STEPHEN JONES and KIM NEWMAN

Necrology: 2009

ONCE AGAIN, WE ACKNOWLEDGE the passing of writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres (or left their mark on popular culture and music in other, often fascinating, ways) . . .

American fan artist Randy Bathurst died of a heart attack on January 10. He contributed cartoons to many 1970s fanzines, including the first issue of File 770, and also designed the first FAAn Award.

British science fiction fan and artist Harry (Henry) Turner died on January 11, aged eighty-eight. The son of a music hall escapologist and illusionist, Turner developed a life-long interest in space travel and science fiction at an early age. He first became involved in fandom in the 1930s as a member of the Manchester Interplanetary Society, editing the group’s journal The Astronaut. He began publishing his own fanzine, Zenith, in the early 1940s, and the following decade published (with Eric Needham) Now & Then. Turner continued to contribute his illustrations of “impossible objects” to numerous fan publications until a stroke wiped out many of his fan memories a few years before his death.

American writer Hortense Calisher died on January 13, aged ninety-seven. She began her career writing for The New Yorker, and her works include the alternate history novel Journey from Ellipsia and the 1951 horror story “Heartburn”.

British-born Emmy Award-winning composer Angela Morely, who before a sex change operation in 1972 was credited as Wally Stott, died of complications from a fall and subsequent heart attack in Arizona on January 14. She was eighty-four. A former conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra, her credits include Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (as “Stott”), The Slipper and the Rose, Watership Down and episodes of TV’s Wonder Woman. She also worked as an uncredited musical arranger on Peeping Tom, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Little Prince, Star Wars, Superman (1978), The Empire Strikes Back, Deathtrap (1982), E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Fire and Ice, The Day After and Hook.

British novelist, playwright and barrister Sir John [Clifford] Mortimer died following a long illness on January 16, aged eighty-five. Best known for creating Rumpole of the Bailey, he also worked on the scripts for The Innocents (based on Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw”), Bunny Lake is Missing, and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (uncredited). In 1971 he successfully defended Oz magazine against charges of obscenity.

American TV writer and jazz musician Gordon “Whitey” Mitchell died of cancer on January 16, aged seventy-six. He was a story editor and staff writer on CBS-TV’s Get Smart (1969–70) and his other credits include episodes of My Mother the Car, Mork and Mindy and a 1986 Twilight Zone.

Screenwriter, celebrity journalist and a publicist for Warner Bros., Mickell Novack died of heart failure on January 22, aged ninety-one. The wife of film producer Walter Seltzer, she co-scripted One Million B.C. starring Lon Chaney, Jr (remade by Hammer as One Million Years B.C.) and the film version of Thorne Smith’s body-swap novel Turnabout.

Seventy-six-year-old John [Hoyer] Updike, widely recognized as one of the “greatest generation” of American authors, died of lung cancer on January 27. Best known for his 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick and its belated sequel, The Widows of Eastwick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, critic and poet’s 1997 novel, Toward the End of Time, was science fiction.

Influential Italian SF writer Lino Aldani died of lung disease on January 31, aged eighty-two. He began publishing SF stories in 1960, and his novels include Quando le radici, Eclissi 2000 and Nel segno della luna bianca. In 1963 he founded his own short-lived SF magazine, Futuro, which was revived many years later as Futuro Europa.

Scottish-born author and English teacher Stuart Gordon (Richard Alexander Steuart Gordon, aka Richard A. Gordon and Alex R. Stuart) died of a heart attack in Shanghai, China, on February 7, aged sixty-one. He began his career contributing to New Worlds in the mid-1960s, and he also sold stories to Philip Harbottle’s Vision of Tomorrow magazine. His SF novels include Time Story, Slaine and the Crow God, Smile on the Void, Fire in the Abyss, and the “Eye” and “Watchers” trilogies. Gordon also wrote a number of non-fiction works, including The Paranormal: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends and The Book or Curses.

Edward (Falaise) Upward, considered to be the oldest living author in the UK, died on February 13 at the age of 105. While at Cambridge in the 1920s, he created the surreal “Mortmere” series of stories with Christopher Isherwood.

American publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Jr died of complications following a fall on February 14. He was ninety. After working at the eponymous publishing company his father founded, he left in 1959 to co-found independent imprint Atheneum. Following a series of takeovers, Knopf eventually became senior vice-president at Macmillan until his retirement in 1988.

American fan and convention runner Chuck (Charles Albert) Crayne died of cardiac problems on February 16, his seventy-first birthday. He had been disgnosed with spinal cancer a few days earlier. During the 1960s he edited the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society newszine De Profundis and co-chaired the 1972 Worldcon – the largest SF convention held at that time. Crayne also helped found the mystery convention Bouchercon in 1970, and in 1976 he was involved in creating the first NASFiC.

Legendary SF and fantasy author Philip José Farmer died in his sleep on February 25, aged ninety-one. His transgressive alien sex story “The Lovers” was rejected by twenty-six publishers before it appeared in Startling Stories in 1952. The author’s more than seventy-five books include the “Riverworld”, “The World of Tiers”, “Herald Childe”, “Dayworld” and the pulp-influenced “Doc Caliban and Lord Grandrith” series. He also published fictional biographies of Tarzan and Doc Savage, plus such literary pastiches as The Wind Whales of Ishmael, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer by John H. Watson M.D., Hadon of Ancient Opar and Flight to Opar, A Barnstormer in Oz, Escape from Loki: Doc Savage’s First Adventure and the Tarzan novel The Dark Heart of Time. Venus on the Half-Shell was published under the byline of Kurt Vonnegut’s hack SF writer “Kilgore Trout” (reputedly partly inspired by Farmer), his numerous short stories were collected in The Book of Philip José Farmer, Riders of the Purple Wage and The Best of Philip José Farmer, amongst many other titles, and he edited the anthology Mother Was a Lovely Beast. He was a winner of the Hugo Award, a SFWA Grand Master Award and a World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.

Oscar-nominated Italian screenwriter, Tullio Pinelli, died in Rome on March 7, aged 100. Best known for his collaborations with Federico Fellini, Pinelli’s credits include the director’s 8V2 and Juliet of the Spirits.

Prolific French horror and SF author André Caroff (André Carpouzis), who produced the eighteen-volume “Madame Atomos” horror series, died on March 13, aged eighty-four.

Spanish comic-strip artist, “Pepe” Gonzalez (José González Navarro), best known for drawing Vampirella for Warren Publishing throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, died on March 13, aged sixty-nine. He had fallen into a coma following a long illness. While still a teenager in the late 1950s, Gonzalez began working for such British publications as TV Heroes and Young Marvelman Annual. As well as contributing to various UK romance titles, in the mid-1960s he also illustrated a syndicated strip based on TV’s The Avengers.

Another Spanish comics artist, José (María) Casanovas, Sr, died on March 14, aged seventy-four. He began drawing from Spanish comics in 1957, and later worked extensively outside his native country, with strips appearing in Germany, Italy, Holland, Finland and America. During the 1970s and 1980s he contributed to such UK titles as 2000AD, Starlord, Starblazer, Scream!!, Eagle and Judge Dredd Annual.

Oscar-nominated American screenwriter Millard Kaufman died from complications from open-heart surgery the same day, aged ninety-two. Best known for co-creating the near-sighted cartoon character Mr Magoo in 1949 with animator John Hubley, Kaufman also wrote Unknown World, Aladdin and His Lamp, Bad Day at Black Rock and The War Lord before becoming MGM’s leading script doctor, working on countless films uncredited. He also “fronted” the script of Joseph H. Lewis’ cult classic Gun Crazy (aka Deadly is the Female, 1950) for blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. Kaufman’s first novel was published in 2007 when he was eighty-six.

American songwriter Jack Lawrence [Schwartz] died of complications from a fall on March 15, aged ninety-six. Best known for the songs “Beyond the Sea” and “Tenderly”, he also wrote the songs for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959).

Hollywood comedy scriptwriter and TV director Mort (Morton) Lachman, who was the head writer for Bob Hope’s “joke factory” for twenty-seven years, died of a heart attack on March 17, aged eighty-nine. He had been suffering from diabetes.

American writer John Kennedy, who had some SF stories published in Galaxy and elsewhere, died on March 18, aged sixty-three. His short fiction was collected in the chapbook Nova in a Bottle (2003).

Canadian writer and collector Chester D. Cuthbert, a member of First Fandom, died on March 20, aged ninety-six. He had two stories published in Hugo Gernsback’s pulp magazine Wonder Stories in 1934, and in 2007 he donated 60,000 SF books and magazines to the University of Alberta.

Triple Oscar-winning film composer and conductor Maurice(Alexis) Jarre died of cancer in Malibu, California, on March 29, aged eighty-four. The French-born Jarre composed the music for more than 150 movies, including Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (aka Eyes Without a Face/The Horror Chamber of Dr Faustus), Judex, The Collector, The Night of the Generals, Disney’s The Island at the Top of the World, Mr Sycamore, The Man Who Would Be King, Ressurection, Firefox, Dreamscape, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Bride, Enemy Mine, Solarbabies, Fatal Attraction, Julia and Julia, Ghost, Solar Crisis and Jacob’s Ladder.

British author, anthologist and biographer Michael (Andrew) Cox died on March 31, aged sixty. He had been suffering for some years from a rare and aggressive form of cancer that gradually causes blindness. A former singer-songwriter (he recorded two albums under the name “Matthew Ellis” and another as “Obie Clayton”), in 1977 he joined Thorsons Publishing Group, and in 1989 he became a senior commissioning editor at Oxford University Press, where he edited The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories and The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (both with R.A. Gilbert), The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, Twelve Tales of the Supernatural and Twelve Victorian Ghost Stories, as well as several other anthologies. Cox also wrote the acclaimed biography M.R. James: An Informal Portrait (1983), and he received a record-breaking advance of £430,000 for his debut novel, the Victorian mystery The Meaning of Night (2005). It was followed three years later by a sequel, The Glass of Time, and he was working on a third novel at the time of his death.

British writer, playwright and poet John (Alfred) Atkins died on March 31, aged ninety-two. When he was called up for war service in 1943 (often going AWOL), his job as Literary Editor at the left-wing newspaper Tribune was taken by George Orwell. He published literary biographies of Walter de la Mare, J.B. Priestley and Orwell, amongst others, and his 1955 study, Tomorrow Revealed, drew on prophetic and utopian writings.

Comics artist Frank Springer died of prostate cancer on April 2, aged seventy-nine. He began his career in the early 1950s, working on newspaper strips such as Terry and the Pirates, Rex Morgan M.D. and, later, The Incredible Hulk. During the 1960s and 1970s he worked for Dell Comics, DC Comics and Marvel Comics, most notably on Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Conan the Barbarian. Springer also contributed to National Lampoon and worked on the animated TV show Space Ghost. He retired from comics in 1992 and took up oil painting.

The sixty-one-year-old Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Dave (Lance) Arneson died of cancer on April 7, just over a year after the death of the game’s other creator, Gary Gygax.

American author Jack Owen Jardine, who wrote SF and fantasy under a number of pseudonyms, died on April 14 after a long illness. He was seventy-seven and had suffered a stroke in 2005, from which he never fully recovered. As “Larry Maddock” he wrote four Agent of T.E.R.R.A. time-travel novels: The Flying Saucer Gambit, The Golden Goddess Gambit, The Emerald Elephant Gambit and The Time Trap Gambit; as “Howard L. Cory” he collaborated with his wife at the time, Julie Ann Jardine, on The Mind Monsters and The Sword of Lankor, and as “Arthur Farmer” he produced several erotic novels, including The Nymph and the Satyr. During the 1960s Jardine published a number of stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Unaccustomed As I Am to Public Dying was a collection of his mystery stories published in 2005.

German-born broadcaster, writer, celebrity chef and former British politician Sir Clement Freud (Clemens Raphael Freud) died in London on April 15, aged eighty-four. The grandson of Sigmund Freud and brother of artist Lucian Freud, his 1968 best-selling children’s book, Grimble, has 150,000 members in its fan club and is a favourite of J.K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman. For almost sixty years, Freud was married to June Flewett, who was the inspiration for the character of “Lucy Pevensie” in C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” books.

Acclaimed and often controversial British “New Wave” SF author J. (James) G. (Graham) Ballard died of complications from prostate cancer on April 19, aged seventy-eight. Born in the International Settlement in Shanghai, China, his family was imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II, and Ballard moved to the UK in 1946. His first short stories appeared in New Worlds and Science Fantasy in December 1956, and he went on to write a number of dystopian or fantastic novels, including The Wind from Nowhere, The Drowned World, The Burning World, The Crystal World, Crash (filmed by David Cronenberg), Concrete Island, High-Rise, The Unlimited Dream Company and Hello America. His short fiction is collected in Billenium, The Four-Dimensional Nightmare, Passport to Eternity, The Terminal Beach, The Impossible Man, The Day of Forever, The Disaster Area, The Overloaded Man, The Atrocity Exhibition, Vermillion Sands, Chronopolis, The Venus Hunters and The Voices of Time, amongst other titles. Steven Spielberg filmed his semi-autobiographical childhood memoir Empire of the Sun in 1987. Ballard’s archive of papers and manuscripts was subsequently donated by his family to the British Library.

American author and journalist Ken Rand died of complications from a rare abdominal cancer on April 21. He was sixty-two. Rand’s work was published widely in the small presses, and his novels include Phoenix, The Golems of Laramie County, Fairy BrewHaHa at the Lucky Nickel Saloon and A Cold Day in Hell. His prolific short fiction is collected in Tales of the Lucky Nickel Saloon, Bad News from Orbit, Soul Taster, Through Wyoming Eyes, Where Angels Fear: The Collected Short Fiction Volume One and The Gods Perspire: The Collected Short Fiction Volume Two. Rand also published a number of non-fiction titles, including The Human Visions: The Talebones Interviews.

New Zealand-born British TV writer and Western and thriller novelist John Gillies (aka Jacques Gillies, John Gill and Jake Gillies) died in April. He wrote the original TV play that Hammer’s Cash on Demand (starring Peter Cushing) was based on, along with episodes of Danger Man, Armchair Thriller, Menace and Shadows of Fear.

Austrian-born parapsychologist and novelist Hans Holzer died in Manhattan after a long illness on April 26, aged eighty-nine. He travelled the world investigating reportedly haunted houses and wrote more than 140 books, starting with Ghost Hunter in 1963 and including Where the Ghosts Are, Haunted House Album and Hans Holzer’s The Supernatural. With medium Ethel Johnson-Meyers he visited the house in Long Island in which Ronald DeFeo, Jr killed six family members in 1974. As a result, Holzer’s 1979 non-fiction book Murder in Amityville became the basis of the 1982 movie Amityville II: The Possession. He also published two related novels, The Amityville Curse (filmed in 1990) and The Secret of Amityville. In 1971 Holzer was a technical advisor on the movie Night of Dark Shadows, and he also wrote the “Randy Knowles: Psychic Detective” trilogy in the 1970s. His other novels include The Psychic World of Bishop Pike, The Clairvoyant, Star of Destiny and The Entry.

Fifty-seven-year-old American fantasy author Tom (Thomas Franklin) Deitz died on April 27 of complications following a serious heart attack in January. His fifteen novels include Windmaster’s Bane (1986) and nine further volumes in the “David Sullivan” series, the “Soulsmith” series, the “Thunderbird O’Conner” duology and the “Tale of Eron” quartet.

Sometimes controversial writer and movie collector Richard “Bojack” Bojarski died in April while visiting a friend in New York. Known for his “Hugo Headstone” comics in Castle of Frankenstein magazine and The Monster Times, he also wrote the early reference books The Films of Boris Karloff and The Films of Bela Lugosi.

British fanzine and feminist writer Abigail Frost was found dead in her London apartment on May 1, aged fifty-seven. She had been battling cancer and apparently died the day before from an undiagnosed heart problem. Frost contributed articles and convention reports (sometimes in collaboration with Roz Kaveney) to a number of fan publications and, for a couple of years in the early 1980s, she was the designer for Interzone. Frost won the 1993 Trans Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) to attend the World SF Convention in San Francisco, but created controversy three years later when, as European administrator, she used the funds to pay her own debts.

Cuban-born American comics artist and animator Ric Estrada died of prostate cancer on May 1, aged eighty-one. He moved to New York in the late 1940s to study art and began working on EC’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat in the early 1950s. Although the penciller also worked for Dell Comics and Warren Publishing’s Eerie, he is best remembered for his work with DC Comics, which included Wonder Woman, Legion of Super-Heroes, and many war titles. Estrada also occasionally contributed to the syndicated Flash Gordon newspaper strip and, during the 1980s, he worked on such cartoon TV series as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Jonny Quest and Bionic Six.

Court clerk and political journalist Herbert A. Goldstone, whose much-anthologized story “Virtuoso” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1953, died on May 6, aged eighty-eight.

American fanzine editor and SF bibliographer A. (Arthur) Langley Searles died of prostate cancer on May 7, also aged eighty-eight. From 1943 to 1953 he published Fantasy Commentator, and revived the title in the late 1970s, first as an annual and later semi-annual until 2004. Searles received a First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1999.

Hollywood scriptwriter and producer John Furia, Jr, whose credits include episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone and Kung Fu, died the same day, aged seventy-nine. He was a former president of the Writers Guild of America, West.

French book editor and translator Robert Louitt, who translated J.G. Ballard’s Crash, died of cancer on May 13, aged sixty-four. From 1973 to 1984 he edited the Dimensions SF imprint, then founded the Double Star line for Denoël, which combined two novels in each volume.

British scriptwriter Alan (Charles Langley) Hackney, best known for co-writing the Peter Sellers comedy I’m All Right Jack (based on his own novel), died on May 15, aged eighty-four. Among his other credits are Hammer’s TV spin-off Sword of Sherwood Forest (starring Peter Cushing) and the 1972 comedy Go For a Take (which featured Dennis Price as a movie Dracula).

British playwright and scriptwriter, Kenneth Jupp, died of lung cancer on May 18, aged eighty. In the early 1970s, he wrote three episodes of TV’s Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries.

British author and playwright Barry England died on May 21, aged seventy-seven. Best known for his 1968 novel Figures in a Landscape (filmed in 1970), he also wrote the post-holocaust novel No Man’s Land.

Fifty-two-year-old British movie fan Alan Keeley who, as “Mister Damage”, co-edited the spoof fanzine Horrorshow (1992–93) with Steve Green (aka Eddie Trenchcoat), died on May 22.

American screenwriter Jack Lewis died of lung cancer in Hawaii on May 24, aged eighty-four. A decorated Korean War veteran who, as a stuntman, had small uncredited roles in a few “B” Westerns in the 1950s, he scripted The Amazing Transparent Man. Lewis also wrote the cult classic Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (starring John Carradine), but sold all rights to credited screenwriter Carl K. Hittleman for a reported $250. He later became a novelist (as C. Jack Lewis) and founded Gun World Magazine. His autobiography, White Horse, Black Hat: A Quarter-Century on Hollywood’s Poverty Row, was published in 2002.

Japanese author Kaoru Kurimoto (Sumiyo Imaoka, aka Azusa Nakajima), who wrote more than 400 books, including the 127-volume “Guin Saga” heroic fantasy series, died of pancreatic cancer on May 26, aged fifty-six. Her books were adapted into manga, animation, musical albums, games and a play.

Best-selling American fantasy writer David (Carroll) Eddings died on June 2, aged seventy-seven. Beginning in 1982 with Pawn of Prophecy, the first volume in “The Belgariad” sequence, former grocery store manager Eddings and his wife Leigh (who died in 2007) turned out a string of popular post-Tolkien fantasies that also included “The Mallorean”, “The Elenium”, “The Tamuli” and “Dreamers” series. They also wrote the standalone fantasy The Redemption of Althalus. Leigh Eddings was only credited on the books from the mid-1990s onwards.

The 1983 John W. Campbell Award-winning SF author, poet and academic Paul O. (Osborne) Williams died of an aortic dissection the same day, aged seventy-four. He published seven novels in the “Pelbar Cycle” (1981–85), set in a post-apocalyptic Illinois, along with two other books in the “Gorboduc” series.

American artist Ilene Meyer, whose work appeared on book covers by Harlan Ellison, Jack Vance and Philip K. Dick, amongst others, died on June 3, aged sixty-nine. She also contributed to Omni and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and her work was collected in Ilene Meyer: Paintings, Drawings, Perceptions (2004).

American comic book artist Dave Simons died after a long battle with cancer on June 9, aged fifty-four. For Marvel he worked on Ghost Rider, King Conan, Red Sonja, Kull the Conqueror, Savage Sword of Conan and The Spectacular Spider-Man, amongst many other titles. Simons moved to DC Comics in the 1990s, where his credits include The Terminator, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. In later years, he created storyboards for the TV cartoon series Captain Planet, Exo-Squad and Masters of the Universe, and his last comic work was on Army of Darkness.

Eighty-six-year-old Bette Farmer (Bette Virginia Andre) died on June 10, exactly fifteen weeks after the death of her husband, author Philip José Farmer. The couple married in 1941.

American children’s author H. (Harriet) B. Gilmore, who is best known for the ten-book “T*witches’’ series (2001–04) with Randi Reisfield, died on June 21, aged sixty-nine. She worked for such publishing houses as E.P. Dutton, Bantam and Scholastic, before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. Her more than fifty other books include the film novelizations Saturday Night Fever, Eyes of Laura Mars, All That Jazz, Fatal Attraction, Pretty in Pink and Godzilla: A Junior Novelization. The “T*witches’’ books were turned into two popular TV movies by Disney.

Underground film-maker, musician and shock artist Joe Christ (Joe Linhart) died in his sleep of a heart attack on June 21, three days after turning fifty-two. For a number of years he was married to horror writer Nancy A. Collins.

American fan magazine and video game artist G. Scott Heckenlively died on June 26, aged forty-five. He had a history of heart problems.

Robert A. (Arnold) Collins who, as a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University founded the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, died of lung cancer on June 27, aged eighty. From 1981 to 1988 he took over the magazine Fantasy Newsletter, changing the name to Fantasy Review. He also edited a number of hardcover volumes of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Annual with Rob Latham.

Nashville fan, collector and convention-runner Ken Moore (Kenneth Alan Moore, aka Khen) died after a long illness on June 30, aged sixty-six. A founding member and former president of the Nashville Science Fiction Club, he co-chaired DeepSouthCon in 1986, chaired it in 1995 and was Guest of Honour in 1991. He also founded and chaired the Kubla Khan convention and ran the art shows at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention and the 1979 NASFiC.

American UFOlogist and journalist John A. (Alva) Keel (Alva John Kiehle) died on July 3, aged seventy-nine. He had undergone surgery the previous October after suffering a heart attack. His many non-fiction books include UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, Strange Creatures from Time and Space (aka The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings), Our Haunted Planet, The Flying Saucer Subculture, The Mothman Prophecies (filmed in 2002 with Richard Gere) and Disneyland of the Gods.

Charles N. (Nikki) Brown, co-founder, editor-in-chief and publisher of Locus, “The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field”, died in his sleep of ventricular fibrillation on July 12 on his flight back to California from Readercon in Massachusetts. He was seventy-two. He started the magazine in 1968 with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf as a one-sheet news fanzine. The magazine grew from there to become the premier information source in the genre, winning the first of its twenty-nine Hugo Awards in 1971. Brown also edited the SF anthologies Alien Worlds, Far Travellers and The Locus Awards, along with a series of annual bibliographical indexes on CD-ROM with William G. Contento. He was the first book reviewer for Asimov’s, wrote the “Best of the Year” summary for Terry Carr’s annual SF anthologies and attended numerous conventions.

British television scriptwriter Vince (Vincent) Powell died on July 13, aged eighty. Although best known for a string of sitcoms through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s (often in collaboration with Harry Driver, who died in 1973), the pair also wrote five episodes of Adam Adamant Lives! (1966–67). Powell also co-devised the celebrity game show Give Us a Clue (1979–97).

Eighty-three-year-old Canadian SF writer, poet and playright Phyllis Gotlieb (Phyllis Fay Bloom) died of complications from a burst appendix on July 14. Her first story appeared in Fantastic in 1959, and her novels include Sunburst, O Master Caliban!, A Judgment of Dragons, Emperor Swords Pentacles, Kingdom of the Cats, Heart of Red Iron, Flesh and Gold, Violet Stars, Mindworlds and Birthstones, while her short fiction has been collected in Son of the Morning and Other Stories and Blue Apes. She also co-edited Tesseracts 2 with Douglas Barbour. Often called “The Founder of Canadian Science Fiction”, that country’s SF prize, the Sunburst Award, is named in her honour and in 1982 she received Canada’s Aurora Award for Life Achievement.

Eleanor “Ellie” Frazetta (Eleanor Kelly), the wife of famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, died of cancer on July 17, aged seventy-four. The couple married in 1956 and, as her husband’s business partner, she was credited with establishing the record prices paid for his work.

Academic Arthur O. (Orcutt) Lewis, Jr., who was president of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1977 to 1978, died on July 18, aged eighty-eight. The author of the reference works Of Men and Machines, American Utopias: Selected Short Fiction and A Directory of Utopian Scholars, the latter title led to the creation of the national Society for Utopian Studies, which in 1984 named an award in his honour. In 2003 the Special Collections Library at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries also named its collection of utopian literature in his honour.

Czechoslovakian-born graphic designer and illustrator Heinz Edelmann, who created the psychedelic landscapes of Pepperland for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, died from heart and kidney disease in Stuttgart, Germany, on July 21. He was seventy-five. Edelmann also illustrated the first German edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Scottish author, illustrator and animator John (Gerald Christopher) Ryan, who created children’s cartoon character “Captain Horatio Pugwash”, died on July 22, aged eighty-eight. Pugwash made his debut in the first issue of Eagle comic in April 1950, before the bumbling buccaneer and his shipmates moved to Radio Times and eventually became a long-running animated series on BBC television. Eighty-six episodes of The Adventures of Captain Pugwash were filmed between 1957 and 1975 in “real-time”, using cardboard cut-outs. Ryan also created inept special agent “Harris Tweed” for Eagle, Mary, Mungo and Midge (1969) and The Adventures of Sir Prancelot (1972) for the BBC, and wrote and illustrated more than fifty books.

Italian screenwriter and occasional actor Renato Izzo died on July 30, aged eighty. Best known for his Spaghetti Westerns in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he also scripted the thrillers The Killer Wore Gloves and Night Train Murders. As a voice actor, Izzo dubbed more than 1,000 films and was the voice of Paul Newman and Gregory Peck, amongst many others.

Journalist, novelist and screenwriter Budd (Wilson) Schulberg, who won an Academy Award for scripting On the Waterfront, died on August 4, aged ninety-nine. Although his novels include the controversial What Makes Sammy Run? and The Harder They Fall, Schulberg is best remembered for naming names – including two of the “Hollywood 10” – before the 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee.

American pop culture collector Lester Glassner died of pancreatic cancer on August 9, aged seventy. For almost fifty years the former picture editor, designer and art librarian for CBS Records accumulated a massive and diverse collection of vintage movie material, books, magazines, records, mechanical toys, antique postcards and other kitsch items numbering into the hundreds of thousands. In 1981 he published Dime-Store Days with photographer Brownie Harris, which featured choice items from his various collections.

Rhode Island specialty press publisher and bookseller Donald M. (Metcalf) Grant, best known for his influential Donald M. Grant publishing imprint, died on August 19, aged eighty-two. He had been in declining health for many years. Grant’s first book was Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945), and he went on to publish books by Robert E. Howard, A. Merritt, H. Warner Munn, C.L. Moore, William Hope Hodgson, Fritz Leiber, Talbot Mundy and many others, including Stephen King’s Dark Tower sequence. Grant was also involved, in various capacities, with Grant-Hadley Enterprises, the Buffalo Book Company, Grandon Publishers, Centaur Press, Shroud, Fantasy Press, Phantagraph Press and Macabre House. A founding member of the World Fantasy Convention, he won three World Fantasy Awards for publishing and was given the Life Achievement Award in 2003.

American SF fan and occasional writer Anne J. (Janet) Braude died of complications from advanced intestinal infection on August 25, aged sixty-seven. She had undergone abdominal surgery two months earlier. A contributor to the 1960s fanzines as Yandro and Niekas (she was a co-editor with Ed Meskys and Mike Bastraw), her fiction appeared in such anthologies as Catfantastic IV and Olympus, and she edited Andre Norton: Fables and Futures.

American songwriter, singer and producer Ellie Greenwich (Eleanor Louise Greenwich) died of a heart attack the same day, aged sixty-eight. She had been suffering from pneumonia. With her husband Jeff Barry she wrote such early 1960s hits as “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Then He Kissed Me”, “Be My Baby”, “Baby I Love You”, “Chapel of Love”, “Leader of the Pack”, “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, “I Can Hear Music” and “River Deep, Mountain High”, often working closely with producer Phil Spector. Greenwich suffered a nervous breakdown after she and Barry divorced in 1965, but she made a comeback in the 1980s with Leader of the Pack, a stage musical about her life.

Acclaimed British novelist, journalist, playwright and screenwriter Keith (Spencer) Waterhouse died after a long illness on September 4, aged eighty. Best known for his satirical novel Billy Liar, Waterhouse was also the co-creator (with Willis Hall) of the children’s TV fantasy series Worzel Gummidge (1979-81), starring Jon Pertwee as the bumbling scarecrow who came to life.

American artist Ed (Edward I.) Valigursky (aka “William Rembach”) died of heart failure on September 7, aged eighty-two. Best known for his depictions of robots and other mechanical devices, he became a staff artist at the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in the early 1950s, working as a cover artist on Amazing and Fantastic Adventures. He later contributed to Galaxy, Argosy and If (where he was briefly art director). In a career spanning more than sixty years as a commercial illustrator, Valigursky also produced countless paperback covers for Ace Doubles, Bantam, Ballantine, Lancer, Pyramid and other publishers.

Emmy and Tony Award-winning American comedy writer and producer Larry [Simon] Gelbert died of cancer on September 11, aged eighty-one. Best known for developing the long-running TV series M*A*S*H, he also wrote the movie Oh God! and contributed to the script for the 2000 remake of Bedazzled (which he unsuccessfully tried to have his name removed from).

Scottish-born scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, best known for writing the 1969 crime caper The Italian Job, died of liver cancer on September 15, aged seventy-seven. His other credits include the acclaimed BBC mini-series Edge of Darkness and an episode of Out of the Unknown (“The Midas Plague”, based on the story by Frederik Pohl).

Irish-born scriptwriter and TV producer Frank Deasy died of liver cancer in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 17, aged forty-nine. The Emmy Award-winning writer scripted the 2002 TV movie The Rats (which had nothing to do with James Herbert’s novel of the same title).

Literary agent Barbara Bova, the wife of SF author Ben Bova, died of cancer on September 23, aged seventy-four.

American writer Mary H. (Hunter) Schaub died of cancer on September 25, aged sixty-six. She collaborated with Andre Norton on the 1996 novel The Magestone and published a number of stories, as well as the solo novel Exile, set in Norton’s “Witch World”.

American SF fan, critic and author Ben P. Indick (Benjamin Philip Indick) died after a long illness on September 28, aged eighty-six. From 1983 onwards he published more than ninety issues of Ben’s Beat and contributed to numerous other fanzines, anthologies and reference books (including studies of Stephen King and Robert E. Howard). Indick’s non-fiction books include Ray Bradbury: Dramatist, A Gentleman from Providence Pens a Letter and George Alec Effinger: From Entropy to Budayeen. He was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 2009.

American-born SF writer and journalist Jennifer Swift died of breast cancer in Oxford on September 30. She was 54. A British resident since the mid-1980s, her work appeared in Amazing, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Interzone.

Edgar Award-winning mystery writer Stuart M. (Melvin) Kaminsky, best known for his 1940s movie-inspired “Toby Peters” series, died of complications from hepatitis and a recent stroke on October 9, aged seventy-five. He also wrote a number of fantasy stories, two graphic novels and a graphic story about Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Kaminsky’s other books include non-fiction works about John Huston, Don Siegel, Ingmar Bergman and novelizations of The Rockford Files and CSI, and he contributed dialogue to Sergio Leone’s film Once Upon a Time in America. He received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 2006.

American scriptwriter Al C. (Altie) Ward, who scripted the American-shot sequences for Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), died the same day, aged ninety. He mostly wrote for TV and co-created the 1969–76 CBS series Medical Center.

American artist Dean Ellis died on October 12, aged 88. During the 1960s and 1970s he painted covers for many publishers and magazines, most notably for several Ray Bradbury novels. He also designed stamps for the US Postal Service.

British composer and arranger Albert (George) Elms died on October 14, aged eighty-nine. Best known for his work as musical director for ITV’s The Prisoner (1967– 68), his other credits include Devil Girl from Mars, Alias John Preston (featuring Christopher Lee), Manfish (featuring Lon Chaney, Jr), Satellite in the Sky, The Man Without a Body, Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons and The Omegans, along with episodes of The Champions and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

Veteran American comics artist George Tuska died on October 15, aged ninety-three. He began his career in 1939 and worked on Captain Marvel Adventures, The Spirit, Uncle Sam, Adventure Into Weird Worlds, Adventures Into Terror, Mystic, Menace and Strange Tales before moving to Marvel Comics in the 1960s where his credits include Sub-Mariner, The X-Men, Planet of the Apes and ten years on Iron Man. From 1959 to 1967 he was the final artist on the Buck Rogers comic strip, and between 1978 and 1993 he illustrated the DC Comics newspaper strip The World’s Greatest Superheroes.

Vic Mizzy, who composed and sang the memorable finger-snapping theme for the 1960s and 1990s The Addams Family TV series, died of heart failure on October 17, aged ninety-three. His other credits include William Castle’s The Night Walker (scripted by Robert Bloch), The Busy Body and The Spirit is Willing, The Ghost and Mr Chicken and The Reluctant Astronaut (both starring Don Knotts), The Perils of Pauline (1967), Halloween with the New Addams Family, The Munsters’ Revenge, and episodes of Shirley Temple’s Storybook (including “The House of the Seven Gables”) and Captain Nice.

Prolific British fantasy author Louise Cooper (Louise Antell) died of a brain aneurysm on October 21, aged fifty-seven. She worked in publishing before becoming a full-time writer in 1977, and her more than eighty books for both adults and children included her debut, The Book of Paradox (1973), plus the “Time Master” trilogy (The Initiate, The Outcast and The Master), the “Indigo” sequence (Nemesis, Inferno, Infanta, Nocturne, Troika, Avatar, Revenant and The Aisling), the “Daughter of Storms” trilogy (Daughter of Storms, The Dark Caller and Keepers of the Light), the “Mirror, Mirror” trilogy (Breaking Through, Running Free and Testing Limits), Storm Ghost, The Summer Witch, Hunter’s Moon, The Bad Seed and Doctor Who: Rip Tide.

American writer and editor Janet [Kaye] Fox died the same day after a long struggle against cancer. She was sixty-eight. A former high school teacher, she was best known as the editor of the monthly writers’ market report Scavenger’s Newsletter from 1984 to 2003. Fox’s short stories and poems appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine, Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, Weirdbook, Whispers, Fantasy Tales and elsewhere, and some of her fiction was collected in Witch’s Dozen (2003). Between 1990 and 1993 she also wrote five of the six novels in Ace Books’ “Scorpio” SF series under the house name “Alex McDonough” (Scorpio Rising, Scorpio Descending, Dragon’s Blood, Dragon’s Eye and Dragon’s Claw).

Maureen Doyle, the wife of agent/editor/publisher Philip Harbottle, died of a massive pulmonary embolism on October 21. Together they worked on the short-lived 1970s British SF magazine Vision of Tomorrow, which Harbottle edited.

Seventy-three-year-old American artist Don Ivan Punchatz, who studied with Burne Hogarth and designed the first Star Wars poster, died on October 22. He had suffered a heart attack eleven days earlier and never regained consciousness. From 1970 onwards, the artist used a team of multiple assistants, known as “the elves”, to help him meet tight deadlines. His work appeared in numerous magazines, including Playboy, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Time, National Lampoon and National Geographic, and he also produced book covers for Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation’’ trilogy, Philip José Farmer’s “Riverworld’’ series, Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology and various Ray Bradbury titles, along with the packaging art for the original Doom video game. During his career, Punchatz worked for publishers Ace, Dell, Avon, Warner and New American Library.

Comic-book collector Sheldon Dorf, the freelance artist and letterer who founded the hugely successful and influential San Diego Comic-Con in 1970, died of kidney failure on November 3, aged seventy-six. He had been hospitalized for more than a year, suffering from complications of diabetes. Dorf was hired to letter Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon strip during its final fourteen years and he was also a consultant on the 1990 film Dick Tracy. Characters based on him appeared in Caniff’s Steve Canyon and Jack Kirby’s Mister Miracle. The first San Diego event attracted 300 people, which was enough to keep it going, and by 2009 attendance had risen to more than 125,000.

Ninety-one-year-old British SF bibliographer I. (Ignatius) F. (Frederic) “Ian” Clarke died on November 5, following complications from a leg amputation three months earlier. An expert on future-war fiction, he wrote The Tale of the Future, Voices Prophesying War, The Pattern of Expectation and eight volumes of the “British Future Fiction” series. In 1974 he received the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for distinguished contribution to science fiction studies.

British editor, publisher and literary agent William Miller died in Japan the same day, aged seventy-five. After working at the Four Square paperback imprint, he joined John Boothe in the early 1960s as joint managing editor of Panther Books, which published H.P. Lovecraft and others. Panther was bought by Granada Publishing in 1965, and seven years later Miller and Boothe resigned from Granada to launch Quartet Books along with Ken Banerji and Brian Thompson. The new imprint included Michael Moorcock and Angela Carter. Miller moved to Tokyo in 1979, where he co-founded the English Agency to sell translation rights to Japanese publishers.

Ron Sproat, who was the head writer (1966–69) for TV’s Dark Shadows and created that series’ vampire character, Barnabas Collins, died of a heart attack on November 6, aged seventy-seven.

American H.G. Wells scholar David C. Smith, who was vice-president of The H.G. Wells Society and wrote the respected 1988 Wells biography Desperately Mortal, died on November 7.

American academic and scholar Karl Kroeber, the brother of Ursula K. Le Guin, died after a long battle with cancer on November 8, aged eighty-three. He wrote the 1988 non-fiction study Romantic Fantasy and Science Fiction.

British author Robert (Paul) Holdstock died of a severe E. coli infection on November 29, aged sixty-one. He had been admitted to a London hospital after collapsing two weeks earlier and moved to intensive care after slipping into a coma with complete organ failure. Holdstock’s first story appeared in New Worlds in 1968, and during the 1970s and 1980s he published a number of novels in various genres under a wide variety of pseudonyms, including “Robert Faulcon” (the “Night Hunter” series), “Chris Carlsen” (the “Beserker” series) and “Richard Kirk” (the “Raven” series). He also wrote the film novelizations of Legend of the Werewolf (as “Robert Black”) and The Emerald Forest. But the author is best-known for his World Fantasy Award-winning novel Mythago Wood (1984) and its various sequels: Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region, The Hollowing, Merlin’s Wood, Gate of Ivory Gate of Horn and Avilion. His other novels include Eye Among the Blind, Earthwind, Necromancer, Stars of Albion, Where the Time Winds Blow, The Fetch, Ancient Echoes, Unknown Regions and the “Merlin Codex” (Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings). He co-edited the anthologies Stars of Albion with Christopher Priest and three volumes of Other Edens with Christopher Evans, and he co-wrote a number of art books with Malcolm Edwards, including Alien Landscapes, Tour of the Universe, Magician, Realms of Fantasy and Lost Realms.

American writer and publisher [Marcelo] “Buddy” Martinez committed suicide by hanging himself on November 30. He had apparently been depressed about money problems. In 1990, Martinez, Jesus (J.F.) Gonzalez and Bill Furtado founded the horror magazine Iniquities (later Phantasm). He then took over Afraid after the magazine’s founder, Mike Baker, died, and went on to publish a short-lived spin-off title, Skull. Martinez also handled layout and design for a number of Gauntlet Press titles, and he wrote several short stories (which appeared in Mondo Zombie and elsewhere). An eBay auction was organized to help pay for his funeral costs.

American literary agent Don (Donald) [Keith] Congdon, who was Ray Bradbury’s agent for more than fifty years (Fahrenheit 451 is dedicated to him), died the same day, aged ninety-one. Congdon’s other clients included Jack Finney, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, and he edited the anthologies Alone by Night (with Michael Congdon), Tales of Love and Horror and Stories for the Dead of Night.

Harry C. Crosby, Jr, who wrote science fiction under his own name and that of “Christopher Anvil”, also died on November 30, aged eighty-four. His first story appeared in Imagination in 1952, and over the next couple of decades he appeared in Astounding/Analog more than any other author. His novels include The Day the Machines Stopped, Strangers in Paradise, Warlord’s World, The Steel the Mist and the Blazing Sun and Pandora’s Legions (2002). A recent reissue series edited by Eric Flint, “The Complete Christopher Anvil” (2002-10), collected all his SF work in eight volumes.

Kennedy “Kippy” Poyser, the former husband of Hugo Award-winning artist Victoria Poyser, died of a heart attack the same day in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He worked on various Norwescons, ran the Connecticut Hatcon in the 1980s and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1981 Orycon. Poyser also designed and edited the 1982 World Fantasy Convention programme book and owned bookstores at various times in Connecticut and Texas.

Eighty-three-year-old American songwriter, publisher and record producer Aaron [Harold] Schroeder died of complications from dementia on December 2. He is credited with writing more than 2,000 songs, recorded by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Roy Orbison, Nat King Cole, the Beatles and many others. Seventeen of his songs were recorded by Elvis Presley, including “It’s Now or Never”, the King’s biggest hit. Schroeder also reportedly wrote the theme song for Scooby Doo, Where Are You!

American writer and academic Jeffrey M. Elliot died of cancer on December 12, aged sixty-two. His numerous interviews with SF and fantasy writers were published widely, and he worked on biographies of Raymond Z. Gallum, Stanton A. Coblentz, George Zebrowski, Pamela Sargent and Jack Dann. Elliot’s books include the children’s fantasy Olgethorpe the Hip Hippopotamus, the SF novel If J.F.K. Had Lived (with Robert Reginald), and the SF anthology Kindred Spirits.

American bibliographer and small press publisher Mark [Samuel] Owings died of pancreatic cancer on December 13. He was sixty-four. He worked with Jack Chalker on The Index to the Science-Fantasy Publishers and The Revised H.P. Lovecraft Bibliography, and was a publisher at Croatan House. A founder of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, he chaired various Balticons and the Compton Crook Award committee.

Screenwriter and director Dan O’Bannon (Daniel Thomas O’Bannon), best known for co-scripting Alien (1979) with Ronald Shusett, died of Crohn’s disease on December 17, aged sixty-three. O’Bannon got his start collaborating with fellow USC student John Carpenter on the script of the low budget SF comedy Dark Star (in which he played Sgt Pinback). After working on the special effects for Star Wars, his other film writing credits include the underrated Dead & Buried (again with Shusett), Heavy Metal, Blue Thunder, Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars (1986), Total Recall, Screamers, Bleeders (aka Hemoglobin, an uncredited adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear” with Shusett) and AVP: Alien vs. Predator. O’Bannon also wrote and directed The Return of the Living Dead, and directed another Lovecraft adaptation, The Resurrected, based on “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.

American film writer/critic Chas (Charlie) Balun died after a long battle with cancer on December 18, aged sixty-one. A regular contributor to Fangoria and GoreZone (with his opinionated “Piece of Mind” column from 1988 to 1991), he created his own self-published magazine, Deep Red, and wrote the novel Ninth and Hell Street. Balun’s non-fiction books include The Connoisseur’s Guide to Contemporary Horror Film, The Gore Score, More Gore Score, Horror Holocaust and Beyond Horror Holocaust. An underground cartoonist and graphic designer, he also designed the monster for Fred Olen Ray’s 1991 horror comedy Evil Toons and he appeared in the 2001 documentary In the Belly of the Beast.

British film teacher and critic Robin (Robert Paul) Wood died in Toronto, Canada, the same day, aged seventy-eight. His essay “The American Nightmare” was one of the first to take 1970s horror movies seriously. Wood’s influential 1965 volume Hitchcock’s Films was amongst the earliest critical studies of a movie director in the English language, and he went on to write books about directors Howard Hawks, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Arthur Penn and Claude Chabrol.

American scriptwriter and producer Michael Fisher died on December 31, aged sixty-nine. A story editor on Starsky and Hutch (including “The Vampire” episode) and producer of the TV movie Return to Fantasy Island, Fisher scripted episodes of The Evil Touch, Matt Helm and Fantasy Island, plus the 1981 SF movie Earthbound.

British-born actor Edmund [Anthony Cutlar] Purdom died in Rome, Italy, on January 1, aged eighty-four. He began his film career in the early 1950s and quickly moved to Hollywood before settling in Europe after gaining a reputation as a “diffi -cult” actor. His credits include The Night They Killed Rasputin (as Rasputin), Queen of the Nile (with Vincent Price), The Man Who Laughs (1966), Evil Fingers (aka The Fifth Cord), The Devil’s Lover, Jungle Master (aka Karzan, Jungle Lord), Jesus Franco’s Los ojos siniestros del doctor Orloff, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, The Cursed Medallion, Nightmare City (aka City of the Walking Dead), Anthropophagus 2, Pieces, Ator the Fighting Eagle, Invaders of the Lost Gold, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Fracchia contro Dracula (as the Count) and The Rift. In the 1960s Purdom narrated a number of “educational” sex documentaries (including the infamous Sweden: Heaven and Hell), along with Witchcraft ’70 (aka The Satanists). He also directed and starred in the 1980s British slasher film Don’t Open ’Til Christmas (which even had its own “making of” documentary). Married four times, Purdom left his first wife to marry Mexican actress Linda Christian.

Veteran character actor Steven Gilborn died of cancer on January 2, aged seventy-two. A former humanities professor at MIT, he appeared in such TV shows as Beauty and the Beast, The Dreamer of Oz, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Touched by an Angel, The Tick and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He also appeared in the movies Timescape (based on a novel by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore), Doctor Dolittle (1998) and Evolution, and his voice was heard in Alien: Resurrection.

Busy American character actor Pat Hingle (Martin Patterson Hingle), best known for playing Commissioner James Gordon in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and its three sequels, died of blood cancer on January 3, aged eighty-four. Often cast as judges or police detectives, Hingle also appeared in the movies Sweet Sweet Rachel, Nightmare Honeymoon, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, Not of This World (1991), The Shining (1997) and Muppets from Space, along with episodes of TV’s Suspense (“Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Invaders, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man, Amazing Stories, American Gothic and Touched by an Angel.

British character actor John Scott Martin, who died of Parkinson’s disease on January 6, aged eighty-two, is probably best known for being the chief Dalek operator in more than seventy episodes of the BBC’s Doctor Who between 1964 and 1980. He also appeared in supporting roles in TV’s Quatermass and the Pit (1959), A for Andromeda, Adam Adamant Lives!, Out of the Unknown, The Tripods and such movies as The Blood Beast Terror (aka The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood, with Peter Cushing), Pink Floyd The Wall, The Meaning of Life, Young Sherlock Holmes and the 1986 musical remake of Little Shop of Horrors.

The original horror host of San Francisco’s KTVU Creature Features show (1970-79), Bob Wilkins (Robert Gene Wilkins), who sat in a rocking chair to introduce movies, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on January 7, aged seventy-six. From 1977 to 1979 he hosted the afternoon TV show Captain Cosmic and 2T2 with the titular robot sidekick. Wilkins also appeared in the 1975 movie The Milpitas Monster and the 2006 documentary American Scary.

Billy Powell, the long-time keyboard artist with Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, died of a suspected heart attack the same day, aged fifty-six. Powell joined the group around 1972 and survived the plane crash five years later that killed three band members. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s hits include “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama”.

British actress Leigh Madison (Pamela Williams), who starred in Behemoth the Sea Monster (aka The Giant Behemoth), died of complications from a degenerative neurological condition on January 8, aged eighty-three. She also appeared in a couple of early Carry On films and an episode of TV’s The Invisible Man (1959).

Three-foot, six-inch Steve Luncinski, who played Stefan, the Castle Prankster in Pittsburgh TV horror host Chilly Billy’s (Bill Cardille) Chiller Theatre show from 1976 to 1983, died the same day, aged fifty-two.

American actor Don Galloway (Donald Poe Galloway), best remembered for playing Sgt Ed Brown in NBC-TV’s Ironside (1967–75) and a pioneering 1972 cross-over episode of The Bold Ones: The New Doctors, died of complications from a stroke on January 8, aged seven. He also appeared in episodes of Gemini Man, Mork and Mindy, Automan, Fantasy Island, Knight Rider, MacGyver and the movie Satan’s Mistress (with John Carradine). Galloway portrayed director John Frankenheimer in a 1990 TV biopic of actor Rock Hudson.

1960s British pop star Dave Dee (David Herman), the lead singer with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, died following a three-year battle with cancer on January 9, aged sixty-five. Between 1965 and 1969 the group spent more weeks in the UK singles charts than any other band with hits that included “Hold Tight”, “Bend It” and the whip-cracking “The Legend of Xanadu”. A former police officer who attended the 1960 car crash that killed Eddie Cochran and injured Gene Vincent, he was later head of A&R at WEA Records, signing new bands (including AC/DC, Boney M and Gary Numan) and continued to tour with his original group.

Canadian-born actor Russ Conway (Russell Zink) died in California on January 12, aged ninety-six. Often appearing (uncredited) in films like A Double Life, One Touch of Venus, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and War of the Worlds, he was billed in Flight to Mars, Bomba and the Killer Leopard, The Screaming Skull, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Our Man Flint and the TV movie The Space-Watch Murders (with Barbara Steele), along with episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, The Hardy Boys (playing Fenton Hardy), Men Into Space, Thriller, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Munsters, The Time Tunnel, The Green Hornet, The Invaders and Get Smart.

American-born Irish actor Patrick [Joseph] McGoohan died after a short illness on January 13, aged eighty. The Emmy Award-winning actor starred as John Drake in TV’s Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), and in 1967 he co-created, produced, directed and scripted (often pseudonymously) and starred as the rebellious Number Six in the controversial 1967-68 series The Prisoner. He recreated the character for a 2000 episode of The Simpsons. McGoohan’s other credits include Disney’s The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, The Three Lives of Thomasina, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend and Treasure Planet, David Cronenberg’s Scanners, The Phantom (1996) and Hysteria (1998). During his career he reportedly turned down the roles of TV’s The Saint (it went to Roger Moore), James Bond (it went to Moore again for Live and Let Die), Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (it went to Ian McKellan) and Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series (it went to Richard Harris).

Russian-born actress Evelyn Kraft died of a heart attack the same day, aged fifty-seven. She appeared in The French Sex Murders, Goliathon (aka Mighty Peking Man) and in the title role of Lady Dracula, before she apparently retired from the screen in the early 1980s.

Mexican-born leading man Ricardo Montalban (Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino) died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles on January 14, aged eighty-eight. Best known for his role as Mr Roarke, the mysterious white-suited host of CBS-TV’s Fantasy Island (1977-84), he made more than a dozen films in Mexico before MGM brought him to Hollywood in 1947. His many credits include Alice Through the Looking Glass (1966), Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Wonder Woman (1974), the two Spy Kids sequels Island of Lost Dreams and Game Over, and The Ant Bully, plus episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Switch, Freakazoid! and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. In the 1967 Star Trek episode “Space Seed” he portrayed genetically-created villain “Khan Noonien Singh”, and recreated the role for the popular 1982 movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.

American leading lady Susanna Foster (Suzanne DeLee Flanders Larson) died of heart failure on January 17, aged eighty-four. Brought to Hollywood at the age of twelve by MGM, she was schooled (alongside Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland) for a singing and acting career. After the studio let her go when she turned down the lead role in National Velvet (it went to a young Elizabeth Taylor instead), and a brief stint at Paramount, Universal signed her in 1941 as leverage against Deanna Durbin. Her most famous role – as Christine Dubois in the 1943 remake of The Phantom of the Opera – was reportedly turned down by Durbin. Foster’s other credits include The Climax, which starred Boris Karloff. She retired from the screen in 1945, and was reportedly found homeless and living in a car in 1982.

British stage and screen actress Kathleen Byron (Kathleen Elizabeth Fell) died on January 18, a week after her eighty-eighth birthday. She had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the past five years. Best remembered for her role as the psychologically disturbed nun Sister Ruth in Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1947), her other credits include A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven, as an angel), The House in the Square (aka I’ll Never Forget You), Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn! based on the book by Fritz Leiber), Hammer’s Twins of Evil, Nothing But the Night (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), Craze (with Jack Palance), Disney’s One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, and The Elephant Man, along with episodes of The Avengers, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Supernatural (“Night of the Marionettes”), Blake’s 7, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and Frighteners.

Actor and stuntman Bob (Robert M.) May, who was under the suit of the Robot in Irwin Allen’s TV series Lost in Space (1965-68), died of congestive heart disease the same day, aged 69. Announcer Dick Tufeld supplied the Robot’s voice (“Danger, Will Robinson!”). The grandson of vaudeville comedian Chic Johnson (of Olsen and Johnson fame), May began acting at the age of two in the duo’s Hellzappopin’ comedy stage review. He also appeared in The Nutty Professor (uncredited stunts) and an episode of Allen’s The Time Tunnel (as Adolf Hitler).

British stunt co-ordinator and actor Gerry Crampton (Robert Gerald Crampton) died on January 24, aged seventy-eight. As an actor he appeared (often uncredited) in small roles in Hammer’s Captain Clegg (aka Night Creatures), Death Line (aka Raw Meat), The Bride, Willow, The Jungle Book (1994), and episodes of The Avengers, The Prisoner and Tales from the Crypt. He performed stunts for six James Bond films, Tarazan Goes to India, Psychomania (aka The Death Wheelers), Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Bride, Biggles, Willow, Batman (1989), A Connecticut in King Arthur’s Court (1989), The Jungle Book, Mary Reilly, Dragonheart, The Odyssey, Merlin, The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells and Revelation. He was one of the first British stuntmen to be inducted into the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame.

Seventy-eight-year-old American actor Darrell Sandeen died on January 26 after suffering a brain haemorrhage following a serious fall. His credits include the low-budget The Education of a Vampire (2001).

British singer-songwriter John Martyn OBE (Iain David McGeachy) died of double pneumonia on January 29, aged sixty. The respected folk, jazz and blues guitarist and singer had suffered from drug and alcohol problems for many years, and he had a leg amputated in 2003, although he continued to perform. Martyn’s best-known albums include Solid Air and Grace and Danger, and he worked with Eric Clapton, David Gilmour and Phil Collins, amongst many others.

American TV character actor and real-life cowboy Clint Ritchie died of a blood clot on January 31 following surgery to implant a pacemaker. He was seventy. Best known for playing Clint Buchanan on ABC-TV’s daily soap opera One Life to Live, he also appeared in episodes of The Wild Wild West, Batman, Land of the Giants, Ghost Story and Fantasy Island.

Lux Interior (Erick Lee Purkhiser), co-founder and lead singer of the pioneering punk-horror band The Cramps, died of a preexisting heart condition on February 4, aged sixty. The band’s 1979 debut EP was entitled Gravest Hits, and their songs include “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns”.

Veteran Hollywood actor James Whitmore died of lung cancer on February 6, aged eighty-eight. Best remembered as the heroic police sergeant battling mutated giant ants in Them! (1954), his many other film credits include The Next Voice You Hear . . ., Angels in the Outfield, Face of Fire, The Canterville Ghost (1974), The Shawshank Redemption and The Relic, plus episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, The Invaders, Tarzan, Planet of the Apes and The Ray Bradbury Theater.

Dependable American leading man Philip Carey (Eugene Joseph Carey) died of lung cancer the same day, aged eighty-three. After making his movie debut in the early 1950s, his films include Screaming Mimi (based on the novel by Fredric Brown), Dead Ringer (aka Dead Image), The Time Travelers, Scream of the Wolf (scripted by Richard Matheson and based on the story by David Case) and Monster (with John Carradine). He also appeared in episodes of Thriller, Kolchak the Night Stalker and The Bionic Woman, and over three decades he played Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan on ABC’s daytime soap opera One Life to Live.

Shirley Jean Rickert, who was one of the child actors in Hal Roach’s “Our Gang”/“The Little Rascals” shorts in the 1930s, died of cardiovascular disease on February 6, aged eighty-two. After appearing in more than 100 movies (often uncredited), in the 1950s she became a burlesque dancer who performed under the name “Gilda and Her Crowning Glory” because of her striking long blonde hair.

Estelle Bennett, a singer with Phil Spector’s 1960s girl group the Ronettes, was found dead in her home on February 11, aged sixty-seven. The singing trio’s hits included “Be My Baby” (described by Brian Wilson as the best pop record of all time), “Frosty the Snowman”, “Baby I Love You”, “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up”, “Walking in the Rain” and “I Can Hear Music” before they disbanded in 1966. The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Greek-born comedian, character actor and mimic Oreste Lionello died in Rome after a long illness on February 12, aged eighty-one. One of Italy’s most prolific dubbing artists, he voiced most of Woody Allen and Jerry Lewis’ performances in Italian. He also lent his voice to Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove, Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, Federico Boido in Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” episode of Spirits of the Dead, Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, and Robin Williams in TV’s Mork and Mindy. Lionello made his acting debut in the 1956 children’s SF TV series Il Marziano Filippo, and he went on to appear in The Beast of Babylon Against the Son of Hercules, Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Case of the Bloody Iris.

American actor Robert [Walter] Quarry, best known for his portrayal of vampire Count Yorga in Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and its even better sequel, The Return of Count Yorga (1971), died of a heart condition at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, on February 20. He was eighty-three. Quarry began his career as a juvenile actor (he had a small uncredited role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and was in A Kiss Before Dying), but after getting the role of Count Yorga, American International Pictures groomed him for a few years as the studio’s Next Big Horror Star, until the genre fizzled out in the mid-1970s. His credits include Agent for H.A.R.M., Deathmaster (as another vampire), Sugar Hill, and Dr Phibes Rises Again and Madhouse (both with Vincent Price and Peter Cushing), but, following a serious car accident in the 1970s, he ended up in such direct-to-video dross (sometimes hiding behind the pseudonym “Robert Connell”) as Moon in Scorpio, Cyclone, Warlords, The Phantom Empire, Beverly Hills Vamp, Evil Spirits, Alienator, Spirits, Haunting Fear, Teenage Exorcist, Inner Sanctum II, Cyberzone, Secret Santa, Jungle Boy, Fugitive Mind and Invisible Mom II. Quarry also appeared in episodes of the children’s TV shows Far Out Space Nuts and The Lost Saucer, plus Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. At the time of his death, the actor was set to appear in a new version of The Tell-Tale Heart.

British leading man and crime novelist Laurence [Stanley] Payne, who portrayed Sexton Blake in the long-running children’s TV series from 1967 to 1971, died on February 23, aged eighty-nine. He also starred in The Trollenberg Terror (both TV series and movie, aka The Crawling Eye), The Tell-Tale Heart (aka The Hidden Room of 1,000 Horrors) and Hammer’s Vampire Circus, as well as appearing in episodes of Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), The Saint (“The Convenient Monster”), The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Thriller (1974), Tales of the Unexpected and Doctor Who.

Born in Shanghai, China, British leading man Edward Judd died of bronchial pneumonia on February 24, aged seventy-six. He made his film debut in the late 1940s and his credits include Hammer’s X The Unknown and The Vengeance of She, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, First Men in the Moon, Invasion, Island of Terror (with Peter Cushing), The Vault of Horror, O Lucky Man!, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983) and Jack the Ripper (1988), along with episodes of Invisible Man (1959), Out of the Unknown, Thriller (1974) and The New Avengers. He retired in the early 1990s and was reportedly in frail health due to his heavy drinking.

[August] Clarence Swensen, who had an uncredited role as one of twenty-five marching Munchkin soldiers in The Wizard of Oz (1939), died on February 25, aged ninety-one. He also played seven uncredited roles in the midget Western The Terror of Tiny Town and donned an ape suit to appear as a chimpanzee riding an elephant in Tarzan Finds a Son.

Carry On actress Wendy Richard MBE (Wendy Emerton) died of breast cancer on February 26, aged sixty-seven. She contributed her distinctive Cockney vocals to Mike Sarne’s #1 novelty pop hit “Come Inside” and appeared in an episode of TV’s Danger Man and the dystopian SF movie No Blade of Grass. Richards’ scenes in the 1965 Beatles’ film Help! were cut, but she is probably best remembered for her roles as Miss Shirley Brahms in the long-running BBC-TV sitcom Are You Being Served? and as matriarch Pauline Fowler in the dour soap opera Eastenders. She recreated the latter character in 1993 for the rarely-seen charity 3-D short Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time.

Veteran American actor John Alvin [Hoffstadt] died on February 27 from complications from a fall. He was ninety-one. Alvin appeared in such films as The Horn Blows at Midnight (as an uncredited angel), The Beast with Five Fingers, The Couch, The Legend of Lizzie Borden and Somewhere in Time, along with episodes of TV’s Climax! (“The Thirteenth Chair”), Rocky Jones Space Ranger, Science Fiction Theatre, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Thriller, One Step Beyond, The Munsters, My Favorite Martian, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (“The Very Important Zombie Affair”), Get Smart, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Incredible Hulk and Amazing Stories.

Sydney [Earle] Chaplin, the eldest living child of legendary comedian Charlie Chaplin, died on March 3 of complications from a stroke, aged eighty-two. He appeared in his father’s films Limelight and A Countess from Hong Kong, and his other credits include Land of the Pharaohs, So Evil My Sister and Satan’s Cheerleaders, along with an episode of TV’s The Bionic Woman.

British magician Ali Bongo (William Wallace), who became president of the Magic Circle in 2008, died of pneumonia on March 8, aged seventy-nine. An advisor to other stage magicians, he was a consultant for such TV series as Doctor Who, Ace of Wands and Jonathan Creek. He also appeared in a two-part episode of The Tomorrow People in 1975.

American actor Jack Grimes, who voiced Superman’s best friend Jimmy Olsen in various TV cartoon series during the 1960s, died on March 10, aged eighty-two. He also appeared in episodes of Inner Sanctum and Tom Corbett Space Detective (playing T.J. Thistle).

British character actor and playwright Derek Benfield died the same date, a day before his eighty-third birthday. Best known for his role as the long-suffering Robert Wainthropp in BBC-TV’s Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1996–98), his many other credits include episodes of TV’s Return to the Lost Planet (1955), Timeslip, Out of the Unknown, Doomwatch, Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense ( “The Late Nancy Irving”), Worlds Beyond and Frightners, along with the movies I Don’t Want to Be Born (aka The Devil Within Her) and Lifeforce (based on the novel by Colin Wilson).

Welsh-born television newscaster Huw [Gruffyd Edwards] Thomas died on March 12, aged eighty-one. He reported the news from 1956 to 1964 for ITN, and also appeared as an uncredited announcer in First Men in the Moon (1964) and turned up as a newscaster in The Ghost Goes Gear (1966).

Oscar-nominated American actress Betsy Blair (Elizabeth Winifred Boger) died of cancer in London on March 13, aged eighty-five. She made her screen debut in 1947, but moved to Britain a decade later after being blacklisted for her leftwing sympathies by Senator Joe McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities Committee. Her credits include A Double Life, The Snake Pit, and an episode of Tales of the Unexpected. She was married to Gene Kelly from 1940 to 1957, and her second husband was film director Karl Reisz (from 1963 until his death in 2002).

Silent film child actor Coy Watson, Jr (James Caughey Watson Jr) died of stomach cancer on March 14, aged ninety-six. The eldest of nine sibling actors, he earned the name The Keystone Kid after appearing in Mack Sennett’s “Keystone Cops” comedies from the age of nine months until he was twenty-two. Among his numerous credits are The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) with Lon Chaney, Sr Watson retired soon after the advent of sound pictures and later became a news photographer and TV cameraman on the West Coast. He was also featured on a 1958 episode of NBC-TV’s This is Your Life. His father, Coy Watson, Sr, created the flying carpet sequence in The Thief of Bagdad (1924), starring Douglas Fairbanks.

Hollywood actor and political activist Ron Silver (Ronald Arthur Silver) died on March 15 after a two-year battle with oesophageal cancer. He was sixty-two. Silver began his acting career in the 1970s, and his credits include The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective, The Entity, Silent Rage, Oh God! You Devil, Eat and Run, Blue Steel, Lifepod (which he also directed), Timecop, The Arrival, Shadow Zone: The Undead Express (as a vampire), Skeletons, Ratz, The Wisher and Xenophobia. The actor turned from being a staunch Democrat to an outspoken supporter of US President George W. Bush’s Republican administration following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Canadian-born singer Edmund [James Arthur] Hockridge died the same day, aged eighty-nine. The baritone moved to Britain in the 1950s, where he starred in a number of West End musicals, including Carousel (1951). Hockridge had a number of hit records in the mid-1950s, including “Young and Foolish” and “No Other Love”, and he made fleeting appearances in a few films.

Tony Award-winning British-born actress Natasha [Jane] Richardson, a member of the legendary Richardson acting dynasty, died in a New York hospital on March 18, three days after sustaining a head injury on a beginners’ ski slope in Canada. Although she originally refused treatment after the fall, she later complained that she did not feel well. Her life support was switched off after her family had said their goodbyes. The daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and wife of actor Liam Neeson, the forty-five-year-old actress played Mary Shelley in Ken Russell’s Gothic (1986), and she also appeared in The Handmaid’s Tale (based on the novel by Margaret Atwood), a BBC-TV remake of Suddenly Last Summer (1993), and the 2005 version of Patrick McGrath’s Asylum, plus episodes of TV’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Worlds Beyond and Tales from the Crypt. Theatres on Broadway and in London’s West End dimmed their lights in tribute to the actress.

Dependable British character actor John [Edward] Cater died of liver cancer on March 21, aged seventy-seven. His numerous credits include The Abominable Dr Phibes, Dr Phibes Rises Again, Hammer’s Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (as Professor Hieronymous Grost), The Woman in Black, Rasputin (1996) and Alien Autopsy. Cater was also in episodes of Out of This World (hosted by Boris Karloff), Doctor Who, The Avengers, Department S, Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries, Thriller (1975), The 10th Kingdom and Bonekickers.

British character actor John Franklyn-Robbins, one of only a small number of actors to have speaking roles in both the Doctor Who and Star Trek franchises, died on March 21, aged eighty-four. His many films include Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972, Asylum (1972), Miss Morison’s Ghosts, The Plague Dogs, The Woman in Black, The Dream Stone, Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde, A Christmas Carol (1999), C.S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia, Hogfather and The Golden Compass, and he appeared in episodes of TV’s The Avengers (“The Cybernauts”), Mystery and Imagination (J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “The Flying Dragon”), The Champions, Doctor Who (“Genesis of the Daleks”), The Storyteller and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Danny Wayland Seals, one half of American pop rock duo England Dan & John Ford Coley, died of complications from cancer on March 25, aged sixty-one. The pair were best known for their 1976 debut single “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight”.

American actor and singer Andy Hallett (Andrew Alcott Hallett), who portrayed the laconic green-skinned demon Lorne in the final four seasons of Warner Bros.’ Angel (2000–04), died of heart failure on March 29. The thirty-three-year-old had battled congestive heart disease for five years. He also appeared as an uncredited student in the classic “Hush” episode of the companion series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and voiced the character of the Cricket in the animated fantasy Geppetto’s Secret.

The 1940s “singing cowboy” Monte Hale (Samuel Buren Ely) died the same day, aged eighty-nine. He made nearly three dozen “B” Westerns for Republic Pictures and had a small role as Rock Hudson’s lawyer in Giant. Hale also appeared in the 1945 serial The Purple Monster Strikes and an episode of TV’s Honey West. The actor also had his own popular comic book series, which were translated into twenty-seven languages. He later became the original owner of the Los Angeles Angels baseball team, and helped establish the Autry National Center of the American West.

Canadian-born actor and country music disc jockey Murray Kash, who voiced the character Colonel Raeburn in the 1960s puppet TV series Space Patrol, died in London on March 30, aged eighty-five. He had small roles in episodes of Tales of Adventure (“20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”), The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Invisible Man (1959), Out of the Unknown and Whoops Apocalypse, plus the movies Mouse on the Moon, Devils of Darkness and Thunderball. His scenes were cut from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Kash was married to singer and comedienne Libby Morris.

Texan character actor Lou Perryman (Louis Byron Perryman, aka Lou Perry) was shot to death on April 1 by a mentally ill convict who was out on parole. He was sixty-seven. After working as an assistant cameraman on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Perryman had small roles in The Blues Brothers, Poltergeist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Cellar and The Monster Hunter (aka Natural Selection).

Veteran Hispanic character actor Victor Millán (Joseph Brown), who portrayed Zahir in the 1950s TV series Ramar of the Jungle, died on April 3, aged eighty-nine. He also appeared in such movies as Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Doc Savage The Man of Bronze, and episodes of Bewitched, The Flying Nun, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man and Knight Rider.

Jody McCrea (Joel Dee McCrea), the eldest son of actors Joel McCrea and Frances Dee, died of cardiac arrest on April 4, aged seventy-four. The six-foot, three-inch actor was best known for his role as the dimwitted surfer Deadhead/Bonehead in AIP’s Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Pajama Party, Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. He also appeared in a number of Westerns (four with his father), along with The Monster That Challenged the World and The Glory Stompers. He all-but-retired from acting in 1970 and became a cattle and elk rancher in Hondo, New Mexico.

American character actress and political activist Maxine Cooper, who memorably made her film debut as Ralph Meeker’s sexy secretary Velda in Robert Aldrich’s classic film noir, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), died the same day, aged eighty-four. She married Oscar-nominated screenwriter Sy Gomberg in 1957, but was “grey-listed” by the Hollywood establishment for her outspoken political views. Subsequently only featured in supporting roles, her later credits include Aldritch’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.

Philippine actress Tita Muñoz (Maria Theresa Sanchez Muñoz) died on April 11, aged eighty. She appeared in Mad Doctor of Blood Island.

Former advertising model and actress Marilyn Chambers (Marilyn Ann Briggs), who had a career in both adult films and mainstream movies, died in her mobile home of a cerebral haemorrhage following an aortic aneurysm on April 12. She was fifty-seven. As well as appearing in such movies as Behind the Green Door, Resurrection of Eve, Beyond De Sade and Insatiable and Insatiable II, she also starred in David Cronenberg’s Rabid and the sci-spy spoof Angel of H.E.A.T. More recently she appeared such direct-to-video fare as Bedtime Fantasies, Lusty Busty Fantasies, Dark Chambers, Little Shop of Erotica and Naked Fairy Tales.

Former actress and community activist Lesley Gilb [Taplin], who played the seductive title role in the 1973 vampire film Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural, was killed on April 13 in a six-car pile-up on Los Angeles’ Highway 101. She was sixty-two.

British actor, musician and writer Bob Hewis (Robert John Hewis) died of an aneurysm the same day, aged fifty-six. He appeared on stage (as The Actor) in The Woman in Black and scripted a radio and stage adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.

Thin-faced Spanish character actor Fernando [Jose] Hilbeck [Gavalda] died on April 25, aged seventy-five. His many movies include Pyro, It Happened at Nightmare Inn, Voodoo Black Exorcist, Clockwork Terror, Creation of the Damned, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, The Possessed, Flesh + Blood, Howl of the Devil (with Paul Naschy) and Mi nombre es sombra, a 1996 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress-comedienne Bea Arthur (Bernice Frankel), best known for her role as Dorothy Zbornak on the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–92), died of cancer the same day, aged eighty-six. In 1958 she played an ugly witch in an episode of the 1950s Omnibus TV series, was an alien bartender in the infamous The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), and contributed her voice to an episode of Futurama.

Overweight comedian Dom DeLuise (Dominick DeLuise) died of kidney failure and respiratory complications from cancer on May 4, aged seventy-five. His many film credits include Fail-Safe (1964), The Glass Bottom Boat, The Busy Body, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, The Muppet Movie, Wholly Moses!, The Secret of NIMH and its sequel, Haunted Honeymoon, An American Tail and All Dogs Go to Heaven, along with their sequels and spin-off TV series, Spaceballs, the uncompleted The Princess and the Dwarf, The Magic Voyage, Munchie, The Silence of the Hams, A Troll in Central Park and Lion of Oz, plus episodes of The Munsters, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Ghost & Mrs Muir, Amazing Stories, SeaQuest DSV, 3rd Rock from the Son, Hercules, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Stargate SG-1 and Duck Dodgers.

Hollywood leading lady Jane Randolph (Jane Roemer), who starred in Val Lewton’s Cat People and its sequel, Curse of the Cat People, died the same day in Gstaad, Switzerland, of complications from hip surgery. She was ninety-three. Her other films include The Falcon’s Brother, The Falcon Strikes Back, the Universal serial The Mysterious Mr M, and (Abbott and Costello) Meet Frankenstein. She retired in the late 1940s and moved to Spain with her husband, property developer Jaime del Amo, and became a Madrid socialite. Disney reportedly used Randolph as a model for one of the humans in the ice-skating sequence in the 1942 cartoon Bambi.

Lynyrd Skynyrd bass player Donald “Ean” Evans died of cancer on May 6, aged forty-eight. Evans joined the tragedy-hit band in 2001, after the death of Leon Wilkeson.

Four-foot, seven-inch Mickey Carroll (Michael Finocchiaro), another of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz (1939), died of a heart ailment and complications from Alzheimer’s disease on May 7, aged eighty-nine. He played the candy-striped Fiddler Munchkin, for which he claimed he was paid just $125 a week. He also reportedly appeared in the Spanky and Our Gang film series and his godfather was mobster Al Capone. Carroll later worked for his family’s gravestone-making business and replaced the worn headstone for L. Frank Baum’s niece, Dorothy Gage, when her grave was rediscovered. Carroll’s family subsequently sued his caregiver, who he had signed control of his assets over to four months prior to his death.

The sixty-seven-year-old actress and dancer Linda Dangcil lost a seven-year battle with tonsilar cancer the same day. In 1954, at the age of twelve, she made her Broadway debut as a Native American dancer in Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin. She recreated the role in the 1960 TV version, and her other credits include playing Sister Ana in ABC’s The Flying Nun (1967–70), portraying a singing trucker in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, and contributing voice work to the cartoon series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and Batman.

American character actor Frank Aletter died of lung cancer on May 13, aged eighty-three. Best known for his roles in sitcoms, he also appeared in Disney’s Now You See Him Now You Don’t, and episodes of The Twilight Zone, My Favorite Martian, Planet of the Apes, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Invisible Man (1975), Holmes and Yo-Yo, The Bionic Woman, Project U.F.O., Fantasy Island and Automan. From 1958 to 1974 Aletter was married to actress and former Miss America Lee Meriweather.

Australian actor and director Charles “Bud” [William] Tingwell died of complications from prostate cancer on May 15, aged eighty-six. He flew Spitfires for the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II, and throughout the 1960s became a familiar face on British television in such shows as Adam Adamant Lives!, The Avengers (“Return of the Cybernauts”), Sherlock Holmes, Out of the Unknown, Catweazle and U.F.O., as well as voicing Captain Brown on Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. He returned to his native Australia in 1973, where he starred in 126 episodes of the popular police series Homicide (1973–77) and guested on an episode of the children’s superhero series Legacy of the Silver Shadow. Tingwell’s film credits include Tarzan the Magnificent, Hammer’s The Secret of Blood Island and Dracula Prince of Darkness, Thunderbirds Are GO!, On the Beach (2000), WillFull and Antigravity. He was given a state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne.

Busy Norwegian-born German actor, stunt co-ordinator, assistant director and special effects expert Freddy (Goffredo) Unger died in Italy in mid-May, aged around seventy-six. He had suffered a stroke some years earlier and was confined to an electric wheelchair. Unger appeared in such films as Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and Knives of the Avenger, Hercules Against the Moon Men, Wild Wild Planet, The War of the Planets, War Between the Planets, Snow Demons, Cannibal Apocalypse, Absurd, Panic, Exterminators in the Year 3000, Devil Fish, Lamberto Bava’s Demons, Wax Mask and numerous Spaghetti Westerns. Behind the camera, he worked on The Humanoid, Treasure of the Four Crowns, Hercules (1983), Yor the Hunter from the Future and Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil.

Former sound-effects editor Wayne [Anthony] Allwine, the voice of Disney’s Mickey Mouse for thirty-two years, died of complications from diabetes on May 18, aged sixty-two. His wife, Russi Taylor, who was the voice of Minnie Mouse, was at his side. Allwine started his career as a Disney post room assistant before becoming the voice of Mickey in 1977 for The New Mickey Mouse Club. His many credits include Mickey’s Christmas Carol, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Runaway Brain, How to Haunt a House, Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, Fantasia 2000 and Mickey’s House of Villains, plus Splash and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. In 1986 he won an Emmy Award for his sound editing on Steven Spielberg’s NBC-TV series Amazing Stories.

British leading man Simon Oates (Arthur Charles Oates), who portrayed the rebellious and flamboyant Dr John Ridge in the BBC-TV series Doomwatch (1970-72) and the spin-off movie from Tigon British, died of prostate cancer on May 20, aged seventy-seven. His other credits include episodes of The Avengers, Nigel Kneale’s Beasts, The New Avengers and the Polish-made Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. He portrayed John Steed in a 1971 London stage version of The Avengers, and also co-starred with Zena Marshall (who died in July) in the low-budget Amicus SF movie The Terrornauts, scripted by John Brunner and based on Murray Leinster’s novel The Wailing Asteroid.

British actress and former model Lucy Gordon hanged herself the same day in the Paris apartment she shared with her cinematographer boyfriend. The twenty-eight-year-old was reportedly despondent over the recent suicide of a friend. She appeared in small roles in the films Perfume, Serial and Spider-Man 3.

Voice actress Joan Alexander (Louise Abras, aka Joan A. Stanton), who made a career of portraying Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, died of an intestinal ailment on May 21, aged ninety-four. She played the Man of Steel’s girlfriend on Mutual Radio’s The Adventures of Superman (1940-51), Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoon shorts of the early 1940s, and episodes of the 1960s animated shows The New Adventures of Superman, The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure and The Batman/Superman Hour. The actress was also a regular on the Philo Vance and Perry Mason radio series, and appeared in TV’s Captain Video and his Video Rangers.

Veteran British character actor and amateur numerologist Terence [Joseph] Alexander died of Parkinson’s disease on May 28, aged eighty-six. A regular on the BBC’s detective drama Bergerac (1981-91) as Charlie Hungerford, he also appeared in episodes of The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, The Avengers, The Champions, Star Maidens, The New Avengers, Doctor Who, Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (“The Corvini Inheritance”) and Worlds Beyond. Alexander’s movies included Carry On Regardless, The Mind Benders, The Magic Christian, The Vault of Horror and the 1984 TV movie Frankenstein. He retired from acting in 1999.

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the Titanic, died at a nursing home in Hampshire on May 31, aged ninety-seven. At just nine weeks old, Dean was the youngest person on the liner when, during its maiden voyage, it struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912 and sank. A month before Dean’s death, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and James Cameron, the stars and director of the 1997 movie Titanic, collectively donated $30,000 to a fund to pay her nursing home fees.

On June 3, the body of seventy-two-year-old American actor and singer David Carradine (John Arthur Carradine), the eldest son of veteran actor John Carradine, was found hanging naked in a closet in a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand. He had been shooting a movie in the country, and the cause of death was allegedly an attempt at auto-erotic asphyxiation that went wrong, although an autopsy failed to confirm an exact cause of death. Best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine in the popular ABC series Kung Fu (1972-75) and the syndicated Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1993-97), Carradine appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows, including Death Race 2000, Deathsport, Circle of Iron (aka The Silent Flute, with Christopher Lee), Trick or Treats, The Warrior and the Sorceress, The Bad Seed (1985), Warlords, I Saw What You Did, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II, Future Force, Sundown The Vampire in Retreat (as Count Dracula), Dune Warriors, Future Zone, Evil Toons, Waxwork II Lost in Time, Light Speed, Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, Knocking on Death’s Door, The Shepherd, The Monster Hunter, Nightfall, Dead & Breakfast, The Last Sect (as Van Helsing), Fall Down Dead, The Rain, Detention, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Night of the Templar, Eldorado, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Night Gallery (“The Phantom Farmhouse”), Darkroom, The Fall Guy (“October 31st”), Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (“A Distant Scream”), Amazing Stories, The Ray Bradbury Theater, Charmed and Medium. He also hosted a video version of the silent classic Nosferatu: The First Vampire that featured a soundtrack by Goth-metal band Type-O Negative. Carradine’s acting career received a much-needed boost when he starred in the titular role in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part over-the-top action movie Kill Bill, and he voiced his original character of Frankenstein in the 2008 remake of Death Race.

Veteran Chinese kung fu actor Kien Shih (Wing-Cheung Shek) died of kidney failure the same day, aged ninety-six. He began his career in 1939 as a make-up man in Hong Kong and is probably best known for his role in Enter the Dragon (1973) opposite Bruce Lee. From the 1940s onwards Shih appeared in more than 300 films, including A Ghostly Tale, The Ten Brothers vs. the Sea Monster, Ali Baba and the 40 Robbers, The Blonde Hair Monster, The Magic Whip, The Horrors of the Evil Shadow, Magic Snowflake Sword, Blood Reincarnation, A Friend from Inner Space and The Magic Crystal. Because he could not speak English, many of Shih’s performances were dubbed by Keye Luke.

Hollywood leading man Ward Costello died of complications due to a stroke on June 4, aged eighty-nine. His many credits include AIP’s Terror from the Year 5000 (aka Cage of Doom), Disney’s Return from Witch Mountain, Bloody Birthday, Firefox and Project X, plus episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

American character actor Del(bert) Monroe, who appeared in the 1961 movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and played Kowalski in all four seasons of the ABC-TV spin-off series, died of leukaemia on June 5, aged seventy-three. He also appeared in episodes of The Time Tunnel, Mission Impossible, Ark II, The Amazing Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Time Express, The Incredible Hulk and Medium.

Kenyan-born British actor and Church of England minister [Walter] Tenniel Evans died of emphysema on June 10, aged eighty-three. Descended from Mary Anne Evans (aka “George Eliot”) and Alice in Wonderland illustrator John Tenniel, he was the son-in-law of actor Leslie Banks. Evans appeared in episodes of The Avengers, Out of the Unknown, Journey to the Unknown, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Menace, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Ripping Yarns (“The Curse of the Claw”), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Worlds Beyond. He encouraged his friend Jon Pertwee to audition for Doctor Who and Evans appeared with the actor in the show’s four-part “Carnival of Monsters” serial.

American TV announcer Ed McMahon (Edward Peter Leo McMahon, Jr) died on June 23, aged eighty-six. For thirty years he worked as Johnny Carson’s straight man on NBC’s The Tonight Show. McMahon also narrated the 1955 horror film Dementia (aka Daughter of Horror) and was in Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, Legends of the Superheroes and Full Moon High. He guested as himself in Elvira’s Movie Macabre, Bewitched (2005), and episodes of Amazing Stories, ALF, Pinky and the Brain, The Simpsons (“Treehouse of Horror IX”), Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Duck Dodgers.

Welsh-born character actress Irene Richmond died on June 24, aged ninety-seven. She had roles in The Brain, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors and Hammer’s Nightmare and Hysteria.

Singer, dancer and songwriter Michael [Joseph] Jackson, who sold an estimated 200 million albums while he was alive, died from apparent cardiac arrest on June 25, aged fifty. A much-publicized autopsy revealed that his body contained lethal doses of a powerful medical anaesthetic – propofol – and at least two sedatives. A former child singer with his brothers in the 1970s Motown group The Jackson 5, he later became a solo artist with a string of mega-hits culminating in 1982 with the biggest-selling record album of all time, Thriller. In later years Jackson became a reclusive and controversial figure due to his bizarre behaviour and odd physical appearance. John Landis directed a thirteen-minute promotional video for the title song from Thriller (featuring a “rap” by Vincent Price), in which the King of Pop played both a zombie and a werewolf. Jackson also appeared in The Wiz (as the Scarecrow), Disney’s 3-D attraction Captain EO, Michael Jackson’s Ghosts and Men in Black II, and he sang the title song for the 1972 killer rat movie Ben. Jackson’s plans to produce and star in a 2002 biopic, The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe, came to nothing.

The sixty-two-year-old Hollywood actress Farrah Fawcett (Ferrah Leni Fawcett) died after a long and very public battle against cancer the same day. After appearing on an iconic 1970s poster, the Texas-born actress was cast as Jill Munroe in the first season of ABC-TV’s Charlie’s Angels (1976–77) before she abruptly quit the show. She also appeared in I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun and four episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man (opposite her husband [1973–82] Lee Majors), while her movie credits include Myra Breckinridge (with John Carradine), Logan’s Run, Saturn 3 and Disney’s The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars. The month before her death, NBC aired a documentary in which the actress allowed cameras to chronicle her fight against cancer. From 1980 to 1997 Fawcett dated Ryan O’Neal, and the actor was at her bedside when she died.

Perky Hollywood “B” movie actress and singer Gale Storm (Josephine Owaissa Cottle) died on June 27, aged eighty-seven. She appeared in the Monogram mysteries Cosmo Jones Crime Smasher (based on the radio series) and Revenge of the Zombies (with John Carradine), along with an episode of TV’s The Unexpected. She had her own eponymous TV series from 1956 to 1960 (Boris Karloff appeared as himself in a 1959 episode) and recorded a number of chart hits, including “I Hear You Knocking” and “Dark Moon”, which reached #4 on the Billboard chart.

Comedian, impersonator and voice artist Fred Travalena (Frederick Albert Travalena III) died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on June 28, aged sixty-six. He appeared on TV in episodes of Fantasy Island and Black Scorpion, and contributed voice-work to The Jetsons, The ABC Comedy Hour, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Smurfs, Dinosaurs and King Fu Magoo.

Czechoslovakian-born actor Jan Rubes died of complications from a stroke in Toronto, Canada, on June 29. He was eighty-nine. A former opera singer, Rubes emigrated to Canada in 1948. He appeared in such films as Deadly Harvest, Murder in Space, Dead of Winter, Blood Relations, The Kiss, The Amityville Curse, Lamb Chop and the Haunted Studio (as the Phantom) and The Birds II: Land’s End, along with episodes of The New Avengers, War of the Worlds, the unsold 1992 TV pilot for The Witches of Eastwick, The X Files, The Outer Limits (1999), Stargate SG-1 and Mentors.

Brothers Alberto Jiménez and Alejandro Pérez Jiménez, two masked Mexican midget wrestlers (“Lucha Mini”) who fought professionally under the names “La Parkita” (“Little Death”) and “Espectrito II”, were found dead by cleaners in a low-rent Mexico City hotel the same day. They were both thirty-six. Police believe that following a TV appearance, the pair picked up two women posing as prostitutes who gave them a cocktail of alcohol and drugs so that they could rob them. Although not usually lethal, the dose may have been too strong for the sibling luchadors. Their masks were placed on their coffins at the funeral. Police later arrested a sixty-five-year-old woman in connection with the deaths.

American singer and actor Harve Presnell (George Harvey Presnell), who portrayed Little Orphan Annie’s millionaire benefactor Daddy Warbucks on stage more than 2,000 times, died of pancreatic cancer on June 30, aged seventy-five. On TV he was best known in the recurring roles of Dr Sam Lane in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1995–97) and Mr Parker in The Pretender (1997–2000) and the show’s spin-off movies The Pretender 2001 and The Pretender: Island of the Haunted. Presnell also appeared in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (uncredited), Star Trek: Voyager, The Guardian, The Outer Limits (1998) and Charmed, along with the movies Blood Bath (1976), The Whole Wide World (as Robert E. Howard’s father), Tidal Wave: No Escape, Escanaba in da Moonlight, Face/Off and Evan Almighty.

Veteran Oscar-winning American actor Karl Malden (Malden George Sekulovich), who starred as Detective Lt Mike Stone in ABC-TV’s popular police series The Streets of San Francisco (1972–77) and the 1992 spin-off movie, died in his sleep on July 1, aged ninety-seven. Malden also starred in the 1954 3-D movie Phantom of the Rue Morgue (based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”), and his other film credits include Dead Ringer (aka Dead Image), Murderer’s Row, Billion Dollar Brain, Dario Argento’s The Cat o’Nine Tales, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Meteor, and as the Walrus in the musical Alice in Wonderland (1985).

American actress and former model Anna Karen [Morrow], who was married to actor Jeff Morrow from 1947 until his death in 1993, died the same day, aged ninety-four. She had roles in episodes of TV’s Lights Out, One Step Beyond, Star Trek (“All Our Yesterdays”) and Project U.F.O.

Bob (Robert Bostwick) Mitchell, one of the last silent film organists in Hollywood, also died on July 1, aged ninety-six. Although the arrival of sound put an end to his career at the age of sixteen, in the early 1990s he became the resident organist at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax Avenue. He also appeared (usually uncredited as a choir conductor) in a few films, including The Big Broadcast of 1938.

Hollywood leading lady Brenda Joyce (Betty “Graftina” Leabo), who played Jane to both Johnny Weissmuller’s and Lex Barker’s Tarzans, died of pneumonia on July 4, aged ninety-seven. She had been battling dementia for a decade. The former model made her screen debut in the Oscar-winning The Rains Came (1939) before being relegated to such “B” movies as Whispering Ghosts (with John Carradine), the “Inner Sanctum” mysteries Strange Confession (aka The Missing Head) and Pillow of Death (both with Lon Chaney, Jr) and The Spider Woman Strikes Back (with Gale Sondergaard). Succeeding Maureen O’Sullivan in the role, she portrayed the jungle man’s mate in Tarzan and the Amazons, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (with Acquenetta), Tarzan and the Huntress, Tarzan and the Mermaids (with George Zucco) and Tarzan’s Magic Fountain. Leaving movies in the late 1940s, she worked incognito for a decade in Washington for the Department of Immigration, and she also kept her past secret from staff at the nursing home in Santa Monica, where she spent her final years.

British singer, sailor, cook, property developer, sometime-actor and general bon vivant Hugh [Geoffroy] Millais, the great-grandson of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais, died the same day, aged seventy-nine. A friend to the rich and famous, including Salvador Dali, Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway, he appeared in a few films, including Robert Altman’s psychological mystery Images.

British actress Zena Marshall, who was born in Nairobi, Kenya, died in London of cancer on July 10, aged eighty-three. A member of Rank’s famous “Charm School” (alongside Christopher Lee and Diana Dors), she played seductive villain Miss Taro in the first James Bond movie, Dr No (1962). Her other film credits include Miranda, Helter Skelter (1949), So Long at the Fair, Three Cases of Murder (the “Lord Mountdrago” episode with Orson Welles) and the Amicus SF movie The Terrornauts, plus episodes of TV’s Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff) and Invisible Man (1959).

British character actor John [Patrick] Breslin, best known for his role as Alan-a-Dale in the 1953 TV series Robin Hood, died on July 11, aged eighty. He apparently turned up in a couple of uncredited roles in The 3 Worlds of Gulliver and Gorgo, and appeared in the Doctor Who series “Spearhead from Space” and an episode of U.F.O. During the 1960s, Breslin reportedly dubbed Steve Reeves in a number of Italian muscleman films.

Hollywood leading lady Beverly [Louise] Roberts, who co-starred with Boris Karloff in Warner Bros.’ West of Shanghai, died on July 13, aged ninety-five.

Albanian-born Italian actress Romana Francesca Coluzzi died of lung cancer on July 15, aged sixty-six. Best remembered for her sex comedies of the 1970s, she made her uncredited screen debut in Lucio Fulci’s SF comedy 002 operazione Luna (1965), and her other film credits include Themroc, Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco, ovvero: Dracula in Brianza, Bollenti spiriti and Red Sonja.

Respected TV broadcaster and commentator (“The Most Trusted Man in America”) Walter Cronkite (Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr), died of cerebrovascular disease on July 17, aged ninety-two. While a news anchor for CBS, he covered the Apollo XI Moon landing in 1969 for twenty-seven out of the thirty hours of the flight. He also hosted the 2000 TV movie Fail Safe and contributed his voice to the animated movie We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story.

Musician Gordon Waller, one half of the 1960s British pop duo Peter & Gordon (with Jane Asher’s brother, Peter), died of cardiac arrest in Norwich, Connecticut, the same day, aged sixty-four. The duo’s biggest hit was “A World Without Love” in 1964, written by Paul McCartney.

British stage, screen and radio actress Jill [Angela Henriette] Balcon, the daughter of Ealing Studios boss Sir Michael Balcon, died on July 18, aged eighty-four. She married future poet laureate C. Day-Lewis after a very public scandal in 1951, and the couple remained together until his early death from cancer in 1972. The second of their two children is Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Hollywood actress and former department store model Virginia [Elizabeth] Carroll, who appeared (uncredited) with her first husband, actor Ralph Byrd, in the 1938 Republic serial Dick Tracy Returns, died on July 23, aged ninety-five. She was also in the serials Mysterious Doctor Satan, G-Men vs. the Black Dragon (aka Black Dragons of Manzanar), The Crimson Ghost (aka Cyclotrode ‘X’), The Black Widow (aka Sombra, the Spider Woman) and Superman (1948, as Martha Kent). Her many other credits include episodes of TV’s Adventures of Superman and The Adventures of Dr Fu Manchu.

Irish-born character actor Harry Towb died of cancer in London on July 24, aged eighty-three. He was in Digby the Biggest Dog in the World, and appeared on TV in a 1958 adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace for ITV Play of the Week and episodes of the 1950s Sherlock Holmes, Suspense, The Avengers, The Champions and Doctor Who.

Character actor Clayton D. (David) Hill, who played a lead zombie in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, died of complications from pneumonia on July 27, aged eighty-eight. A former singer who also worked as a location casting director, weapons co-ordinator and second unit director, Hill appeared in Knightriders, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (as The Priest) and was about to start filming River of Darkness when he died.

Sixty-six-year-old Italian-born singer Renato Pagliari who, as one half of the duo Renée (Hilary Lester) and Renato, topped the UK charts for four weeks in 1982 with “Save Your Love”, died following surgery for a brain tumour on July 29. He also sang the jingle “Just One More Cornetto” in the memorable Wall’s ice-cream commercial.

The same day saw the deaths of twenty-eight-year-old Michelle Partlow (aka Amber Harris) and fifty-nine-year-old Wanda Faye [Mabrey] in an automobile accident in Beebe, Arkansas. Both actresses appeared in the direct-to-video movies Evil on Queen Street, Evil on Queen Street: Ascension, StoryLine and Pray for the Hunters.

Influential American folk musician and folklorist Mike (Michael) Seeger, half-brother of Pete Seeger and brother of Peggy Seeger, died on August 7, aged seventy-five. A founding member in the late 1950s of the music group The New Lost City Ramblers, his own record albums include Tipple Loom and Rail and Music from True Vine.

Film and TV character actor John Quade (John William Saunders III), who made a career out of playing “heavies” and sheriffs, died in his sleep on August 9, aged seventy-one. A former worker in the missile and aerospace industry before he became an actor, Quade appeared in the pilot for Planet Earth, The Swinging Cheerleaders, The Ghost of Flight 401, The Highwayman, And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird, plus episodes of The Wild Wild West, The Bionic Woman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Galactica 1980, Manimal and Werewolf.

Romanian-born character actor Henry Ramer died in Toronto, Canada, the same day. He was thought to be in his eighties. Ramer’s credits include Change of Mind, Welcome to Blood City, Starship Invasions (with Christopher Lee) and Virus, plus voice work on the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon series, Friday the 13th The Series, Screamers and Mythic Warriors: Guardians of the Legend. The actor was also the voice of “the mysterious Luther Kranst”, who introduced 100 episodes of the Canadian late-night radio series Nightfall (1980-83), which included adaptations of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Monkey’s Paw”.

Former fashion model/Hollywood actress Ruth Ford died on August 12, aged ninety-eight. A member of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre group, during the 1940s she appeared in such “B” movies as Secrets of the Lone Wolf, The Hidden Hand (with Milton Parsons), The Woman Who Came Back and Dragonwyck (uncredited), before making a belated comeback in Too Scared to Scream (1985). She was married to actors Peter van Eyck and Zachary Scott.

Actor and comedian Sammy Petrillo (Sam Patrello, aka Samuel Petrillo), who made a career out of looking and sounding like Jerry Lewis, died of cancer on August 15, aged seventy-four. Best known for playing himself in the not-quite-dreadful 1952 horror comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (aka The Boys from Brooklyn), he also appeared in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (uncredited), the nudie comedies Shangri-La and Doris Wishman’s Keyholes Are For Peeping, along with the 1997 documentary Lugosi: Hollywood’s Dracula. As the owner of a Pittsburgh comedy nightclub, he gave Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller their first big breaks.

Ninety-year-old Virginia Davis who, as a four-year-old, was the curly-haired star of Walt Disney’s pioneering Alice films (1923-25), combining animation with live-action, died the same day. She also had an uncredited role in the old dark house mystery Murder at the Vanities (1934) and provided some background voices for Disney’s Pinocchio. Davis later became an interior designer, magazine editor and a real estate agent.

Mexican character actor Héctor Gómez [Sotomayor] died of cancer on August 15, aged seventy-four. He appeared in Invisible Man in Mexico, Blue Demon destructor de espías, Pasaporte a la muerte and the 1962 TV series Las momias de Guanajuato.

Johnny Carter, lead tenor of the 1960s group The Dells (“Oh, What a Night”) and the last surviving member of the 1950s group The Flamingos (“I Only Have Eyes for You”), died of lung cancer on August 21, aged seventy-five.

Diminutive British variety actress Sadie Corré died of complications from a stroke on August 26, aged ninety-one. Her first film role was as the ventriloquist dummy Hugo in the 1964 Devil Doll, and she also had small roles in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wombling Free, The Dark Crystal, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (as an Ewok), Brazil, Willow and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The four-foot, two-inch Corré also played various pantomime cats on stage.

American actor Wayne Tippit died on August 28, aged seventy-six. Tippit, who underwent a lung transplant in 2000, died of complications from emphysema. In 1964 he was assistant director and played the drunk killed by a monster in The Horror of Party Beach. His other credits include episodes of Tales from the Darkside, Quantum Leap, Dark Shadows (1990–91), The X Files and Dark Skies (as J. Edgar Hoover).

German actress and dancer Mady Rahl (Edith Gertrud Meta Raschke), reportedly the last surviving star of the UFA studio, died of cancer the same day, aged ninety-four. She made her film debut in 1934, and her numerous credits include The Inn on Dartmoor, The Horror of Blackwood Castle, Venus in Furs and the TV comedy Faust auf eigene Faust.

Mexican actress Yolanda Varela (Carmen Yolanda Sainz Reyes) died of a cerebral embolism on August 29, aged seventy-nine. She began her film career while a teenager, and her credits include La casa del terror (aka Face of the Screaming Werewolf, with Lon Chaney, Jr).

Dependable Scottish actor Iain Cuthbertson died on September 4, aged seventy-nine. Although he appeared in a number of films, he is better known for his TV work in Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape and episodes of Adam Adamant Lives!, The Avengers, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Children of the Stones, Survivors, Doctor Who (“The Ribos Operation”) and The Ray Bradbury Theater.

Former child actor Frank [Francis Edward] Coghlan, Jr (aka Junior Coghlan) who, as Billy Batson, shouted “Shazam!” and turned into the adult superhero (Tom Tyler) of the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, died on September 7, aged ninety-three. His many other films (often uncredited) include Charlie Chan at the Race Track, It’s a Wonderful Life, Murder Over New York and Valley of the Dolls. In 1974 he had a cameo role in the CBS-TV series Shazam!

Australian-born actor Ray Barrett (Raymond Charles Barrett), who voiced both John Tracy and the villainous Hood in Thunderbirds (1965–66) and Thunderbirds Are GO!, died on September 8 of a brain haemorrhage on Australia’s Gold Coast. He was eighty-two. Barrett worked in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in such movies as The Reptile for Hammer and Revenge, while his TV credits include Out of This World, The Avengers, Doctor Who and Stingray (as the voice of Commander Sam Shore who announced “Stand by for action!”).

South African-born actor Zakes Mokae died in Las Vegas of complications from a stroke on September 11, aged seventy-five. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for a number of years. Mokae moved to London in the early 1960s when his acting career was blocked in his own country, and he eventually relocated to America in the mid-1970s. He appeared in the films The Island, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Body Parts, Dust Devil, Vampire in Brooklyn, Outbreak and Waterworld, along with episodes of Knight Rider and The X Files.

American actor Paul Burke died of leukaemia and non-Hodg-kin’s lymphoma on September 13, aged eighty-three. Although he made his film debut in the early 1950s and appeared in such movies as Francis Goes to West Point, Francis in the Navy, The Disembodied, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, Crowhaven Farm (with John Carradine) and Psychic Killer, he was better known as a TV star with appearances in such shows as Adventures of Superman, Men Into Space, Thriller (1974) and Fantasy Island to his credit.

Hollywood leading man Patrick [Wayne] Swayze died on September 14 after losing his two-year battle against pancreatic cancer. He was fifty-seven. A trained dancer, Swayze starred in Red Dawn, Steel Dawn, Dirty Dancing, Ghost, Tall Tale, Three Wishes, Donnie Darko, George and the Dragon, King Solomon’s Mines (2004), Disney’s The Fox and the Hound 2 and an episode of TV’s Amazing Stories.

American character actor Henry Gibson (James Bateman), best known as a regular cast member on NBC-TV’s Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In from 1967 to 1971, died of cancer the same day, aged seventy-three. Gibson made his movie debut in The Nutty Professor (1963), and his other credits include Charlotte’s Web (1973), Halloween is Grinch Night, The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t (as Igor), The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Monster in the Closet (with John Carradine), Innerspace, The ’burbs, Around the World in 80 Days (1989), Night Visitor, Brenda Starr, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (with Christopher Lee), Escape to Witch Mountain (1995), Asylum (1997) and The Luck of the Irish. Gibson was also in episodes of TV’s My Favorite Martian, Bewitched, Wonder Woman, Fantasy Island, The Twilight Zone (1986), Knight Rider, Eerie Indiana, Tales from the Crypt, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Total Recall 2070, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Early Edition, Stagate: SG-1 and Charmed, and he was a regular voice on Galaxy High School.

British actor John [Patrick] Joyce, who worked with Ken Campbell’s Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool on such stage productions as the nine-hour Illuminatus! (1977) and the twenty-two hour The Warp (1979), died from oesophageal cancer on September 15, aged seventy. His film and TV appearances include Morons from Outer Space and Doctor Who (“The Daemons”), and for the last ten years of his life he worked as a dummy patient for doctors training in London hospitals.

Busy character actor Timothy [Dingwall] Bateson died the same day, aged eighty-three. He appeared in the first British stage production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1955, and his numerous film and TV credits include Vice Versa (1948), What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide!), The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Hammer’s Nightmare, The Evil of Frankenstein and The Anniversary, Torture Garden, Twisted Nerve, A Christmas Carol (1984), Labyrinth, Merlin (1998), The 10th Kingdom, Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (as the voice of Kreacher), along with episodes of Out of the Unknown, The Avengers, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Polterguests and Relic Hunter.

Mary Travers, who sang with the 1960s American folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, died of leukaemia on September 16, aged seventy-two. The trio’s hits include “Puff the Magic Dragon”, Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and their only #1 hit, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”.

Six-foot, five-inch tall American stuntman and actor Dick Durock, who portrayed the heroic monster in Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing, The Return of Swamp Thing and the 1990s cable TV series, died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on September 17, aged seventy-two. He began his career as a stunt double for Guy Williams on the final season of Lost in Space, and his other credits include Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, The Thing with Two Heads, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, Doc Savage Man of Bronze, The Nude Bomb, More Wild Wild West, The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Stand By Me, Ewocks: The Battle for Endor, Howard the Duck, The Monster Squad and Remote Control, plus episodes of Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica (as the Imperious Leader), Quark, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Incredible Hulk, The Powers of Matthew Star, Knight Rider and Hard Time on Planet Earth.

Prolific Spanish character actor Víctor Israel (Josep Maria Soler Vilanova) died on September 19, aged eighty. His many credits include The Sweet Sound of Death, The House That Screamed, Exorcism’s Daughter, The Light at the Edge of the World (based on the novel by Jules Verne), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), Necrophagus, The Witches’ Mountain, Horror Express (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), The Mysterious Island (1973), Devil’s Kiss, Night of the Howling Beast and Crimson (both with Paul Naschy), El jovencito Drácula, Zombie Creeping Flesh (aka Night of the Zombies), The Sea Serpent (with Ray Milland), Más allá de la muerte and El anticristo 2, along with numerous Spaghetti Westerns and comedies.

American actor John Hart, who took over from Clayton Moore as TV’s The Lone Ranger in 1952–53, died on September 20. He was ninety-one and had been suffering from dementia for some years. Hart appeared (often uncredited) in the serials Jack Armstrong, Brick Bradford, Batman and Robin, Atom Man vs. Superman and Adventures of Captain Africa, plus the movies Fury of the Congo, Aladdin and His Lamp, Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land, Thief of Damascus (with Lon Chaney, Jr), The Ten Commandments (1956), Disney’s The Shaggy Dog (1959), Atlantis the Lost Continent, Simon King of the Witches, Blackenstein, Welcome to Arrow Beach, Blood Voyage (aka Nightmare Voyage), The Astral Factor (aka Invisible Strangler) and Cheerleaders Beach Party. He co-starred with Chaney, Jr again in the TV series Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, and was also in episodes of World of Giants and The Addams Family. Hart reprised the role of the Lone Ranger in The Phynx (1970), plus episodes of The Greatest American Hero and Happy Days. He had a cameo role in The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981). In later years he became a dubbing supervisor on cartoon shows.

Former musician-turned-painter and actor Robert [Winthrop] Ginty died of cancer on September 21, aged sixty. Following The Exterminator (1980), Ginty became a direct-to-video action/horror star in such films as Warrior of the Lost World, The Alchemist, Scarab, Exterminator 2, Maniac Killer and Programmed to Kill. He appeared in episodes of Project U.F.O., Knight Rider, Baywatch Nights and the TV movie The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake before becoming a successful director on such shows as Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Early Edition, Honey I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show, Xena: Warrior Princess, Charmed, Tracker and the 1995 TV movie Here Come the Munsters. In 2004 he directed a rap/hip-hop musical stage version of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.

Argentinian actress Inés [Escariz] Fernández, who starred in El fantasma de la opera (1955), died on September 22, aged seventy-seven.

Lucy O’Donnell (Lucy Vodden) died of complications from lupus the same day, aged forty-seven. It was a drawing of her by nursery school friend Julian Lennon that inspired his father, John, to write the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” for The Beatles in 1967.

American character actor Vincent Russo, who appeared in Screamtime and Maniac Cop 2, died on September 26, aged fifty-eight.

British actress Margo Johns (Jessie Margaret Johns), who co-starred with Michael Gough and a giant gorilla in Konga (1961), died on September 29, aged ninety. She also appeared in Meet Sexton Blake and Murder at the Windmill (aka Murder at the Burlesque), and was married to actor William Franklyn from 1952 to 1962.

American actor and singer Byron Palmer, who portrayed a Scotland Yard inspector in the 1953 Jack the Ripper thriller Man in the Attic, died on September 30, aged eighty-nine.

“B” movie heroine Pamela Blake (Adele Pearce) died on October 6, aged ninety-four. A former teenage beauty queen, she appeared in The Unknown Guest and such serials as Chick Carter Detective, The Mysterious Mr M and Ghost of Zorro. Blake retired from the screen in 1953 and moved with her family to Las Vegas.

Irish actor Sean Lawlor, who portrayed a modern-day Captain Nemo in the direct-to-video 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007), died on October 10, aged fifty-five. He also appeared in Space Truckers, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond, the fantasy short Scarecrow Joe and an episode of TV’s Night Man.

Cynthia Ann Thompson (aka Cindy Ann Thompson), who starred in the 1985 comedy Cavegirl, died of cancer the same day, aged fifty. She was also in a handful of other films during the decade, including Ruggero Deodato’s Body Count (aka The Eleventh Commandment) and the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth.

Thirty-three-year-old Irish boyband singer Stephen [Patrick David] Gately was found dead in his £1 million apartment in Majorca, Spain, on October 10. A post-mortem examination revealed that he had died of a pulmonary oedema – an accumulation of fluid on the lungs. During the 1990s he was one of five members of Boyzone, who had six #1 singles in the UK. He played the lead in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in London’s West End and, in 2008, Gately had an acting role the independent British horror film Credo (aka The Devil’s Curse).

Italian-American crooner Al Martino (Alfred Cini), who appeared as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather, died on October 13, aged eighty-two. Martino was the first singer to top the UK charts when they began in November 1952 with “Here In My Heart”, which remained there for nine weeks (only six records have had a longer continuous run). During a fifty-year career, his other hits included “Spanish Eyes” and “The Man from Laramie”, and he also sang the theme song for Robert Aldrich’s Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).

American actress Collin Wilcox (aka Collin Wilcox-Horne and Collin Wilcox Paxton) died on October 14, aged seventy-four. Best remembered for her debut film role as the teenage girl in the 1962 version of To Kill a Mockingbird, she also appeared in The Name of the Game is Kill, Catch-22, Jaws 2, Fluke (based on the novel by James Herbert) and The Crying Child, plus episodes of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Great Ghost Tales, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar”), The Immortal, Ghost Story and American Gothic. When diagnosed with brain cancer, the actress arranged and attended her own memorial service.

WWE pro-wrestler “Captain” Lou Albano (Louis Vincent Albano), who appeared in his manager Cyndi Lauper’s music videos “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “Time After Time”, died the same day, aged seventy-six. In 1989 he voiced Mario “Jumpman’’ Mario for TV’s The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! and had a cameo in the movie Stay Tuned.

Irish-born actor Denys [Vernon] Hawthorne died on October 16, aged seventy-seven. He had suffered a debilitating stroke some years earlier. Hawthorne appeared in episodes of Play for Tomorrow (“Easter 2016”), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who (“The Trial of a Time Lord”), plus the 1988 TV movie Jack the Ripper.

Canadian-born character actor Joseph Wiseman died in New York on October 19, aged ninety-one. Best remembered for playing the eponymous super-villain in the first James Bond film, Dr No (1962), he also appeared in a TV version of The Suicide Club (1974), plus episodes of Lights Out, Tales of Tomorrow, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, Kraft Television Theatre (“Death Takes a Holiday”), Shirley Temple’s Storybook, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and The Greatest American Hero.

Pie-throwing American comedian Soupy Sales (Milton Supman), who had his own children’s TV series in the 1950s and 1960s, died on October 22, following a fall at a local Emmy Awards show in New York. He was eighty-three. Towards the end of his career he appeared in the movies The Innocent and the Damned and Angels with Angles, was in an episode of the syndicated TV show Monsters, and appeared in a few episodes of Roger Corman’s Black Scorpion as Sonny Dey aka Professor Prophet.

Moustachioed Canadian-born character actor and comic Lou Jacobi (Louis Harold Jacobovitch) died in New York City on October 23, aged ninety-five. He appeared in Little Murders, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* *But Were Afraid to Ask, and Amazon Women on the Moon, along with episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Tales of the Unexpected and Tales from the Darkside.

American character actor and comedy magician Carl Ballantine (Meyer Kessler, aka The Amazing Mr Ballantine), best known for playing crew-member Lester Gruber in the 1962–66 TV series McHale’s Navy and the 1964 spin-off movie, died on November 3, aged ninety-two. He also appeared in episodes of Shirley Temple’s Storybook (“Babes in Toyland”), The Monkees, I Dream of Jeannie, The Ghost Busters and Fantasy Island, as well as the John Landis movie Susan’s Plan, and he contributed voices to the Freakazoid! and Spider-Man cartoon series. Ballantine was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Fellowship from the Magic Castle in Hollywood in 2007.

British stage and screen actor David Tree (David Parsons) died on November 4, aged ninety-four. After making a number of films in the 1930s and early 1940s, he lost a hand during a training exercise in World War II and retired from acting to become a farmer. He was convinced by his friend Nicolas Roeg to return to the screen one final time in Don’t Look Now.

British actor Edward [Albert Arthur] Woodward, OBE, died of complications from pneumonia on November 16, aged seventy-nine. Best remembered for starring in such TV series as Callan (1967–72) and The Equalizer (1985–89), he also portrayed the doomed Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man (1973). Woodward’s other credits include Incense for the Damned (aka Bloodsuckers), 10 Rillington Place, A Christmas Carol (1984), Merlin and the Sword, Hands of a Murderer (as Sherlock Holmes), Gulliver’s Travels (1996) and Hot Fuzz, plus episodes of TV’s Mystery and Imagination, Sherlock Holmes (1968), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1988) and Dark Realm. He was married to actress Michele Dotrice.

Welsh-born painter, scientist and film extra Richard [Henry Louen] Jones died of complications from a genetic disorder on November 18, aged sixty-four. The four-foot-tall Jones was inside R2D2 as well as playing an Ewok in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. He also appeared in Flash Gordon (1980) and Labyrinth.

Hollywood “B” movie actress Beatrice [Kimbrough] Gray, the mother of child actor Billy Gray (The Day the Earth Stood Still), died on November 25, aged ninety-eight. She had uncredited roles in Laura, A Double Life and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff.

Italian leading man Tony Kendall (Luciano Stella) died of cancer on November 28, aged seventy-three. His credits include Mario Bava’s What (aka The Whip and the Body, with Christopher Lee), The Three Fantastic Supermen, The Return of the Evil Dead, When the Screaming Stops, The People Who Own the Dark, Giant of the 20th Century and the popular Kommissar X series of 1960s spy movies.

Spain’s great horror star Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina Álvarez) died in Madrid of cancer on November 30, aged seventy-five. A former weightlifting champion and stunt player-turned-writer, producer, director and actor, he is best known for playing the doomed werewolf Waldemar Daninsky in a series of unconnected films that included Hell’s Creatures (aka Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror), Nights of the Werewolf, Dracula vs. Frankenstein (aka Assignment Terror), The Fury of the Wolfman, The Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman, Dr Jekyll and the Werewolf (in both roles!), Curse of the Devil, Night of the Howling Beast, The Craving (aka Night of the Werewolf), The Beast and the Magic Sword, Howl of the Devil and Lycantropus: The Moonlight Murders. Naschy’s other genre films included Jack the Ripper (1971), Dracula’s Great Love (as the Count), House of Psychotic Women, The Mummy’s Revenge, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Vengeance of the Zombies, Hunchback of the Morgue, The Hanging Woman (aka Terror of the Living Dead), Exorcism, Inquisition, Crimson, The People Who Own the Dark, Mystery on Monster Island (with Peter Cushing), Good Night Mr Monster, Panic Beats, The Beasts’ Carnival and La hija de Fu Manchú (as Fu Manchu). He also appeared (uncredited) in the I Spy TV episode “Mainly on the Plains”, which guest-starred Boris Karloff. The actor suffered a major heart attack in 1991 but made a full recovery, publishing his autobiography Memoirs of a Wolfman in 1997. More recently he appeared in a couple of low-budget American productions that did nothing for his career: Tomb of the Werewolf (as Daninsky again) and Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood, and he continued to work up to his death on such productions as Rottweiler, A Werewolf in the Amazon (as Dr Moreau), La herencia Valdemar and the short film La duodécima hora.

American actress Carolyn de Fonseca, who worked in Rome voice-dubbing the English-language versions of many Italian movies from the early 1960s onwards, died towards the end of 2009. Among the numerous films she worked on (usually uncredited) are Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules, Mario Bava’s What (aka The Whip and the Body, dubbing Daliah Lavi), Hercules vs. the Moon Men, The Last Man on Earth, Terror-Creatures from the Grave (dubbing Barbara Steele), Blade of the Ripper, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Torso, Spasmo, Deep Red, Suspiria, Buried Alive (1979), Antropophagus, Night of the Zombies, Burial Ground, The House by the Cemetery, Inferno, Macabre, Absurd, Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery, Piranha II: The Spawning, Ator the Fighting Eagle, The New York Ripper, Pieces, Monster Dog, Miami Golem, Phenomena, Ratman, Alien degli abissi, Bronx Executioner and Killer Crocodile II. From The Loves of Hercules (1960) onwards she was also Jayne Mansfield’s official dubbing voice in European productions, even recreating the late actress’ voice for the mondo documentary The Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968). De Fonseca also appeared in a number of small roles in films and was married to actor/director Ted Rusoff (the nephew of AIP producer Samuel Z. Arkoff).

Olivier Rollin, the half-brother of French director Jean Rollin, died of cancer in Paris on December 2. He appeared in Rollin’s La vampire nue (aka The Nude Vampire) and Les Raisins de la mort, also working as a production assistant on the latter film.

British character actress Maggie Jones, who played Blanche Hunt in the long-running soap opera Coronation Street since 1974, died after a long illness the same day, aged seventy-five. She also appeared in the movie Every Home Should Have One (aka Think Dirty) and episodes of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Goodnight Sweetheart.

Stiff upper-lipped leading man Richard Todd, OBE (Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd), best known for his roles in classic war films, died of cancer on December 3, aged ninety. The Irish-born Todd also appeared in Dorian Gray (1970), Asylum (1972), House of Long Shadows (with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine) and Incident at Victoria Falls (with Lee as Sherlock Holmes), along with episodes of TV’s Thriller (1974), Doctor Who (“Kinda”), Virtual Murder and the revival of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). The actor’s youngest son shot himself in 1977 at the age of twenty, and eight years later his eldest son also committed suicide after suffering from depression. Todd was named a Disney Legend in 2002 for his roles in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy the Highland Rogue.

Dependable British character actor Garfield Morgan died of cancer on December 5, aged seventy-eight. He appeared in the movies Digby the Biggest Dog in the World and 28 Weeks Later, plus episodes of Out of This World, three episodes of The Avengers, Out of the Unknown, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Tripods. Morgan also narrated four Rick Wakeman albums between the late 1980s and mid-1990s.

Rugged and debonair American leading man Gene Barry (Eugene Klass) died of congestive heart disease on December 9, aged ninety. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the past five years. The star of such popular TV series as Bat Masterson (1958-61), Burke’s Law (1963-66 and 1994-95), The Name of the Game (1968-71) and The Adventurer (1972-73), Barry also appeared in War of the Worlds (both the 1953 and 2005 versions), The 27th Day, The Devil and Miss Sarah, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Dynamite and episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Fantasy Island and The Twilight Zone (1987).

Irish-born character actor Charles [Jessee] Davis died in California of a heart attack on December 12, aged eighty-four. He travelled to America in the 1940s to play Og the Leprechaun in the Broadway musical production of Finian’s Rainbow, making more than 1,000 appearances in the role. He went on to appear in the movies The Man from Planet X and Moonfleet, along with episodes of TV’s Rocky Jones Space Ranger, Shirley Temple’s Storybook, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Wild Wild West (in a recurring role), Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, Man from Atlantis, Knight Rider and Starman.

Tough guy character actor Val Avery (Sebouh Der Abrahamian) died the same day, aged eighty-five. The son of a revolutionary who founded the Republic of Armenia, Avery appeared in The Legend of Hillbilly John (based on Manly Wade Wellman’s “John the Balladeer” stories), The Amityville Horror (1979) and Too Scared to Scream, plus episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Get Smart, The Wild Wild West, The Invaders, Man from Atlantis and Friday the 13th The Series.

The seventy-six-year-old American actor Conard Fowkes (aka “Conrad Fowkes”) died of pancreatic cancer on December 14. From 1966 to 1967 he was a regular on Dark Shadows as Frank Garner, and his other credits include an episode of Way Out before he was elected to American Equity’s Council in the early 1970s.

Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Jones (Phylis Lee Isley), who starred in the 1948 version of Robert Nathan’s romantic fantasy Portrait of Jennie, died on December 17, aged ninety. She also appeared in the serial Dick Tracy’s G-Men (under the name “Phyllis Isley”), Angel Angel Down We Go and The Towering Inferno. Her first marriage, to actor Robert Walker, ended when she began an affair with film producer David O. Selznick, who she eventually married in 1949.

American TV actress Connie Hines, who co-starred with Alan Young in CBS’ talking horse comedy series Mister Ed (1961– 66), died of complications from heart problems on December 18, aged seventy-eight. She retired from the screen in the early 1970s.

British character actor Donald [Ellis] Pickering, who played Dr Watson to Geoffrey Whitehead’s consulting detective in the rarely-seen Polish-shot series Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1980), died on December 19, aged seventy-six. Pickering appeared in Doctor Who opposite three different Doctors (William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Sylvester McCoy), and his numerous other appearances include the films Fahrenheit 451 (uncredited) and Scarab, a 1964 TV adaptation of John Buchan’s novel Witch Wood, and episodes of Out of the Unknown, The Champions, The Avengers, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Tales of the Unexpected.

American actress and singer Brittany [Anne] Murphy (Brittany Bertolotti) died of cardiac arrest in her Hollywood Hills home on December 20, aged thirty-two. The cause of death was later revealed to be pneumonia complicated by anaemia and an overdose of prescription drugs. The Los Angeles Coroner found that the actress had “elevated levels” of Vicodin and other over-the-counter cold medicine in her system. A former child actress whose TV credits include an episode of SeaQuest DSV, she appeared in such movies as Freeway, Drive, The Prophecy II, Cherry Falls, Sin City, Neverwas, Deadline, MegaFault, Abandoned and Something Wicked, and she voiced an animated penguin in Happy Feet. Her single “Faster Kill Pussycat” (with DJ Paul Oakenfold) reached #7 in the UK music charts in May 2006. Murphy was married to British screenwriter/producer Simon Monjack.

American comedy actor and voice artist Arnold Stang, best known as the voice of Herman the mouse in a series of 1950s Paramount cartoons and the feline star of Hanna-Barbera’s TV show Top Cat (1961–62), died of pneumonia the same day, aged ninety-one. He appeared in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Skidoo, Hercules in New York and Ghost Dad, along with episodes of Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Batman and Tales from the Dark Side. Stang also contributed voice characterizations to Pinocchio in Outer Space, Marco Polo Junior versus The Red Dragon and Pogo for President: “I Go Pogo”.

James Gurley, who was a guitarist with the 1960s rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, died of a heart attack on December 20, aged seventy. The group was one of a number that appeared at the influential Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Incredibly prolific British character actress Marianne Stone (aka “Mary Stone”), who was the second wife of film critic/historian Peter Noble (who died in 1997), died on December 21, aged eighty-seven. She appeared, often uncredited, in Brighton Rock, Seven Days to Noon, Horrors of the Black Museum, Jack the Ripper (1959), The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Witchcraft (with Lon Chaney, Jr), A Hard Day’s Night, Devils of Darkness, The Night Caller (aka Blood Beast from Outer Space), Berserk, Twisted Nerve, Scrooge (1970), Incense for the Damned (aka Bloodsuckers), Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, Assault (aka Tower of Terror), Tower of Evil (aka Horror on Snape Island), The Creeping Flesh (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), The Vault of Horror and Craze (aka The Infernal Idol). Stone also had small roles in Hammer’s Spaceways, The Quatermass Experiment (aka The Creeping Unknown), Quatermass 2 (aka Enemy from Space), Paranoiac, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, Hysteria and Countess Dracula, plus nine Carry On films (including Carry On Screaming). Her scenes were cut from the mermaid comedy Mad About Men, and her credits also include episodes of TV’s Dead of Night and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.

American character actor Michael Currie (Herman Christian Schwenk, Jr), who portrayed Sheriff Jonas Carter in five 1966 episodes of the daytime soap opera Dark Shadows, died on December 22, aged eighty-one. His other credits include four films with Clint Eastwood, plus Dead and Buried, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land (aka Starflight One), The Philadelphia Experiment, and episodes of TV’s Voyagers! and Wizards and Warriors.

NWA and WCW professional wrestler Steve Williams (aka Dr Death) died of throat cancer on December 29, aged forty-nine.

Italian actor Glauco Onorato died of cancer on December 31, aged seventy-three. Best known as the Italian dubbing voice of actor Bud Spencer, he appeared in Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (in “The Wurdalak” segment with Boris Karloff), Deep Red and an episode of Dario Argento’s Door Into Darkness TV series.

Adult film actress Erica Boyer (Amanda Margaret Jensen) was killed instantly while crossing the road the same day when she was struck by a car being driven by an off-duty Florida Highway Patrol officer. She was fifty-three. Known as “The Ultimate Goddess of Erotica”, Boyer began her porn career in the late 1970s and appeared under a number of pseudonyms, including “Carol Christy” and “Joanne McRay”. Her more than 180 credits include The Night of the Headhunter, Wet Science, The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage, Black to the Future, Backside to the Future, Robofox, Barbara the Barbarian, Amazing Tails 4 and Snatched to the Future. Having retired from the adult film industry in 1994, she made one further film in 2000.

American TV director Alvin Ganzer died in Hawaii on January 3, aged ninety-seven. He joined Paramount in 1932 casting extras and went on to work as an assistant director on a number of movies during the 1940s and 1950s (including Road to Utopia). Ganzer also directed episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, The Twilight Zone, Men Into Space, Lost in Space, The Wild Wild West, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries.

Former Universal Pictures and Paramount president Ned [Stone] Tanen, the son-in-law of director Howard Hawks, died on January 5, aged seventy-seven. Among the box-office hits he presided over were E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Ghost. A former talent agent who worked with Elton John, Neil Diamond and Olivia Newton-John, Tanen also produced Mary Reilly, based on Valerie Martin’s novel about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The character Biff Tannen in Back to the Future (1985) was reportedly named after him.

Low-budget film-maker Ray Dennis Steckler died of a heart attack in Las Vegas (where he ran a video business) on January 7, aged seventy. His films as a director include the infamous The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, The Thrill Killers, Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters, Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, Sinthia the Devil’s Doll, The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire, The Horny Vampire, Blood Shack, Sexorcist Devil, The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skidrow Slasher and Las Vegas Serial Killer, many of them starring his first wife, Carolyn Brandt (he produced a documentary about the actress in 1994). Steckler directed many of his softcore adult films under pseudonyms, including “Sven Christian” and “Sven Hellstrom”. He often also worked as editor, cinematographer, writer and producer, and he acted under the name “Cash Flagg”. One of his early jobs was as assistant cameraman on Eegah (1962), in which he also appeared.

Gary Goch (aka Gary Grotch), who worked in the film business in various capacities, often in collaboration with Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby, died on January 8. He was a camera assistant on The Female Bunch (featuring Lon Chaney, Jr), musical director on Pink Narcissus, edited and produced Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, did sound on Dead of Night (aka Deathdream), was a production assistant on Black Christmas (1974) and produced Popcorn.

American theatrical director Tom O’Horgan died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on January 11, aged eighty-four. Best remembered as the man who brought Hair to Broadway in 1968, he also composed the music for Alex in Wonderland, directed the 1974 movie version of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, and conceived the original stage production of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (filmed in 1978).

French film producer Jacques Bar (Jean Louis Alfred Bar) died on January 19, aged eighty-seven. His many films include the 1966 remake of The Man Who Laughs and The Mysterious Island (1973), based on the novel by Jules Verne.

American camera effects expert Bob (Robert C.) Broughton died of pneumonia the same day, aged ninety-one. He reportedly worked on almost every Walt Disney film from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Tron (1982). He also created the visual effects for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Hollywood movie producer Charles H. (Hirsh) Schneer died in Florida after a long illness on January 21, aged eighty-eight. He was best known for his many collaborations with stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen – It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon, The Valley of Gwangi, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger and Clash of the Titans.

American film and TV producer Arthur A. Jacobs died of congestive heart failure on January 25, aged eighty-six. In 1958 he teamed up with his friend and business partner Richard E. Cunha for the low-budget movies Giant from the Unknown and She Demons. As “Art Jacobs” he also produced the 1974 horror nudie The Beauties and the Beast featuring Uschi Digard.

Television producer and director Kim Manners died of lung cancer the same day, aged fifty-nine. He produced and executive produced The X Files and Supernatural, and directed episodes of both those shows, along with Automan, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, M.A.N.T.I.S. and Harsh Realm.

Actor turned television producer/director Peter Duguid (George Duguid) died of Parkinson’s disease on March 3, aged eighty-six. He directed the BBC’s 1982 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes, and three episodes of Chocky’s Children (1985), based on the novel by John Wyndham. He was reportedly nearly cast as the first Doctor Who in 1963, but had already enrolled in a BBC training programme to become a director.

Sound-effects editor turned Emmy Award-winning TV director Harry Harris died of complications from myelodysplasia on March 19, aged eighty-six. His prolific credits include episodes of Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, Kung Fu, Man from Atlantis, MacGyver and the 1985 TV movie Alice in Wonderland.

Former United Artists (UA) executive Steven Bach, who was fired over the Heaven’s Gate debacle in 1980, died of lung cancer on March 25, aged seventy. While senior VP of worldwide production at UA, Bach presided over the making of Michael Cimino’s epic Western, which was budgeted at $7.5 million, cost anywhere from $36–44 million to make, and grossed just $2 million at the time. As a result, the film became synonymous with Hollywood excess. He later wrote a book about the experience, Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate.

American theatre designer and director John [Edward] Blankenchip, who since 1972 was resident designer for Ray Bradbury’s Pandemonium Theatre Company, died following a brief illness on April 1, aged eighty-nine. Among the productions he designed based on Bradbury’s work were Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Incredible Ice Cream Suit, and he was working on a stage adaptation of The Martian Chronicles at the time of his death.

British TV director and animator David Wheatley died after a long illness on April 5, aged fifty-nine. He directed the BBC Omnibus documentaries “The Illustrated Man” (about Ray Bradbury) and “The Brothers Grimm”, and the Arena documentary “Borges and I”, with Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. His other credits include the award-winning docudrama The Road to 1984 with James Fox as George Orwell, the 1987 adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, the apocalyptic The March, and episodes of the Canadian TV series Starhunter 2300.

Controversial Scottish pop group manager “Tam” Paton (Thomas Dougal Paton) died on April 8, aged seventy-one. The former manager of 1970s band The Bay City Rollers, Paton was accused of swindling the group out of their royalties, and in 1982 he went to prison for committing indecent acts with males under the age of consent. In 2004 he was fined £200,000 for dealing in cannabis. At the same time that he managed the Rollers, Paton also looked after another Scottish band, the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired Bilbo Baggins. They had one hit as Bilbo in 1978, “She’s Gonna Win”, before splitting with their management.

American screenwriter and director Lee Madden died of complications from pneumonia on April 9, aged eighty-two. His credits include AIP’s Hell’s Angels ’69, Angel Unchained, The Night God Screamed, Night Creature (starring Donald Pleasence) and Ghost Fever (as Alan Smithee).

Japanese film producer Fumio Tanaka died of a brain haemorrhage on April 12, aged sixty-seven. He produced Toho’s vampire trilogy Bloodsucking Doll, Lake of Dracula and Evil of Dracula, plus Yog: Monster from Space, Esupai, Battle in Out Space 2, Murders in the Doll House, Bye Bye Jupiter and Godzilla 1985.

British producer Peter Rogers, best known for the series of thirty-one Carry On films from 1958 onwards, including Carry on Spying and Carry on Screaming, died on April 13, aged ninety-five. A former journalist, his other credits include The Cat Girl (starring Barbara Shelley), Revenge (aka Inn of the Frightened People) and Quest for Love (based on John Wyndham’s story “Random Quest”). His wife Betty Box OBE, who produced the rival Doctor film series, died in 1999.

Veteran British cinematographer and director, Jack Cardiff OBE, who was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2001, died on April 22, aged ninety-four. He worked in various capacities (usually uncredited) on The Ghost Train (1931), The Ghost Goes West, Things to Come (1936), The Man Who Could Work Miracles and The Last Days of Pompeii, before becoming one of the screen’s most acclaimed cinematographers with such films as A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, The Awakening, Ghost Story, Conan the Destroyer, Cat’s Eye, the Showscan short Call from Space and a 2004 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Cardiff also directed the first (and only) film in “Smell-o-Vision”, Scent of Mystery (aka Holiday in Spain) featuring Peter Lorre and scripted by Gerald Kersh, and the 1974 horror film The Mutations (aka The Freakmaker).

British-born film director, Ken Annakin OBE (Kenneth Cooper Annakin), died at his Beverly Hills home the same day, aged ninety-four. He had been in failing health since suffering a heart attack and a stroke two months earlier. Annakin’s credits include the 1948 mermaid comedy Miranda and Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.

British record producer Ron Richards (Ronald Richard Pratley), who produced The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Hollies and P.J. Proby during the 1960s, died on April 30, aged eighty. Among the memorable songs he worked on were “Love Me Do”, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother” and “The Air That I Breathe”. Along with fellow Parlephone producer George Martin, he was responsible for the decision to replace Beatles’ drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. Richards also did much of the administrative work on the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine.

American cinematographer Irv (Irving/Irvin) Goodnoff died of a heart attack on May 3, aged sixty-one. He photographed the short The Tell-Tale Heart (1971) starring Sam Jaffe, Rattlers, Jennifer, Evilspeak, Dan O’Bannon’s The Resurrected (based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), The Dark Mist (aka Lord Protector), Jennifer is Dead, Planet Ibsen, The Cursed and Legend of the Red Reaper, along with two unsold TV pilots (1989 and 2002) for shows based on The Witches of Eastwick.

Show business agent Sam Cohen (Samuel Charles Cohn), who represented Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep and Arthur Miller, amongst many others, died on May 6, aged seventy-nine. For three decades he worked at International Creative Management (ICM) and was regarded by his clients as an “auteur agent”, helping to creatively shape their careers. He also reportedly liked to eat paper.

Prop-maker Jenny Heap, who created the Triffids for the 1962 movie The Day of the Triffids, died in May of cancer, aged seventy-one. During a varied career she taught prop and mask-making at RADA and managed the prop department at the Royal National Theatre. She later became a touring production manager.

Film and TV producer Mort Abrahams died after a long illness on May 28, aged ninety-three. He began his career with the 1950 series Tom Corbett Space Cadet, and he went on to produce or executive produce such TV series as Tales of Tomorrow, Route 66 (including “Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” with Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney, Jr) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His movie credits include Doctor Dolittle (1967), Planet of the Apes (1967), the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Rhinoceros.

Producer and director Don Edmonds died of liver cancer on May 30, aged seventy-two. Best known for directing the cult softcore“Nazisploitation” movies Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975) and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), his other directing credits include the 1980 horror film Terror on Tour and he worked in various production capacities on Home Sweet Home, The Night Stalker, Skeeter and Last Gasp. In the 1980s he was vice-president of production at Producers Sales Organization (PSO), where he was responsible for such movies as Short Circuit and Clan of the Cave Bear. As an actor, Edmonds appeared in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Disney’s Son of Flubber, Home Sweet Home, Last Gasp, and episodes of TV’s Men Into Space and The Munsters.

British art director Bob (Robert) Bell, who worked on such Gerry Anderson TV shows as Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and U.F.O., died on June 6. Bell’s other credits include Thunderbird 6, Doppelgänger (aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) and The New Avengers; he was assistant art director on the 1980 series Hammer House of Horror, and he created the matte paintings for Clive Barker’s Nightbreed.

Canadian TV director and producer Allan [Winton] King died of brain cancer on June 15, aged seventy-nine. He directed episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series, the new Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Dracula: The Series, The Odyssey and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.

British producer and cinematographer Peter [Austin Harely] Newbrook, best known for his only directing credit on the underrated 1973 horror film The Asphyx, died of a heart attack on June 19, aged eighty-eight. Newbrook produced and contributed the original story to the legendary 1965 SF musical Gonks Go Beat, and his other credits as a producer include Corruption and Incense for the Damned (both with Peter Cushing), and Crucible of Terror (with Mike Raven). He photographed The Black Torment, Corruption and Crucible of Terror, and worked as a camera operator on Hammer’s Dick Barton Strikes Back.

American music manager, recording executive and film producer Allen Klein died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on July 4, aged seventy-seven. During an often controversial career, the former New Jersey accountant managed the affairs of such recording artists and groups as Donovan, Connie Francis, The Animals, The Rolling Stones and three out of four of The Beatles (his involvement reportedly contributed to the break-up of the Fab Four). He also produced a number of movies, including Alejandro Jodorowsky’s religious fantasy The Holy Mountain.

Eighty-six-year-old George [William] Fullerton, who partnered electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender in the manufacturing of the Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars, died of congestive heart failure the same day in Fullerton, California.

Film and TV producer Ted [Adams] Swanson, whose credits include Island Claws (co-scripted by Ricou Browning), The Presence (aka Danger Island) and The Tale of Sweeney Todd, died on July 23, aged seventy-two. Swanson also worked in various production capacities (often uncredited) on The Omega Man, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Harry and the Hendersons and Jaws The Revenge.

Italian-born first assistant director Tony (Antonio) Brandt died on July 25, aged seventy-nine. He worked as an additional assistant director on Apocalypse Now, and his other credits include She (1982), Warrior of the Lost World, Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, F/X 2 and The Eighteenth Angel.

Emmy Award-winning American TV producer Harvey Frand died of respiratory failure on July 28, aged sixty-eight. His many credits include the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone, The Pretender, Strange World, and the new series of Battlestar Galactica and The Bionic Woman, along with the TV movies New Eden and Painkiller Jane.

Legendary British film producer Harry Alan Towers died of pneumonia and heart failure in Toronto, Canada, on August 2. He was eighty-eight. A genius for putting together co-production deals, Towers made more than 100 films around the world, from Austria to Zimbabwe (many scripted under his pseudonym “Peter Welbeck” and starring his wife, actress Maria Rohm). Among his numerous credits are The Anatomist, The Face of Fu Manchu and its four sequels (all starring Christopher Lee), Circus of Fear (aka Psycho-Circus), Sumuru (aka The Million Eyes of Sumuru), Rocket to the Moon, House of 1,000 Dolls (with Vincent Price), The Girl from Rio (aka Future Women), Deadly Sanctuary, Jesus Franco’s Night of the Blood Monster and Count Dracula (1970), Dorian Gray (1970), King Solomon’s Treasure, The Shape of Things to Come, Gor and Outlaw of Gor, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, Edge of Sanity, The House of Usher (1989), The Phantom of the Opera (1989), Masque of the Red Death (1990), Buried Alive (with John Carradine), The Lost World (1992) and Return to the Lost World, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and Incident at Victoria Falls (both starring Lee as Holmes), Dance Macabre, The Mummy Lives (with Tony Curtis!), Night Terrors, The Mangler (based on the story by Stephen King), Pact with the Devil, She (2001) and Sumuru (2003). Always happy to recycle properties he had the rights to, Towers made three not-quite-star-studded versions of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None) in 1965, 1974 and 1989, and he was developing a new version of Fu Manchu at the time of his death.

Reclusive director, producer and screenwriter John Hughes [Jr] (aka Edmond Dantès), who was responsible for such iconic 1980s comedies as The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, died of a heart attack while walking in Manhattan on August 6. He was fifty-nine. Hughes’ credits also include Weird Science and the remakes of Miracle on 34th Street (1994), 101 Dalmations (1996), Flubber (1997) and Just Visiting (2001).

British film producer [Anthony Simon] Clive Parsons died of pancreatic cancer on August 12, aged sixty-six. His credits (with business partner Davina Belling) ranged from the softcore comedy Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse, through Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital, to the low-budget horror films Half Light and Splintered.

Widely regarded as revolutionizing the music industry as a pioneer of electric guitar design and recording technology, Les Paul (Lester William Polsfuss) died of complications from pneumonia on August 13, aged ninety-four. A former performer in the early 1950s with a string of hits, including “Mockin’ Bird Hill”, “Vaya Con Dios” and “How High the Moon” with his then-wife Mary Ford, Paul created the Gibson Les Paul, one of the most iconic electric guitars ever made, as well as inventing tape echo, sound-on-sound recording and multitrack technology.

British TV director/producer John [Steven Rule] Stroud died of a brain tumour on August 15, aged fifty-four. His credits include the 1980s children’s anthology series Spooky, So Haunt Me, Bugs and the superhero comedy My Hero.

American cinematographer Richard Moore, whose single directing credit was Circle of Iron (aka The Silent Flute) starring David Carradine and Christopher Lee, died on August 16, aged eighty-three. The co-creator (with Robert Gottschalk) of the anamorphic wide-screen Panavision format, he worked uncredited as an underwater camera operator on Thunderball, and his other credits include The Wild Angels, Devil’s Angels, Wild in the Streets and Myra Breckinridge.

American make-up artist Michael R. Thomas (aka Mike Thomas) died following a minor hospital procedure on August 24, three days before his sixtieth birthday. He had suffered from a heart condition for a few years. During the mid-1960s he made himself up as a dancing Frankenstein Monster for the live TV show Disc-O-Teen, and Thomas was a regular at horror movie fan conventions made up as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula or Ygor. As a make-up artist he worked on such movies as The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969), The Sentinel, The Wiz, Wolfen, Ghostbusters, Fear City, My Demon Lover, Fatal Attraction, Ghostbusters II, PlayMate of the Apes, The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the Ring, Dr Horror’s Erotic House of Idiots, The Stepford Wives (2004), Bite Me!, An Erotic Werewolf in London, Disney’s Enchanted and the 2007 version of I Am Legend. As an actor he appeared in many of these films, and also turned up in Fanny Hill Meets Dr Erotico (as The Monster), Titanic 2000, Erotic Witch 2: Book of Seduction, Mistress Frankenstein (in various roles, including The Monster again), Witchbabe: The Erotic Witch Project 3, Vampire Vixens, Spiderbabe, Rectuma, The Ghosts of Angela Webb, Shock-O-Rama, Skin Crawl, Sculpture and House of the Wolf Man (as Dracula).

Dick (Richard J.) Berg, a pioneer of 1970s made-for-TV movies, died on September 1 of complications from a fall, aged eighty-seven. A former scriptwriter, he executive produced such TV films and mini-series as The Spell, Night Cries, Are You in the House Alone? and Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

American film and TV director/producer/screenwriter Arnold Laven died of pneumonia on September 13, aged eighty-seven. A former script supervisor and co-founder of the independent Levy-Gardner-Laven production company, he directed The Monster That Challenged the World and produced The Vampire (both 1957). His TV credits include episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Ghost Story, Shazam!, Planet of the Apes, Isis, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantasy Island (including the “Vampire” episode), Turnabout, Time Express (starring Vincent Price) and The Greatest American Hero.

American film producer Melvin Simon died of pancreatic cancer on September 16, aged eighty-three. While an executive at Columbia Pictures, he founded AVCO Embassy Pictures in 1967 and produced a number of films during the 1970s and 1980s, including Dominique (aka Dominique is Dead), The Manitou, Love at First Bite, When a Stranger Calls (1979), UFOria and the Porky’s series. With his younger brother Herbert, Simon developed shopping mall sites, including the Mall of America near Minneapolis, which opened in 1992.

Romanian-born British film editor Teddy Darvas died on September 27, aged eighty-four. His credits include Gonks Go Beat, The Man Who Haunted Himself, Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Amazing Mr Blunden and Dark Places.

Veteran British film producer, cinematographer, screenwriter and director Robert S. (Sidney) Baker who, with his business partner Monty Berman, was a low-budget rival to Hammer Films in the late 1950s and early 1960s, died on September 30, aged ninety-three. Among the many “B” movies produced by Baker and Berman were Blood of the Vampire, The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye), The Flesh and the Fiends (aka Mania/ The Fiendish Ghouls) and What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide), and the pair also co-directed Jack the Ripper (1959) and The Hellfire Club (both of which Baker photographed). He later went on to co-produce the TV series The Saint and The Persuaders, both with star Roger Moore.

French-born Hollywood agent and film producer Alain Bernheim died of complications during kidney dialysis in Paris on October 2, three days before his eighty-seventh birthday. As a talent agent he represented such writers as Gore Vidal, Pierre Boulle and Jean-Paul Sartre, along with film directors Jules Dassin, Louis Malle, Nicholas Ray, John Frankenheimer and Joseph Losey. During the communist witch-hunts in America, Bernheim represented a number of blacklisted talents.

Italian exploitation writer, producer and director Rino Di Silvestro died of cancer on October 3, aged seventy-seven. His credits include the prison sexploitation films Women in Cell Block 7 and SS Special Section Women, plus the 1976 horror movie Werewolf Woman (La lupa mannara).

American make-up artist Bob (Robert A.) Westmoreland died of a heart attack in Hawaii on October 6, aged seventy-four. He was the make-up supervisor on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which he also had a cameo in), and his other credits include Love Me Deadly, the TV movie Satan’s Triangle, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Ravagers, 1941, The Island and Twilight Zone The Movie.

Barry [Leopold] Letts, a former actor-turned-TV producer/director/writer, died of cancer on October 9, aged eighty-four. He appeared in such series as The Moonstone (1959), Invisible Man (1959), City Beneath the Sea and The Avengers before moving to the other side of the camera. Letts produced the 1973 BBC series Moonbase 3, Sexton Blake and the Demon God, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1982) The Invisible Man (1984) and nearly 130 episodes of Doctor Who between 1967 and 1981, many of which he also directed. In the 1990s he scripted a couple of BBC Radio 2 serials for Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, The Paradise of Death and Doctor Who and the Ghosts of N-Space, which he subsequently novelized. The 2009 Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars, was dedicated to Letts’ memory.

Italian cinematographer Franco Villa (aka “Frank Town”) died on October 12. After working as a camera assistant during the 1950s on such films as My Friend Dr Jekyll, his exploitation credits include Asylum Erotica (aka Slaughter Hotel), Jungle Master, The Return of the Exorcist, Giallo a Venezia, Patrick Still Lives, A Girl for Satan and a number of Spaghetti Westerns.

Daniel Melnick, film producer and the former head of production at MGM and Columbia studios, died of lung cancer on October 13, aged seventy-seven. Credited as the creative force behind the comedy sci-spy TV series Get Smart (1965–70), his film credits include Straw Dogs, All That Jazz, Altered States, Get Smart Again! and Universal Soldier The Return.

American film and TV director [Abraham] Paul Wendkos died of a lung infection on November 12, aged eighty-four. He had earlier suffered a stroke. Wendkos’ many credits include Gidget and its two sequels, Fear No Evil, The Brotherhood of the Bell, The Mephisto Waltz, Haunts of the Very Rich, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Good Against Evil, The Bad Seed (1985), From the Dead of Night and episodes of The Wild Wild West and The Invaders.

Hollywood costume designer Robert Turturice, who was president of the Costume Designers Guild from 1992 to 1996, died of a heart attack on December 15. He was sixty. Turturice began his career designing the costumes for the 1975–76 Filmation TV series The Ghost Busters, and his other credits include The Star Wars Holiday Special, Big-Top Pee-Wee, Solar Crisis, Fade to Black, Joel Schumacher’s infamous Batman and Robin and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.

Roy E. [Edward] Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney who led two successful shareholder revolts at the family’s company, died of stomach cancer on December 16, aged seventy-nine. The son of Roy O. Disney, who co-founded the company with his brother Walt, Roy E. Disney was elected to the Board of Directors in 1967. In 1984, having led a campaign to replace Walt Disney’s son-in-law, Ron Miller, because he felt that he was guiding the company in the wrong direction, he returned as vice chairman of the Board and head of the Animation Department. Almost twenty years later he helped remove Disney chairman and CEO Michael Eisner, the man he had brought in after the previous shareholder revolt. Among the films he presided over were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Fantasia 2000.

British production designer Peter Murton died just before Christmas. He began his career in the art department in the mid-1940s, working his way up to art director on such films as Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Night Watch and Stargate. As a production designer, his credits include The Ruling Class, The Possession of Joel Delaney, The Man with the Golden Gun, Dracula (1979), Superman II, Superman III, Sheena, King Kong Lives, Popcorn and the Disney theme park attraction From Time to Time (featuring Jeremy Irons as H.G. Wells). In later years Murton was a guest speaker at a number of James Bond-themed events.