LOS ANGELES (AP) – Larry D. Mann, who voiced Yukon Cornelius in the animated Christmas favorite “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” has died. He was 91.

His son, Richard Mann, says the actor died of age-related causes on Monday in Los Angeles.

Beginning in the 1950s, the Canadian-born Mann had small roles in movies, including “The Sting” and “In the Heat of the Night.”

On TV, his appearances included “Gunsmoke,” ”Bewitched” and Hill Street Blues.”

He also did voice work for animated shows, including 1964’s “Rudolph.”

His son says Mann’s last role before retirement was playing a talent agent in the 1991 TV show “Homefront.”

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Saul Zaentz, a music producer whose second career as a filmmaker brought him best-picture Academy Awards for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” ”Amadeus” and “The English Patient,” has died. He was 92.

Zaentz died Jan. 3 at his San Francisco apartment after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Paul Zaentz, the producer’s nephew and longtime business partner told the Associated Press.

Zaentz was never a prolific movie producer, but he took on classy productions, specializing in complex literary adaptations that Hollywood studios generally find too intricate to put on film.

Since moving into film at age 50 with 1972’s low-budget country-music drama “Payday,” Zaentz made just 10 movies, giving him a remarkable three-for-10 batting average on best-picture wins at the Oscars.

Among Zaentz’s other films were the 1978 animated version of “The Lord of the Rings,” which later paved the way for the blockbuster live action trilogy.

He also brought out the 1986 Harrison Ford drama “The Mosquito Coast”; 1998’s acclaimed “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which co-starred “English Patient” Oscar winner Juliette Binoche; and 1991’s “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” a critical and commercial flop despite a cast that included Kathy Bates, Tom Berenger and John Lithgow.

Zaentz was a throwback to old Hollywood, a producer who cared tremendously about his films and would go to extremes to get them right, often putting his own money up to help finance them.

He appreciated unique personal vision in directors, taking chances on relatively untested filmmakers.

Anthony Minghella had made just two small films when Zaentz picked him to direct “The English Patient,” whose awards included the best-director Oscar. Czech director Milos Forman had worked on films mostly in his home country when producers Zaentz and Michael Douglas chose him to make “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Forman also directed “Amadeus.”

With “Lord of the Rings,” whose film rights he acquired in the mid-1970s, Zaentz rejected all suitors interested in doing a live-action version until he saw New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s visually striking “Heavenly Creatures.”

Though Zaentz’s involvement was limited and he did not share in the producing credits, he gave full blessing to Jackson’s mammoth, three-film “Lord of the Rings” production. He later sued over royalties, however; the dispute was settled out of court in 2005.

A lavish theatrical version of the tale was mounted in Toronto in March 2006, but closed six months later. The show was trimmed and reworked for a run in London, where it ran for 13 months, though it had still failed to impress some critics.

Zaentz entered the movie business after growing bored with his successful recording-industry career, which included the Fantasy Records label he bought in 1967.

Largely a jazz label whose catalog includes albums by Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, Fantasy also released albums by Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose leader John Fogerty later feuded with Zaentz in bitter court fights.

Fogerty had to change the name of a song on his 1980s solo album, after Zaentz said he was being libeled. (It became “Vanz Kant Danz.”) Zaentz lost his lawsuit against Fogerty claiming the musician’s song “Old Man Down the Road” copied the melody from “Run Through the Jungle,” a Creedence tune that remained in the Fantasy library.

After Zaentz sold Fantasy in 2004, Fogerty made peace with the label’s new owners.

Zaentz had worked in the music industry for nearly two decades when he decided to try his hand at film. He tended to go after the rights to literary works he loved, and one of the first was Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Kirk Douglas owned the film rights. Zaentz said in a 1985 interview in the journal American Film that Douglas would only sell the rights if he could star.

Uninterested in those terms, Zaentz went off and produced “Payday,” which starred Rip Torn and cost $76,000, “of which we got $61,000 back” from the little seen film, Zaentz said. By then, Michael Douglas had obtained the “Cuckoo’s Nest” rights from his father, and he and Zaentz teamed up to make the film with Jack Nicholson.

The film won five Oscars and was the first since “It Happened One Night” 42 years earlier to sweep the top four categories: best picture, director (Forman), actor (Nicholson) and actress (Louise Fletcher).

Zaentz’s next film, the 1977 American Indian drama “Three Warriors,” quickly disappeared, and he later admitted his animated “Lord of the Rings” from 1978 had missed the mark.

Reteaming with Forman, Zaentz made “Amadeus,” adapted from Peter Shaffer’s play that whimsically examined the relationship between Mozart and rival composer Salieri. “Amadeus” won eight Oscars.

Zaentz topped that with “The English Patient,” which won nine. The film nearly fell apart after original backer 20th Century Fox shut it down because Zaentz declined to recast with a bigger-name cast.

Miramax rescued the film, with Zaentz putting up cash of his own to round out the budget.

The same night “The English Patient” triumphed at the Oscars, Zaentz received the Irving G. Thalberg Award, a lifetime-achievement honor for producers.

“My cup is full,” Zaentz said in accepting the award. After “The English Patient” won best picture, Zaentz added: “I said my cup was full before. Now it runneth over.”

Born Feb. 28, 1921, in Passaic, N.J., Zaentz earned a degree in poultry husbandry from Rutgers University. He served in Africa and Sicily and aboard troop ships in the North Atlantic and Pacific during World War II.

After the war, Zaentz attended business college and moved to San Francisco, where he worked for a small record distributor and later joined jazz producer Norman Granz, working on recordings and concerts.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

SAN DIEGO (AP) – Hall of Fame broadcaster Jerry Coleman, a former second baseman for the New York Yankees who interrupted his pro career to fly as a Marine Corps pilot in World War II and Korea, died Sunday, the San Diego Padres said. He was 89.

Coleman spent more than four decades with the Padres as a broadcaster. He managed the team in 1980.

Padres president Mike Dee said Coleman died at a hospital Sunday afternoon. He said the team was notified by Coleman’s wife, Maggie.

A family friend told The Associated Press on Sunday night that Coleman had surgery before Christmas for bleeding in the brain. Doctors discovered more bleeding last week and Coleman had more surgery, said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation.

“It’s a sad day,” Padres manager Bud Black said. “We’re losing a San Diego icon. He’s going to be missed.”

The Padres planned to keep Coleman’s statue at Petco Park open until 11:30 p.m. Sunday so fans could pay tribute.

While recounting his military career in an interview days before the statue was unveiled in September 2012, Coleman said: “Your country is bigger than baseball.”

Coleman spent some seven decades in pro baseball, a career that included four World Series titles with the Yankees and was interrupted by his service in World War II and the Korean War.

He flew 120 missions combined in the two wars. Coleman was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 13 Air Medals and three Navy Citations.

Around Petco Park and on Padres radio broadcasts, Coleman was known as “The Colonel,” having retired from the Marines with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was the only major leaguer to see combat in two wars.

“He was a wonderful human being and a great guy,” Black said. “He was one of a kind. He sort of blazed his own path from San Francisco and ended up as a war hero and a major league ballplayer and doing so many things in our game. As much as he’s remembered for all he accomplished as a baseball man, he was more proud of his military service.”

Coleman’s broadcast schedule had been reduced to home day games. He also did a pregame interview with Black, who said Coleman was self-deprecating and preferred to talk about the Padres rather than anything he’d done with the Yankees or in the Marines.

“You wouldn’t know it walking down the street that he was a World Series champion and also a guy that flew fighter planes,” Black said.

Coleman was known for calls of “Oh, Doctor!” and “You can hang a star on that!” after big plays. He received the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

He also was known for malaprops, like the time he was describing Dave Winfield going back for a long fly ball.

“I said, ‘Winfield hit his head against the wall and it’s rolling toward the infield.’ I meant the ball, of course,” Coleman said in 2012.

In a statement, commissioner Bud Selig said Coleman “was a hero and a role model to myself and countless others in the game of baseball. … But above all, Jerry’s decorated service to our country in both World War II and Korea made him an integral part of the Greatest Generation. He was a true friend whose counsel I valued greatly.”

After graduating from high school in 1942, Coleman traveled three days by train from San Francisco to Wellsville, N.Y., to report to the New York Yankees’ Class D affiliate.

Still 17, he was too young to enlist and fight in World War II, so he got to spend the summer playing ball. After he joined the military, he flew Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers in the Pacific in World War II. He played three more seasons of minor league ball before making his big league debut with the Yankees on April 20, 1949. He was The Associated Press’ Rookie of the Year that season.

Coleman’s best season was 1950, when he was an All-Star and was named MVP of the Yankees’ four-game sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. Among his teammates were Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto and Johnny Mize.

“We won the first game 1-0 and I drove in that run,” Coleman recalled in 2012. “We won the second game 2-1. I scored one of the two runs and DiMaggio hit a home run in the 10th to win it. In the third game I drove in the winning run in the last inning, and in the fourth game I rested.”

By “rested,” he means he went 0 for 3. “I was exhausted,” he said.

In October 1951, Coleman found out that Marine pilots from World War II were not discharged, but on inactive status and that he’d be going to Korea for 18 months. He missed the bulk of two seasons.

Coleman said he took his physical along with Ted Williams in Jacksonville in 1952. Williams, a San Diego native, also was a Marine pilot in World War II, but didn’t see combat duty. He did fly combat missions in Korea.

When Coleman returned to the Yankees, he hit only .217. He was sent to an eye doctor, who told him he’d lost his depth perception.

“If you’re trying to hit a baseball and you don’t have depth perception, you have a problem,” Coleman said.

He got that corrected but then broke his collarbone in April 1955. The night he came back from that injury, he got beaned.

His last season was 1957, when he hit .364 in a seven-game World Series loss to the Milwaukee Braves.

Coleman worked in the Yankees’ front office before beginning a broadcasting career that eventually brought him to San Diego.

“First and foremost, he was an American hero whose service to this country is his lasting legacy. He was also a great Yankee, a true ambassador for baseball, and someone whose imprint on our game will be felt for generations,” Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said. “On behalf of the entire New York Yankees organization, we send our deepest condolences to the Coleman family.”

Coleman managed the Padres in 1980, when they went 73-89 and finished last in the NL West. Coleman was fired and returned to the booth.

“I should never have taken it,” he said. “I look at it now and see the mistakes I made. If I wanted to be a manager, I should have gone to the minor leagues and developed there.”

Coleman’s statue at Petco Park depicts him in a flight suit.

Coleman said the closest he came to being killed was in Korea when the engine in his Corsair quit during takeoff and his plane flipped. He preferred to talk about his comrades.

Coleman remembered a mission over Korea when a plane piloted by his buddy, Max Harper, blew up and flew straight into the ground.

“I knew there was no need for help. It was an unpleasant thing,” Coleman said.

In describing the two-seat Dauntless he flew in the Solomon Islands and the Philippines, Coleman said the gunner “was the bravest man I knew. If I did something wrong, he died, too.”

Longtime San Francisco Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper mentioned the various halls of fame Coleman belonged to and added: “More than anything he’s just a Hall of Fame guy. If he had a bad day, it was never around us. He was always in a good mood. He was quite funny. Northern California guy. Really just a great guy. I’m shocked and saddened that he passed away.

“Here’s a guy, what didn’t he do in life?” Kuiper said.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Emmy-nominated actress Carmen Zapata, who started a foundation to promote Hispanic writers because jobs were so scarce, has died of heart problems, colleagues say. She was 86.

Zapata died Sunday at her Van Nuys-area home, said Luis Vela, marketing manager for the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in Los Angeles.

Zapata started her career in 1945 in the Broadway musical “Oklahoma” and went on to perform in “Bells Are Ringing,” ”Guys and Dolls” and many plays.

“She was an inspiration for me,” Vela said. “She taught me that art is the key to resolving differences in the community.”

He said Zapata was once asked how she wanted to be remembered – as an artist, producer or founder. “‘I prefer people remember us as educators,'” Vela recalled her saying.

Her movie credits included “Sister Act,” ”Gang Boys” and “Carola.” She also appeared in dozens of television series, including nine seasons on the PBS bilingual children’s show, “Villa Alegre.”

Zapata had continuing TV roles in “The Man and the City” and “The New Dick Van Dyke Show.” She sang in several other musicals, including “Bloomer Girl.” ”No Strings,” ”Show Boat,” ”Stop the World, I Want to Get Off” and “Funny Girl.”

Born in New York City of Mexican-Argentinian descent, Zapata joined forces with Cuban-born actress, playwright and director Margarita Galban to found the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in 1973.

The organization produces four plays a year that are presented at its 99-seat theater. Productions alternate in English and Spanish, with some shows taken on the road by production companies.

Zapata collected Emmy nominations for best supporting actress in a segment of “Medical Center” and for “Carola” on “Hollywood TV Theatre.”

Vela said he last saw Zapata on Christmas Eve.

“Everyone who worked with her felt she had created something really important and was making our community a better place.” he said. “She was emphatic that what we were doing at the foundation was more important than personal recognition.”

She was not working on any one project when she died, Vela said, but was supervising and approving projects being presented to her.

Funeral and service arrangements were being finalized.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) – Nobel laureate and longtime Northwestern University economics professor Dale Mortensen has died.

Mortensen shared the Nobel economics prize with two other Americans in 2010 for their work explaining how unemployment can remain high despite a large number of job openings.

Mortensen died Thursday at his home in Wilmette, Ill., said his personal assistant and close family friend, Sue Triforo. He was 74.

Northwestern President Morton Schapiro paid tribute to Mortensen, saying “his groundbreaking work is especially relevant to policymakers attempting to address unemployment today.”

Besides his pioneering approaches to investigating the labor market, Mortensen had a way of breaking down complex economic ideas into terms anyone could relate to.

He even quoted the late Chicago author and fellow Pulitzer prize winner Studs Terkel while thanking the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation.

“Work was a search, sometimes successful, sometimes not, for daily meaning as well as daily bread,” Mortensen said, quoting Terkel, who was known for recording the stories of ordinary Americans.

Mortensen was away teaching in Aarhus, Denmark, when he found out he won the prize. When delivering the news to his wife on the phone he said simply, “I won.”

Such understatement and humility was a prominent characteristic, according to Triforo.

“The words really fail me at the moment because the grief is overwhelming, but he was a remarkable, humble, brilliant mind and man is all I can say,” she said.

Mortensen was born in Enterprise, Ore. He had been at Northwestern in suburban Chicago since 1965. He also was an accomplished musician.

Survivors include his wife, Beverly, their son and two daughters, and eight grandchildren.

A public memorial will be announced later.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

miri Baraka, the militant man of letters and tireless agitator whose blues-based, fist-shaking poems, plays and criticism made him a provocative and groundbreaking force in American culture, has died. He was 79.

His booking agent, Celeste Bateman, told The Associated Press that Baraka, who had been hospitalized since last month, died Thursday at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.

Perhaps no writer of the 1960s and ’70s was more radical or polarizing than the former LeRoi Jones, and no one did more to extend the political debates of the civil rights era to the world of the arts. He inspired at least one generation of poets, playwrights and musicians, and his immersion in spoken word traditions and raw street language anticipated rap, hip-hop and slam poetry. The FBI feared him to the point of flattery, identifying Baraka as “the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the Pan-African movement in the United States.”

Baraka transformed from the rare black to join the Beat caravan of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to leader of the Black Arts Movement, an ally of the Black Power movement that rejected the liberal optimism of the early ’60s and intensified a divide over how and whether the black artist should take on social issues. Scorning art for art’s sake and the pursuit of black-white unity, Barak was part of a philosophy that called for the teaching of black art and history and producing works that bluntly called for revolution.

“We want ‘poems that kill,'” Baraka wrote in his landmark “Black Art,” a manifesto published in 1965, the year he helped found the Black Arts Movement. “Assassin poems. Poems that shoot guns/Poems that wrestle cops into alleys/and take their weapons leaving them dead/with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.”

He was as eclectic as he was prolific: His influences ranged from Ray Bradbury and Mao Zedong to Ginsberg and John Coltrane. Baraka wrote poems, short stories, novels, essays, plays, musical and cultural criticism and jazz operas. His 1963 book “Blues People” has been called the first major history of black music to be written by an African-American. A line from his poem “Black People!” – “Up against the wall mother f—–” – became a counterculture slogan for everyone from student protesters to the rock band Jefferson Airplane. A 2002 poem he wrote alleging that some Israelis had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks led to widespread outrage.

He was denounced by critics as buffoonish, homophobic, anti-Semitic, a demagogue. He was called by others a genius, a prophet, the Malcolm X of literature. Eldridge Cleaver hailed him as the bard of the “funky facts.” Ishmael Reed credited the Black Arts Movement for encouraging artists of all backgrounds and enabling the rise of multiculturalism. The scholar Arnold Rampersad placed him alongside Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright in the pantheon of black cultural influences.

“From Amiri Baraka, I learned that all art is political, although I don’t write political plays,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist August Wilson once said.

First published in the 1950s, Baraka crashed the literary party in 1964, at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, when “Dutchman” opened and made instant history at the height of the civil rights movement. Baraka’s play was a one-act showdown between a middle class black man, Clay, and a sexually daring white woman, Lula, ending in a brawl of murderous taunts and confessions.

“Charlie Parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird,” Clay says. “And they sit there talking about the tortured genius of Charlie Parker. Bird would’ve not played a note of music if he just walked up to East 67th Street and killed the first 10 white people he saw. Not a note!”

Baraka was still LeRoi Jones when he wrote “Dutchman.” But the Cuban revolution, the assassination in 1965 of Malcolm X and the Newark riots of 1967, when the poet was jailed and photographed looking dazed and bloodied, radicalized him. Jones left his white wife (Hettie Cohen), cut off his white friends and moved from Greenwich Village to Harlem. He renamed himself Imamu Ameer Baraka, “spiritual leader blessed prince,” and dismissed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a “brainwashed Negro.” He helped organize the 1972 National Black Political Convention and founded the Congress of African People. He also founded community groups in Harlem and Newark, the hometown to which he eventually returned.

The Black Arts Movement was essentially over by the mid-1970s, and Baraka distanced himself from some of his harsher comments – about Dr. King, about gays and about whites in general. But he kept making news. In the early 1990s, as Spike Lee was filming a biography of Malcolm X, Baraka ridiculed the director as “a petit bourgeois Negro” unworthy of his subject. In 2002, respected enough to be named New Jersey’s poet laureate, he shocked again with “Somebody Blew Up America,” a Sept. 11 poem with a jarring twist.

“Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed,” read a line from the poem. “Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?”

Then-Gov. James E. McGreevey and others demanded his resignation. Baraka refused, denying that “Somebody Blew Up” was anti-Semitic (the poem also attacks Hitler and the Holocaust) and condemning the “dishonest, consciously distorted and insulting non-interpretation of my poem.” Discovering he couldn’t be fired, the state eliminated the position altogether, in 2003.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Franklin McCain, who helped spark a movement of nonviolent sit-in protests across the South by occupying a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960, has died, his son said Friday. He was 73.

McCain died of respiratory complications late Thursday, Frank McCain of Greensboro said Friday.

Franklin McCain was one of four freshmen students from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro who sat down at the local “whites only” lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960.

“The best feeling of my life,” McCain said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press, was “sitting on that dumb stool.”

“I felt so relieved,” he added. “I felt so at peace and so self-accepted at that very moment. Nothing has ever happened to me since then that topped that good feeling of being clean and fully accepted and feeling proud of me.”

McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan) planned their surprise action carefully. They bought school supplies and toiletries so that their receipts would offer proof that the lunch counter was the only part of the store where racial segregation still ruled.

The young men stayed until the store closed, but returned the next day and subsequent days. They were joined by more protesters, whose numbers built to at least 1,000 by the fifth day. Within weeks, sit-ins launched in more than 50 cities in nine states. The Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro was desegregated within six months.

The sit-in led to the formation in Raleigh of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which became the cutting edge of the student direct-action civil rights movement. The demonstrations between 1960 and 1965 helped pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“To the world, he was a civil rights pioneer who, along with his three classmates, dared to make a difference by starting the sit-in movement,” McCain’s family said in a prepared statement. “To us, he was ‘Daddy’ – a man who deeply loved his family and cherished his friends.”

McCain graduated in 1964, became a research chemist and sales executive, and moved to Charlotte. His wife of 48 years, Bettye, died a year ago. He served on his alma mater’s board of trustees, then spent four years on the governing board of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system. His term on the public university board ended last year.

“What I think people should remember most about Franklin is that his courage and commitment to doing what was right didn’t end at Woolworth’s,” said state university system president Tom Ross, who grew up in Greensboro. “That commitment continued throughout his life, and he channeled it in ways that really mattered, particularly in his service and devotion to our university and to higher education.”

Richmond died in 1990. McNeil is now 71 and Khazan is 72, said Steffany Reeve, a spokeswoman for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which occupies the former Woolworth’s store.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Larry Speakes, who spent six years as acting press secretary for President Ronald Reagan, died Friday in his native Mississippi. He was 74.

Speakes died at home in Cleveland, Miss., where he had lived the past several years, said Bolivar County Coroner Nate Brown. Brown said Speakes had Alzheimer’s disease.

“He died in his sleep and it was a natural death,” Brown said.

Speakes was buried in North Cleveland Cemetery during a private service Friday morning, a few hours after dying, said Kenny Williams of Cleveland Funeral Home.

Speakes became Reagan’s acting spokesman after Press Secretary James Brady was wounded during an assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981.

In a statement issued from Los Angeles, former first lady Nancy Reagan said that she was “saddened to learn about Larry, who served Ronnie with great loyalty in one of the toughest jobs in the White House.”

“He stepped up in very difficult circumstances and was an articulate and respected spokesman day in and day out, including some very historically significant moments,” Reagan said. “It is a source of special sadness to know he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.” Ronald Reagan died in 2004 after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Republican Haley Barbour, who served as Mississippi governor from 2004 to 2012, was political director of the Reagan White House when Speakes worked there. He said Friday that it wasn’t unusual to have tension between the political office and the press office, but he and Speakes had a good working relationship.

Barbour said that within the Reagan administration, people generally admired Speakes’ handling of the press, although Speakes could be abrupt.

“Sometimes, that meant reporters didn’t get everything they wanted, and sometimes it meant they didn’t get anything,” Barbour said Friday. “But, Larry knew who he worked for.”

Peter Roussel, who worked with Speakes in the Ford and Reagan press offices, said Speakes conducted more than 2,000 press briefings. “Larry set high performance standards for himself and for those who worked for him,” Roussel said.

Dennis Brack, a photographer who has covered the White House for the Black Star photo agency since the 1960s, said Speakes had a good relationship with photographers during the years when Reagan, a former actor, was president.

But when photographers took pictures of President Gerald Ford falling down the steps of Air Force One in Austria in 1976, Speakes complained that the press was determined to make the president “look like a klutz,” said Brack, author of “Presidential Picture Stories: Behind the Cameras at the White House,” published in December.

Weeks after leaving his White House job in 1987, Speakes said during a speech at East Texas State University that he often thought about the day Reagan, Brady and two others were wounded when John Hinckley Jr. opened fire.

“Shortly before the president left that day to go the Hilton Hotel to make a speech, I said to Jim, ‘Do you want to go with the president, or would you like me to go?’ And he said, ‘I believe I’ll go,'” Speakes said. “And had it not been in that one split second, I would have been exactly where Jim Brady was at that moment an hour or so later. … It’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about that.”

After leaving the White House, Speakes worked for Merrill Lynch in New York. Speakes left the Merrill Lynch job after he wrote in his memoir, “Speaking Out,” that he had fabricated quotes for President Reagan while working for him.

He returned to Washington in 1988 and worked in public relations for Northern Telecom and the U. S. Postal Service, retiring in 2008.

Speakes grew up in Merigold, Miss., and graduated from the University of Mississippi. He worked for two Mississippi newspapers, the Oxford Eagle and the Bolivar Commercial, before going to Washington in 1968 as press secretary for U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, D-Miss.

In 1974, Speakes worked as press secretary for the special counsel to President Richard Nixon during the Watergate hearings. After Nixon resigned, Speakes became assistant press secretary for President Gerald Ford.

Speakes worked as press secretary for Ford’s vice presidential running mate, Bob Dole, during the 1976 campaign. After Democrat Jimmy Carter won the election, he moved to the Hill and Knowlton public relations firm in Washington. Speakes worked for Reagan’s transition team after Reagan won the 1980 election, then became deputy press secretary under Brady.

Speakes is survived by a daughter, Sandy Speakes Huerta of Cleveland, Miss; sons Scott Speakes of Cleveland, Miss., and Jeremy Speakes of Clifton, Va.; six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – When it came to portraying the rugged western outdoorsman who helped transform a pack of filtered cigarettes into the world’s most popular brand, Marlboro Man Eric Lawson was the real deal.

Ruggedly handsome, the actor could ride a horse through the wide-open spaces of the Southwest, from Texas to Colorado to Arizona or wherever else the Phillip Morris tobacco company sent him to light up while representing a true American icon, the cowboy. And he really did smoke Marlboro cigarettes, as many as three packs a day.

Lawson was still smoking in 2006 when he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He died of the disease at his home in San Luis Obispo on Jan. 10. He was 72.

For three years in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Lawson portrayed one of the most iconic figures in both advertising and popular culture.

And for the past several years, Lawson had spoken out fiercely about the hazards of smoking, doing a public service announcement for the American Cancer Society in the 1990s, years before he was able to bring himself to quit.

“He tried to speak to the kids, telling them don’t start smoking,” his wife, Susan Lawson, told The Associated Press. “He already knew cigarettes had a hold on him.”

Exactly how many rugged he-man types portrayed the Marlboro Man over the years isn’t clear, although Lawson was one of dozens.

His wife said Monday he was friendly with some of the others, including Wayne McLaren, a former rodeo rider who died in 1992 of lung cancer that he blamed on his lifelong smoking habit.

Like Lawson, McLaren spent his final years advocating against smoking. So did David McLean, who died in 1995 of lung cancer that he also blamed on smoking. He was 73.

As the Marlboro Man, Lawson and the others helped turn a brand that had once been marketed as a mild women’s cigarette into the ultimate symbol of American machismo.

Not every Marlboro Man was a cowboy – there were also pilots, hunters, weight lifters, miners and other macho characters. But cowboys were clearly the most popular and the most often used.

“The most powerful – and in some quarters, most hated – brand image of the century, the Marlboro Man stands worldwide as the ultimate American cowboy and masculine trademark, helping establish Marlboro as the best-selling cigarette in the world,” the industry publication Advertising Age declared in 1999.

Part of the reason for the brand’s success was that Phillip Morris’ ad agency went to great pains to track down real cowboys, who not only looked rugged but could really do things like rope and ride.

“He had to go out and ride, he needed to prove himself as a cowboy,” Lawson’s wife recalled of her husband’s audition to become a Marlboro Man.

By the time he got the job in 1978, cigarette advertising was no longer allowed on U.S. television, so Lawson appeared in print and billboard ads. His wife still has one from Time magazine.

The ads, often filmed in stunning, picturesque settings in the West always emphasized that it was a real man, not in any way a wimp, who smoked a Marlboro.

Lawson was perfect for the part. The veteran actor had appeared in such Western films and TV shows as “The Shooter,” ”Walker, Texas Ranger,” ”Tall Tale,” ”Bonanza: Under Attack” and “The A Team.”

Later, he also became a perfect role model who made a difference in the lives of the people he kept from smoking simply by pointing out what it did to him, said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

“That’s important,” Seffrin said, “because people stop and think if that happens to Eric Lawson it could happen to me.”

In addition to his wife, Lawson is survived by six children, 18 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Former first lady Nancy Reagan has died at 94 in Bel-Air, California.

Assistant Allison Borio says Mrs. Reagan died Sunday at her home of congestive heart failure.

Her marriage to Ronald Reagan lasted 52 years until his death in 2004.

A former actress, she was Reagan’s closest adviser and fierce protector on his journey from actor to governor of California to president of the United States.

She rushed to his side after he was shot in 1981 by a would-be assassin, and later endured his nearly decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. In recent years she broke with fellow Republicans in backing stem cell research as a way to possibly find a cure for Alzheimer’s.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) – Two versions of a New Jersey man’s obituary have appeared together in a newspaper – one saying he’s survived by his wife, and the other saying he’s survived by his girlfriend.

Both obituaries in the Press of Atlantic City agree that Leroy Bill Black, of Egg Harbor Township, died Tuesday of lung cancer caused by fiberglass exposure.

However, the obituary with top billing says he’s survived by his “loving wife” and a son. The second announcement, right beneath the first one with the same photo of Black, says he’s survived by his son, a host of siblings and his long-time girlfriend.

A person who answered the phone at Greenidge Funeral Home, which is handling arrangements, wouldn’t comment on the two obituaries and would only say the funeral home works at the discretion of the wife.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Martin Landau, the chameleon-like actor who gained fame as the crafty master of disguise in the 1960s TV show “Mission: Impossible,” then capped a long and versatile career with an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of aging horror movie star Bela Lugosi in 1994’s “Ed Wood,” has died. He was 89.

Landau died Saturday of unexpected complications during a short stay at UCLA Medical Center, his publicist Dick Guttman said.

“Mission: Impossible,” which also starred Landau’s wife, Barbara Bain, became an immediate hit upon its debut in 1966. It remained on the air until 1973, but Landau and Bain left at the end of the show’s third season amid a financial dispute with the producers. They starred in the British-made sci-fi series “Space: 1999” from 1975 to 1977.

Landau might have been a superstar but for a role he didn’t play — the pointy-eared starship Enterprise science officer, Mr. Spock. “Star Trek” creator Gene Rodenberry had offered him the half-Vulcan, half-human who attempts to rid his life of all emotion. Landau turned it down.

“A character without emotions would have driven me crazy; I would have had to be lobotomized,” he explained in 2001. Instead, he chose “Mission: Impossible,” and Leonard Nimoy went on to everlasting fame as Spock.

Ironically, Nimoy replaced Landau on “Mission: Impossible.”

After a brief but impressive Broadway career, Landau had made an auspicious film debut in the late 1950s, playing a soldier in “Pork Chop Hill” and a villain in the Alfred Hitchcock classic “North By Northwest.”

He enjoyed far less success after “Mission: Impossible,” however, finding he had been typecast as Rollin Hand, the top-secret mission team’s disguise wizard. His film career languished for more than a decade, reaching its nadir with his appearance in the 1981 TV movie “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island.”

He began to find redemption with a sympathetic role in “Tucker: The Man and his Dream,” the 1988 Francis Ford Coppola film that garnered Landau his first Oscar nomination.

He was nominated again the next year for his turn as the adulterous husband in Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

His third nomination was for “Ed Wood,” director Tim Burton’s affectionate tribute to a man widely viewed as the worst Hollywood filmmaker of all time.

“There was a 10-year period when everything I did was bad. I’d like to go back and turn all those films into guitar picks,” Landau said after accepting his Oscar.

In “Ed Wood,” he portrayed Lugosi during his final years, when the Hungarian-born actor who had become famous as Count Dracula was ill, addicted to drugs and forced to make films with Ed Wood just to pay his bills. A gifted mimic trained in method acting, Landau had thoroughly researched the role.

“I watched about 35 Lugosi movies, including ones that were worse than anything Ed Wood ever made,” he recalled in 2001. “Despite the trash, he had a certain dignity about him, whatever the role.”

So did the New York-born Landau, who had studied drawing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and worked for a time as a New York Daily News cartoonist before switching careers at age 22.

He had dabbled in acting before the switch, making his stage debut in 1951 at a Maine summer theater in “Detective Story” and off-Broadway in “First Love.”

In 1955, he was among hundreds who applied to study at the prestigious Actors Studio and one of only two selected. The other was Steve McQueen.

On Broadway, Landau won praise for his work in “Middle of the Night,” which starred Edward G. Robinson. He toured with the play until it reached Los Angeles, where he began his film career.

Landau and Bain had two daughters, Susan and Juliet. They divorced in 1993.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Comic strip artist Mort Walker, a World War II veteran who satirized the Army and tickled millions of newspaper readers with the antics of the lazy private “Beetle Bailey,” died Saturday. He was 94.

Walker died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, said Greg Walker, his eldest son and a collaborator. His father’s advanced age was the cause of death, he said.

Walker began publishing cartoons at age 11 and was involved with more than a half-dozen comic strips in his career, including “Hi and Lois,” ”Boner’s Ark” and “Sam & Silo.” But he found his greatest success drawing slacker Beetle, his hot-tempered sergeant and the rest of the gang at fictional Camp Swampy for nearly 70 years.

The character that was to become Beetle Bailey made his debut as Spider in Walker’s cartoons published by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Walker changed Spider’s name and launched “Beetle Bailey” as a college humor strip in 1950.

At first the strip failed to attract readers and King Features Syndicate considered dropping it after just six months, Walker said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. The syndicate suggested Beetle join the Army after the start of the Korean War, Walker said.

“I was kind of against it because after World War II, Bill Mauldin and Sad Sack were fading away,” he said. But his misgivings were overcome and Beetle “enlisted” in 1951.

Walker attributed the success of the strip to Beetle’s indolence and reluctance to follow authority.

“Most people are sort of against authority,” he said. “Here’s Beetle always challenging authority. I think people relate to it.”

“Beetle Bailey” led to spin-off comic strip “Hi and Lois,” which he created with Dik Browne, in 1954. The premise was that Beetle went home on furlough to visit his sister Lois and brother-in-law Hi.

Fellow cartoonists remembered Walker on Saturday as a pleasant man who adored his fans. Bill Morrison, president of the National Cartoonists Society, called Walker the definition of “cartoonist” in a post on the society’s website.

“He lived and breathed the art every day of his life. He will be sorely missed by his friends in the NCS and by a world of comic strip fans,” Morrison said.

Fellow cartoonist Mark Evanier said on his website that Walker was “delightful to be around and always willing to draw Beetle or Sarge for any of his fans. He sure had a lot of them.”

“Beetle Bailey,” which appeared in as many as 1,800 newspapers, sometimes sparked controversy. The Tokyo editions of the military newspaper Stars & Stripes dropped it in 1954 for fear that it would encourage disrespect of its officers. But ensuing media coverage spurred more than 100 newspapers to add the strip.

Shortly after President Bill Clinton took office, Walker drew a strip suggesting that the draft be retroactive in order to send Clinton to Vietnam. Walker said he received hundreds of angry letters from Clinton supporters.

For years, Walker drew Camp Swampy’s highest-ranking officer, Gen. Amos Halftrack, ogling his secretary, Miss Buxley. Feminist groups claimed the strip made light of sexual harassment, and Walker said the syndicate wanted him to write out the lecherous general.

That wasn’t feasible because the general was such a fixture in the strip, Greg Walker said Saturday. His father solved the problem in 1997 by sending Halftrack to sensitivity training.

“That became a whole theme that we could use,” said Greg Walker, who with his brother, Brian, intends to carry on his father’s work. Both have worked in the family business for decades.

“Beetle Bailey” also featured one of the first African-American characters to be added to a white cast in an established comic strip. (“Peanuts” had added the character of Franklin in 1968.) Lt. Jack Flap debuted in the comic strip’s panels in 1970.

In a 2002 interview, Walker said that comics are filled with stereotypes and he likes to find humor in all characters.

“I like to keep doing something new and different, so people can’t say I’m doing the same thing all the time. I like to challenge myself,” he said.

Walker also created “Boner’s Ark” in 1968 using his given first name, Addison, as his pen name, and “Sam & Silo” with Jerry Dumas in 1977. He was the writer of “Mrs. Fitz’s Flats” with Frank Roberge.

In 1974, he founded the Museum of Cartoon Art in Connecticut to preserve and honor the art of comics. It moved twice before closing in 2002 in Boca Raton, Florida, as the International Museum of Cartoon Art. Walker changed the name to the National Cartoon Museum and announced in 2005 plans to relocate to the Empire State Building in New York. But the following year, the deal to use that space fell through.

In 2000, Walker was honored at the Pentagon with the Army’s highest civilian award — the Distinguished Civilian Service award — for his work, his military service and his contribution to a new military memorial.

He also developed a reputation for helping aspiring cartoonists with advice.

“I make friends for people,” he said.

Addison Morton Walker was born Sept. 3, 1923, in El Dorado, Kansas, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1943 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving in Europe during World II. He was discharged as a first lieutenant, graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia and pursued a career as a cartoonist in New York.

Walker most recently oversaw the work of the staff at his Stamford studio, Comicana.

Besides sons Greg and Brian, Walker is survived by his second wife, Catherine; daughters Polly Blackstock and Margie Walker Hauer; sons Neal and Roger Walker; stepchildren Whitney Prentice and Priscilla Prentice Campbell and several grandchildren.

Funeral services will be private.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Patricia Morison, who originated the role of an overemotional diva in the Broadway musical “Kiss Me, Kate,” starred on stage opposite Yul Brynner in “The King and I” and appeared in films alongside Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, died Sunday at age 103.

Morison died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said.

With her long auburn hair and fiery blue-gray eyes, Morison radiated a sophisticated sex appeal.

She had “the most sensual mouth of any lady in the movies,” Gregory William Mank wrote in his book “Women in Horror Films, 1940s.”

Broadway actress Merle Dandridge posted a picture of herself with Morison on Sunday and tweeted out a tribute.

“Rest, Beautiful Patricia Morison,” Dandridge said. “It was an honor to follow in your footsteps.”

Morison’s career got off to a rocky start. At 18 she was cast in the 1933 Broadway comedy “Growing Pains,” which lasted 29 performances. “I was so bad in it, they fired me in rehearsals,” Morison told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. “I cried so hard they gave me a walk-on.”

Her second Broadway role five years later was only marginally better — “The Two Bouquets” with Alfred Drake lasted 55 performances — but Hollywood noticed and Paramount signed her. (The New York Times praised her “willowy elegance.”) Morison made her film debut in 1939’s “Persons in Hiding,” but she often found her options in the studio system frustrating.

She appeared as Empress Eugenie in 1943’s “The Song of Bernadette,” opposite John Garfield in the 1943 thriller “The Fallen Sparrow” and in the 1945 Tracy-Hepburn romantic comedy “Without Love.”

She was often cast as the femme fatale or villain, including the mastermind in 1946’s “Dressed to Kill,” sparring with Sherlock Holmes, played by Basil Rathbone. Her other films included “Danger Woman” and “Tarzan and the Huntress.”

Morison’s death was first reported Sunday by The Hollywood Reporter.

Born in New York, she was the daughter of playwright and actor William R. Morison and Salina Morison. She studied acting and movement with Martha Graham. In 1935, she understudied Helen Hayes in “Victoria Regina” on Broadway.

After Paramount replaced her in several films, Morison left the studio and joined Al Jolson on a USO tour of Britain to entertain troops in 1942. She returned to get a part in one of her most-remembered films — “Hitler’s Madman.” She also played opposite Lon Chaney Jr. in “Calling Dr. Death” in 1943 and Victor Mature in “Kiss of Death.”

To appear in “Kiss Me, Kate,” Morison needed to get out of a commitment to appear in what was a new line of work for actors in 1947 — a TV series. She had been cast as a psychiatrist who helps a detective solve cases. The producer shot all of her 13 segments on the show in a quick two-week period.

“Kiss Me, Kate,” in which she was reunited with Drake, turned out to be Cole Porter’s biggest musical success and gave Morison the opportunity to play the temperamental Lili Vanessi and sing such songs as “Wunderbar” and “So in Love.”

She told The Associated Press in 1988 that she went to Porter’s home to audition for him but picked a Rodgers and Hammerstein song to sing. “I thought it was safer,” she explained. She went on perform the role for almost 1,500 performances on Broadway and in London. The New York Times called her “an agile and humorous actress who is not afraid of slapstick and who can sing enchantingly.”

In 1954, Morison appeared on Broadway as a replacement Anna Leonowens with Brynner in “The King and I” and joined him on tour. She took over the role in 1952 shortly after Gertrude Lawrence died while performing the lead character. “She was marvelous,” Brynner said. “I could do anything with her.”

One story she told frequently was knocking on Brynner’s stage door and opening it to find Brynner sitting naked, in a Buddha style position, waiting to get his skin stained with a special juice to look like the King of Siam.

In 2000, she was struck by a car and the right side of her body was badly hurt.

Morison, who never married, lived in a Los Angeles apartment with a piano upon which there were signed photographs of Porter and Oscar Hammerstein II.

___

Kennedy reported from New York. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits.

Follow Dalton at https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton .

REDWOOD FALLS, MN (CBS Local) – A mother’s obituary in a Minnesota newspaper took an ugly turn when the writer chose to air the woman’s dirty laundry after her death.

The five-paragraph memorial to 80-year-old Kathleen Dehmlow began like most obituaries, but quickly turned into an attack on Dehmlow and her past. The obituary alleges that the mother of two walked out on her children and had another child with her husband’s brother.

The shocking obituary which was published in the Redwood Falls Gazette, adds that her children Gina and Jay were raised by their grandparents after Dehmlow left for California. “She will not be missed by Gina and Jay, and they understand that this world is a better place without her,” the letter ended. It is not known who paid for the obituary to be placed in the Gazette.

Stunned readers posted the June 4 article on Twitter where the vengeful obit quickly went viral, getting re-tweeted over 13,000 times.

Several people chose to take the high road when commenting on Dehmlow’s passing on May 31 and encouraged her children to move forward. “May you both find healing and peace after the passing of Kathleen,” Michelle Peterson wrote.

(CNN) — “My name is: Garrett Michael Boofias

My birthday is: I am 5 years old

My address is: I am a Bulldog!

My favorite color is: Blue….and Red and Black and Green … ”

These lines mark the beginning of Garrett Michael Matthias’ obituary, words he spoke to his parents before losing his battle to a rare form of pediatric cancer.

The Iowa boy made up the surname Boofias because his real name was too hard for him to pronounce. He also went by “The Great Garrett Underpants.”

In his obituary, he expressed his love for Batman and Thor and his family. He hated pants and needles and the illness. He was diagnosed with cancer nine months ago and died Friday.

“We never necessarily talked about his funeral, so we never had the conversation with him that he was going to die,” his mother Emilie Matthias told CNN affiliate WHO. “But we had a lot of conversations around, ‘When I die I want to do this.'”

Garrett planned an imaginative funeral, with five bouncy houses (one for each year of his life), snow cones, and of course, Batman.

“I want to be burned (like when Thor’s Mommy died) and made into a tree so I can live in it when I’m a gorilla,” he wrote.

And he wanted fireworks.

“That’s him speaking. Those are his words verbatim,” his father Ryan Matthias told WHO. “When I read it, I’m just like ‘Wow’. Sounds like Garrett just yapping at me.”

CNN was not able to reach Garrett’s parents Thursday.

They said they will honor his wishes with a symbolic Thor-influenced burial ceremony and fireworks on Saturday.

“A private burial of Garrett’s ashes will be held at a later time once his parents figure out how the hell to get his ashes made into a tree and locate a nature preserve, so his tree resides in a protected area,” they wrote.

Read the full obituary here.

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& © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

MIAMI (AP) — Tony Sparano once beat Bill Belichick with the single wing, but wasn’t as old as that made him sound.

Sparano was only 56 when he died unexpectedly Sunday. The Minnesota Vikings announced his death in a statement that did not provide a cause.

He had been the Vikings’ offensive line coach since 2016.

The most memorable moment in Sparano’s 19-year NFL coaching career came in 2008, when he was a rookie head coach with the Miami Dolphins, inheriting a team that had gone 1-15 the previous season. In Week 3 he surprised Belichick with a single wing-style formation that the Dolphins called the wildcat, and they won at New England 38-13.

The wildcat became a fad around the league, and the stunning upset propelled Sparano’s team to 11 wins and the AFC East title. It’s one of two playoff berths for the franchise since 2002.

That was Sparano’s lone winning season, and he was fired in 2011 after going 29-32 in Miami. He was popular with his players, but a dismal home record, declining attendance and a falling-out with general manager Jeff Ireland accelerated his firing by owner Stephen Ross.

Sparano was the Oakland Raiders’ interim head coach in 2014 after the team fired Dennis Allen, and he went 3-9. He also worked as an assistant for the Browns, Redskins, Jaguars, Cowboys and 49ers, and most recently for Vikings coach Mike Zimmer.

“I love Tony Sparano,” Zimmer said in a statement. “He was a great teacher, a grinder of a worker and had a toughness and fighting spirit that showed in our linemen. He was a great husband, father and grandfather and a great friend to me. This is just sinking in for us, but Tony will be sorely missed by all.”

Sparano’s former players also paid tribute.

“Heart broken and lost for words! We lost a great man,” tweeted Brian Hartline, who played receiver for Sparano in Miami.

“Damn I’m at a loss for words,” tweeted Raiders Pro Bowl tackle Donald Penn. “Coach Sparano taught me so much not just about football about life also.”

Sparano played at the University of New Haven where he was a four-year letterman. He was hired as New Haven’s head coach in 1994 and held that position for five seasons.

In Miami, Sparano lost his first two games before turning to the wildcat. Six times they ran plays from the formation at New England, snapping the ball directly to running back Ronnie Brown, and four of those plays resulted in touchdowns.

“It was like playing hide and go seek, making them guess,” Brown said at the time.

Sparano said the Dolphins began practicing the wildcat during training camp but waited until the Patriots game to spring it.

“This is not something that just came up and we scribbled on the board a couple of days ago,” the coach said.

Defenses soon adjusted, and a sputtering offense in Sparano’s final two seasons at Miami contributed to his firing. But the Dolphins haven’t won at New England since the wildcat game.

“We were saddened to learn of Tony Sparano’s tragic and unexpected passing,” owner Ross said in a statement. “Tony made an indelible impact on our team’s history. His toughness, grit and leadership were evident to everyone who had the chance to coach with or play for him.”

___

For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL

(CNN) — Actor Ken Berry, known for his roles in American TV comedies such as “F Troop” and “Mama’s Family,” died Saturday, according to a hospital spokesperson.

Berry, 85, died at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, according to Patricia Aidem.

Berry played Capt. Wilton Parmenter on the 1960s sitcom “F Troop,” and Vinton Harper/ Carl Harper in “Mama’s Family,” which ran from 1983 to 1990, according to his page on IMDb.

Berry appeared in other classic TV series such as “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Mayberry R.F.D” and “Fantasy Island, according to IMDb.

“I’m feeling so much love and gratitude for the affection and kindness expressed by Ken’s friends and admirers. And to Susie Walsh, Ken’s dear partner for the last 26 years, for bringing him laughter and devotion and care,” Berry’s ex-wife, Jackie Joseph-Lawrence, posted on Facebook.

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WOODLAND (CBS13) — The man behind Woodland-based Nugget Markets has passed away. According to his family, Eugene (Gene) Stille passed away peacefully in his sleep earlier this month.

Stille was chairman of Nugget Markets and was a third-generation grocer. In the mid-1950s, he took over the family business which his grandfather founded in 1926.

ALSO: Nugget Markets Rises On Forbes List Of Best Companies To Work For

There are currently 12 Nugget Markets across Northern California.

In 2016, Nugget Markets was ranked #13 on Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For.

In lieu of sending flowers, the Stille family asks people to contribute to Yolo Hospice.