1. Stan Lee (an American comic-book writer, editor, film executive producer, actor, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics) (December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018).
2. Dorothy Patrick (June 3, 1921 – May 31, 1987)
She was a Chesterfield Girl Model when she entered the cinema, making her film debut in “Up in Arms” (1944). Signed to MGM, she appeared mostly in westerns to include “Boys’ Ranch” (1946), “New Orleans” (1947), “House by the River” (1950), “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952), “Outlaw Stallion” (1954) and “Thunder Pass” (1954). Her last movies were in 1955 as Dorothy Davis Patrick at 20th Century Fox: Violent Saturday (1955) as the wife of Victor Mature and The View from Pompey’s Head (1955) with Richard Egan and Dana Wynter. That same year saw Dorothy take a hiatus from Hollywood to raise her two adolescent sons back East in Short Hills, a New Jersey suburb of New York City. Dorothy Patrick died of a heart attack at age 65, and is interred at Westwood Memorial Park.
3. Meredith Lynn MacRae (May 30, 1944 – July 14, 2000)
MacRae was born to Gordon and Sheila MacRae. Her father was stationed with the Army Air Corps in Houston at the time of her birth. Both of her parents went on to be actors. She is the sister of William Gordon MacRae, Robert Bruce MacRae, and Heather MacRae. She was known for her roles as Sally Ann on My Three Sons (1963–1965) and as Billie Jo on Petticoat Junction (1966–1970). MacRae also made guest appearances on such shows as The Donald O’Connor Show (1968 version), The Dean Martin Show (1971), The F.B.I., The Rockford Files, Fantasy Island, Webster, CHiPS, Love American Style, and Magnum, P.I.. Her game show appearances included: Funny You Should Ask, Match Game, What’s My Line?, I’ve Got a Secret, Tattletales (with then-husband Greg Mullavey), Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, Password (ABC version), $10,000 Pyramid, $25,000 Pyramid, Break the Bank, Celebrity Whew!, Beat the Clock, Card Sharks, and Family Feud.
On July 14, 2000, MacRae died at her Manhattan Beach home at age 56 from complications of brain cancer. Per her wishes, her body was cremated, and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
4. Andrew John Leonard Fletcher (July 8, 1961 – May 26, 2022)
Fletcher was a keyboard player, DJ, and a founding member of the electronic band Depeche Mode. In 2020, Fletcher was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Depeche Mode. Fletcher formed Depeche Mode in 1980 with Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Vince Clarke. Over the course of Fletcher’s tenure with the group, they sold over 100 million records worldwide and had 54 songs chart on the UK Singles Chart. The group quickly became one of the defining acts of the synth-pop era, with hit songs “Just Can’t Get Enough,” “See You” and “Dreaming of Me,” before taking a darker turn following Clarke’s departure and eventually conquering the American underground with harder-edged and more provocatively themed singles like “People Are People,” “Blasphemous Rumors” and “Strangelove.” The group’s 1990 blockbuster Violator, and accompanying worldwide crossover smashes “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy the Silence” confirmed Depeche Mode as one of the biggest global acts of the pre-grunge alt-rock era.
In addition to his work in Depeche Mode, Fletcher briefly ran an imprint of storied British indie label Mute Records called Toast Hawaii, signing electro-pop duo Client. He also spent time as a restauranteur, opening the Gascogne restaurant in London’s St. John’s Wood district in the ’90s, and did some side performing as a DJ, touring briefly in the mid-’10s. Fletcher married his longtime girlfriend Gráinne Mullan in January 1993 and the couple had two children, Megan and Joe. Fletcher died on May 26, 2022 at age 60.
5. Michael Alden Norell (October 4, 1937 – May 12, 2023)
He was a screenwriter, actor, and executive producer who starred as Captain Henry “Hank” Stanley in the television series Emergency! from 1972 to 1978. After graduating college Norell entered the Army where he spent the next five years, leaving with the rank of captain. After his stint in the Army he went to work for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He went to New York City not too long after returning to civilian life and worked at acting full-time. Six months later he arrived in Hollywood where he won the role of Captain Henry “Hank” Stanley for the show Emergency!. In addition to acting in the show, Norell also wrote four episodes of Emergency! which began his career as a screenwriter. After Emergency! ended, Norell turned to screenwriting. He wrote for shows such as The Love Boat, Love Boat: The Next Wave, Nash Bridges, and The Magnificent Seven, among others. His screenwriting credits also include several made-for-TV movies such as Doomsday Rock, Three on a Date, The Covergirl and the Cop, Pals, Barnum, Christmas Comes to Willow Creek, and The Incident for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. He was married, and had two children. Norrell died in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on May 12, 2023, age 85.
6. Alan White (June 14, 1949 – May 26, 2022)
White is best remembered for his tenure in the rock band Yes. He joined Yes in 1972 as a replacement for original drummer, Bill Bruford. Following the death of bassist Chris Squire in 2015, White became the longest-remaining member in the band. In 1969 White had joined John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band, after Lennon invited him to play at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, followed by a show at the Lyceum Ballroom. He notably played drums on the singles “Instant Karma!” and “Imagine”, as well as on eight of the ten tracks on Lennon’s 1971 Imagine album. White’s first album with Yes was 1973’s Tales from Topographic Oceans, which topped the UK chart and made the U.S. Top 10. He and the band followed during the next decade with Relayer, Going for the One, Tormato — all of which made the Top 10 in the U.S. and UK and went gold or platinum. The band’s 1980 disc Drama reached No. 18 in the US. After a live set and compilation album, the band scored its best-selling U.S. album with 90125, which spawned the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”
In addition to his work with Yes and John Lennon, White performed on over 50 albums by other performers, notably George Harrison, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, Terry Reid, Joe Cocker and The Ventures. White was married for over 40 years to his wife Gigi, and they had two children. White died on May 26, 2022 at age 72, following a brief illness.
7. Linnea Eleanor “Bunny” Yeager (March 13, 1929 – May 25, 2014)
Yeager was a photographer and pin-up model. She graduated from Miami Edison High School and afterwards enrolled at the Coronet Modeling School and Agency. She won numerous local beauty pageants including in rapid succession Queen of Miami, Florida Orchid Queen, Miss Trailercoach of Dade County, Miss Army & Air Force, Miss Personality of Miami Beach, Queen of the Sports Carnival and Cheesecake Queen of 1951. Yeager became one of the most photographed models in Miami. Photos of Yeager appeared in over 300 newspapers and magazines. Yeager also designed and sewed many of the outfits she and her models wore, at one time boasting that she never wore the same outfit twice while modeling. Bruno Banani, the German fashion company, has developed a line of swimwear based on Yeager’s designs from the 1950s. Yeager entered photography to save money by copying her modeling photographs, enrolling in a night class at a vocational school in 1953. Her career as a professional photographer began when a picture of Maria Stinger, taken for her first school assignment, was sold to Eye magazine for the cover of the March 1954 issue. Yeager was one of the first photographers to photograph her models outdoors with natural light. She met Bettie Page in 1954, and took most of the photographs of her that year.
8. Donald Crisp, born George William Crisp (July 27, 1882 – May 25, 1974)
He was an early producer, director and screenwriter. His career lasted from the early silent film era into the 1960s. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942 for his performance in How Green Was My Valley. From 1908 to 1930, Crisp, in addition to directing dozens of films, also appeared in nearly 100 silent films, though many in bit or small parts. One notable exception was his casting by D.W. Griffith as General Ulysses S. Grant in Griffith’s landmark film The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Another was his role in Griffith’s 1919 film Broken Blossoms as “Battling Burrows”, the brutal and abusive father of the film’s heroine, Lucy Burrows . Crisp worked as an assistant to Griffith for several years and learned much during this time from Griffith, an early master of film story telling who was influential in advancing a number of early techniques, such as cross cutting in editing his films. This experience fostered a similar passion in Crisp to become a director in his own right. His first directing credit was Little Country Mouse, made in 1914. Many directors (and actors) would find themselves turning out a dozen or more films in a single year at this time. Over the next fifteen years, Crisp directed some 70 films in all, most notably The Navigator (1924) with Buster Keaton and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) with Douglas Fairbanks.
With the advent of “talkies”, Crisp abandoned directing and devoted himself entirely to acting after 1930. He became a much sought after character actor. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he appeared in a wide range of roles alongside some of the era’s biggest stars, including Katharine Hepburn in The Little Minister (1934) and A Woman Rebels (1936), Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Bette Davis and Henry Fonda in That Certain Woman (1937), Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1939), Errol Flynn in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and The Sea Hawk (1940) and Gregory Peck in The Valley of Decision (1945).
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