American actress Marjorie Lord (Marjorie F. Wollenberg), best known for her starring role in the long-running TV sitcom Make Room for Daddy (1953-65), died on November 28, aged 97. She made her movie debut as a teenager in 1937, and her credits include Universal’s Sherlock Holmes in Washington (opposite Basil Rathbone and George Zucco) and Flesh and Fantasy, along with the “Bomba, the Jungle Boy” adventure The Lost Volcano. On TV she was also in episodes of Ramar of the Jungle and Fantasy Island, before she retired from the screen in the late 1980s to become a philanthropist and fundraiser. Lord’s first husband was actor John Archer, and their daughter is actress Anne Archer.
British actor Anthony Valentine died of Parkinson’s disease on December 2, aged 76. A former BBC child actor from the late 1940s onwards, he appeared in The Flesh and the Fiends (with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence), Hammer’s These Are the Damned and To the Devil a Daughter (with Christopher Lee), Tower of Evil (aka Horror on Snape Island) and The Monster Club (with Vincent Price and John Carradine). On TV Valentine was in A for Andromeda and episodes of The Avengers, Thriller (1975), Space: 1999, Hammer House of Horror (‘Carpathian Eagle’), Tales of the Unexpected, Robin Hood (1984-85) and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes.
Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti (Pasquale Ferzetti) died the same day, aged 90. His many credits include the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic, Encounters in the Deep, Julia and Julia, Computron 22, Die ringe des Saturn and the TV mini-series Around the World in 80 Days (1989).
American actor Will MacMillan (William George McMillan), who co-starred in George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973) as “W.G. McMillan”, also died on December 2, aged 71. He was in Christmas Evil, Cards of Death (which he also wrote and directed), Dark Romances Vol.1 and Monarch of the Moon, along with episodes of TV’s The Greatest American Hero, Knight Rider, Werewolf and The Flash (1991).
Italian-American actor Robert Loggia (Salvatore Loggia), best remembered for dancing on a giant piano with Tom Hanks in the 1988 fantasy Big, died on December 4, aged 85. His many movie credits include The Lost Missile, The Ninth Configuration, Psycho II, The Believers, Amazon Women on the Moon, Innocent Blood, Lifepod, Independence Day, Lost Highway, The Boneyard Collection, Her Morbid Desires, The Life Zone, Bleeding Hearts and Sicilian Vampire, and he appeared in episodes of TV’s One Step Beyond, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1960, 1962 and 1986), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild Wild West, Tarzan (1968), Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantasy Island, Tales of the Unexpected, Wild Palms, The Fearing Mind, The Outer Limits (2000) and Touched by an Angel.
Jug-eared British character actor Nicholas (John) Smith, who played “Mr. Rumbold” in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? (1972-85) plus various spin-offs, died on December 6, following a fall seven weeks earlier at his home. He was 81. Smith made his first (uncredited) appearance on TV in the serial Pathfinders to Mars (1960) and went on to appear in episodes of Doctor Who, The Avengers, The Champions, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Ace of Wands, Worzel Gummidge and M.I. High (as “Professor Quakermass”). He was also in the 1973 musical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hammer’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, and he voiced the eccentric “Reverend Hedges” in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Puerto Rican-born transgender actress Holly Woodlawn (Haraldo Santiago Feanceschi Rodriguez Danhaki) died of brain and liver cancer in Los Angeles the same day, aged 69. The subject of Lou Reed’s song ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, Woodlawn appeared in films by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, and was also in the 1993 vampire movie Night Owl starring John Leguizamo.
American character actor Martin E. Brooks (Martin Baum), who played “Dr. Rudy Wells” in The Six Million Dollar Man (1975-78), The Bionic Woman (1976-78) and related spin-off movies, died on December 7, aged 90. He also appeared in Colossus: The Forbin Project and The Man, along with episodes of ‘Way Out (‘False Face’), The Wild Wild West, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and Planet of the Apes.
American actress Elaine (Louise) Riley died the same day, aged 98. A former beauty queen, she had small roles in The Falcon and the Co-eds, The Brighton Strangler and an episode of TV’s Adventures of Superman. Riley retired from the screen in 1960.
American actor and producer Tony (Anthony) Cardoza (Jr.) died of complications from a stroke also on December 7, aged 85. He appeared in such films as Edward D. Wood’s Night of the Ghouls, The Beast of Yucca Flats, Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters and Bigfoot (1970). He also associate-produced Wood’s 1957 short The Final Curtain, along with Night of the Ghouls, The Beast of Yucca Flats (which he also edited) and Bigfoot.
American actress Rose Siggins (Rosemarie Homan), who played “Legless Suzi” in the TV series American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014-15), died of complications from surgery on December 12, aged 43.
Canadian character actor Ken (Kenneth) Pogue died of cancer on December 15, aged 81. His many credits include The Neptune Factor, An American Christmas Carol, Virus, David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, Dead of Winter, Still Not Quite Human, Sherlock Holmes Returns (as “James Moriarty Booth”), Bad Moon, The 6th Day, The Christmas Secret and Phenomenon II. On TV, Pogue appeared in episodes of Amerika, The Twilight Zone (1989), War of the Worlds, Highlander, Sliders, Strange Luck, The Sentinel, The Outer Limits (1996-98), Millennium (as “Tom Miller”), Viper (1997-99), So Weird, Mysterious Ways, Night Visions, Taken, The Dead Zone, The Collector, Fringe and Alcatraz.
Exotic-looking Spanish-born singer, dancer and actress Lita Baron (Isabel Beth Castro, aka “Isabelita”) died of complications from a broken hip in Palm Springs, California, on December 16. She was 92. Baron appeared in Jungle Jim, the Lewtonesque Bomba on Panther Island and Savage Drums. A featured singer with Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra in the early 1940s, she was married to actor Rory Calhoun from 1948-70.
Italian actor Carlo de Mejo, the son of actress Alida Valli, died on December 18, aged 70. His credits include Equinox (1971), The Dead Are Alive, Alien Contamination, City of the Living Dead, The Other Hell, The House by the Cemetery, Manhattan Baby and The Night-Gaunts.
American actor and scriptwriter Douglas M. Dick died on December 19, aged 95. He appeared in episodes of such TV series as World of Giants, One Step Beyond, Men Into Space and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Dick also came up with the story for an episode of I Dream of Jeannie and co-scripted four episodes of Bewitched with his second wife, Peggy Chantler Dick. In the early 1970s he left acting and became a psychologist.
52-year-old American actor Brooke McCarter, best known for his role as the undead “Paul” in The Lost Boys (1987), died of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AAT), a rare genetic liver disease, on December 22. His other credits include Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Uh-oh Show, Emerging Past and a 1987 episode of TV’s The Twilight Zone. During the 1990s he was fellow Lost Boys actor Corey Haim’s manager.
American character actor Jason Wingreen, best known as the original voice of bounty hunter “Boba Fett” in the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back (1980), died on Christmas Day, aged 95. Wingreen appeared (often playing doctors) in episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild Wild West, Get Smart, Captain Nice, The Green Hornet, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders, Star Trek, The Name of the Game (‘LA 2017’), Night Gallery, The Sixth Sense, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantasy Island, Starman, Highway to Heaven and Freddy’s Nightmares. He was also in the movies The Dunwich Horror, The Last Child, Paper Man, Miracle on 34th Street (1973), The Terminal Man, The Man with the Power, Captain America (1979), The Golden Gate Murders and Oh, God! You Devil. Wingreen additionally scripted episodes of Thriller (‘Portrait Without a Face’) and The Wild Wild West (‘The Night of the Torture Chamber’).
Lemmy (Ian Fraser Kilmister), the British lead singer and bassist for heavy metal band Motörhead, died in Los Ang
eles four days after his 70th birthday on December 28. He had been diagnosed with an extremely aggressive brain cancer just two days earlier. The band’s music can be heard on the sountracks for such movies as Zombie Nightmare (‘Ace of Spades’), Hardware, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (‘Hellraiser’), Wishmaster and Halloween II (2009), and Lemmy appeared in Hardware, Terror Firmer, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, The Curse of El Charro, Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1 and the forthcoming Midnight Show and Gutterdammerung.
Puerto Rican-born actress Lucinda Dooling (Lucinda Schiff), who co-starred in the 1983 horror movie The Alchemist, died after a long battle with brain cancer on December 30, aged 61. She was also in Steven Spielberg’s 1941 and the musical comedy Surf II before retiring from the screen in the late 1980s.
American leading man Wayne Rogers (William Wayne McMillan Rogers III), who starred as “Trapper John” in the first three seasons (1972-75) of the CBS series M*A*S*H, died of pneumonia on December 31, aged 82. His other TV credits include episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Smothers Brothers Show and The Invaders, and he was in the movies Chamber of Horrors, Doomsday Machine, It Happened One Christmas and I Dream of Jeannie… Fifteen Years Later. Rogers also co-produced and co-scripted Dr. Sex (as “Juan Rogero”) and The Astro-Zombies with director Ted V. Mikels, and in later years he became a very successful money manager and business investor.
FILM/TV TECHNICIANS
Scottish-born TV director Fiona Cumming died on January 1, aged 77. A former actress, she directed four 1980s series of Doctor Who, along with an epsiode of The Omega Factor and two episodes of Blake’s 7 (including Tanith Lee’s ‘Sarcophagus’).
American independent movie producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., the son of the infamous Hollywood studio mogul, died of congestive heart failure on January 9, aged 88. Goldwyn, Jr.’s films include The Visitor, Once Bitten, The Preacher’s Wife and the 2013 remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (his father produced the 1947 original).
American film editor Frank (Francisco) Mazzola, whose credits include Demon Seed and Annihilator, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on January 13, aged 79. The son of a Hollywood stuntman, Mazzola appeared as a child extra in the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
American studio executive Alan (James) Hirschfield who, while CEO of Columbia Pictures from 1973-78 oversaw the making of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, died on January 15, aged 79. He was fired from Columbia after he refused to reinstate embezzler David Begelman on moral grounds. Hirschfield later served as chairman for 20th Century-Fox from 1982-86.
British TV and film editor Charlie Phillips died on February 6. His credits include Kim Newman’s series Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman, Psychoville, Sherlock and the 2015 movie Victor Frankenstein. Phillips also worked on the visual effects for the 2007 TV series Jekyll.
55-year-old Danish producer and director Finn Nørgaard was shot to death by a fanatical gunman in Copenhagen on February 14. He had been attending a debate on Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Speech when 22-year-old Omar El-Hussein fired dozens of shots before eventually being killed by police. Nørgaard began his career as a cinematographer on Nicolas Barbano’s occult detective short Adam Hart i Sahara (1990), and he also appeared in the 1998 SF film Webmaster.
American TV executive Dick Crew (Richard Edgar Crew), who created and executive produced the Sci-Fi Channel series Sci-Fi Buzz (1993-98), Sci-Fi Entertainment (1998) and the award-winning Masters of Fantasy (1994-98), died of lymphoma the same day, aged 72.
American costume designer Patricia Norris died on February 20, aged 83. Her many credits include Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973), The Stranger Within, Capricorn One, High Anxiety, The Elephant Man, SpaceCamp and Bad Dreams. She was also a production designer for David Lynch, working on the director’s Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway and the Twin Peaks pilot.
British-born Alexander “Sandy” Whitelaw died of lung cancer in Paris, France, the same day, aged 84. In 1975 he scripted, produced and directed the SF film Lifespan starring Klaus Kinski. As an actor, Whitelaw appeared in seventeen movies, and he also worked as a writer of English subtitles on more than 1,000 French and other European films.
84-year-old American film and TV producer and scriptwriter Harve Bennett (Fischman), one of radio’s original “Quiz Kids”, died of complications from a fall on February 25. He co-produced the movies Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and helped create such TV shows as The Invisible Man (1975-76), Gemini Man, Time Trax and the animated Invasion America. Bennett was also an executive producer on such series as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman and Salvage 1.
Multiple Emmy Award-winning American TV producer and writer Sam Simon (Samuel Michael Simon) died of colorectal cancer on March 8, aged 59. As co-developer, he worked on The Simpsons from 1989-93, but was still credited as an executive producer on the animated show. Simon was married to actress Meg Tilly from 1984-91 before being married to Playboy model Jami Ferrell for three years.
Italian-born producer, scriptwriter and director Luciano Ercoli died in Spain on March 15, aged 85. His films include the 1970s mystery thrillers Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight, and he produced the 1964 film of Fantomas.
American journeyman director and producer Walter (Eliott) Grauman, who directed more than fifty episodes of CBS-TV’s Murder, She Wrote (1984-96), died on March 20, aged 93. His credits include The Disembodied, Lady in a Cage, Daughter of the Mind, Crowhaven Farm, Paper Man, Are You in the House Alone?, The Golden Gate Murders, Covenant and Nightmare on the 13th Floor, along with episodes of NBC Matinee Theatre (‘Frankenstein’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, ‘The Suicide Club’ etc.), The Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected and V. Grauman’s first wife (1976-80) was actress Joan Taylor.
Hungarian-born American director and screenwriter Ivan Nagy died on March 23, aged 77. His credits include Mind Over Murder, Captain America II: Death Too Soon and Once Upon a Spy (both featuring Christopher Lee), the remake of Midnight Lace (1981) and Skinner, plus episodes of TV’s The Powers of Matthew Star, The Hitchhiker and The Highwayman. Nagy, who was a boyfriend of high-class Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, ended his career in the late 1990s and early 2000s making adult videos.
American screenwriter, producer and director Richard L. (Leland) Bare died on March 28, aged 101. While studying at the University of Southern California in 1932 he made The Oval Portrait, an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story that is considered the university’s first student film. Shot for $400.00, it won the Paul Muni Award, a college film competition sponsored by Warner Bros. He went on to make the long-running series of “Joe McDoakes” short films for the same studio during the 1940s and ‘50s. Bare also wrote, produced and directed the 1973 horror movie Wicked, Wicked in “Duo-Vision” and directed several episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone (including Richard Matheson’s ‘Third from the Sun’ and Damon Knight’s classic ‘To Serve Man’). Three of his five wives were actresses Phyllis Coates (1948-49), Julie Van Zandt (1951-57) and Jeanne Evans (1958-65).
Czech director of photography Miroslav Ondříček, who often worked with Miloš Forman, died the same day, aged 80. His credits include Lindsay Anderson’s If….and O Lucky Man!, Slaughterhouse-Five (based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.), F/X and The Preacher’s Wife.
Michael Birkett, who was an assistant director on The Innocents (1961), died on April 3, aged 85. He went on to be a producer on Modesty Blaise (1966), Marat/Sade and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968). Birkett, who was Vice-President of the British Board of Film Classification from 1985, was the stepfather of actor Alexander Siddig and brother-in-law to actor Malcolm McDowell.
American TV executive Walt Baker (Walter Peter Baker), who helped turn actress Cassandra Peterson into sexy horror hostess “Elvira” for KHJ-TV’s late-night hor
ror series Movie Macabre in the early 1980s, died on April 7, aged 84.
American producer and director Dean Whitney died of a heart attack on April 19, aged 68. His credits include the short films The Body Bag, Seizures and Aberrant, along with the low budget independent horror movies Terror House, The Games That Children Play, Ghostline, Arisen, Terror at Crimson Creek and Kill Me Once.
Val E. (Edwin) Lewton, the son of R.K.O. movie producer Val Lewton, died of metastatic melanoma on April 24, aged 77. He appeared in the documentaries Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy and Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows.
Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer Andrew Lesnie died of a heart attack on April 27, aged 59. As a director of photography, his credits include Dark Age, Babe and Babe: Pig in the City, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, King Kong (2005), I Am Legend (2007), The Lovely Bones, The Last Airbender, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Lesnie also worked in various capacities in the camera department on Patrick (1978), Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Dead End Drive-In, Incident at Raven’s Gate, The 13th Floor and Dark City.
Award-winning Canadian music video director Steven (Harvey) Goldmann, who directed the comic-book adaptation Trailer Park of Terror (2008), died of cancer in California on April 30. He was 53.
American TV writer and producer Robert Foshko died on May 3, aged 85. His script ‘The Monsters’ for a 1951 episode of Tales of Tomorrow was adapted eight years later for an episode of The Unseen. He was also an associate producer on the 1965 season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Donald (Malcolm) Wrye, who wrote, produced and directed the 1987 ABC-TV mini-series Amerika, in which the United States was taken over by the Soviet Union, died on May 15, aged 80. He also directed the TV movies It Happened One Christmas and A Vision of Murder: The Story of Donielle.
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