Sybil Jason, Warner Bros.' answer to Fox's Shirley Temple in the '30s died Tuesday in Northridge, Calif., of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to the Washington Post...
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Gloria Stuart, the 1930s starlet who became the oldest person ever to be nominated for an Academy Award with her career-making turn in Titanic, has died. She was 100.
Stuart died Sunday night at her West Los Angeles home, her daughter, Sylvia Thompson, told The Los Angeles Times. Stuart was diagnosed with lung cancer five years ago.
See other celebrities who died this year
"She also was a breast cancer survivor," Thompson said, "but she just paid no attention to illness. She was a very strong woman and had other fish to fry."
Stuart turned 100 on July 4 and celebrated with Titanic director James Cameron and his wife, Titanic co-star Suzy Amis, at the "Academy Centennial Celebration with Gloria Stuart."
The actress was 87 when she starred ...
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Question: I know the Oscar statuettes are about a foot tall and weigh 8 pounds, but what are they made of, and is it true that they got their name because someone said it looked like their Uncle Oscar? That sounds like a made-up story.
Answer: Last part first: The official story is indeed that Margaret Herrick, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' first librarian in 1931 and its executive director from 1943 to 1971 (and for whom the Academy's Los Angeles library, where I've done my share of research, is named), saw one of the statuettes (designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons for the first ceremony in 1929) on a desk and exclaimed that it looked just like her Uncle Oscar. Which is sort of alarming in that it implies that her uncle was a bald nudist with a thing for (perhaps compensatory) swords. Many people prefer the slightly ruder version in which Bette Davis suggeread more