Those We Lost: recent Irish-American passings

He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Patsy Porter, a dancer whom he met during the London run of Finian’s Rainbow decades ago, and sons Jonathan and Damian, both of Chicago.

 

Brittany Murphy
1977-2009

Actress Brittany Murphy, who starred in numerous hit movies and television shows in the 1990’s and 2000’s, died at age 32 on December 19 after going into cardiac arrest in her home in Los Angeles. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Murphy’s father was the Italian-American mobster Angelo Bertolotti and she was raised by her Irish-American mother, Sharon Murphy, in New Jersey and later Los Angeles. Her parents divorced when she was two. “My mother and uncle’s last name is Murphy and it’s the name I’ve always used all my life,” she told Ireland’s Sunday Tribune in an interview to promote her 2005 movie Sin City. “My family is very Irish. They give Murphy sweatshirts out to everyone when we go somewhere. We have the emblem from Murphy’s stout put on the sweatshirts like a family crest.”

Murphy’s movie career took off in 1995 when she starred in the hit Clueless alongside Alicia Silverstone. A string of successful films followed, including 1999’s Girl, Interrupted and Drop Dead Gorgeous, 2001’s Don’t Say A Word, 2002’s 8 Mile, and Uptown Girls and Spun in 2003. She also dabbled in music, singing in a band called Blessed Soul in the late 1990s and as part of her vocal acting in 2006’s Happy Feet. She is survived by her husband, British screenwriter Simon Monjack, whom she married in 2007.

John J. O’Connor
1933-2009 

John J. O’Connor, former New York Times television critic, died in Manhattan at age 76 on November 13. His partner of 47 years, Seymour Barofsky, reported the cause as lung cancer, diagnosed a month prior. Born in 1933 in the Bronx, one of four sons of Kerry immigrants James O’Connor and Hannah Foley, O’Connor earned degrees from the City College of New York and Yale University before joining The Wall Street Journal’s staff in 1959 as a copy editor. In 1971, he became a television critic at The New York Times, beginning a career that spanned over 25 years of developments in the drastically changing medium until his retirement in 1997. He wrote also for the paper’s Sunday Arts & Leisure section and as a theater and dance critic.

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Nster.com