Distinguished British stage actor and iconic horror film star Michael Gough died on 17 March, aged ninety-three. Best known to modern audiences for his role as faithful butler “Alfred Pennyworth” in the 1980s–90s Batman films (Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin) and his later collaborations with director Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland), the Malaysian-born Gough’s many other movies also include The Man in the White Suit, Hammer’s Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962), Horrors of the Black Museum, Konga, What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide!), Black Zoo, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, The Skull, They Came from Beyond Space, Berserk, Curse of the Crimson Altar (aka The Crimson Cult), Trog, The Corpse (aka Crucible of Horror), Horror Hospital, The Legend of Hell House (uncredited), Satan’s Slave (aka Evil Heritage), The Boys from Brazil, Venom, A Christmas Carol (1984), Arthur the King (aka Merlin and the Sword), The Serpent and the Rainbow, Nostradamus and the TV movie The Haunting of Helen Walker (based on “Turn of the Screw” by Henry James). He also appeared in episodes of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Wednesday Play (“Alice in Wonderland”), Doctor Who, The Avengers (“The Cybernauts”), Hammer’s Journey to the Unknown, The Champions, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Moonbase 3, Blakes 7, The Little Vampire (1986–87) and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
American dancer and novelist Dorothy Young, who worked as an assistant to stage magician Harry Houdini from 1925–26, died on 20 March, aged 103. She made her debut as the futuristic “Radio Girl of 1950”, but left the act two months before the escapologist’s death on 31 October, 1926. Young was the last surviving member of Houdini’s touring show.
Legendary Hollywood star Dame Elizabeth [Rosemond] Taylor died of complications from congestive heart failure on 24 March, aged seventy-nine. She had been hospitalised for six weeks. Born to American parents in London, England, Taylor’s family relocated to Los Angeles in 1939 where, within a few years, she became a child star at MGM. In later years she developed into one of the screen’s most iconic figures, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress. Her films include Jane Eyre (1943), Suddenly Last Summer, Doctor Faustus (1967), Hammersmith is Out, Night Watch, The Blue Bird (1976) and The Flintstones (1994). She also contributed voice work to the animated TV series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, The Simpsons and God, the Devil and Bob, and in later years became a spokesperson for AIDS research. Taylor was almost as well-known for her eight marriages as her movies, and her husbands included Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher and, most famously, Richard Burton (twice). It was revealed that the scheduled start time was delayed for almost fifteen minutes, after the actress left instructions that she wanted to be late for her own funeral.
American leading man Farley [Earle] Granger [II] died on 27 March, aged eighty-five. Best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951), he also appeared in Behave Yourself! (with Lon Chaney, Jr.), Full House (“The Gift of the Magi”), Hans Christian Andersen, Something Creeping in the Dark (aka Qualcosa striscia nel buio), Amuck! (aka Hot Bed of Sex), So Sweet So Dead (aka Penetration), Arnold and The Prowler (aka Rosemary’s Killer), along with episodes of TV’s The United States Steel Hour (“The Bottle Imp”), Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (“The Inn of the Flying Dragon”), Get Smart, Wide World Mystery (“The Haunting of Penthouse D”), The Six Million Dollar Man, Matt Helm, The Invisible Man (1975), Tales from the Dark Side and Monsters. In 1980 Granger also starred on Broadway in Ira Levin’s Deathtrap.
American child actress and singer Donna Lee [O’Leary], who appeared in Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher and Bedlam, both starring Boris Karloff, died on 3 April, aged eighty-one. She also appeared (uncredited) as a member of the Donna Lee Trio in the 1936 mystery thriller A Face in the Fog.
Angela [Margaret] Scoular, the second wife of actor Leslie Phillips, died on 11 April, aged sixty-five. The bi-polar and alcoholic British actress feared that her bowel cancer would return (despite a successful operation in 2009) and killed herself by drinking drain cleaner. Scoular appeared in two James Bond films, Casino Royale (1966) and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, an episode of The Avengers, and starred as “Cathy” opposite Ian McShane’s “Heathcliff” in a 1967 BBC-TV serial of Wuthering Heights (the inspiration for the Kate Bush song and video).
British character actor Trevor [Gordon] Bannister, best known for his role as “Mr Lucas” in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served?, died of a heart attack while repairing his allotment shed on 14 April, aged seventy-six. He also appeared in such TV series as Object Z, Object Z Returns, The Man in Room 17 (“The Black Witch”), The Avengers, Doomwatch, The Tomorrow People, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Woof!.
American actor Jon Cedar died the same day, aged eighty. He appeared in episodes of TV’s The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Invisible Man (1975), The Incredible Hulk, The Greatest American Hero and Tales from the Darkside, along with the movies Stowaway to the Moon (with John Carradine), Time Travelers (1976), Day of the Animals, Capricorn One, The Manitou (based on the novel by Graham Masterton), By Dawn’s Early Light and Asteroid.
Canadian-born leading man Michael Sarrazin (Jacques Michel André Sarrazin) died in Montreal of cancer on 17 April, aged seventy. He starred in Eye of the Cat, The Groundstar Conspiracy, Frankenstein the True Story (as “The Creature”), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Earthquake in New York, The Second Arrival (aka Arrival II) and FeardotCom, and appeared in episodes of the 1988 Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Outer Limits, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Mentors (as Edgar Allan Poe) and Earth: Final Conflict. Sarrazin was in a relationship with actress Jacqueline Bisset for fourteen years.
British actress Elisabeth [Claira Heath] Sladen, who starred as “Sarah Jane Smith” in the BBC’s Doctor Who and her own spin-off series, died of cancer on 19 April, aged sixty-five. She first joined John Pertwee’s Doctor in the 1973 series “The Time Warrior”, and went on to appear alongside Tom Baker’s incarnation of the Time Lord until 1976. She recreated the role for the TV specials K-9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend (1981), Doctor Who: “The Five Doctors” (1983) and Doctor Who: “Dimensions in Time” (1993), along with the independent video, Downtime (1995), and various radio serials. She returned to Doctor Who as the inquisitive journalist in 2006 and subsequently got her own children’s spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–11). Sladen also appeared in the TV movies Gulliver in Lilliput (1982) and Alice in Wonderland (1986), as well as an episode of Doomwatch.
British character actor Terence Longdon (Hubert Tuelly Longdon) died of cancer on 23 April, aged eighty-eight. He appeared in the first four Carry On films, along with What a Whopper, The Return of Mr Moto, and episodes of The Avengers, The New Avengers, The Martian Chronicles and The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Longdon also starred as the titular charter pilot in the BBC children’s adventure series Garry Halliday (1959–62). He was married to actress Barbara Jefford from 1953 to 1960.
Sixty-six-year-old French actress, novelist and director Marie-France Pisier was found dead in the swimming pool at her home in Saint Cyr sur Mer on 24 April. Born in French Indochina (now Vietnam), her credits include The Vampire of Dusseldorf (1965), Luis Buñuel’s surreal The Phantom of Liberty and Céline and Julie Go Boating.
Cult American B-movie star Yvette Vickers (Iola Yvette Vedder) was found dead from heart failure in an upstairs room of her dilapidated Bendedict Canyon home in Los Angeles on 27 April. The mummified state of the eighty-one-year-old actress’ body indicated that she could have been dead for nearly a year. The July 1959 Playboy Playmate appeared in Sunset Boulevard (uncredited), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), Attack of the Giant Leeches (aka Demons of the Swamp), Beach Party (uncredited), What’s the Matter with Helen?, The Dead Don’t Die! (scripted by Robert Bloch) and Evil Spirits, along with an episode of TV’s One Step Beyond.
William Campbell, w
ho portrayed Klingon commander “Koloth” in the classic Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”, died on 28 April, aged eighty-seven. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13 (aka The Haunted and the Hunted), Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte, Portrait in Terror, Blood Bath (aka Track of the Vampire), Pretty Maids All in a Row and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, along with episodes of TV’s The Wild Wild West, Star Trek (“The Squire of Gothos”), Shazam!, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Next Step Beyond, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (reprising his role as “Koloth”) and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. From 1952 to 1958 he was married to Judith Campbell Exner, a paramour of President John F. Kennedy and Mafia figure Sam Giancana.
Veteran Hollywood character actor and director Jackie Cooper (John Copper, Jr.) died after a short illness on 3 May, aged eighty-eight. He began his career as a child actor in 1929, and is best known for portraying Daily Planet newspaper editor “Perry White” in Superman (1978) and its three sequels. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1931 when he was just nine years old, and his other credits include Chosen Survivors, The Invisible Man (1975) and episodes of TV’s Tales of Tomorrow, Suspense, The Twilight Zone and Ghost Story. Cooper was also an Emmy Award-winning director, with the Holmes and Yo-Yo pilot and the TV movie The Night They Saved Christmas to his credit.
American actress Mary Murphy, who co-starred with Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953), died of heart disease on 4 May, aged eighty. A former shop assistant, she began her acting career with uncredited appearances in When Worlds Collide, My Favorite Spy and The Atomic City, before moving on to such films as The Mad Magician (with Vincent Price) and episodes of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Honey West and Ghost Story. In 1956 she was married to actor Dale Robertson for just three months.
German-born actress Dana Wynter (Dagmar Winter), who helped Kevin McCarthy battle the pod people in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), died of congestive heart failure in California on 5 May, aged seventy-nine. Her other credits include the Gene Roddenberry TV movie The Questor Tapes and episodes of Suspense, Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Wild Wild West, The Invaders, Get Smart, Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries and Fantasy Island.
Rugged American character actor Ross Hagen (Leland Lando Lilly) died of prostate cancer on 7 May, aged seventy-two. His films include Wonder Women, Night Creature (with Donald Pleasence), Angel, Avenging Angel, Prison Ship (aka Star Slammer), Warlords, B.O.R.N. (which he also co-scripted and directed), The Phantom Empire, Alienator, Time Wars (which he also wrote and directed), Dinosaur Island, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds, Bikini Drive-In, Cyberzone (aka Phoenix 2), Night Shade, The Elf Who Didn’t Believe, Invisible Dad, Jungle Boy, The Kid with X-ray Eyes and Sideshow, along with episodes of Captain Nice, The Wild Wild West, The Invaders and Kung Fu. Hagen made around twenty films with director Fred Olen Ray, and he also directed Reel Terror (1985) featuring footage of John Carradine and Victor Buono.
Dolores Fuller (Dolores Agnes Eble), who was director Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s muse and leading lady in such cult classics as Glen or Glenda (aka I Led Two Lives), Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster, died after a long illness on 9 May, aged eighty-eight. Her other films include Mesa of Lost Women, The Ironbound Vampire and The Corpse Grinders 2, along with an episode of TV’s Adventures of Superman. As a lyricist, Fuller also co-wrote thirteen songs for Elvis Presley, including “Rock-a-Hula Baby” for the film Blue Hawaii. Her autobiography, A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood and Me (co-written with Stone Wallace and her husband, Philip Chamberlin) was published in 2008. Sarah Jessica Parker portrayed Fuller in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994).
British character actor Edward [Cedric] Hardwicke, the son of actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke, died of cancer on 16 May, aged seventy-eight. Following the departure of David Burke, in 1986 he took over the role of “Dr John Watson” opposite Jeremy Brett’s consulting detective in the series The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1968–88), The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1991–93), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994) and the TV movies The Sign of Four (1987) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988). He also recreated the role on the West End stage in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes in 1989. Hardwicke began his career as a child actor, and his other films include A Guy Named Joe (uncredited), Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia), Venom, Disney’s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, Photographing Fairies (as “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”), Shadowlands, Appetite, The Alchemists (based on the novel by Peter James) and yet another remake She (2001), plus episodes of TV’s Invisible Man (1959), Sherlock Holmes (1968), Hammer’s Journey to the Unknown, Wessex Tales, Thriller (1974) and Supernatural (“The Werewolf Reunion”).
Veteran Australian actor Bill Hunter died of cancer on 21 May, aged seventy-one. His credits include The Return of Captain Invincible (with Christopher Lee), Moby Dick (1998) and On the Beach (2000), along with episodes of Space: Above and Beyond and Two Twisted (“Arkham’s Curios and Wonders”). Hunter also contributed voice work to Disney’s Finding Nemo and Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.
American actress Tallie Cochrane (Lillian Rose Cochrane) died of cancer the same day, aged sixty-six. Under various pseudonyms, such as “Toni Talley”, “Viola Reeves”, “Dandy Thomas”, “Chic Jones”, “Talie Wright” and “Silver Foxx”, she appeared in a number of sexploitation films, including Wam Bang Thank You Spaceman, Tarz & Jane Cheeta & Boy and Devil’s Ecstasy. She also had small roles in Slapstick (of Another Kind) and Frightmare (aka The Horror Star). Cochrane worked as a make-up artist on Track of the Moon Beast.
Sixty-year-old American actor Jeff Conaway (Jeffrey Charles William Michael Conaway) died of pneumonia exacerbated by substance abuse on 27 May. Having battled drug and alcohol addiction since he was a teenager, Conaway was found unconscious at his home sixteen days earlier and remained in a medically induced coma until his family terminated his life-support. He appeared in Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, Bay Coven, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Ghost Writer, The Sleeping Car, Mirror Images, Alien Intruder and Curse of the Forty-Niner. On TV Conaway was a regular on Wizards and Warriors (1983) and Babylon 5 (1994–98), and he also guest-starred in episodes of Tales from the Darkside (“My Ghostwriter – the Vampire”), Monsters, Freddy’s Nightmares, Shades of LA and three Babylon 5 spin-off movies.
American actress Clarice Taylor, who played Bill Cosby’s mother on TV’s The Cosby Show, died of heart failure on 30 May, aged ninety-three. Her other credits include Change of Mind and Play Misty for Me. Taylor portrayed “Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North” in the 1970s Broadway musical The Wiz.
American leading man James Arness (James King Aurness), best remembered for his role as “Marshall Matt Dillon” on the long-running Western series Gunsmoke (aka Gun Law, 1955– 75) and a number of spin-off TV movies, died on 3 June. He was eighty-eight. Arness’ film credits include Two Lost Worlds, The Thing from Another World (as “The Thing”) and Them!. His younger brother was actor Peter Graves.
British character actress and comedienne Miriam Karlin OBE (Miriam Samuels) died after a long battle with cancer the same day, aged eighty-five. She appeared in The Goons’ comedy Down Among the ‘Z’ Men, Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera (1962), A Clockwork Orange, Jekyll & Hyde (1990) and Children of Men. On TV, Karlin starred in the supernatural sitcom So Haunt Me (1992–94).
Ninety-year-old Wally Boag (Wallace Vincent Boag) and ninety-one-year-old Betty Taylor, who co-starred as sweethearts Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue five days a week for nearly three decades in Disneyland’s Golden Horseshoe Revue, died on 3 and 7 June, respectively. The show is officially the longest-running stage production in entertainment history (1955–86). Boag also appeared in Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber and The Love Bug (1968).
British TV actor Donald [Marland] Hewlett died of pneumonia on 4 June, aged ninety. He had suffered from epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease for many years. Hewlett appe
ared in episodes of Sherlock Holmes (1965), The Avengers, Doctor Who (“The Claws of Axos”) and The New Avengers.
Canadian-born actor Paul Massie (Arthur Dickinson Massé), best known for playing an ugly Dr Jekyll and a handsome Mr Hyde in Hammer’s The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (aka Jekyll’s Inferno, 1960), died of lung cancer in Nova Scotia on 8 June, aged seventy-eight. He also appeared in an episode of TV’s The Avengers. He retired from acting at the age of forty to teach drama at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Seventy-nine-year-old voice and theatre actor Roy [William] Skelton, who not only voiced the popular British children’s TV puppet characters George and Zippy for Rainbow (1973–92), but also the Daleks and Cybermen in Doctor Who, died of pneumonia the same day. He had suffered a stroke five months earlier. Skelton was also the voice of a robot in an episode of Out of the Unknown, the “Mock Turtle” in a BBC version of Alice in Wonderland (1986), “Henry Swift” in the two Ghosts of Albion animated webseries and George and Zippy again in 2008 for the first episode of Ashes to Ashes. He started supplying voices for the various aliens on Doctor Who in 1966, and he continued until “Remembrance of the Daleks” in 1988.
Seventy-two-year-old Indian-born British character actor Badi Uzzaman (Mohammed Badji Uzzaman Azmi) died of a lung infection on 14 June in Pakistan. He appeared in The Sign of Four (1987), Stephen Gallagher’s Chimera, and Gulliver’s Travels (1996), along with episodes of The Singing Detective, Screen One (“Frankenstein’s Baby”) and Torchwood.
Thirty-four-year-old stuntman Ryan [Matthew] Dunn, best known as one of the moronic Jackass team on MTV, died on 20 June when he crashed the Porsche he was driving drunk at 3 a.m., killing himself and his passenger, twenty-nine-year-old Zachary Hartwell. The car had been travelling at speeds of up to 140 mph and the crash turned the vehicle into a fireball. Dunn also had small roles in Invader and Welcome to the Bates Motel.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books) Page 61
