Science-fiction giant Isaac Asimov, 72, who wrote more than 400 hooks, 350 short stories and some 2,000 articles during his 54-year career, died of heart and kidney failure in New York City on April 6. His best-known works are I, Robot and The Realm of Numbers, which appealed to both the scientific community and ordinary readers. The Russian-born author, who had a Ph.D. in chemistry, attributed his extraordinary output partly to the fact that he could type 90 words a minute. "I write as a result of some inner compulsion, and I'm not always in control of it," Asimov once said....
Actress Molly Picon, 94, often called the Helen Hayes of the Yiddish Theater, died in her sleep at her sister's house in Lancaster, Pa., on April 5. Born in a Manhattan tenement, she won her first amateur singing contest at age 5 and continued entertaining people for the next 76 years on Broadway (Milk and Honey), on TV (Car 54, Where Are You?) and on the screen, where she played the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof. When Picon, a fixture on the Lower East Side's Yiddish stage, moved uptown to make her Broadway debut in 1940 in the English-language play Morning Star, Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times critic, wrote, "To coin a phrase, she is a darling."
Spiky-haired English rocker Billy Idol, 36, was fined $2,000 on April 1 by a Beverly Hills judge after pleading no contest to charges that he hit a woman in the face after they left a restaurant together one night last October. Idol was also ordered to campaign against drug and alcohol abuse and to get counseling....
Mob boss John Gotti, 51, was found guilty of murder and racketeering on 13 counts in a Brooklyn federal court on April 2. Gotti now faces life imprisonment....
Rich and famous TV host Robin Leach, 50, may be poorer but even more famous now that his ex-lover, actress Judith Ledford, has slapped him with a breach-of-contract suit in L.A. Ledford claims she and the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host-producer lived together for five years but that the relationship began unraveling two years ago when she discovered Leach had been unfaithful.
Cecil Hoffman. 29, who plays prosecutor Zoey Clemmons on L.A. Law, has become engaged to former high school classmate Paul Slye, 30, and in real estate. The couple dated briefly at the private Middlesex School in Concord, Mass., but hadn't seen each other for 11 years until they hooked up last year.
Italian-English actress Greta (Presumed Innocent) Scacchi, 32, gave birth to a baby girl named Leila on March 20 in Sydney, where she was visiting her mother. The father is her beau, actor Vincent (Dying Young) D'Onofrio, 31, who met Scacchi in 1989 when they costarred in Fires Within....
Singer Jimmy Buffett, 45, and his wife", Jane Slagsvol, had their second child, daughter Sarah Delano, on April 1 in Nashville. The couple already have a daughter, Savannah, 12....
That TV twosome Mark (Reasonable Doubts) Harmon, 40, and Pam (My Sister Sam) Dawber, also 40, are expecting their second child this June. The couple already have one child, son Sean, who is 3 years old.
Actor Richard Dreyfuss fuss, 44, and his wife, Jeramie, 43, have separated after nine years of marriage. The couple have three children: daughter Emily, 8, and sons Ben, 5, and Harry, 18 months. The Dreyfusses released a statement saying their parting, which had been rumored for several months, was "mutual and amicable."
Bo Knows surgery: Erstwhile all-around athlete Bo Jackson, 29, currently on the payroll of the Chicago White Sox as the team's designated hitter-in-absentia, will be sitting this season out after undergoing hip-replacement surgery on April 4 in Palos Hills, Ill., outside Chicago. Jackson, believed to be the first athlete chosen to play in all-star games in two professional sports (baseball and football), injured his left hip during a football game with the L.A. Raiders in January 1991.
All My Children soap opera star Michael Nader, 47, who played the niftily named Dex Dexter on Dynasty, wed actress Beth (Capitol) Windsor on March 20 on Long Island, N.Y....
All in the family: Hugh O'Connor, 30, the actor son of Carroll O'Connor who plays Lonnie Jamison on Dad's In the Heat of the Night TV series, wed costumer Angela Clayton, 23, who works in the wardrobe department of Heal, on March 28 in Malibu.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
