Self-appointed busybody Mary Whitehouse, who formed the Viewers and Listeners Association in an attempt to censor films and television in Britain, died on November 23rd, aged 91. She won’t be missed by many.
TV scriptwriter and producer William Read Woodfield, whose credits include The Hypnotic Eye and the TV movies Earth II and Satan’s Triangle, died of a heart attack on November 24th, aged 73.
Former Beatles guitarist George Harrison died of cancer on November 29th, aged 58. His film appearances include Help!, Yellow Submarine, A Magical Mystery Tour and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and he produced the latter along with The Time Bandits and other movies under his production company Hand-Made Films, which he co-founded. At the time of his death the singer/songwriter was reportedly worth £120 million, and his 1970 single ‘My Sweet Lord’ briefly topped the UK charts again, replacing the late Aaliyah’s ‘More Than a Woman’. It was the first time that a posthumous No.1 hit was replaced by another.
75-year-old comic-strip artist Dave Graue, who took over the syndicated strip Alley Oop from its creator Vincent T. Hamlin in 1973, was killed in a car crash near his home in North Carolina on December 10th.
British TV writer Alan Fennell died of cancer on December 11th, aged 65. After teaming up with Gerry Anderson on the comic strip adaptations of the puppet series Four Feather Falls andSupercar, he began scripting many of Anderson’s TV series, includingFireball XL5, Stingray, Joe 90, Thunderbirds and U.F.O. Fennell edited the children’s magazine Look-in from 1971-74 and in 1991 he became editor of Fleetway’s Thunder-birds comics.
Archie Comics artist Dan DeCarlo, who created Sabrina the Teenage Witch, died on December 18th, aged 82.
Writer and editor Keith Allen Daniels died of cancer the same day, aged 45. His SF and fantasy poetry appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Weird Tales and other magazines, and he founded Anamnesis Press in 1990.
British ghost story author and former television scriptwriter and playwright Sheila Hodgson died of a stroke on Christmas Day, just three days after her 80th birthday. During the late 1970s she wrote a series of supernatural plays, three of which were based upon ideas suggested by M.R. James in his essay ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’. These were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and subsequently published as stories in such periodicals as Blackwood’s Magazine and Ghosts & Scholars, as well as being reprinted in Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories XI and XVI, and Ramsey Campbell’s anthology Meddling With Ghosts. In 1998, Ash-Tree Press collected twelve of her tales featuring James as the central character in a volume entitled The Fellow Travellers and Other Ghost Stories.
Composer Florian Fricke, whose credits include Herzog’s Nosferatu, died of a stroke on December 29th, aged 57.
British author Victor [Joseph] Hanson died of complications from a stroke in mid-December, aged 81. Best known for his hard-boiled crime and Western novels, in the early 1960s he published The Twisters, Creatures of the Mist, Claws of the Night andThe Grip of Fear under the pseudonym ‘Vern Hansen’.
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ACTORS/ACTRESSES
American character actor Ray Walston, best known as TV’s My Favorite Martian (1963-66) and the Devil in Damn Yankees (on Broadway and in the 1958 film), died on January 1st, aged 86. His numerous other credits include The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, Popeye, The Fall of the House of Usher (1980), Galaxy of Terror, O’Hara’s Wife, Blood Relations, Saturday the 14th Strikes Back, Blood Salvage, Popcorn, Addams Family Values, the 1999 My Favorite Martian movie, the Stephen King mini-series The Stand and a recurring role in Star Trek Voyager. He also narrated the title sequence of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories TV series (1985-87).
Character actress Nancy Parsons died after a long illness on January 5th, aged 58. She appeared in Motel Hell and on TV’s Nightmare Classics: Eyes of the Panther.
Film and TV character actor Scott Marlowe died of a heart attack on January 6th, aged 68. He appeared inThe Subterraneans and the TV movie Night Slaves along with episodes of The Outer Limits, Thriller, The Wild Wild West and many other shows.
65-year-old British stage and television actor Michael Williams, the husband of Dame Judi Dench, died of cancer on January 11th after a seventeen-month battle against the disease. He appeared in the RSC’s 1966 movie Marat/Sade, and between 1989 and 1998 he portrayed Dr Watson to Clive Merrison’s Sherlock Holmes for the entire canon of Sir Arthur Conan’s Doyle’s fifty-six short stories and four novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Canadian character actor Al Waxman died during heart surgery on January 17th, aged 65. His many credits include When Michael Calls, I Still Dream of Jeannie, Heavy Metal, Spasms (akaDeath Bite), Millennium and Bogus.
Hollywood musical comedy star Virginia [Lee] O’Brien died on January 18th, aged 79. Related to Civil War General Robert E. Lee, she appeared in sixteen movies between 1940 and 1947 and in 1955 had a small role in Francis in the Navy. She was married to Superman star Kirk Alyn (who died in 1999) from 1942-55.
Veteran Shakespearean actor Joseph O’Conor died in London on January 21st, aged 84. His films includeGorgo, Hammer’s The Gorgon and Devil Ship Pirates, andDoomwatch, and he appeared on TV in the 1973 adaptation of M.R. James’sA Ghost Story for Christmas: Lost Hearts and the recent children’s series The Belfry Witches.
American actress Sally Mansfield, who portrayed Vena Ray on the 1950s TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, died of lung cancer on January 28th, aged 77.
French leading man Jean-Pierre Aumont (Jean-Pierre Salomons) died on January 29th, aged 92. His many films include Siren of Atlantis, Cauldron of Blood (with Boris Karloff),Castle Keep, The Happy Hooker and Don’t Look in the Attic. One of his three wives was Maria Montez, whom he married in 1946 and with whom he had a daughter, actress Tina Aumont.
BBC television announcer and co-host (with Derek Bond) of the long-running weekly show Picture Parade, Peter [Varley] Haigh also died in January, aged 75. He married Rank starlet Jill Adams in 1957.
Actor Titus Moede, who appeared in Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, Rat Pfink and Boo Boo and The Thrill Killers, died of colon cancer on February 6th. As ‘Titus Moody’ he was a pioneer in adult films.
Dale Evans (Frances Octavia Lucille Wood Smith), former band singer and the widow of Hollywood cowboy Roy Rogers, died of congestive heart failure on February 7th, aged 88. She had suffered a stroke in 1996 and was confined to a wheelchair. Known as ‘The Queen of the Cowgirls’, she appeared in twenty-eight films with her husband (who died in 1998) and they worked together on TV in The Roy Rogers Show (1951-57) and The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show (1962). She was named California Mother of the Year in 1967 and Texan of the Year in 1970. The couple lost three of their children, two of them in tragic accidents.
British character actor Reginald Marsh died on February 9th, aged 74. His numerous credits include It Happened Here, Berserk and the TV movies The Stone Tape andHammer House of Mystery and Suspense: Mark of the Devil.
Former European middleweight champion boxer and actor Tiberio Mitri was run over by a train on February 12th, aged 74. The Italian boxer, who famously survived fifteen rounds in the ring with Jake La Motta at Madison Square Garden, went on to appear in a number of films, including Ben-Hur (1959) and numerous spaghetti Westerns and peplums. Following the premature deaths of his son and daughter, he developed a drinking problem and was living among Rome’s homeless population.
British leading man Michael [Anthony] Johnson died on February 24th, aged 62. Best known as a television actor (notably opposite Herbert Lom in The Human Jungle [1963-65]), his only starring role on screen was in Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire (1971).
American character actress Rosemary DeCamp, who played James Cagney’s mother in Yankee Doodle Dandy despite being thirteen years his junior, died of pneumonia on February 20th, aged 90. She also appeared in Jungle Book (1942), William Castle’s 13 Ghosts, Saturday the 14th and the TV movie The Time Machine (1978).
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American actress Peggy Converse, who starred in The Thing That Couldn’t Die, died on March 2nd, aged 95.
TV actor Louis Edmonds, who portrayed various members of the Collins family in the daytime soap operaDark Shadows (1966-71) and the movie House of Dark Shadows, died of respiratory failure on March 3rd, aged 77.
Edward Winter, who starred as Captain Ben Ryan in the TV series Project U.F.O. (1978-79), died of Parkinson’s disease on March 8th, aged 63.
Obnoxious talkshow host and chain-smoker [Sean] Morton Downey, Jr. died of lung cancer and other respiratory problems on March 12th, aged 68. After composing such hit surf-rock numbers as ‘Pipeline’ and ‘Wipeout’ in the early 1960s, his syndicated TV series The Morton Downey Jr. Show debuted in the New York City area in 1987. He also appeared in more than twenty movies and TV shows, includingPredator 2 and episodes of Monsters and Tales from the Crypt.
Calypso singer Sir Lancelot (Lancelot Victor Pinard), whose credits include Val Lewton’s I Walked With a Zombie, The Ghost Ship and Curse of the Cat People, plus Zombies on Broadway and The Unknown Terror, died the same day, aged 97.
Hollywood actress and light comedienne Ann Sothern (Harriette Lake) died of heart failure on March 15th, aged 92. Her many films include Super-Sleuth, Lady in a Cage, Golden Needles and The Manitou, and she was the voice of the car in the TV fantasy sitcom My Mother the Car (1965-66). Sothern was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in The Whales of August (with Vincent Price). Her daughter, designer Tisha Sterling, was also an actress.
Voice actress Norma MacMillan, who was the voice of Casper, The Friendly Ghost in the 1950s Paramount cartoon series, died in Canada on March 16th, aged 79. She also voiced Gumby in the Claymation series Pokey and Gumby and Sweet Polly Purebread inUnderdog.
British leading man of the 1950s Anthony [Maitland] Steel died on March 21st, his 81st birthday. His credits includeHelter Skelter (1948) and West of Zanzibar (1954). Later in his career he appeared in The Story of O (1975) and portrayed film producer Lintom Busotsky (a role originally intended for Peter Cushing) in the 1980 R. Chetwynd-Hayes adaptation, The Monster Club. He was briefly married to Anita Ekberg.
American stage and screen actor Anthony Dexter (Walter Fleischmann) died on March 27th, aged 82. After being cast as Rudolph Valentino in the 1951 biopic, his career never recovered and he found himself in such films as Fire Maidens from Outer Space, The Story of Mankind, 12 to the Moon and Phantom Planet.
Alleged serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to more than 300 homicides and was the inspiration for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, also died in March. He was apparently the only man whose death sentence was commuted by Governor George W. Bush of Texas.
British stage, screen and television actress Jean Anderson died on April 1st, aged 93. Her occasional film credits include Disney’s The Three Lives of Thomasina, The Night Digger and Scream-time.
German-born stage and screen actor Brother Theodore (Theodore Gottlieb) died of pneumonia in New York City on April 5th, aged 94. A survivor of Dachau concentration camp, his film credits include Orson Welles’s The Stranger, Nocturna, the 1976 porno spoof Gums, The Invisible Kid and Joe Dante’s The ‘burbs. He also narrated A1 Adamson’s Horror of the Blood Monsters and voiced Gollum in the animated TV movies The Hobbit and The Return of the King. Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors was a 1975 paperback anthology co-edited with Marvin Kaye.
Oscar-winning American actress Beatrice Straight, who played the paranormal investigator in Poltergeist, died of pneumonia on April 7th, aged 86. She also won a Tony Award as Best Supporting Actress in the 1953 Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and was nominated for an Emmy for her role in the 1978 mini-seriesThe Dain Curse. She had a recurring role as the Queen of the Amazons in the 1977 TV series Wonder Woman.
American TV and film actor David Graf, best known for his recurring role in the Police Academy movies, died of a heart attack on the same day, aged 50. His other credits include Burnin’ Love and Skeleton.
Jerome Barr, estranged from his daughter Roseanne after she publicly accused him in 1991 of molesting her as a child, died of a heart attack on April 9th, aged 71. Barr, who had always denied the allegations, won a casino jackpot just days before his death.
New Zealand-born actress Nyree (Ngaire) Dawn Porter died suddenly in London on April 10th, aged 61. In Britain since 1960, she made her name as Irene in the 1967 BBC serial The Forsyte Saga and as the co-star of The Protectors (1972-74), and appeared in such films as AIP’s Jane Eyre (1970), the Amicus productionsThe House That Dripped Blood and From Beyond the Grave, and in the 1980 TV mini-series of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.
Welsh-born comedian and singer Sir Harry [Donald] Secombe died of prostate cancer on April 11th, aged 79. From 1951-60 Secombe co-starred in the surreal BBC radio programme The Goon Show (as Neddie Seagoon) along with Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. His film appearances include Helter Skelter (1948), Down Among the Z Men, Svengali (1954) and The Bed Sitting Room.
British stage and screen actor Paul Daneman died on April 28th, aged 75. His film credits include Richard Lester’s surreal How I Won the War (1967).
Argentine actress Mabel Karr died in a Madrid hospital from complications from an infection on May 1st, aged 66. She starred in Jesus Franco’s The Diabolical Dr Z and The Killer Tongue.
Actress and singer Deborah Walley, who starred in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Beach Blanket Bingo, Ski Party, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, Sergeant Deadhead the Astronaut, It’s a Bikini World, the 3-D The Bubble andThe Severed Arm, died of oesophageal cancer on May 10th, aged 57. She had been diagnosed in February and was given just six months to live. Her other film credits include Spinout (with Elvis Presley). She also wrote children’s books and divorced actor John Ashley in 1966.
The same day, actress turned pot dealer Jennifer Stahl, who had a small role in Necropolis and appeared as a dancer in Dirty Dancing, was one of three people found shot to death in a drug deal that went wrong in a sixth-floor apartment above Manhattan’s Carnegie Deli.
87-year-old Italian-American crooner and former barber Perry Como (Pierino Roland Como, aka Nick Perido) died at his home in Florida on May 12th after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for two years. He appeared in a small number of films during the 1940s, and by the late 1950s was America’s highest-paid TV performer. With record sales of more than 100 million, his laid-back hits include ‘Catch a Falling Star’, ‘Magic Moments’ and ‘It’s Impossible’.
American actor and playwright Jason Miller, who won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for his 1973 play That Championship Season and was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist, died of heart failure in Pennsylvania on May 13th, aged 62. His other credits include The Ninth Configuration, The Exorcist III and such TV movies as The Dain Curse, Vampire (1979) and The Henderson Monster.
British leading man of the stage and screen, Jack Watling, died on May 22nd, aged 78. His credits includeMeet Mr Lucifer, Hammer’s The Nanny, 11 Harrowhouse and TV’sInvisible Man and Doctor Who (both opposite his daughter, Deborah).
Veteran TV character actor Harry Townes died in Alabama on May 23rd, aged 86. He played Dr Greenwood in the 1958 movie of Fredric Brown’s The Screaming Mimi and appeared in episodes of Inner Sanctum, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Climax!, One Step Beyond, The Twilight Zone, Thriller, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, Night Gallery, The Sixth Sense and numerous others. He semi-retired from acting thirty years ago to become an Episcopalian priest in his home town of Huntsville.
French actor Jean Champion, whose many credits include TV’s Belphegor, died the same day, aged 87.
American actress and TV personality Arlene Francis (Arlene Kazanjian), best known as a panellist on the quiz show What’s My Line?, died of cancer on May 31st, aged 93. Her occasional film appearances include Murders in the Rue Morgue opposite Bela Lugosi.
British film jour
nalist and arts administrator David Prothero committed suicide in the summer. He contributed to Shivers, The Dark Side, Scapegoat and Kim Newman’s The BFI Companion to Horror as well as publishing his own magazine, Bloody Hell.
Stuntman Russell Saunders died on June 1st, aged 86. His numerous credits include The Thing (1951), Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure and Logan’s Run.
Comedienne-actress Imogene Coca died on June 2nd, aged 92. Best known for her TV appearances, with guest spots on Bewitched, Fantasy Island, Night Gallery and Monsters, she also had roles in several films, including Alice in Wonderland (1985). A former Broadway dancer, she was married to her second husband, actor King Donovan, from 1960 until his death in 1987.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 - [Anthology] Page 69
