death (50 posts)

John Stanton Wireimage

Papa has fetched a brand new bag—of money.

The medical bracelet James Brown was wearing before he died on Christmas Day in 2006 sold for a whopping $32,500 Thursday at a Christie's auction of Brown memorabilia.

The winning bidder: The Late Show With David Letterman sidekick and band leader Paul Shaffer.

But although the bracelet way surpassed Christie's $200 to $300 estimate, the day's overall take of $857,688 fell short of expectations.

Also among the 317 personal items on the block at the behest of the Godfather of Soul's estate, which maintained that the auction was necessary to pay bills and taxes: a full-length, black satin cape that went for $47,500; a red leather furniture set that sold for $40,000; and a denim jumpsuit studded with the acronym GFOS that fetched $25,000.

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AP Photo/Matt Sayles

Billy Crystal is clearly in a New York state of mind.

The Emmy winner has joined the board of directors of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, a foundation raising funds for the still-in-the-works local memorial to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Crystal, who was born on Long Island and who performed at a benefit concert to raise money for the city a month after 9/11, joins fellow Big Apple native Robert De Niro on the now 45-member board.

The organization has privately raised more than $350 million to go toward a memorial at the WTC site, a project that has attracted no end of creative, logistical and financial controversy.

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Sara Pezzini needed the Witchblade to come into otherworldly powers. Witchblade, the comic turned TV series, needed Michael Turner to come to life.

Turner was the artist who helped spawn the supernatural franchise. In comicdom, he was also known for creating Fathom, launching Aspen Comics, named for Fathom's heroine, and lending his pen line to the likes of Superman, Batman and Wolverine.

Online, his company produced—and still does—NBC.com's series of Heroes graphic novels—he provided the art for the very first chapter.

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Before there was Krusty, there was Larry.

Larry Harmon, the man who delighted millions of kids as Bozo the Clown for more than five decades, has died. He was 83.

Longtime publicist Jerry Digney announced that Harmon passed away from congestive heart failure on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles.

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It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that Bruce Springsteen fans are in mourning.

Boardwalk fixture and Springsteen song legend Madam Marie, the seaside clairvoyant immortalized in "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," died last Friday at age 93, great-granddaughter Sally Castello told the Asbury Park Press.

The medium, whose real name was Marie Castello, was an iconic presence along the Asbury Park boardwalk, performing her palm reading next door to Springsteen's old Jersey Shore haunt, the Stone Pony.

"Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do?" Springsteen sang in the track off his 1973 sophomore release, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.

He was so fond of Castello that he always dropped by her small stand to say hello whenever he was in town.

"I'd sit across from her on the metal guard rail bordering the beach, and watched as she led the day-trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future," Springsteen writes in tribute on his website. "She always told me mine looked pretty good—she was right.

"Over here on E Street, we will miss her."

(Originally published July 2, 2008 at 8:59 a.m. PT.)

Making Stargate SG-1's Maj. Gen. George Hammond hard-nosed was a given. Making him human, as well, was a Don S. Davis mission.

Davis played the commanding Hammond for several seasons on the 1997-2007 sci-fi series. The show reunited him with Richard Dean Anderson, with whom he began his prime-time career in the 1980s on MacGyver, and cemented his credentials as a genre actor of the first order.

It was Davis who played Agent Scully's father on The X-Files. Who conversed with the Log Lady on Twin Peaks. Who appeared on The Dead Zone, Andromeda, and, for students of obscure 1990s television, something called M.A.N.T.I.S. Invariably, he was cast as a military man, which he once had been in real life.

Davis died last Sunday of a heart attack at his home in Canada, the Vancouver Sun reported this week. He was 65. And he left behind one last Hammond mission.

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Lisa O'Connor/ZUMA Press

Some very sad news for Christina Applegate.

E! News has confirmed that an investigation is under way into the circumstances surrounding the death of 26-year-old Lee Grivas, an aspiring photographer who had been dating the Samantha Who? star off and on for more than two years.

"I am profoundly saddened," Applegate said in a statement to E! News.

"Lee was an incredible human being who was an extremely important and beautiful part of my life. He is missed beyond words. He touched so many and I feel much sadness for his mother, brother and all of his family and friends."

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Ian Curtis wasn't around long but he left quite an impression.

Someone has stolen the memorial gravestone that marks the late Joy Division singer's final resting place in a West England cemetery, British authorities said Thursday.

Curtis, who was recently played by Sam Riley in the well-received biopic Control, hanged himself May, 18, 1980, at the age of 23, right before his band was about to embark on its first U.S. tour. The post-punk visionary's body was cremated in Macclesfield, where he grew up.

The more than 20-year-old stone marking the spot where his ashes are buried is inscribed "Ian Curtis, 18-5-80" and bears the signaturely gloomy sentiment, "Love Will Tear Us Apart, " the title of Joy Division's biggest song.

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Whitesnake.com

Mel Galley, the former guitarist and backing vocalist for White Snake in its early-'80s incarnation, has died at the age of 60, the band confirmed on its website.

Galley passed away on Tuesday at his home in Staffordshire, England, after battling cancer of the esophagus, according to British media reports.

Frontman David Coverdale told the BBC that he "treasures the memory of knowing [Galley] and working together with him."

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AP Photo/Nick Ut

George Carlin may have been one of comedy's biggest stars, but his memorial was a small—and private—affair.

Roughly 150 people, among them Garry Shandling, Bill Maher and Carlin's former stand-up partner, Jack Burns, turned up at a private memorial for the late comedian in Los Angeles Sunday, which was closed off to both the public and the media.

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Dody Goodman specialized in comedy. As anyone who saw her muck up Principal McGee's class schedules in Grease probably surmised.

Goodman's career dated back to Broadway in the 1940s. For all her credits—notably, she was an Emmy-nominated performer on Jack Paar's Tonight Show, and a Fernwood, Ohio, elder in the 1970s cult sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman—Goodman was arguably best known for one word: Grease.

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Brian Ach/WireImage.com

It remains to be seen whether the man who operated on Kanye West's mom ever operates again.

Dr. Jan Adams' license to practice medicine expired yesterday—not because of patient-related issues or his DUI troubles (which include an arrest earlier today on suspicion of driving under the influence), but because he has yet to cough up child support that he owes his ex, a spokesman for the Medical Board of California confirmed to E! News.

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