Check out photos and video of actors, filmmakers and musicians who’ve recently died, including a man who still don’t get no respect, the grandfather of surf flicks, a song writer who just wanted to have fun, a folk rocker who was talking politics until the day he died, and a jazz man who could really blow.

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He still don’t get no respect! Rodney Dangerfield’s Widow Ends Suit Against Comic’s Daughter

By Erik Larson

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) — Rodney Dangerfield’s widow settled a copyright-infringement lawsuit in which she accused the late comedian’s daughter of wrongfully trying to sell video footage of his one-hour Las Vegas act.

Joan Dangerfield alleged in a 2006 complaint that Melanie Roy-Friedman “defrauded her father” by trying to register a federal copyright for the video performance after the comedian’s death in 2004 at age 82.

“All copyrights to Rodney Dangerfield’s act are held by Joan Dangerfield, who owns all of her late husband’s intellectual property,” Patricia Glaser, Joan Dangerfield’s attorney, said today in a statement.

A confidential settlement was reached in April and both sides asked the judge July 31 to dismiss the case, according to the court docket. A trial had been scheduled for Sept. 2. Prior to the deal, Dangerfield’s daughter suggested in court papers that she was a joint author of the act.

Rodney Dangerfield, best known for his punch line “I don’t get no respect,” speculated before his death that his daughter planned to profit from the video when he died, according to the complaint. Roy-Friedman had refused to return the master copy of the video when he requested it, Dangerfield’s widow said in a statement when the suit was filed.

“Rodney had always zealously guarded the act and had previously refused substantial monetary offers from various producers to videotape and exploit his act,” Dangerfield’s widow said in a 2006 statement about the case.

Dangerfield’s autobiography, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs,” was published the same year as his death. He was born in 1921 in Babylon, New York.

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Robert Hazard, Who Wrote Lauper Hit Song, Dies

Robert Hazard – Escalator of Life (1982)

By Chris Dolmetsch

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) — Robert Hazard, the Philadelphia musician and songwriter who wrote Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” has died. He was 59.

Hazard died in a Massachusetts hospital after surgery, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, citing his widow. No cause was cited by the newspaper.

“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was written by Hazard while he was in a motel bathtub in Delaware, the Inquirer said, and he recorded a demo of it in 1979. Lauper’s version of the bouncy pop anthem reached No. 2 on Billboard’s pop charts and has since been covered by artists including Miley Cyrus, who featured it on her most recent album.

Born Robert Rimato, Hazard started singing and songwriting at about age 10 and later formed Robert Hazard and the Heroes, a rock band that became a fixture on the Philadelphia bar scene in the 1980s, the Inquirer reported.

The band’s break came in 1982, when Rolling Stone magazine writer Kurt Loder wrote an article after seeing the group perform, and Hazard’s song “Escalator of Life” hit the charts soon afterward, the Inquirer said, citing Hazard’s autobiography.

Hazard is survived by his second wife, Susan, two sons, Rex and Remy, and a daughter, Corrina, from his first marriage, the Inquirer said.

Cyndi Lauper – Hey Now – Girls Just Want to Have Fun

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’60s songwriter Erik Darling dies at 74

By ESTES THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Erik Darling, the reedy-voiced guitarist and banjo player who deftly stepped in when Pete Seeger left the pioneering folk music group The Weavers, has died after battling lymphoma. He was 74.

He died Sunday in Chapel Hill, not far from Raleigh.

Darling was perhaps best known for his hit “Walk Right In” and for his arrangement of the iconic Southern true-crime ballad “Tom Dooley,” which inspired The Kingston Trio’s recording of the song that topped the charts in 1958. He was a member of the Tarriers, known for its version of “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” — the signature tune of Harry Belafonte.

Darling also replaced Seeger in the Weavers in the late 1950s, a few years after the band was blacklisted for its political views.

Fred Hellerman, an original member of the group, said he learned of his friend’s death by e-mail earlier this week.

“He was immensely talented — immensely talented,” Hellerman, 81, said Thursday in a telephone interview from his home in Weston, Conn. “When he came into the Weavers to replace Pete Seeger, which was a pretty tall order, he not only did that, but he brought so much of his own talents to bear that it was overwhelming. It really was.”

Hellerman said Darling moved to Chapel Hill a couple of years ago to be near Willard Svanoe, a fellow member of The Rooftop Singers, the band with which he recorded “Walk Right In,” a No. 1 hit for Vanguard Records in 1963.

In an e-mail posted on Darling’s Web site, Svanoe said Darling died early Aug. 3.

The Weavers first burst on the scene in 1948 in Greenwich Village and had their first national hit in 1950 with “Goodnight Irene.” But during the red scare of the 1950s, their politics came under scrutiny and the group was brought in to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

They soon found themselves blacklisted, and disbanded in 1953. It wasn’t until a Christmas 1955 concert at Carnegie Hall that they re-emerged to rejoin the national folk music revival they’d helped launch.

“He was an absolutely logical person to be brought in” after Seeger’s departure, Hellerman said. “Of the next generation of Weavers, I mean he was so outstanding that it was hard then or even now to imagine who else we could have brought in other than Erik.”

Hellerman said he didn’t learn until many years later that Darling was uncomfortable with his band mates’ leftist leanings.

Hellerman said they last spoke about a year ago, but he had received a package from Darling in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It was a copy of Darling’s recently published memoir, “I’d Give My Life — A Journey by Folk Music.” Hellerman said he couldn’t put it down.

Hellerman said he had been meaning to write to Darling and tell him how much he enjoyed the book.

“My big regret is that I didn’t get to do it,” he said. “I did have the chance, but I didn’t take advantage of it.”

Oh Sinner Man – The Weavers, including political commentary from Erik Darling.

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British playwright Simon Gray dead at 71

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) — British writer Simon Gray, author of literate, bittersweet plays and acerbic diaries, has died at 71, his publisher said Thursday.

Granta Books said Gray died Wednesday in London. He had been diagnosed with cancer last year.

Gray wrote more than 30 plays, including “Quartermaine’s Terms,” “Otherwise Engaged” and “The Old Masters,” as well as five novels and the screenplay for the 1987 film “A Month in the Country.”

A rakish figure who claimed to have consumed three bottles of champagne a day for years, Gray also was steeped in the academic world.

Born in Hampshire, southern England, on Oct. 21, 1936 and educated at Canada’s Dalhousie University and the University of Cambridge, Gray taught English for many years at the University of London’s Queen Mary college.

Universities provided the setting for several of his best-known plays, including “Butley,” the story of a dyspeptic English professor in meltdown that was turned into a movie starring Alan Bates, and “The Common Pursuit,” about the aspirations and disappointments of a group of students working on a literary magazine.

In 1995, the West End run of Gray’s play “Cell Mates” was famously curtailed when star Stephen Fry suffered a breakdown and disappeared, turning up several days later in Belgium. As was his habit, Gray turned the misadventure into material, writing a book about the episode, “Fat Chance.”

Although Gray’s plays about the misadventures of middle-class intellectuals sometimes seemed to have gone out of fashion, he was respected by heavyweight collaborators including playwright Harold Pinter, who directed several Gray works, and Bates.

Several of his plays have had successful recent revivals. “Butley” was staged on Broadway in 2006 with Nathan Lane in the title role, and “The Common Pursuit” received strong reviews at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory this year.

In recent years, Gray gained a new following for a series of frank and witty memoirs — including “The Smoking Diaries,” “The Year of the Jouncer” and “The Last Cigarette” — chronicling his battles with theater producers, alcoholism and a 60-a-day cigarette habit.

Gray is survived by his wife Victoria, and by a son and daughter from his first marriage.

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Surf film innovator Bud Browne dead at 96

2008 Surf Night – Honoring Bud Browne

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (AP) — Bud Browne, an innovator in surf filmmaking, has died in San Luis Obispo after a brief illness. He was 96.

Officials from Wheeler-Smith Mortuary and Crematory said Browne died July 25 at a local residential care facility.

Starting in the 1950s, Browne filmed more than a dozen surf movies, including “Goin’ Surfing,” “Hawaiian Surf Movie.”

An avid surfer himself, Browne’s work was marked by his water shots that brought viewers close to surfers.

Classic TV commercial with Bud Browne footage from his film “LOCKED IN”

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Renowned Egyptian director Chahine dies at age 82

By LEE KEATH
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Youssef Chahine, one of Egypt’s most lauded movie directors whose films over nearly five decades often went on Fellini-esque flights of fancy and tackled social ills and Islamic fundamentalism, died July 27 in Cairo. He was 82 years old.

His death comes about four weeks after he fell into a coma following a brain hemorrhage. Chahine was flown to France in critical condition for treatment but later sent back to Al Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo, where he died Sunday, according to Egypt’s official new agency, MENA.

Chahine’s eclectic work made him one of the few Egyptian directors to gain an audience abroad, particularly in Europe and France, where he won a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement Sunday calling Chahine one of cinema’s “most celebrated servants” and “a fervent defender of freedom of expression.”

“Youssef Chahine sought throughout his life to denounce, through images, censure, fanaticism and fundamentalism,” Sarkozy said.

At home, his films raised controversy for their frank portrayal of sexuality, their sharp criticism of political oppression and, in his later works, their denunciations of rising Islamic extremism in Egypt.

In 1994, a fundamentalist lawyer succeeded in getting a court to ban his film “The Emigrant” because its plot was based on the story of Joseph, found in the Bible and Quran. Most interpretations of Islam ban the depiction of prophets.

Chahine was born on Jan. 25, 1926 to a Christian family of Lebanese origin in Alexandria, the Mediterranean port known at the time as a cosmopolitan city, with large European and other foreign communities. Throughout his more than 40 films and documentaries, Chahine sought to recapture and defend the spirit of multicultural tolerance against the forces he saw undermining it — fundamentalism, dictatorship and imperialism.

Chahine grew up speaking French and English better than Arabic, and many of his films were French co-productions, bringing criticism by some at home that he was not Arab — or Egyptian — enough. But his early films became classics of social realism, giving gritty depictions of the lowest in Egyptian society. In his 1958 “Cairo Station,” Chahine himself starred as Qenawi, a mentally retarded newspaper seller at Cairo’s main railroad station, who becomes obsessed with a woman selling lemonade.

“The Land” in 1969, seen by some as his greatest film, told an epic story of peasant farmers and landowners struggling over land in the Nile Delta.

In his Alexandria Trilogy — “Alexandria, Why?”, “An Egyptian Story,” and “Alexandria Again and Forever” — Chahine turned autobiographical, recounting his childhood in his hometown, his love of Hollywood and his ambiguous feeling toward the United States, which he was drawn to but also saw as an overweening power. The 1978 “Alexandria, Why?” has a scene of the Statue of Liberty giving a sneering laugh at immigrants arriving in America.

“I have a problem with America, you can call it a dilemma,” Chahine — who studied acting for two years at Pasadena Playhouse in California in the 1940s — once told an interviewer. “I used to love it very much, I studied there, my first love was there … I don’t hate America as some think … but it is difficult to sympathize with it.”

The trilogy broke with the realist style, bringing in wild scenes of fantasy, musical numbers and surrealism that drew comparisons with Italian director Frederico Fellini.

“Alexandria, Why?” also raised eyebrows by telling the story of two taboo love affairs — one homosexual between an Egyptian man and a British solider, the other between a Muslim man and a Jewish woman.

His later films tackled Islamic conservativism. After the banning of “The Emigrant,” Chahine responded with the historical film “Destiny,” about the 12th Century Muslim philosopher Averroes, whose books were banned by extremists in the Islamic kingdom of Andalus in what is now Spain.

His last movie, 2007’s “This is Chaos” — co-directed with his protege Deg De Khaled Youssef — was a sharp criticism of the Egyptian government’s crackdown on democracy activists, depicting a corrupt police officer who takes bribes and tortures his detainees.

Chahine is survived by his French wife Colette. He had no children.

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American jazz saxophonist Johnny Griffin who played with the greats dies in France

Johnny Griffin solo

PARIS (AP) — Jazz saxophonist Johnny Griffin, who played with America’s greats from Thelonious Monk to Lionel Hampton but chose to live in France, died hours before a concert, his agent said Saturday. He was 80.

Griffin, whose career spanned more than a half-century, was found dead the morning of July 26 in the music room of his home in Mauprevoir in western France by his wife Miriam, said Helene Manfredi, his agent for 28 years. The exact cause of death was not clear.

Griffin, who had played in the Riviera town of Hyeres on Monday, was to give a concert Friday night in the central Cher region.

A Chicago native, the diminutive Griffin took up the sax early on, eventually preferring the tenor saxophone and taking on the nickname “the Little Giant” for the big sounds he blew out of the instrument at breakneck speed.

Born April 24, 1928, Griffin got an early start at Chicago’s Du Sable High School where Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington and other greats grew into their music. He graduated then toured with Hampton’s big band. After two years in the army, he played in Chicago and New York, gaining a national reputation with his hard-bop improvisations. In the late 1950s, he played with Art Blakey and Monk.

In the early 1960s, the sax master moved to France where a collection of jazz artists was gathering. He then hopscotched to the Netherlands and back to France. He toured Europe, keeping up the pace even in his final years with recent concerts in Spain, Portugal and Tunisia, his agent said.

Griffin’s 1958 album “A Blowing Session,” a hard bop jam session with John Coltrane, drummer Art Blakey and others, remains among his signature works.

Griffin is survived by his wife Miriam and four children, one of whom lives in France and the others in the United States.