Bobby Cox, Ted Turner, Rex Reed, and Jack Taylor Die

These guys were a Braves baseball, Hall of Fame, manager and Worlds Series winner; the owner of the Atlanta Braves, 17 Superstation, CNN, Ted’s Montana Grill, etc.; a film critic, journalist, actor and media personality; and an actor in movies like Cleopatra, Conan the Barbarian, Grand Piano, etc.

Bobby Cox was born Robert Joseph Cox in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 05-21-1941, and moved with his family at a young age to Selma, California, where he grew up and developed into a standout baseball player at Selma High School. Signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers organization in 1959, he spent years working his way through the minor leagues as an infielder before finally reaching Major League Baseball with the New York Yankees in 1968.

Although his playing career in the majors was brief, appearing mainly as a third baseman for the Yankees during the 1968 and 1969 seasons, he gained valuable experience around legendary players and baseball minds that would shape his future managerial style. After his playing days ended, Cox moved quickly into coaching and managing, beginning in the Yankees’ farm system before becoming manager of the Atlanta Braves in 1978.

His first stint with the Braves ended after the strike-disrupted 1981 season, but he soon resurfaced with the Toronto Blue Jays, where he helped transform the struggling expansion franchise into a contender, leading the club to its first division title in 1985.

Cox later returned to Atlanta as general manager and helped assemble the nucleus of one of baseball’s greatest dynasties before reclaiming the manager’s job in 1990. Beginning with the remarkable “worst-to-first” turnaround of 1991, Cox guided the Braves through an era of unprecedented regular-season success, winning 14 consecutive division titles between 1991 and 2005, interrupted only by the 1994 strike.

His teams captured five National League pennants and won the 1995 World Series, bringing Atlanta its first major professional sports championship. Known for his calm demeanor with players and fiery confrontations with umpires, Cox set the Major League record for managerial ejections while simultaneously earning enormous respect throughout baseball for his loyalty,

leadership, and ability to develop talent. During his tenure, stars such as Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper Jones, and Andruw Jones flourished under his guidance, and many players considered him a father figure as much as a manager. Cox retired after the 2010 season with 2,504 managerial victories, ranking among the winningest managers in baseball history, and he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.

His uniform number 6 was retired by the Braves, and his influence on the franchise remained visible long after retirement. In his personal life, Cox was married first to Mary Cox, with whom he had five children before the marriage ended in divorce, and later married Pamela Boswell Cox, with whom he had three daughters. Despite an enormously successful career, his personal life was not entirely

free from controversy, including a highly publicized domestic dispute in the mid-1990s that drew national attention. In later years, Cox faced significant health challenges, suffering a stroke in 2019 that affected his mobility and speech,

followed by heart-related complications, though he continued to follow baseball closely and remained beloved within the Braves organization and by fans across the sport. Bobby Cox died on Saturday, 05-09-2026, in Marietta, Georgia, at the age of 84, just days before his 85th birthday. He was survived by his wife Pamela, his children, grandchildren, and an enormous extended baseball family that regarded him as one of the defining figures of the modern game.

Ted Turner was born Robert Edward Turner III in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 11-19-1938, the son of Florence Rooney Turner and billboard advertising executive Robert Edward Turner II, and spent much of his youth in Savannah, Georgia, where he developed the fiercely competitive personality that would later define both his business career and public image. He attended the McCallie School

in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and later enrolled at Brown University, initially studying classics before switching to economics, but he left the university before graduating after disciplinary problems involving a female student in his dormitory room; Brown later awarded him an honorary degree. Turner also served in the United States Coast Guard Reserve to fulfill his national service obligation.

After the suicide of his father in 1963, the young Turner inherited the family billboard company and rapidly transformed it from a regional advertising business into the foundation of a vast media empire. He purchased struggling television stations, most notably Atlanta’s WTCG,

and pioneered the “superstation” concept by distributing the signal nationally via satellite, allowing local programming and Atlanta Braves baseball games to reach audiences across America. Turner revolutionized broadcasting in 1980 by

launching the Cable News Network, better known as CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news channel, a move widely mocked at first but ultimately one that changed journalism forever. CNN’s nonstop reporting during events such as the Challenger disaster,

the fall of the Berlin Wall, and especially the Gulf War established the network as a global force and permanently altered how people consumed news. Turner continued expanding with the creation of networks including TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, and other entertainment properties, while also owning the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks and helping elevate Atlanta’s national sports profile.

His brash public persona earned him nicknames such as “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South,” and he became known for outspoken comments, bold risks, and a willingness to challenge rivals and conventional wisdom. Outside broadcasting, Turner was an accomplished yachtsman who skippered the yacht Courageous to victory in the 1977 America’s Cup and won admiration in sailing circles for his aggressive style and competitive instincts.

He also became one of the largest private landowners in the United States, devoting enormous resources to conservation, bison restoration, environmental causes, and philanthropy. In 1997 he stunned the world by pledging $1 billion to support United Nations initiatives, leading to the formation of the United Nations Foundation,

and he later co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative to combat nuclear and biological threats. Turner received countless honors throughout his life, including being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1991, induction into the Cable Hall of Fame, the America’s Cup Hall of Fame, and numerous humanitarian and environmental awards recognizing both his media innovations and charitable work. His personal life was often turbulent and highly publicized; he married three times,

most famously to actress and activist Jane Fonda from 1991 until their divorce in 2001, and he openly discussed struggles with depression, grief following his father’s death, and later serious health problems. In 2018 Turner revealed that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, and in his final years he largely withdrew from public life while remaining an iconic figure in American media history. Ted Turner died on Wednesday, 05-06-2026, at his home in Lamont, Florida, at the age of 87.

He was survived by his five children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and a legacy that permanently reshaped television news, cable broadcasting, sports media, and modern philanthropy.

Rex Reed was born Rex Taylor Reed in Fort Worth, Texas, on 10-02-1938, the son of an oil company supervisor whose work caused the family to move frequently throughout the American South during Reed’s childhood, giving him a broad exposure to Southern culture, personalities, and storytelling that later colored his flamboyant writing style and sharp wit. Fascinated by movies, theater, music, and celebrity culture

from an early age, he developed a passion for journalism while attending Louisiana State University, where he earned a degree in journalism in 1960 and began writing film and theater reviews for both the campus newspaper and local Baton Rouge publications.

After graduation, Reed moved to New York City hoping to become an actor, but instead found work in the publicity department at 20th Century Fox, where he sharpened his understanding of the entertainment business while observing firsthand the machinery of Hollywood promotion. By the mid-1960s he had emerged as one of America’s most recognizable and controversial cultural critics, writing celebrity profiles,

arts commentary, and movie criticism for publications including The New York Times, New York magazine, Vogue, GQ, Women’s Wear Daily, and the New York Daily News before eventually becoming closely associated with The New York Observer, where his columns and reviews appeared for nearly four decades. Reed’s style was unmistakable: witty, caustic, theatrical, deeply opinionated, and often brutally personal,

making him both feared and celebrated in entertainment circles. He became part of a new generation of critics who treated film criticism as personality-driven cultural commentary rather than detached academic analysis, and his reviews could elevate small films, savage major productions, or provoke public outrage in equal measure. Over the years he became notorious for controversial remarks directed at performers including

Frank Sinatra, Marlee Matlin, Melissa McCarthy, and others, sometimes drawing accusations of cruelty, insensitivity, or factual recklessness, yet he remained a major media presence whose work continued attracting readers because of its fearless tone and unmistakable voice. Reed also enjoyed a secondary career as a performer and television personality, appearing in films such as

“Myra Breckinridge,” “Superman,” “Inchon,” and “Irreconcilable Differences,” while frequently appearing on television talk shows and as a judge on “The Gong Show,” where his flamboyant persona made him almost as famous as the celebrities he critiqued. He authored numerous books including “Do You Sleep in the Nude?,” “Conversations in the Raw,” and “Valentines & Vitriol,” collections that combined celebrity interviews, essays, humor, and memoir-like observations from his decades covering entertainment culture.

In his personal life Reed was openly gay and spent much of his adult life living in Manhattan’s famed Dakota apartment building, cultivating friendships with actors, writers, and Broadway figures while also embracing the role of the unapologetic outsider. Though he never married and had no children, he often spoke candidly about loneliness, aging, and the difficulties of maintaining close relationships while living such a public and opinionated life. Reed continued writing well into his eighties despite declining

health, falls, hospitalizations, and mobility issues, maintaining his devotion to movies and journalism almost until the end of his life. Rex Reed died on Tuesday, 05-12-2026, at his home in Manhattan, New York, at the age of 87 after a short illness. He was not known to have immediate survivors, though he was survived by close friends, longtime colleagues, admirers, and generations of readers who regarded him as one of the last great old-school celebrity critics whose voice could still command attention in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Jack Taylor was born George Brown Randall on October 21, 1926, in Oregon City, Oregon, and developed an interest in acting as a child, appearing in stage productions before eventually moving into television work during the 1950s. Adopting the professional name Jack Taylor, he began his screen career with small appearances on American television programs before relocating to Mexico, where he appeared in genre films directed by Federico Curiel,

often in productions involving horror and masked-superhero characters that were popular in Mexican cinema at the time. Seeking broader opportunities, Taylor later moved to Europe and became closely associated with the flourishing Spanish and European exploitation and horror film scene of the late 1960s and 1970s, particularly through his collaborations with director Jesús Franco.

Tall, charismatic, and possessing a distinctive screen presence that could project both sophistication and menace, Taylor became a familiar face in cult cinema through films such as Succubus, Count Dracula, Female Vampire, and Pieces, earning a devoted following among horror fans worldwide. Although many of the productions in which he appeared were low-budget genre

pictures, Taylor worked steadily for decades and also appeared in larger international productions including Conan the Barbarian, The Ninth Gate, and Goya’s Ghosts, demonstrating an ability to move comfortably between cult cinema and mainstream historical or fantasy films.

His career ultimately spanned more than sixty years, and he remained highly respected within European horror circles for both his professionalism and his willingness to embrace unusual and challenging material. Taylor largely kept his personal life private despite his long public career, and relatively little was publicly documented regarding marriages or children.

Over time he became celebrated as one of the enduring icons of European cult horror cinema, frequently appearing at film festivals and retrospectives dedicated to the genre, where younger audiences rediscovered his work. Jack Taylor died on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at the age of 99. Information regarding immediate survivors was not widely released at the time of his death.