We would like to pay tribute to all the men we lost in 2009.

Ricardo Montalban, 88, the Mexican-born actor who became a star in MGM musicals and later as Mr Roarke in TV's Fantasy Island, in Los Angeles.

John Mortimer, 85, the British lawyer-writer who created the curmudgeonly criminal lawyer Rumpole of the Bailey, in the Chiltern Hills, England.

John Updike, 76, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, of lung cancer in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Billy Powell, 56, the Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboard player, in Orange Park, Florida.

Horton Foote, 92, a playwright who won an Oscar for his screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Maurice Jarre, 84, an Oscar-winning composer who captured the majesty of the desert in his music for Lawrence of Arabia, and wrote the haunting Lara's Theme in his score for Doctor Zhivago, in Los Angeles.

Clement Freud, 84, a grandson of Sigmund Freud who became a well-known writer and politician, in London.

Author JG Ballard, 78, a survivor of a Japanese prison camp who reached a wide audience with the autobiographical Empire Of The Sun, in London.

Ken Annakin, 94, the British-born director whose credits included the World War II epics Battle of the Bulge and The Longest Day and the family classic Swiss Family Robinson, in Beverly Hills, California.

Dom DeLuise, 75, an actor and film director, in Santa Monica, California.

Mickey Carroll, 89, one of the last surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, in Crestwood, Missouri.

Wayne Allwine, the actor who voiced Mickey Mouse for more than 30 years, of complications from diabetes in Los Angeles.

David Carradine, 72, a US actor, is found hanging in a Bangkok, Thailand, hotel room.

Ed McMahon, 86, American television's Tonight Show sidekick for 30 years, in Los Angeles.

Michael Jackson, 50, the "King of Pop," who emerged from childhood superstardom to become the entertainment world's most influential singer and dancer, in Los Angeles.

Karl Malden, 97, an Academy Award-winning actor, in Brentwood, California.

Robert S McNamara, 93, the former US secretary of defence, in Washington, DC.

Walter Cronkite, 92, the TV anchorman of the networks' golden age, in New York City.

Gordon Waller, 64, of the pop duo Peter and Gordon, of cardiovascular disease in Norwich, Connecticut.

Henry Allingham, 113, the world's oldest man and World War I veteran in southern England.

Frank McCourt, 78, the author of Angela's Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about his impoverished Irish childhood, of cancer in New York City.

John Hughes, 59, Hollywood's youth movie director of the 1980s and '90s, of a heart attack in New York City.

Les Paul, 94, the guitar virtuoso who created rock 'n' roll by developing the solid-body electric guitar and multitrack recording, of complications from pneumonia in White Plains, New York.

Sen Edward M Kennedy, 77, the liberal lion of the US Senate and haunted bearer of the Camelot torch after two of his brothers fell to assassins' bullets, after a battle with a brain tumour in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

Keith Waterhouse, 80, a raconteur and wit whose works include the enduringly popular novel Billy Liar, in London.

Patrick Swayze, 57, the actor who starred in such films as Dirty Dancing and Ghost, after a battle with pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles.

Stephen Gately, 33, a singer with the Irish boy band Boyzone, while on vacation on the island of Mallorca, Spain.

Daniel Melnick, 77, the film producer of Straw Dogs, Network and Midnight Express in Los Angeles.

Joseph Wiseman, 91, an actor who played the sinister scientist and title character of Dr No in the first James Bond feature film, in New York City.

Soupy Sales, 83, the comedian whose career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5000 live TV appearances, in New York City.

Claude Levi-Strauss, 100, a founder of modern anthropology, in Paris.

Lou Filippo, 83, a World Boxing Hall of Famer who judged 85 world champion fights and had small roles in the Rocky movies, in Downey, California.

Russian spaceship designer Konstantin Feoktistov, 83, who took part in the first group flight in space history in 1964, from unspecified causes in Moscow.

Actor Gene Barry, 90, an American television star for two decades who also appeared in movies and musicals, of unknown causes, in Los Angeles.

Evangelist Oral Roberts, 91, a pioneer in television evangelism who rose from tent revivals to found a multi-million dollar ministry and a university bearing his name, of complications from pneumonia, in Newport Beach, California.

Roy E Disney, 79, the son and nephew of the Walt Disney Co founders who twice led shareholder revolts that shook up the family business, of stomach cancer, in Newport Beach, California.

You will all be missed….