Noteworthy deaths

Character actor known for villain roles

Actor Irwin Keyes is shown in Chez Jay restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif., in this December 2012 file photo. Keyes has died in Southern California. He was 63.
Actor Irwin Keyes is shown in Chez Jay restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif., in this December 2012 file photo. Keyes has died in Southern California. He was 63.

LOS ANGELES -- Irwin Keyes, who was Hugo the bodyguard on TV's The Jeffersons and had a long career playing villains and henchmen, died Wednesday in Southern California. He was 63.

Talent manager Travis Engle said Keyes died of complications from acromegaly, a hormonal disorder in which the pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone. The condition can cause changes in facial bone structure and lead to premature death.

Engle said Keyes had the disorder throughout his life. He spent the last two years living at a rehabilitation center in Playa del Rey. Actor Andre Rene Roussimoff, better known as Andre the Giant, also had the condition.

Engle called Keyes "probably one of the last of a generation of true character actors."

Keyes was born in New York City and went on to play roles in films including Friday the 13th and House of 1000 Corpses as well as comedies, action movies and sitcoms. He played a malicious henchman in the Coen brothers film Intolerable Cruelty and Fred and Barney's friend Joe Rockhead in the Flintstones movies.

Pulitzer-winning poet, English professor

AMHERST, Mass. -- James Tate, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and longtime English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, has died. He was 71.

He died Wednesday after a long illness, the university said.

Tate was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1992 for Selected Poems. It was one of many honors he received, including the National Book Award for the 1994 Worshipful Company of Fletchers and a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for poetry.

Over his career, he published more than 20 books of poetry.

Tate taught in UMass-Amherst's Master of Fine Arts program for poets and writers since 1971.

Kumble Subbaswamy, the university's chancellor, called Tate one of the school's most distinguished faculty members.

A native of Kansas City, Mo., Tate attended Kansas State College of Pittsburg and was studying at the University of Iowa writers' workshop when, at 23, his first collection of poetry, The Lost Pilot, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, which is for poets under 40 who had not previously published a volume of poetry.

A celebration of Tate's life and his poetry would be held in New York City in the fall, said Jennifer Jacobson, associate director of the university's MFA program.

He was married to poet and fellow UMass-Amherst English professor Dara Wier.

Metro on 07/11/2015

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