Michael Clark Duncan dies

I just found out about Michael Clark Duncan today. This is a big loss to the acting world. I must admit I have seen lots of Mr. Duncan's movie but my all time favorite of his was The Green Mile with Tom Hanks. He was excellent in his role.

Sage Stallone found dead at 36

Sage Stallone, son of actor Sylvester Stallone, has been found dead, The New York Post and TMZ report.
The junior Stallone was reportedly found at home in Los Angeles. TMZ reports that his father is extremely distraught. I do not know a parent that would not be distraught over the loss of their child.  The Post spoke with Sage Moonblood Stallone's attorney, who said the death came as a complete shock. TMZ's sources say the cause of death was a prescription drug overdose. The Post reports that his mother, Sasha Czack, had also been notified of her son's passing. Stallone made his acting debut alongside his father in "Rocky V." He went on to act in a number of films, most recently in "Promises Written in Water" in 2010.


Lots of prayers, blessings of peace and deepest condolences go out to the Stallone Family.

Ernest Borgnine died at 95

American actor Ernest Borgnine gestures during an interview at his London Hotel on Jan. 26, 1966. (AP Photo)

He was a tubby tough guy with a pug of a mug, as unlikely a big-screen star or a romantic lead as could be imagined.

Yet Ernest Borgnine won a woman's love and an Academy Award in one of the great lonelyhearts roles in "Marty," a highlight in a workhorse career that spanned nearly seven decades and more than 200 film and television parts.

Borgnine, who died Sunday at 95, worked to the end. One of his final roles was a bit part as a CIA records-keeper in 2011's action comedy "Red" – fittingly for his age, a story of retired spies who show that it's never too late to remain in the game when they're pulled back into action.

"I keep telling myself, `Damn it, you gotta go to work,'" Borgnine said in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press. "But there aren't many people who want to put Borgnine to work these days. They keep asking, `Is he still alive?'"

And yet people put him to work – and kept him working – from his late-blooming start as an actor after a 10-year Navy career through modern times, when he had a recurring voice role on "SpongeBob SquarePants," became the oldest actor ever nominated for a Golden Globe and received the lifetime-achievement award last year from the Screen Actors Guild.

Borgnine died of renal failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with his wife and children at his side, said spokesman Harry Flynn.

With his beefy build and a huge orb of a head that looked hard enough to shatter granite, Borgnine naturally was cast as heavies early on, notably as Sgt. Fatso Judson, the brute who beat Frank Sinatra's character to death in 1953's Pearl Harbor saga "From Here to Eternity."

More bad guy roles followed, but Borgnine showed his true pussycat colors as lovesick Marty Piletti, a Bronx butcher who, against all odds and his own expectations, finds romance with a wallflower in "Marty," adapted from Paddy Chayefsky's television play. Borgnine won the best-actor Oscar, and the film picked up three other awards, including best picture.

It turned out to be Borgnine's only Oscar nomination, yet it was a star-making part that broke him out of the villain mold. Borgnine went on to roles in such films as "The Dirty Dozen," "The Wild Bunch," "The Flight of the Phoenix," "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Escape from New York," but after "Marty," the veteran sailor's most memorable character appropriately came with the title role of the 1960s TV comedy "McHale's Navy" and its big-screen spinoff.

Mischievous con man McHale, commander of a World War II PT boat manned by misfits and malcontents, was far closer in spirit than shy Marty or savage Fatso to the real Borgnine, who had a cackling laugh and a reputation as a prankster.

Despite his big-hearted nature, Borgnine was typecast as a thug from the start, playing bad guys in a series of Westerns including Randolph Scott's "The Stranger Wore a Gun," Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden's "Johnny Guitar" and Gary Cooper's "Vera Cruz" and Victor Mature and Susan Hayward's historical saga "Demetrius and the Gladiators."

Borgnine was playing another nasty character opposite Spencer Tracy in "Bad Day at Black Rock" when he auditioned for "Marty." In a 2004 interview, Borgnine recalled that Chayefsky and "Marty" director Delbert Mann thought of him as an actor whose lone screen specialty was to "kill people."

The filmmakers had hoped to cast Rod Steiger, who played the lead in the TV version of "Marty," but he had just landed a part Borgnine himself coveted – the bad guy Jud Fry in "Oklahoma!" Mann and Chayefsky flew to the "Black Rock" location to audition Borgnine, who showed up wearing a "cowboy suit, cowboy hat, three-day growth of beard, cowboy boots," the actor recalled. He even began the audition in a Western drawl before shifting to Marty's Bronx accent.

Borgnine said he knew immediately he had won over Mann and Chayefsky, and "Marty" charmed audiences who saw for the first time that he could play the teddy bear as well as the beast.

No one knew Borgnine could act at all – himself included – until he came home from World War II after his 10-year Navy stint. He enlisted in 1935, was discharged in 1941, then re-enlisted when the war began, serving on a destroyer.

As he contemplated what to do after the war, Borgnine's mother suggested acting.

"She said, `You always like getting in front of people and making a fool of yourself, why don't you give it a try?'" Borgnine recalled last year, shortly before receiving his SAG lifetime honor. "I was sitting at the kitchen table and I saw this light. No kidding. It sounds crazy. And 10 years later, I had Grace Kelly handing me an Academy Award."

Mann and Chayefsky also won Oscars, and modest, gentle "Marty" claimed the best-picture prize over big-budget contenders "The Rose Tattoo," "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," "Picnic" and "Mister Roberts."

"Marty" made his career, but the success also brought complications for Borgnine.

"The Oscar made me a star, and I'm grateful," Borgnine said in 1966. "But I feel had I not won the Oscar I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life."

Those messes included four failed marriages, including one in 1964 to singer Ethel Merman that lasted less than six weeks.

But Borgnine's fifth marriage, in 1973 to Norwegian-born Tova Traesnaes, endured and brought with it an interesting business partnership. She manufactured and sold her own beauty products under the name of Tova and used her husband's rejuvenated face in her ads.

During a 2007 interview with The Associated Press, Borgnine expressed delight that their union had reached 34 years. "That's longer than the total of my four other marriages," he commented, laughing heartily.

Borgnine played a sensitive role opposite Bette Davis in another film based on a Chayefsky TV drama, "The Catered Affair," a film that was a personal favorite. It concerned a New York taxi driver and his wife who argued over the expense of their daughter's wedding.

Among Borgnine's other films were "Three Bad Men," "The Vikings," "Torpedo Run" and "Barabbas," "Ice Station Zebra," "The Adventurers," "Willard" and "The Greatest" (as Muhammad Ali's manager).

More recently, Borgnine had a recurring role as the apartment house doorman-cum-chef in the NBC sitcom "The Single Guy." He had a small role in the unsuccessful 1997 movie version of "McHale's Navy." And he was the voice of Mermaid Man on "SpongeBob SquarePants" and Carface in "All Dogs Go to Heaven 2."

"I don't care whether a role is 10 minutes long or two hours," he said in 1973. "And I don't care whether my name is up there on top, either. Matter of fact, I'd rather have someone else get top billing; then if the picture bombs, he gets the blame, not me."

In 2007, Borgnine became the oldest Golden Globe nominee ever, at 90, for the TV movie "A Grandpa for Christmas." It came 52 years after his only other Globe nomination, for "Marty," which he won.

He didn't win that second time, but Borgnine was as gracious as could be about it.

"Hey, I already got one," Borgnine said. "I was nominated and I think that's wonderful. You don't have to win them all."

Ermes Efron Borgnino was born in Hamden, Conn., on Jan. 24, 1917, the son of Italian immigrant parents. The family lived in Milan when the boy was 2 to 7, then returned to Connecticut, where he attended school in New Haven.

When Borgnine joined the Navy, he weighed 135 pounds; when he left 10 years later, he weighed 100 pounds more.

"I wouldn't trade those 10 years for anything," he said in 1956. "The Navy taught me a lot of things. It molded me as a man, and I made a lot of wonderful friends."

For a time he contemplated taking a job with an air-conditioning company. But his mother persuaded him to enroll at the Randall School of Dramatic Arts in Hartford. He stayed four months, the only formal training he received.

He appeared in repertory at the Barter Theater in Virginia, toured as a hospital attendant in "Harvey" and played a villain on TV's "Captain Video."

After earning $2,300 in 1951, Borgnine almost accepted a position with an electrical company. But the job fell through, and he returned to acting, moving into a modest house in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.

His first marriage was to Rhoda Kenins, whom he met when she was a Navy pharmacist's mate and he was a patient. They had a daughter, but the marriage ended in divorce after his "Marty" stardom.

Borgnine married Mexican actress Katy Jurado in 1959, and their marriage resulted in headlined squabbles from Hollywood to Rome before it ended in 1964.

In 1963, he and Merman startled the show business world by announcing, after a month's acquaintance, that they would marry when his divorce from Jurado became final. The Broadway singing star and the movie tough guy seemed to have nothing in common, and their marriage ended in 38 days after a fierce battle.

"If you blinked, you missed it," Merman once cracked.

Next came one-time child actress Donna Rancourt, with whom Borgnine had a daughter, and finally his happy union with Tova.

On Jan. 24, 2007, Borgnine celebrated his 90th birthday with a party for friends and family at a West Hollywood bistro. Still boisterous, Borgnine made a rare concession to age at 88 when he gave up driving the bus he would take around the country, stopping to talk with local folks along the way.

During an interview at the time, Borgnine complained that he wanted to continue acting but roles were tough to find at his age.

"I just want to do more work," he said. "Every time I step in front of a camera I feel young again. I really do. It keeps your mind active and it keeps you going."

Obituary from the New York Times.

Andy Griffith dead at age 86

Andy Griffith, an actor most notably as the small-town sheriff on the long-running TV show that bore his name, died today, Tuesday, July 3, 2012, at his home on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. He was 86 years old.

            His death was confirmed by the Dare County sheriff, Doug Doughtie.

Mr. Griffith was already a star, with rave reviews on Broadway in “No Time for Sergeants” and in Elia Kazan’s film “A Face in the Crowd,” when “The Andy Griffith Show” made its debut in the fall of 1960. And he delighted a later generation of television viewers in the 1980s and ’90s in the title role of the courtroom drama “Matlock.”

But by the late 1960s, the younger viewers networks prized were spurning cornpone, and Mr. Griffith had decided to leave to make movies after the 1966-67 season. CBS made a lucrative offer for him to do one more season, and “The Andy Griffith Show” became the No. 1 series in the 1967-68 season. But Mr. Griffith had decided to move on, and so had the zeitgeist. “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” with its one-liners about drugs and Vietnam, and “The Mod Squad,” about an integrated police force, were grabbing a new generation of viewers.

But the characters in “The Andy Griffith Show” — Barney (Don Knotts), Gomer (Jim Nabors), Opie (Ron Howard), Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) and the rest, including Gomer’s cousin Goober Pyle (George Lindsey, who died in May) — remained tantalizingly real to enthusiasts who still gather online and sometimes in person in fan clubs to watch the old reruns.

Beginning with the lead in Elia Kazan’s film “A Face in the Crowd” in 1957, the story of a rough-hewn television personality who becomes a power-crazed megalomaniac, Mr. Griffith brought an authenticity to dark roles.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, Mr. Griffith starred in no fewer than six movies with the words “murder” or “kill” in their titles. In 1983, in “Murder in Coweta County,” he played a chillingly wicked man who remains stone cold even as he is being strapped into the electric chair.

Mr. Griffith’s fans may have imagined him as a happy bumpkin, but he enjoyed life in Hollywood and knew his way around a wine list. His career was controlled by personal manager, Richard O. Linke, who forbade Mr. Griffith to solicit advice from anyone else, even his wife.

“If there is ever a question about something, I will do what he wants me to do,” Mr. Griffith said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1970. “Had it not been for him, I would have gone down the toilet.”

Far from the relaxed, gregarious, drawling Andy Taylor, Mr. Griffith was a loner and a worrier. He once hit a door in anger, and for two episodes of the second season of “The Andy Griffith Show” he had a bandaged hand (explained on the show as an injury Sheriff Taylor sustained while apprehending criminals).

But the 35 million viewers of “The Andy Griffith Show” would have been reassured to learn that even at the peak of his popularity, Mr. Griffith drove a Ford station wagon and bought his suits off the rack. He said his favorite honor was having a 10-mile stretch of a North Carolina highway named after him in 2002. (That was before President George W. Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.)

Another honor was having his character place No. 8 on TV Guide’s list of the “50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time” in 2004. (Bill Cosby’s Dr. Cliff Huxtable was No. 1.) But one honor that was denied him was an Emmy Award: surprisingly, he was nominated only once, for his role in the TV movie “Murder in Texas,” although Mr. Knotts won five Emmys as Deputy Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show” and Ms. Bavier won one as Andy’s aunt. The show itself was nominated three times but also never won.

Andy Samuel Griffith was born in Mount Airy on June 1, 1926, the only child of Carl Lee and the former Geneva Nann Nunn. His father was a foreman at a furniture factory. Mr. Griffith described his childhood as happy, but said he never forgot the pain he felt when someone called him “white trash.”

After seeing the trombonist Jack Teagarden in the 1941 film “Birth of the Blues,” he bought a trombone from Sears, Roebuck & Company with money he earned sweeping out the high school for $6 a month. He wheedled lessons out of a local pastor, who later recommended him to the University of North Carolina, where he won a music degree and married Barbara Edwards. He moved on from the trombone to singing, and for a while hoped to be an opera singer.

After first aspiring to be a minister, he tried teaching music and phonetics at the high school in Goldsboro, N.C., but left after three frustrating years. “First day, I’d tell the class all I knew,” he told The Saturday Evening Post, “and there was nothin’ left to say for the rest o’ the semester.”

In spare moments Mr. Griffith and his wife put together an act in which he posed as a preacher, telling jokes about things like putting frogs in the baptismal water, and she danced. They played local civic clubs.

In 1953, speaking to a convention of the Standard Life Insurance Company in Greensboro, Mr. Griffith, in his preacher persona, told a comic first-person tale about attending a college football game and trying to figure out what was going on. Some 500 discs of his monologue were pressed under the title “What It Was, Was Football,” and it became a hit on local radio. Mr. Linke, then with Capitol Records, scurried to North Carolina to acquire the rights and to sign Mr. Griffith.

Mr. Linke began guiding Mr. Griffith’s career in television and nightclubs. His break came in 1955, when he was cast in the Broadway play “No Time for Sergeants” as a mountain yokel drafted into the Air Force — a role he had already played on television, on an episode of “Playhouse 90.” The New York Journal-American called him “an engaging and brilliant natural,” and the play was a hit, running for almost two years. He played the same role in the 1958 film version, with what Bosley Crowther of The Times admiringly called “staggering simplicity.”

In Mr. Griffith’s first movie, “A Face in the Crowd” (1957), he played a far more complicated role: a mentally unbalanced vagrant who is discovered playing the guitar in an Arkansas jail and becomes a beloved television star until he is undone by his dark side. Mr. Griffith told The Times Magazine that he was so consumed by the stormy character that it affected even his marriage.

In 1959, Mr. Griffith returned to Broadway in the musical comedy “Destry Rides Again,” in a role that had been played in films by Tom Mix, James Stewart, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy. Though reviews were mixed, Newsday declared, “There isn’t a more likable personality around than Andy Griffith.”

The pilot of “The Andy Griffith Show” was actually an episode of “The Danny Thomas Show” in February 1960. Danny Williams (Mr. Thomas) is arrested by a sheriff for running through a stop sign while driving through Mayberry.

Sheldon Leonard, producer of Mr. Thomas’s show, intended “The Andy Griffith Show” to fit the image of its star. Mr. Griffith negotiated for 50 percent ownership, which enabled him to be a major player in the show’s development.

A critical element to the show’s success was casting Mr. Knotts as the inept but lovable sidekick. So was the simple but appealing formula: characters would confront a problem, then resolve it by exercising honesty or some other virtue.

When Mr. Knotts left the show in 1965, a year after Mr. Nabors, Mr. Griffith said he became “nervous” about its future. Some principal writers had also left, and critics and viewers perceived the later years of the show as lacking the sparkle of earlier scripts and more lovable stars. Ratings, however, never tottered.

In the 1968-69 season, Mr. Griffith produced a follow-up series, “Mayberry R.F.D.,” with Ken Berry starring as a widowed farmer and many of the regular characters returning. It ran three seasons.Mr. Griffith’s acting career stalled after he left the show. Despite signing a five-year deal with Universal Pictures, he said he was not offered roles he wanted to play. “I thought I was hot stuff and would go right into the movies,” he said in an interview with The Virginian-Pilot in 2008. “It didn’t work out that way.”

He returned to television in the fall of 1970 with “The Headmaster,” but it lasted only until January. It was replaced by “The New Andy Griffith Show,” but that was not a success, either, and was off the air by the summer. Then came a slew of made-for-TV movies.

In 1984, he played a deceptively laid-back prosecutor in the mini-series “Fatal Vision,” impressing NBC enough to make him the star of a TV movie, “Diary of a Perfect Murder,” which served as the pilot for a new series. Mr. Griffith played an unassuming but cagey defense lawyer in that series, “Matlock,” which made its debut in 1986 and went on to have an even longer life than “The Andy Griffith Show,” running until 1992 on NBC and for three more years on ABC.

Mr. Griffith continued to play occasional movie and television parts, and in 1996 recorded a gospel album, “I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns,” that went platinum and even won a Grammy.

In the 2009 movie “Play the Game,” he played an 80-something widowed grandfather who lives in a nursing home and awkwardly jumps back into the singles game. He tries Viagra and experiences oral sex, and says the words “horny” and “erection.”

One thing that had always bothered Mr. Griffith was people’s assumption that in his depiction of Sheriff Taylor he was pretty much playing himself. He said he not only threw himself into creating a textured persona for the small-town lawman, but also helped write almost every episode — though he didn’t receive writing credit.

Children's cold medicines and deaths related to cold meds

I was watching an episode of America Now yesterday. I found it very fasinating. However, they were talking about children's cold medicines and being a mom this caught my attention. According to a recent study that was done, three children die a year from cough medicine. It is unclear if it is from overdosing, an allergic reaction to the medicine or what. It is recommended that we treat or child's colds the old fashioned way. This would be by giving them chicken noodle soup, water and letting them get lots of rest. This old fashioned and tested remedy has always worked for ages.