American-born film director, screenwriter, producer and actor Jules Dassin (Julius Samuel Dassin) died of complications from flu in Athens, Greece, on March 31. He was 96. Starting out as an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock, his credits include the 1941 MGM short The Tell-Tale Heart, based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe, and The Canterville Ghost (1944), starring Charles Laughton. Blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, Dassin left the United States for France in 1953 and in 1966 he married the Greek actress and culture minister Melina Mercouri (who died in 1994).
Former talent agent turned studio executive Guy McElwaine died of pancreatic cancer on April 2, aged 71. He produced Exorcist: The Beginning and its original/variant version, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. McElwaine was named president of Columbia Pictures in 1982, and later became president of Morgan Creek Productions from 2002 until his death.
American director and producer Alex Grasshoff (Alexander Grasshoff) died on April 5 of complications following leg surgery. He was 79. Grasshoff’s credits include Future Shock, The Last Dinosaur, and three episodes of ABC-TV’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He had to return the feature documentary Oscar he won in 1969 on a technicality.
American mathematician and meteorologist Edward [Norton] Lorenz, “the father of chaos theory”, died of cancer on April 16, aged 90. Norton came up with the “butterfly effect”, which postulated that small actions on one side of the Earth could cause major changes elsewhere. His hypothesis, widely regarded as the third scientific revolution of the twentieth century, following relativity and quantum physics, has been utilized in many Hollywood movies. He was awarded the Kyoto Prize for science in 1991.
Broadway music director and dance arranger Peter Howard died of complications from Parkinson’s disease on April 18, aged 80. He arranged the opening dance sequence for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Distribution executive Stanley E. Dudelson, who founded the television division of American International Pictures in the 1960s, died of lung disease on April 26, aged 83. After joining New Line Cinema in 1971, he was an executive producer on the first two A Nightmare on Elm Street movies. His other executive producer credits include Morella, Horror 101 and Museum of the Dead.
Hollywood producer and director Sandy Howard died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on May 16, aged 80. He had suffered from the disease for ten years. After co-directing such films as Tarzan and the Trappers and the US version of Gammera the Invicible, he went on to produce The Neptune Factor, The Devil’s Rain, Embryo, The Island of Dr Moreau (1977), The Silent Flute (aka Circle of Iron), Meteor, What Waits Below (aka Secrets of the Phantom Caverns), Angel, Avenging Angel, Dark Tower and Blue Monkey (aka Invasion of the Bodysuckers).
Scottish-born David [Nelson Godfrey] Mitton, who directed thirty-seven episodes of the BBC’s Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends from 1984–95, died of a heart attack the same day, aged 69. A skilled model-maker, he had previously worked on the special effects for such Gerry Anderson TV shows as Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, The Secret Service and U.F.O.
Joseph Pevney, who directed fourteen episodes of the original Star Trek TV series (including “The City on the Edge of Forever”, “Catspaw”, “Wolf in the Fold” and “The Trouble with Tribbles”), died on May 18, aged 96. A former actor in the 1940s and early ’50s, his other directing credits include the films The Strange Door (with Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff) and Man of a Thousand Faces (starring James Cagney as Lon Chaney, Sr), along with the TV pilot for Destination Space and episodes of Bewitched, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Munsters, Search, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (“Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula”), Lucan, Fantasy Island, Cliffhangers: The Secret Empire and The Incredible Hulk. He retired in 1985.
German-born NASA illustrator and designer Harry Lange (Hans-Kurt Lange), who created the look of 2001: A Space Odyssey for Stanley Kubrick, died of complications from a stroke in Oxford, England, on May 22. He was 77. Lange went on to work on Z.P.G., Star Wars (uncredited), Moonraker, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, The Great Muppet Caper, The Dark Crystal, The Return of the Jedi, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and Hyper Sapien: People from Another Star. He was nominated for Oscars for his work on 2001 and The Return of the Jedi.
Seventy-three-year-old Oscar-winning Hollywood actor, producer and director Sydney (Irwin) Pollack died on May 26 following a nine-month battle with cancer. His directing credits include Castle Keep and two episodes of TV’s The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Pollack also executive produced Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again and produced Peter Howitt’s Sliding Doors. In 2000 he began a producing partnership with Anthony Minghella, who himself died in March.
TV producer Robert H. (Harris) Justman, who produced fifty-six episodes of the original Star Trek series, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease on May 28, aged 81. His father owned Hollywood’s Motion Picture Center Studio, which later became part of Desilu Studios, and he worked as a production assistant (often uncredited) or assistant director on such movies as the remake of M, Red Planet Mars, Kiss Me Deadly, The World the Flesh and the Devil, and the TV shows Adventures of Superman, One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits. Justman’s other credits include Search, Star Trek: The Next Generation and the TV movies Planet Earth, The Man from Atlantis and Dark Mansions.
TV and film director Georg Fenady (George J. Fenady) died on May 29, aged 77. The younger brother of screenwriter Andrew J. Fenady, he directed the 1973 horror movies Terror in the Wax Museum and Arnold. His other credits include a trio of TV disaster movies and episodes of Manimal and Knight Rider.
Oscar-winning special effects creator Stan Winston died of multiple myeloma on June 15, aged 62. Winston and his spfx studio set the standard for robotics/animatronics and prosthetic make-up effects, and his numerous credits in special make-up effects include Gargoyles, The Bat People, Mr Black and Mr Hyde, Mansion of the Doomed, Dracula’s Dog, The Wiz, The Entity, The Hand, Dead & Buried, Heartbeeps, The Thing, The Phantom of the Opera (1983), Chiller, Edward Scissorhands, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Batman Returns, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, The Island of Dr Moreau (1996), Galaxy Quest, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Constantine. He also designed the special effects for TV’s Manimal, Invaders from Mars (1986), Aliens, Predator, The Monster Squad, Leviathan, Predator 2, Congo, The Relic, Small Soldiers, Lake Placid, Inspector Gadget, End of Days, Jurassic Park III, The Day the World Ended (2001), Darkness Falls, Big Fish, Iron Man and Terminator: Salvation. Winston directed Pumpkinhead, A Gnome Named Norm, the Universal Studios theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, and the short film Ghosts starring Michael Jackson. He also worked on the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. Actor turned California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my best friends”. The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio was published by Titan Books in 2006.
French film director Jean Delannoy died on June 18, aged 100. His credits include the Jean Cocteau-scripted fantasy Love Eternal and the 1956 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida.
American costume designer Kermit [Ernest Hollinghead] Love, who helped puppeteer Jim Henson create Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and other Sesame Street characters, died of congestive heart failure on June 21, aged 91. Love also appeared on the TV show as “Willy”, the local hot dog vendor. Kermit the Frog was actually named after philosophy professor Kermit Smith, who died the previous month.
Oscar-winning film producer and manager Charles H. Joffe, best-known for his long association with Woody Allen since the early 1960s, died after a long battle with lung cancer on July 9, aged 78. Joffe’s movies with Allen include Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* *But Were Afraid to Ask, Sleeper, Love and Death, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, New York Stories, Alice,
Shadows and Fog, Manhattan Murder Mystery and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, among many other titles. Joffe and his management partner Jack Rollins are also credited with fostering the careers of Billy Crystal, Mike Nicholls, Elaine May, David Letterman and Lenny Bruce.
Former actor turned journeyman TV director Jud Taylor (Judson Taylor), who directed five episodes of the original Star Trek series, died after a long illness on August 6, aged 76. His other credits include the TV movies Revenge, The Disappearance of Flight 412, Search for the Gods, Future Cop, Doubletake, Rung Fu: The Legend Continues, and episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and Captain Nice.
Seventy-seven-year-old Bernie Brillstein, a former agent turned Hollywood manager-producer, died of chronic pulmonary disease on August 7. He had undergone double-bypass heart surgery in February. Apart from being a major force behind the success of TV’s Saturday Night Live, The Muppets, Fraggle Rock and ALF, Brillstein also received executive producer credits on such movies as The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, Dragnet, Ghostbusters II, The Cable Guy and What Planet Are You From?. He also directed the 1989 NBC-TV special The Wickedest Witch. While CEO at Lorimar Film Entertainment in the late 1980s, Brillstein famously feuded with CAA chief Michael Ovitz.
Legendary American music producer Jerry Wexler died on August 15, aged 91. He had been suffering from congenital heart disease for a couple of years. As a partner in Atlantic Records, he helped shape the careers of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan, Dusty Springfield and Willie Nelson. While a writer at Billboard magazine in the 1940s Wexler coined the term “rhythm & blues”, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
American record producer Jerry Finn died on August 21, aged 39. He had suffered a brain haemorrhage in July and never regained consciousness. Finn worked with acts such as Blink-182, Green Day, Smoking Popes and Morrissey.
Morris F. (Francis) Sullivan, whose Sullivan Bluth Studios produced the animated films The Land Before Time, An American Tail and All Dogs Go to Heaven, died on August 24, aged 91.
French special effects make-up designer Benoît Lestang committed suicide on July 27, aged around 44. The films he worked on include Baby Blood, The City of Lost Children, Wax Mask, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Satan and many others.
Former radio producer and head of BBC TV comedy Geoffrey Perkins died when he fell into the path of an oncoming lorry in London on August 29. It is thought that the 55-year-old fainted while walking along the street. While working for BBC Radio Light Entertainment, Perkins produced The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Mexican-born animator and director José “Bill” Melendez (José Cuauhtemoc Melendez, aka “J. C. Melendez”), best known as the voice of Snoopy in his numerous Charlie Brown TV specials since the mid-1960s, died on September 2, aged 91. Melendez began his career in the early 1940s working as an animator on Looney Tunes cartoons for Warner Bros., and his other credits include Dick Dead-eye or Duty Done, Frosty Returns, and the 1979 TV version of The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe.
Mel Harris who, while an executive at Paramount, led the 1987 revival of Star Trek with The Next Generation, died of cancer on September 6, aged 65. A former radio announcer, during his fourteen years at the studio he was also responsible for helping to create the “sell-through” home video market and the USA Network.
British-born film, theatre and TV director David Hugh Jones died in Rockport, Maine, of emphysema on September 18. He was 74. Having begun his career with the BBC in the late 1950s, he moved to America in the late 1980s where he directed episodes of Early Edition, Fantasy Island (1998), Now and Again, Ghost Whisperer and the 1999 TV movie of A Christmas Carol starring Patrick Stewart.
Prolific Philippine producer and director Cirio H. Santiago (aka “Leonard Hermes”) died of complications from lung cancer on September 26, aged 72. Santiago worked in all the exploitation genres, especially post-apocalyptic SF, and had a long-running production partnership in the 1980s with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. His many film credits as a director include Vampire Hookers (starring John Carradine), Stryker, Wheels of Fire, Future Hunters, Equalizer 2000, Demon of Paradise, Dune Warriors, Raiders of the Sun, Vulcan, Bloodfist 2050 and Road Raiders. He also produced The Blood Drinkers (aka The Vampire People), Up from the Depths, Terminal Virus and Robo Warriors.
British film and television producer Mark Shivas died of lung cancer on October 11, aged 70. A former head of drama at the BBC and the first head of BBC Films, he produced such movies as The Witches, adapted from the book by Roald Dahl, Anthony Minghella’s BAFTA-winning Truly Madly Deeply, and the TV film The Cormorant, based on the horror novel by Stephen Gregory.
Forty-one-year-old miniature effects model-maker Mark “Buck” Bucksen died in a road traffic accident on October 16. While at ILM he worked on Starship Troopers, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and War of the Worlds. After moving to Kerner Optical, his credits include Transformers, Evan Almighty and Terminator: Salvation.
American adult movie director Gerard [Gerardo Rocco] Damiano, best known for his ground-breaking porno film Deep Throat (1972), died of complications from a stroke on October 25, aged 80. Filmed in six days on a budget of just $25,000, Deep Throat grossed an estimated $600 million after it became the first hardcore movie released theatrically in America. His other films include The Magical Ring, The Devil in Miss Jones, and the non-porno horror film Legacy of Satan.
British-born film producer John Daly died of cancer in Los Angeles on Halloween, aged 71. In 1966 he co-founded the Hemdale Company with actor David Hemmings, and his many credits include Strange Behavior (aka Dead Kids), Turkey Shoot (aka Escape 2000), The Terminator, The Return of the Living Dead, Vampire’s Kiss and Miracle Mile.
Executive vice-president of Def Jam, Shakir Stewart, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on November 1. The 34-year-old had only succeeded Jay-Z as the head of the recording label five months earlier.
Motown Records president (1988–95) Jheryl Busby was found dead in a hot tub at his home on November 4. He was 59. Busby brought Diana Ross back to the label after several years and, along with working with such stalwarts as Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie, developed new acts like Boys II Men and Queen Latifah. After being forced out of the company by a legal dispute with MCA, he joined DreamWorks SKG as head of the company’s urban music division.
Italian director, editor, scriptwriter and actor Luigi Batzella died after a long illness on November 18, aged 84. His many “B” movie credits as a film-maker include The Devil’s Wedding Night, Nude for Satan and SS Hell Camp. Under the name “Paolo Solvay” Batzella starred in Slaughter of the Vampires, and he appeared uncredited in The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance.
Flamboyant British TV director Robert Tronson died on November 27, aged 84. He directed five Edgar Wallace second features in the early 1960s before moving to television, where his many credits include episodes of The Avengers, Mystery and Imagination (M. R. James’ “Lost Hearts”, plus two others), Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Guardians and Brian Clemens’ Thriller.
American film and TV producer Bill Finnegan, a co-founder of Finnegan/Pinchuk Priductions, died of Parkinson’s disease on November 28, aged 80. He began his career as an assistant director on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (directing the 1967 episode “The Matter-horn Affair”), and went on to work as a producer on such TV films as Maneaters Are Loose!, Wes Craven’s Stranger in Our House (aka Summer of Fear), World War III and Babes in Toyland (1986). He was an executive producer on the early 1990s TV series She-Wolf of London, and his movie credits include Night of the Creeps.
British writer, producer, director and voice artist Oliver Postgate, best remembered as the co-creator with puppeteer Peter Firmin of such children’s TV shows as Noggin the Nog (1958) and The Clangers (1969–71), died on December 8, aged 83. Under their Smallfilms production company, the duo was also respons
ible for Ivor the Engine, Pogles’ Wood and Bagpuss. He was a cousin of actress Angela Lansbury. Postgate’s autobiography, Seeing Things, was published in 2000.
Dakota Culkin, the 29-year-old sister of actor Macaulay Culkin, died from a massive head trauma on December 10, after being hit by a car in West Los Angeles the day before. She had recently completed work as an art department assistant on the independent movie Lost Soul starring Nick Mancuso.
American film and TV director Robert Mulligan died of heart disease on December 20, aged 83. He began his career directing thirteen episodes of CBS-TV’s Suspense, and went on to helm such movies as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Stalking Moon and The Other (based on the novel by Thomas Tryon).
Science fiction conventions would not be the same without 86-year-old Alfred Shaheen, who died in California of complications from diabetes on December 22. Shaheen was the man responsible for bringing Hawaiian shirts to the mass-market after Elvis Presley modelled one of his colourful creations on the cover of his 1961 soundtrack album Blue Hawaii.
USEFUL ADDRESSES
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THE FOLLOWING LISTING of organizations, publications, dealers and individuals is designed to present readers and authors with further avenues to explore. Although I can personally recommend most of those listed on the following pages, neither the publisher nor myself can take any responsibility for the services they offer. Please also note that the information below is only a guide and is subject to change without notice.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 Page 69
