The late greats

This year, we experienced the loss of one of the greatest film actors of the 20th century, a trailblazing R&B; singer, television pioneers, dance legends, a movie star who become a champion for the disabled and one of the last of Walt Disney’s renowned animators. Here’s a look at some of the legends to whom the world said goodbye in 2004.

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Ray Charles

73, singer

Known as the “Genius of Soul,” the musical innovator broke color barriers in the 1950s and ‘60s, but his legacy also extends beyond rock and soul to country music. Unfortunately, Charles, who had been blind since he was a youngster, didn’t get to enjoy two enormous successes of 2004: Since his death in June, his recording of duets, “Genius Loves Company,” has been his first Top 10 album since the 1960s and has been nominated for 10 Grammys. And “Ray,” the film biography of his life, scored a critical and box office success this past fall with star Jamie Foxx a leading contender for an Oscar nomination.

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Christopher Reeve

52, actor, director, advocate for the disabled

Tall and handsome, Reeve soared into fame in 1978 as Superman in the hit film version of the DC Comics classic. But he became a superhero to the disabled in 1995 when a horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. Reeve never gave up his hope of walking again. His Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation raised $42.5 million to help neuroscientists try to come up with cures for spinal cord injuries, and his highly publicized advocacy for stem cell research became a focal point of this year’s presidential campaign. Amid his tireless fundraising work, Reeve directed two TV films, wrote a bestselling autobiography and starred in a TV remake of “Rear Window.”

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Marlon Brando

80, actor

Movie acting can be divided into B.B. (Before Brando) and A.B. (After Brando). With a body like a finely toned panther and a ferocity and passion moviegoers had never seen, Brando transformed himself into a series of memorable characters -- his brutally sexual Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the motorcycle rebel yearning to be loved in “The Wild One,” the ex-pugilist turned stoolie who redeems himself in “On the Waterfront” (for which he won his first Oscar), and the cat-loving family man who just happened to be the murderous head of a Mafia family in “The Godfather” (which brought him his second). He dazzled and challenged audiences and has influenced every actor who has followed in his wake.

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Julia Child

91, cooking instructor, author

and TV personality

Without her, the Food Channel might never have existed -- she made cooking shows on the small screen palatable and fun. The tall, irreverent Child not only revolutionized food when she co-wrote “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 1961, two years later she also brought her culinary finesse to public television with her show “The French Chef.” Other TV shows followed. Child was quirky, down-to-earth, funny and a bit of a klutz, a fan of butter, salt and red meat. Her distinct personality made her a favorite of comics, including Dan Aykroyd, whose “French Chef” became a classic sketch from the early years of “Saturday Night Live.”

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Bella Lewitzky

88, dancer, choreographer, teacher and arts advocate

A leading force of dance on the West Coast, Lewitzky proved that one could have a healthy, productive dance career away from the Eastern arts establishment. A protege of the legendary Los Angeles choreographer Lester Horton, she performed until she was 62 and formed her acclaimed dance company in 1966. She taught at USC, the Idyllwild School of the Arts and the California Institute for the Arts, where she was named the first “dean of dance.” During her career, she received numerous awards and honors, including the Dance Magazine Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Medal of Arts and the Capezio Award. Lewitzky also served as a vice chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts and 20 years ago produced the diverse, stimulating dance sections of the 10-week Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles.

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Remembering, with respect

This year saw the passing of a number of notables in arts and entertainment.

Spalding Gray, 62, monologist, writer and actor

Known for his mesmerizing monologues on life, love and, most especially, death (including “Swimming to Cambodia”), Gray turned the theatrical genre on its ear. To theatergoers accustomed to staid British thespians doing one-man shows on the works of an author, Gray’s scary, funny, lewd and sophisticated riffs on his fears and phobias were often shocking and unsettling. But above all else they were brilliant. After a near-fatal car accident in 2001 left him with numerous health problems, Gray attempted suicide in 2002 and 2003. Last seen on the Staten Island ferry in January of this year, his body was pulled from the East River off Brooklyn two months later.

Dame Alicia Markova, 94, ballerina and teacher

One of the greatest interpreters of classical ballet roles such as “Giselle,” Markova was also one of the most influential ballerinas of the 20th century. Her dancing career was en pointe for 52 years. She was all of 14 when Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev discovered her and turned into the soloist for the innovative company the Ballets Russes. Over the years, she was a principal dancer for the companies that became the Royal Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre and the English National Ballet as well as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

Jack Paar, 85, talk-show host pioneer and actor

Mercurial, witty and urbane, Paar was the original “King of Late Night.” He paved the way for the likes of Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien. After appearing in a few forgettable films, Paar hit his stride on the small screen as host of the “Tonight Show” from 1957 to 1962. He excelled in chatting with guests, and over the years they included then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, pianist-composer Oscar Levant and Judy Garland.

Bob Keeshan, 76, creator and star of the CBS children’s series “Captain Kangaroo”

Long before there was an Elmo, “Dora the Explorer” or “Rugrats,” there was “Captain Kangaroo,” a quiet, wholesome CBS series that educated children through songs and puppets. Presiding over the show was the gentle, soft-spoken Keeshan, who was all of 28 when he started. He enchanted children and their parents for more than 30 years.

David Raksin, 92; Elmer Bernstein, 82; and Jerry Goldsmith, 75; film composers

Within a few months this summer, the film community lost three of its most influential composers. Raksin came into his own as a composer in the 1940s, writing the seminal score to the 1944 murder mystery “Laura” and receiving an Oscar nomination for the 1947 period drama “Forever Amber.” A onetime member of the Communist Party, he reluctantly did name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Among his other classic scores were 1948’s “Force of Evil”; 1952’s “Carrie”; 1955’s “The Big Combo”; 1958’s “Separate Tables,” for which he received his second Oscar nomination; and 1968’s “Will Penny.”

Bernstein deftly went from writing scores for action blockbusters, such as 1960’s “The Magnificent Seven” and 1963’s “The Great Escape,” to composing the music for smaller, more intimate films such as 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and 2002’s “Far From Heaven.” He even acquired a new, younger audience with his scores for such comedies as 1978’s “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” In a career that spanned more than 50 years, he received 14 Oscar nominations and won for 1967’s “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” Like Raksin, he also composed for TV.

Goldsmith cut his composing teeth in television, scoring such series as “Dr. Kildare” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” But it was his innovative, atmospheric movie scores that brought him his fame. An Emmy and Oscar winner, he composed the scores for 200 feature films, including “Planet of the Apes,” in which he used stainless-steel mixing bowls to create an odd, surreal percussion sound; “Patton”; “Chinatown”; and “The Omen,” for which he won his Academy Award.

Cy Coleman, 75, Broadway composers, and Fred Ebb, 76, Broadway lyricist

Both Coleman and Ebb came to Broadway’s attention in the 1960s just as the careers of an earlier generation of Broadway composers, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, were fading away.

One of the most successful Broadway and pop composers of the latter half of the 20th century, Coleman won Tonys for “Sweet Charity,” “On the Twentieth Century” and “City of Angels.” Though perhaps not as versatile as the composers who came before him, “his works were peppy, brassy and infectious. And the top pop singers -- like Frank Sinatra, who hit the charts with “Witchcraft” and “The Best Is Yet to Come” -- loved to perform his tunes. One of the most prolific composers around, he had premiered two new works within the last year: the well-received “Like Jazz,” which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum, and “The Great Ostrovsky,” a comedy about the American Yiddish theater.

Though Coleman worked with several lyricists during his career, Ebb had been teamed with composer John Kander since a music publisher brought them together in the early 1960s. Ebb wrote dramatic, funny, naughty and literate lyrics to Kander’s haunting ballads and jazzy, catchy tunes for 11 Broadway shows, including the Tony Award-winning “Cabaret,” “Woman of the Year” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” And they never grew out of fashion. Their 1975 musical “Chicago” got a new life on Broadway in 1997 in a sexy new revival -- it is still running-- and received the best picture Oscar for a movie version in 2002.

Frank Thomas, 92, Disney animator

Though most movie animation is now 3-D, none of the new animation can match the beauty, simplicity and artistic quality of the traditional 2-D animation of which Thomas was a master.

Thomas and his college pal Ollie Johnston were the last two “Nine Old Men” from the golden age of Disney animation. Thomas drew some of the most memorable characters and scenes in animated movie history, including Peter Pan’s duel with Captain Hook in “Peter Pan,” “The Lady and the Tramp” sharing a meatball outside in Italian restaurant, the wicked stepmother in “Cinderella,” the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland” and Baloo, Mowgli and Kaa in “The Jungle Book.” During his last years at the studio, he nurtured and mentored several young animators, including Glen Keane.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 95; Helmut Newton, 83; Richard Avedon, 81; Francesco Scavullo, 82; photographers

France’s Cartier-Bresson changed the face of photojournalism by using a small hand-held camera and declaring that photography needed to capture “the decisive moment.” Using a plain Leica, he traveled the world recording these decisive moments for the likes of Look, Life and Paris Match. He was one of the first Western photographers who went to Russia in 1954 after Joseph Stalin died and photographed Mohandas K. Gandhi an hour before his assassination.

Newton turned his artistic eye to the fashion world. His striking, often provocative work was featured in Vogue and other fashion magazines, and his images inspired stylish directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Brian De Palma and Roman Polanski. Newton drew his inspiration from the surreal, opulent 1920s films of Erich von Stroheim and Brassais’ legendary photographs of Paris by night.

Avedon was the successor of such early Hollywood portrait photographers as Clarence Sinclair Bull and George Hurrell. But his black-and-white portraits and fashion pictures displayed more of a sense of humor than Bull’s or Hurrell’s. And unlike the glossy, airbrushed-perfect photos from the golden age of Hollywood, his portraits were stripped down, bare and seemed to capture the soul of his subjects. He broke new ground with his fashion photos, eschewing posed models for action shots.

Scavullo’s camera loved beautiful women, and, in a career that spanned five decades, he shot such beauties as Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and Michelle Pfeiffer. His work appeared in Seventeen, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Town & Country and Harper’s Bazaar. He made his biggest impression with his sexy covers for Cosmopolitan, which he began shooting in the mid-’60s for editor Helen Gurley Brown.

Rodney Dangerfield, 82, comic and actor

Though he made a name for himself as the man who couldn’t get any respect, to his fellow comics he was one of the most respected funnymen around. With a face that would stop a clock and huge bulging eyes, Dangerfield would nervously hang on to the microphone as he would throw out self-deprecating one-liners. Dangerfield was an everyman comic who didn’t hit his stride until the 1960s, when his perfectly timed rat-a-tat-tat delivery caught on during the turbulent decade. He parlayed his nightclub success into TV guest appearances and starring roles in movies such as “Caddyshack” and “Back to School.”

Russ Meyer, 82, sexploitation filmmaker

Just as Hugh Hefner brought respectability to soft-core pornography magazines with the success of Playboy in the 1950s, Meyer elevated the sexploitation film from the grind houses to the mainstream. Often referred to as “King Leer” or “King of the Nudies,” his movies were violent and populated by big-busted females, but rarely were filled with sex scenes. He wrote, produced, directed, financed, edited and photographed 23 films during his career, including “Vixen” and “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” His 1970 sequel to “Valley of the Dolls,” titled “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” was co-written by film critic Roger Ebert. Meyer’s work was celebrated with retrospectives at the American Cinematheque and even at London’s National Film Theatre

Tony Randall, 84, director and actor

In a career that lasted six decades, Randall was a raconteur of the first order, a comic force, a director and the perfect talk-show guest. Always fastidiously dressed and perfectly groomed -- a pioneer metrosexual -- Randall was the perfect foil for the likes of Doris Day and Rock Hudson in their movie comedies “Pillow Talk,” “Lover Come Back” and “Send Me No Flowers.” He will be forever known, though, as the neatnik, lovelorn photographer Felix Unger in the sitcom version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” opposite Jack Klugman’s slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison.

-- Susan King

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Here is a list of other notables in the world of arts and entertainment who died in 2004:

Julian J. Aberbach, 95, music publisher

“Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, 38, guitarist

Anita Addison, 51, TV executive

Dayton Allen, 85, voice actor

Carl Anderson, 58, actor/singer

Vernon Alley, 89, bassist

Victor Argo, 69, actor

Izora Armstead, 62, singer

Paul Atkinson, 58, guitarist

Estelle Axton, 85, co-founder Stax Records

Peter Baird, 52, puppeteer

Max Barnes, 67, songwriter

John Drew Barrymore, 72, actor

Geoffrey Beene, 77, fashion designer

Jackson Beck, 92, voice actor

Jan Berry, 62, singer

Richard Biggs, 44, actor

Laura Branigan, 47, singer

Robert “Gypsy Boots” Bootzin, 89, actor/writer/organic foods promoter

Johnny Bristol, 65, music producer

Cornelius Bumpus, 58, saxophonist

Mary-Ellis Bunim, 57, TV producer

Kenny Buttrey, 59, drummer

Virginia Capers, 78, actress

Johnnie Carl, 57, composer/music director

Frances Chaney, 89, actress

Robert F. Colesberry Jr., 57, TV producer

Michel Colombier, 65, composer

Alistair Cooke, 95, TV host/radio commentator/author

Joan Cullman, 72, theater producer

D-Roc, a.k.a. Dennis Miles, 45, guitarist

Danny Dark, 65, voice actor

Skeeter Davis, 72, singer

Philippe de Broca, 71, director

Frances Dee, 94, actress

Julius Dixon, 90, songwriter

Eric Douglas, 46, actor

Al Dvorin, 81, announcer

Carole Eastman, 69, screenwriter

Neal L. Fredericks, 35, cinematographer

Donald Yetter Gardner, 91, songwriter

Hank Garland, 74, Nashville guitarist

Phil Gersh, 92, Gersh Agency founder, Brian Gibson, 59, director

Olivia Goldsmith, 54, writer

Les Gray, 57, singer

Uta Hagen, 84, actress/teacher

Arthur Hailey, 84, writer

Jeff Harris, 68, TV producer

Julius Harris, 81, actor

Jean Ruth Hay, 87, radio host

Syd Hoff, 91, cartoonist/children’s book illustrator

Harry Holter, 93, Disney animator

Bart Howard, 88, songwriter

Jody Jacobs, 82, society columnist

J.J. Jackson, 62 disc jockey/MTV veejay

Art James, 74, game show host/announcer

Rick James, 56, singer

Joyce Jillson, 58, actress/astrologer

Elvin Jones, 76, drummer

Larry Kamm, 64, TV director

Arthur “Killer” Kane, 55, bassist

Tichi Kassell, 77, Hollywood Reporter editor/Woman in Film founder

Gilbert “Zulu” Kauhi, 66, TV actor

Howard Keel, 85, actor/singer

Alan King, 76, comic/actor/producer

Carlos Kleiber, 74, conductor

Harry Lampert, 88, illustrator

Lester Lanin, 97, bandleader

Anna Lee, 91, actress

Janet Leigh, 77, actress,

Donald Leight, 80, trumpeter

William Manchester, 82, biographer,

Billy May, 87, bandleader/arranger

Mercedes McCambridge, 87, actress

Vaughn Meader, 68, comic/musician

Terry Melcher, 62, record producer/songwriter

Ann Miller, 81, actress/dancer

Jan Miner, 86, actress

Arnold “Gatemouth” Moore, 90, blues singer

Carl Mydans, 97, photographer

David Myers, 90, cinematographer

Ol’ Dirty Bastard, a.k.a. Russell Jones, 35, rapper

Ron O’Neal, 66, actor

Jerry Orbach, 69, actor

Bruce Palmer,58, bassist

Hildy Parks Cohen, 78, TV writer

Robert Pastorelli, 49, actor

John Peel, 65, disc jockey

Daniel Petrie Sr., 83, director

Robert Quine, 61, guitarist

Johnny Ramone, 55, guitarist

Jason Raize, 28, actor

Leonard Reed, 97, tap dancer

Joan Richman, 64, TV producer

Alexander Ripley, 70, author

John Randolph, 88, actor

Eugene Roche, 75, actor

William Sackheim, 84, producer

Pierre Salinger, 79, journalist/political press officer

Francoise Sagan, 69, writer

Adan Sanchez, 19, singer

Isabel Sanford, 86, actress

Drake Sather, 44, TV writer

Hubert Selby Jr., 75, author

Mary Selway, 68, casting director

Julius Schwartz, 88, D.C. Comics editor

Artie Shaw, 94, bandleader

Jeff Smith, 65, TV chef

Elly Annie Schneider, 90, “Wizard of Oz” Munchkin

Carrie Snodgress, 57, actress

Ray Stark, 88, producer

Jan Sterling, 82, actress,

Niki Sullivan, 66, guitarist

Susan Sontag, 71, writer/critic

June Taylor, 86, choreographer

Peter Ustinov, 82, actor/writer

Theo Van Gogh, 47, documentary filmmaker

Randy Vanwarmer, 48, singer/songwriter

Joe Viterelli, 66, actor

John Whitehead, 55, songwriter

Noble Willingham, 72, actor/teacher

Paul Winfield, 62, actor,

Fay Wray, 96, actress

Syreeta Wright, 58, singer

Charlotte Zwerin, 72, director