Obituaries

California wine master Robert Mondavi died peacefully today in his Napa Valley home at age 94, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Disciples and critics alike have praised the vintner for elevating West Coast wine from jug juice to world-class vino. "His legacy and his vision for what California could do remains with us as guidepost and a source of aspiration," one winemaker said. More »

In some ways, Robert Rauschenberg lived more of the rock ’n’ roll life than his friend and collaborator David Byrne, who offers an affectionate farewell in the New York Times today . His life was just as wild and unpredictable as his work, says the Talking Heads founder. "Conversation was like one of his pieces: a crazy mishmash of images, multiple layers and references, and a spray of allusions that were simultaneously silly, profound and beautiful—he was the Neal Cassady of the art world." More »

Robert Rauschenberg, a pioneer of pop art and one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century, died yesterday at 82, the AP reports. Rauschenberg's "combine paintings" of the 1950s, which incorporated three-dimensional objects ranging from soda bottles to stuffed birds, were seen as revolutionary, but over a decades-long career he also worked in other media, including sculpture and dance. More »

Eddy Arnold, the “Tennessee Plowboy,” died this morning at the age of 89, the Tennessean reports. Ranked as Billboard ’s most popular country musician of all time, Arnold sold more than 85 million records and had 37 singles on the pop charts. Besides being remembered as a caring man who “radiated gentility,” he is credited with moving country into popular music’s mainstream. More »

Irvine Robbins, the co-founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, has died at 90, the LA Times reports. Robbins grew up scooping ice cream at his family’s Tacoma, Wash., shop and opened his own store in California in 1945. As his chain expanded, he loved inventing and naming new flavors, including cherry chocolate chip “ChaChaCha” and Jamoca Almond Fudge. More »

Mildred Loving, whose challenge to Virginia law led to the Supreme Court decision overturning bans on racially mixed marriage, has died at the age of 68. Loving, who was black, and her white husband Richard pleaded guilty to “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth” before their suit led to a landmark civil-rights ruling in 1967. More »

The last surviving member of a cabal that twice tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler died this week at age 90, the Telegraph reports. Nearly all of Phillip Von Boeselager’s co-conspirators were executed after a 1944 attempt to plant a bomb under the table at Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, but von Boeselager escaped and Hitler sustained only minor injuries in the blast. More »

The iconoclastic clarinetist and composer Jimmy Giuffre died Thursday, two days before what would have been his 87th birthday, the New York Times reports. The Texas-born jazz legend's 50-year career took him from big-band hits with Woody Herman to minimalist trios, with a stint playing in mess halls as a GI in WWII. Giuffre's experimental, blues-infused styling made him a leading figure in the '50s "cool jazz" scene. More »

Longtime Bruce Springsteen keyboardist Danny Federici died yesterday at the age of 58 in New York after a three-year battle with melanoma. As a member of the Boss’ E Street Band, he performed on hit records for decades and helped bring Springsteen into the spotlight after jamming in New Jersey in the 1960s. “We grew up together,” Springsteen said in an online statement. More »

The MIT scientist whose pioneering of chaos theory revolutionized science, has died at the age of 90, MIT News reports. Meteorologist Edward Lorenz came up with the concept of chaos theory after meticulously analyzing weather data and discovering microscopic differences could have huge effects, leading to his paper "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" More »

The last surviving member of Disney's legendary "Nine Old Men," who pioneered character animation, has died at the age of 95, the Los Angeles Times reports. Ollie Johnston's many creations, often in collaboration with Frank Thomas, included sequences and characters in Pinocchio, the Jungle Book, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians and many more. More »

A Georgia man who took his own life last week had lived 12 years after receiving a transplanted heart from a South Carolina man who also committed suicide, police said. And in a twist worthy of Edgar Allan Poe, the donor's widow had met and married the recipient, the Hilton Head Island Packet reports. More »

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 »

Jules Dassin, a master of film noir who left Hollywood after being blacklisted, has died in an Athens hospital at the age of 96, reports the Los Angeles Times . Born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Connecticut, Dassin made such dark crime dramas as Brute Force and The Naked City in the 1940s. Hounded during the Red scare, he moved to France, where he directed his masterpiece, Rififi. More »

Photojournalist Dith Pran, whose saga was re-created in the film The Killing Fields, has died of pancreatic cancer at 65, the New York Times reports. The Cambodian native became the Khmer Rouge's most vocal opponent after escaping in 1979, having worked in labor camps and survived on a spoonful of rice a day. He moved to New York, where he began working for the Times and against the Cambodian genocide. "I'm a one-person crusade," he once said. More »

The inventor of the Egg McMuffin has died in his Southern California home at the age of 89,  AP reports. Herb Peterson began working with McDonald's in the advertising department, and later switched to the hands-on side of the business, owning six restaurants in the Santa Barbara area. Peterson, a big fan of eggs Benedict, came up with the idea for the breakfast-on-the-run Egg McMuffin in 1972, inspiring a host of imitators. More »

Richard Widmark, the American actor renowned for his sinister portrayals of gangsters, has died at age 93. His first film role—as a giggling, sadistic killer in the 1947 Kiss of Death —made him an instant movie star and gained him a Fox contract for 20 parts in seven years—most of them heavies. One film historian has called him “the most frightening person on the screen,” the New York Times reports. More »

"Fifth Beatle" Neil Aspinall, the first road manager of the legendary band who later ran the Beatles' recording company, has died from lung cancer. Aspinall, 66, was the chief guardian of the group's musical legacy after the Beatles broke up. "He vigorously fought to protect the Beatles franchise," said Beatles historian Bruce Spizer. He reignited interest in the Fab Four for a new generation of fans in the 1990s. More »

The husband of British soul singer Corinne Bailey Rae has been found dead from a suspected drug overdose at his home in the UK. Jason Rae, 31, a saxophone player, is said to have struggled with drug abuse for years, according to Britain's Daily Mail . His band, the Haggis Horns, had backed Amy Winehouse. More »

Paul Scofield, the British actor who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons , has died at the age of 86. His agent told Reuters that the actor, who eschewed Hollywood stardom for smaller film roles and a robust theater career, had been suffering from leukemia. "Of the 10 greatest moments in the theater, eight are Scofield's," Richard Burton once said. More »