Singer and musician Buck Page, who founded the original Western band Riders of the Purple Sage in 1936, died on August 21st, aged 84.
Bruce Gary, drummer for The Knack (“My Sharona”) died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on August 22nd, aged 55.
British character actor Bill Stewart died of complications from motor neurone disease on August 29th, aged 63. He appeared in such films as Morons from Outer Space, 101 Dalmatians (1996) and Fairy Tale: A True Story.
Rockabilly singer and songwriter Jumpin’ Gene Simmons, who had a novelty hit in 1964 with “Haunted House”, died after a long illness the same day, aged 69.
90-year-old Canadian-born Hollywood star Glenn Ford (Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford) was found dead at his home on August 30th. He had suffered a series of strokes over the previous decade. Best known for his many Western roles, Ford also appeared in The Visitor (Stridulum), Virus (Fukkatsu no hi), Happy Birthday to Me, Raw Nerve, the TV movies The Brotherhood of the Bell and The Disappearance of Flight 412, and his final film appearance was as Jonathan Kent in Superman (1978). In 1958 Ford was voted the #1 male box-office attraction. Despite being romantically linked to Rita Hayworth for four decades, the first of his four wives was actress/dancer Eleanor Powell.
1948 and 1952 American Olympic decathlon champion Bob Mathias, who later became an actor and Republican Member of Congress, died of cancer on September 2nd, aged 75. He portrayed Prince Theseus in The Minotaur (1961).
Actor, radio singer/announcer and television station owner John Conte died on September 4th, aged 90. From 1955–58 he hosted more than 600 segments of the NBC-TV daytime anthology series Matinee Theater, which included adaptations of Dracula (with John Carradine), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (with Robert Montgomery) and Frankenstein (with Primo Camera). Conte founded the NBC affiliate KMIR-TV in California’s Palm Springs-Rancho Mirage area in 1968 and ran the station until he sold it in 1999.
Crikey! Australian “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed the same day by a freak stingray strike in the heart during underwater filming for a show called Ocean’s Deadliest at the Great Barrier Reef. He was only the third person in Australian history to die from a stingray attack. The 44-year-old TV personality and conservationist appeared in Dr Dolittle 2 and starred in the 2002 movie The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course.
Welsh-born actor Bill Meilen, who played Dr Egas Gottreich in Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, died of cancer in Canada on September 4th, aged 74. He also appeared in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed and episodes of TV’s The Ray Bradbury Theater, The Outer Limits, Mysterious Ways, Dead Like Me and Battlestar Galactica.
British actress Hilary [Lavender] Mason, best known for her role as the blind psychic Heather in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), died on September 5th, the day after her 89th birthday. She also appeared in the films I Don’t Want to be Born (aka The Devil Within Her), Dolls, Robotjox, Meridian (aka Phantoms), Afraid of the Dark and Haunted. Her TV credits include The Secret Garden (1960), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1976), the 1977 Ripping Yarns episode “The Curse of the Claw”, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: The Last Vampyre, and episodes of Out of the Unknown and Tales of the Unexpected.
Broadway actor Robert Earl Jones, the father of actor James, died of heart failure on September 7th, aged 95. Blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, his relatively few film credits include Sleepaway Camp and Maniac Cop 2.
British character actor Frank Middlemass died on September 8th, aged 87. His credits include Hammer’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Madame Sin, The Island, Dreamchild, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and episodes of The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes (1968), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Invisible Man (1984), Highlander and the mini-series The 10th Kingdom. In the mid-1960s, needing somewhere to stay in London, Middlemass asked actor Geoffrey Toone (who died in 2005) if he could borrow a spare room for a couple of weeks. Forty years later, he was still there.
American character actor S. John Launer died the same day, aged 86. He began his film career in Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and went on to appear in The Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Jailhouse Rock (uncredited, as the judge who sends Elvis to prison), along with episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Wild Wild West and Batman. He retired in the late 1970s.
Herbert Rudley, who co-starred with Basil Rathbone, Lon Cha-ney, Jr, Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Akim Tamiroff and Tor Johnson in The Black Sleep (1956), died of a heart attack on September 9th, aged 96. He also played Ira Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945), and his TV credits include episodes of Lights Out, Science Fiction Theater, Suspicion, Men Into Space, Thriller, My Favorite Martian, My Living Doll, The Munsters, I Dream ofjeannie and Project UFO.
20-year-old Daniel Smith, the son of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, died in Nassau, Bahamas, on September 10th. He had been visiting his mother in hospital after she had given birth to a daughter three days earlier. A pathologist later attributed his death to a heart attack caused by drugs.
American-born singer Peter Tevis died of Parkinson’s disease on September 13th, aged 69. Tevis spent most of his early career in Italy, where he was instrumental in creating the distinctive themes for Spaghetti Westerns. After returning to America in the late 1960s, he was credited as music producer on Flesh Gordon (1974).
Hungarian-born champion bodybuilder turned actor Mickey Hargitay (Miklós Hargitay), the father of Emmy Award-winning actress Mariska, died after a long illness on September 14th, aged 80. Inspired by a magazine cover of muscleman Steve Reeves, Hargitay won the “Mr. Universe”, “Mr America” and “Mr Olympia” contests in 1955 and went on to become an ensemble cast member of Mae West’s night-club stage show. He was married to actress Jayne Mansfield from 1958 until three years before her untimely death in a car crash in 1967. The couple appeared together in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Promises! Promises! and the Italian films The Loves of Hercules and Primitive Love. Hargitay’s other European movies include Revenge of the Gladiators, Lady Frankenstein, Delirium, The Reincarnation of Isabel and, most famously, as the “Crimson Executioner” in Bloody Pit of Horror. On TV he appeared in an episode of The Wild Wild West, and Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hargitay in the 1982 TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story.
Senegal-born British actor Johnny Sekka (Lamine Secka) died of lung cancer in California the same day, aged 72. After stowing away on a ship to Europe in the 1950s, he initially worked on the British stage before appearing in such films and TV shows as Incense for the Damned (aka Bloodsuckers), Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, Babylon 5: The Gathering, The Avengers, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (“Voodoo Doll”) and Tales of the Gold Monkey.
Saxophone player Danny Flores (aka “Chuck Rio”), who shouted the word “Tequila!” on the Champs’ 1958 hit song of the same name (which he wrote), died of pneumonia on September 19th, aged 77. A heavy drinker during the early days of the band, he reportedly signed away US royalties to the song (which was featured in such films as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure) for a pittance.
59-year-old actor and voice-over artist Tim (Timothy) [Hayes] Rooney, the son of veteran Mickey Rooney, died on September 21st after a five-year battle with the muscle disease dermatomyositis. His credits include Riot of Sunset Strip, Village of the Giants and episodes of TV’s Bewitched and The Jetsons.
Christopher Crawford, the second child adopted by film star Joan Crawford, died of cancer on September 22nd, aged 62. He apparently supported his adoptive sister Christina’s account of their upbringing in her 1979 memoir Mommy Dearest.
American leading man Edward [Laurence] Albert (Jr), the only son of actor Eddie Albert (who died in 2005) and Mexican actress/dancer Margo, died of lung cancer the same day, aged 55. His credits include The Fool Killer (at the age of eleven), Killer Bees, Death Cruise, When Time Ran Out . . ., Galaxy of Terror, The House Where Evil Dwells, Accidents, The Girl from Mars, Demon Keeper, Sorceress (
aka Temptress II), Space Marines, Stageghost, Mimic 2 and Sea of Fear. He voiced Daredevil/Matt Murdock on the 1996 Spider-Man cartoon series and the Silver Surfer on Fantastic Four the same year. His other TV credits include episodes of Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries (“A Terribly Strange Bed”), Tales of the Unexpected, The Hitchhiker, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Time Trax, Profiler, The Sentinel, Conan, Extreme Ghostbusters, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Invasion America and She Spies. He had recurring roles as Elliot Burch on Beauty and the Beast, Bennett Devlin in the supernatural soap opera Port Charles and Mr. Collins on Power Rangers: Time Force. Albert was married to British-born actress Katherine Woodville. A dedicated environmentalist, like his father, Malibu’s Escondido Canyon was renamed in his honour as the Edward Albert Escondido Trail & Waterfalls.
Influential blues guitarist Etta Baker, who recorded with Taj-Mahal, died on September 23rd, aged 93. She worked in a textile mill for twenty-six years before starting her professional career in the late 1950s.
Prolific Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba (Shozaburo Tanba), who portrayed Tiger Tanaka in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice, died of pneumonia on September 24th, aged 84. His more than 300 credits (he reportedly never turned down a role) include The Depths, Kwaidan, Japan Sinks (both 1973 and 2006 versions), The Last Days of Planet Earth, Message from Space, Peking Man (1997), Jigoku, Blind Beast vs. Dwarf, The Happiness of the Kata-kuris, Gozu and the popular anime The Cat Returns. He later became a spiritual cult leader in Japan.
Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who may have been better known as World War II propagandist “Tokyo Rose”, died in Chicago on September 26th, aged 90. An American citizen, D’Aquino had been visiting relatives in Japan when war broke out and she reportedly began broadcasting anti-American propaganda to US troops in the Pacific. She was convicted of treason and jailed for six years in 1949 but, after doubts about guilt, she was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1977.
British-born actor, scriptwriter and author Alan Caillou (Alan Lyle-Smythe) died in Arizona on October 1st, aged 92. Following World War II, he worked as a police chief in Ethiopa and a district officer in Somalia before moving to Canada and then the United States. Usually cast a British “major” types in Hollywood, Caillou appeared in the 1959 Journey to the Center the Earth (uncredited), Five Weeks in a Balloon, Sole Survivor, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1972, as Inspector Lestrade), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” “And Were Afraid to Ask, The Questor Tapes, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Beyond Evil, The Sword and the Sorcerer and Ice Pirates, along with episodes of TV’s One Step Beyond, Thriller, Tarzan, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. He also had a recurring role as “The Head” in the SF comedy series Quark (1977–78). Among Caillou’s scripting credits are the movies Village of the Giants and Kingdom the Spiders, plus episodes of Thriller, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Six Million Dollar Man.
Six-foot, two-inch tall fashion model-turned-actress Tamara Dobson died of complications from pneumonia and multiple sclerosis on October 2nd, aged 59. In the 1970s she portrayed the eponymous kung-fu fighting government agent in Cleopatra Jones and its sequel, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the tallest leading actress in films, her other credits include Chained Heat and the TV movie Amazons. She appeared in an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (“Happy Birthday, Buck”) and played “Samantha” on the 1980–81 season of Jason of Star Command.
Actress and former model Frances Bergen (Frances Westerman), the widow of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (who died in 1978) and mother of Candice Bergen, died after a long illness the same day, aged 84.
British character actor Tom Bell died after a short illness on October 4th, aged 73. Best known for his recurring role in the Prime Suspect TV movies, in an acting career dating back to 1948 his other credits include Quest for Love (based on a short SF story by John Wyndham), Hammer’s Straight on Till Morning, an adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, Prospero’s Books, Angels, Long Time Dead and episodes of TV’s The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (“Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom”) and Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible (“Voodoo Feet of Death”).
69-year-old Mexican-American singer Freddy Fender died of lung cancer at his home in Texas on October 14th. He had suffered numerous health problems for years due to drug and alcohol abuse. After recording a Spanish-language version of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel” in the 1950s, he later had hits with “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” and “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” following a three-year prison sentence for possession of marijuana.
Scottish-born leading man Derek [William Douglas] Bond died on October 15th, aged 86. His film credits include Uncle Silas (aka The Inheritance) based on the novel by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, The Hour of 13, Stranger from Venus (aka Immediate Disaster), Svengali (1954) and Visions. He was one of the first reputable actors to appear in sexploitation films in the 1960s. Bond made his TV debut as a robot in a 1938 adaptation of Karel Capek’s R.U.R., and also appeared in episodes of The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Invisible Man (1959), Thriller (1974) and Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
American actor Jack DeLeon died on October 16th. As well as appearing in such films as Linda Lovelace for President and Train Ride to Hollywood, as a TV voice performer he contributed to Halloween is Grinch Night, The Hobbit, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and Spider-Man (1981).
Tuba player Tommy Johnson, who played the opening notes of the ominous shark theme in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, died of complications from cancer and kidney failure the same day, aged 71. Johnson also played on the soundtracks for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Lion King and various Star Trek movies.
Distinctive French character actor Daniel Emilfork [Berenstein] died on October 17th, aged 82. Born in Chile of Ukrainian parents, his film credits include The Hunchback ofNotre-Dame (1956), OSS 117, The Devil’s Nightmare (as the Devil), The Thief of Baghdad (1978) and The City of Lost Children.
Hollywood actress and former model Phyllis Kirk (Phyllis Kirkegaard) who co-starred with Vincent Price in the 1953 3-D movie House of Wax, died of a post-cerebral aneurysm on October 19th, aged 79. On TV she appeared in episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, Suspense (“The Moonstone”), Climax! and The Twilight Zone, and she played Nora Charles in the 1959 TV series The Thin Man, opposite Peter Lawford. She eventually became a publicist for CBS-TV and retired in 1992.
Emmy Award-winning actress Jane [Waddington] Wyatt, who co-starred with Ronald Coleman in Lost Horizon (1937), died on October 20th, aged 95. Her other film credits include Great Expectations (1934) and Amityville: The Evil Escapes. On TV she appeared in episodes of Lights Out, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“The Monkey’s Paw – A Retelling”), Fantasy Island, Starman and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. She played Mr. Spock’s mother Amanda in an episode of the original Star Trek series (“Journey to Babel”), and the actress later recreated the role in the 1986 film Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. She was blacklisted for several years for participating in communist-friendly cultural activities.
77-year-old British character actor Peter Barkworth died of broncho-pneumonia following a stroke on October 21st. A mainstay of British television during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, he appeared in episodes of Doctor Who (“The Ice Warriors”), The Avengers, Shadows of Fear, Out of the Unknown, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Dead of Night, Tales of the Unexpected and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Sandy West, drummer with the all-female band The Runaways, died of lung cancer the same day, aged 47. She was only sixteen years old in 1975 when she founded the group with singer and guitarist Joan Jett. Their hits include “Cherry Bomb” and “Born to Be Bad”.
84-year-old Canadian-born actor Arthur Hill died in a Los Angeles care facility on October 22nd after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He made his uncredited film debut in 1949, and went on to appear in M
r Drake’s Duck, The Chairman (aka The Most Dangerous Man in the World), The Andromeda Strain, Futureworld, Revenge of the Stepford Wives, Disney’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (as the Narrator), Prototype, The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, Murder in Space and One Magic Christmas, along with episodes of TV’s Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (“The Woman in White”), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Great Ghost Tales, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Invaders and Tales of the Unexpected.
Acknowledged as the world’s smallest actor, two-feet, four-inch tall Nelson de la Rosa died of a heart attack the same day, aged 38. As well as being the good-luck charm for the Boston Redsox during the baseball team’s victorious 2004 World Series run, the Dominican Republic national, who was born with the genetic syndrome microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II, was the eponymous creature in Ratman (Quella villa in fondo alparco), portrayed a demon in Fuoco incrociato and appeared alongside Marlon Brando in the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau (a role that reportedly became the inspiration for the “Mini-Me” character in the Austin Powers films). He subsequently became a circus performer.
Freddie Marsden, the drummer for Liverpool band Gerry and the Pacemakers, which he co-founded with his younger brother in the early 1960s, died on October 23rd, aged 66. He played on such hits as “How Do You Do It”, “I Like It”, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “I’m the One”.
French actress Tina Aumont (Maria Christina Aumont), the daughter of actors Jean-Pierre Aumont and Maria Montez, died of a pulmonary embolism on October 26th, aged 60. After making her screen debut under the name “Tina Marquand” in the 1966 version of Modesty Blaise, her credits include Fellini’s Satyricon, Necropolis, Torso, Dinosaur from the Deep and Jean Rollin’s Two Orphan Vampires. She married director Christian Marquand in 1963.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 71
