Michael Duncan – The public had its chance to pay respects to the actor Michael Clarke Duncan yesterday at a public memorial.
The service was held at the Hall of Liberty at Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries in Hollywood Hills.
The memorial lasted about four hours, according to reports, and included remarks from friends, a slideshow and a screening of 1999’s “The Green Mile,” the movie that earned Duncan an Oscar nomination and made him a star.
There will be a private service today at the same location and is expected to include many Hollywood stars, in addition to Duncan’s fiance, reality TV star Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth.
The 54-year-old Duncan died last Monday from natural causes and never fully recovering from a heart attack he suffered on July 13.
“Manigault is grateful for all of your prayers and asks for privacy at this time,” said her rep in a statement.
When Duncan died, he and Stallworth were in the middle of planning a wedding and the start of a family.It was back in July that the gentle giant, star of “The Green Mile,” was hospitalized after going into cardiac arrest. Stallworth discovered her fiancé at 2 a.m. and managed to perform CPR to resuscitate him until paramedics arrived.“I am devastated,” Stallworth toldRadarOnline on Monday. “He was the love of my life.”
Last week the public learnedthat a 32-year-old woman in Chicago, Marquea (Marqay) Ambrose, has come forward with claims that she is Duncan’s daughter—though she hadn’t spoken to him in over ten years.A source told RadarOnline.com, “It was the day he died that she started calling his mother saying ‘I want what’s mine’ and trying to get money from her.”Sources also confirmed that although Duncan did date Ambrose’s mother, he “believed he was not her father.”
“The only thing that really bothers me about him passing is that we didn’t fix,” Ambrose told Chicago’s WFLD-TV.
Duncan’s family, on the other hand, is convinced that if there really was a relationship to be mended between Ambrose and the “The Green Mile” actor, she would have at least tried to contact the family during the 53 days he was in the hospital.
