Highway Song's blog: "Celebrity Obits"

NEW YORK – Lena Horne, the enchanting jazz singer and actress who reviled the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them, slowing her rise to Broadway superstardom, died Sunday. She was 92.

Horne died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Gloria Chin. Chin would not release any other details.

Horne, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often overshadowed her sultry voice, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason for her success.

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," she once said. "I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."

In the 1940s, she was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana nightclub and among a handful with a Hollywood contract.

In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical "Stormy Weather." Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her signature piece.

On screen, on records and in nightclubs and concert halls, Horne was at home vocally with a wide musical range, from blues and jazz to the sophistication of Rodgers and Hart in songs like "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered."

In her first big Broadway success, as the star of "Jamaica" in 1957, reviewer Richard Watts Jr. called her "one of the incomparable performers of our time." Songwriter Buddy de Sylva dubbed her "the best female singer of songs."

But Horne was perpetually frustrated with the public humiliation of racism.

"I was always battling the system to try to get to be with my people. Finally, I wouldn't work for places that kept us out ... it was a damn fight everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New York, in Hollywood, all over the world," she said in Brian Lanker's book "I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America."

While at MGM, she starred in the all-black "Cabin in the Sky," in 1943, but in most of her other movies, she appeared only in musical numbers that could be cut in the racially insensitive South without affecting the story. These included "I Dood It," a Red Skelton comedy, "Thousands Cheer" and "Swing Fever," all in 1943; "Broadway Rhythm" in 1944; and "Ziegfeld Follies" in 1946.

"Metro's cowardice deprived the musical of one of the great singing actresses," film historian John Kobal wrote.

Early in her career Horne cultivated an aloof style out of self-preservation, becoming "a woman the audience can't reach and therefore can't hurt" she once said.

Later she embraced activism, breaking loose as a voice for civil rights and as an artist. In the last decades of her life, she rode a new wave of popularity as a revered icon of American popular music.

Her 1981 one-woman Broadway show, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music," won a special Tony Award. In it, the 64-year-old singer used two renditions — one straight and the other gut-wrenching — of "Stormy Weather" to give audiences a glimpse of the spiritual odyssey of her five-decade career.

A sometimes savage critic, John Simon, wrote that she was "ageless. ... tempered like steel, baked like clay, annealed like glass; life has chiseled, burnished, refined her."

When Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the best actress Oscar in 2002, she sobbed: "This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. ... It's for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, the great-granddaughter of a freed slave, was born in Brooklyn June 30, 1917, to a leading family in the black bourgeoisie. Her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote in her 1986 book "The Hornes: An American Family" that among their relatives was a college girlfriend of W.E.B. Du Bois and a black adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Dropping out of school at 16 to support her ailing mother, Horne joined the chorus line at the Cotton Club, the fabled Harlem night spot where the entertainers were black and the clientele white.

She left the club in 1935 to tour with Noble Sissle's orchestra, billed as Helena Horne, the name she continued using when she joined Charlie Barnet's white orchestra in 1940.

A movie offer from MGM came when she headlined a show at the Little Troc nightclub with the Katherine Dunham dancers in 1942.

Her success led some blacks to accuse Horne of trying to "pass" in a white world with her light complexion. Max Factor even developed an "Egyptian" makeup shade especially for the budding actress while she was at MGM.

But in his book "Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals," Kobal wrote that she refused to go along with the studio's efforts to portray her as an exotic Latin American.

"I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become," Horne once said. "I'm me, and I'm like nobody else."

Horne was only 2 when her grandmother, a prominent member of the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, enrolled her in the NAACP. But she avoided activism until 1945 when she was entertaining at an Army base and saw German prisoners of war sitting up front while black American soldiers were consigned to the rear.

That pivotal moment channeled her anger into something useful.

She got involved in various social and political organizations and — along with her friendship with Paul Robeson — got her name onto blacklists during the red-hunting McCarthy era.

By the 1960s, Horne was one of the most visible celebrities in the civil rights movement, once throwing a lamp at a customer who made a racial slur in a Beverly Hills restaurant and in 1963 joining 250,000 others in the March on Washington when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Horne also spoke at a rally that same year with another civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, just days before his assassination.

It was also in the mid-'60s that she put out an autobiography, "Lena," with author Richard Schickel.

The next decade brought her first to a low point, then to a fresh burst of artistry.

She had married MGM music director Lennie Hayton, a white man, in Paris in 1947 after her first overseas engagements in France and England. An earlier marriage to Louis J. Jones had ended in divorce in 1944 after producing daughter Gail and a son, Teddy.

In the 2009 biography "Stormy Weather," author James Gavin recounts that when Horne was asked by a lover why she'd married a white man, she replied: "To get even with him."

Her father, her son and her husband, Hayton, all died in 1970-71, and the grief-stricken singer secluded herself, refusing to perform or even see anyone but her closest friends. One of them, comedian Alan King, took months persuading her to return to the stage, with results that surprised her.

"I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters," she said. "It was a long time, but when it came I truly began to live."

And she discovered that time had mellowed her bitterness.

"I wouldn't trade my life for anything," she said, "because being black made me understand."

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Designing Women" star Dixie Carter, whose Southern charm and natural beauty won her a host of television roles, has died at age 70.

Carter died Saturday morning, according to publicist Steve Rohr, who represents Carter and her husband, actor Hal Holbrook. He declined to disclose the cause of death or where she died. Carter lived with Holbrook in the Los Angeles area.

"This has been a terrible blow to our family," Holbrook said in a written statement. "We would appreciate everyone understanding that this is a private family tragedy."

A native of Tennessee, Carter was most famous for playing wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker for seven years on "Designing Women," the CBS sitcom that ran from 1986 to 1993. The series was the peak of a career in which she often played wealthy and self-important but independent Southern women.

She was nominated for an Emmy in 2007 for her seven-episode guest stint on the ABC hit "Desperate Housewives."

Carter's other credits include roles on the series "Family Law" and "Diff'rent Strokes."

She married Holbrook in 1984. The two had met four years earlier while making the TV movie "The Killing of Randy Webster," and although attracted to one another, each had suffered two failed marriages and were wary at first.

They finally wed two years before Carter landed her role on "Designing Women." Holbrook appeared on the show regularly in the late 1980s as her boyfriend, Reese Watson.

The two appeared together in her final project, the 2009 independent film "That Evening Sun," shot in Tennessee and based on a short story by Southern novelist William Gay.

The middle of three children, Carter was born in 1939 in McLemoresville, Tenn.

Carter was the daughter of a grocery and department store owner who died just three years ago at 96. She said at the time of his death that he taught her to believe in people's essential goodness.

"When I asked him how he handled shoplifting in his new store, which had a lot of goods on display, making it impossible to keep an eye on everything, he said, 'Most people are honest, and if they weren't, you couldn't stay in business because a thief will find a way to steal,'" Carter said. "'You can't really protect yourself, but papa and I built our business believing most people are honest and want to do right by you.'"

Carter grew up in Carroll County and made her stage debut in a 1960 production of "Carousel" in Memphis. It was the beginning of a decades-long stage career in which she relied on her singing voice as much as her acting.

She appeared in TV soap operas in the 1970s, but did not become a national star until her recurring roles on "Diff'rent Strokes" and another series, "Filthy Rich," in the 1980s.

Those two parts led to her role on "Designing Women," a comedy about the lives of four women at an interior design firm in Atlanta.

Carter and Delta Burke played the sparring sisters who ran the firm. The series also starred Annie Potts and Jean Smart.

The show, whose reruns have rarely left the airwaves, was not a typical sitcom. It tackled such topics as sexism, ageism, body image and AIDS.

"It was something so unique, because there had never been anything quite like it," Potts told The Associated Press at a 2006 cast reunion. "We had Lucy and Ethel, but we never had that exponentially expanded, smart, attractive women who read newspapers and had passions about things and loved each other and stood by each other."

Carter appeared on the drama "Family Law" from 1999 to 2002, and in her last major TV appearance she played Gloria Hodge, the surly mother-in-law to Marcia Cross's Bree on "Desperate Housewives."

Carter said the role was far from the kindly woman she played on "Designing Women."

"It's a vast difference," Carter said while filming the series. "Gloria Hodge doesn't have any redeeming qualities except her intelligence."

In addition to Holbrook, Carter is survived by daughters Mary Dixie and Ginna.

RIP

As coroner, I must aver
I thoroughly examined her.
And she’s not only merely dead,
She’s really most sincerely dead.

Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner in "The Wizard of Oz" and proclaimed in the movie that the Wicked Witch of the East was "really most sincerely dead," has died. He was 94.

His caregiver, Cindy Bosnyak, said Raabe — pronounced RAH'-bee — died Friday morning at a hospital in Orange Park, Fla. He was one of the few surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film.

Bosnyak said he complained of a sore throat at his retirement community before collapsing and going into cardiac arrest. He was taken to Orange Park Medical Center, where he later died, she said.

"He had a headful of hair at 94 and he ... remembered everything everyday," she said. "To me he was a walking history book, very alert."

Raabe was one of the 124 Munchkins in the film classic and one of only nine who had speaking parts. He was 22 years old and a show business veteran, earning money for college as a "midget" performer, as they were called then, when the movie was shot in 1938.

Raabe portrayed the diminutive Munchkin official who solemnly pronounces the witch dead after Dorothy's farmhouse lands on her: "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

His costume included a huge hat with a rolled brim, and dyed yak hair was used for his handlebar mustache and long beard.

In a 1988 Associated Press interview, he said he had no idea the movie would become a classic, because at the time of its release, it was overshadowed by "Gone With the Wind."

"It was only after CBS got the film in 1956 and used it for their promotions that it became as well known," he said.

"There is nothing in the picture that dates it," he said. "There are no old vintage cars or old vintage streetcars. ... It's a fantasy picture that will be fantasy for generations to come."

Raabe was about 3 1/2 feet tall when the movie was made. He eventually grew to about 4 1/2 feet. He toured the country for 30 years in the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, promoting hot dogs as "Little Oscar, the World's Smallest Chef."

He also enjoyed going to Oz nostalgia events and getting fan mail.

"It's an ego trip," he said. "This is our reward, the nostalgia."

In 2005, his book "Memories of a Munchkin: An Illustrated Walk Down the Yellow Brick Road," co-written by Daniel Kinske, was published. In later years, he lived in a retirement community in Penney Farms, Fla.

In 2007, Raabe was one of seven surviving Munchkins on hand when the Munchkins were honored in Los Angeles with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Raabe said he couldn't remember what he was paid for his role in the movie, but that it was very low.

"By today's standards, people would say you were crazy to work for that," he said.

Raabe, born in Watertown, Wis., in 1915, was a member of the Midget City cast at the Chicago World's Fair in 1934. He also performed at other fairs, including the San Diego Exposition in 1935.

"By working at these world's fairs as a midget, I was able to work my way through the university," Raabe said. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin and, years later, a master's degree in business administration from Drexel University.

Raabe married Marie Hartline, who worked for a vaudeville show called Rose's Royal Midget Troupe, in 1946. She died in a car crash in 1997.

Raabe said some little people resented the word "midget," but that was the description widely used when he was in show business.

"My wife and I were both in show business, were both midgets. My wife worked from 1929 to 1932 as a member of Rose's Royal Midgets, the largest midget troupe in vaudeville," he said.

Raabe became a regular visitor to the annual OzFest in Chittenango, N.Y., the birthplace of "Oz" author L. Frank Baum, after reading about it in a magazine in the late 1980s.

"Meinhardt wrote us a letter and said, `You know I'm a Munchkin. I was in this movie. Would you ever be interested in having me come.' Of course, after we stopped screaming ...," organizer Barbara Evans said in 1998.

"Things didn't start to get really big until Meinhardt first came and we started getting the Munchkins to come," said Evans.

RIP

Forsythe died late Thursday at his home in Santa Ynez from complications of pneumonia, publicist Harlan Boll said Friday.

"He died as he lived his life, with dignity and grace," daughter Brooke Forsythe said.

Despite his distinguished work in theater and films, Forsythe's greatest fame came from his role as Blake Carrington in the 1981-89 primetime soap opera Dynasty. Forsythe lent dignity to the tale of murder, deceit, adultery and high finance, which often brought Carrington into conflict with his flashy, vengeful former wife, Alexis Colby, played to the hilt by Joan Collins.

Forsythe was an important part of another hit series without being seen. From 1976 to 1981 he played the voice of Charlie, the boss who delivered assignments to his beautiful detectives via telephone in Charlie's Angels.

Forsythe evidenced little of the ego drive that motivates many actors. He viewed himself with a self-effacing humor, considering himself "a vastly usable, not wildly talented actor."

In a 1981 interview by The Associated Press, he also said: "I figure there are a few actors like Marlon Brando, George C. Scott and Laurence Olivier who have been touched by the hand of God. I'm in the next bunch."

With his full head of silver hair, tanned face and soothing voice, Forsythe as Carrington attracted the ardor of millions of female television viewers. "It's rather amusing at my advanced age (mid-60s) to become a sex symbol," he cracked.

While he had small roles in a couple of films in the early 1940s, Forsythe's first successes were mainly on the stage. While serving during World War II, he was cast in Moss Hart's Air Force show Winged Victory, along with many other future stars.

After the war, Forsythe became a founding member of the Actors Studio, recalling it as "a wildly stimulating place for a guy like me who was a babe in the woods. I never suspected there was that kind of artistry and psychological approach to acting."

Declining a return to Warner Bros., Forsythe began appearing in television plays as early as 1947, and he continued his Broadway career. A role in Arthur Miller's All My Sons led to the awesome task of replacing Henry Fonda in Mister Roberts.

He was next able to create a role of his own, as the naive Army officer in occupied Okinawa in Teahouse of the August Moon. The play was a huge success, winning the Pulitzer Prize. "It gave me a sense of worth as an actor," Forsythe remarked.

The call to Hollywood was irresistible, and Forsythe came west to star in such films as The Captive City,The Glass Web and Escape from Fort Bravo. His best break came in 1955 when he starred in Alfred Hitchcock's one attempt at whimsy, The Trouble with Harry, about a corpse that kept turning up in a New England town.

But Forsythe's film roles were limited because he was already busy in television. The comedy Bachelor Father, in which he played a Hollywood lawyer who cared for his teenage niece, lasted from 1957 to 1962, appearing successively on CBS, NBC and ABC.

His later films included Madame X (opposite Lana Turner) and In Cold Blood, Hitchcock's spy thriller Topaz,The Happy Ending and Goodbye and Amen.

And Justice for All (1979) marked a departure for the actor. Director Norman Jewison cast him as a judge with a kinky sex life.

"He wanted to create suspense on whether the judge was guilty of such dark deeds," Forsythe said.

He credited the role for causing him to be considered as the unscrupulous Carrington in Dynasty.

"The producers didn't know what the hell they wanted," Forsythe recalled. "They talked to me in terms of J.R. in Dallas. I said, 'Look, fellas, I don't want to play J.R. Part of my strength as an actor comes from what I've learned all these years: when you play a villain, you try to get the light touches; when you play a hero, you try to get in some of the warts."

He was born John Lincoln Freund on Jan. 29, 1918, in Penn's Grove, N.J.

He won an athletic scholarship to the University of North Carolina, had a stint as public address announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, then launched his struggle to become an actor against the wishes of his father. Having had his name mispronounced all his life, he adopted the name of Forsythe, which came from his mother's family.

He toured the country in a children's theater troupe with his first wife, actress Parker McCormick, and began appearing in radio soap operas and Broadway plays.

His first marriage ended after the birth of a son, Dall. During the run of Winged Victory, Forsythe married another actress, Julie Warren. They had two daughters, Page in 1950, Brooke in 1954.

When not acting, Forsythe maintained a strong interest in politics and sports, often playing in charity tennis tournaments. A devoted environmentalist, he also narrated a long-running outdoor series, The World of Survival.

In lieu of flowers, Forsythe's family asked that donations be made to the American Cancer Society.

The family said there will be no public service.

RIP

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Robert Culp, the actor who teamed with Bill Cosby in the racially groundbreaking TV series "I Spy" and was Bob in the critically acclaimed sex comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," died Wednesday after collapsing outside his Hollywood home, his manager said. Culp was 79.

Manager Hillard Elkins said the actor was on a walk when he fell. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead just before noon. The actor's son was told he died of a heart attack, Elkins said, though police were unsure if the fall was medically related.

Los Angeles police Lt. Robert Binder said no foul play was suspected. Binder said a jogger found Culp, who apparently fell and struck his head.

"I Spy" greatly advanced the careers of Culp and Cosby and forged a lifelong friendship. Cosby said Wednesday Culp was like an older brother to him.

"The first born in every family is always dreaming of the older brother or sister he or she doesn' t have, to protect, to be the buffer, provide the wisdom, shoulder the blows and make things right," he said. "Bob was the answer to my dreams.

"No matter how many mistakes I made on 'I Spy,' he was always there to teach and protect me," Cosby said.

Candace Culp, the actor's ex-wife, said she was devastated.

"He was a wonderful, creative man who contributed so much to his business, as an actor, as a writer, as a director," she said.

Robert Culp lately had been working on writing screenplays, Elkins said.

"I Spy," which aired from 1965 to 1968, was a television milestone in more ways than one. Its combination of humor and adventure broke new ground, and it was the first integrated television show to feature a black actor in a starring role.

Culp played Kelly Robinson, a spy whose cover was that of an ace tennis player. (In real life, Culp actually was a top-notch tennis player who showed his skills in numerous celebrity tournaments.). Cosby was fellow spy Alexander Scott, whose cover was that of Culp's trainer. The pair traveled the world in the service of the U.S. government.

Culp followed "I Spy" with his most prestigious film role, in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice." The work of first-time director Paul Mazursky, who also co-wrote the screenplay, lampooned the lifestyles of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Bob and Carol (Culp and Natalie Wood) introduced wife-swapping to their best friends, Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon).

Culp also had starring roles in such films as "The Castaway Cowboy," "Golden Girl," "Turk 182!" and "Big Bad Mama II."

His teaming with Cosby, however, was likely his best remembered role.

Cosby won Emmys for actor in a leading role all three years that "I Spy" aired, and Culp, who was nominated for the same award each year, said he was never jealous.

"I was the proudest man around," he said in a 1977 interview.

Both he and Cosb y were involved in civil rights causes, and when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 the pair traveled to Memphis, Tenn., to join the striking garbage workers King had been organizing.

Culp and Cosby also costarred in the 1972 movie "Hickey and Boggs," which Culp also directed. This time they were hard-luck private detectives who encountered multiple deaths. Audiences who had enjoyed the lightheartedness of "I Spy" were disappointed, and the movie flopped at the box office.

"His proudest moments were when he was writing and directing 'I Spy' and 'Hickey and Boggs,'" Cosby said. "Bob was meticulous and committed."

After years of talking up the idea, they finally re-teamed in 1994 for a two-hour CBS movie, "I Spy Returns."

In his first movie role Culp played one of John Kennedy's crew in "PT 109."

His first starring TV series, "Trackdown" (1957-1959) was a Western based partly on files of the Texas Rangers. In the 1980s, he starred as an FBI agent in the fantasy "The Greatest American Hero."

He remained active in movies and TV. Among his notable later performances was as a U.S. president in 1993's "The Pelican Brief." More recently, he had a recurring role as Patricia Heaton's father in the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" and appeared in such shows as "Robot Chicken," "Chicago Hope" and an episode of "Cosby."

Robert Martin Culp, born in 1930 in Oakland, led a peripatetic existence as a college student, attending College of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., Washington University in St. Louis and San Francisco State College before landing at the University of Washington drama school.

Then at age 21, a semester removed from his degree, he moved to New York, where he began landing roles in off-Broadway plays. One of them was in "He Who Gets Slapped."

"I saw it in college in Seattle, and I said, 'My God, that's my part, that's my part,'" he once told an interviewer. After he won the role in a Greenwich Village production "the floodgates opened," he said.

Good reviews and an Obie award led to offers from Hollywood.

Culp was married five times, to Nancy Ashe, Elayne Wilner, France Nuyen, Sheila Sullivan and Candace Culp. He had four children with Ashe and one with Candace Culp.

RIP

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Peter Graves, who starred in the 1960s TV show "Mission: Impossible" and the "Airplane!" movies, died in Los Angeles on Sunday. He was 83.

Graves' spokesman said the actor died of an apparent heart attack at his house in the coastal suburb of Pacific Palisades. He had returned home after attending a family brunch to celebrate his upcoming birthday on Thursday.

The younger brother of "Gunsmoke" actor Jim Arness, Graves gained widespread recognition in 1967, when he took the role as leader of the "Impossible Missions Force" on popular TV spy drama "Mission: Impossible."

He portrayed Jim Phelps, who would receive his team's next mission instructions on a tape that would self-destruct in a puff of smoke. Graves stayed on the U.S. series until it was canceled in 1973, then later reprised the role in a TV revival from 1988-1990.

Graves is perhaps better known to modern audiences for his deadpan comedic role in 1980 spoof "Airplane!" in which he played the not-so-subtle pedophile pilot of a seemingly doomed jet.

The actor often told a story that he initially wanted to turn down the role, but was talked into it after being convinced by the filmmakers that his dry, deadpan delivery was exactly what was needed to make the spoof work.

Graves appeared in about 130 films and television shows.

In recent years, he hosted U.S. cable TV series, including the A&E Network's long-running historical series, "Biography."

Born Peter Aurness on March 18, 1926, in Minneapolis, Graves worked at a local radio station as a teenager and later attended the University of Minnesota, where he majored in drama.

He made his film debut in the 1951 crime drama "Rogue River," and two years later won acclaim portraying a German spy placed among allied prisoners of war in "Stalag 17."

In one of his early TV credits, Graves portrayed Jim Newton on the 1950s-era Saturday morning kids' show "Fury," about a horse and the boy who loved him.

Graves won a Golden Globe Award in 1971 for his work in "Mission: Impossible," and he and "Biography" won a Emmy Award for outstanding informational series in 1997.

He is survived by his wife, Joan, and three daughters.

RIP

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Pro Football Hall of Famer and former television actor Merlin Olsen has died. He was 69.

Utah State University assistant athletic media relations director Zach Fisher says Olsen died Wednesday night at a Los Angeles hospital.

He was diagnosed with mesothelioma last year.

Olsen was an All-American at Utah State and a first-round draft pick of the Los Angles Rams in 1962.

The burley giant from northern Utah joined Deacon Jones, Lamar Lundy and Rosey Grier on the Rams' storied "Fearsome Foursome" defensive line known for either stopping or knocking backward whatever offenses it faced. The Rams set an NFL record for the fewest yards allowed during a 14-game season in 1968.

Olsen was rookie of the year for the Rams in 1962 and is still the Rams' all-time leader in career tackles with 915. He was named to 14 consecutive Pro Bowls, a string that started his rookie year.

Olsen was also an established televisio n actor with a role on "Little House on the Prairie," then starring in his own series, "Father Murphy," from 1981 to 1983 and the short-lived "Aaron's Way" in 1988.

Olsen was a consensus All-American at Utah State and won the 1961 Outland Trophy as the nation's best interior lineman. The Rams drafted Olsen third overall in 1962 and he spent the next 15 years with the team before retiring in 1976.

Utah State honored Olsen in December by naming the football field at Romney Stadium "Merlin Olsen Field." Because of his illness, Olsen's alma mater didn't want to wait until football season and made the announcement during halftime of a basketball game.

Olsen was well enough to attend, but did not speak at the event. He stood and smiled as he waved to fans during a standing ovation and chants of "Merlin Olsen!" and "Aggie Legend!"

Utah State is also planning a statue of Olsen at the southeast corner of the stadium.

The Rams also honored Olsen during a g ame Dec. 20, with a video tribute narrated by Dick Enberg, Olsen's longtime broadcast partner. Olsen did not attend because of his health. His name was already part of the Ring of Fame inside the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis along with other franchise standouts.

He was voted NFC defensive lineman of the year in 1973 and the NFL MVP in 1974, and was voted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.

RIP

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Corey Haim, a Hollywood teen star of the 1980s who became as famous for his struggles with substance abuse as his acting, died in Los Angeles of an apparent drug overdose, U.S. media reports said Wednesday. He was 38.

In the 1980s, the Canadian-born Haim starred in "Lucas," alongside Charlie Sheen and Winona Ryder, and "The Lost Boys," with Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric and Corey Feldman, as well as "License to Drive," also with Feldman.

He became known for his on-screen partnership and off-screen friendship with Feldman, another teen star, and they often were called "The Two Coreys." Both struggled with drug abuse. The pair starred in a reality TV series on American cable television in the 2000s.

According to media reports from Los Angeles, Haim was found unresponsive in his apartment and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Los Angeles police said the death was the result of an apparent drug overdose, the reports said.

RIP

Jack Brisco, a former NWA world champion and NCAA champion who was considered one of the greatest workers in the history of the industry, passed away earlier today at the age of 68.

"He was my best friend and my hero growing up," said Brian Blair, echoing comments made by several wrestlers and people in wrestling this morning in their 50s who grew up when Jack Brisco was a larger-than-life type of personality, promoted as the greatest technical wrestler who nobody could beat in a fair match, which in his era, may not have been far from the truth.

Brisco had been battling an assortment of health problems in recent years, including circulatory problems and emphyzema.  He underwent open heart surgery a few weeks ago, and a little over a week ago, collapsed while undergoing rehab, and flatlined at one point.  Brother Gerald, who was very close with him, has been battling to regain his health after suffering strokes.

Outside the ring, Brisco was a well known practical joker, but in the ring, for his time, he may have been the best in the business.  Wrestlers like Dory and Terry Funk, who wrestled virtually every major star of the era, had both told me at times that Jack Brisco and Johnny Valentine were the two best workers they had faced.

Brisco, who grew up in Blackwell, OK, was a huge wrestling fan as a child, telling stories about going to the newsstands and leafing through wrestling magazines to see stories on his two heroes, Lou Thesz and Danny Hodge, never to realize that he would grow up and be mentioned in the same breath with them.

Brisco got into amateur wrestling because of his love for pro wrestling, and was an all-state football player as well as a state high school wrestling champion.

Due to having to work and support a young family, he only wrestled two years at Oklahoma State, as part of a powerhouse team that included wrestling legend Yojiro Uetake.  During those two years, he only lost one match, in the finals of the 1964 NCAA tournament to Harry Houska, helping his team capture the NCAA title.  Brisco went undefeated in 1965, taking the NCAA title at 191 pounds, and immediately started wrestling for Leroy McGuirk, capitalizing on his national title.

Brisco was reputed to be like an Owen Hart or Kurt Angle, in that he was a natural, already a smooth pro from almost the start of his career.  He started off as a headliner but was largely considered a main event superstar until his retirement, in 1984.

Brisco's rise to superstardom came through the booking of Eddie Graham in Florida.  His first big money break was in Australia, where Jim Barnett saw superstardom in him because of his good looks and athletic ability.  Graham and Sam Muchnick from just a few years into his career groomed Brisco for the NWA world heavyweight title, then considered by many as the ultimate prize in the industry.  People would marvel at Brisco's ability to smoke a pack of cigarettes and then go in the ring and go 60 minutes hard.

Throughout the four-year reign of Dory Funk Jr., Jack Brisco was considered the heir apparent and No. 1 contender for the title.  The Brisco chase of Funk Jr. in the early 70s is considered one of pro wrestling's all-time legendary feuds and were considered the greatest technical matches of the era, drawing sellout crowds in many parts of the country.  To this day, in St. Louis, Brisco vs. Funk and Lou Thesz vs. Pat O'Connor were widely remembered as the two greatest matches of that era in what was considered one of wrestling's best cities.

This also led to the natural tag team feud with the Funk Brothers (and on occasion the father-and-son team of Dory Jr. & Sr.) against the Brisco Brothers.

Jack was scheduled to win the title from Dory Funk Jr. in early 1973, but an injury to Funk Jr. led to a string of events over the next few months where Funk Jr. lost to Harley Race and Race lost to Brisco on July 20, 1973, in Houston.  Except for a one-week switch in Japan to Giant Baba, Brisco remained champion until December 10, 1975, losing to Terry Funk in Miami Beach.

Jack was always considered a top contender for the title, until the era of Ric Flair, but because of his closeness with younger brother Gerald Brisco, became a tag team wrestler.  The Briscos were a top babyface team in Florida through the 70s, and in the 80s, when going to the Mid Atlantic promotion, held the world tag team titles including a well remembered run as heels against Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood.

Jack was also the architect of the sale of Georgia Championship Wrestling to Vince McMahon in 1984, which led to the one-year run of WWF on TBS, and the resulting McMahon vs. Ted Turner feud when Turner wanted McMahon off the station.

Brisco was given part ownership of the Georgia territory during a promotional war as a way to get him based in Atlanta as world champion.  Brisco rounded up enough disgruntled stockholders to have proxy for a majority interest, and made a secret deal with McMahon.   The Brisco brothers were working a program in late 1984 with tag champs Adrian Adonis & Dick Murdoch, when Jack, in the middle of a Northeast blizzard, told Gerald that he was flying home.  Unlike virtually every other wrestler in history who retired, Jack never wrestled again.

RIP