Batman's Commissioner Gordon Dies

(NEWSER) - Down-to-earth stage and screen actor James Whitmore died of lung cancer in Malibu today, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was 87. Known for his supporting roles and leads in films such as Battleground, Planet of the Apes, and The Shawshank Redeption, the Emmy and Tony Award winner preferred theater. "The stage is human beings sharing something together—flesh and blood together," Whitmore said. More»

'Stormy Weather' great broke ground for African Americans

(NEWSER) - Lena Horne, the legendary singer who broke new ground for African-Americans in Hollywood, has died at the age of 92. Best known for the song "Stormy Weather," the jazz vocalist won accolades as a cabaret and Broadway performer. Horne got her start in 1933 as a teenage chorus girl at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem; she was such a sensation that she later became the first African-American signed to long-term Hollywood contract, the LA Times reports. More»

(NEWSER) - John Forsythe, a versatile actor who gained lasting fame as Blake Carrington on the pioneering prime-time soap Dynasty and as the voice of the mysterious Charlie on Charlie's Angels, died yesterday in California. He was 92. Best known at the time as the affable star of Bachelor Father, Forsythe played a villainous judge in the 1979 Al Pacino vehicle And Justice for All, demonstrating he had the chops to channel the scheming Blake Carrington. More»

(NEWSER) - Former film and TV heartthrob Van Johnson died today in New York of natural causes, Variety reports. He was 92. Johnson starred in many movies in the 1940s and 1950s, and was later nominated for an Emmy for his appearance on the TV show Rich Man, Poor Man. Dubbed the "non-singing Sinatra," the wholesome star married only once—a union that ended in what he called "the ugliest divorce in Hollywood history." More»

Longtime leading man, former NRA president, had Alzheimer's

(NEWSER) - Charlton Heston, the longtime Hollywood leading man who portrayed everyone from Moses to Michelangelo and won an Oscar for his chariot-driving performance in Ben Hur, has died at age 84, the AP reports. Heston, who announced in 2002 that he had Alzheimer's, became the unapologetic head of the NRA in 1998, a position that nearly overshadowed his acting career. More»