Three legends.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The worlds of show business and sports lost three great legends over the weekend with the deaths of Donald O'Connor, Althea Gibson and Elia Kazan. Each brought talent, innovation, inspiration and, above all, passion to his or her profession.

O'Connor, who died Saturday at age 78, was 3 days old when his vaudevillian parents first took him on stage. Over the next eight decades, he performed in virtually every 20th-century entertainment venue, from the circus to vaudeville, from movies to television, and from nightclubs to Broadway. He will be remembered by, er, middle-age Americans for many films, including six silly but lucrative Francis the Talking Mule movies such as "Francis Goes to the Races" and "Francis Goes to West Point."

But O'Connor will forever be remembered as one of the three stars - the others were Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds - in probably the best movie musical ever made, 1952's "Singin' in the Rain." His extended, brilliant, self-choreographed solo dance-singing number in that film, "Make 'Em Laugh," is among the finest and most creative performances in film history.

Althea Gibson's talent was on the tennis court. While winning Wimbledon five times and six other major championships, Gibson broke the color barrier for African-Americans in what until the 1950s was a whites-only sport.

Dubbed "the Jackie Robinson of tennis," Gibson, who died Sunday at age 76, played in an era when tennis was not the financial bonanza it is now. To make ends meet, she quit the sport early to take on a movie role in "The Horse Soldiers," to try her hand at professional golf and to accept state and local athletic jobs. Sadly, her last years were spent in virtual isolation. But Gibson's contribution to American sports and American life will be eternally etched in the national conscience.

Kazan, who died Sunday at age 94, made his mark as a film and stage director. Five of the plays he staged won Pulitzer Pries for their authors: "The Skin of Our Teeth," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Death of a Salesman," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "J.B." For the latter, Kazan won a director's Tony award. In Hollywood, he won Oscars for directing "Gentleman's Agreement" and "On the Waterfront."

A shadow fell over Kazan's career when he testified in the 1950s before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and named friends and colleagues with whom he had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s. That testimony caused rifts with longtime friends and colleagues that lasted for the rest of Kazan's life. But that controversy aside, Kazan was a gifted director who brought the world deep insight and great art.

Three legends: O'Connor, Gibson and Kazan. Their memory will forever be embedded in the fabric of American culture.