Adult film star and director Jamie Gillis (James Ira Gurman), who portrayed a hardcore “Count Dracula” in Dracula Sucks and Dracula Exotica, died of cancer the same day, aged 66. As an aspiring theatre actor and mime artist he entered the porn film industry in the early 1970s and appeared (often under various pseudonyms) in more than 500 films and “loops” before he retired from the screen at the end of 2007. His numerous credits (not all porn) include Devil’s Due, Hypnorotica, Invasion of the Love Drones, Night of the Zombies, Pandora’s Mirror, Pleasure Zone, Blue Voodoo, Erotic Zone, Ten Little Maidens, Deranged, The Dark Angel, The Phantom of the Cabaret and The Phantom of the Cabaret II (both as “The Phantom”), Alien Space Avenger, Robo Fox II: The Collector, Mummy Dearest, Curse of the Catwoman, Forever Night, Dark Garden and Die You Zombie Bastards!
American character actor and voice artist Sandy Kenyon (Sanford Klein) died on February 20, aged 87. He appeared in When Time Ran Out . . ., The Loch Ness Horror, Lifepod and episodes of TV’s Steve Canyon, One Step Beyond, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Wild Wild West, The Invaders and The Bionic Woman.
Welsh actor Robin Davies (Robert Richard Davies) died of lung cancer on February 22, aged 56. A former child actor, he appeared in If . . ., The Blood of Satan’s Claw (aka Satan’s Skin), Britannia Hospital, the first season of TV’s Catweazle and an episode of Doomwatch.
The body of [Joshua] Andrew Koenig, the son of Star Trek actor Walter Koenig, was discovered in a densely wooded area of the 1,000-acre Stanley Park in Vancouver, Canada, on February 25. The 41-year-old actor and film-maker had been reported missing by his family on the 16th, and it was subsequently determined that he had committed suicide by hanging a couple of days before his body was found. Koenig suffered from depression and had reportedly stopped taking his medication. He had small roles in the SF movie InAlienable (scripted by his father) and an episode of TV’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He also played “The Joker” in the 2003 short film Batman: Dead End.
American character actor Richard Devon, who played “Satan” in Roger Corman’s The Undead (1957), died of vascular disease on February 26, aged 83. Devon was also in Corman’s The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent and War of the Satellites, and his other credits include Blood of Dracula (aka Blood is My Heritage), The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze, The Silencers, The Seventh Sign and episodes of TV’s Space Patrol, One Step Beyond, The Twilight Zone, The Monkees, Get Smart, Planet of the Apes and Quark.
Busy British character actor and Shakespearean artist Martin [Benjamin] Benson died on February 28, aged 91. Best remembered for his role as American gangster “Mr Solo” in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, he also appeared in The Strange World of Planet X (aka Cosmic Monsters), The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, Gorgo, Hammer’s Captain Clegg (aka Night Creatures, with Peter Cushing), Battle Beneath the Earth and The Omen, along with episodes of TV’s Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Invisible Man (1959), One Step Beyond, The Champions, Thriller (1976), Tales of the Unexpected and The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (as the “Vogon Captain”).
Tony Award-nominated American stage and screen actress Nan [Clow] Martin died of complications from emphysema on March 4, aged 82. A former fashion model, her film credits include A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (as Freddy Krueger’s mother) and Last Gasp, and she appeared in episodes of The Twilight Zone (both the original and revived series), The Invaders, Bewitched, The Sixth Sense, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Harry and the Hendersons, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. and The Invisible Man (2000). Her son, Zen Gesner, starred in the South African TV series The Adventures of Sinbad (1996–98).
British-born leading man Richard Stapley (aka “Richard Wyler”) died of kidney failure in Palm Springs, California, on March 5, aged 86. As hero “Denis de Beaulieu” he starred opposite Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff in The Strange Door (1951), and he also appeared in the “Jungle Jim” movie Jungle Man-Eaters, Jess Franco’s The Girl from Rio (aka Future Women/Rio 70), Dick Smart 2007 and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (uncredited).
British actress Carol Marsh (Norma Lilian Simpson), best known for her role as “Lucy” opposite Christopher Lee’s Count in Hammer’s Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula), died on March 6, aged 84. She also appeared in Brighton Rock, Alice in Wonderland (1949), Helter Skelter, The Tempest (1951) and Scrooge (1951). Marsh continued to appear on TV until the mid-1970s.
Troubled Canadian-born actor Corey [Ian] Haim died in a Burbank, California, hospital of pulmonary oedema (thickening of the heart muscles) on March 10. He was 38 and had battled drug and alcohol problems for years. As a child actor he co-starred as “Sam” in the cult vampire movie The Lost Boys (1987), and his other credits include Silver Bullet (based on the novella by Stephen King), Watchers (based on the novel by Dean R. Koontz), Dream a Little Dream, Prayer of the Rollerboys, The Double 0 Kid, Double Switch, Dream a Little Dream 2, Fever Lake, Merlin (1998), The Back Lot Murders, Lost Boys: The Tribe, Crank: High Voltage and an episode of PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal.
Singer and actress Evelyn [Mildred] Dall (Evelyn Mildred Fuss), the American-born “Blonde Bombshell” who appeared in a few 1930s and ’40s musical-comedy films on both sides of the Atlantic, died the same day, aged 92. Her credits include King Arthur Was a Gentleman (with Arthur Askey) and the time-travel comedy Time Flies (with Tommy Handley).
American NFL football star-turned-actor Merlin Olsen died of malignant pleural mesothelioma on March 11, aged 69. A former player with the Los Angeles Rams, he went on to portray “Jonathan Garvey” in TV’s Little House on the Prairie and appeared in the 1978 TV movie A Fire in the Sky.
Hollywood leading man Peter Graves (Peter Duesler Aurness), best remembered for his role as “Jim Phelps” on both the 1960s and 1980s series of TV’s Mission Impossible, died of a heart attack on March 14, four days before his 84th birthday. The younger brother of actor James Arness, Graves also appeared in Red Planet Mars, Killers from Space, The Night of the Hunter (1955), Roger Corman’s It Conquered the World, Beginning of the End, Scream of the Wolf (based on the story by David Case), Where Have All the People Gone, The Clonus Horror, Death Car on the Freeway, Addams Family Values and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, along with episodes of The Invaders, Fantasy Island, Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (“Tennis Court”).
American character actor and vocal teacher Lisle Wilson died the same day, aged 66. He appeared in Sisters (aka Blood Sisters), The Incredible Melting Man and episodes of TV’s ALF and Tales from the Crypt.
Diminutive three-foot, one-inch character actor David Joseph Steinberg died on March 15, aged 45. He played the loyal “Meegosh” in Willow, and his other movie credits include Epic Movie and Transylmania, along with episodes of TV’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Charmed.
Alex Chilton, singer and guitarist with the influential early 1970s rock goup Big Star, died of a heart attack on March 17, aged 59. Chilton was also a former member of the Box Tops.
American leading man Fess Parker (Fess Elisha Parker, Jr), who starred as both frontiersmen “Davy Crockett” and “Daniel Boone” on TV, died on March 18, aged 85. The theme song “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” from the 1950s Disney TV series Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier was #1 for sixteen weeks. Parker began his career as the voice of the chauffeur in Harvey (1950) and he went on to appear in Them! and an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He retired from the screen in 1974 and went into the lucrative real-estate business.
American Doo-Wop singer Johnny Maestro (John Peter Mastrangelo) died of cancer on March 24, aged 70. As lead singer for the Crests he is best remembered for the hit teen anthem “16 Candles” (which reached #2 in the US charts in 1958). Maestro later sang with such groups as the Del-Satins and the Brooklyn Bridge.
45-year-old American actor and producer John [Patrick] McGarr was killed on the mor
ning of March 25 while attending a horror film convention in Indianapolis when he was hit by a car being driven by a drunk driver. His credits include House of the Wolf Man and Mondo Holocausto!
Robert [Martin] Culp, who starred as debonair secret agent “Kelly Robinson” opposite Bill Cosby on NBC-TV’s I Spy (1965–68), died on March 26, aged 79. He apparently suffered a heart attack while out walking and died from head injuries he sustained in the fall. A former cartoonist, he appeared in Silent Night Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!, Xtro 3: Watch the Skies, Santa’s Slay and the TV movies Now is Tomorrow, A Name for Evil, A Cold Night’s Death, Gene Roddenberry’s pilot Spectre, Calendar Girl Murders and the 1994 reunion I Spy Returns. Culp also co-starred as CIA agent “Bill Maxwell” on ABC’s The Greatest American Hero (1981–86), and he appeared in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Shirley Temple Theatre (“The House of the Seven Gables”), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Outer Limits (including Harlan Ellison’s “Demon with a Glass Hand”), The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, Highway to Heaven, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, The New Adventures of Superman, Viper, Conan (“Red Sonja”) and The Dead Zone. He was married five times, including to actress France Nuyen for three years in the late 1960s.
Canadian-born Hollywood actress, singer and playwright June Havoc (Ellen Evangeline Hovick), died in Stamford, Connecticut, on March 28, aged 97. A former vaudeville child star (as “Baby June”) with her older sister, Rose Louise (aka stripper “Gypsy Rose Lee”), she appeared in A Return to Salem’s Lot and an episode of The Outer Limits. It has been speculated that Havoc’s estranged relationship with her sister was the inspiration for Henry Farrell’s 1960 novel What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
American actor John Forsythe (John Lincoln Freund), the voice of the unseen “Charles Townsend” on the ABC-TV series Charlie’s Angels and the subsequent two movies, died of complications from pneumonia on April 1, aged 92. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, In Cold Blood, Cruise Into Terror, Mysterious Two and Scrooged (as a zombie). Forsythe also portrayed patriarch “Blake Carrington” on Dynasty for eight years, and his other credits include episodes of Kraft Theatre (“Wuthering Heights”), Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Buddy Gorman, who temporarily replaced Bennie Bartlett as “Butch” in several Bowery Boys/Dead End Kids movies in the early 1950s, died the same day, aged 88. He appeared in Whistling in Brooklyn, the 1945 serial The Master Key, The Perils of Pauline (1947) and the Bowery Boys comedy Ghost Chasers. After retiring from the screen, Gorman and his wife opened a magic and novelty store in Los Angeles.
American navy Vice Admiral Chuck Griffiths (Charles Henry Griffiths), who played Kenneth Tobey’s executive officer on board the submarine in It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), also died on April 1, aged 88.
Former WWE and WWF wrestler Chris “Champagne” Kanyon (Chris Klucsaritis, aka “Mortis”), one of the first openly gay American professional wrestlers, committed suicide by overdosing on medication in his New York apartment on April 2. He was 40 years old and suffered from a recently diagnosed bipolar disorder.
British actor and playwright Corin [William] Redgrave, the middle brother of Vanessa and Lynn, died after a short illness on April 6, aged 70. He appeared on the screen in A Study in Terror (uncredited), The Magus, Excalibur, The Woman in White (1997), Doctor Sleep (aka Close Your Eyes) and episodes of The Avengers, Mystery and Imagination (as “Jonathan Harker” in “Dracula”) and Ultraviolet. His final role was in the 2009 BBC TV movie of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, playing the same role his father, Michael, did in the 1961 adaptation, The Innocents. Redgrave’s second wife was actress Kika Markham.
28-year-old American stuntwoman April [Erin] Stirton was killed in a motorcycle accident in Los Angeles the same day. Her credits include The Dead Undead (starring Luke Goss and Forrest J Ackerman!), Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter and an episode of TV’s True Blood.
Canadian actor Eddie Carroll, who had been the voice of Disney’s “Jiminy Cricket” from 1973 onwards, died of a brain tumour on April 6. He was 76.
British actor Christopher Cazenove (Christopher de Lerisson Cazenove), best known to American audiences as “Ben Carrington” in Dynasty, died of septicaemia on April 7, aged 64. He reportedly began drinking heavily after the death of his eldest son in a road accident in 1999. The son of a brigadier in the Coldstream Guards, Cazenove appeared in the TV movie Dead Man’s Island and episodes of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Thriller (1974), Hammer House of Horror (“Children of the Full Moon”), Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, Tales from the Crypt and Charmed. Cazenove was married to actress Angharad Rees from 1973 to 1994.
Austrian-born British actor James Aubrey [Tregidgo], who made his memorable screen debut as the feral schoolboy “Ralph” in Lord of the Flies (1963), died of pancreatitis on April 8, aged 62. Ten years after his first film, he returned to the screen in The Sex Thief (which was released in the US in an X-rated version), and followed it with appearances in Norman J. Warren’s Terror, The Hunger, The American Way (aka Riders of the Storm), The Rift, A Demon in My View and episodes of Tales of the Unexpected and Worlds Beyond.
We must aver, he’s really most sincerely dead: four-foot, seven-inch Meinhardt [Frank] Raabe, who played the uncredited “Munchkin Coroner” who examined The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939) died of a heart attack on April 9, aged 94. For thirty years, as “Little Oscar, the World’s Smallest Chef”, he worked as a spokesperson for the Oscar Mayer hot dog company.
Likeable American TV actor Peter [Abraham] Haskell died of a heart attack on April 12, aged 75. His credits include the TV movies The Eyes of Charles Sand, The Phantom of Hollywood, The Suicide Club and Mandrake, along with episodes of TV’s The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Green Hornet, Land of the Giants, The Bionic Woman, Fantasy Island and the 1980s remake of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Haskell also appeared in the movies Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3 and Robot Wars.
American character actor Robert Brubaker died on April 15, aged 93. He appeared (often uncredited) in the movies Man of a Thousand Faces (as Unholy Three director “Jack Conway”), Seven Days in May, Seconds and The Brotherhood of the Bell, along with episodes of TV’s Steve Canyon, Men Into Space, The Twilight Zone, Moon Pilot, The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Tarzan, The Invaders, The Sixth Sense and Search Control.
Memorable American character actor Michael Pataki, who portrayed both the Count and his ancestor in Dracula’s Dog (aka Zoltan, Hound of Dracula), died of cancer on April 16, aged 72. Pataki also played another bloodsucker in Grave of the Vampire (aka Seed of Evil), and his other credits include Dream No Evil, The Return of Count Yorga, The Baby, The Bat People, Love at First Bite, Graduation Day, Dead & Buried, Remo: The Adventure Begins (aka Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous), Death House and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. On TV he appeared in episodes of The Twilight Zone, My Favorite Martian, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Batman, Mr Terrific, Star Trek (he was apparently the first character on the show to speak Klingon), The Flying Nun (in a recurring role), The Sixth Sense, The Invisible Man, The Amazing Spider-Man (as regular “Capt. Barbera”), Beyond Westworld, Automan, Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Highwayman. Pataki also directed two films for Charles Band: the cult horror movie Mansion of the Doomed (aka The Terror of Dr Chaney) and the softcore musical comedy Cinderella (aka The Other Cinderella), plus an episode of TV’s The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries.
Scottish actor and poet Tom Fleming OBE (Thomas Kelman Fleming), who appeared in a 1954 BBC adaptation of John Buchan’s Witch Wood, died on April 18, aged 82. More famously, as the “Voice of the BBC”, he was the commentator for the TV coverage of the Queen’s coronation, the Silver Jubilee, the enthronement of two Popes and Princess Diana’s funeral.
American stuntman and actor Mike Adams (Michael Gene Adams) a former President of the Stuntman’s Association of Motion Pictures, died
of a stroke the same day, aged 60. His numerous credits include The Manitou, Prophecy, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, WarGames, My Science Project, Ratboy, RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3, Mr Destiny, Coneheads, Mighty Joe Young (1998), Herbie Fully Loaded and Dark Moon Rising (aka Wolf Moon).
American voice and character actor Allen Swift (Ira Stadlen) died of complications from a fall on April 18, aged 86. He contributed a number of voices (including Dracula’s) to the cartoon movies Mad Monster Party? and The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters, amongst numerous other credits.
Sparkling blonde actress, dancer and commediene [Michele] Dorothy Provine died of emphysema on April 25, aged 75. Best remembered for her role in The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (opposite a solo Lou Costello in his last film), she also appeared in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, One Spy Too Many, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. She mostly retired from the screen in 1968, after marrying British-born director Robert Day.
American actress Helen Wagner, who had played “Nancy Hughes” on the CBS daytime soap opera As the World Turns for a record-breaking fifty-four years, died on May 1, aged 91. In 1954 she appeared in two episodes of Inner Sactum.
53-year-old American stuntman, actor and film-maker Danny Aiello III, the son of actor Danny Aiello, died of pancreatic cancer the same day. His many credits include Splash, A Return to Salem’s Lot, Ghostbusters II, Jacob’s Ladder, Kate & Leopold, Stuart Little 2, 13 Going on 30, The Forgotten, The Invasion, Halloween II (2009), The Box and episodes of the US TV version of Life on Mars.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22 Page 59
