73-year-old scriptwriter Dennis Murphy died on October 6th. His credits include The Todd Killings and Eye of the Devil (aka 13).
Film and TV writer and producer Devery Freeman died of complications from open heart surgery on October 7th, aged 92. A veteran of the “Golden Age” of American television, in 1954 he helped create the Writers Guild of America and as a negotiator won the right for the union to decide how writing credits were displayed on screen.
Mountain climber Michael Ward, who was part of the 1953 Everest expedition, died the same day, aged 80. Two years earlier he photographed a thirteen-inch, three-toed footprint in the Himalayas that is purportedly that of a yeti.
Songwriter Baker Knight (Thomas Baker Knight, Jr), whose work was recorded by Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Paul McCartney and Ricky Nelson, amongst others, died on October 12th, aged 72. His best-known songs include “The Wonder of You”, “Somewhere There’s a Someone” and “Lonesome Town”.
Chicago advertising executive Jack Mathis died on October 13th, aged 73. His book on the Republic serials, Valley of the Cliffhangers, was published in 1975, and he followed it with Republic Confidential: The Players and Republic Confidential: The Studio, the first two volumes in a proposed trilogy.
French-born artist and fan Bernie Zuber died of complications from pneumonia in California on October 14th, aged 72. The original vice-president of the Mythopoeic Society from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, he was the first associate editor of the society’s journal, Mythlore. As founder and president of the Tolkien Fellowships, he edited the newsletter The Westmarch Chronicle. His professional career included working on Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and doing publicity for the animated Lord of the Rings. Zuber suffered from bipolar disorder and during the late 1980s was homeless for five years before subsequently losing most of his possessions.
Cartoonist Tom Gill died of heart failure on October 17th, aged 92. He began his career drawing cartoon strips for the New York Daily News and the New York Herald Tribune before joining Dell/Gold Key Comics, where he was the artist on The Lone Ranger for twenty years (1950–70) and such other titles as Hi-Yo Silver and Bonanza.
TV scriptwriter Stephen Katz died of prostate cancer on October 18th, aged 59. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1978 for Best Short Film, and he scripted episodes of Knight Rider and Friday the 13th The Series, plus the 1990 movie Satan’s Princess.
Comedy scriptwriter Fred S. Fox died of pneumonia on October 23rd, aged 90. Beginning in 1939, he worked with such Hollywood legends as Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, George Burns, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Jack Carson, Jackie Gleason, Doris Day, Spike Jones and Jerry Lewis. Fox worked as a gag writer on the Road movies with Hope and Crosby and co-wrote Oh God! Book II for Burns.
Swedish science fiction author Denis Lindbohm, who published more than a hundred stories since 1945, died of cancer on October 24th, aged 78. He was considered a founder of Swedish SF fandom.
Two-time Chesley Award-winning fantasy artist Keith [Arlin] Parkinson died on October 26th, four days after his 47th birthday, following a sixteen-month battle against leukaemia. The role-playing game Everquest was created around his designs, and his work appeared on numerous TSR books, video game covers, magazines, calendars and even pinball machines. His work is collected in Knightsbridge: The Art of Keith Parkinson, Spellbound: The Kieth Parkinson Sketch Book, and Kingsgate: The Art of Keith Parkinson.
New Zealand-born scriptwriter Bruce Stewart also died in October, aged 80. After moving to the UK in the early 1950s, he scripted episodes of TV’s Out of This World, Out of the Unknown, Timeslip and Sherlock Holmes, along with the 1960s vampire movie The Hand of Night (aka Beast of Morocco).
Television writer and creative executive Michael Piller died of cancer on November 1st, aged 57. An executive producer (1990–94) and writer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he co-created Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He also co-created the 1995 UPN series Legend and, with his son Shawn, created the USA Network series The Dead Zone, based on the novel by Stephen King. In 1998, Piller scripted and co-produced Star Trek: Insurrection, the ninth film in the popular franchise.
The death of 89-year-old Hollywood scriptwriter Jerome Gottler was announced the same day. He wrote a number of Three Stooges shorts, including High Society, for which he was mistakenly nominated for an Academy Award when it was confused with the musical of the same title.
Composer and songwriter Rick Thodes, whose credits include Mars Attacks!, died of brain cancer on November 2nd, aged 54.
British-born science fiction author Michael G. (Greatrex) Coney died of lung cancer, caused by exposure to asbestos, in Canada on November 4th, aged 73. His first story was published in 1969, and his books include Mirror Image, Syzygy, Friends Come in Boxes, The Hero Downstairs, Winter’s Children, The Jaws That Bite the Claws That Catch (aka The Girl With a Symphony in Her Fingers), Hello Summer Goodbye (aka Rex), Charisma, The Ultimate Jungle, Neptune’s Cauldron, Cat Karina, The Celestial Steam Locomotive, Gods of the Greataway, Fang the Gnome, King of the Sceptre’d Isle and the collection Monitor Found in Orbit. When diagnosed with terminal cancer, Coney posted three unpublished novels online for free.
Reclusive British author John [Robert] Fowles died after a long illness on November 5th, aged 79. A middle-class rebel best known for his best-selling novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, he also wrote The Collector and The Magus, both of which were filmed. His final novel, A Maggot (1985), included aspects of SF, Gothic horror and detective fiction.
Italian composer Francesco de Masi died of cancer on November 6th, aged 75. His many film scores include Toto vs. Maciste, Lo Spettro, Triumph of Hercules, An Angel for Satan, Three Fantastic Superman, Murder Clinic, Orgy of the Living Dead, The New York Ripper, Invaders of the Lost Gold, Thor the Conqueror and Bronx Warriors 2.
Film historian Dave Holland (David Thomas Holland) died on November 14th, aged 70. Best known as the founder and director of Alabama’s annual Lone Pine Film Festival, he was also the author of the 1989 study Out of the Past: A Pictorial History of the Lone Ranger.
Television writer and producer Edward Gruskin died of Alzheimer’s disease on November 15th, aged 91. He began his career writing for the 1940s Doc Savage comic book and went on to produce a radio show based on the character. Gruskin also wrote and produced the 1950 Flash Gordon TV series starring Steve Holland.
Maurice Zimm (Maurice Zimring), who wrote the original screen story for the Universal classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, died on November 17th, aged 96. He scripted a number radio plays, TV shows and films before moving to Hawaii in 1960 to work in real estate development.
American fantasy author Jay (Mark) Gordon died after a long battle with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) on November 18th, aged 61. A former IT specialist, his first novel, The Hickory Staff, the first book in the “Eldarn Sequence”, written in collaboration with his son-in-law Robert Scott, was published by Gollancz in 2005. The pair delivered a second volume, Lessek’s Key, just prior to Gordon’s death and had almost completed a first draft of the final book in the series, The Larion Senate.
Playwright and TV scriptwriter Robert Sloman died aged 79. With producer Barry Letts, he scripted the 1970s Doctor Who serials “The Daemons” (under the pseudonym “Guy Leopold”), “The Time Monster”, “The Green Death” and “Planet of the Spiders”.
Animation designer Charles McElmurray, whose credits include A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Magoo’s Arabian Nights, died on December 5th, aged 84.
American science fiction writer Robert Sheckley died of a brain aneurysm on December 9th, aged 77. He had been hospitalized in April with an upper respiratory infection during a visit to Ukraine and subsequently returned to the United States after a local businessman paid his medical costs. However, he was not well enough to attend the 2005 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, where he was scheduled to be a Guest of Honour. A prolific short story writer whose career be
gan in 1951, his short fiction is collected in Untouched by Human Hands, Citizen in Space, Store of Infinity, Shards of Space, The People Trap, The Robot Who Looked Like Me, Dimensions of Sheckley and Uncanny Tales. Sheckley’s novels include Immortality Inc. (aka Time Killer, filmed as Freejack), The Status Civilization, Journey Beyond Tomorrow, Mindswap, Dimension of Miracles, Options, The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton and the film novelisation The Tenth Victim (based on his 1953 short story “Seventh Victim”). He also collaborated on books with Harry Harrison and Roger Zelazny, and wrote tie-in novels for Aliens, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5. He produced the 1966 radio series Behind the Green Door, narrated by Basil Rathbone, scripted fifteen episodes of the 1953 Captain Video TV series, and had his work adapted on Armchair Theatre, Out of the Unknown and Monsters. His novel The Game of X became Disney’s Condorman, while Prize of Peril was also filmed in 1983. From 1980–82 Sheckley served as fiction editor of Omni magazine, and in 2001 he was named “Author Emeritus” by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Horror author and anthologist J. N. Williamson (Gerald Neal Williamson) died on December 8th, aged 73. A published author since the 1960s, his first novel, The Ritual, appeared in 1979 and he followed it with more than thirty more, including Horror House, The Evil One, Playmates, Babel’s Children, Evil Offspring, Dead to the World, The Black School, Hell Storm, The Night Seasons, The Monastery, Bloodlines, The Haunt and Affinity. His short fiction is collected in The Naked Flesh of Feeling and Frights of Fancy, and he also edited five volumes of the Masques series (1984–2006) of original anthologies. Williamson’s non-fiction books include The New Devil’s Dictionary: Creep Cliches and Sinister Synonyms and How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and in 2003 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association.
American children’s author Margaret Hodge (Sarah Margaret Moore) died of heart disease and complications from Parkinson’s disease on December 13th, aged 94. The author of more than forty books, including the Caldecott Medal-winning St. George and the Dragon, her other titles include Merlin and the Making of the King.
Prolific British science fiction, fantasy and comics author [Henry] Kenneth Bulmer died after a long illness on December 16th, aged 84. Starting in 1952, he wrote numerous short stories and more than 180 novels under a wide variety of pseudonyms in numerous genres. These include such titles as Space Treason (with Vince Clarke), Encounter in Space, City Under the Sea, The Secret of ZI, The Earth Gods Are Coming and Worlds for the Taking. His most popular series, the “Dray Prescott” space opera sequence, was published over more than fifty volumes by DAW Books (and later German publisher Heyne) under the by-line “Alan Burt Akers”. With Robert Holdstock he collaborated on most of The Professionals TV tie-ins as “Ken Blake”, and he edited eight volumes of the New Writings in SF anthology series. For the UK comics industry Bulmer worked for Amalgamated Press during the late 1950s and ’60s, churning out “novel-length” war stories for War Picture Library as well as contributing strips to such titles as Lion (“Jet-Ace Logan”; “Karl the Viking”), Hurricane (“Worst Boy in School”), Buster (“Gladiator”; “The Drowned World”), Boys’ World (“The Angry Planet”) and Valiant (“The Steel Claw”). A former Honorary President of the British Fantasy Society, he was awarded a Special BFS Award in 1998.
American novelist Rona Jaffe died of cancer in a London hospital on December 30th, aged 74. She began her career as an associate editor at Fawcett Publications before writing her first best-seller, The Best of Everything (1958). Her novel Mazes and Monsters became a TV film in 1982 starring Tom Hanks.
American book dealer, editor, convention organiser and fan “Big-Hearted” Howard DeVore died after a long illness on December 31st, aged 80. He compiled A History of the Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards (with Donald Franson) in 1978, which was revised twice. A member of First Fandom, DeVore was set to be the Fan Guest of Honour at the 2006 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles.
PERFORMERS/PERSONALITIES
American actress and comedienne Thelma White (Thelma Wolpa), who starred as Mae, the drug-dealing blonde in the cult favourite Reefer Madness (1936), died of pneumonia on January 4th, aged 94. A former child star in carnivals and vaudeville, she became a contract player at RKO Radio Pictures during the 1930s and later, after appearing in some Bowery Boys films, developed a second career as an agent and producer. Her clients included James Coburn, Dolores Hart, Debbie Reynolds and Robert Blake. She reputedly had affairs with both sexes, including Marlene Dietrich.
Martial arts specialist and film stuntman Stuart Quan died after losing consciousness in a car returning from a snowboarding trip on January 8th. He was 43. Quan appeared in Big Trouble in Little China, Licence to Kill, The Shadow, Fist of the North Star, Escape from L. A. and Hulk.
Spencer Dryden, drummer with 1960s American rock band Jefferson Airplane and ’70s group New Riders of the Purple Sage, died of colon cancer in California on January 10th, aged 66. He was the son of British actor Wheeler Dryden, half-brother of Charlie Chaplin.
Jimmy Griffin, co-founder of the 1970s group Bread, died of lung cancer on January 11th, aged 61.
Bollywood actor Amrish Puri, who played the evil villain “Mola Ram” in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, died in Bombay of a brain haemorrhage on January 12th, aged 72. Puri appeared in more than 200 films over three decades.
American actress Ruth Warrick died of complications from pneumonia on January 15th, aged 88. Best known for he role as Emily, the first Mrs. Kane, in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, she also appeared in The Corsican Brothers (1941) opposite Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, Journey Into Fear, Disney’s controversial Song of the South, How to Steal the World, The Returning and Deathmask. In later years she moved to TV and starred in Peyton Place and the daytime soap operas As the World Turns and All My Children.
Hollywood leading lady Virginia Mayo (Virginia Clara Jones) died of pneumonia and heart failure on January 17th, aged 84. Initially plucked from the chorus line, the curvaceous blonde actress appeared in such films as Wonder Man, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (with Boris Karloff), The Story of Mankind (as Cleopatra), Castle of Evil, Haunted and Evil Spirits, along with an episode of TV’s Night Gallery (“The Diary”).
31-year-old American actor Lamont Bentley, who appeared in Tales from the Hood (1995), died when he was thrown from his vehicle outside Los Angeles on January 19th.
Cal Bolder, who portrayed the bald-headed “monster” in Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, died of cancer the same day, aged 74. He also appeared in episodes of TV’s Star Trek, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.
American-born soul singer Solomon King (Allen Levy) died on January 20th, aged 74. After touring with Billie Holiday and singing with Elvis Presley’s backing group, the Jordanaires, he moved to Britain in the 1960s and had hits with “She Wears My Ring”, “When We Were Young” and “Say a Little Prayer”.
American actor and voice-over artist Steven Susskind died after an automobile accident in Mission Hills, California, on January 21st. He was 62. Susskind was heard in Monsters, Inc., and the TV series Challenge of the GoBots and the animated Batman (as “Maxie Zeus”). He also appeared in Friday the 13th Part III, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Witch Hunt, Star Trek V, House and F/X 2, along with such TV series as Weird Science, Teen Angel, Tales from the Crypt and Alien Nation.
British comedienne Patsy (Patricia) Rowlands died of breast cancer on January 22nd, aged 71. Best remembered for her supporting roles in nine Carry On films (1969–75), she also appeared in Vengeance (aka The Brain) and The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu. On TV she co-starred as “Netta Kinvig” in Nigel Kneale’s 1981 SF series Kinvig, and was featured in episodes of Out of the Unknown, The Avengers and Raven.
Comedian and talk show host Johnny Carson, whose signature introduction “Heeere’s Johnny” was used to memorable effect by Jack Nicholson’s cha
racter in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, died of emphysema on January 23rd, aged 79. An Academy Awards host, from 1962–92 he hosted The Tonight Show for NBC-TV, reputedly earning $10 million a year by the end of his third decade.
Texas-born singer Ray Peterson, best known for his 1960 death ballad “Tell Laura I Love Her”, died of cancer on January 25th, aged 69. He also had a hit with “The Wonder of You”.
Actor Paul A. Partain, who portrayed the crippled “Franklin” in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), died of cancer on January 27th, aged 58. His other credits include Race with the Devil and Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Drummer and song-writer Jim Capaldi, co-founder of the 1960s British rock group Traffic, died of stomach cancer on January 28th, aged 60. Traffic’s hits include “Paper Sun”, “Hole in My Shoe” and “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush”, and Capaldi had a solo hit in 1975 with “Love Hurts”. He left an estate of just over £2 million to his wife.
31-year-old adult film star Karen Bach committed suicide on January 28th.
American character actor and prolific cartoon voice artist Ron Feinberg died on January 29th. He appeared in A Boy and His Dog (as “Fellini”) and the TV movies Dying Room Only and The Man in the Santa Claus Suit.
Former US airman Dave Lerchey, the first white singer with the Del Vikings, died of cancer the same day, aged 67. Baritone and tenor Lerchey sang on the 1950s hits “Come Go with Me” and “Whispering Bells”. The group’s songs were featured in the movies The Big Beat and American Graffiti.
Eric Griffiths, who played guitar with John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the Quarry Men, before they became the Beatles, died in Scotland of pancreatic cancer on January 29th, aged 64.
New York actor Fred Borges died of a heart attack on January 31st, aged 45. He appeared in such low budget independent horror films as Weasels Rip My Flesh and Long Island Cannibal Massacre.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17 Page 65