Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

Carrie Fisher, the actress, author and screenwriter who brought a rare combination of nerve, grit and hopefulness to her most indelible role, as Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” movie franchise, died on Tuesday morning. She was 60.

“Star Wars,” released in 1977, turned her overnight into an international movie star. The film, written and directed by George Lucas, traveled around the world, breaking box-office records. It proved to be the first installment of a blockbuster series whose vivid, even preposterous characters — living “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” as the opening sequence announced — became pop culture legends and the progenitors of a merchandising bonanza.

Ms. Fisher established Princess Leia as a damsel who could very much deal with her own distress, whether facing down the villainy of the dreaded Darth Vader or the romantic interests of the roguish smuggler Han Solo.

Wielding blaster pistols, piloting futuristic vehicles and, to her occasional chagrin, wearing strange hairdos and a revealing metal bikini, she reprised the role in three more films — “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980, “Return of the Jedi” in 1983 and, 32 years later, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” by which time Leia had become a hard-bitten general.

Lucasfilm said on Tuesday that Ms. Fisher had completed her work in an as-yet-untitled eighth episode of the main “Star Wars” saga, which is scheduled to be released in December 2017.

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[12/28/16] Debbie Reynolds, the Oscar-nominated singer-actress who was the mother of late actress Carrie Fisher, has died at Cedars-Sinai hospital. She was 84.

“She wanted to be with Carrie,” her son Todd Fisher told Variety.

She was taken to the hospital from Todd Fisher’s Beverly Hills house Wednesday after a suspected stroke, the day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died.

The vivacious blonde, who had a close but sometimes tempestuous relationship with her daughter, was one of MGM’s principal stars of the 1950s and ’60s in such films as the 1952 classic “Singin’ in the Rain” and 1964’s “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” for which she received an Oscar nomination as best actress.

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Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds to be buried together

ways to use flour

I have an old bag of flour that's been sitting in the fridge unopened for probably 10 years (or more).

I'm about to toss it, but maybe I can find some use for it?

Well, how about cleaning my stainless steel sink top?  I think I'll try it before tossing it out.

Tom Moffatt

Tom Moffatt — radio disc jockey, concert promoter and one of the most influential figures in the Hawaii entertainment industry — died Monday. He was 85.

Longtime associate Barb Saito, operations manager and vice president of Tom Moffatt Productions, confirmed that Moffatt died Monday night at home after several months of declining health. She described the 35 years she worked with him as “an amazing ride.”

Born Dec. 30, 1930, in Detroit, Moffatt disliked city life and spent most of his teen years working on farms and going to school in small towns outside the Motor City. He came to Hawaii in 1950, enrolled in the University of Hawaii, gravitating toward a career in radio.

Moffatt was playing jazz on KIKI when he started getting requests for a unknown artist named Elvis Presley. With the station’s permission, Moffatt became the first “rock ‘n’ roll” disk jockey in Hawaii and one of the pioneers of modern Top 40 radio.

Moffatt developed the format with Hawaii-born Ron Jacobs at KHVH, KPOA and finally at KPOI — possibly the first time that a station’s call letters formed a pronounceable word. Moffatt, Jacobs and other deejays became the “Poi Boys,” and captivated Hawaii audiences with a seemingly endless series of contests, special events, staged “feuds” between Moffatt and Jacobs, and the “Marathon of Hits” — an annual countdown of the most popular songs in Hawaii as voted on by KPOI listeners. KPOI dominated the Hawaii radio market throughout the 1960s.

Moffatt got involved in concert promotion in the 1950s as an outgrowth of his work in radio. He presented musical revues of the hit artists of the day with the “Show of Stars” concerts and then helped open the Honolulu International Center (now the Neal S. Blaisdell Center) with the first in a series of “Million Dollar Parties.” In the decades that followed Moffatt presented almost every big name in the music business at least once — among his biggest productions were mega-concerts by Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and the Eagles in Aloha Stadium. He also brokered reunion concerts by Cecilio & Kapono, Kalapana and Hui Ohana when conventional wisdom held that the members of the those acts would never work together again.

Moffatt’s involvement in the Hawaii record industry started in the late 1950s. He became a major figure in the Hawaii record industry in the 1970s and 1980s as the head of two labels — Paradise and Bluewater — that released Hoku Hanohano Award-winning recordings by Keola & Kapono Beamer, Andy Bumatai, Loyal Garner, the Aliis, the Kasuals, Rap Reiplinger, The Krush, Hui Ohana and Ledward Kaapana.

Early in his career — while he was still in his 20s, and for reasons now long forgotten — Moffatt’s teenage fans began calling him “Uncle Tom” and dubbed his radio studio as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Moffatt said in 2016 that only one person had ever seemed to take offense at the nickname — an African-American entertainer who arrived from the mainland and wanted to know “Who this ‘Uncle Tom’ guy is.” Prominent kamaaina members of Hawaii’s African-American community have said that although a disc jockey’s use of the name “Uncle Tom” could be problematic elsewhere in the country they found nothing offensive in Moffatt being known as “Uncle Tom” in Hawaii.

Moffatt continued to be active as a concert promoter and radio personality well into his 80s. He returned to radio in the 2000s hosting a Saturday morning program on Kool Gold 107.9 where he entertained listeners with stories about events from the 1950s to present and played songs from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s — in some cases song that had only been hits in Hawaii.

Moffatt is survived by his wife, Esther “Sweetie” Kealoha Cablay Moffatt, son Troy Moffatt, his brother Norman Moffatt and sister Alice Moffatt.

Van Williams

Van Williams, star of the 1966 TV show “The Green Hornet,” died last Monday. He was 82.

Actress Pat Priest, Williams’ longtime friend and neighbor, confirmed the news to Variety. Priest received an email from Williams’ wife, Vicki Flaxman, about her husband’s death on Sunday.

“Sad news. Van passed away last Monday night,” Flaxman wrote. “He really fought hard, but he had more health issues than he could manage. I am heartbroken.”

Producer Kevin Burns first announced the news on his Facebook page after being forwarded the aforementioned email by Priest.

Williams was a diving instructor in Hawaii when he was discovered in 1957 by producer Mike Todd, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time. Williams was persuaded to come to Hollywood and try his hand at acting, and earned his big break on the ABC private detective show “Bourbon Street Beat.” He played Ken Madison, a character he later recycled for another detective show, “Surfside 6.”

In 1966, Williams signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to star in “The Green Hornet” as both the titular masked crusader and his newspaper editor alter ego, Britt Reid. He was ably supported by his martial arts master sidekick Kato, played by Bruce Lee, and by his weaponized car, Black Beauty. Williams played the role straight, signaling a departure from the lampoon comedy of Fox’s earlier “Batman” series.

Williams later appeared in iconic shows such as “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” as well as in the young adult-targeted “Westwind,” which centered around the adventures of the Andrews family who sailed around the world on a yacht.

After his acting career dropped off in the late 1970s, Williams became a reserve deputy sheriff and a fire fighter in the Los Angeles area.

Grant Tinker

Grant Tinker, a television producer and network executive who ushered in a new era of sophisticated prime-time programming in the 1970s and 1980s, championing such well-received series as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Cheers” and “The Cosby Show,” and who turned around NBC’s flagging fortunes in the early 1980s, died Nov. 28 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.

NBC announced his death. The cause was not disclosed.

Mr. Tinker, who began his career at NBC during the dawn of the television era, later became an advertising executive who helped develop “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in the early 1960s. Several years after he married the sitcom’s co-star, Mary Tyler Moore, the two founded a production company, MTM Enterprises, that launched some of television’s most honored and successful programs.

Their first effort, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” debuted on CBS in 1970 and featured the personal and professional misadventures of a single woman working in a TV newsroom. The groundbreaking series, which brought the concerns of working women to prime-time television, went on to win 29 Emmy Awards during its seven seasons.

Three of the show’s spinoffs, “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant” and “Phyllis,” became critical and commercial hits, along with other MTM sitcoms such as “The Bob Newhart Show,” about a Chicago psychologist, and “WKRP in Cincinnati,” about the staff of a Top-40 radio station.

After his success at MTM, Mr. Tinker was named chairman of NBC in 1981. NBC was in last place among the three major broadcast networks of the time and was in such bad shape that its parent company, RCA, was thinking of selling it or shuttering it altogether.

Mr. Tinker took a patient approach, renewing shows that didn’t immediately find an audience, such as Bochco’s gritty police drama “Hill Street Blues” and the hospital show “St. Elsewhere” — both produced by MTM. Despite dismal early ratings, he renewed “Cheers,” a comedy set in a Boston neighborhood bar, and “Family Ties,” about aging hippies raising children in the 1980s. All became long-running hits.

He revamped NBC’s news operation and added prime-time blockbusters to the lineup, such as “L.A. Law,” the stylish detective series “Miami Vice” and, especially, “The Cosby Show.” The Cosby sitcom was the breakout No. 1 hit and established the network’s “must-see TV” comedy block on Thursdays for decades to come.

By the end of 1985, Mr. Tinker had transformed NBC from an industry laughingstock to TV’s most-watched network. Johnny Carson and David Letterman ruled late-night television, and “Today” had become the No. 1 morning show.