Notable Deaths in 2022 – CBS News

A look back at the esteemed personalities who left us this year, who’d touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.

By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan. The Associated Press contributed to this gallery.

Actress Monica Vitti (November 3, 1931-February 2, 2022) reigned as the “queen of Italian Cinema” in the 1960s and ’70s, starring in several international hits, including “L’Avventura,” “La Notte,” and “Red Desert,” each directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, her lover at the time.

Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome, Vitti appeared in amateur stage productions as a teenager, and studied at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts. She first appeared on screen, uncredited, in 1954, but she told Vogue magazine in 1979 that during early auditions she’d been told she had “an excessively irregular face and was a bit too tall and slim. One director offered me a role, but on the condition that I changed my facial features.” Wary about surgery, she turned down the film.

She met Antonioni while working in a dubbing studio, and the two became partners. He cast her as Sally Bowles in his stage production of “I Am a Camera,” and then as the lead in his 1960 film, “L’Avventura,” a striking and despairing drama about a woman’s disappearance and a couple’s tenuous attachment, set against a world of privilege and ennui. The film won the jury prize at Cannes and made Vitti an arthouse star.

She would work with Antonioni again in “La Notte,” costarring Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni; “Eclisse (The Eclipse),” opposite Alain Delon; “Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert),” as a paranoid and mentally unstable woman in an alienating society; and “Il mistero di Oberwald (The Mystery of Oberwald).”

Other films either fed off her Antonioni-fueled image of icy coolness, or played off of it to humorous effect, and she often starred in madcap Italian comedies that infrequently played on American screens. Among her credits were “I Married You for Fun,” “The Scarlet Lady,” “The Girl With a Pistol,” “The Pacifist,” “That’s How We Women Are,” “The Pizza Triangle,” “Teresa the Thief,” “The Phantom of Liberty” by Luis Buñuel, “Blonde in Black Leather,” and “Polvere di stelle (Stardust).” She made only two English-language films: The 1966 spy spoof “Modesty Blaise,” opposite Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde; and Michael Ritchie’s comedy “An Almost Perfect Affair,” co-starring Keith Carradine, set in Cannes during its annual film festival. Her last feature (which she also wrote and directed) was “Secret Scandal” (1990).

Her stage credits included Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall,” in a 1964 Rome production directed by Franco Zeffirelli. 

Cheslie Kryst

Cheslie Kryst (April 28, 1991-January 30, 2022), a former University of South Carolina athlete and attorney, won the Miss USA pageant in 2019. That year marked the first time that the reigning Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss America, Miss World and Miss Universe were all Black women.

Kryst’s interest in pageants began as a child, in 2002, watching her mom in a parade when she was named Mrs. North Carolina. She told the Associated Press it was a time in her life when she lacked confidence: “I was that little weird kid who had a unibrow and didn’t have any friends. My hair was always pulled back. I thought, ‘I want to be just like her.’

“I can’t say pageants make you beautiful,” she said. “I think they make your more confident in the person that you are.”

Before being crowned Miss USA, she had already earned a law degree and MBA from Wake Forest University. As a civil litigation attorney, Kryst performed pro bono legal work for inmates fighting unjust sentences.

During the pageant, Kryst told the story of participating in a legal competition, where a judge suggested she wear a skirt instead of pants because “judges prefer skirts.”

“We stood there for 30 minutes after practicing for months and all you said was, ‘Wear a skirt next time’?” she said. “It was very frustrating. Don’t tell females to wear different clothes while you give the men substantive feedback on their legal arguments.”

Kryst’s advice? “Glass ceilings can be broken wearing either a skirt or pants.”

She later worked as a correspondent for the entertainment news show “Extra,” earning two Daytime Emmy Award nominations, and wrote a fashion blog for professionals, White Collar Glam.

Howard Hesseman

Howard Hesseman (February 27, 1940-January 29, 2022) starred as the morning drive radio DJ Dr. Johnny Fever on the CBS sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati,” and as actor-turned-history teacher Charlie Moore on “Head of the Class.”

The character of Dr. Johnny Fever (for which he received two Emmy nominations) was perhaps not much of a stretch for Hesseman, who was jailed in San Francisco in 1963 for selling marijuana to an undercover cop. (“It was two ounces, and in fact at the preliminary hearing in San Francisco County Court, there was only one ounce offered in evidence – you draw your own conclusions!” he said in a 1989 “Fresh Air” interview.)

Playing hippies in his earliest credits, he would perform with the improv group The Committee, and moonlight as a disk jockey for a rock station, KMPX – experiences that would help Hesseman improvise his on-air banter on “WKRP.”

As a character actor, Hesseman’s TV credits included “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Sanford and Son,” “One Day at a Time,” “The Rockford Files,” “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “Soap,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “That ’70s Show,” “House,” “ER,” “Boston Legal,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” and “Fresh Off the Boat,” and three times as host of “Saturday Night Live.” (During one monologue Hesseman mooned a photograph of President Ronald Reagan.) He also returned as Dr. Johnny in a 1991 reboot, “The New WKRP in Cincinnati.”

His film appearances included “Steelyard Blues,” “Shampoo,” “Tunnel Vision,” “Silent Movie,” “Americathon,” “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment,” “Flight of the Navigator,” “About Schmidt,” “Man About Town,” and “The Rocker.” He appeared on stage in the Neil Simon comedy “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

He told NPR’s Terry Gross that, despite having started as a political satirist mocking the establishment, it was not surprising that he would eventually play a high school teacher, an authority figure: “Yes, I’ve turned into one of my own targets! But many of us have been saying that for a long time – we became the people we used to satirize. It’s terrifying to consider, and then on the other hand you can say, ‘Well, of course I was young when I did all that, it’s all changed now. My values are different.’ Some of them are, some of them aren’t. If none of them changed, I would have assumed that I was the victim of some real arrested development. And I’m not a registered Republican, I don’t think that’s the case!”

Don Wilson

Rhythm guitarist Don Wilson (February 10, 1933-January 29, 2022) was co-founder of the influential guitar rock group The Ventures, whose hits included “Walk, Don’t Run,” and a cover of the theme song for “Hawaii Five-O.”

Wilson and Bob Bogle, who met at Wilson’s dad’s used-car dealership, were construction workers who decided to buy guitars at a Tacoma, Wash., pawnshop in 1958. The “really cheap guitars” didn’t stay in tune very well, Wilson recalled, but the following year he and Bogle formed The Ventures, later joined by guitarist Nokie Edwards and Skip Moore on drums. Their recording of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run” (praised by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest guitar songs of all time) hit #2 on the charts.

With Howie Johnson joining as a new drummer, followed by Mel Taylor, The Ventures would go one to have 38 albums on the U.S. charts in the 1960s and ’70s; 14 singles would hit the Billboard Hot 100.

In addition to their studio and live albums, the group also recorded instructional records for aspiring guitarists – 250 albums in all over five decades.

With more than 100 million records sold, the Ventures are the best-selling instrumental band of all time. In 2008 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though the band’s lineup changed over the years, Wilson – the last surviving member of the original group – continued to tour until 2015.

In 2020 Wilson’s daughter, Staci Layne Wilson, directed a documentary, “The Ventures: Stars on Guitars.” That year Wilson told People magazine that The Ventures never set out to be a “surf band.”

“Honestly, I love playing surf music – it’s very fun and it makes you feel good,” he said.

Manfred Thierry Mugler

The outlandish creations of French fashion designer Manfred Thierry Mugler (December 21, 1948-January 23, 2022) have been worn by such celebrities as Madonna, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Demi Moore, Lady Gaga and Cardi B.

Mugler, who was also a dancer, acrobat and body-builder, stressed the human body as art with his sculpted designs. Launching his brand in 1973, Mugler became known for his theatrical style that was featured at galas, on red carpets and runways.

He retired from the Thierry Mugler label in 2003, telling Elle magazine in 2017 that he had decided, “Fashion is beautiful, 3-D art on a human being. But it wasn’t enough, which is why I went on to create in other ways. For me, it wasn’t the right tool anymore.”

He continued the Thierry Mugler perfume line, producing fragrances that have sold more than $200 million annually. He also directed music videos and a ballet staged in Berlin. Meanwhile, Mugler created costumes for Beyoncé’s 2008 “I Am … ” world tour and for stage productions. He also designed Kim Kardashian’s 2019 Met Gala outfit.

“I’m very proud of – what can I call it? – the science that we put into fashion,” he told Elle. “That special body-conscious cut that influenced the whole fashion world.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

A revered Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh (October 11, 1926-January 22, 2022) helped popularize socially-engaged Buddhism in the East, and the practice of mindfulness in the West.

Beginning in 1961 he studied in the United States, where he taught comparative religion at Princeton Theological Seminary and Columbia University. Returning to his home country of Vietnam, Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism, founding the Order of Inter-being, dedicated to nonviolence, mindfulness and social service. 

According to Nhat Hanh, “Buddhism means to be awake – mindful of what is happening in one’s body, feelings, mind, and in the world. If you are awake, you cannot do otherwise than act compassionately to help relieve suffering you see around you. So, Buddhism must be engaged in the world. If it is not engaged, it is not Buddhism.”

He promoted reconciliation between the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government and communist North Vietnam. In 1966, after going abroad to campaign against the war, Nhat Hanh was barred from returning (by both North and South Vietnam), leaving him, he said, “like a bee without a beehive.” He would spend the next several decades in exile in southern France, at the monastic order he founded, Plum Village. 

He and his order were also responsible for founding monasteries around the world. He wrote more than 130 books, about Zen Buddhism, mindfulness, meditation, peace, healing, love and death.

He suffered a stroke in 2014, and moved to Thailand in late 2016. Two years later, he returned to Vietnam, where he spent the remainder of his life at the Tu Hieu Pagoda, the monastery where he was ordained.

In his 2001 book “You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment,” Nhat Hanh wrote, “Every twenty-four hour day is a tremendous gift to us. So we all should learn to live in a way that makes joy and happiness possible. We can do this. … [When you wake up], breathe in and tell yourself that a new day has been offered to you, and you have to be here to live it.” 

Louie Anderson

Comedian Louie Anderson (March 24, 1953-January 21, 2022) could easily make fun of his heft, and his own difficult upbringing:

“Eating for me is like my dad’s drinking … Even when he was out, like sometimes my dad would be so out, my mom would go, ‘Check to see if he’s breathing.’ And I’d go, ‘You check to see if he’s breathing. I’m not really concerned.'”

He told “Sunday Morning” in 2018 that such humor could be healing: “But more than that, people don’t feel so alone. If people know that I had, you know, my butt kicked and my dad was cruel to me, if they know that I did, and I’m still going, maybe they can keep going.”

Anderson, who served as a counselor to troubled youth, won a comedy competition and was hired by Henny Youngman as a writer. In 1984 he made his national TV debut as a standup on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” Numerous appearances would follow with Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Craig Ferguson, Seth Myers, “Comic Relief,” and specials on Showtime, HBO and CMT. He also hosted “Family Feud,” and was featured on “Hollywood Squares.”

As an actor, Anderson appeared in “Grace Under Fire,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Ally McBeal,” “Chicago Hope,” “Young Sheldon” and “Search Party,” and was featured in “Coming to America,” “Coming 2 America,” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

In 2016 Anderson was cast as Christine Baskets, the mollycoddling mother of Zach Galifianakis, in the series “Baskets.” Basing the character on his own late mother, Anderson won an Emmy for his performance. “You know, she’s got the starring role that she deserves,” he told “Sunday Morning.” “You know, the great thing about my mom was she protected us. She took all the brunt, and this is such a great repay, and tribute. I get to pay her back.”

In addition to his role in “Baskets,” Anderson won two Daytime Emmys for the animated series “Life With Louie.”

He also authored the books “Goodbye Jumbo … Hello Cruel World”; “Dear Dad: Letters From an Adult Child”; “The F Word: How To Survive Your Family”; and “Hey Mom: Stories From My Mother, But You Can Read Them, Too.”

Meat Loaf

The rock star Marvin Lee Aday, best known by his stage name Meat Loaf (September 27, 1947-January 20, 2022), was immortalized by the energetic operatic rock ballads he blasted on his 1977 debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” one of the bestselling records in history. It featured such dark hits as “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

Raised in Dallas by his schoolteacher mother after she divorced his alcoholic father, Aday acted and sang in school productions. After his mother died while he was a teenager, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue work in the music industry. His first band, Meat Loaf Soul (using a nickname he’d acquired in his youth), opened for such acts as Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, The Who and The Grateful Dead.

In New York he appeared on stage in “Hair,” “Rainbow,” “As You Like it,” “More Than You Deserve,” and “The Rocky Horror Show” (repeating his role as the biker Eddie in the film version, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”).

Having gotten to know composer Jim Steinman while working at the Public Theatre, the two teamed up with producer Todd Rundgren for the album “Bat Out of Hell,” a hybrid of rock and opera that was repeatedly turned down by record companies, before Cleveland International (a division of Epic) released it in 1977. It would sell more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Meat Loaf’s subsequent albums – “Dead Ringer,” “Midnight at the Lost and Found,” “Bad Attitude” and “Blind Before I Stop” – fared less well, but he went to the top of the charts when he and Steinman reunited for 1993’s “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell.” Its lead track, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” earned Meat Loaf a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance (Solo).

Later albums included “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” “Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose,” “Hell in a Handbasket,” and “Braver Than We Are.”

While his musical output proved inconsistent (especially given his turbulent relationship with Steinman), Meat Loaf also made continuous appearances or acted in films and on TV, including “Wayne’s World,” “Tales From the Crypt,” “Spice World,” “Black Dog,” “The Mighty,” “Fight Club,” “South Park,” and “Ghost Wars.”

In a 2015 Billboard interview, Aday credited his early years for his staying power: “I already had that professionalism, because I’d already studied acting in high school for three years, and college, and done plays. I had the discipline of a football player and the discipline of an actor going in. So, my whole career has been very disciplined. That’s why I’m still here.”

Dick Halligan

Musician, songwriter and arranger Richard “Dick” Halligan (August 29, 1943-January 18, 2022) was a co-founder of the jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears, playing trombone on their first album, 1968’s “Child Is Father to the Man,” then switching to keyboards and flute on their next three albums. He earned two Grammy Awards while with the group.

Blood, Sweat & Tears’ hits during this period included “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die,” and “Hi-De-Ho.”

Halligan then turned to scoring films and TV. Having written music for “The Owl and the Pussycat,” he composed for “The Bionic Woman,” “Switch,” “Holmes and Yoyo,” “Go Tell the Spartans,” “A Force of One,” “The Octagon,” “Cheaper to Keep Her,” “House Calls,” “Chicago Story” and “Fear City.”

Halligan also wrote for jazz and orchestral ensembles.

In his 2013 memoir, “Musical Being,” Halligan wrote, “For all my fears and doubts I have always preferred to take on a challenge rather than to take the easy way out. This has served me well. If I had stayed within my comfort zone in my life, I would have simply vegetated.” 

André Leon Talley

Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Durham, North Carolina, the pioneering fashion journalist André Leon Talley (October 16, 1948-January 18, 2022) earned a master’s degree in French literature from Brown University before arriving in New York in the 1970s, where he served as an unpaid apprentice to Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. He later worked at Interview magazine, The New York Times and Women’s Wear Daily. 

He was hired in 1983 by Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour as a fashion news director – the magazine’s first Black editor. Tally was named creative director in 1988.

At 6’6″, Talley was a towering figure recognizable in his signature caftans and extravagant capes. One Vogue staffer called him “the pharaoh of fabulosity.”

Praised for his enthusiasm and boosterism of the fashion industry, Talley was also familiar to TV audiences, as a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,” and in the 2009 documentary “The September Issue.” He authored the memoirs “The Chiffon Trenches,” “A.L.T.,” and “A.L.T. 365+.”

In 2020 Talley told “CBS This Morning” that he felt no pressure as a trailblazing Black journalist in an overwhelmingly White industry: “I felt it was important to simply represent the outstanding excellence for the firms that I worked for, for Women’s Wear Daily and Vogue. I sat in the front row. They didn’t have me there because of the way I looked. They had me there because of my knowledge and my smartness. And therefore, that was an easy role for me to play or to become, because I didn’t have to play a role. I was just being me. I was smart. I was curious. And I was passionate about people.”

Yvette Mimieux

Actress Yvette Mimieux (January 8, 1942-January 17, 2022) rose to stardom in the 1960 science fiction classic “The Time Machine,” based on H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel, as a woman in the year 802,701.

The story of her discovery was no less fantastic: at age 15, the blonde and blue-eyed Mimieux was horseback riding in the Hollywood Hills when she was spotted by a publicist in a helicopter; he landed and gave her his card.

As a model and starlet, Mimieux broke through with “Time Machine,” and her early films played up her ingenue looks while also hinting at something more mysterious. In “Where the Boys Are,” she was a college student on spring break in Florida who is sexually assaulted. In “Light in the Piazza,” she played a mentally disabled young woman who finds romance in Italy. In “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Mimieux played a member of the French Resistance during World War II.

She starred opposite Charlton Heston in “Diamond Head,” and in “Joy in the Morning,” costarred with Richard Chamberlain as young newlyweds. (The two had appeared together on the TV series “Dr. Kildare.”)

“I suppose I had a soulful quality,” she explained in a 1979 Washington Post interview. “I was often cast as a wounded person, the ‘sensitive’ role.”

Other films included “Toys in the Attic,” “The Caper of the Golden Bulls,” “Three in the Attic,” “The Picasso Summer,” “Death Takes a Holiday,” “Skyjacked,” and “The Black Hole.” She also starred in the TV series “The Most Deadly Game,” and wrote the TV movies “Hit Lady” (about a female assassin), and “Obsessive Love.”

In her late 40s, Mimieux retired from acting, devoting herself to other interests, including painting, and studying archaeology at UCLA.

“I decided I didn’t want to have a totally public life,” she told the Post. “When the fan magazines started wanting to take pictures of me making sandwiches for my husband, I said no. You know, there are tribes in Africa who believe that a camera steals a little part of your soul, and in a way I think that’s true about living your private life in public. It takes something away from your relationships, it cheapens them.”

Robert Washburn

Raymond Washburn (January 5, 1947-January 16, 2022) owned and operated a snack bar on the fourth floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., when a truck bomb parked outside exploded on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people and destroying most of the building. Washburn, who was blind, rescued four customers and an employee who were in the snack bar when the blast occurred.

Washburn instructed the others to place their hands on the person in front of them, and led them through smoke and ash down a stairwell.

In an interview recorded for the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, Washburn described how he led his customers and employee out of his snack bar: “I had the advantage over them because, not being able to see, I felt like that, you know, this is one time that, you know, you want to try to help somebody as much as you can. I knew how to get out. I just didn’t know what was going to be in our way.”

Washburn, who’d lost his sight as a child, was an Oklahoma State Wrestling Champion, a beep ball player, and ham radio operator.

A friend of Washburn’s, Princella Smith, said that on the day of the bombing his heart “illuminated the darkness.”

Steve Schapiro

Prize-winning photographer Steve Schapiro (1934-January 15, 2022), whose work appeared in such publications as Time, Look, Rolling Stone, Life, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, People and Paris Match, started out as a freelancer in the early 1960s, and was witness to such historic moments as the 1963 March on Washington, Robert F. Kennedy’s senate and presidential campaigns, and the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Having studied under photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, Schapiro emulated the style of Henri Cartier-Bresson in his documentary-style depiction of his subjects through an empathetic lens. He captured Muhammad Ali shadowboxing, the lives of migrant workers, and the Selma-to-Montgomery march.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Schapiro captured images on the sets of films, including “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Godfather,” “Chinatown,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and “Risky Business.” His work has been collected in such books as “American Edge,” “Schapiro’s Heroes,” “The Godfather Family Album,” “Then and Now,” “Bowie,” and “The Fire Next Time,” which paired his photos with text by James Baldwin.

In a 2019 interview with Lens Magazine, Schapiro said, “I think that if you’re going to achieve something in any profession, particularly like being a photographer, which at that time was very competitive, you have to put all your energy into that. You have to. It can’t be something where that’s one element of seven different things you’re involved with or thinking about or working at. And it wouldn’t work well to be a basketball player and a photographer. Maybe that’s not a good example…”

Ralph Emery

Known as the dean of country music broadcasters, Ralph Emery (March 10, 1933-January 15, 2022) began at radio stations In Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Nashville area, before joining Nashville’s WSM, home of the Grand Ole Opry. As a graveyard shift DJ, Emery’s show, “Opry-Star Spotlight,” was carried by the 50,000-watt station to almost 40 states, for 15 years.

“Ten at night ’til five in the morning is a long time to be on the radio,” he said in a 2021 PBS interview. “And there weren’t many stations playing country music. I always thought that if the Opry had died and they had taken that show off, it would have killed country music. But because of WSM and the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ and that all-night show, we hung on by our fingertips.”

Emery then moved into television, as host of “The Ralph Emery Show“; the syndicated “Pop Goes the Country”; “Nashville Alive” on WTBS; the Nashville Network’s live talk-variety show, “Nashville Now”; and a weekly program on RFD-TV.

In 2007 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

He’d tried his hand at a recording career in the early 1960s, but as he later confessed, “I’m not a singer, and that was one of the major problems.” 

Ronnie Spector

Growing up in New York’s Washington Heights as Veronica Bennett, Ronnie Spector (August 10, 1943-January 12, 2022), along with her sister, Estelle Bennett, and cousin Nedra Talley, began performing together in high school, and recorded as Ronnie and the Relatives, before signing on to Phil Spector’s Phillies Records.

After releasing their 1963 hits “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You,” the group released its debut album, “Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica,” which included such hits as “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up,” and “Walking in the Rain.”

On their first tour of the U.K., The Ronettes had The Rolling Stones as their opening act; by 1966 The Ronettes were the opening act for The Beatles’ American tour, and themselves toured Germany the following year. But disappointing sales of their late ’60s songs, such as “Is This What I Get For Loving You?,” led to the group’s disbandment.

Ronnie married Phil Spector in 1968. The details of their divorce in 1974 revealed that he kept her a virtual prisoner in his home; she would barely record during the years of her marriage. [Her autobiography, “Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts and Madness,” was published in 1990.]

In 1973 she recorded as Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes (with Chip Fields Hurd and Diane Linton), and later released several solo recordings. She would also team up with such artists as Bruce Springsteen, Joey Ramone, Keith Richards, Eddie Money and The Misfits. Her solo albums included “Siren,” “Unfinished Business,” and the 2016 “English Heart.”

In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, Spector recalled her treatment by Jimi Hendrix, compared to others in the industry in the 1960s: “I’d get up and sing – anything he would do on his guitar, I would repeat with my voice. He would say, ‘Boy, your voice sounds like a guitar.’ I didn’t know my voice was supposedly that great because people didn’t tell you back then how great you were. Then it was, ‘Go to the ladies’ room. Re-do your eye makeup, or something.'”

Clyde Bellecourt

A leader in the Native American struggle for civil rights, Clyde Bellecourt (May 8, 1936-January 11, 2022) was a co-founder, in 1968, of the American Indian Movement.

Born on the White Earth reservation in northwestern Minnesota (his Ojibwe name is Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun), Bellecourt found urban life difficult when his family relocated to Minneapolis (encouraged by the Indian Relocation Act). Jailed for robbery and burglary, he met other Native inmates, and upon release embarked on a life as an activist promoting indigenous history, language and spirituality.

In his 2018 autobiography, “The Thunder Before the Storm,” Bellecourt wrote that he and his fellow Native Americans had been living with the effects of “historical trauma,” including his parents, who’d “had the Indian beaten out of them.”

After his introduction to the spiritual life of Native Americans, he wrote, “I really started feeling good about being an Indian. I stopped thinking about killing myself.”

AIM began as a local organization in Minneapolis that fought against police brutality and discrimination against Native Americans, cultural appropriation, and environmental injustice. AIM also provided job training and sought to improve housing and education for Indigenous people.

During the 1970s they engaged in multiple national protests, including a 1972 march to Washington, D.C., called the Trail of Broken Treaties. In 1973 AIM led a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, to protest corruption on the reservation and federal injustices against Indians. Two people died during a shootout when the demonstration turned violent.

For decades Bellecourt was a key figure in calls for dropping disparaging Indian names from sports teams and mascots. In 2020 the Washington Redskins dropped its name after decades of criticism and mounting pressure from sponsors.

Bob Saget

Actor and comedian Bob Saget (May 17, 1956-January 9, 2022) was studying film at the University of Southern California when he left college to pursue stand-up comedy. “I never knew that I could do that until I got up the nerve to go on stage,” he told the Norfolk (Va.) Daily Press in 1990. “Look what trouble that’s gotten me into.”

Small acting roles in “Bosom Buddies,” “New Love, American Style” and “It’s a Living” led to his starring role in the sitcom “Full House,” playing a widower raising three daughters with the help of his best friend and his brother-in-law. The show (which costarred John Stamos, Davie Coulier, Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin, and – as the youngest child, Michelle – twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) ran for eight seasons.

He would play another widower in the sitcom “Raising Dad,” and returned to the Tanner household in the 2016 sequel series, “Fuller House.” Saget was also the narrator of the long-running CBS series, “How I Met Your Mother.”

His charisma and wholesome humor were put to good use as the host of the family-friendly “America’s Funniest Home Videos” for its first eight years. But his comedy could run much bluer, as in the 2005 documentary “The Aristocrats,” in which he contributed his take on the world’s dirtiest joke. He had a cameo appearance as a cocaine addict in “Half Baked,” and in the comedy series “Entourage,” he was featured as a foul-mouthed, misogynistic character named … Bob Saget.

As Saget told “CBS This Morning” in 2017, his uncensored stand-up could come as a surprise to his TV fans: “I was playing in Vancouver one night in a casino up there, and there was a lady that just started to walk. But for the most part I always adapt in a chameleon-like way to the audience. I don’t purposely go, ‘I’m gonna be crass here,’ if they’re not enjoying it, you know? I want to get laughs.” 

He also directed several films, including the Norm MacDonald comedy “Dirty Work,” “Benjamin,” the mockumentary “Farce of the Penguins,” and the TV movie “For Hope,” a drama about a woman battling scleroderma, inspired by his late sister, Gay. In 2020, when the pandemic halted his planned comedy tour, he hosted a podcast, “Bob Saget’s Here For You,” in which he answered fans’ questions.

In January, while in Florida on his “I Don’t Do Negative Comedy Tour,” he tweeted, “Loving beyond words being on tour … I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. I’m happily addicted again to this s***.”

Marilyn Bergman

Lyricist Marilyn Bergman (November 10, 1928-January 8, 2022), and her husband, Alan Bergman, were among the most enduring and successful songwriting partnerships. Their romantic ballads for movies, television and Broadway earned them three Oscars, four Emmys, and two Grammys.

They worked with such composers as Marvin Hamlisch, Michel Legrand, John Williams, Henry Mancini, David Shire, Dave Grusin, Cy Coleman and Billy Goldenberg, and wrote hits for Frank Sinatra (“Nice ‘n’ Easy”) and Dean Martin (“Sleep Warm”).

Their greatest collaborations were with singer Barbra Streisand; they won the Academy Award for best original song for “The Way We Were” (with composer Marvin Hamlisch); and their song “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” – first recorded by Neil Diamond and later covered by Streisand – became a duet, after radio station DJs began splicing together the two versions. Diamond and Streisand recorded a new version together, which went platinum.

The Bergmans also won Oscars for “The Windmills of Your Mind” (from “The Thomas Crown Affair”), and for the song score for Streisand’s “Yentl.”

Their TV theme songs included the sitcoms “Maude,” “Alice,” and “Good Times.” They also contributed lyrics to music in the films “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Happy Ending,” “Sometimes a Great Notion,” “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,” the 1976 “A Star Is Born,” “Best Friends,” “Tootsie,” “Yes, Giorgio,” “The Promise,” “Micki & Maude,” “For the Boys,” “Sabrina,” “Major League,” and “Shirley Valentine.”

The couple was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Marilyn became the first woman elected to ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), and later served as the chair and president. She was also the first chair of the Library of Congress’ National Recorded Sound Preservation Board.

In 2010 “Sunday Morning” correspondent Nancy Giles asked the Bergmans how they were able to combine working together with being married for more than half a century. Marilyn replied: “The way porcupines make love – carefully.” 

Michael Lang

In the summer of 1969 concert promoter Michael Lang (December 11, 1944-January 8, 2022), along with three partners, put together a festival billed as “three days of peace and music.” Roughly 400,000 people would show up at the small town of Bethel, N.Y., on land owned by farmer Max Yasgur, and endure mammoth traffic jams, rains, food shortages and overwhelmed restrooms to participate in the culture phenomenon that was known as Woodstock.

More than 30 acts performed on the concert’s main stage, from Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, and Sly and the Family Stone, to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (playing their second-ever gig) and Jimi Hendrix. The epic festival, heralded as a peaceful celebration of community in the midst of a divisive war, was immortalized in an Oscar-winning documentary.

Lang (who also ran a label in the early ’70s, Just Sunshine Records, and managed such artists as Joe Cocker and Rickie Lee Jones) had organized the Miami Pop Festival in 1968, and would go on to produce, in 1994 and 1999, follow-ups of Woodstock, which had created the template, as it were, for later music festivals that even hoped to match its singular cultural impact. “We sort of set a precedent in a lot of those areas,” Lang told “CBS Evening News” in 2009, on the 40th anniversary of the original Woodstock. “It was the beginning of the idea of music and social change, I think.”

Sidney Poitier

The first Black Academy Award-winner for best actor, Sir Sidney Poitier (February 20, 1927-January 6, 2022) created a career filled with memorable characters who exhibited dignity, intelligence, and moral courage – particularly noteworthy given he did so in a Hollywood notorious for underserving Black artists and audiences.

Born in Miami to Bahamian parents, Poitier rose from a childhood of poverty to perform with the American Negro Theater in New York City, before breaking out as a film actor in the 1950 drama “No Way Out.” He starred in such classics as “The Blackboard Jungle,” “The Defiant Ones,” “Porgy and Bess,” “To Sir With Love,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and “In the Heat of the Night.” Poitier received a Tony Award nomination for the 1961 Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” (he later starred in the film version).

In a life filled with firsts, he became the first Black man to win a best actor Oscar, for “Lilies of the Field” (1963), playing a handyman who helps a group of nuns in the Arizona desert construct a chapel. He was the first Black man to kiss a White woman in a movie (1965’s “A Patch of Blue”). With three hit films, including the Oscar-winner for best picture, Poitier was named by theater owners the No. 1 movie star of 1967 – the first time ever for a Black actor.

But he said his career choices were less about being “first” and more about the image of his characters. In a 2013 “Sunday Morning” profile Poitier told CBS News’ Lesley Stahl he would never play someone who was immoral or cruel: “If you go through my career package, you’ll find that I didn’t ever. I didn’t ever.”

He also directed nine features, including “Buck and the Preacher” (starring alongside Harry Belafonte), and the comedies “Uptown Saturday Night” (co-starring Bill Cosby and Flip Wilson), and “Stir Crazy” (directing Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder).

Later acting appearances on television brought him Emmy nominations, for portraying future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (in “Separate But Equal”) and Nelson Mandela (in “Mandela and de Klerk”). His 2000 autobiography, “The Measure of a Man,” was an Oprah Book Club selection.

He received a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2002. In 2009 President Barack Obama awarded Poitier the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying that the actor “not only entertained but enlightened … revealing the power of the silver screen to bring us closer together.”

Throughout his life he was adamant about representation on screen. Before signing on to play the role of Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia homicide detective who reluctantly helps a small town police chief in Mississippi solve a murder, in 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” Poitier asked for a major script change to one scene in which his character is slapped: “I said, ‘If he slaps me, I’m going to slap him back. You will put on paper that the studio agrees that the film will be shown nowhere in the world, with me standing there taking the slap from the man.'”

He had the slap written into his contract. “Yes, I knew that I would have been insulting every Black person in the world [if I hadn’t],” Poitier said. 

Peter Bogdanovich

One of a cohort of “New Hollywood” directors who came of age in the late 1960s and ’70s, Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939-January 6, 2022) got an education in film early, taken at age 5 by his father to the Museum of Modern Art to watch Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies. From age 12 to 30, he saw nearly 4,000 films, which he documented and reviewed on index cards.

He would become a film journalist, documentary filmmaker and actor (studying under Stella Adler), and even work as a film programmer at MoMA. He engaged with the old guard of Hollywood: Howard Hawks, John Ford and Orson Welles, with whom he would later collaborate.

As a director, Bogdanovich earned praise for his early films, including the low-budget thriller “Targets” (produced by Roger Corman and starring an Old Hollywood stalwart, Boris Karloff), and his 1971 classic, “The Last Picture Show.” Adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, the black-and-white period piece about a small, dying rural Texas community earned eight Academy Award nominations and scored Oscars for actors Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson.

In a 2013 “Sunday Morning” interview, Ellen Burstyn revealed Bogdanovich’s direction of her performance in “Last Picture Show,” when her character realizes her daughter (played by Cybill Shepherd) has been sleeping with her lover. “I said, ‘Peter, I have eight different things to express here, and I don’t have a line.’ And he went, ‘I know!’ And I said, ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ And he said, ‘Just think the thoughts of the character, and the camera will read your mind.'”

Bogdanovich followed with “What’s Up, Doc?” a screwball comedy with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal; and “Paper Moon,” a Depression-Era comedy (also shot in black-and-white) starring Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal as a pair of con artists. Tatum, at age 10, became the youngest winner of an Oscar, for best supporting actress.

But Bogdanovich’s personal life also dramatically colored his work. His affair with Cybill Shepherd during the filming of “Last Picture Show” ended his marriage to producer and production designer Polly Platt, and his later films starring Shepherd – “Daisy Miller” and “At Long Last Love” – failed at the box office. His relationship with former Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, begun during the filming of the comedy “They All Laughed,” ended with her murder by her estranged husband – a tragedy that Bogdanovich wrote about in a book, “The Killing of the Unicorn.” [He would later marry Dorothy’s younger sister, Louise.]

Other films received mixed critical response, from the terrific Ben Gazzara drama “Saint Jack,” and the hit “Mask,” starring Cher, to “Texasville,” (a sequel to “Last Picture Show”), “Noises Off,” “The Thing Called Love,” “The Cat’s Meow,” and “She’s Funny That Way.”

He returned to acting, with turns as Dr. Melfi’s psychiatric colleague in “The Sopranos,” and in “Out of Order,” “While We’re Young,” and “It: Chapter Two.” 

His friendship with Welles (who likewise came out of the gate as a wunderkind young director and faced increasing difficulties with his later projects) would lead him to take a role in Welles’ long-in-the-works drama “The Other Side of the Wind,” playing a protégé and fellow filmmaker opposite star John Huston. Parts of the film were even shot in Bogdanovich’s house in Bel Air. Begun in 1970, the film was unfinished at the time of Welles’ death, and remained in legal limbo for decades, until Bogdanovich and a production team rescued the negative, completed the film, and premiered it at Venice in 2018.

The movie was shot in the manner of a mockumentary before there were mockumentaries. “It’s funny, it seems very modern to me,” Bogdanovich told CBS News. “It seems like it was way ahead of its time. Even though the Seventies was kind of a free-for-all in terms of filmmaking, nobody quite made a film like this.”

After Welles’ death, Bogdanovich published a book of their interviews, “This Is Orson Welles,” in 1992.

In a 2002 interview with The AV Club, Bogdanovich decried the lack of interest or knowledge of film culture more than a few years old: “Younger people don’t seem to know anything about older films,” he said. “And it’s not just movie history that nobody knows. It’s regular history. America is a young country, I suppose, and maybe that’s the reason why there’s no tradition of tradition. … Yes, older films are available now, in a way that they never were before. And there’s less interest than ever. It’s just awful. It’s like ignoring buried treasure, but it’s not even buried. It’s right there. …

“You look at the average, well-made movie of the ’30s … well, not average, but the good movies of the ’30s: If you look at it today, you’ll see that those films were made for adults, but kids could see them. Whereas today, films are made for kids, and adults are expected to tolerate them. It’s a whole new world.”