American author Craig [Allan] Mills, who had four fantasy novels published between 1982 and 1995, died of a heart attack on October 15th, aged 47. His debut novel was The Bane of Lord Caladon, followed by The Dreamer in Discord, Shadow of the Crown and the gaming novelization King’s Quest: The Floating Castle.
British-born physicist and SF novelist Charles Sheffield died on November 2nd, aged 67. He had undergone surgery for brain cancer three months earlier. A winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for his 1993 novella “Georgia on My Mind”, his more than two dozen novels include Sight of Proteus and its two sequels, The Web Between the Worlds, Between the Strokes of Night, Summertide, Brother to Dragons, Starfire and two collaborations with David F. Bischoff. His second wife was fellow SF author Nancy Kress.
SF novelist and scriptwriter Jerry Sohl (Gerald Allan Sohl, Sr.) died on November 4th, aged 88. He scripted episodes of Star Trek, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Invaders, The Man from Atlantis and The Next Step Beyond. His numerous books (many written under the pseudonyms “Nathan Butler”, “Sean Mei Sullivan” and “Roberta Jean Mountjoy”) include Costigan’s Needle, The Altered Ego, Point Ultimate, Night Slaves (filmed as a TV movie in 1970), Death Sleep and Kaheesh. Sohl also scripted the 1965 movie Monster of Terror (aka Die, Monster, Die!), starring Boris Karloff and based on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space”.
Comics and TV scriptwriter Hilary Bader, whose credits include episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, died of breast cancer on November 7th, aged 50. She wrote thirty-eight books for DC Comics, and also worked on such series as Xena Warrior Princess, Lois & Clark The New Adventures of Superman and Silk Stalkings. Bader won two daytime Emmy Awards for her scripts for the animated The New Superman/Batman Adventures and Batman Beyond.
Belgian comics publisher Charles Dupuis, who helped launch such titles as The Smurfs and Lucky Luke, died on November 14th, aged 84.
92-year-old TV writer and Desilu Studios producer Bert Granet, credited for saving CBS-TV’s The Twilight Zone after the advertising agency for the show’s sponsor initially refused to back the series, died on November 15th from injuries caused by a fall. Granet was also responsible for The Untouchables (1959–62).
Blacklisted American film and TV writer Alfred Levitt died of heart failure on November 16th, aged 87. Writing under the name “Tom August” for almost two decades, he co-scripted Disney’s The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and The Monkey’s Uncle with his wife, Helen Slotte Levitt (who died in 1993). He helped form the Hollywood Blacklist Writers Credits Committee, whose work has so far restored correct screen credits to more than eighty films.
Max Reinhart, the publisher and chairman of Reinhart Books since 1947, died in London on November 19th, aged 86. He published a number of Alfred Hitchcock anthologies.
American songwriter/lyricist “Buddy” (Jules Leonard) Kaye died on November 21st, aged 84. Among his more than 400 compositions are the theme for TV’s I Dream of Jeannie and the title songs for the Elvis movies Change of Habit and The Trouble With Girls. In 1975 he won a Grammy for his recording of The Little Prince narrated by Richard Burton.
American writer Thomas E. (Edward) Fuller died from a heart attack the same day, aged 54. The author of various fantasy and horror short stories since 1990, he collaborated with Brad Strick-land on several young-adult novels, most of them mysteries. Fuller also adapted a number of H.P. Lovecraft stories for radio.
British film composer-conductor Stanley Black died on November 26th, aged 89. Best known for his scores for the Cliff Richard movies The Young Ones and Summer Holiday, he worked on more than eighty films, including The Monkey’s Paw (1948), Blood of the Vampire, The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye), The Flesh and the Fiends, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Hammer’s Maniac and The City Under the Sea (aka War-Gods of the Deep).
British SF fan Mal Ashworth, whose fanzines include Bem (1954-59) and Rot (1955–63; 1984), died in a pub on November 27th, aged 69.
78-year-old artist and animator William [Erwin] “Tex” Henson, who started his career in 1944 at Disney, where he worked on such films as Song of the South, Mickey and the Beanstalk, Pecos Bill, Peter and the Wolf and a number of Chip ’n’ Dale cartoons, died of head injuries on December 5th after being hit by a pick-up truck in Texas three days earlier. After leaving Disney, he worked on TV’s Casper the Friendly Ghost, before moving to Mexico to supervise several series of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, Underdog and the Trix cereal rabbit.
Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning poet and painter Stan Rice, the husband of bestselling author Anne Rice, died after a four-month battle with brain cancer in New Orleans on December 9th, aged 60. He was the physical inspiration for his wife’s popular character, the vampire Lestat.
Russian-born engineer, heart surgeon and author Nicolai Mikhailovich Amosov died on December 12th, aged 89. His SF novel was translated in 1970 as Notes from the Future.
Prolific comedy scriptwriter Charles Isaacs, who created material for Bob Hope, Red Skelton, John Barrymore and the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, died of cancer on December 13th, aged 88. Amongst his numerous credits, he wrote the original story for the 1973 movie Digby the Biggest Dog in the World.
British playwright and screenwriter Frederick Knott died in New York on December 17th, aged 86. Born in China to an English missionary family, he began his career as a script editor at Hammer Films in the early 1950s. He adapted his own play, Dial M for Murder, for Alfred Hitchcock in 1954, and his play Wait Until Dark was filmed in 1967.
British composer Roger Webb, whose film credits include Burke and Hare and The Godsend (1979), died on December 19th. He also composed the music for a stage production of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Film author Doug McClelland died of a heart attack on December 28th, aged 68. His books include The Golden Age of B Movies and Down the Yellow Brick Road: The Making of the Wizard of Oz.
British author Mary Wesley CBE (Mary Aline Siepmann, aka Mary Aline Mynors Farmar) whose young adult books include the 1969 post-apocalyptic novel The Sixth Seal, died on December 30th, aged 90.
ACTORS/ACTRESSES
American character actress Meg Wyllie died on January 1st, aged 84. She is best remembered for her role as the alien Talosian in the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage” (aka “The Menagerie”). She also appeared in the 1963 Beauty and the Beast, Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, Lipstick, The Last Starfighter and Dragnet (1987).
33-year-old Cat (Catya) Sassoon, the daughter of celebrity hairstylist Vidal Sassoon and actress Beverly Adams, was found dead of a suspected drug overdose the same day at her home in Los Angeles following a New Year party. The model and actress had reportedly struggled with alcohol and drug addiction since the age of twelve, and at fourteen she dropped out of high school to pursue a modelling career. She made her film debut in Tuff Turf (1984) and after getting breast implants also appeared in such “B” films as Dance With Death, Secret Games, Bloodfist IV: Die Trying, Bloodfist VI, Angelfist and The Alien Within. Sassoon was also the lead singer of the all-girl band The Feline Force.
Character actor and comedian Avery Schreiber died of a heart attack on January 7th, aged 66. A member of Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe in the early 1960s, he appeared in The Monitors, Silent Scream, Galaxina, Caveman, Saturday the 14th Strikes Back, Dracula Dead and Loving It and the TV movies Escape, More Wild Wild West and Outlaws. He also starred as Captain Bernard Mancini in the fantasy TV series My Mother the Car (1965–66).
Jon Lee, the 33-year-old drummer with rock band Feeder, committed suicide the same day. The band’s biggest hit single was titled “Buck Rogers”.
Wendy’s founder and spokesman Dave Thomas (who did his own advertising on American TV in the longest-running campaign to feature a company leader) died of liver cancer on January 8th, aged 69. Founded in 1969, the hamburger chain was named after Thomas’ eight-year-old daught
er, Melinda Lou, nicknamed “Wendy”. He also had a small part in the 1994 TV movie Bionic Ever After?
Tony-winning American character actor Bill McCutcheon died of pneumonia on January 9th, aged 77. He portrayed the inept Martian Dropo in the 1964 cult classic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and was Uncle Wally on TV’s Sesame Street (1984–92). Other film credits include Vibes and Mr. Destiny.
Goodly bylode to South African-born comedian and former BBC sound engineer “Professor” Stanley Unwin, who died on January 12th, aged 90. Best known for bringing Deep Joy with his invented language, “Unwinese” – a mixture of malapropisms and gibberish – he appeared in several films, including Carry On Regardless and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also played Father Stanley Unwin in Gerry Anderson’s short-lived marionette and live-action TV series The Secret Service (1966). Unwin wrote the children’s book Fairly Stories and his autobiography, Deep Joy, appeared in 1984.
Canadian comedian Frank Shuster, one half of the Wayne and Shuster team with partner Johnny Wayne (who died in 1990), died of pneumonia on January 13th, aged 85. In 1965 the duo co-hosted an episode of their TV series entitled Wayne and Shuster Take an Affectionate Look At . . . The Monsters.
American blues singer Ron Taylor, who created the voice of Audrey II for the cult 1982 off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors, died of heart failure on January 15th, aged 49. His film credits include Exterminator 2, Dead Heat and Ritual. The voice of saxophonist “Bleeding Gums” Murphy on several episodes of TV’s The Simpsons, in 1977 he portrayed the Cowardly Lion in the first national touring company of The Wiz.
British-born actress and cabaret singer Queenie Leonard (Pearl Walker) died in West Los Angeles on January 17th, aged 96. She made her film debut in the early 1930s, and during the following decade she appeared in Ladies in Retirement, The Uninvited, The Lodger and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. She was also the voice of the Bird in the Tree in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Princess in 101 Dalmatians (1961), and appeared on TV in episodes of One Step Beyond, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.
Carrie Hamilton, the eldest daughter of Carol Burnett, died of complications from lung and brain cancer treatment on January 20th, aged 38. After briefly living on the streets as a drug addict in the late 1970s, she became a singer and actress, appearing in two seasons of Fame (1986–87) as Reggie Higgins and guest-starring on such shows as The X Files and Touched by an Angel.
Singer Peggy Lee (Norma Delores Estrom) died of a heart attack on January 21st, aged 81. Originally a performer with Benny Goodman’s band, she collaborated on the songs for Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp.
Spanish actor Adolfo Marsillach, who appeared in El Cruz del Diablo, died of cancer the same day, aged 73.
86-year-old stuntman, actor and former circus trapeze artist Henry “Blackie” Escalante died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in a Californian hospice on January 23rd. During the 1930s he doubled Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan films and he later appeared in the 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon.
British character actor Harold Kasket, who played the Sultan in the 1958 fantasy film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, died on January 24th, aged 75.
South African-born character actor [Alan] Stratford Johns, best known for his role as detective Charles Barlow in the 1960s BBC police series Z Cars and its various spin-offs, died of a heart condition on January 28th, aged 77. He was also in such films as The Night My Number Came Up, The Ladykillers, Who Done It?, Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon (aka Those Fantastic Flying Fools) and The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu. Later in his career he appeared in Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm and Salome’s Last Dance, as well as the 1996 BBC-TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Never Where.
Film and TV actress Evelyn Scott died on January 31st, aged 86. She was Los Angeles’s first female disc jockey (on station KMPC) and appeared in a handful of films, including Back from the Dead (1957). She played bartender Ada Jacks on Peyton Place (1965–69) and its TV movie sequels.
Actress and former model Irish McCalla (Elizabeth McCalla), best remembered for replacing Anita Ekberg (who failed to show up for filming) as the 1930s comic-strip heroine in the twenty-six-episode syndicated TV show Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1955–56), died of complications from a brain tumour and stroke on February 1st, aged 72. She also appeared in the movies She Demons and Hands of a Stranger.
American character actor Earl Rowe died of Parkinson’s disease the same day, aged 81. He was best known for his role as small-town police chief Lt Dave in the 1958 cult classic The Blob starring Steve McQueen.
Also on February 1st, German actress, cabaret singer and former cartoonist Hildegarde Neff (aka “Hildegard Knef”) died in a Berlin hospital from a lung infection, aged 76. She began her career appearing in Nazi propaganda films before being captured by the Russians, and her later movies include the 1952 adaptation of Alraune (aka Unnatural) with Erich von Stroheim, Svengali (1954), Lulu, Hypnosis, Bluebeard (1962), Fedora, Witchery and Hammer’s The Lost Continent. Her autobiography, The Gift Horse, was published in 1971.
80-year-old “B” movie actor George Nader, who starred in the 3-D Robot Monster, died of pneumonia at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Country Home on February 4th. Outed by the studio system, the openly gay leading man also appeared in The Human Duplicators, House of 1,000 Dolls (with Vincent Price), Sumuru (aka The Million Eyes of Sumuru) and Beyond Atlantis. He also starred as Glen Barton in the 1959 TV series Man and the Challenge, and in 1978 he published the homoerotic science fiction novel Chrome. A co-beneficiary of the late Rock Hudson’s $27 million estate, Nader had a funeral identical to that of his close friend.
American actor Guy Stockwell, older brother of the more famous Dean, died on February 7th, aged 69. Before becoming an acting coach, he also appeared in The Sword of Zorro (as Zorro), The War Lord, The Monitors, It’s Alive, The Coming, Grotesque, Santa Sangre and the TV movie The Disappearance of Flight 412.
American actress Tracey Roberts (Blanche Goldstone) died of a cerebral haemorrhage on February 8th, aged 87. She left film and TV acting in the 1960s to teach drama and founded the Tracey Roberts Actors Studio, where she produced and directed such plays as Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.
38-year-old New Zealand actor Kevin Smith, best known for his recurring roles as Ares the God of War and Bacchus in TV’s Hercules The Legendary Journeys, Xena Warrior Princess and Young Hercules, died of head injuries in a Beijing hospital on February 9th after losing his balance and falling from a prop tower while filming Warriors of Virtue II in China. One of his last appearances was in the pilot TV film based on Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld.
74-year-old British actor Barry Foster, who portrayed the psychotic killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, died of a heart attack on February 11th while appearing on stage in London. Best remembered for his role as the Dutch detective in TV’s Van der Valk (1972–79), he also appeared in Twisted Nerve.
Country singer Waylon Jennings, who narrated and sang the theme song for TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard, died of complications from diabetes on February 13th, aged 64. A former member of Buddy Holly’s backing group, The Crickets, he escaped death in 1959 when he gave up his seat on the plane that crashed, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.
American actress and former model Eve Whitney died the same day, aged 79. A model for such illustrators as Albert Vargas and George Petty, she appeared in a number of movies during the 1940s and early 1950s, plus the serial Radar Patrol vs. Spy King.
American actress Lucille Lund, best remembered for her dual roles as the preserved wife and also daughter of Bela Lugosi’s character in The Black Cat (1934), died on February 15th, aged 89. She joined Universal in 1933 after winning a “most beautiful college co-ed’ contest and appeared in a number of films throughout the 1930s, including a couple of Three Stooges shorts.
Veteran American newscaster Howard K. Smith, who appeared as himself in the TV series V, Clo
se Encounters of the Third Kind and other movies, died of congestive heart failure the same day, aged 87.
British actor John [Edward] Thaw CBE, best known for his portrayals of grumpy TV policemen in The Sweeney (1974–78) and Inspector Morse (1986–2000), died after a long battle against cancer of the oesophagus on February 21st, aged 60. His films include Dr Phibes Rises Again and the Sherlock Holmes TV movie The Sign of Four (1987). He was married for twenty-nine years to actress Sheila Hancock.
Former TV child actor Harold Pruett died of an accidental drug overdose in Los Angeles on the same day, aged 32. His film credits include Summer Camp Nightmare, Spellcaster, Mirror Mirror, Embrace of the Vampire and Precious Find.
Austrian actress Barbara Valentin (Uschi Ledersteger) died of a stroke in Munich, Germany, on February 22nd, aged 61. Known as the “German Jayne Mansfield”, her film credits include The Head, Horrors of Spider Island (aka It’s Hot in Paradise), Bite Me Darling and The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press. She lived for a while with singer Freddie Mercury until his death.
American character actor Mel Stewart, who was a regular on TV’s All in the Family (as Archie Bunker’s neighbour Henry Jefferson) and the 1977 Bewitched spin-off Tabitha (as Marvin Decker), died of Alzheimer’s disease on February 24th, aged 72. He also appeared in Dead Heat (with Vincent Price), Martians Go Home, Bride of Re-Animator and the TV movie The Invisible Woman (1983).
Tough-guy character actor Lawrence Tierney died in his sleep on February 26th, aged 82. He had suffered from strokes and pneumonia during the past few years. His many credits include Val Lewton’s The Ghost Ship (1943), The Falcon Out West, Monogram’s poverty-row Dillinger, Exorcism at Midnight, The Kirlian Witness, The Prowler (aka Rosemary’s Killer), Midnight (aka Backwoods Massacre), Stephen King’s Silver Bullet, From a Whisper to a Scream (aka The Offspring), The Horror Show, Wizards of the Demon Sword, The Runestone, Armageddon and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (as crime boss Joe Cabot). Tierney was the elder brother of actors Scott Brady and Edward Tierney (aka “Ed Tracy”), and during the late 1950s and 1960s he was frequently arrested on charges of drunken driving and disorderly conduct.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14 Page 64
