Wayne Osmond, the second-eldest sibling in the Osmond Brothers group of singers, has died. He was 73.

The baritone-voiced singer and guitarist, who was the fourth oldest of the nine Osmond children and older brother to famed duo Donny and Marie Osmond, “passed away peacefully” Wednesday surrounded by his wife and five children, his daughter Amy Osmond Cook said Thursday in a statement posted on Facebook. The family also launched a celebration of life page on the platform to memorialize the late musician.

“His legacy of faith, music, love, and laughter have influenced the lives of many people around the world. He would want everyone to know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, that families are forever, and that banana splits are the best dessert. We love him and will miss him dearly,” his daughter’s statement said.

Osmond’s younger brother, Donny Osmond, confirmed Thursday that he died from a stroke.

“I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to visit him in the hospital before he passed,” the “Donny & Marie” star and Las Vegas headliner wrote on Instagram.

“Wayne brought so much light, laughter, and love to everyone who knew him, especially me. He was the ultimate optimist and was loved by everyone,” Donny added. “I’m sure I speak on behalf of every one of us siblings when I state that we were fortunate to have Wayne as a brother. Even though we are separated in this mortal life, I know that by the grace and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, we will have the opportunity to be with Wayne for eternity. I love you, Wayne.”

Wayne Osmond, born Melvin Wayne Osmond in Ogden on Aug. 28, 1951, wed Kathlyn White in 1974. The multi-instrumentalist had surgery for a brain tumor in 1997, suffered a stroke in 2012 that left him unable to play guitar and also was treated for cancer, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But he famously reunited with his siblings in 2019 to sing with his brothers for sister Marie’s 60th birthday.

Representatives for Marie Osmond did not immediately respond Thursday to The Times’ requests for comment.

Brother Merrill Osmond said on Facebook that Wayne Osmond recently had “a massive stroke” and that he was being treated at a Salt Lake City hospital. Wayne “endured much” and “gave it his all,” he said, and praised his brother’s “genius in his ability to write music” and “capture the hearts of millions of people and bring them closer to God.”

“My brother was a saint before he came into this world, and he will leave as an even greater saint than he came in,” Merrill Osmond wrote Thursday on Facebook. “I’ve never known a man that had more humility. A man with absolute no guile. An individual that was quick to forgive and had the ability to show unconditional love to everyone he ever met.

“His departure from this earth will be a sad moment for some, but for those who are waiting for him on the other side, there will be a massive celebration beyond anything we can imagine,” he added.

Wayne’s younger brother Jay Osmond also said Thursday that he was “deeply saddened” by the death and that “a true legend has left the Earth.”

“It is said that where there is great love there is great grief as we part during our earthly journey. Throughout my life I have always felt most connected to Wayne out of all of my siblings. He was my roommate and my confidant over the decades,” he wrote on Facebook.

Jay Osmond said that when he visited his brother last week, Wayne Osmond was sad that he could no longer fly a plane and that “flying brought him peace.”

“What gives me joy is to know that my brother ‘Wings’ has earned his wings and I can only imagine the heights he is soaring right now. The reunion he must’ve had with Father and Mother I’m sure was spectacular!” he said.

Family patriarch George Osmond, a soldier who launched his children’s entertainment careers in the late 1950s, died in 2007. He was predeceased by his wife, Olive Osmond, in 2004.

Both husband and wife passed on their affinity for music — George’s as a singer and Olive’s as a saxophone player — to their children and formed the Osmond Brothers troupe with sons Alan, Wayne, and Jay Osmond. (The couple’s two eldest sons, Virl and Tom, have degenerative hearing loss that affected their speech.) George taught the quartet how to sing four-part harmonies as children, and they performed for their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints congregation in Ogden, Utah. They also performed at fairs and amusement parks in the late 1950s.

(NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

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The family made its way to Los Angeles in 1962 to audition for “The Lawrence Welk Show” but didn’t land the gig. As a consolation, George Osmond took the family to Disneyland. The boys were dressed alike and the barbershop quartet performing on Main Street took notice. They were asked to do a number with the group; the performance ended up lasting for more than an hour. According to D23, the Osmonds then were brought to the Disneyland entertainment office, where they signed their first professional contract.

While they were performing at Disneyland, the father of singer Andy Williams spotted them and recommended the group to his son, ultimately leading the Osmond Brothers to book a five-year network TV run on “The Andy Williams Show.”.

The group added youngest brother Donny Osmond in 1963, changing its name to the Osmonds, and appeared on “The Jerry Lewis Show” before signing with a record label. They produced 34 gold and platinum records in the 1960s and ’70s, according to the Associated Press, including the 1971 chart-topper “One Bad Apple (Don’t Spoil the Whole Bunch).” Their other Billboard Hot 100 hits include “Down by the Lazy River,” “Yo-Yo,” “Love Me for a Reason” and “Crazy Horses.”

Donny and younger sister Marie also performed separately and as a duo to much success in music and television. Wayne made frequent appearances on the “Donny and Marie” variety show, which ran from 1975 to 1979 and which he also occasionally produced.

NEW YORK (OSV News) – You don’t have to be Dr. Dolittle to understand what the animals are saying in the musical adventure “Mufasa: The Lion King” (Disney). That’s because director Barry Jenkins’ prequel to the popular franchise uses the same technology employed in the 2019 remake of the 1994 animated kick-off of the series to enable them to talk.

How much viewers will enjoy the varied creatures’ dialogue, however, is another question. The movie’s strong suit is visual rather than verbal and the upshot is a sweeping spectacle that lacks substance.

As narrated by Rafiki (voice of John Kani), a wise mandrill, the story looks back to the youthful bond between two princely lions, Mufasa (voice of Aaron Pierre) and Taka (voice of Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Though the duo quickly become friends, their situations are very different.

Taka is right at home under the protection of his royal parents, Queen Eshe (voice of Thandiwe Newton) and King Obasi (voiced by Lennie James). When Taka first encounters him, by contrast, Mufasa has been forcibly carried away by a sudden flood from his home, family and inheritance and is on the point of being eaten by crocodiles when Taka steps in to rescue him.

As their relationship flourishes, the pair treat each other as adoptive brothers. But plot complications — primarily involving Sarabi (voice of Tiffany Boone), a lioness they both befriend — eventually drive them apart.

Beyond the importance of unity and the corrupting effect of jealousy, there are few thematic elements to ponder as these events unfold. So viewers will have to be content with lush landscapes and some pleasant tunes from composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.

While free of objectionable elements, Jeff Nathanson’s script does flirt with shamanism and suggests that the dead achieve immortality through their influence on the living. Along with the numerous dangers through which the central characters pass, that may give some parents pause.

The film contains potentially frightening scenes of combat and peril. The OSV News classification is A-I — general patronage. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

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Some kids aspire to be doctors, astronauts, teachers or firefighters. Growing up in Bolton, a former mill town in the north of England, Diane Morgan was interested in one thing: comedy. She watched a lot of it, mostly British. Peter Sellers, “Fawlty Towers,” Monty Python.

When she landed in drama school, she told the head of the program, “‘Look, I’m not here for the Shakespeare’ — so they gave me Lady Macbeth, all the big roles,” she recalled in a video chat from her London home. “All these lovely, beautiful girls who wanted to play the ingenues — they hated me because they were like, ‘Why is she getting these parts? She wants to be the stupid maid.’”

Several decades later, Morgan’s commitment to playing the fool has paid off. Since 2013, she has starred as Philomena Cunk, a know-nothing TV pundit, in a series of mockumentaries about history, philosophy, art and science (including “Cunk on Earth”). As she strides through picturesque locations, dressed in tweed, and sits down with distinguished experts from the world of academia, she looks every bit the part of a BBC presenter. Then she does things like ask an Oxford professor, “What was more culturally significant, Beyoncé’s hit ‘Single Ladies’ or the Renaissance period?” and the illusion of gravitas is (hilariously) ruptured.

The latest volume in the “Cunk” canon, “Cunk on Life,” premieres Thursday on Netflix. Cunk remains as deadpan and ill-informed as ever, asking great philosophers and physicists “some of the most significant questions you can ask with a mouth.” In one particularly absurd scene, she tells a renowned British surgeon that only 40% of people have skeletons. Everyone else, she says, is “solid meat.”

Morgan has a remarkable ability to maintain a straight face throughout these interviews. It’s all about the pressure, she says. “I know that as soon as I laugh, it’s not funny.” She admits she does “corpse” — or crack up — on occasion, particularly with certain experts, like Douglas Hedley, a professor of the philosophy of religion at Cambridge University who has become a recurring talking head in the “Cunk” universe. “He talks very slowly, but he’s brilliant. I think the straighter and more serious they are, the more it tickles me,” she says.

The academics who appear in “Cunk” may be aware that Morgan is doing a bit for a comedy program, but they still react to her character’s idiotic questions with genuine shock and exasperation. In the early days, before Cunk became well-known, there was more confusion.

“We had some real eggheads, and famously, they don’t watch comedy. Then you trample all over their favorite topic” and things can get tense, she says. One expert grew so irritated they had to pause filming while he calmed down. “I said, ‘Don’t stop if that happens again.’ I was willing for him to punch me, because I thought it would make great TV. If he breaks my nose, it’ll heal.”

“I think they genuinely feel a bit defensive of their subject matter,” says “Cunk on Life” creator Charlie Brooker, who is also the force behind the techno-dystopian anthology series “Black Mirror.” He is usually not physically present when Morgan is filming the interviews because, he says, “I find it too cringe. I would die.”

Brooker says Morgan “doesn’t mind an awkward silence, which comes in really handy when she’s doing the interviews, because sometimes they will last an hour, 70% of which is awkward silence.”

The experts, some of whom have become recurring favorites, “seem to really enjoy the fact that they’re there,” Brooker says. “The sad thing is, experts don’t get interviewed on mainstream TV very often anymore.”

Over time, Cunk has grown more antagonistic toward the talking heads she interrogates, and more willing to counter their arguments with dubious anecdotal evidence. (“My mate Paul” is one of her most frequently cited sources.)

“That feels like a modern-day thing,” Brooker says. “People are less shy these days about saying to an expert, ‘Yeah, whatever, you may have studied this subject for 25 years, but I just watched a video on YouTube which tells me your life’s work is bulls—. I’ll tell you why we didn’t land on the moon, or vaccines don’t work. There’s an arrogant swagger to a lot of the alternative truth crowd.

“There’s something funny about watching her attack their professions, things they care passionately about, from her position of slightly bored detachment,” he adds.

Diane Morgan in the Max comedy “Frayed.”

(Lisa Tomasetti / HBO Max)

Morgan’s Bolton accent somehow adds to the character’s dry comedic affect. When Morgan was studying at the East 15 Acting School, she was told the way she spoke would be an obstacle to getting work.

“It’s madness, because every part I’ve had since then, it’s the accent that’s got it,” she says. “In drama school, they always want to stamp out the interesting bits about you and build you back up into an actor that they think people want. But actually, people want weirdness. They want individuality, don’t they? They want humps and lumps and weird eyes.”

Morgan spent nearly 10 years performing stand-up in London, an experience that was at least as valuable as drama school. “You learn a lot very quickly about how not to bore people,” she says.

During those lean years, she made ends meet by working a string of miserable jobs. There was a stint as a telemarketer, cold-calling people to ask if they needed a new accountant, and a particularly grim gig packing worming tablets for dogs for 10 hours a day, with no talking or sitting allowed. “It was the worst experience, but it made me think, ‘I’ve really got to make this work. I’ve really got to pull my socks up and do something with my life, because I don’t want to end up here,’” Morgan says.

She had landed a few small parts in TV when she got the audition for Philomena Cunk, which originated as a character on the satirical news show “Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe.” Comedian Al Campbell played a dim-witted commentator with the ludicrous name Barry Shitpeas. The show was looking for his female counterpart, someone they originally envisioned as “a yummy mummy cupcake blogger who’s vacuous and drives a Range Rover,” Brooker says.

To complete the stereotype, the character was supposed to sound more posh. But Morgan insisted on asking for additional time in her audition to play Cunk in her own voice. “I’d never had the balls to do that,” she says. “It was just funnier, because my own accent is quite flat, and it lends a sort of misery to everything.”

Brooker was “absolutely floored” by the audition. Morgan brings “an odd comic unknowability” to Cunk, he says. “There’s something very curious about the character, where she is sort of alien and otherworldly but simultaneously vapid in a cosmic way,”

“Everyone was quite nervous about it — would this new character work or not?” Morgan recalls. “If it hadn’t, I’d have been axed immediately and taken off and shot around the corner. But it worked.”

Morgan, right, with Paul Ready in “Motherland.”

(Sundance Now / BBC Pictures)

Cunk became a breakout character, appearing in recurring segments and then anchoring standalone specials, including “Cunk on Britain” and — yes — “Cunk on Shakespeare.” (Standout quote: “School in Shakespeare’s day and age was vastly different to our own. In fact, it was far easier because he didn’t have to study Shakespeare.”)

Meanwhile, Morgan became a reliable scene stealer in acerbic British comedies, often playing bluntly profane characters with little regard for social niceties. In the Ricky Gervais vehicle “After Life,” she starred as a newspaper employee obsessed with Kevin Hart’s oeuvre. In “Motherland,” a sitcom co-created by Sharon Horgan, she played a foul-mouthed single mom who chafes at the bourgeois parenting standards of her middle-class social orbit. (She lets her son pee in the street and makes sandwiches by hacking cheese from a hunk in her freezer, severing a finger in the process.)

“It’s nice to have someone like that, who just doesn’t give a toss,” she says of her “Motherland” role. “I used to get moms running up to me in the street every day: ‘Thank God for this. I thought I was the only one.’”

She also wrote, directed and starred in the defiantly weird comedy “Mandy,” which follows an unemployable woman as she skips from one odd job to the next.

Morgan occasionally thinks it would be nice to do something a bit grittier and more dramatic. “But I’ve still got no interest in Shakespeare.”