Gena Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker “The Notebook,” has died. She was 94.

Rowlands’ death was confirmed Wednesday by representatives for her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. He revealed earlier this year that his mother had Alzheimer’s disease. TMZ reported that Rowlands died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California.

Operating outside the studio system, the husband-and-wife team of John Cassavetes and Rowlands created indelible portraits of working-class strivers and small-timers in such films as “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria” and “Faces.”

Rowlands made 10 films across four decades with Cassavetes, including “Minnie and Moskowitz” in 1971, “Opening Night” in 1977 and “Love Streams” in 1984.

She earned two Oscar nods for two of them: 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which she played a wife and mother cracking under the burden of domestic harmony, and “Gloria” in 1980, about a woman who helps a young boy escape the mob.

“He had a particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treated and how they solved and overcame what they needed to, so all his movies have some interesting women, and you don’t need many,” she told the AP in 2015.

In addition to the Oscar nominations, Rowlands earned three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Daytime Emmy and two Golden Globes. She was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2015 in recognition of her work and legacy in Hollywood. “You know what’s wonderful about being an actress? You don’t just live one life,” she said at the podium. “You live many lives.”

A new generation was introduced to Rowlands in her son’s blockbuster “The Notebook,” in which she played a woman whose memory is ravaged, looking back on a romance for the ages. Her younger self was portrayed by Rachel McAdams. (She also appeared in Nick Cassavetes’ “Unhook the Stars” in 1996.)

In her later years, Rowlands made several appearances in films and TV, including in “The Skeleton Key” and the detective series “Monk.” Her last appearance in a movie was in 2014, playing a retiree who befriends her gay dance instructor in “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.”

One of her career triumphs was 1974’s “Woman Under the Influence,” playing a lower middle-class housewife who, the actress said, “was totally vulnerable and giving; she had no sense of her own worth.” In “Gloria” (1980) she portrayed a faded showgirl menaced by her ex-boyfriend, a mobster boss. She was Oscar-nominated as best actress for both performances.

She and Cassavetes met at the American School of Dramatic Arts when both their careers were beginning. They married four months later. In 1960 Cassavetes used his earnings from the TV series “Johnny Stacatto” to finance his first film, “Shadows.” Partly improvised, shot with natural light on New York locations with a $40,000 budget, it was applauded by critics for its stark realism.

Gena (pronounced Jenna) Rowlands became a seasoned actor through live television drama and tours in “The Seven Year Itch” and “Time for Ginger” as well as off-Broadway.

Her big break came when Josh Logan cast her opposite Edward G. Robinson in Paddy Chayefsky’s play “Middle of the Night.” Her role as a young woman in love with her much older boss brought reviews hailing her as a new star.

MGM offered her a contract for two pictures a year. Her first film, a comedy directed by and costarring Jose Ferrer, “The High Cost of Loving,” brought Rowlands comparisons to one of the great 1930s stars, Carole Lombard.

But she asked to be released from her contract because she was expecting a baby. Often during her career she would absent herself from the screen for long stretches to attend to family matters.

In addition to Nick, a director (“Alpha Dog,” “My Sister’s Keeper”) and actor, she and Cassavetes had two daughters, Alexandra and Zoe, who also pursued acting careers.

John Cassavetes died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1989, and Rowlands returned to acting to assuage her grief. Between assignments she sometimes attended film festivals and societies for Cassavetes screenings.

“I want everyone to see his films,” she said at the San Sebastian Festival in 1992. “John was one of a kind, the most totally fearless person I’ve ever known. He had a very specific view of life and the individuality of people.”

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands was born in 1930 (some sources give a later date) in Cambria, Wisconsin, where her Welsh ancestors had settled in the early 19th century. Her father was a banker and state senator. She was a withdrawn child who loved books and make-believe. Her mother encouraged the girl’s ambition to become an actress.

Rowlands quit the University of Wisconsin in her junior year to pursue an acting career in New York. Like other actors of her generation, she gained invaluable experience in the thriving field of television drama in the 1950s, appearing on all the major series.

After leaving her MGM contract, she was able to choose her film roles. When nothing attracted her, she appeared in TV series such as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Bonanza,” “Dr. Kildare” and “The Virginian.” One of her career delights was co-starring with her icon Bette Davis on the TV movie “Strangers” in 1979.

Her other movies included “Lonely Are the Brave” with Kirk Douglas, “The Spiral Road” (Rock Hudson), “A Child Is Waiting” (with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland, directed by Cassavetes), “Two Minute Warning” (Charlton Heston), “Tempest” (co-starring with Cassavetes and Molly Ringwald, in her screen debut) and the mother who wants to do right by her children in Paul Schrader’s 1987 study of a blue-collar family “Light of Day.”

In middle age and beyond, Rowlands continued playing demanding roles. In Woody Allen’s austere drama, “Another Woman,” she was cast as a writer whose life has been shielded from emotion until dire incidents force her to deal with her feelings. In the groundbreaking TV movie “An Early Frost,” she appeared as a mother confronting her son’s AIDS.

Rowlands commented in 1992 that her roles remained in her memory.

“Sometimes, those white nights when I have no sleep and a lot of time to think about everything, I’ll examine different possibilities of different characters and what they might be doing now,” she said.

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Film Writer Jake Coyle in New York contributed to this report. The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this report.

HONOLULU (AP) — Wallace “Wally” Amos, the creator of the cookie empire that took his name and made it famous and who went on to become a children’s literacy advocate, has died. He was 88.

Amos created the Famous Amos cookie empire and eventually lost ownership of the company — as well as the rights to use the catchy Amos name. In his later years, he became a proprietor of a cookie shop called Chip & Cookie in Hawaii, where he moved in 1977.

He died Tuesday at his home in Honolulu, with his wife, Carol, at his side, his children said. He died from complications with dementia, they said.

“With his Panama hat, kazoo, and boundless optimism, Famous Amos was a great American success story, and a source of Black pride,” said a statement from his children, Sarah, Michael, Gregory and Shawn Amos.

They said their dad “inspired a generation of entrepreneurs when he founded the world’s first cookie store” on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975.

Wally Amos was also co-founder of Uncle Wally’s Muffin Co., whose products are found in stores nationwide. But Amos said the fame never really mattered much to him.

“Being famous is highly overrated anyway,” Amos told The Associated Press in 2007.

His muffin company, based in Shirley, N.Y., was originally founded as Uncle Noname Cookie Co. in 1992, a few years after Amos lost Famous Amos, which still widely uses his name on its products.

Amos had said the Famous Amos cookies sold today are unlike his cookies, which had lots of chocolate, real butter and pure vanilla extract.

“You can’t compare a machine-made cookie with handmade cookie,” he told the AP. “It’s like comparing a Rolls Royce with a Volkswagen.”

Uncle Noname, however, foundered because of debt and problems with its contracted manufacturers.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 1996, abandoned cookies and went into muffins at the suggestion of Amos’ business partner, Lou Avignone.

Inside his now-shuttered Hawaii cookie shop, he sold bite-sized cookies similar to the ones he first sold at the Famous Amos Hollywood store.

Amos also was active in promoting reading. His shop, for example, had a reading room with dozens of donated books, and Amos usually spent Saturdays sitting on a rocking chair, wearing a watermelon hat, reading to children.

The former high school dropout penned eight books, served as spokesperson for Literacy Volunteers of America for 24 years and gave motivational talks to corporations, universities and other groups.

Amos earned numerous honors for his volunteerism, including the Literacy Award presented by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.

“Your greatest contribution to your country is not your signature straw hat in the Smithsonian, but the people you have inspired to learn to read,” Bush said.

In one of his books, “Man With No Name: Turn Lemons Into Lemonade,” Amos explained how he lost Famous Amos even before it was sold for $63 million to a Taiwanese company in 1991. Despite robust sales, by 1985, the business was losing money, so Amos brought in outside investors.

“The new owners gobbled up more of my share until all of a sudden, I found I had lost all ownership in the company I founded,” Amos wrote. Before long, the company had changed ownership four times.

Born in Tallahassee, Fla., Amos moved to New York City at age 12 because of his parents’ divorce. He lived with an aunt, Della Bryant, who taught him how to make chocolate chip cookies.

He later dropped out of high school to join the Air Force before working as a mailroom clerk at the William Morris Agency, where he became a talent agent, working with The Supremes, Simon & Garfunkel and Marvin Gaye before borrowing $25,000 to launch his cookie business.

He was the first Black agent in the business, his son, Shawn Amos, said.

“Our dad taught us the value of hard work, believing in ourselves, and chasing our dreams,” his children’s statement said. “We also know he would love it if you had a chocolate chip cookie today.”

The longtime Sunrise resident died on Sunday evening after a brief battle with stage 4 esophageal cancer, his surviving children confirmed. He was 75.

Public services are planned for noon to 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18, at Menorah Gardens & Funeral Chapels, 21100 Griffin Road, Southwest Ranches, followed by a private reception that will include hot dogs.

A native of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Garber opened Coney Island Joe’s at 6401 Sheridan St., and for 27 years his blue and mustard-yellow stand on Seminole tribal land became a no-frills shrine to New York grilled and boiled “dirty water dogs” topped with red onions and sauerkraut, ingredients he sourced direct from the Empire State.

Joe’s became a noshing must-stop for Brooklynites, or anyone craving a moist, flavorful dog with a signature snap on a fluffy white bun, the same type found on New York street corners from Gramercy Park to Coney Island. Its all-caps “Sabrett” logo and weathered signboard-on-wheels — “Hot Corned Beef, Hot Pastrami” — beckoned for miles around.

Two of Garber’s children, Tiffany Jara and Cheyanne Alba, on Wednesday remembered their dad as a Disney diehard and hot rod racing lover when he wasn’t serving comfort food under a tent in 100-degree heat. Jara and Alba each worked their father’s stand through middle and high school.

“It was many years of being paid under the table in hot dogs and knishes,” said Jara, 36. “I’m still addicted to Cheetos and Sabretts because of that man.”

The devoted father often took his children out for subs at Publix, toys at Walmart and back-to-school shopping at Sawgrass Mills mall.

“He loved taking us to Disney World so much,” Jara said. “He’d call us up in this high-pitched Mickey Mouse voice and go, ‘This is Mickey calling!’ and we’re like, ‘Dad, c’mon.’ He always made sure to hug us when we came and hug us when we left.”

And despite being a true-blue Brooklynite, Garber refused to turn away customers who ordered ketchup on their hot dogs, Alba added. Or worse: mayonnaise.

“Dad would go, ‘Ugh, what is that? What are you doing to it?’ ” Alba, 38, recalled with a laugh. “But he carried the condiments to give the public what they wanted. As long as they were stepping foot in his shop to try his hot dogs, he was there for it.”

In a Facebook post on Monday, friend Bert Stephens spoke of Garber’s ever-present happy face and warm greetings under the Sabrett tent.

“My heart is broken tonight as I say goodbye to my very dear friend,” he wrote. “If you never got to eat one of his hot dogs, or my favorite, the meatball Parmigiana, you only missed part of the incredible visit to the Hollywood Seminole reservation. Go fly high my friend, your work here is done!”

Pat Conlon, 71, called his close friend of 20 years a tireless worker, quick-witted with an easy laugh and unafraid to keep things lighthearted — even toward the end, when chemotherapy treatments made him too weak to work the stand.

“A few months ago, when he wasn’t feeling well, people asked which hospital he went to, and he said he went to the Broward Animal Clinic,” Conlon said, chuckling. “He’d say anything to get you laughing.”

Conlon and Garber bonded quickly over the drag-racing circuit — Garber drove “funny cars” professionally in the late ’60s — and several times the duo road-tripped to Gainesville for the drag-racing event Gatornationals. One weekend three years ago, driving up in Garber’s Jeep, the engine began leaking oil and billowing black smoke. A Gainesville mechanic confirmed the leak, but rather than fix it in North Florida, Garber insisted on driving it home, arguing the repair would force him to keep the hot dog stand closed too long.

“So we’d stop every 30, 40 miles and add seven quarts of oil just to get it home,” Conlon said with a laugh. “We must’ve put 48 quarts of oil in that thing. We limped it up there and limped it back but, boy, Elliott was determined to get back to work.”

Garber is survived by his widow, Debbie Ayers, his four children — Tiffany Jara, Cheyanne Alba, Shannon Cardinali and Brian Garber — and five grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations to cover funeral expenses may be made via Zelle at 954-829-9892. For information, go to dignitymemorial.com.

While attending the University of Florida in Gainesville, he waited on tables for meals and tips. Those hard early years influenced Tate’s business philosophy in Miami.

“I owe my success and my family’s stability to this community, which makes giving back a priority. Plus, giving back and supporting the next generation is the only way to ensure our city will one day reach its true potential,” he said in an interview in 2018.

Tate, who became a Miami real estate giant and founded Florida’s Prepaid College Plan, died at his Bal Harbour home on July 26 at age 96.

Read the full story at MiamiHerald.com.

Her claims propelled a seminal criminal case that helped change the course of race relations and social justice in Central Florida and the U.S., although it took many years for it to be accepted widely as the miscarriage of justice it was.

Padgett’s July 12 death, first reported by the Washington Post, was confirmed by a spokesperson for the probate court in Taylor County, Georgia, where she passed of “natural causes.”

Norma Padgett and her husband Willie contended the men, who became known as the Groveland Four, approached them on a dark stretch of road near Okahumpka in Lake County, after the couple’s car had broken down on July 16, 1949. She was 17 at the time.

The four men were at first helpful, she told police at the time. But then she said they hit Willie, took his wallet, and raped her in the backseat of their car.

Padgett didn’t speak publicly about the case outside of a courtroom – even as doubts and some outrage percolated for decades – until she testified at a hearing of the Florida Clemency Board in 2019 and defended her accusation.

“You all just don’t know what kind of horror I’ve been through for all these many years,” she said, from her wheelchair. “I’m begging you all not to give them pardon, because they done it.”

Groveland Four accuser Norma Padgett speaks publicly for the first time since 1952

The most dramatic moment of that hearing – in which the board did grant pardons to the Groveland Four, who are all dead – came when Beverly Robinson, a cousin of Samuel Shepherd, turned to Padgett and declared: “You all are liars.”

That day Samuel Shepherd, Walter Irvin, Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas got the justice denied them in life. After the hearing, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he didn’t think the men were treated fairly at trial.

“I think the way this was carried out was a miscarriage of justice,” he said.

Within hours of Padgett’s original claim, a racist mob gathered from across Central Florida. The group burned and looted the home of Shepherd’s family and fired shots into other homes and businesses. Its actions drove Groveland’s Black families away – and many never returned. The Ku Klux Klan littered the streets with pamphlets, and the governor called in the National Guard.

Shepherd and Irvin, who were both 22, were best friends from Groveland, and were beaten along with Greenlee, who was 16, in Lake County’s jail following their arrests. Thomas, 26, a friend of Greenlee’s, was killed by a posse in the Panhandle after fleeing Central Florida days after the alleged crime.

Three years later, Irvin and Shepherd were shot by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, when he was driving them from prison in Raiford back to Lake County, where they were due to face trial for a second time after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out their initial convictions.

McCall said the men tried to escape, but Irvin, who survived the shooting, said McCall forced them from the car and shot them point-blank.

The fury from the incident helped propel the career of Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer in the case who went on to become a Supreme Court justice, and drew nationwide attention to the quality of justice provided to Blacks in Florida.

Gilbert King, author of the book ‘Devil in the Grove,’ said in a Wednesday interview with the Orlando Sentinel that the greatest regret of his Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the case was that he could not persuade Norma to talk with him. He said he flew to Georgia and they sat together outside her trailer, but she didn’t want to discuss the case.

“The reason for that, I believe, is she was a victim in the case, too, though not to the scale of the Groveland Four,” he said. “She was, I believe, strong-armed by an abusive husband and then the prosecutor and the sheriff, Willis McCall, to go along with the story.”

Her sons shielded her from interview requests. Her son, Curtis Upshaw, politely declined a request by the Sentinel in 2019.

Compelling evidence surfaced over the years that the crime never happened.

King obtained an FBI report through a public records request that revealed Padgett made statements to the agency contradicting her trial testimony.

A witness, Lawrence Burtoft, who was the first to see Padgett after the alleged attack, told prosecutors she told him she was kidnapped, but never mentioned being raped. He also said she told him she couldn’t identify her attackers, which was withheld from the defense. Burtoft testified at Irvin’s second trial, and Padgett changed her story and said she told him the details about the attack. Nevertheless, Irvin was convicted a second time.

A medical report by a doctor who examined Padgett after the fact didn’t find conclusive evidence that she was raped, and that was not turned over to the defense.

Greenlee was already in custody when the attack took place after he was accused of carrying a pistol without a license, King found.

Jesse Hunter, who prosecuted the case, wrote a letter to then-Gov. LeRoy Collins, asking him to commute Irvin’s sentence from death to life in prison as he doubted the man’s guilt. Collins did so in 1954.

Authors and historians have suggested that Padgett and her husband – whom she divorced in 1958 – made up the story of the rape in part to explain their volatile relationship. King reported that Irvin and Shepherd did stop that night to help, then Shepherd got into a fight with Willie Padgett after he made a racist comment, and eventually the two men left.

While fact-gathering for the exoneration motion, State Attorney Bill Gladson said he called Padgett’s home, but a man who answered wouldn’t hand the phone to her. Gladson asked if Padgett would be willing to provide a DNA sample that could confirm her story if it matched a key stain on a piece of clothing. The man who answered responded: “Leave us alone. We don’t want to do any more of this.”

“I’ve never said she lied, although I think she did,” Gladson said in an interview with the Sentinel Wednesday. “I’ve always said it was a stacked deck.”

Robinson, now 67, the cousin of Shepherd, offered condolences to Norma Padgett’s family when contacted by the Sentinel Wednesday. “However I think it is very tragic that she would pass away knowing the truth and she just chose to take it to the grave with her.”

King said he once hoped she would make a deathbed confession to what actually happened, but that hope died when she testified at the Tallahassee hearing. He nonetheless has some sympathy for her.

”It’s kind of hard to blame a 17-year-old kid facing those figures in that situation,” he said.

rygillespie@orlandosentinel.com, creyes@orlandosentinel.com, shudak@orlandosentinel.com

NEW YORK (AP) —  Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last surviving original member of the beloved Motown group the Four Tops that was known for such hits as “Reach Out, I’ll Be There” and “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” has died at age 88.

Fakir died Monday of heart failure at his home in Detroit, according to a family spokesperson, with his wife and other loved ones by his side.

The Four Tops were among Motown’s most popular and enduring acts, peaking in the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1967, they had 11 top 20 hits and two No. 1’s: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” and the operatic classic “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” Other songs, often sagas of romantic pain and bereavement, included “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” “Bernadette” and “Just Ask the Lonely.”

Many of Motown’s greatest stars, from the Supremes to Stevie Wonder, came of age at the Detroit-based company founded by Berry Gordy in the late 1950s. But Fakir, lead singer Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton had been together for a decade when Gordy signed them up in 1963 (after the group had turned him down a few years earlier) and they already had a polished stage act and versatile vocal style that enabled them to perform anything from country songs to pop standards like “Paper Doll.”

They called themselves the Four Aims when they started out, but soon renamed themselves the Four Tops to avoid confusion with the white harmony quartet the Ames Brothers.

The Tops had recorded for several labels, including the famed Chess Records in Chicago, with little commercial success. But Gordy and A&R man Mickey Stevenson paired them with the songwriting-production team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland and they quickly caught on, blending tight, haunting harmonies (with Fakir as lead tenor) behind Stubbs’ urgent, sometimes desperate baritone.

After Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown in 1967, the Tops had more sporadic success, with hits over the next few years including “Still Water (Love),” and a pair of top 10 songs in the early 1970s for ABC/Dunhill Records, ”Keeper of the Castle” and “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got).” They reached the top 20 for the last time in the early 1980s, with the sentimental ballad “When She Was My Girl.”

Throughout, they remained a busy concert act and at times toured with latter day members of the Temptations, a friendly rivalry launched when the groups performed together at the all-star 1983 television concert marking Motown’s 25th anniversary. While the Temptations and other peers suffered from drug problems, internal dissension and personnel changes, the Four Tops remained united and intact until Payton died in 1997. (Benson died in 2005 and Stubbs in 2008).

“The things I love about them the most — they are very professional, they have fun with what they do, they are very loving, they have always been gentlemen,” Wonder said of them when he helped induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Fakir later toured as the Four Tops with lead vocalist Alexander Morris, Ronnie McNeir and Lawrence ‘Roquel’ Payton Jr., the son of Lawrence Payton.

“As each one of them (the original members) passed a little bit of me left with them,” Fakir told UK Music Reviews in 2021. “When Levi left us, I found myself in a quandary as to what I was going to do from that moment on but after a while I realized that the name together with the legacy that they had left us simply had to carry on, and judging by the audience reaction it soon became pretty evident that I did the right thing and I really do feel good about that.”

Besides the Rock Hall of Fame, their honors included being voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and receiving a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2009. More recently, Fakir was working on a planned Broadway musical based on their lives and completed the memoir “I’ll Be There,” published in 2022.

Fakir was married twice, for the last 50 years to Piper Gibson, and had seven children. (Six survive him). In the mid-1960s, he was briefly engaged to Mary Wilson of the Supremes.

A lifelong Detroit resident who stayed home even after Gordy moved the label to Los Angeles in early 1970s, Fakir was of Ethiopian and Bangladeshi descent and grew up in a rough neighborhood where rival Black and white gangs fought often. He had early dreams of being a professional athlete, but was also a talented singer whose tenor brought him attention as a performer in his church choir. He was in his teens when he befriended Stubbs, and the two first sang with Benson and Payton at a birthday party thrown by a local “girl” group whom Fakir remembered as “high-class, very fine young ladies.”

“Singing was the by-product of us going to the party looking for the girls!” Fakir said in a 2016 interview with https://writewyattuk.com.

“We told Levi to just pick a song and sing the lead. We’d just back him up. Well, when he started, we all fell in like we’d been rehearsing the song for months! Our blend was incredible. We were just looking at each other as we were singing, and right after we said, ’Man, this is a group! This is a group!’”

“The Great Lou Dobbs has just passed away — A friend, and truly incredible journalist, reporter, and talent,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He understood the world, and what was ‘happening,’ better than others.”

Trump praised Dobbs as “unique in so many ways” and sent his condolences to the TV personality’s wife, Debi, and the Dobbs family.

“He will be greatly missed!” Trump wrote.

A short time later, an Instagram page tied to Dobbs confirmed the broadcaster’s death.

“It’s with a heavy heart we announce the passing of ‘The Great Lou Dobbs,’” the message read, remembering him as a “patriot and a great American” and “a fighter till the very end.”

A cause of death was not reported.

The former president’s Truth Social post appeared to be the first announcement of the death of Dobbs, who spent more than 20 years at CNN and a decade at the Fox Business Network.

Dobbs was a loyal Trump supporter known to promote conspiracy theories. His tenure with the Fox family ended in 2021 when “Lou Dobbs Tonight” was canceled in the throes of two defamation lawsuits filed by voting technologies companies against Fox News, which also named Dobbs.

CNN sources indicated at the time the lawsuits from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, the latter of which settled with Fox for $787.5 million, weren’t solely to blame for Dobbs’ severance from the right-wing media operation.

Dobbs, a Texas native who attended Harvard University, was with CNN at the cable news channel’s inception in 1980.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award in 2005.

Jerry Digney, Newhart’s publicist, says the actor died Thursday in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses.

Newhart, best remembered now as the star of two hit television shows of the 1970s and 1980s, launched his career as a standup comic in the late 1950s. He gained nationwide fame when his routine was captured on vinyl in 1960 as “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” which went on to win a Grammy Award as album of the year.

While other comedians of the time, including Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Alan King, and Mike Nichols and Elaine May, frequently got laughs with their aggressive attacks on modern mores, Newhart was an anomaly. His outlook was modern, but he rarely raised his voice above a hesitant, almost stammering delivery. His only prop was a telephone, used to pretend to hold a conversation with someone on the other end of the line.

In one memorable skit, he portrayed a Madison Avenue image-maker trying to instruct Abraham Lincoln on how to improve the Gettysburg Address: “Say 87 years ago instead of fourscore and seven,” he advised.

Another favorite was “Merchandising the Wright Brothers,” in which he tried to persuade the aviation pioneers to start an airline, although he acknowledged the distance of their maiden flight could limit them.

“Well, see, that’s going to hurt our time to the Coast if we’ve got to land every 105 feet.”

Newhart was initially wary of signing on to a weekly TV series, fearing it would overexpose his material. Nevertheless, he accepted an attractive offer from NBC, and “The Bob Newhart Show” premiered on Oct. 11, 1961. Despite Emmy and Peabody awards, the half-hour variety show was canceled after one season, a source for jokes by Newhart for decades after.

He waited 10 years before undertaking another “Bob Newhart Show” in 1972. This one was a situation comedy with Newhart playing a Chicago psychologist living in a penthouse with his schoolteacher wife, Suzanne Pleshette. Their neighbors and his patients, notably Bill Daily as an airline navigator, were a wacky, neurotic bunch who provided an ideal counterpoint to Newhart’s deadpan commentary.

The series, one of the most acclaimed of the 1970s, ran through 1978.

Four years later, the comedian launched another show, simply called “Newhart.” This time he was a successful New York writer who decides to reopen a long-closed Vermont inn. Again Newhart was the calm, reasonable man surrounded by a group of eccentric locals. Again the show was a huge hit, lasting eight seasons on CBS.

It bowed out in memorable style in 1990 with Newhart — in his old Chicago psychologist character — waking up in bed with Pleshette, cringing as he tells her about the strange dream he had: “I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town in Vermont. … The handyman kept missing the point of things, and then there were these three woodsmen, but only one of them talked!”

The stunt parodied a “Dallas” episode where a key character was killed off, then revived when the death was revealed to have been in a dream.

Two later series were comparative duds: “Bob,” in 1992-93, and “George & Leo,” 1997-98. Though nominated several times, he never won an Emmy for his sitcom work. “I guess they think I’m not acting. That it’s just Bob being Bob,” he sighed.

Over the years, Newhart also appeared in several movies, usually in comedic roles. Among them: “Catch 22,” “In and Out,” “Legally Blonde 2” and “Elf,” as the diminutive dad of adopted full-size son Will Ferrell. More recent work included “Horrible Bosses” and the TV series “The Librarians,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon.

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Former Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report.

James Sikking, who starred as a hardened police lieutenant on “Hill Street Blues” and as the titular character’s kindhearted dad on “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” has died at 90.

Sikking died of complications from dementia, his publicist Cynthia Snyder said in a statement Sunday evening.

Born the youngest of five children on March 5, 1934 in Los Angeles, his early acting ventures included an uncredited part in Roger Corman’s “Five Guns West” and a bit role in an episode of “Perry Mason.” He also secured guest spots in a litany of popular 1970s television series, from the action-packed “Mission: Impossible,” “M.A.S.H.” “The F.B.I.,” “The Rockford Files,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Charlie’s Angels” to “Eight is Enough” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

“Hill Street Blues” would debut in 1981, a fresh take on the traditional police procedural. Sikking played Lt. Howard Hunter, a clean-cut Vietnam War veteran who headed the Emergency Action Team of the Metropolitan Police Department in a never-named city.

The acclaimed show was a drama, but Sikking’s character’s uptight nature and quirks were often used to comic effect. Sikking based his performance on a drill instructor he’d had at basic training when military service cut through his time at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1959.

“The drill instructor looked like he had steel for hair and his uniform had so much starch in it, you knew it would sit in the corner when he took it off in the barracks,” he told The Fresno Bee in 2014, when he did a series of interviews with various publications marking the box set’s release.

When it debuted on the heels of a Hollywood dual strike, the NBC show was met with low ratings and little fanfare. But the struggling network kept it on the air: “Up popped this word ‘demographic,’” Sikking told the Star Tribune in 2014. “We were reaching people with a certain education and (who) made a certain kind of money. They called it the ‘Esquire audience.’”

The show ultimately ran until 1987, although for a brief moment it wasn’t clear Sikking would make it that far. A December 1983 episode ended with his character contemplating dying by suicide. The cliffhanger drew comparisons to the “Who shot J.R.?” mystery from “Dallas” not long before — although it was quickly resolved when TV supplements accidentally ran a teaser summary that made it clear Hunter had been saved.

“I remember when Howard tried to kill himself. My brother called and asked, ‘You still got a job?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Oh good,’ and then hung up,” Sikking told The Fresno Bee.

Sikking would earn an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a drama in 1984. The look and format of “Hill Street Blues” were something new to Sikking — and many in the audience, from the grimy look of the set to the multiple storylines that often kept actors working in the background, even when they didn’t have lines in the scene.

“It was a lot of hard work, but everybody loved it and that shows. When you have the people who are involved in the creation, manufacture — whatever you want to call it — who are really into it and enjoy doing it, you’re going to get a good product,” he told Parade.com in 2014. “We always had three different stories running through (each episode), which means you had to listen and you had to pay attention because everything was important.”

Aside from “Hill Street Blues,” Sikking played Captain Styles in 1984’s “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” He wasn’t enthusiastic about the role, but had been lured by the idea that it would take just a day on set.

“It was not my cup of tea. I was not into that kind of outer space business. I had an arrogant point of view in those days. I wanted to do real theater. I wanted to do serious shows, not something about somebody’s imagination of what outer space was going to be like,” Sikking explained to startrek.com in 2014. “So I had a silly prejudice against it, which is bizarre because I’ve probably and happily signed more this, that or the other thing of ‘Star Trek’ than I have anything of all the other work I’ve done.”

After the end of “Hill Street Blues,” he acted in nearly 100 episodes of “Dougie Howser, M.D.,” reuniting with Steven Bochco, who co-created both “Hill Street Blues” and the Neil Patrick Harris-starring sitcom.

He married Florine Caplan, with whom he had two children and four grandchildren.

Sikking had all but retired by the time the box set of “Hill Street Blues” came out. He had fewer but memorable roles after the turn of the millennium, guest-starring on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and acting in the rom-com films “Fever Pitch” and “Made of Honor.” His last roles were as a guest star on a 2012 episode of “The Closer” and in a movie that same year, “Just an American.”

Sikking continued to do charity events. He was a longtime participant in celebrity golf tournaments and even once made it to the ribbon-cutting for a health center in an Iowa town of just 7,200 people. “Actually, I came to get something from you — air I can’t see,” Sikking told the crowd of 100 people. “Where we’re from, if it isn’t brown, we don’t know how to breathe it, The Associated Press reported in 1982.

“I probably would do something if it got me going. Acting is a license to do self-investigation. It’s a great ego trip to be an actor,” he told startrek.com in 2014. “I must say that, in the past few years in which I haven’t worked, the obscurity has been quite attractive.”

“The condiment of my life is good fortune,” he finished.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shannen Doherty, the “Beverly Hills, 90210” star whose life and career were roiled by illness and tabloid stories, has died at 53.

After years with breast cancer, Doherty died Saturday, according to a statement from her publicist, Leslie Sloane.

“The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace,” Sloane said Sunday. The news was first reported by People magazine.

Her illness was publicly revealed in a lawsuit filed in 2015 against her former business managers, in which she alleged they mismanaged her money and allowed her health insurance to lapse. She later shared intimate details of her treatment following a single mastectomy. In December 2016, she posted a photo of her first day of radiation, calling the treatment “frightening” for her.

In February 2020, Doherty revealed that the cancer had returned and she was at stage four. She said she came forward because her health conditions could come out in court. The actor had sued insurance giant State Farm after her California home was damaged in a fire in 2018.

“I have no idea how long I’m going to be on the chemo for. … That’s not something that I can predict, it’s not something my doctors can predict. And it’s scary, it’s like a big wake-up call,” Doherty said on a late June episode of her podcast “Let’s Be Clear,” adding that a recent change in the shape of her cancer cells meant there were new treatment protocols for her to try. “For the first time in a couple months probably, I feel hopeful because there are so many more protocols now, whereas before I was hopeful — but I was still getting prepared.”

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Doherty moved to Los Angeles with her family at age 7 and, within a few years, became an actor.

“It was completely my decision,” she told The Associated Press in a 1994 interview. “My parents never pushed me into anything. They support me. It really wouldn’t matter if I was a professional soccer player — they’d still be as supportive and loving.”

As a child star, she worked steadily in such TV series as “Little House on the Prairie,” in which she played Jenny Wilder. She detoured as a teenager to the big screen in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (1985) and “Heathers.”

In 1990, the doe-eyed, dark-haired actor won her breakout role as Brenda Walsh in producer Aaron Spelling’s hit teenage melodrama set in posh Beverly Hills. She and Jason Priestley’s Brandon, Brenda’s twin brother, were fish-out-of-water Midwesterners.

But Doherty’s fame came with media scrutiny and accounts of outbursts, drinking and impulsiveness — the latter most notably after a very brief marriage to actor George Hamilton’s son, Ashley. Doherty’s second marriage, in 2002, was to Rick Salomon and was annulled within a year. In 2011, Doherty married photographer Kurt Iswarienko. She filed for divorce in April 2023.

She left “Beverly Hills, 90210” at the end of its fourth season in 1994 (the show aired until 2000), reportedly removed by Spelling because of conflicts with her co-stars and chronic lateness.

But in her 1994 AP interview, Doherty described her life as peaceful.

“It must be, if you pick up the Enquirer and find the only thing they can write about me is that I installed a pay phone next to my house and was seen at Stroud’s (a discount bed-and-bath chain) buying $1,400 worth of bed linens and wouldn’t go to an expensive store,” she said. “It must be calm if they’re pulling that stuff out of their heads.”

Three years later, in 1997, Doherty was sentenced to anger-management counseling by a Beverly Hills Municipal Court judge after she allegedly smashed a beer bottle onto a man’s windshield during a quarrel. After a 2001 drunken driving arrest, she pleaded no contest and was ordered to serve five days in a work-release program.

Doherty reunited with Spelling when he cast her in 1998 as Prue Halliwell in “Charmed.” In an AP interview that year, the actor expressed regrets about her past.

“I did bring a lot of it on myself,” Doherty said. “I don’t think I can point fingers and say, ‘Oh, YOU’RE to blame.’ And I don’t do that with myself, either. Because I was just growing up.”

Her personality was “grotesquely misconstrued” by the media, Doherty added.

Spelling said at the time that their relationship was never as bad as some made it seem.

“We had a few bumps along the road, but golly, who doesn’t?” said Spelling, who died in 2006. “Everything Shannen did was blown out of proportion by the rag sheets.”

Doherty starred with Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano in “Charmed” from 1998-2001, at which point her character was replaced by one played by Rose McGowan. Doherty appeared in the “90210” sequel series seven years later and competed on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2010. She also worked on the third “Beverly Hills, 90210” reboot, “BH90210,” a meta send-up that reunited most of the original cast and aired for one season in 2019.

She also appeared in a tribute episode of “Riverdale” dedicated to that show’s star — and her late “Beverly Hills, 90210” on-screen love interest — Luke Perry.

Doherty struggled to recapture her “Beverly Hills, 90210” star status, but worked in big-screen films including “Mallrats” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” and in such TV movies as “A Burning Passion: The Margaret Mitchell Story,” in which she played the “Gone with the Wind” author. A nadir was “Blindfold: Acts of Obsession,” an erotic thriller opposite Judd Nelson.

Doherty’s lawsuit against her ex-business managers was settled in 2016. She was open about the toll that cancer was taking. She posted photos that showed the baldness that followed treatment and, in an August 2016 interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” shared her fears.

“The unknown is always the scariest part,” she said. “Is the chemo going to work? Is the radiation going to work?” she said. “Pain is manageable, you know living without a breast is manageable, it’s the worry of your future and how your future is going to affect the people that you love.”

Doherty advocated for cancer awareness and care, and spoke to the AP in 2021 about how spending years with the disease affected her life and sense of optimism.

“When you get something like cancer, your tolerance for drama is zero. I don’t like people wasting my time. I don’t like negativity,” she said. “It’s odd because I think if you look back, you’re like, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s so much drama around her,’ but I don’t think I was necessarily into the drama. I just think if we took young 18-year-old Shannon, 19-year-old Shannon, and we took her and planted her like right now, I would be a nerd and nobody would be writing about me.”

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Lynn Elber, a longtime television writer, retired from The Associated Press in 2022. AP journalists Alicia Rancilio and Mallika Sen contributed reporting.