Franco Zeffirelli

popular name: Cameron Mitchell

date_of_death: July 6, 1994

age: 75

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Burly, tough-guy leading man and character actor famous as the hard-drinking, hardworking Buck Cannon on the TV series "High Chaparral." Mitchell began acting on Broadway in the late 1930s before signing a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and appearing in such films as Cass Timberlane (1945) and Homecoming (1948). After playing many character roles and occasional leads in B action films and Westerns, Mitchell began to make some headway after playing Happy, one of Willy Loman's (Fredric March) sons in a film adaptation of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" (1951). A breakthrough into big-budget, big-star films came when he was one of the three male consorts paired up with Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall in "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953). Prominent leads--as in "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955), opposite Doris Day and James Cagney--continued for a number of years. Throughout the 1960s, he appeared in spaghetti Westerns and Italian films―including several collaborations with director Mario Bava―then on U.S. television. From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, he appeared in numerous exploitation and horror films and television shows including The Toolbox Murders, Slaughter and The Tomb.

popular name: Hedy Lamarr

date_of_death: January 19, 2000

age: 85

cause_of_death: Heart disease

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Hedy Lamarr, the raven-haired Viennese beauty who became one of the reigning temptresses in Hollywood films in the 1930's and 40's, especially as Delilah vamping Victor Mature's Samson was was an Austrian-born Austro-Hungarian-American film actress and inventor. She was a film star during Hollywood's golden age. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her first husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood. She became a film star with her performance in Algiers (1938). Her MGM films include Lady of the Tropics (1939), Boom Town (1940), H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), and White Cargo (1942). Her greatest success was as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's Bible-inspired Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film, The Female Animal (1958). She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Interesting to note that at the beginning of World War II, she and avant-garde composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Upon her passing Hedy Lamarr's well-visited grave can be found at Wiener Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, Austria.

popular name: Dean Martin

date_of_death: December 25, 1995

age: 78

cause_of_death: Acute respiratory failure resulting from emphysema and lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Throughout his career Dean Martin slyly and hilariously exploited the myth that his supreme relaxation was the result of knocking back a few too many martinis. In fact Dean was the master of the insinuating ad-lib and a natural at self-parody. When he died at the age of 78, Dean Martin was and will forever be the quintessential lounge lizard.