Actor and comedian Richard De Angelis, who played Baltimore police Col. Raymond Foerster on the HBO crime drama “The Wire,” has died. He was 73.

De Angelis died of congestive heart failure Dec. 28 at his home in Silver Spring, said his son, Richard M. De Angelis. He also had complications from prostate cancer.

In addition to his recurring role on “The Wire,” De Angelis appeared in “Homicide: The Movie” and the John Waters films “A Dirty Shame” and “Cecil B. Demented.”

De Angelis also appeared in plays, TV commercials, radio spots and print advertisements in an acting career that spanned four decades. He performed standup comedy for many years under the name Ricky Roach.

Born in Boston, De Angelis served in the Navy during the Korean conflict and worked as an accountant for 14 years. At 38, he quit smoking, became a vegetarian and enrolled in acting school. He received a master’s degree in 1983 from the University of Maryland’s theater arts program.

Patrick Cranshaw best known for ‘Old School’

Patrick Cranshaw, who achieved cultlike status as fraternity brother “Blue” in the 2003 comedy “Old School,” has died. He was 86.

The veteran character actor died of natural causes Wednesday at his home in Fort Worth, Texas, his personal manager, Jeff Ross, told the Los Angeles Times.

Throughout his career spanning nearly 50 years, Cranshaw had dozens of roles, including a bank teller in “Bonnie and Clyde” and a demolition derby owner in “Herbie: Fully Loaded” (2005). Other credits included “Bandolero” (1968), “Best in Show” (2000) and “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994), as well as television series “Mork &Mindy” and “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

But he was probably best known for his role as elderly frat boy Joseph “Blue” Palasky in “Old School,” starring Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn.

In the hit comedy, he was about to wrestle two topless girls but dies of an apparent heart attack from overexcitment. After singing “Dust in the Wind” at Blue’s funeral, Ferrell’s character calls out in agony: “You’re my boy, Blue!”

Fans would yell the signature line whenever they saw the actor and erected Web sites paying homage to his “Old School” character. He was even invited to meet with the Texas Rangers when they played the Angels in Anaheim.

“It was a great experience and an acknowledgment for him,” Ross said. “He loved the recognition and would turn back and say, ‘I’m your boy Blue.’”

Cranshaw was born in Bartlesville, Okla., in 1919 and became interested in acting while entertaining American troops before World War II.

Psychiatrist claimed he could cure homosexuality

Charles Socarides, the psychiatrist famous for insisting that homosexuality was a treatable illness and who claimed to have “cured” hundreds, has died. He was 83.

Socarides, died Dec. 25 of heart failure at a hospital near his Manhattan home, his family announced. A funeral Mass was held Friday.

He waged an unsuccessful battle to reverse the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, and brushed off frequent condemnations by colleagues who considered his views hurtful.

“Gays ascribe their condition to God, but he should not have to take that rap, any more than he should be blamed for the existence of other manmade maladies – like war,” he wrote in the Catholic weekly magazine America in 1995.

Socarides persisted in his views despite having a gay son, Richard, who became an adviser to President Clinton on gay and lesbian affairs.

In the 1990s, he was among the founders of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, a nonprofit group based in Encino, Calif., “dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality.”

A native of Brockton, Mass., Socarides decided he wanted to become a psychoanalyst at age 13 after reading a book on the life of Sigmund Freud. He graduated from Harvard College, earned his medical degree at New York Medical College, and got a certificate in psychoanalytic medicine at Columbia University. He taught at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

From Herald news services