Tony Goldman, pioneering developer who helped transform South Beach and Wynwood, dies at 68

BY DAVID SMILEY AND DOUGLAS HANKS, DHANKS@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Tony Goldman, a pioneer in turning South Beach from a drab retirement spot to one of the country’s hippest hotel districts and who played a central role in reviving Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood as an arts destination, died Tuesday at 68, a family spokeswoman said.

Goldman died of heart failure at a New York hospital after a long bout with lung maladies, said Susan Brustman, a longtime Goldman publicist. His family was with him when he died, she said.

Brustman released a statement from the family that read: “To the community he touched, he was a transforming, once in a lifetime figure. To us, he was a devoted husband, wonderful father and doting grandfather.”

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Comedy icon Phyllis Diller dies in her sleep at 95

BY SANDY COHEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES -- Phyllis Diller, the housewife turned humorist who aimed some of her sharpest barbs at herself, punctuating her jokes with her trademark cackle, died Monday morning in Los Angeles at age 95.

"She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face," her longtime manager, Milton Suchin, told The Associated Press.

Diller suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999. The cause of her death has not been released.

She was a staple of nightclubs and television from the 1950s - when female comics were rare indeed - until her retirement in 2002. Diller built her stand-up act around the persona of the corner-cutting housewife ("I bury a lot of my ironing in the back yard") with bizarre looks, a wardrobe to match (by "Omar of Omaha") and a husband named "Fang."

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Dale Olson dies at 78; was publicity agent for Rock Hudson when movie star revealed he had AIDS

BY ELAINE WOO, LOS ANGELES TIMES

LOS ANGELES - Dale Olson, an elder statesman of the Hollywood publicity corps whose assignments over a four-decade career included representing Rock Hudson during the last months of the actor's struggle with AIDS, died Thursday of complications of liver cancer. He was 78.

Olson, who lived in the Hollywood Hills, died at a nursing facility in Burbank, said his spouse, Eugene Harbin.

A savvy promoter of Oscar-worthy movies, Olson helped craft campaigns for stars such as Maggie Smith in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969), Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment" (1983) and Robert Duvall in "Tender Mercies" (1983).

During 18 years at Rogers and Cowan, he rose to head the agency's motion pictures division, leaving to run his own Beverly Hills publicity firm, Dale C. Olson & Associates, in 1985.

That year, Olson found himself in the middle of a media storm when reporters began raising questions about Hudson's health after the actor appeared shockingly gaunt at a public appearance with his former leading lady, Doris Day.

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Liza Minnelli mourns Marvin Hamlisch: 'I have lost my first lifelong best friend, and sadly we have lost a splendid, splendid talent'

BY STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@MiamiHerald.com

Three years ago, Marvin Hamlisch told me that at age 16 in 1960 he became friendly with a high-school girl who wanted to give her mom an unusual Christmas present -- a demo record to prove she could sing. The two teens went into a studio and recorded four songs.

''I almost died right there,'' Hamlisch recalls, when young Liza Minnelli brought him home to play the demo for Judy Garland.

Four years later, Minnelli performed Hamlisch's musical arrangements during her famous London Palladium concerts with Garland.

Hamlisch died Monday at age 68 and Minnelli now mourns her longtime friend.

"Marvin Hamlisch and I have been best friends since I was 13 years old. He arranged my first album, my second album, the songs for Judy Garland & Liza Minnelli at the London Palladium and just about everything else," Minnelli said in an email to The Miami Herald.

"He was one of the funniest people I knew. I will miss his talent, our laughter & friendship, but mostly I will miss Marvin. My heart is with his wife Terre always.

"I have lost my first lifelong best friend, and sadly we have lost a splendid, splendid talent."

Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch, 68, dies

Oscar-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch (The Way We Were, A Chorus Line) has died in Los Angeles following a brief illness, the Associated Press reports.

Hamlisch was 68.

His other films also included The Sting and Sophie's Choice. He won three Academy Awards, four Emmys and a Tony.

I spoke with Hamlisch three years ago before his appearances at the Adrienne Arsht Center. Click here to read the 2009 interview.

Chavela Vargas, famed Mexican singer who came out as a lesbian at age 81, dies at 93 (with video)

BY ISAAC GARRIDO, ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY -- Chavela Vargas, who defied gender stereotypes to become one of the most legendary singers in Mexico, died Sunday at age 93.

Her friend and biographer Maria Cortina said Vargas died at a hospital in the city of Cuernavaca, where she had been admitted for heart and respiratory problems.

Vargas rose to fame flouting the Roman Catholic country's preconceptions of what it meant to be a female singer: singing lusty "ranchera" songs while wearing men's clothes, carrying a pistol, drinking heavily and smoking cigars.

Though she refused to change the pronouns in love songs about women as some audiences expected, many of her versions of passionate Mexican folk songs are considered definitive.

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New York Times correction: Not true that Gore Vidal and his longtime companion never had sex

Hat tip to gay journalist Rex Wockner, who describes this as "Best. New York Times. Correction. Ever."

GORE VIDAL, 1925-2012
Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer

Correction: August 1, 2012

An earlier version misstated the term Mr. Vidal called William F. Buckley Jr. in a television appearance during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It was crypto-Nazi, not crypto-fascist. It also described incorrectly Mr. Vidal’s connection with former Vice President Al Gore. Although Mr. Vidal frequently referred jokingly to Mr. Gore as his cousin, they were not related. And Mr. Vidal’s relationship with his longtime live-in companion, Howard Austen, was also described incorrectly.  According to Mr. Vidal’s memoir “Palimpsest,” they had sex the night they met, but did not sleep together after they began living together. It was not true that they never had sex.

Gore Vidal, 86, celebrated author, playwright, dies

BY HILLEL ITALIE, ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES -- In a world more to his liking, Gore Vidal might have been president, or even king. He had an aristocrat's bearing - tall, handsome and composed - and an authoritative baritone ideal for summoning an aide or courtier.

But Vidal made his living - a very good living - from challenging power, not holding it. He was wealthy and famous and committed to exposing a system often led by men he knew firsthand. During the days of Franklin Roosevelt, one of the few leaders whom Vidal admired, he might have been called a "traitor to his class." The real traitors, Vidal would respond, were the upholders of his class.

The author, playwright, politician and commentator whose vast and sharpened range of published works and public remarks were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, died Tuesday at age 86 in Los Angeles.

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Columnist Michael Musto: Jeffersons' star 'Sherman Hemsley Was A Gay! Deal With It!'

Village Voice columnist Michael Musto has written a column headlined Jeffersons' star "Sherman Hemsley Was A Gay! Deal With It!"

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Video | Chick-fil-A VP of public relations dies

From WGN Chicago:

Don Perry, the vice president of public relations for Chick-fil-A, has died. Over the last week, he was busy defending the company's president for making a controversial comment about same-sex marriages.