RIP – JEFF CONAWAY

EXPIRED: 05/11/11 – Jeff Conaway, 60, was a heartthrob. Then he lost heart. Then his heart stopped.

He shot to fame as Kenickie in the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical “Grease” in 1978, costarring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. After “Grease,” Conaway went on to become Bobby Wheeler, a struggling actor-turned-cab driver on the TV hit “Taxi.” He tried his hand at singing and when he decided he was too big for the show, he left it. It hurt his career.

That wasn’t the only ain he was in though. Decades later he appeared on appeared on “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew,” there to treat his addiction to painkillers. These appearances showed what was left of his fans how far he had spiraled.

“Jeff was a severe, severe opiate addict with chronic pain, one of the most serious and dangerous combination of problems you could possibly interact with,” said Dr. Drew Pinsky.

While pneumonia was the cause of death, the doctor who treated him for drug addiction for years says it was his dependence on prescription painkillers that eventually cost him his life. The actor had been in a medically induced coma before being removed from life support.

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RIP – BABY MARIE

EXPIRED: 11/11/10 – Baby Marie, 99, was a star.

At 5, she made $300/week when most Depression-era Americans earned less than $1,000 a year.

Girls wished for a Baby Marie doll for Xmas. She asked for, and got, mansions.

Why not? She made 26 movies in 6 years, including Little Mary Sunshine!

But she was washed up at age 10.

In the 30’s she did stand-in work for Betty Hutton and for Ginger Rogers in Change of Heart. She also appeared in the Gay Divorcée.

Later she learned how to make costumes and found a job doing that behind the scenes for Guys and Dolls, Spartacus, The Way We Were, Mame,  The Godfather, Part II, and many others.

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RIP – BOBBY HEBB

EXPIRED: 08/03/10 – Bobby Hebb, 72, was raised by blind parents near Nashville’s Music Row, so with parents who were focused on sound it was only natural that he would gravitate to the sounds of the area.

Early on he began performing as a street musician, singing, tap dancing, and playing spoons. His talents got him on a local Nashville TV show, which caught the eye of country star and music impresario Roy Acuff, who asked Hebb to join the house-band at Nashville’s Grand Old Opry.

He accepted, and this being the 50’s, made history. Hebb became the first black performer on stage at the famed theatre.

This “celebrity” or “infamy” – whichever way you look at it – got him a lot of attention, and eventually Hebb was singing back-up for many of rock’s early black stars, including Bo Diddley on his recording of “Diddley Daddy.” In 1960 he got in front of the mike on his own and recorded a version of Acuff’s hit “Night Train To Memphis” scoring a minor hit and raising his stature a wee bit.

Things were looking up for Hebb until things started looking down. On the day following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Hebb’s brother, Harold, was stabbed to death in a fight in a Nashville club. He was down, and while most people grieved and found no solace, Hebb looked up. He wrote “Sunny.”

“Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain / Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain”