"He was the reluctant hero of Halloween, an icon who became so associated with the holiday, it ended his normal singing career.

Bobby "Boris" Pickett, the man behind one of the most famous one-hit wonders in history, died Thursday. The artist who made "Monster Mash" an annual event starting in 1962 was suffering from leukemia and was only 69 years old."

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

4 Apr 2007
Director Bob Clark, who helmed the modern holiday classic A Christmas Story and was the writer-director-producer of the Porky's films, died in a car crash with his son on the Pacific Coast Highway early Wednesday morning; he was 67.

According to police reports, Clark's car was hit head-on around 2:30am by an SUV that swerved into Clark's southbound lane; Clark and his 22 year-old son, Ariel, were pronounced dead at the scene.

The SUV driver, who was driving without a license, was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and is to be booked for gross vehicular manslaughter.

The director of the 1974 cult horror film Black Christmas as well as the 1980 Jack Lemmon drama Tribute (which nabbed Lemmon a Best Actor Oscar nomination), Clark scored a major box office success in the early '80s with the teen sex comedy Porky's, a surprise hit that he wrote, directed and produced which became the highest-grossing film of 1982 and one of the highest-grossing films ever in Canada.

Clark went on to helm the sequel, Porky's II: The Next Day, a year later, but it was another 1983 film that would become his most memorable. Based on humorist Jean Shepherd's short story collection In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, A Christmas Story was the nostalgic and humorous tale of a young boy named Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) growing up in the 1940s who yearned for the ultimate Christmas gift, a Red Ryder BB gun. Also starring Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon, the comedy (which Clark directed, co-wrote and produced) was a modest success in its initial box office run but gained a strong and steady following through the next two decades, becoming a TV staple during the holiday season and a consistent seller on DVD.

Clark's other films included the Dolly Parton-Sylvester Stallone comedy Rhinestone, Turk 182!, From the Hip, and the two Baby Geniuses movies.

Recently, there had been talk of Howard Stern producing a remake of Porky's, and Clark had begun development on a remake of one of his first films, the horror movie Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things.

--Mark Englehart, IMDb staff