Obituary - Sydney Omarr

American astrologer Sydney Omarr died on 2 January 2003 at the age of 76 in Santa Monica, California. He was born Sidney Kimmelman 5 August 1926 at 10:27 am, Philedelphia.

Omarr's horoscopes were among the most widely read in the world. Blinded and paralysed from the neck down by multiple sclerosis, Omarr died of complications from a heart attack.

He was diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis in 1971 but continued working until suffering a massive heart attack on 23 December 2002. He reached millions through his thirteen books and his column owned by the Tribune Co. and carried by the Los Angeles Times. The column appears in more than 200 daily newspapers. Omarr's books have sold 50 million copies worldwide.

His fans ranged from politicians and princes to movie stars and scholars. The walls of his apartment are covered with framed photographs of him with celebrities such as actresses Angie Dickinson and Jayne Mansfield, and authors Aldous Huxley and Henry Miller.

His fascination with astrology began in school. Omarr was already performing sleight-of-hand tricks in magic shops when, at 15, he saw a film called Shanghai Gesture starring Victor Mature as a character named Omar. Aiming to increase his chances for success, he changed the "i" to "y" in his first name and adopted Omar as his last name, but added a second "r, in accordance with certain numerological formulas. The same year, still in his teens, he wrote a book called Sydney Omarr's Private Course on Numerology. He also started analysing the horoscopes of movie stars such as Edward G. Robinson for magazines.

Enlisting in the Army at 17, Omarr was sent to Okinawa, where his weekly Armed Forces Radio program, Sydney Omarr's Almanac predicted the outcomes of professional boxing matches and horse races and was heard throughout the Pacific Theatre.

After the service, he took journalism courses and his first job after college was for United Press as a news reporter. One of his first assignments was to interview Goodwin Knight, California's Republican governor, who, it turned out, had been reading Omarr's columns for years. When Omarr arrived at the governor's office, Knight asked everyone else to leave the room. Then he showed Omarr his confidential file of horoscopes of every friend and foe in politics.

Omarr later spent a decade as a CBS radio newsman before becoming a full-time columnist and astrological consultant. By the 1970s, Omarr was a headliner on television talk shows. When it became impossible to hide the symptoms of MS Omarr withdrew to the confines of his home, dictating his column to an assistant. His assistants plan to continue the column under his name.