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Jackie Collins, the beloved best-selling novelist, has died, PEOPLE has exclusively learned. "It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful, dynamic and one of a kind mother, Jackie Collins, who died of breast cancer today," the Collins family tells PEOPLE in a statement. "She lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over 4 decades. She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we...

Jean Darling, one of the last surviving members of the silent movie Our Gang comedies, has died. Her death was reported on Sunday September 6 on social media sites by her friends. She had turned 93 years old only two weeks earlier. Our Gang were also called Hal Roach's Rascals. The series was known as The Little Rascals on television. In its long history, from the 1920s into the 1940s, the Our Gang roster changed a lot, with some notable members including Jackie Cooper, Farina Hoskins, Stymie Beard, Spanky McFarland, Darla Hood, and Alfalfa Switzer. Jean Darling joined Our Gang in...

Showbiz legend Cilla, who also had two number one singles at the start of a career stretching over 50 years, died in Spain.... She was championed by The Beatles and enjoyed eleven top ten hits including chart-toppers Anyone Who Had a Heart and You're My World.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Lynn Anderson, whose strong, husky voice carried her to the top of the charts with "(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden," has died. She was 67. A statement from the family said she passed away at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday. Her publicist said the cause of death was cardiac arrest. Anderson first soaked up the national spotlight as a young singer on "The Lawrence Welk Show" between 1967 and 1969. Although she was signed to an independent label, the exposure helped her nab a deal with Columbia Records in Nashville....

Dick Van Patten, who played the paterfamilias on the 1980s TV dramedy “Eight Is Enough,” died on Tuesday morning. He was 86. Patten died at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. due to complications from diabetes. The always-genial, round-faced actor also appeared in Disney films including “Freaky Friday” (the original, Jodie Foster version) as well as Mel Brooks comedies “High Anxiety,” “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Space Balls.”

Jim Ed Brown, a member of the country music trio The Browns and a star of the Grand Ole Opry for more than a half-century, died Thursday. He was 81. Brown, who was elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame in March with his sisters Maxine and Bonnie, died at Williamson Medical Center in Franklin, Tenn. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in September. The Browns’ 1959 crossover smash “The Three Bells” topped Billboard’s country chart for 10 straight weeks, and it spent four weeks atop Billboard’s all-genre singles chart.

From a very good friend of Teresa (Arasina): "Got the terrible news I'd been half expecting. Early this morning Teresa (arasina @Free Republic) has passed on to be with the Lord due to complications with what was an acute case of cystic fibrosis. Her lungs simply would not respond. Even with her oxygen machine she could not quite get enough oxygen. All that could be done at that point was sedation. On Saturday I'd called but she immediately said she couldn't speak. Yesterday I regrettably didn't reach out...and this AM Teresa's niece left the message of the bad news. The...

Lennie Merullo, the last living Cubs player from the 1945 World Series, died Saturday. He was 98. Merullo played seven seasons at shortstop with the Cubs from 1941-47. After Andy Pafko’s death in 2013, Merullo became the only living person to have played for the Cubs in a World Series.

Good Times actor Ben Powers has died, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 64. While a cause of death has yet to be revealed, an obituary created by his loved ones has surfaced that reveals the actor passed away April 6 in New Bedford, Mass. Powers was best known for his role as Keith Anderson on the '70s sitcom Good Times. His character was married to Thelma Evans played by BerNadette Stanis.

Stan Freberg was funny in every medium he tried. In cartoons, where he was the voice of a gopher, two bears and an insurance agent, among others. On his radio show and comedy albums, on which he spoofed everyone from George Washington to Elvis Presley, from to Harry Belafonte to Lawrence Welk and the Founding Fathers. In his revolutionary ad campaigns, which injected humor into the staid, overly earnest advertisements of earlier decades, sometimes at the cost of the very product he was selling. (In a classic commercial for pit-less prunes, a skeptic of the fruit sniffs, “They’re still rather...

John Paul Hammerschmidt, who defeated Bill Clinton in the future president’s first political campaign and was the first Republican congressman from Arkansas since Reconstruction, died on Wednesday in Springdale, Ark. He was 92. The cause was heart and respiratory failure, said his son and only survivor, John Arthur Hammerschmidt.

Full title: 'He died while smoking, drinking whiskey and telling lies': Hilarious and heartfelt obituary to Alaska fisherman, 60, published in local paper by adoring daughter ".........The obituary goes on to tell the story of Malcolm's life, starting with his upbringing in Kirkland, Washington. At the age of 19, Malcolm left his home state for Dutch Harbor, Alaska in order to realize his life's calling to 'yell at deckhands on commercial fishing boats.' For forty years, Malcolm worked as a boat cook, mechanic, deckhand, captain and boat owner catching crab, halibut, black cod and salmon - mostly out of the...

New York City television anchor and Strongsville native Lisa Colagrossi died Friday after suffering a brain aneurysm a day earlier. Colagrossi, 49, who anchored weekend morning news for NBC station WKYC-TV (Channel 3) in Cleveland in the early 1990s, became ill while on a reporting assignment for WABC-TV. She was also a morning anchor for the station. The station confirmed her death early Saturday in a lengthy tribute. Earlier, a Twitter post by anchor Sade Baderinwa said "hearts are broken" at the station over Colagrossi's death.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, indulge me for just a few minutes here. We all here at the EIB Network are experiencing a huge void in all of our hearts here today because of a death, one of our staff members, the very first staff member to join me 27 years ago in New York. Christopher Carson, "Kit," my trusted chief of staff, aide-de-camp, passed away today at 8 a.m. at his home in New Jersey after what really was a four-year battle, really valiant, never-seen-anything-like-it battle with essentially brain cancer. He thought that it was beaten back two...

NEW YORK (AP) — Pioneering radio and TV host Joe Franklin, who gave breaks to the likes of Al Pacino and Bill Cosby on his variety show long before they became famous and who boasted he never missed a broadcast in decades, has died at age 88. He died Saturday of cancer, which he had had for a few years, longtime producer and friend Steven Garrin said. Franklin often is credited with developing the standard TV talk show format, sitting behind a desk while interviewing wanna-be celebrities, minor celebrities and the occasional bona fide celebrity. The host of "The Joe...

West Virginia's longest-serving governor, Arch A. Moore Jr. died Jan. 7 in Charleston at age 91 just one day after his daughter, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., was sworn into office. The man with a reputation throughout the Mountain State for always recalling names, occupations and family details with incredible accuracy died after battling heart trouble and dementia. Moore, a Marshall County native, launched his life in politics at age 28 by winning his uncle's former seat in the House of Delegates. He was married to the late Shelley Riley Moore for 65 years. She died in September 2014...

Stuart Scott, a longtime anchor at ESPN, died Sunday morning at the age of 49. Among the features of the new ESPN studio in Bristol is a wall of catchphrases made famous by on-air talent over the years. An amazing nine of them belong to one man -- from his signature "Boo-Yah!" to "As cool as the other side of the pillow" to "He must be the bus driver cuz he was takin' him to school."

Actress Luise Rainer, who became the first winner of consecutive Oscars in the 1930s, has died at the age of 104. The German-born star was named best actress in 1936 and 1937 - a feat achieved by only five actors in Academy Awards history to date. Her achievement made her a force in the golden age of Hollywood cinema, but was also a curse, making her last major film in 1943. She settled in London and made occasional appearances on film and TV. Rainer appeared in US small screen series The Loveboat in 1984, while her last substantial film role...

Jane Byrne was not mighty, like her mentor, Richard J. Daley. She was not beloved, like her successor, Harold Washington. Nor was she long-serving, like her bitter rival, Richard M. Daley. But she was mayor, Chicago’s first and only female mayor — making Chicago the largest city in the United States to elect a female chief executive — serving a single, tempestuous term, ushering the city into the 1980s, leaving her own colorful legacy during a time of political change, social upheaval and financial crisis. Byrne, 81, died Friday in hospice care. She had been in poor health in recent...

Richard "Dick" Schaal, a pioneer at the Second City comedy theater in Chicago, the former husband of the actress Valerie Harper and a familiar face from a plethora of character roles on movies and television, including "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda," died Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home in Woodland Hills, Calif., said his only daughter, the actress Wendy Schaal. He was 86..