Silent movie actress Lina Basquette died on 30 September, aged 87. After appearing in the silent films of Cecil B. De Mille and Frank Capra, at the age of 18 she married Sam Warner, one of the founder Warner Bros. When he died in 1927, the 20-year-old widow lost her estate and custody of her daughter, Lita, to her in-laws. She was married nine times to seven different husbands.
Singer/actress Harriet Nelson (Peggy Sue Snyder), who co-starred with her bandleader husband Ozzie on TV in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–66), died of congestive heart failure on 2 October. She was 85. Her credits include The Falcon Strikes Back, Death Car On the Freeway and episodes of TV’s Night Gallery and Fantasy Island. Ozzie died in 1975 and her youngest son, singer Ricky, was killed in a plane crash in 1985.
Comedian Dennis Wolfberg, who played an eccentric scientist in the TV series Quantum Leap, died from cancer on 3 October. He was 48.
Veteran American character actor Dub Taylor (Walter Clarence Taylor II) died from a heart attack the same day, aged 87. He was a saxophonist and vaudevillian before making his film début in Frank Capra’s 1938 comedy You Can’t Take It With You. His numerous other movie credits include Bonnie and Clyde, Them!, Wild in the Sky, Creature from Black Lake, Burnt Offerings, Back to the Future Part III and Maverick (1993).
John Walters regular Paul Swift died on 7 October from AIDS, aged 60. He appeared in Pink Flamingos (as the Eggman), Multiple Maniacs, Female Trouble and Desperate Living.
Wide-mouthed American singer/comedienne Martha Raye died on 19 October after a prolonged illness. She was 78, and her movie credits include Hellzapoppin’, Monsieur Verdoux, Pufnstuf and The Concorde – Airport 79. She was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 for entertaining military personnel in three wars.
Former circus acrobat and Hollywood star Burt Lancaster (Burton Stephen Lancaster) died of a heart attack on 20 October, aged 80. His many films include The Killers, The Crimson Pirate, From Here to Eternity, The List of Adrian Messenger, Seven Days in May, Castle Keep, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, The Island of Dr Moreau, Field of Dreams and TV’s The Phantom of the Opera (1990). He won an Academy Award in 1961 for the title role in Elmer Gantry.
American leading man Robert Lansing (Robert H. Broom) died on 23 October from cancer. He was 66. Among his many genre credits are The 4-D Man, Wild in the Sky, Empire of the Ants, Scalpel, The Nest, Bionic Showdown, Island Claws, Automan and numerous TV series, including Star Trek, (as Gary Seven in “Assignment: Earth”) and Kung Fu The Legend Continues (as series regular Capt. Paul Blaisdell).
Puerto Rican-born actor Raul Julia died on 24 October, aged 54, eight days after suffering a stroke. His film credits include Kiss of the Spider Woman, Eyes of Laura Mars, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (as Dr Frankenstein), an energetic Gomez in both The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Street Fighter.
American character actress Mildred Natwick died on 25 October, aged 89. On TV she appeared as one half of The Snoop Sisters (1972–73) with Helen Hayes, and was nominated for an Emmy for her role in Blithe Spirit. Her film credits include The Enchanted Cottage, Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry, The Court Jester, Barefoot in the Park, The Maltese Bippy and Do Not Fold Spindle or Mutilate.
American character actor Noah Beery, Jr died in November, aged 81. The son of Hollywood star Noah Beery, he started his career as a child actor in The Mark of Zorro (1920) and went on to appear in Jungle Madness, The Cat Creeps, Rocketship X-M and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. On TV, he was a regular in the series Circus Boy and The Rockford Files.
American actor Dennis Ott died on 3 November from AIDS, aged 36. He portrayed a Klingon in Star Trek III The Search for Spock, and the Devil in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
Actor Tom Villard also died from AIDS on 14 November. Best known for his lead role in the TV series We Got It Made, he also appeared in Star Trek Deep Space Nine and had the title role in the film The Trouble With Dick.
John Boylan, who played the mayor in TV’s Twin Peaks, died on 16 November of lung cancer. He was 82.
Flamboyant American band leader and jazz singer Cab Calloway (Cabell Calloway) died on 18 November, aged 87. His occasional film appearances include the “Betty Boop” cartoon, The Old Man of the Mountains, The Big Broadcast, International House (with Bela Lugosi) and The Blues Brothers.
Gravel-voiced character actor Lionel Stander died on 30 November of lung cancer. He was 86. Best known for his role as Max in the TV series Hart to Hart, his film career was harmed in the late 1940s by the Communist witch-hunts. His many credits include The Scoundrel, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, A Star is Born (1937), Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac, The Loved One, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Black Bird, The Cassandra Crossing and The Wicked Stepmother.
Italian leading man Gian Maria Volonte (aka “John Wells”) died on 6 December, aged 61, from a heart attack while on location in Greece. His films include A Witch in Love, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
Broadway star Julie Haydon died of abdominal cancer on 24 December, aged 84. Among the films she appeared in were The Scoundrel and Thirteen Women, and she was reputed to have dubbed Fay Wray’s screams in King Kong (1933).
Australian actor Frank Thring died in December. He appeared in Ben Hur (1959), King of Kings, The Vikings, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Howling 3 The Marsupials.
American actor Woody Strode (Woodrow Strode) died in December, aged 71. His film credits include Bride of the Gorilla, The Ten Commandments, Tarzan’s Fight for Life, Spartacus, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Tarzan’s Three Challenges, Kingdom of the Spiders and Ravagers.
British leading man Sebastian Shaw died in December, aged 89. A child actor on the stage since 1913, his film credits include The Squeaker, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968) and It Happened Here, in which Britain is conquered by the Nazis during the Second World War.
Shaw’s co-star in It Happened Here, Pauline Murray, also died in December.
FILM/TV TECHNICIANS
Jim Booth, the 48-year-old New Zealand producer of Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles, Braindead (aka Dead Alive) and Heavenly Creatures, died on 4 January of cancer.
American independent producer Samuel Bronston died on 12 January, aged 85. His movies include King of Kings, El Cid, Fifty Five Days at Peking, Fall of the Roman Empire and And Then There Were None.
Iconoclastic British director and champion of gay rights, Derek Jarman, died on 19 February from AIDS. He was 52. He was the art director on The Devils, and his own films include Jubilee, The Tempest, Edward II and Last of England.
Ezra Stone, best known for his role as Henry Aldrich on the radio show The Aldrich Family, was killed in a car accident on 3 March. He was 76. During the 1960s he directed episodes of TV’s The Munsters and Lost in Space.
The creator of cartoon character Woody Woodpecker, animator Walter Lantz, died on 22 March of heart disease, aged 93. He made more than 800 short films before retiring in 1976. He received an Academy Award in 1979 for Lifetime Achievement in the art of animation.
Disney executive Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash on 3 April. He was 62, and was credited with re-establishing the studio’s commercial strength during the 1990s through medium-budget comedies (such as Sister Act) and high-quality animated features (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin).
Hammer Films producer/director Michael Carreras died from cancer on 19 April, aged 67. The son of James Carreras, he began his career with Exclusive Films in the 1940s and became managing director of Hammer from 1971 until 1979. He produced or executive produced many of the studio’s most successful films, and his credits as a director include Maniac (1963), The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, Slave Girls (aka Prehistoric Women), The Lost Continent (1968), the last few days of Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb after the death of Seth Holt, and Shatter (aka Call Him Mr Shatter).
Pioneer Hollywood sound mixer Murray Spivack died on 8 May, aged 90. He began working with the new RKO Radio studios in
1929, and his credits include The Most Dangerous Game, King Kong (1933), The Son of Kong, Disney’s Fantasia, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady and Hello Dolly! (for which he won an Academy Award).
Chicago-based cinematographer Jack Richards, whose credits include Damien Omen II, died on 20 May, aged 77.
British writer/producer/director Sidney Gilliat, best remembered for his collaborations with Frank Launder, died on 31 May, aged 86. His many credits include Chu Chin Chow, Bulldog Jack, The Lady Vanishes, Jamaica Inn, Ask a Policeman, Green for Danger, Endless Night and the “St Trinian’s” series.
German-born TV producer/director Rudolph Cartier died on 8 June, aged 90. He joined the UFA Studios in Berlin as a scriptwriter in 1929, but when Hitler came to power in 1933 he moved to Britain. Among his many credits during his 23 years working for BBC-TV are Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Peter Cushing and Nigel Kneale’s trilogy of Quatermass serials.
William G. Marshall, who directed The Phantom Planet, died the same day in France, aged 76.
American animator and director Jack Hannah died of cancer on 11 June, aged 81. He joined the Walt Disney animation staff in 1933 and directed more than 100 Donald Duck cartoons. Eight of his films were nominated for Academy Awards. He retired from Disney in 1960, and worked for Walter Lantz directing several Woody Woodpecker cartoons before spending eight years on the staff developing Disney’s School of Character Animation at the California Institute of the Arts.
American arranger/composer Henry Mancini died on 14 June of liver complications and pancreatic cancer. He was 70, and married to Julie Andrews. He won four Academy Awards, including Oscars for the songs “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses”, and his many credits include the Pink Panther theme, the Peter Gunn TV series, and such movies as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Touch of Evil, Without a Clue, Ghost Dad, Switch, The Great Race, The Night Visitor, 99&44/100th% Dead, The Parallax View, The Big Bus, Nightwing, Condorman, Santa Claus, The Right Stuff and Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective. During the 1950s he contributed to the scores of numerous classic SF and horror movies as a staff composer, along with Hans J. Salter, at Universal-International.
German-born composer Hans J. Salter died on 23 July, aged 98. Associated with Universal studios from the late 1930s through the 1950s, his credits include many of the great horror and science fiction films of this period, including The Mummy’s Hand, The Wolf Man, Man Made Monster, The Black Cat (1941), Hold That Ghost, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy’s Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Son of Dracula, The Mummy’s Ghost, House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man’s Revenge, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, The Mole People, The Creature Walks Among Us, The Incredible Shrinking Man and numerous others, including titles for Universal’s Sherlock Holmes and Inner Sanctum mysteries.
Bernard Delfont, who was the head of EMI during the 1970s, died from a heart attack on 28 July, aged 84.
British writer/producer Joan Harrison, who was Alfred Hitchcock’s assistant for many years, died on 14 August, aged 83. Married to Eric Ambler, she scripted Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, Suspicion, Saboteur and Dark Waters, and produced Phantom Lady, Circle of Danger, and TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Journey Into Fear.
British director and film critic Lindsay Anderson died in August, aged 71. His credits include If . . ., O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.
Italian director Duccio Tessari died of cancer on 6 September, aged 67. His films include Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Tex and the Lords of the Abyss and A Pistol for Ringo.
British screenwriter and director Terence Young died from a heart attack on 7 September, aged 79. His films include Corridor of Mirrors, Valley of Eagles, Wait until Dark, and the James Bond adventures Dr No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball.
Canadian-born Harry Saltzman, who along with partner Albert R. Broccoli produced the Bond films until 1975, died from a heart attack in Paris on 28 September, aged 78. His credits also include another sci-spy thriller, The Ipcress File.
British director James Hill died on 9 October, aged 75. His credits include Born Free, A Study in Terror, Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, and episodes of TV’s The Avengers.
American TV movie director E.W. Swackhammer died from an aortic aneurism on 5 December. He was 67. His numerous credits include Bridge Across Time (aka Arizona Ripper/Terror at London Bridge), Vampire, Spider-Man, The Wizard, Death At Love House, The Dain Curse, and episodes of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.
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