The Charlie’s Angel died of Cancer at the age of 62.

David Carradine, a talented actor whose list of credits includes the ’70s series Kung Fu and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill was found dead in Thailand of an apparent suicide.  Here’s a photo gallery that takes you through his career, and here’s a roundup of Carradine’s film projects that haven’t been released yet.

From MSNBC:

It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the room’s curtains. It cited police as saying he had been dead at least 12 hours and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

A police officer at Bangkok’s Lumpini precinct station would not confirm the identity of the dead man to The Associated Press, but said the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel had reported that a male guest killed himself there.

The actor-comedian-chef (how’s that for a triple threat) passed away Monday night after a long illness.  He was 75. 

DeLuise was best known for his frequent collaborations with director Mel Brooks and actor Burt Reynolds. 

Brooks cast him in several of his films, including “The Twelve Chairs,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Silent Movie,” “History of the World Part I” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” DeLuise was also the voice of Pizza the Hutt in Brooks’ “Star Wars” parody, “Spaceballs.”

Opposite his friend Burt Reynolds, DeLuise starred in, “The End,” “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” ‘Smokey and the Bandit II,” “The Cannonball Run” and “Cannonball Run II.”

Even more, some might know him for his two cookbooks or frequent appearances on morning shows, whiping up his favorite dishes. 

Also?  There was always that unmistakable chortle. 

Golden Girls and Maude star Bea Arthur died today at age 86. Thank you for being a friend.  I don’t know why I’m crushed about this more than I should be.  [Los Angeles Times]

The author died yesterday.  Some considered him our greatest author.  I’ve never read anything by him, to be honest, but I was deeply moved by the obituary from Tomorrow Museum.

There is a distrust of technology and human nature in Ballard’s novels, a sense of the absurdity of shopping malls and an intuitive understanding how architecture, especially in its most banal forms, affects our emotions. Ballard shunned email and Internet, it was irrelevant to his obsessions. His concern was space, the body, travel, the dark underbelly of a suburban tract housing development.

Even if you’ve never read anything from Ballard, you might be remotely aware of Empire of the Sun. That fictionalized novel was turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg.  You might also be vaguely aware of Crash, his 1973 novel, which posited modern society found traffic accidents sexually stimulating and was turned into a movie by David Cronenberg.

After reading Joanne’s obituary for him though, I feel deeply ashamed to never getting around to reading him.  Why is it that in many of these cases an artist’s death is what finally pushes us into exploring their creative work?

The literary legend passed away today at the age of 76.  Updike will best be remembered for his series of Rabbit novels: Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, etc.

It was lung cancer that struck down the titan at his howe in Beverly Farms, Mass., according to his longtime publisher Alfred A. Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir “Self-Consciousness” and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams.

He released more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s, winning virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for “Rabbit Is Rich” and “Rabbit at Rest,” and two National Book Awards.

Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanizing, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.

His settings ranged from the court of “Hamlet” to postcolonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburb, the great new territory of mid-century fiction.

Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by “penny-pinching parents,” united by “the patriotic cohesion of World War II” and blessed by a “disproportionate share of the world’s resources,” the postwar, suburban boom of “idealistic careers and early marriages.”

He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation’s confusion over the civil rights and women’s movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment.

On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing. Last year, judges of Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction Prize voted Updike lifetime achievement honors.
But more often he was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man’s interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it “to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached.”

It’s time to dust off that collection of Rabbit novels and a few short story collections. It’s been too long since I’ve strolled down the literary cobbelstone with Updike – the finest example of literatary writing blended with an acute populism.

He also had a hilarious cameo on The Simpsons once, as the ghost writer of Krusty the Klown’s autobiography.   So, you know, that makes his doubly awesome.  He leaves behind four children and his second wife, Martha.

For now you can chew over Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu - a profile between Ted Williams and his relationship with Red Sox fans.

Oddly, I had never even heard of Bettie Page until the biopic with Gretchen Mol came out a few years ago.  Page was  best known as a fetish pinup model in the 1950’s; she was the second girl to grace the cover of Playboy.  The first being Marilyn Monroe.  She was 85.

Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page’s family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.

“She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality,” Roesler said. “She is the embodiment of beauty.”

Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.

The influential comedian and all-around badass died yesterday at the age of 81 due to complications from diabetes.

“Moore starred in dozens of films but is best known for 1975’s “Dolemite,” a low-budget mix of kung fu and bawdy humor that he wrote, produced and starred in as the titular wisecracking pimp,” wrote MTV News. “The film was a huge hit, spawned many knockoffs (not to mention a few sequels of its own) and was declared — many years later, of course — to be “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of blaxploitation films” by The New York Times.”

I remember renting Dolemite one year in college, probably cause I was drunk and thought the cover of the movie was humorous, but it’s easily on par with Superfly and Shaft. Just an all-around great movie.

Literary icon David Foster Wallace was found dead in his home over the weekend. The author was 46. He was best known for his sprawling novel “Infinite Jest” but will always be near and dear to me for “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” and “Consider the Lobster.”� Jesus, I shouldn’t be as sad about this as I am.� Some links: Jay McInerney reviews Infinite Jest (1996), DFW on Charlie Rose (1997), NYT Mag profile (1996), DFW profiles David Lynch in Premiere (1996), DFW on John Updike in the New York Observer (1997), first chapter of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997), interviewed by Gus Van Sant in Dazed & Confused (1998), “Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Breakup Letter At Page 20″ in The Onion (2003), “Consider the Lobster” in Gourmet (2004), Where to go after Infinite Jest? in n+1 (2005), Kenyon Commencement Address (2005), profile of John Ziegler in The Atlantic (2005), Profile of Roger Federer in Play (2006), interview with John Krasinksi about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2008), Michiko Kakutani remembers (2008).� Links rounded up by Rex.

Though you might not recognize his name, you certainly would recognize the voice of Don LaFontaine.� The man who makes everything exciting, the man who has provided his voice to more than 5,000 trailers and 350,000 commercials.

Yes, Don LaFontaine is best known as “the movie voiceover guy” but also as the man who coined the phrase “In a world…” but that’s probably not the best thing to put in an obituary.� He died of complications from pneumothorax yesterday at the age of 68.�

LaFontaine most recently spoofed his own image for Geico, perhaps lending himself the most notoriety of his career. It is said he would record about 60 promotions in a week, sometimes as many as 35 in one day. The guy was a beast, the highest compliment I could give someone.

His deep and thrilling voice and particular diction could make any crap movie seem important and the good ones seem legendary.� His voice was one of the reasons to watch and love trailers in the first place.� Not surprisingly, he narrated a video about his own biography.

Aint It Cool has rounded up a nice sampling of his work. He will be missed. [via]

Dave Freeman, 47, co-author of the popular and much imitated book 100 Things to Do Before You Die, has in fact died after banging his head after falling in his home last week.� “This life is a short journey,” the book says. “How can you make sure you fill it with the most fun and that you visit all the coolest places on earth before you pack those bags for the very last time?” Indeed, for Freeman, the journey was a short one.� He visited about half the places on his list.� Interestingly, Freeman, who grew up in California, moved to New York.� He watched both airplanes crash into the World Trade Towers from his apartment only blocks away.� Soon after he moved back to California to be closer to his family.� [Washington Post]

I know he passed on Tuesday night, but it’s still hard to believe that he’s gone.� Everyone went through a DMB phase at least for a few years in high school and then in college.� I can’t say I’ve listened to them much since the album after Crash, but they are consummate musicians.� Leroi Moore, the saxophone player, was one of the most enjoyable parts of the band.

Here’s the band performing Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” in what would be Leroi’s final concert. Listen to the way the saxophone on the song just hits all the right moments.

M4a: Dave Matthews Band – “Bartender (Lillywhite Sessions)”