who sprayed his car with machine-gun fire and then escaped to Panama.

 

The family later moved to Miami. By then, Mr. Matos’s left arm was partly paralyzed from the beatings he had suffered.

 

Huber Matos Benítez was born into a family of modest means on Nov. 26, 1918, in Yara, a small town in Oriente Province, in southeastern Cuba. He graduated from a teachers college and earned a doctorate from the University of Havana in 1944. His teaching among the rural poor living in harsh conditions turned him against the repressive Batista government and led to his joining the Castro movement.

 

Information about his survivors was not immediately available.

 

In Miami, his standing in its vocal and powerful exile population was complicated. On his arrival there from Costa Rica, he was greeted by cheering Cuban exiles as a long-suffering political prisoner who had repudiated Mr. Castro and Communism. Yet many of them never completely forgave him for his actions as a commander in Castro’s army.

 

Still, he spoke out against Mr. Castro frequently. He led two organizations, Cuba Independiente y Democrática and the Huber Matos Foundation for Democracy, which work for democracy and human rights in Cuba and the rest of Latin America.

 

The day before he died, Mr. Matos was taking calls from supporters in Cuba, his family said in a statement. One group, they said, sang the Cuban national anthem to him over the phone.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/world/americas/huber-matos-comrade-of-castro-then-adversary-dies-at-95.html?hp&_r=1

[Flashermac]

Bob Hoskins dies of pneumonia aged 71

 

 

Actor Bob Hoskins, who was best known for roles in The Long Good Friday and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, has died of pneumonia at the age of 71.

 

His agent said he died on Tuesday in hospital, surrounded by family.

 

The star was nominated for a best actor Oscar in 1987 for crime drama Mona Lisa, in which he starred opposite Sir Michael Caine and Robbie Coltrane.

 

He announced he was retiring from acting in 2012 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

 

"We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Bob," the actor's wife Linda and children Alex, Sarah, Rosa and Jack said in a statement.

 

"Bob died peacefully at hospital last night surrounded by family, following a bout of pneumonia.

 

"We ask that you respect our privacy during this time and thank you for your messages of love and support."

 

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27224995

[huumlaar]

THat's not old, just about anything he was in I liked,

[Mekong]

Just watched "The Long Good Friday" again, I had forgotten how good that movie was, and it really is not acting.

 

Hoskins was introduced to the Kray twins in the 60's but chose not to pursue a life of crime, joined the merchant navy and took up acting rather late in his life.

 

He never took himself seriously, just a kid from North London who got Lucky and came out with many memorable quotes

"I've played so many historical characters because most horrible dictators are short, fat, middle-aged men."

 

"I realised one day that men are emotional cripples. We can't express ourselves emotionally, we can only do it with anger and humour. Emotional stability and expression comes from women."

"[On the set of Hook] We had Dustin Hoffman apologising for making Ishtar. And [steven] Spielberg apologising for 1941 and Robin Williams jumping in and saying: 'I apologise for Cadillac Man. I was sitting there and shouted 'Well, I apologise for f**king nothing!'"

"Monogamy is a possibility – and a necessity. Kids have got to have something they can rely on. You have got to have something you rely on."

"The worst thing I ever did? 'Super Mario Bros.' It was a f**kin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks, their own agent told them to get off the set! F**kin' nightmare. F**kin' idiots."

On ever doing the BT adverts again: "You're joking, intcha? I couldn't believe it. It was un-be-lie-va-ble. The worst thing that happened to me was Madonna getting stalked by a fella called Bob Hoskins, and I had f*ckin' hundreds of people come up to me, and say 'It's good to stalk.' B*stards! Hahaha!"

"I'm very romantic. I've emptied flower shops."

"Money's very handy, let's face it."

"When you get to my age, what you want is the cameo. You get paid a lot of money. You fly in for a couple of weeks. Everybody treats you like the crown jewels. It's all great and if the film turns out to be a load of s**t, nobody blames you.

"I'm Winnie the Pooh - that's as sexy as I am. I meet ladies and they talk about their family and I talk about my family. It's about as sexy as a bag of Brussel sprouts."

"What do I owe my parents? Confidence. My mum used to say to me, 'If somebody doesn't like you, f*ck 'em, they've got bad taste.'"

"What would I have done if I wasn't an actor? Probably rob banks."

Star

[Flashermac]

Efrem Zimbalist Jr., star of 'The FBI,' dies at 95

 

 

LOS ANGELES – Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the son of famous musical parents who established his own name in the long-running television series "77 Sunset Strip" and the even longer running TV hit "The F.B.I.," died Friday at age 95.

 

Zimbalist died at his Solvang home in California's bucolic horse country, said family friend Judith Moose, who released a statement from his children, actress Stephanie Zimbalist and her brother, Efrem Zimbalist III.

 

...

 

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/05/03/efrem-zimbalist-jr-star-fbi-dead-at-5/

[huumlaar]

RIP, really liked him, was a great dancer

[bust]

Reg Gasnier dies aged 74. Legend

[bust]

Sir Jack Brabham dead at 88

 

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/motorsport/sir-jack-brabham-dead-20140519-zrgoj.html

[Flashermac]

"He remains the only man in history to have designed, built and driven a championship-winning car."

 

 

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27465380