Sunday, October 21, 2007

It's Been A Tough Week

Max McGee has passed away.
Former Green Bay Packer Max McGee, 75, died while trying to blow leaves from
his roof, family members said. Police arrived about 5:20 p.m. and emergency
crews tried to revive him, but to no avail. He was pronounced dead that evening.

"I just lost my best friend," said former teammate and Pro
Football Hall of Fame member Paul Hornung from his home in Louisville, Ky. "(His
wife) Denise was away from the house, she'd warned him not to get up there. He
shouldn't have been up there. He knew better than that."

The lovely Deborah Kerr is gone.

Deborah Kerr, who shared one of Hollywood's most famous kisses while
portraying an Army officer's unhappy wife in "From Here to Eternity" and danced
with the Siamese monarch in "The King and I," has died. She was 86.

Kerr, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, died Tuesday in Suffolk in eastern England, her agent, Anne Hutton, said Thursday.

Now THAT was a sweaty movie.

And Joey Bishop has taken his last bow.

Joey Bishop, the long-faced comedian and the last surviving member of the
Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra's celebrated retinue of the 1960s, died Wednesday night
at his home in Newport Beach, California. He was 89.

His death was of multiple causes, his publicist said.

Bishop was the least flamboyant of the Rat Pack and no match for the others - Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and Sinatra himself - in their dedication to hell-raising.

But he shared in their phenomenal success in the early 1960s, when they headlined music and comedy shows in Las Vegas, appearing at the Sands, and made movies like "Ocean's 11" and "Sergeants 3." When John F. Kennedy, a friend of Sinatra's and a brother-in-law of Lawford's, was elected president in 1960, Bishop was master of ceremonies at the inaugural ball.

A regular guest on television as a stand-up comedian, Bishop eventually had his own TV shows: A sitcom in which he played a talk show host, and later his own actual talk show, appearing on ABC in a short-lived challenge to Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show."


Believe it or not, it was while watching the late-night Joey Bishop Show that a gawky 14 year-old aspiring grumps first held hands with a girl of the opposite sex. A mere 3 years later he would get his first kiss.


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