A look back at the esteemed personalities who left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.

By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

One of the shortest men in the world due to a genetic disorder, achondroplasia dwarfism, Verne Troyer (January 1, 1969-April 21, 2018) was also one of the most recognizable, thanks to his role as "Mini-Me," the diminutive clone of the sinister Dr. Evil, in the "Austin Powers" comedies.

He'd worked as a stunt double in "Baby's Day Out," and played a baby simian in "Mighty Joe Young," before "Austin Powers" made him a star. Other films include "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (as Griphook) and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." He was also a competitor on the series "Celebrity Big Brother."

In a 2014 National Geographic Channel documentary Troyer credited his parents with helping his overcome the obstacles of dwarfism: "They raised me very independent and taught me you can do anything you want to. I have an average-sized brother and an average-sized sister and I had to do everything they had to."

Tim Bergling, the Swedish-born producer and DJ known as Avicii (September 8, 1989-April 20, 2018), was a pioneer of the contemporary Electronic Dance Movement and a rare DJ capable of worldwide arena tours. In April he was nominated for a Billboard Music Award for top dance/electronic album for his EP "Avicii (01)."  He'd previously won two MTV Music Awards and one Billboard Music Award, and received two Grammy nominations.

His biggest hit was "Le7els." Other hits included "Wake Me Up!" ''The Days" and "You Make Me."

Listen to an excerpt from "Le7els"

Health problems due to chronic alcoholism (he suffered acute pancreatitis, and his appendix and part of his gall bladder were removed in 2016) forced him to stop touring, but he continued making music: "The next stage will be all about my love of making music to you guys," he said in 2017. "It is the beginning of something new." 

The son of Italian immigrants, Bruno Sammartino (October 6, 1935-April 18, 2018) fled the Nazis as a child. His family immigrated to Pittsburgh, where he was bullied because he spoke little English. Having suffered from rheumatic fever in childhood, Sammartino dedicated himself to bodybuilding. A wrestler in high school, he became a champion power lifter and workout fanatic (he once bench-pressed 569 pounds), and authored "The Bruno Course of Bodybuilding." He then learned the ropes of pro wrestling, thrilling fans and earning the title "Living Legend."

Sammartino's Italian heritage, brute strength and good-guy charisma helped make him an instant star. He had rivalries with Killer Kowalski, Gorilla Monsoon and George "The Animal" Steele during his title runs, and later wrestled famous grudge matches at Shea Stadium against Pedro Morales, Stan Hansen and Larry Zbyszko.

Sammartino became a broadcaster on World Wrestling Entertainment's weekend morning shows, before his frustration over the company's direction into campier storylines, and his outrage over the drug culture he said had permeated the industry, led to a bitter split with WWE. Yet, he accepted an induction into its Hall of Fame in 2013. 

Newscaster Carl Kasell (April 2, 1934-April 17, 2018) loved radio from an early age, telling stories of how he would play his grandmother's records on a wind-up turntable, providing his own commercial breaks and news reports.

Kasell's radio career spanned half a century, starting as a morning DJ and newscaster in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and later as morning anchor and news director in Arlington, Virginia. He joined NPR in 1975 for "Weekend All Things Considered," and then announced the news on the first broadcast of "Morning Edition" in 1979 alongside host Bob Edwards. He remained on that show for 30 years.

Beginning in 1998, he was also the official judge and scorekeeper of the popular news trivia game, "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!" By the time of his retirement in 2014, he had provided the prize for hundreds of call-in winners: his voice recorded for their telephone answering machines:

Sample answering machine message featuring Carl Kasell

In addition to his radio talents, Casell was also a magician whose trick included once appearing to saw NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg in half. "She volunteered," he said in 2009 of the potentially fatal event. "She said it tickled, and she got up and walked away in one piece."

Barbara Pierce Bush (June 8, 1925-April 17, 2018) walked the world stage as the wife of a Texas oilman who became the 41st President of the United States - and as the mother of the 43rd President. In public, Barbara preferred to leave political matters to her husband, George H.W. Bush. But her stand-by-your-man stance was her political statement, soothed over by her warm, matronly, self-mocking charm, which earned her enormous popularity, surpassing her husband's in public opinion polls.

She expressed no regrets over dropping out of Smith College as a sophomore and foregoing a professional career to get married to the young Navy pilot. They had six children together (including President George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush), but suffered a family tragedy when their daughter Robin died at age three of leukemia.

After George Bush built an oil business in Texas, he ran for Congress, and the family headed to Washington, D.C. - one of 29 moves that Barbara Bush organized during their marriage, including one to Beijing, where he served as U.S. envoy to China. When she became first lady, she would use her position to champion literacy as a remedy for improving society.

In a 2008 commencement speech at Wellesley College, the former first lady said, "Who knows? Somewhere out in the audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse - and I wish him well."

Choi Eun-hee (November 20, 1926-April 16, 2018) was one of the most celebrated actresses in South Korea. But no screenplay could ever have matched the bizarre turn that her life took when, in 1976, she was kidnapped by agents of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il; her husband, film director Shin Sang-ok, was also abducted and held in a North Korean prison for four years, before the two were reunited and tasked by Kim to make films for his regime. (In addition to being a dictator, Kim was also a movie fan, and was often credited as executive producer on films made in Pyongyang.)

Feigning loyalty, Choi and Shin produced nearly two dozen films for Kim, which was good enough to keep them alive, and ultimately to earn them a trip to Austria to attend a film festival in 1986. There, they managed to slip away from their minders and head for the U.S. embassy in Vienna, and freedom. They resettled in America for a time, but work in Hollywood was difficult to come by, and they returned to South Korea, their bizarre odyssey told in the 2016 documentary, "The Lovers and the Despot." As Choi remarked, "There's acting for film, and there's acting for life. And in North Korea, those could be one and the same thing."

R. Lee Ermey (March 24, 1944-April 15, 2018) served 11 years in the Marine Corps and spent 14 months in Vietnam and then in Okinawa, Japan, where he became staff sergeant. Looking for work after his discharge he signed up to appear in the films "Apocalypse Now" and "The Boys in Company C," before being hired as a technical consultant for Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam War drama, "Full Metal Jacket" (pictured). But he recorded an audition tape for the brutal drill instructor and won the part, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. According to the director, many of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's invective- and profanity-filled (and scarily funny) taunts to his young recruits were Ermey's own.

The showy part propelled Ermey's career as a character actor playing powerful authority figures in such movies as "Se7en," "Mississippi Burning," "Toy Soldiers," "Dead Man Walking," "Leaving Las Vegas," "The Frighteners" and "Prefontaine." Ermey also hosted the History Channel series "Mail Call" (in which he answered viewer questions about military life) and "Lock N' Load with R. Lee Ermey."

"I generally do play authoritative roles," Ermey told the website CinemaBlend in 2007. "I'm not competition to Pee Wee Herman by any stretch of the imagination. … I do occasionally play sentimental or gentle or emotional characters. It's no problem. It just depends what the script calls for. I played a gay homicidal high school football coach in 'Saving Silverman.' When they offered that to me, I thought, 'Oh boy, that's a stretch. That's a challenge.' But it worked out okay."

When he arrived in Hollywood in the late 1960s, Milos Forman (February 18, 1932-April 13, 2018) was lacking in both money and English skills, but carrying a portfolio of Czechoslovakian films much admired internationally for their quirky, lighthearted spirit, including ''Loves of a Blonde" and "The Fireman's Ball."

He brought an anarchic sensibility to prestige Hollywood films, including two Best Picture Oscar-winners: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," starring Jack Nicholson as a misfit who leads the inmates of a mental institution in a revolt against authority; and "Amadeus," from Peter Shaffer's play, which pitted the 18th century musical genius and foul-mouthed man-child Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart against a wily, older composer of lesser talents, Antonio Salieri. Forman won the Best Director Academy Award for each.

Forman's other credits include the film adaptation of the musical "Hair"; "Ragtime," from E.L. Doctorow's novel; "The People vs. Larry Flynt," about the publisher of Hustler magazine; and "Man on the Moon," a biopic of madcap comic Andy Kaufman, starring Jim Carrey.

In a 2002 Telegraph interview Forman talked about the fame that Salieri achieved, if a little late, from "Amadeus": "Well, mediocrity never goes away - but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it."

In the 1960s New York City native Susan Anspach (November 23, 1942-April 2, 2018) appeared on stage in "A View From the Bridge" (with Robert Duvall) and in the Broadway show "And Things That Go Bump in the Night," with Eileen Heckart. She then broke into movies, specializing in maverick comedies, including "Play It Again, Sam" (playing Woody Allen's ex-wife); Hal Ashby's "The Landlord"; and Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces," opposite Jack Nicholson.

Other major credits included Paul Mazursky's "Blume in Love," "The Big Fix," "Running," and the 1981 Swedish film "Montenegro," as an American woman seeking excitement from her marriage.

"I was getting reviews that compared me to Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis," Anspach told People magazine in 1978. "But there were no Hepburn or Davis parts."

She was also a political activist, marching with United Farm Workers head Cesar Chavez, protesting the racist apartheid system of South Africa, and advocating for human rights in Central America.

Entering Universal Studio's story department right out of college, with no writing experience, Steven Bochco (December 16, 1943-April 1, 2018) would work on such series as "The Name of the Game," "The Invisible Man," "McMillan and Wife," "Columbo," "The White Shadow" and "Delvecchio," on which he met his future "Hill Street Blues" co-creator Michael Kozoll. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1972 sci-fi film "Silent Running," but the experienced soured him on films, focusing him instead of television.

The groundbreaking police drama "Hill Street Blues" (1981-1987) incorporated documentary film techniques, overlapping dialogue and multiple narratives with its gritty take on the lives of big city police officers, its ensemble cast balancing high drama and humor with aplomb. The series garnered 26 Emmys during its seven-year run.

Bochco once recalled a fan telling him that "Hill Street Blues" was the first TV series with a memory. "That's what I always thought of myself doing in the context of TV: craft a show that over time would have a memory," he told The Associated Press in 2016. "I sensed that very early in my career. It just took me another 10 or 12 years to get to the point where I earned the right to take a shot at it."

Bochco later created such shows as "L.A. Law," ''NYPD Blue," "Doogie Howser, M.D.," "Civil Wars,"  and "Murder One," winning 10 Emmys and four Peabody Awards. 

Orange-haired outfielder Rusty Staub (April 1, 1944-March 29, 2018), dubbed "Le Grand Orange" while playing in Montreal, was a six-time All-Star over his 23 seasons in baseball, and the only player in major league history to have at least 500 hits with four different teams. He ended his career at age 41, with just under 3,000 hits.

Staub broke into the majors as a teenager with Houston (the Colt .45s, later the Astros), joined the expansion team Montreal Expos, then the Mets (hitting a three-run homer against the Oakland As in the 1973 World Series despite a separated shoulder injury), and the Detroit Tigers.

He spent decades doing charity work in the New York area, including creating a fund for the widows and children of police officers and firemen, and assisting families of victims from the 9/11 terror attacks.

"I want to give back," he said in 2017. "The city has meant a great deal to me. A lot of things in my life were great because of New York City. … I didn't want to sit around and bask in the glory."

Seven decades ago Charles P. Lazarus (October 4, 1923-March 22, 2018) opened Children's Bargain Town, a baby furniture store in Washington, D.C. He began selling baby toys, and quickly concluded that - in the baby-boom years - toys were a more lucrative business than furniture. (How many parents buy a new crib for their second baby?)  

Using a self-service supermarket business model, he turned the company he founded, Toys R Us, into one of the first retail category giants: a chain of big stores devoted to one thing. The stores' circus-like atmosphere - aimed at making kids want to keep coming back - was amplified by its mascot, Geoffrey the giraffe, who appeared in his first TV commercial in 1973. By the 1980s and early '90s, Toys R Us dominated the retail toy industry.

In an interview with videographer Mark Aaron, posted to Youtube, Lazarus described the toy industry as a happy business. "You've gotta be kind of kid-like," he said. "When you look at what the creativity of the toy market is, you have to have imagination. You have to think like a child."

Lazarus stepped down as CEO of Toys R Us in 1994. Since then, competition from retailers like Walmart and online sellers like Amazon, and the rise of online diversions, would drive Toys R Us, in March 2018, into bankruptcy. 

A college dropout, entrepreneur H. Wayne Huizenga (December 29, 1937-March 22, 2018) began his career with trash. Starting with a single garbage truck in 1968, Huizenga built Waste Management Inc. into a Fortune 500 company, acquiring 133 small-time hauling companies along the way. By 1983, Waste Management was the largest waste disposal company in the U.S.

The business model worked again with Blockbuster Video, after he took control of the company and started an aggressive expansion program. It would become the leading movie rental chain; at its peak it had 9,000 stores worldwide, with 60,000 blue-shirted employees reminding customers to "Be kind, rewind."

Huizenga also formed AutoNation, the nation's largest automotive retailer. He founded the Florida Marlins and Florida Panthers, and later bought the Miami Dolphins. By 2009 he'd sold all three sports teams.

Regarding his business acumen, Huizenga once said: "You just have to be in the right place at the right time. It can only happen in America."

"Bozo the Clown" was a staple of children's programming in the 1950s and '60s, but there was more than one Bozo at a time; many TV stations bought the character as a franchisee and produced their own broadcasts, with their own Bozo and local kids. But from 1959 to 1970, Boston entertainer and TV personality Frank Avruch (c. 1929-March 20, 2018) was the nationally-syndicated version of Bozo. 

He was also a board member of UNICEF'S New England chapter, and appeared in documentaries as Bozo touring the world, such as "Bozo's Adventures in Asia." "It proved that a clown is a universal symbol," Avruch told the website TVParty! in 2010. "Kids everywhere loved it, and kids are basically the same."

Born totally blind in Vietnam, Julie Yip-Williams (Jan. 6, 1976-March 19, 2018) narrowly escaped with her family to the United States, where a surgeon was able to give her partial sight. Though she regretted not being able to drive or play tennis, she was able to graduate from Harvard Law School and become a corporate attorney, marry, and have two children. But at age 37, she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

Throughout multiple surgeries radiation treatments, chemotherapy regimens and clinical trials, Yip-Williams shared her experiences through a candid blog, My Cancer Fighting Journey (which will soon be published as a book by Random House). Her writing also helped her prepare her daughters, now ages six and eight, for the inevitable.

Shortly before her death she told "Sunday Morning" correspondent Tracy Smith about the strength she wishes to pass on to her children: "I want them to find goodness out of their mother dying so young. I want them to learn how to live with passion, and love. And I want them to also expect that no life is free of hardship. Embrace it, and know that you will come out on the other side stronger. …

"I've had to overcome a lot of things, right? But I want to convey, within every human being is the capacity to overcome those same things. We just have to find it."

Actor Sammy Williams (November 13, 1948-March 17, 2018) won Tony and Obie Awards for the original production of "A Chorus Line," the pioneering musical about the inner lives of actors auditioning for a Broadway show. Williams gave a wrenching performance as Paul, a young, gay Puerto Rican seeking validation on the stage, while recounting a life tormented by bullying.

Because the show was workshopped from the real-life stories of Broadway dancers, Williams' own experience as a youngster provided the tale, immortalized in another character's song, of a boy who declared "I can do that" at his sister's dance class.

In addition to the New York and national touring companies of "A Chorus Line," Williams was a dancer in the Broadway productions "Applause" (starring Lauren Bacall) and "The Happy Time." He was later a choreographer, director and actor in Los Angeles, appearing in "Follies" in 2012, and in a one-man show based on his career. But his New York stage success was never replicated.

"When 'A Chorus Line' opened, we were really it," Williams told The New York Times. "But when it's over, so are you."

After studying studied microbiology at the University of Kentucky, Louise Slaughter (August 14, 1929-March 16, 2018) entered politics, serving in the New York State Assembly. The Democrat was then elected to Congress in 1986, where she became the first woman to chair the House Rules Committee

The blacksmith's daughter was the chief force behind a 2012 law to ban insider stock trading based on Congressional knowledge and require disclosure of market activities by lawmakers. She also helped write the Violence Against Women Act, and a 2008 law designed to protect people with genetic predispositions to health conditions from facing discrimination from their employers or health insurance companies.

At the time of her death, Slaughter, 88, was serving her 16th term in the House, and was the oldest sitting Member of Congress.

African American composer and musicologist Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. (September 7, 1937-March 13, 2018) entered the world of music early, performing in jazz and R&B bands as a teenager and playing backup for such noted artists as Chuck Berry. A professor at UC Berkeley, Wilson composed works for chamber ensembles and orchestra as well as electronic instruments. He was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Boston Musica Viva, and the Black Music Repertory Ensemble.

Excerpt: "Sinfonia" (1984) by Olly Wilson

In 1967 he established the TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) program at Oberlin Conservatory of Music - the first-ever conservatory program in electronic music.

Excerpt: "Cetus" (1967) by Olly Wilson

Among the most recognizable faces in science was Cambridge professor and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (January 8, 1942-March 14, 2018), author of the bestselling "A Brief History of Time," who survived more than six decades with a motor neurone disease. Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, when he was a student at Cambridge; doctors believed it would kill him in his early 20s. But despite his condition - confined to a wheelchair, and in later years speaking via a voice synthesizer - he was able to pursue his studies of quantum mechanics, gravity, black holes, and a Unified Theory of Cosmology.

As slowly as a word per minute, Hawking used the twitching of the muscle under his right eye to grind out his thoughts on a custom-built computer. What he produced was a masterwork of popular science, a guidebook through the esoteric world of anti-particles, quarks, and quantum theory.

Hawking's other major scientific contribution was to cosmology, the study of the universe's origin and evolution. Working with Jim Hartle of UC, Santa Barbara, Hawking proposed in 1983 that space and time might have no beginning and no end. "Asking what happens before the Big Bang is like asking for a point one mile north of the North Pole," he said.

Hawking appeared in several documentaries, and played himself (or at least a holographic version of Stephen Hawking) in a 1993 episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." His life was dramatized in the 2014 film "The Theory of Everything," starring Eddie Redmayne. 

French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy (February 20, 1927-March 10 2018) was part of the elite cadre of Paris-based designers, including Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, who redefined fashion after World War II.

Born into an aristocratic family in the provincial city of Beauvais, he founded his label in 1952. A pioneer of ready-to-wear, he also designed clothes for such clients as Princess Grace of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy. He also created fashions for his "muse," Audrey Hepburn, for the films "Sabrina," "Charade" and "Funny Face," as well as her iconic little black dress in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

"It was always my dream to be a dress designer," he told The Independent newspaper.

He sold his label to the luxury conglomerate LVMH in 1988 and retired several years later. But he was sanguine about the state of haute couture after his retirement, as he told the paper in 2010: "Every epoch is different, and you must accept the reality. C'est la vie. Happily, for many years we had a wonderful time. Beautiful fabric, beautiful people, beautiful memories."

From an early age, Nobel Prize-winning British scientist John Sulston (March 27, 1942-March 6, 2018) was fascinated with the mechanical workings of living things - as a youngster he examined tiny organisms with a microscope, and even dissected a bird. "I understood that living things were mechanisms," he told the Guardian in 2002.

He graduated from Cambridge University in 1963, and did postdoctoral research in California before joining Sydney Brenner's group at the Cambridge University molecular biology lab, where the structure of DNA was first identified. By studying the one mm-long adult nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, Sulston discovered how a living animal's cells move and even die due to genetic instruction. The findings were key to understanding how cancers develop.

In 1992, Sulston was appointed director of the Sanger Center at Cambridge, spearheading Britain's contribution to the international Human Genome Project. He shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz for their work unraveling how genes control cell division.

At its height, the Tower Records chain operated in 20 countries, and is still up and running in Japan (owing to a split from the company), where a Tokyo store takes up nine stories. But it all began in Sacramento, where Russell Solomon (September 22, 1925-March 4, 2018) founded the enterprise that became a global phenomenon and changed the way people consumed music.

Solomon began as a teenager selling records out of his father's drugstore. His first real store didn't take off until he opened a second in San Francisco, borrowing ideas from supermarkets: stock thousands of titles in all categories in a really big space, and keep the doors open until midnight. He also hired knowledgeable staff, invited bands for in-store events, and expanded into video, books and other merchandise.

Tower stores became a Mecca for music buffs - hangout spots where people browsed, or dropped serious coin. In the 2015 documentary "All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records," Elton John proudly boasted, "I spent more money at Tower than any other human being."

The fat lady finally sang for Tower when - after absorbing hundreds of millions in debt to fuel its expansion - it went bankrupt and, in 2006, closed its doors, a victim of the decline in retail sales and music piracy as much as Solomon's failure to go public. "That was the dumbest thing I ever did," he told The New York Times last year.

On May 6, 1954, British runner Roger Bannister (March 23, 1929-March 3, 2018), a lanky Oxford medical student, became the first man to break the mythical 4-minute barrier in the mile. His time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds captured the world's imagination and buoyed the spirits of Britons still suffering through post-war austerity.

"It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile," Bannister said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2012.

The record didn't last long, however, eclipsed by Australian John Landy. That set the stage for a race between them later that year at the Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, dubbed the "Mile of the Century. Bannister beat Landy, with both men going under 4 minutes. Bannister regarded that as his greatest race because it came in a competitive championship against his fiercest rival.

While he will forever be remembered for his running, Bannister considered his long medical career in neurology as his life's greatest accomplishment. "My medical work has been my achievement, and my family with 14 grandchildren," he said. "Those are real achievements."

Prolific actor David Ogden Stiers (October 31, 1942-March 3, 2018) was best known for playing a fussy, aristocratic surgeon, Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III, on the TV series "M.A.S.H." He received two Emmy nominations for his performance.

Born in Peoria, Illinois (in high school he co-edited a science fiction newspaper with classmate Roger Ebert), Stiers trained at Juilliard, and appeared with John Houseman's Acting Company, at San Francisco's Actors' Workshop, at the Old Globe, and on Broadway. He directed as well, and later in life conducted concerts.

Stiers also voiced characters in several Disney animated films, including Cogsworth in "Beauty and the Beast," and in "Lilo & Stitch" and "Pocahontas." When it came to weighing one kind of acting with another, Stiers told the Los Angeles Times in 2002, "I don't care if you're doing a VW commercial or Euripides. There is an elevation of emotion, spirit, audibility that happens, particularly in classical theater. Once you're unafraid on stage to do the storm scene in 'Lear' or be the ghost in 'Hamlet,' you can summon all those images of size and space and vividness in front of a microphone."

Sridevi (August 13, 1963-February 24, 2018) had been a child actress and worked in regional films in southern India before making her Bollywood debut in the late 1970s. Within a decade, she had become an icon in mainstream Hindi-language films and was able to command top billing and dominate screen space in a film industry in which the heroine's role was largely relegated to a few songs and a handful of romantic scenes as the leading man's love interest.

In the late 1990s she stepped away from films to raise two daughters, but she returned in 2012 in the comedy-drama "English Vinglish," in which she played a quiet housewife who, on a trip to New York City for a family wedding, enters a class to learn English. In 2017, she starred in "Mom," playing a woman out to seek vengeance for the rape of her teenage stepdaughter.

Shortly before her passing, she described her acting career to Indian media: "No one else from my family had ever acted. I don't know how I do it. All I know is, whatever one does, has to come from one's heart."

Nanette Fabray (October 27, 1920-February 22, 2018) was just three years old when she launched her career as vaudeville singer-dancer "Baby Nanette." She went on to star on Broadway in such musicals as "Bloomer Girl," ''High Button Shoes," and "Mr. President," playing first lady to Robert Ryan's commander-in-chief. But perhaps he most memorable film role was as … a baby, part of the trio of triplets (pictured, with Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan) in the 1953 Comden & Green musical, "The Band Wagon."

Heading back East from Hollywood, the vivacious actress, singer and dancer earned three Emmy Awards as a comic foil in the Sid Caesar comedy/variety series, "Caesar's Hour," despite a hearing disability that had plagued her from childhood into her late 40s. In 1967 she underwent surgery that gave her normal hearing for the first time in her life.

She talked openly about her disability on behalf of organizations concerned with hearing loss. "She had such an amazing life professionally, but I think if she could say what she wanted to be remembered for it would be more for her humanitarian work," her son, Dr. Jamie MacDougall, told the Associated Press. "She was very instrumental in advocating for the rights of the deaf and hearing-impaired."

Other TV appearances included "Laramie," ''Burke's Law," ''The Girl From U.N.C.L.E," "Love, American Style," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "One Day at a Time" (on which she reprised her "Triplets" number with Bonnie Franklin and Valerie Bertinelli), and "Coach."

Raised in the fundamentalist faith of his native North Carolina, The Rev. Billy Graham (November 7, 1918-February 21, 2018) dedicated his life to preaching the Gospel when he was 16. Ordained as a Baptist minister in 1939, he created his own brand of populist evangelism. His "crusades," as he called them, were soon attracting millions in person and later through television. Over seven decades he spoke to the faithful in 185 countries. A staunch anti-Communist, one of his cherished ambitions was to bring the message of Jesus Christ to the officially atheist countries behind the Iron Curtain, as well as to China.

Graham became a counselor and confidante to every American president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, but Graham himself denied he had a role in making policy. He said: "I don't advise them, I pray with them."

Despite his proximity to power, Graham was resolutely nonpartisan, and his ethics and emphasis on cooperation among different faiths earned him widespread respect. In moments of national crisis, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, Graham was sought out for his ability to comfort and console with simplicity and eloquence. "We've been reminded that a cruel event like this, which so vividly demonstrates the depths of human evil, also brings out the best of us," Graham said.

Frank Sinatra once praised Vic Damone (June 12, 1928-February 11, 2018) as having "the best pipes in the business." With his mellow baritone, the crooner's easy-listening romantic ballads brought him million-selling records and sustained a half-century career in recordings, movies and nightclub, concert and television appearances.

After winning a tie on the radio show "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Hunt," Damone's career began climbing. His hit singles included "Again," ''You're Breaking My Heart," ''My Heart Cries for You," ''On the Street Where You Live" and, in 1957, the title song of the Cary Grant film "An Affair to Remember."

Excerpt: "You're Breaking My Heart"

In addition to recording the theme songs of films, Damone also appeared in movies such as "Rich, Young and Pretty," "Kismet," "Hit the Deck," "Deep in My Heart," "Athena," and "Hell to Eternity." 

Damone's style as a lounge singer remained constant through the years: straightforward, concentrated on melody and lyrics without resorting to vocal gimmicks. He wrote in his memoir, "Singing Was the Easy Part," that he never considered himself a showman like Milton Berle or Sammy Davis Jr.

"That wasn't my particular gift," he wrote. "My gift was singing."

A native of Reykjavík, Iceland who started out as a rock guitarist, Jóhann Jóhannsson (September 19, 1969-February 9, 2018) began scoring films in Iceland, before winning a Golden Globe and received Grammy and Oscar nominations for "The Theory of Everything. His music for the 2014 biopic, about Stephen Hawking, captured the film's intimacy as well as the ideas of a physicist that spanned the universe and time. Jóhannsson received another Oscar nomination for the 2015 movie "Sicario." A thriller set on the U.S.-Mexico border, his music consisted of low woodwinds and strings, percussion, and an incessant, throbbing pulse evoking a descent into the underground, savage world of drug traffickers.

His music for the 2016 science fiction film "Arrival," in which a linguist tries to interpret the language of visiting aliens, used heavily-processed vocalizations (performed by an ensemble called Theatre of Voices) and tape loops to create an otherworldly soundscape of mystery, dread and hope.

Play Excerpt: "The Beast" from "Sicario"

Play Excerpt: "Heptapod B" from "Arrival"

"I spend a lot of time working on sounds and finding sounds and finding ways of creating something … looking at things that excite me, that I haven't heard," Jóhannsson told the online publication Consequence of Sound in 2016.

Born in Huntsville, Ala., Reg E. Cathey (August 18, 1958-February 9, 2018) grew up on a farm in West Germany (his father was an Army officer, his mother a Defense Department employee of secret responsibilities). He would go on to study acting at the University of Michigan (where he and friend Madonna appeared in what he once described as "the worst production of 'West Side Story' ever"), and at the Yale School of Drama.

Known for his deep baritone, Cathey appeared on the kids' show "Square One;" in Shakespeare productions at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York; and such films as "And the Band Played On," "Tank Girl," "Fantastic Four" and "The Machinist." He drew attention with roles in "Homicide: Life on the Street," "The Corner," "Oz," and "The Wire." And as barbecue joint owner Freddy Hayes in "House of Cards," Cathey earned three Emmy nominations and won one award.

In 2017 he recalled for the magazine American Theatre his time at Yale following the death of two acting teachers: "I remember Andrei Belgrader coming in; he took one look at us and said, 'Okay, you guys are traumatized,' and he took us all out for coffee. Later he had us pick a scene to do but said, 'You have to be terrible. You have to do all the bad acting you can.' It was the most fun class ever. His point was that it's okay to fail because that's the only way you're going to get better. I kept that lesson."

A dashing, 6-foot-4-inch actor who appeared in such Hollywood films as "A Time to Love and a Time to Die," "Imitation of Life," "Spartacus" and "Psycho," John Gavin (April 8, 1931-February 9, 2018) would become as well-known for diplomacy as for acting.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he had served in Panama as Pan-American affairs officer to the Navy commandant during the 1950s, and in the early '60s he was appointed special adviser to the secretary-general of the Organization of American States to promote President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. He served as President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1971-73.

President Ronald Reagan named Gavin U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, a position he held for five years.

In 1973, while appearing on Broadway in the musical "Seesaw," Gavin told United Features Syndicate, "For a long time I wondered if I should have gone into something worthwhile, such as being a doctor. To the bitter end Spencer Tracy was also tortured with the same agony. I've only recently realized that there's an actor in every human being - and to let it out, to let it happen is a very wonderful, very giving thing. But I would have been so much happier in the past if I realized it sooner. You see, I would have relaxed."

John Mahoney (June 20, 1940-February 4, 2018), a native of Manchester, England, remembered huddling in an air raid shelter and playing among bombed-out houses during the war. One sister, who moved to the Midwest after marrying a U.S. sailor, was responsible for Mahoney's decision to make his life in America. He visited Chicago as a college student and fell in love with it, and become a U.S. citizen. But editing a medical journal did not seem like a life for him. So, in his mid-30s, he began taking acting lessons, and joined the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

He told the Chicago Tribute in 2004, "By the time I started my career, most people had given up and started selling insurance. I didn't have so much competition."

He would appear on stage in "I Never Sang for My Father," "Orphans," "The Seafarer," "The Dresser,"  "Balm in Gilead," "Prelude to a Kiss," "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Long Days Journey into Night," and "After the Fall." For his Broadway debut, "The House of Blue Leaves," he won a Tony Award for Best Actor.

His film roles included "Moonstruck," "Eight Men Out," "Tin Men," "Say Anything" and "Barton Fink." Mahoney is most recognizable as the father on the TV sitcom "Frasier," playing the grumpy dad of Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce. He earned two Emmy nominations for his portrayal.

After he was signed by Motown Records, soul and R&B singer Dennis Edwards (February 3, 1943-February 2, 2018) performed as part of the opening act for The Temptations. When that group's lead singer David Ruffin was dismissed, Edwards (pictured, second from right) was brought on, debuting on the album "Cloud Nine." He sang with the group at various periods between 1968 and 1987, as the Temptations veered from soul to a more psychedelic/funk sound.

Edwards can be heard on such hits as "Runaway Child, Running Wild," "Psychedelic Shack," "I Can't Get Next to You," "Mother Nature," "Masterpiece," "Happy People," and the Grammy-winning "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone."

Excerpt from "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone"

As a solo artist in the mid-'80s, Edwards hit No. 2 on the R&B charts with his album, "Don't Look Any Further."

Heinz Jakob "Coco" Schumann (May 14, 1924-January 28, 2018) made a name for himself as a young musician in Berlin's underground jazz and swing scene in the 1930s. He was arrested in 1943 after authorities learned his mother was Jewish, and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. There, he played in a band known as the "Ghetto Swingers" (whom the Nazis presented to the Red Cross as "proof" of humane treatment at such camps), before being transferred to Auschwitz in 1944, where he played to entertain the guards.

After the war Schumann emigrated to Australia, before returning to Berlin in the mid-1950s and re-establishing his music career. He performed with such artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Marlene Dietrich, and taught music, with a preference for the electric guitar.

Of his taste for jazz and swing, and the improvisation that is part of the form, Schumann liked to say that notes are only black dots: "One has to bring them to life."

Comic strip artist and World War II veteran Mort Walker (September 3, 1923-January 27, 2018) began publishing cartoons at age 11. It was in one of his cartoons published by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s that a character named Spider made his debut. Spider would become "Beetle Bailey," star of his own strip launched in 1950.

The strip struggled at first, and after the start of the Korean War King Features Syndicate suggested Walker have his character, a slacker college student, enlist in the Army. Beetle and the other service members at Camp Swampy would go on to entertain millions for nearly 70 years (though Stars & Stripes dropped it in 1954, fearing it would encourage disrespect of officers!).

Walker attributed the success of the strip to Beetle's indolence and reluctance to follow authority. "Most people are sort of against authority," he said. "Here's Beetle always challenging authority. I think people relate to it."

In spite of Stars & Stripes' concern back in the '50s, in 2000 Walker was honored at the Pentagon with the Army's highest civilian award - the Distinguished Civilian Service award.

Walker was also involved - as an artist or a writer - with several other popular comic strips, including "Hi and Lois," ''Boner's Ark," "Sam & Silo" and "Mrs. Fitz's Flats." He also founded a museum of cartoon art, and was generous with advice for aspiring cartoonists. 

Composer John Morris (October 18, 1926-January 25, 2018) had begun working with comedy writer Mel Books in the 1950s, both brought in to repair the Broadway musical "Shinbone Alley." So it was that the two collaborated on Brooks' first movie, a hilarious tale of Broadway shysters, "The Producers." Morris created the film's original score as well as for the hapless musical "Springtime for Hitler," which would (much to the film's scheming producers' horror) becomes a bona fide hit.

Play Excerpt: "Springtime for Hitler," from "The Producers"

Morris also wrote music for Brooks' "Blazing Saddles" (including the Oscar-nominated theme song), "Young Frankenstein," "Silent Movie," "High Anxiety" and other comedies, as well as a very poignant score for a film that Brooks produced, David Lynch's "The Elephant Man," for which Morris received his second Academy Award nomination.

Play Excerpt: "Main Title," from "The Elephant Man"

A World War II veteran, ski racer, surfer and sailor, Warren Miller (October 15, 1924-January 24, 2018) was 15 when he took his first ski run with his Boy Scout troop, at Mount Waterman near Los Angeles. "I really believe in my heart that that first turn you make on a pair of skis is your first taste of total freedom, the first time in your life that you could go anywhere that your adrenaline would let you go," he told the Seattle Times in 2010.

Miller would produce, direct and narrate hundreds of films about outdoor sports, including surfing and sailing. But he was best known for his ski films, beginning with 1950's "Deep and Light." Each subsequent feature (including "Have Skis, Will Travel," "Any Snow, Any Mountain" and "Steep and Deep") would help popularize the sport with thrill-seeking spectacles of daredevils hitting the slopes.

Legendary musician and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Masekela (April 4, 1939-January 23, 2018) was often called "Father of South African jazz," the rare artist who succeeded in fusing politics with music. A trumpeter, singer and composer, Masekela started playing the horn at 14. He quickly became an integral part of the 1950s jazz scene in Johannesburg. In the 1960s he went into exile in the United Kingdom and the United States, while spreading awareness about South Africa's oppressive system of white-minority rule. Many of his compositions were about the struggle for majority rule and full democratic rights in South Africa.

He scored an international No. 1 hit in 1968 with his instrumental "Grazing in the Grass." His catchy upbeat 1987 song "Bring Him Back Home" calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison became an international anthem for the anti-apartheid movement. In the 1980s he appeared with Paul Simon as part of the "Graceland" album tour.

Excerpt: "Grazing in the Grass"

Excerpt: "Bring Him Back Home"

Masekela returned to South Africa in 1990 after Mandela was freed and the ban on the African National Congress party lifted.

"My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are," Masekela said on his website.

A Grandmaster of Science Fiction (the rare female writer to attain that distinguished title), Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929-January 22, 2018) was known for exploring feminist themes. Her first novel was "Rocannon's World" (1966), but she gained fame three years later with "The Left Hand of Darkness," which imagines a future society in which people are equally male and female, and dramatizes the perils of tyranny, violence and conformity. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards - top honors in science fiction.

Her best-known works, the Earthsea books, have sold in the millions worldwide and have been translated into 16 languages. She also produced volumes of short stories, poetry, essays and literature for young adults, for which she received the Newbery Medal. Last year, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

"I know that I am always called 'the sci-fi writer.' Everybody wants to stick me into that one box, while I really live in several boxes," she told scifi.com.

Multiple women have been identified over the years as possible models for "Rosie the Riveter," the World War II icon of females manning the factory floors while men went off to battle. But in 2016 a Seton Hall University professor, writing in the journal Rhetoric & Public Affairs, focused on Naomi Parker Fraley (August 26, 1921-January 20, 2018) as the true inspiration.

Fraley, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, went to work in the machine shop at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, Calif., following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - one of the first women to do war work there.

A photo of Fraley on the job (sporting a polka-dot bandana and heels) was the basis for a widely-seen poster of a woman flexing her muscles with the caption, "We can do it!" The artwork became one of the most powerful propaganda images from the war years, and has since taken on significance as a striking feminist symbol of empowerment.

Born into a family of cooks that dates to the 1700s, master chef Paul Bocuse (February 11, 1926-January 20, 2018) defined French cuisine for more than half a century. Often referred to as the "pope of French cuisine," Bocuse was a tireless pioneer, the first chef to blend the art of cooking with savvy business tactics, branding his cuisine (and his image) to create an empire of restaurants around the globe.

Bocuse's temple to French gastronomy, L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges, outside the city of Lyon in southeastern France, has held three Michelin stars, without interruption, since 1965.

While excelling in the business of cooking, Bocuse never flagged in his devotion to his first love, creating a top class, quintessentially French meal. He eschewed the fads and experiments that captivated many other top chefs. "In cooking, there are those who are rap and those who are concerto," he once told the French newsmagazine L'Express, adding that he tended toward the concerto.

And his favorite ingredient? Butter. "(It's a) magical product," he said during a visit to the Culinary Institute of America. "Nothing replaces butter."

In her first notable film at Warner Brothers, "The Big Sleep" (pictured, top), she was cast as a bookshop clerk who lets her hair down, takes off her glasses and seduces private eye Humphrey Bogart. But after 11 years of mostly roles as loving sweethearts and wives, Dorothy Malone (January 30, 1924-January 19, 2018) decided she needed to gamble on her career instead of playing it safe. She fired her agent, hired a publicist, dyed her hair blonde and sought a new image. She welcomed the offer to play an alcoholic nymphomaniac who tries to steal Rock Hudson from wife Lauren Bacall, in "Written on the Wind" (bottom), and won an Oscar for it.

"I've been unfaithful or drunk or oversexed almost ever since - on the screen, of course," she said.

She would garner her widest popularity as Constance Mackenzie, the bookshop operator who harbored a dark secret about the birth of her daughter Allison (played by a young Mia Farrow) in "Peyton Place," the 1964-69 TV series based on Grace Metalious' steamy novel.

A Rhodes scholar and 33-year Navy veteran, Admiral Stansfield Turner (December 1, 1923-January 18, 2018) commanded NATO's forces in southern Europe from 1975 to 1977 before being chosen by President Jimmy Carter to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Turner would oversee reforms at the agency after the Senate had uncovered CIA surveillance aimed at American citizens and assassination plots against foreign figures, including the hiring of Mafia hit men in a failed bid to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Turner (who would be unanimously confirmed by the Senate) promised at his confirmation hearing to conduct intelligence operations "strictly in accordance with the law and American values." He also said "covert operations must be handled very discreetly. People's lives are at stake."

Turner was the first director given full authority over the agency's $7 billion budget. Assassinations and medical experiments on unwitting human subjects were prohibited, and he dismissed more than 800 officers from the agency. But he also argued that some proposals aimed at sharing agency information with Congress went too far, because of operational sensitivity and the possibility of damaging leaks.

He also admitted later that the CIA had not fully anticipated the fall of the Shah in Iran or the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union. "We were just plain asleep," he said.

Before she was 20, Dolores O'Riordan (September 6, 1971-January 15, 2018) - raised in a simple, admittedly non-materialistic family in County Limerick, Ireland - earned fame as the lead singer and lyricist of the Irish rock group The Cranberries, which would produce such '90s hits as "Linger," "Zombie" and "Dreams." The group, which sold more than 40 million records (including the albums "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?," "No Need to Argue," "To the Faithful Departed," and "Bury the Hatchet"), broke up in 2003, but six years later reunited and began touring again. Their most recent album was 2017's "Something Else," comprised of acoustic and orchestral versions of their songs.

Excerpt: "Zombie" by The Cranberries

"A lot of evolution is about accepting the past and accepting the up-and-downs and realizing that things happen to make you stronger and more aware … and that's life," she told Rolling Stone in 2009. "A lot of things made me realize life is very fragile. People die of cancer. There are world-altering events like September 11. You realize that you cannot assume tomorrow is going to come. When you think about things like that, it makes you realize you could be gone tomorrow, so what the heck am I worrying about? It's just a realization, and it came to me in the last couple years. I'm really glad it did because I've just been more relaxed. "

"Whoa, Nellie!" Sportscaster Keith Jackson (October 18, 1928-January 12, 2018) called contests in the NFL, MLB, NBA, PGA Tour golf, the Olympics, boxing, racing and college basketball, and was the first play-by-play man of ABC's "Monday Night Football."

But for generations of fans, Jackson's voice was synonymous with college football, as he spent 50 years in the booth covering games across the country.

"I think college football is a reflection of Middle America," Jackson told Sports Illustrated in 1979. "That's the kind of stock I'm from and that's where I think the strength of the country is. You go into a college football town, and you will find three generations of a family sitting together. It's a rallying point for the university, the community and the families."

Guitarist Edward "Fast Eddie" Clarke (October 5, 1950-January 10, 2018) recorded with the progressive rock band Zeus, before joining the British hard rock band Motorhead soon after it was founded in 1975, with Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister and Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. During Clarke's time in Motorhead the band produced some of their biggest hits, including the ferocious anthem "Ace of Spades."

Excerpt: "Ace of Spades" by Motorhead

He left Motorhead in 1982 and later formed the band Fastway.

In 2014 Clarke issued a new album, "Make My Day - Back to Blues."

A veteran Navy test pilot who brought an engineer's keen eye to three generations of spacecraft and NASA management, astronaut John Young (September 24, 1930-January 5, 2018) was the first man to fly in space six times, in Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle missions. After walking the lunar surface, he commanded the maiden voyage of the space shuttle, and oversaw 25 shuttle flights during the program's formative years.

A relentless advocate for improving flight safety, Young was occasionally a thorn in the side of NASA management, especially in the wake of the 1986 Challenger disaster. Throughout it all, he brought a dry wit, a ready smile, and a cool nerve that belied a near-photographic memory and encyclopedic knowledge of complex space systems.

Before blasting off aboard the shuttle Columbia on the first flight of the winged orbiter - the first time anyone had launched aboard the untried booster rockets - Young was asked if he had any worries. "Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world, knowing they're going to light the bottom, and doesn't get a little worried, does not fully understand the situation," he famously deadpanned.

"My life has been long, and it has been interesting. It's also been a lot of fun, and a lot of hard, challenging work," Young once stated. "If I could do it over, I would do it over the very same way. Most of it has been a marvel to me."

Actor and comedian Jerry Van Dyke (July 27, 1931-January 5, 2018) possessed the same likability as his brother, Dick Van Dyke, and even played the star's banjo-playing brother on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" - his first acting gig. "I came away thinking, 'TV is a piece of cake; I want more of this!'" he later told the Associated Press.

Van Dyke would make regular appearances on variety showcases like "The Judy Garland Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show," and starred in one of the most high-concept situation comedies ever: "My Mother the Car," in which his character's deceased mother is reincarnated as a 1928 Porter automobile. He remarked in 1990 that his brother told him the show sounded promising - this at a time when a show featuring a talking horse was a hit. "I never asked him for advice after that," Jerry added.

With scores of TV and movie appearances (including "That Girl," "Gomer Pyle: USMC," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Love, American Style," "The Love Boat," "Fantasy Island," and "Fresno"), Van Dyke scored his greatest success with the long-running ABC comedy "Coach," playing assistant coach Luther Van Dam opposite series star Craig T. Nelson. The role would earn Van Dyke four Emmy Award nominations.