Roberts Blossom, 87, quirky character actor

Roberts Blossom, a durable character actor who was known for playing cantankerous old coots, both comic and sinister, but who may be best remembered as the kindly next-door neighbor in the comedy “Home Alone,” died Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Deborah.

Blossom amassed a long string of theater credits before hitting his stride as a character actor in the movies in the 1970s. He performed in dozens of films, usually in small but memorable roles.

He was an ill-fated patient in the George C. Scott film “The Hospital,” the delirious Wild Bob Cody in “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Paul Le Mat’s ornery father in “Citizens Band,” the farmer who once saw Bigfoot in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the convict who paints the warden’s portrait in “Escape From Alcatraz” and the irate judge who sentences Michael J. Fox to community service in the local hospital in “Doc Hollywood.”

In a rare starring role, he was Ezra Cobb, a crazed farmer who unleashes mayhem, in the cult horror film “Deranged.” Posters for the film bore the tag line: “Pretty Sally Mae died a very unnatural death ... but the worst hasn’t happened to her yet!”

He played against type in the hugely popular Christmas film “Home Alone.” As Old Man Marley, he was a threatening-looking geezer rumored to have killed his entire family, but the scary Marley turns out to be a sweet old fellow who befriends the character played by Macaulay Culkin.

Vincent Canby, in an article in The New York Times on outstanding small roles, praised Blossom in “Escape From Alcatraz” for “one of his quietest, creepiest performances to date” as Doc Dalton, an elderly inmate who incurs the wrath of the sadistic warden when he paints his portrait.

After being denied painting privileges, Doc cuts off his fingers in the prison woodworking shop, an expression of defiance and despair that Canby described as “serenely lunatic and unexpectedly moving.”

Roberts Scott Blossom was born on March 25, 1924, in New Haven, Conn., and grew up in Cleveland. After graduating from the Asheville School in North Carolina in 1941, he enrolled at Harvard but entered the Army after a year. On returning from duty in Europe during World War II he trained as a therapist, but he soon began acting in productions at Karamu House in Cleveland and then moved to New York.

World Maritime News - USA: Diamond S Shipping Acquires 30 Medium ...

Diamond S Shipping announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 30 medium-range refined product carriers to add to its fleet of ten tankers under construction in Korean shipyards. The 30 product carriers and related charters are being purchased from Cido Tanker Holding Co. under a definitive agreement which is scheduled to close, subject to customary conditions, in this calendar quarter. The ten newbuild tankers, eight Suezmax tankers and two LR2 tankers, are being constructed by Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries, with the first delivery scheduled for January, 2012.

Founding Diamond S investor First Reserve Corporation (Greenwich, CT) is being joined by a group of investors led by WL Ross & Co. (New York), China Investment Corporation (Beijing), Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Canada), Morgan Creek Capital Management (Chapel Hill, N.C.) and PPM America Capital Partners (Chicago), which firms have committed to invest over $600 million in Diamond S in connection with the Cido product tanker acquisition. The balance of the product tanker purchase price will be provided by debt financing committed by Nordea Bank Finland and DnB Nor Bank ASA. Funding for the newbuilds had previously been arranged.

London-based Clarksons conducted a competitive global sales process on behalf of Cido Shipping.

“We have been looking for the right opportunity in the shipping industry for some time,”