Born June 11

Mentor Williams, a music producer and songwriter who penned the hit “Drift Away,” died Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, in Taos, New Mexico, according to multiple news sources. He was 70. …

When “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” was released in 1971, few of its stars were familiar to audiences. And even with the movie’s moderate success at the box office …

Gene Wilder, the comic actor known for movies including “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Young Frankenstein,” has died at the age of 83.

His most famous skits included diving into a sewage tank.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Confessions of Nat Turner.”