Zoë Rae (Zoë Rae Bech), one of the earliest child stars of the silent film era, died on May 20th, aged 95. She made her screen debut at the age of three in 1914, and two years later Carl Laemmle signed her to a five-year contract at Universal for $100.00 per week. Billed as “Little Zoë, the Universal Baby”, she worked with John Ford, Rupert Julian and Lon Chaney (The Kaiser: The Beast of Berlin, 1918). “I was just fascinated by him,” she later recalled. “He was a very pleasant gentleman, in my eyes, and very dedicated.”
64-year-old Jamaican ska and reggae singer Desmond Dekker (Desmond Adolphus Dacres) died of a heart attack on May 25th in Surrey, England. As Desmond Dekker and the Aces he had such hits in the 1960s as “Israelites” and “It Mek”.
American actor Paul Gleason, usually seen in supporting roles as authority figures, died of a rare form of lung cancer on May 27th, aged 67. He had only been diagnosed three weeks earlier. A former professional baseball player and drinking companion of writer Jack Kerouac, Gleason’s many credits include Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, He Knows You’re Alone, Arthur, Ghost Chase, Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, Abominable, the 1985 Star Wars spin-off Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, and episodes of TV’s The Green Hornet (“Alias the Scarf”, with John Carradine), Beauty and the Beast, Tales from the Crypt (“The Reluctant Vampire”), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Dark Skies.
British actor and film and TV writer David Butler died the same day, aged 78. He appeared in the 1970 horror thriller Crucible of Horror.
British musical entertainer Derek Scott died on May 27th, aged 84. Following World War II, he formed a comedy duo with Tony Hancock, and he later composed the music for Hancock’s 1960s TV series and the film The Punch and Judy Man. Scott also composed many songs for The Muppet Show and was the voice of the piano-playing dog, Rolfe.
American leading man Robert Sterling (William John Hart), best remembered for his role as the ghostly George Kirby in the 1953–56 TV series Topper, died on May 30th, aged 88. He had suffered from shingles for a decade. The son of baseball star William S. Hart (not to be confused with the silent screen actor), Sterling appeared in Mandrake the Magician, Beware Spooks!, and the 1961 film version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as Captain Lee Crane, along with episodes of TV’s Lights Out, Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone and Fantasy Island. He was married to actresses Ann Sothern from 1943–49 and Anne Jeffreys (who he co-starred with in Topper) from 1951 until his death.
Johnny Grande, who played piano for Bill Haley and His Comets on their 1954 hit “Rock Around the Clock”, died on June 2nd, aged 76. He also played on “See You Later, Alligator” and “Rockin’ Through the Rye”.
Grateful Dead and The Tubes keyboard player Vince Welnick apparently committed suicide the same day, aged 55.
75-year-old radio actor James Barrett, who voiced the part of Dan Reid, the young nephew of The Lone Ranger, died on June 4th. He also worked on The Green Hornet and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.
59-year-old Texas-born singer, songwriter and musician Billy Preston, best known for playing keyboards on the Beatles’ 1970 album Let it Be, died of a heart infection and kidney failure on June 6th. He had been in a coma since November the previous year. Often referred to as “the Fifth Beatle” after he was credited on “Get Back”, Preston was the first musical guest to appear on TV’s Saturday Night Live when the show premiered in 1975.
American character actor Robert Donner, a founding member of Harvey Lembec’s comedy-improv group The Crazy Quilt Comedy Company, died of a heart attack on June 8th, aged 75. After his friend and neighbour, Clint Eastwood, encouraged him to try drama, Donner appeared in more than 100 films and TV shows. Best known for his recurring role as Exidor on Mork and Mindy (1978–82), he also appeared in Agent for H.A.R.M., The Spirit is Willing, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, High Plains Drifter, Damnation Alley, Hysterical, Alan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, Alien Nation: Dark Horizon and episodes of TV’s Ghost Story, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, Voyagers!, Blue Thunder, Starman and Early Edition.
Former model and exploitation actress Audrey Campbell (aka “Audrey Theile”) died after a long illness the same day, aged 76. She suffered from kidney and respiratory problems for many years. Best remembered for her role as Madame Olga in the 1964 sexploitation trilogy White Slaves of Chinatown, Olga’s House of Shame and Olga’s Girls, she also appeared in 50,000 B.C. (Before Clothing) and TV’s original Dark Shadows.
Hollywood leading man Arthur Franz died of heart failure and emphysema on June 17th, aged 86. His film credits include Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Flight to Mars, Invaders from Mars (1953), Back from the Dead, The Elame Barrier, Monster on the Campus, The Atomic Submarine, Sisters of Death and Dream No Evil. On TV he starred as Bill Winters in the 1959 series World of the Giants and appeared in episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, Man Into Space, One Step Beyond, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Invaders, Land of the Giants and The Six Million Dollar Man.
American character actor Richard Stahl (aka “Dick Stahl”) died on June 18th, aged 74. His numerous credits include The Student Nurses, Billy Jack, Slaughterhouse-Five, Beware the Blob, Terminal Island, Good Against Evil, High Anxiety, Hi Honey – I’m Dead, plus episodes of TV’s Search, Struck by Lightning, Highway to Heaven and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Claydes “Charles” Smith, co-founder and lead guitarist with the 1970s jazz funk group Kool & the Gang, died after a long illness on June 20th, aged 57. Smith wrote the hits “Joanna” and “Take My Heart”.
Welsh-born character actor and anti-establishment film-maker Kenneth Griffith (Kenneth Griffiths) died on June 25th, aged 84. He made his film debut in the early 1940s, and his credits include Helter Skelter (1947), 1984 (1956), Expresso Bongo, Circus of Horrors, Jane Eyre (1970), Revenge and The House in Nightmare Park (aka Crazy House). On TV he is best remembered for appearing in two episodes of the 1960s cult classic The Prisoner, including the series finale, “Fall Out”.
71-year-old Lennie Weinrib (aka “Len Weinrib”), who supplied the voice of the title character on the 1969 TV series H. R. Pufnstuff (which he also wrote), died in Santiago, Chile, of a stroke on June 28th. As a prolific voice actor, he worked on numerous cartoons featuring the Addams Family, Flintstones, Charlie Chan, Batman and Scooby-Doo (he was the original voice of Scrappy-Doo), as well as Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Weinrib also appeared in Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror, The Strongest Man in the World and episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
55-year-old American actor Benjamin Hendrickson, who won a Daytime Emmy Award for playing police chief Hal Munson on the soap opera As the World Turns, committed suicide on July 1st by shooting himself in the head. He had apparently been depressed since his mother’s death from cancer in 2003. Hendrickson also appeared in The Demon Murder Case and Manhunter.
80-year-old American actress Kasey Rogers (Josie Imogene Rogers, aka “Laura Elliot”), who played Louise Tate on TV’s Bewitched, died of a stroke on July 6th after a long battle with cancer. She portrayed the murder victim in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and her other film credits include Two Lost Worlds, When Worlds Collide and My Favorite Spy. A regular on Peyton Place (as “Julie Anderson”), she left the show in 1968 and was cast as the wife of advertising executive Larry Tate in Bewitched. After retiring from acting, she became a motor racing promoter.
Syd Barrett (Roger Keith Barrett), founder of the rock group Pink Floyd, died of diabetes-related symptoms on July 7th, aged 60. Barrett was the lead singer and guitarist of the group until 1968, when an LSD-induced mental breakdown led to him living as a recluse for more than thirty years. He wrote such early hits for the group as “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”, while the Floyd’s songs “Wish You Were Here” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” celebrated Barrett’s genius.
1940s Hollywood star June Allyson (Ella Geisman) died aft
er a long illness from pulmonary respiratory failure and acute bronchitis on July 8th, aged 88. A former Broadway chorus dancer, late in her career she appeared in such TV movies as Curse of the Black Widow and The Kid with the Broken Halo, as well as episodes of The Sixth Sense, The Incredible Hulk, Misfits of Science and Airwolf The first of her three marriages was to actor-director Dick Powell, which lasted from 1945 until his death in 1963.
Tony and Emmy Award-winning stage and screen actor Barnard Hughes died after a short illness on July 11th, aged 90. His film credits include Sisters, Rage, Oh God!, Disney’s Tron, Maxie, The Lost Boys and such TV movies as Dr. Cook’s Garden, The Borrowers (1973) and The UFO Incident. He also appeared in episodes of Way Out and Tales from the Darkside.
Swiss-German actor Kurt Kreuger (aka “Knud Kreuger”) often cast as Nazi officers in movies, died of a stroke in Los Angeles on July 12th, aged 89. He appeared in such films as Secret Service in Darkest Africa and The Spider (1945), and during the 1950s he was Twentieth Century-Fox’s third most requested male pin-up. He moved to TV in the 1960s, appearing in episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Get Smart (“House of Max”) and Wonder Woman, before later becoming a hugely successful Beverly Hills realtor.
American burlesque comedian and Oscar-winning supporting actor Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt) died of vascular disease on July 13th, aged 87. In a career that spanned seven decades, his credits include Five Weeks in a Balloon, Gay Purr-ee, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, C.H.O.M.P.S., When Time Ran Out, 18 Again!, The Ambulance, the TV movies The New Original Wonder Woman and Alice in Wonderland (1985), and episodes of Suspense and Fantasy Island. Buttons was onstage the night in 1942 New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered the police to close down comedian Billy Minsky’s club, the city’s last burlesque show.
American stage and screen actress Carrie Nye (Carolyn Nye McGeoy) died of lung cancer on July 14th, aged 69. The wife of US talk show host Dick Cavett, she appeared in Creepshow, Too Scared to Scream, Hello Again and the TV movie Screaming Skull.
Veteran character actor Jack Warden (John H. Lebzelter) died on July 19th, aged 85. A former teenage boxer (under the name “Johnny Costello”), he appeared in The White Buffalo, Heaven Can Wait (1978, for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Topper (1979), The Great Muppet Caper, Alice in Wonderland (1985) and episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, Bewitched and The Invaders.
Veteran character actor Robert Cornthwaite died on July 20th, aged 89. Best remembered for his roles as various doctors in The Thing from Another World, Monkey Business, The War of the Worlds (1953) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, he also appeared in Kiss Me Deadly (uncredited), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Devil’s Daughter, The Six Million Dollar Man, Futureworld, Time Trackers, Matinee (uncredited), The Naked Monster and episodes of TV’s Men Into Space, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Munsters, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Get Smart, Batman (as villain “Alan A. Dale”), Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Beauty and the Beast and The Pretender.
Oscar-nominated Japanese-American film and TV actor Mako (Makoto Iwamatsu) died of oesophageal cancer on July 21st, aged 72. He appeared in The Island at the Top of the World, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, RoboCop 3, Highlander III the Sorcerer, Bulletproof Monk and episodes of TV’s I Dream of Jeannie, The Green Hornet, The Time Tunnel, Wonder Woman, Supertrain, The Incredible Hulk, A Man Called Shane, Fantasy Island, Voyagers!, The Greatest American Hero, Faerie Tale Theatre, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne and Charmed. In 1965 Mako co-founded East West Players, the United States’ first Asian-American theatre company.
Former child actress and model J. Madison Wright [Morris] died of a heart attack the same day, aged 21. She had just returned from her honeymoon. Mostly known for her TV work, her first major role was playing True Danziger in the NBC-TV series Earth 2 (1994–95). After an X-ray revealed she had an enlarged heart and she was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, Morris had a heart transplant in 2000.
Classical music composer and teacher Dika Newlin, who later became an actress and unlikely punk rock performer, died on July 22nd, aged 82. A singer and keyboard player with the alternative rock band Apocowlypso in the 1980s, she composed the music for the horror film Mark of the Devil 666: The Moralist and appeared in the 1995 movie Creep.
British professional jockey turned film stuntman Mick Dillon died on July 23rd, aged 80. In 1961, Dillon and two other stuntmen took turns wearing the monster suit for Gorgo. He also played one of the deadly plants in The Day of the Triffids (1963) and was inside a Dalek for Dr Who and the Daleks.
52-year-old Michael Sellers, the son of British actor Peter, died of a heart attack on July 24th, twenty-six years to the day after his father died of the same condition at the age of 54. The first child of the actor’s marriage to actress Anne Howe, Michael Sellers was left virtually penniless following his father’s death and he subsequently wrote the biographies PS I Love You (1981) and Sellers On Sellers (with Gary Morecambe, 2000).
Johnny Weissmuller, Jr, the son of the Olympic swimmer famous for his movie portrayal of Tarzan in the 1930s and ’40s, died of cancer on July 27th, aged 65. A former US Navy underwater demolition expert, the six-foot, six-inch actor appeared in a number of TV shows and movies, including George Lucas’ THX 1138 and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. He co-authored the biography Tarzan: My Father with Bill Reed.
Square-jawed leading British actor and “King of the Voice-Overs” Patrick Allen (John Keith Patrick Allen) died on July 28th, aged 79. Born in the British protectorate of Nyasaland (now Malawi), he grew up in Canada and America before arriving back in the UK in 1953, where he got a small role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. He starred as the eponymous adventurer in the 1963 TV series Crane, and his other film credits include 1984 (1956), Hammer’s Never Take Sweets from a Stranger, Captain Clegg (aka Night Creatures) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Night of the Generals, Night of the Big Heat (aka Island of the Burning Damned), The Body Stealers (aka Thin Air) and Persecution (aka The Terror of Sheba). His also re-voiced Leon Greene’s character “Rex” in Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out. On TV Allen appeared in episodes of Out of This World, The Avengers, Journey Into Darkness, The Champions, Journey to the Unknown, U.F.O., Thriller and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (as “Colonel Sebastian Moran”). His distinctive gravel-voice was used by the Ministry of Defence on twenty “Protect and Survive” videos, to be shown on TV in the event of a nuclear attack, and these were sampled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood for their #1 single “Two Tribes”. He was married to actress Sarah Lawson since 1960.
57-year-old Kim McLagan (Patsy Kerrigan, aka “Kim Kerrigan”), a swinging ’60s London fashion model and the former wife (1966–75) of The Who drummer Keith Moon (who died of a drug overdose in 1978), was killed in Texas on August 2nd when she apparently jumped a stop sign in her car and was hit by a truck. In 1978 she married Small Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan.
British wrestler turned actor Ken Richmond died on August 3rd, aged 80. From the mid-1950s he was the fourth bare-chested strongman to strike the giant gong for J. Arthur Rank film productions. He also had small roles in Blithe Spirit and Mad About Men.
Arthur Lee (Arthur Taylor Porter), lead singer with the 1960s Los Angeles band Love, died of lymphoblastic leukaemia the same day, aged 61. Such albums as Forever Changes (1967) are said to have influenced Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and others. Lee was jailed in 1995 for five years for firing a handgun in the air outside a neighbour’s house.
British-born character actor John “Basher” Alderson died in California on August 4th, aged 90. His numerous credits include Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet, the Disney comedy The Cat from Outer Space, Riders of the Storm and episodes of TV’s Space Patrol, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Doctor Who, The Time Tunnel, The Wild Wild West, Rod Serling’s N
ight Gallery and Automan.
Japanese anime voice actor Hirotaka Suzuoki died of lung cancer on August 6th, aged 56.
Hollywood “B” movie actress [Laura] Lois January died of Alzheimer’s disease on August 7th, aged 93. The heroine of countless Westerns, she also appeared in The Black Cat (1934) and The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (both uncredited), Life Returns, Night Life of the Gods, The Wizard ofOz (uncredited as the Emerald City’s singing salon operator) and an episode of TV’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker (“Bad Medicine”).
American TV talk show host Mike Douglas (Michael Delaney Dowd, Jr) died on August 11th, aged 81. In the late 1940s he sang with Kay Kyser’s band, and he was the singing voice of Prince Charming in Walt Disney’s 1950 animated feature Sleeping Beauty.
73-year-old British-born character actor and prolific voice performer Tony Jay, best known as the voice of the scheming Judge Frollo in Disney’s animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame, died in Los Angeles on August 13th following complications from surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumour from his lungs in April. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he moved to America in 1986 and became a naturalised citizen. His many credits include Time Bandits (as the voice of the “Supreme Being”), Warriors of the Wind, Twins, My Stepmother is an Alien, Beasties, Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Treasure Planet, The Jungle Book 2 and numerous others. The Emmy Award-nominated Jay had recurring roles as the villainous Paracelcus in the TV series Beauty and the Beast, Dougie Milford in Twin Peaks and Nigel St. John in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and appeared in episodes of Eerie Indiana, Star Trek the Next Generation, The Adventures ofBrisco County Jr and The Burning Zone.
American character actor Bruno Kirby (Bruno Giovanni Quida-ciolu, aka “B. Kirby, Jr”) died of complications from leukaemia on August 14th, aged 57. His credits include Flesh + Blood, Stuart Little, Helter Skelter (2004) and an episode of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt (“The Trap”).
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 70