Here are the notable deaths on August 28 throughout the years:

Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896 – August 28, 1985) - Better known as Ruth Gordon, was an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and Emmy Award-winning American actress and writer.  She was perhaps best known for her films roles such as the oversolicitous neighbor in Rosemary’s Baby and the eccentric life-loving Maude in Harold and Maude.  In addition to her acting career, Gordon wrote numerous well-known plays, film scripts and books.  She and husband Garson Kanin collaborated on the screenplays for the Katharine Hepburn–Spencer Tracy films Adam’s Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952.)  Both films were directed by George Cukor.  The onscreen relationship of Hepburn and Tracy, seen in those films, was modelled on Gordon and Kanin’s own marriage.  Gordon and Kanin received Academy Awards nominations for both of those screenplays, as well as for that of a prior film, A Double Life (1947), which was also directed by Cukor.  She had a minor but memorable role as the mother of Orville Boggs (Geoffrey Lewis) in the Clint Eastwood films Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can.  Gordon died from a stroke in Edgartown, Massachusetts, aged 88, in 1985.  A small theater in Westboro, Massachusetts was named in her honor, as was an outdoor amphitheater in Quincy, Massachusetts.  Harold and Maude and Adam’s Rib have both been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress. (more…)

Here are the notable deaths on August 27 throughout the years:

William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) - An American civil rights activist, public intellectual, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar.  He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95.  His health had declined in 1962, and he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of ninety-five, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  At the March on Washington, prominent civil rights activist Roy Wilkins informed the hundreds of thousands of marchers and called for a moment of silence.  In 1992, the United States Postal Service honored him with his portrait on a postage stamp. (more…)

Here are the notable deaths on August 26 throughout the years:

Lon Chaney, Sr. (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) - An American actor during the age of silent films.  He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema.  He is best remembered for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted characters, and his groundbreaking artistry with film makeup.  He is chiefly remembered as a pioneer in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and most notably, The Phantom of the Opera.  His ability to transform himself using self-invented makeup techniques earned him the nickname of “Man of a Thousand Faces.”  During the filming of Thunder in the winter of 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia.  In late 1929 he was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer.  Despite aggressive treatment, his condition gradually worsened, and seven weeks after the release of the remake of The Unholy Three, he died of a throat hemorrhage.  In 1957, Chaney was the subject of a biopic titled Man of a Thousand Faces, and was portrayed by James Cagney.  Chaney’s son, Lon Chaney, Jr., became a film actor after his father’s death, and is best remembered for roles in horror films, especially The Wolf Man.  The Chaneys appeared on US postage stamps as their signature characters, the Phantom of the Opera and the Wolf Man, with the set completed by Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster and The Mummy.  He and his son are mentioned in the Warren Zevon song “Werewolves of London.” (more…)

Truman Capote (30 September 1924, New Orleans, Louisiana – 25 August 1984, Los Angeles, California) - An American writer whose short stories, novels, plays and non-fiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a “non-fiction novel.”  At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories, and screenplays.  He was a lifelong friend of author Harper Lee, who wrote the 1960 bestselling, Pulitzer prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird.  He died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 59.  According to the coroner’s report the cause of death was “liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication.”  He died at the home of his old friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of late-night TV host Johnny Carson, on whose program Capote had been a frequent guest.  He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, leaving behind his longtime companion, author Jack Dunphy.  In 2005, the biopic Capote got five Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor win for Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played the title character.  Here is a clip of Capote explaining his idea behind In Cold Blood: