34 thoughts on “Remembering Those We Lost In 2024 (Entertainers or Otherwise)”

1. I definitely felt the loss of Dame Maggie Smith. Several friends mentioned it as well, so I wasn’t alone in this 🙂

2. from your list, only Gena Rowlands and Kris Kristofferson had a profound personal effect on me. I am very sorry for the loss of the others, all of whom gave so much of themselves to enhance our culture, but I cannot claim a personal response to their passing. In past years I have been profoundly affected by the deaths of Sam Peckinpah, Merle Haggard, Prince, and personal friends Tim Hardin, Ron Davies, Virgil Frye, and Chuck E Weiss.

3. I hear ya Bill. I am also aware that the passing of your wife hit you hard and I just want you to know that you and your daughter remain in my prayers. May 2025 be a better year for you and your daughter.

4. I hear ya June 🙂 Dame Maggie Smith was always fantastic to watch 🙂 Did you ever see her in Downton Abbey? 🙂

5. John, the passing of my wife was the end of my life. I never experienced anything as horrible as that and after nearly a year, it is even worse. And I have lost my mother father, two of my sisters, and a couple of girlfriends…Hard as those losses were, they did not compare to the loss of my wife. I am lucky she gave me a daughter to love and devote myself to in her absence.

6. I hear ya Bill. As I said before, I sincerely wish you all of the luck in the world and hope that 2025 is a better year for you and your daughter because you both deserve it 🙂 Also, you are a national treasure to me 🙂

7. Hated to loose Chita Rivera. She was a force of nature. Wonderful Broadway performer.

8. Three names from the list jump out at me. Bob Newhart was someone whose TV work was immense and someone who I always enjoyed catching whenever his show aired (the 80s Newhart in my case) on late night TV in Ireland back in the day when I was a teenager – there just seemed to be something so comfortingly attractive about that (to me) far away world his characters inhabited.

   Kris Kristoffersen, a man whose music was always there.

   Donald Sutherland, such a wonderfully strange film and TV presence yet reassuringly familiar too.

9. She was the highlight of the show for me 🙂

10. Gena Rowlands was one of my favourite actresses, and ‘Goria’ is still one of my favourite modern American films. Maggie Smith was something of an institution in Britain, but I was greatly saddened by the unexpected death of Timothy West. Not least because he left behind his actress wife Prunella Scales who has been suffering from dementia for many years, and she must be wondering where he has gone.

    Best wishes, Pete.

11. Sorry for the late reply Pam 🙂 I was busy yesterday 🙂 As you probably know, I feel the same about Chita Rivera as well. On an unrelated note, Letterboxd recently asked Pamela Anderson to name her four favorite films recently and she not to spoil anything, but she talks briefly about her love of the late Gena Rowlands as an actress. Click the link below 🙂

12. I hear ya Pete. I heard about Timothy West and it saddens me too that not only is he gone, but that his wife Prunella Scales has dementia and we say to ourselves, West should have at least lived longer.

13. Sorry for the late response Colin 🙂 I have just been busy 🙂 I too always loved Bob Newhart’s humor – he hails from Illinois like I do 🙂 Though unlike me of course, he had been living in California for a long time by the time of his death last year.

    I always loved Kris Kristofferson as not only an actor and singer, but as a human being and activist. I loved his films he was in too like Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and (yes) Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. You are probably bound to disagree with me there, but I love the film. Back in 2005 (I was 20 at the time) he voiced a character in the western video game Gun and the reason I mention that is because like myself, you too are a huge fan of westerns 🙂 I am long retired from video game playing, but when I want to relive memories of that video game, I go on youtube to watch a playthrough – it is my version of an old man watching a game of baseball or football or whatever you want to name 🙂 What sport is popular TV watching in Ireland or Greece since you told me that you live there now? 🙂

    Some of the big name directors that Donald Sutherland got to work with would have made anyone positively envious at the time like Robert Altman, Nicholas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci to name just three 🙂

    Thoughts? 🙂

14. I was watching an report on YouTube that showed famous people who had passed this year. Some I hadn’t even known about – like Donald Sutherland.
    I never made it to the end of the report. It was just too much.

    I gotta go … my cat needs attention.

15. That is completely understandable jcalberta. I too understand that death is a part of life, but it really sucks when we lose someone beloved – whether it be a friend, family member or celebrity.

16. That’s very cool. I’m a big fan of Gena Rowlands. She was a terrific actor, one of the best.

17. Not a big sports fan, John. Soccer is probably the biggest game in Greece, and in Ireland too although rugby and Gaelic games (hurling and Gaelic football) would run that pretty close.

    Something that I enjoyed about the shape of Sutherland’s career was the way early on he would pop up intermittently in various British ITC shows, then some big Hollywood picture, and then maybe some more obscure art house affair.

18. i first started feeling old when i was looking at coming attraction posters in the lobby of a movie theatre and said to myself. “Oh great, Donald Sutherland has a new picture coming out.|” Then I looked a little closer and realized it was Kiefer Sutherland on the poster, not his father.

19. For me, Sutherland’s passing was a shocker. He seemed to be working right up to the end.
    But most everyone on that list are known to me and appreciated in what they gave us.

20. Sorry for the late jacalberta 🙂 Past few days have been hectic 🙂 I agree with you 100% on everything you have said jcalberta 🙂

21. Hard to believe isn’t it Bill? Sorry for the late reply, I have been busy these past few days 🙂

22. Gotcha regarding sports Colin 🙂 Same here 🙂 Nevertheless, it is entertaining to watch to see what happens regarding teams 🙂

    Same here regarding Sutherland – though I caught him in films first before tracking down some of the British television stuff (I live in the US) 🙂 BTW, sorry for the late response, past few days have been hectic 🙂

23. Hi, John. I was sad about Shelley Duvall and Teri Garr because they were still fairly “young”. Teri had such comic timing, like in Young Frankenstein, which I was guffawing over just a few months ago when we caught it on TV. Of course, Madeline Khan, who’s not on your list, but who also isn’t with us anymore, was a comic genius. I still think of the scene where the monster’s approaching her and she’s sort of babbling and going, “What are you doing? What are you going to do to me? Listen, I have to go. I have an appointment at 11…” LOL !!! Just the best. I always think of Shelley and all the screaming she had to do in The Shining. I’ll miss Kris K., too, because he was in Blade, one of our favorite movies, and even though he was up there he did a great tough guy in that. Sutherland, too, like a lot of your comments said. He was in SO MANY things… waaaaah. They’re complete strangers, but it’s like we know them!

24. regarding selizabryangmailcom ‘s comment than mentions why we are so affected te the deaths o these strangers…after jeff beck died, my wife asked me why i always got so emotional when these people i never knew died, i wrote this song to answer her..

    https://billwhite.bandcamp.com/track/spitting-in-my-own-face

25. Hi, Bill. I went to your link and heard the song, and all I can think is that maybe now your wife stops asking you that question, lol !! What a bittersweet confessional piece you wrote. It’s very poignant. I love the lyric (along with “spitting in my own face,” of course) “worshipping the work of my own hands” and the folksy melancholy. I just recently told someone Nick Cave’s voice reminded me a little of Johnny Cash, and now I’m gonna say YOUR voice reminded me a little of Johnny Cash, lol. Is everyone J.C. in my eyes? No, not really. But you reminded me of him too. And in the end, yeah, we know these celebs. They don’t know us. They don’t know we’re even alive. But we come to know them, their faces, their style, watch them change, even get old, the ones we grew up with and have known our whole lives. I think your song’s a wonderful nod to being sort of “invisible” to someone but having strong feelings and nostalgia toward them, regardless.

    Thanks for sharing! 🙂

26. selizabryangmailcom….although we do not know the celebrity personally, their work is a part of the culture we live in, so when they die, a part of our world is gone. thanks for listening to my song. i never thought of myself as sounding like johnny cash, but when i was recording an album in 1998, the engineer , who had worked with nick cave, told me that the sound waves when i was singing matched exactly those of nick cave.

27. we lost luchino visconti in 1976, but it seems like yesterday, and yesterday as i rewatched the critically savaged “The Innocent,” i was struck by a thought that i felt compelled to share on this thread. In that era when movies were deserving of the title “art film,” standards were so high that the finest directors we criticized for the slightest aesthetic infraction. today, when it is sometimes difficult to find something worth watching even though you subscribe to a dozen movie channels, the most mediocre garbage is hailed as the promise of a new golden area. I just find it interesting that such cinema artists as visconti, fellini, bergman, bunuel, kurosawa, godard, bresson, and antonioni met with such negative critical response in their later films, while barely competent entertainers such as jordan peele and greta gerwig are hailed as new masters of the medium.

28. I know what you mean Bill 🙂 I too was amazed that any critic would savage Visconti’s The Innocent. I love all of Visconti’s films btw. I would rank The Innocent somewhere within my top 5 of his greatest films. I think we will have to agree to disagree on Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig though 🙂 I want to apologize for not communicating on here as much. The reason for it is because I am currently writing an essay on an Antonioni film. I can’t tell you which one because it will be posted on January 27th. I do not know If it is just me, but why does it seem like Antonioni’s films still have lots to say about the world we live in? Speaking of later works by master filmmakers, I still find it hard to believe that Kurosawa’s Ran was the work of a director in his 70’s. I mean it is such a grand achievement 🙂

29. John, I look forward to your Antonioni article. My point with Peele and Gerwig is that they are examples of lesser talents receiving accolades in this era of general mediocrity, while genius directors like Visconti were subject to harsher criticism because the standards of excellence were much higher then.

30. I agree Bill 🙂 It always pains me when these greats were subject to a higher standard back then and makes me grateful that it is different today. You probably knew this already but when Monica Vitti died a few years back, Italy’s then Minister of Culture labeled her the Queen of Italian Cinema – how is that for recognition? 🙂 Btw, I agree with him 🙂

31. i have to disagree regarding Monica Vitti. My love for actors is mostly dependent on how integral they are to the overall cinematic image. And in Antonioni’s films, she is the queen of Italian cinema. She has no peer. His images of her are exquisite, as are her performances in his films. But with the notable exception of White Nights, I find her presence in most of her other films rather dull and, in the case of Modesty Blaise, embarrssing. this does not take away from her unforgettable presence in some of Italy’s greatest films. Were I to choose a Queen of Italian cinema, however, my vote would go to Sophia Loren, who to me is a symbol of Italian feminine beauty and whose versatility has enhanced a broader swath of films, including Two Women, Boccaccio 50, Yesterday and Today, Marriage Italian Style, Sunflower, A Special Day, El Cid Aida, and A Countess from Hong Kong. Dont get me wrong. I wouldnt trade the Antonioni/Vitti films for all the Sophia Loren pictures. I just think Loren has represented Italy and Italian films to a greater general degree than Vitti.

32. With the passing of David Lynch, 2025 is off to a sorrowful start.

33. Bill, I just posted an obituary on David Lynch just now – click the link below:

    R.I.P. David Lynch (1946-2025)

34. We did lose some of the greats last year, including Donald Sutherland and Maggie Smith. I missed Bob Newhart more than I expected to.