Michael “Mickey” Ross, a writer-producer who reveled in speaking Yiddish and pushing society’s buttons on the popular televisions sitcoms “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Three’s Company,” has died. He was 89.
Ross, who lived in West Hollywood, died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke and heart attack, said Carol Summers, a friend and former colleague.
Born Isidore Rovinsky in 1919 in New York City, he grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household that he once said was permeated by “the essence of Yiddishkeit,” or the Jewish way of life. After his wife died in 2000, he had no heirs and decided to give most of his fortune to Jewish causes.
With his writing partner, Bernie West, Ross wrote more than 30 episodes between 1971 and 1975 for the ground-breaking “All in the Family.”
Kenneth Kahn, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who had a side career as a briefcase-toting stand-up comic in a double-breasted suit who irreverently poked fun at the legal system, has died. He was 66.
Kahn, a Santa Monica resident, died Wednesday in a hospital in Cuzco, Peru, after suffering internal injuries in a fall while climbing the mountain above the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, according to information provided to Bob Mazza, Kahn’s public relations consultant.
Kahn had retired from his full-time law practice earlier this year and, Mazza said, had decided to fulfill a dream of traveling to South America.
As a lawyer, Kahn may be best known for representing convicted spy Andrew Daulton Lee, whom Sean Penn portrayed in the 1985 movie “The Falcon and the Snowman.”
But there was that other side of Kahn, who began moonlighting as a stand-up comic in the mid-1990s and carried a business card that boasted: Kenny Kahn. World’s Funniest Attorney.
Albert P. Toner, a White House aide in two Republican administrations nearly 20 years apart, died of congestive heart failure May 21 at his home in Brunswick, Maine. He was 91.
Toner prepared the daily information report for President Dwight D. Eisenhower on problems and activities submitted by government agencies and the White House staff. He returned for his second White House tour during the Nixon administration to do essentially the same job.
From Herald news services
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