The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 13

STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN NECROLOGY: 2001

Arthur c. Clarke’s iconic date saw the passing of many 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 in other, often fascinating, ways).

AUTHORS/ARTISTS

Children’s author Catherine Storr, whose classic 1958 novel Marianne Dreams was filmed in 1988 as Paperhouse, died on January 6th, aged 87. A former editor at Penguin Books, eleven of her supernatural stories were collected inCold Marble and Other Ghost Stories, while her collection of stories for young children, Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, was published in 1955 and remains on the curriculum of many British primary schools.

Wartime cryptographer and screenwriter Leo Marks died on January 15th, aged 80. He scripted Michael Powell’s cult classic Peeping Tom and Twisted Nerve.

Gordon B. Love, who produced the fanzineRocket’s Blast/Comicollector in the 1960s, died on January 17th following an automobile accident. He was 62.

Comics artist Frederic E. Ray, Jr., who illustrated Superman and Tomahawk for DC Comics during the 1940s and 1950s, died on January 23rd.

Fantasy and military SF writer Rick Shelley died of complications from a massive heart attack on January 27th, aged 54. His books include the ‘Varayan Memoir’ trilogy, the ‘Lucky 13th’ series, plus The Wizard at Meq and The Wizard at Home.

Canadian-born fantasy and SF writer Gordon R. (Rupert) Dickson died of complications from asthma on January 31st, aged 77. Best known for the ‘Childe Cycle’, ‘Dorsai’ sequence and ‘Hoka’ stories (written with Poul Anderson), the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author published his first story in 1951 and wrote more than eighty books and around 200 short stories. His 1976 novel The Dragon and the George won the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award.

British horror author Gerald Suster died of an apparent heart attack on February 4th, aged 49. A former teacher before becoming a full-time writer in the late 1970s, his many occult thrillers include such titles as The Devil’s Maze, The God Game andThe Labyrinth of Satan, which formed a loosely linked trilogy. His other novels include The Elect, The Scar, The Offering, The Block, The Force and The Handyman. A devotee of Arthur Machen, whose writing was a major influence on his own work, Suster also wrote a number of non-fiction volumes based on his personal interest in the occult, including Hitler and the Age of Horus, The Truth About the Tarot, The Hellfire Friars and a biography of Aleister Crowley. He also contributed a regular column to the esoteric magazineThe Talking Stick.

Slovakian-born John L. Nanovic, who worked as an editor under the name ‘Henry Lysing’ for Street & Smith on such pulp magazines as Doc Savage and The Shadow, died on February 9th, aged 94.

Peggy (Margaret) Cave, the wife of pulp author Hugh B. Cave, died of cancer complications on February 12th after two weeks in hospital. She was 86.

Popular horror author Richard [Carl] Laymon died of a massive heart attack on February 14th, aged 54. The current President of the Horror Writers Association, his many novels include the ‘Beast House’ series (The Cellar, The Beast House and The Midnight Tour), along with The Woods Are Dark, Out Are the Lights, Beware! All-Hallows Eve, Resurrection Dreams, The Stake, Quake, Bite, Cuts, Once Upon a Halloween, The Travelling Vampire Show and Night in the Lonesome October. As well as writing two novels under the pseudonyms ‘Carl Laymon’ and ‘Richard Kelly’, his short fiction was collected in A Good Secret Place and Dreadful Tales, while the autobiographical studyA Writer’s Life appeared from Deadline Press. He was set to be guest of honour at the 2001 World Horror Convention in May.

Italian composer Pierro Umiliani died the same day, aged 75. He composed the scores for more than 100 films, including The Amazing Doctor G., Five Dolls for an August Moon, Witchcraft ‘70, Night of the Devils and Baba Yaga.

Eccentric Irish Ufologist and author Desmond [Arthur Peter] Leslie died in France on February 22nd, aged 79. He collaborated with George Adamski on the controversial 1953 bestseller Flying Saucers Have Landed.

Film and TV composer Richard Stone died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on March 9th, aged 47. Besides writing the music for such movies as Sundown The Vampire in Retreat and Pumpkinhead, he also won seven Emmys for his work on Animaniacs and such other cartoon TV series as Freakazoid, Histeria! Pinky and the Brain and Tazmania.

25-year-old Jenna A. (Anne) Felice, an editor at Tor Books, died on March 10th of complications from a severe allergic reaction and asthmatic attack after spending nearly a week in a coma. She also worked with her life partner Rob Killheffer on the small-press magazine Century.

73-year-old bestselling thriller writer Robert Ludlum died of a massive heart attack at his Florida home on March 12th, after recently undergoing heart surgery. A former television and stage actor and theatre director, his first book The Scarlatti Inheritance was written in 1971 ‘as a lark’, since when he sold more than 220 million copies in forty countries. His many titles include The Holcroft Covenant (made into a film starring Michael Caine), The Bourne Identity (made into a TV mini-series with Richard Chamberlain and a theatrical film with Matt Damon), The Matarese Circle, The Scorpio Illusion, The Apocalypse Watch and The Prometheus Deception, which appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly.

Veteran pulp author J. (John) Harvey Haggard died on March 15th, aged 87. A distant relative of H. Rider Haggard, from 1930 until 1960 his stories appeared in such titles as Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Future Fiction, Fantastic Universe and Ray Bradbury’s 1939 fanzine Futuria Fantasia. He had two stories reprinted in the 1997 volume Ackermanthology.

Dr Donald A. (Anthony) Reed, founder and president of The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, died of heart failure and complications from diabetes on March 18th in Los Angeles, aged 65. Reed, who founded the Academy in 1972, was instrumental in the promotion of the Saturn Awards and also founded and served as president of the Count Dracula Society since 1962.

‘Papa’ John [Edmund] Phillips, who founded the 1960s California pop group the Mammas and the Papas, died of heart failure the same day, aged 65. After years of drug and alcohol abuse, he had had a liver transplant several years earlier. Phillips wrote such classic ‘flower power’ songs as “Monday Monday”, ‘California Dreamin’, ‘Creeque Alley’ and ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’. He also scored the movies Brewster McCloud, Myra Breckinridge and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

British supernatural fiction writer R. (Ronald) [Henry Glynn] Chetwynd-Hayes, described by one of his publishers as ‘Britain’s Prince of Chill’, died of bronchial pneumonia in a London nursing home on March 20th, aged 81. His first book was The Man from the Bomb, a science fiction novel published in 1959 by Badger Books, since when he published a further twelve novels, twenty-three collections, and edited such anthologies as Cornish Tales of Terror, Scottish Tales of Terror (as ‘Angus Campbell’), Welsh Tales of Terror, Tales of Terror from Outer Space, Gaslight Tales of Terror, Doomed to the Night, twelve volumes ofThe Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and six volumes of The Armada Monster Book for children. In 1976 he ghost-edited and wrote almost all of the one-shot magazine Ghoul, and his own short stories were adapted for the screen in the anthology movies From Beyond the Grave and The Monster Club (the author was portrayed in the latter by John Carradine). In 1989 R. Chetwynd-Hayes was presented with Life Achievement Awards by both The Horror Writers of America and The British Fantasy Society for his services to the genre.

Daniel Counihan, British journalist, radio reporter and author of the children’s fantasy Unicorn Magic (1953), died on March 25th, aged 83.

82-year-old Italian comic-strip artist Luciana Giussani died in Milan after a long illness on March 31st. With her sister Angela (who died in 1987) she created the popular crime comic Diabolik in 1962 (filmed by Mario Bava in 1967 as Danger: Diabolik) and together they founded the Astorina publishing house.

Novelist and TV scriptwriter Gene Thompson, a teenage protégé of Groucho Marx, died of cancer on April 14th, aged 76. He wrote the occult novel Lupe and scripts for such shows as Gilligan’s Island, My Favorite Martian, Love American Style and Columbo.

Judy (Judith) Watson, the 61-year-old wife of science fiction/fantasy writer Ian Watson, died on April 14th of heart failure brought on by emphysema, from which she suffered progressively for the past few years. Her artwork appeared in New Worlds and Oz, and she bequeathed her body to the Department of Human Anatomy of the University of Oxford.

New York singer/songwriter and drummer Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman) died after a long battle with lymphatic cancer on April 15th, aged 49. He formed his punk band The Ramones in March 1974. Following a fist fight in 1983, Ramone underwent emergency brain surgery. The band released twenty-one albums until they disbanded in 1996 and they appeared in the cult 1979 movie Rock V Roll High School and recorded the theme for Pet Sematary.

Film and TV scriptwriter George F. Slavin, whose credits include Mystery Submarine, The Rocket Man and the Star Trek episode ‘The Mark of Gideon’, died on April 19th, aged 85.

Noted anthropologist and former SF writer Dr Morton Klass died on April 28th of a heart attack, aged 73. The brother of Philip Klass (aka author William Tenn), his short fiction appeared in the 1950s and 1960s in Astounding, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Worlds of If.

39-year-old Chicago model, singer, artist and writer Lynne Gauger (Lynne Sinclaire), best known as a companion to late horror authors Karl Edward Wagner and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, died on May 2nd after a long illness. She had been taking a variety of painkillers and other medication ever since being injured in a car crash several years earlier, and had apparently lost the will to live. Her collaborative story with Rex Miller, ‘Vampires of London’, appeared in the anthology The Hot Blood Series: Kiss and Kill.

British songwriter Michael Hazlewood, whose best-known hits were probably ‘(All I Need is) The Air That I Breathe’ and ‘It Never Rains in Southern California’, died of a heart attack on May 6th while on vacation in Florence, Italy. He was 59, and his other hits included the Pipkins’ irritating ‘Gimme Dat Ding’ and the equally awful ‘Little Arrows’ by Leapy Lee.

American songwriter James E. Myers died on May 9th from leukaemia, age 81. With more than 300 songs to his credit, Myers co-wrote ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in 1953 (as ‘Jimmy De-Knight’) and changed the world. The two-minute, eight-second song was recorded by Bill Haley 8t His Comets the following year and quickly went to No.1 in the charts. It has since been recorded by more than 500 other artists, and used in more than forty movies, earning Myers a reported $10 million in royalties.

49-year-old British author Douglas [Noel] Adams died of a massive heart attack on May 11th while exercising in Santa Barbara, California. His writing career began with the BBC, working as a script editor and writer for Doctor Who from 1978 to 1980. At the same time, he wrote a humorous SF radio series entitled The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The original six episodes were so popular that they led to a novelization that would eventually sell more than fourteen million copies worldwide, a television series and a stage show. Various sequels followed, including The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe and Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless, along with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and its sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; the comedy dictionary The Meaning of Liff (with John Lloyd); a non-fiction book on conservation, Last Chance to See; and the computer game Starship Titanic. Eleven chapters from his unfinished 1996 novel, The Salmon of Doubt, were included in a collection of the same title published exactly a year after the author’s death.

Controversial and hedonistic author and television scriptwriter Simon [Arthur Noel] Raven died of a stroke on May 12th, aged 73. His 1961 vampire novel Doctors Wear Scarlet was filmed as Incense for the Damned (aka Bloodsuckers), while his other books with genre elements include The Sabre Squadron, The Roses of Picardie and its sequel September Castle, The Islands of Sorrow and the collection Remember Your Grammar and Other Haunted Stories. He edited the 1960 collection The Best of Gerald Kersh, and his script work includes such projects as the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Unman Wittering and Zigo and TV’s Sexton Blake and The Demon God. Suffering with Krohn’s disease since the early 1990s, he had lived as a pensioner in Sutton’s Hospital, Charterhouse, an alms house for impoverished gentlemen in London.

Hank (Henry King) Ketcham, who created the comic strip character Dennis the Menace in 1951, died of heart disease and cancer on June 1st, aged 81. Although the strip appears in 1,000 newspapers around the world, he stopped drawing the character himself in 1994. Ketcham got his first job as an animator for Woody Woodpecker creator Walter Lantz, and he went on to work on such Disney classics as Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia. The artist suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after active service in the armed forces and was estranged from his son, Dennis.

British fan writer and publisher Alan Dodd died on June 5th. During the 1950s and 1960s he contributed to a number of fanzines and produced his own title, Camber.

Legendary blues guitarist and singer John Lee Hooker died in San Francisco on June 21st, aged 83.

81-year-old E.C. comics artist George Evans died on June 22nd of terminal leukaemia following a heart attack. He began his career working for the aviation pulps, such as Dare-Devil Aces, before moving into comics after World War II. Starting out as a staff artist with Fiction House, he also worked at Fawcett (where he illustrated adaptations ofWhen Worlds Collide and Captain Video), E.C., Classics Illustrated, Dell, Gold Key (The Twilight Zone), DC Comics and Marvel. Evans also produced the daily newspaper strips Terry and the Pirates and Secret Agent Corrigan. For Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa imprint he illustrated Far Lands Other Days by E. Hoffman Price (1975) and Lonely Vigils by Manly Wade Wellman (1981).

Finnish author and illustrator Tove [Marika] Jansson, best known for her Moomin children’s fantasies, died on June 27th, aged 86.

Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter Harold ‘Hal’ Goldman died of lung cancer in Los Angeles on the same day, aged 81. A member of Jack Benny’s writing staff for more than two decades, he collaborated with George Burns from 1978 until the comedian’s death in 1996. During that time he co-scripted the movie Oh, God! Book II starring Burns.

Guitarist and record producer Chet (Chester) [Burton] Atkins died of cancer on June 30th, aged 77. From the mid-1950s until the 1990s he released more than 100 albums and won fourteen Grammy Awards. As a session guitarist he played on Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, Hank Williams’s ‘Jambalaya’ and the Everly Brothers’ ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ and ‘Bye Bye Love’.

Film and TV scriptwriter Arnold Peyser died of cancer on July 1st, aged 80. His credits include Elvis’sThe Trouble With Girls and such series as Mission: Impossible, My Favorite Martian and Gilligan’s Island.

Canadian novelist and screenwriter Mordecai Richler, whose books include the children’s fantasies Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang and Jacob Two-Two and the Dinosaur, died of cancer on July 3rd, aged 70. He is best known forThe Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (filmed in 1974).

British composer/arranger Delia Derbyshire, best remembered for arranging composer Ron Grainer’s electronic theme for Doctor Who, died of kidney failure the same day, aged 64. She also worked on The Legend of Hell House.

Indian-born British composer James Bernard died in London on July 12th, aged 75. Educated at Wellington College, where his fellow pupils included Christopher Lee, Bernard was encouraged by the great British composer Benjamin Britten, whom he first met when he was seventeen. After serving in the RAF for three years, and a short stint with BBC Radio, he wrote his first score for Hammer Films, The Quatermass Experiment, in 1955 for £100. His subsequent output of scores for the studio comprised Quatermass 2, The Curse of Frankenstein, X The Unknown, Dracula (one of the greatest and most influential horror film scores ever recorded), The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Stranglers of Bombay, The Terror of the Tongs, The Kiss of the Vampire, The Gorgon, Dracula Prince of Darkness, The Plague of the Zombies, She, Frankenstein Created Woman, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Devil Rides Out, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Scars of Dracula, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. He also composed the score for Torture Garden, an anthology film from Hammer’s rival Amicus, and in 1997 he wrote the score for Channel 4/Photoplay Production’s restoration of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu. His final work appeared the following year in Kevin Brownlow’s documentary Universal Horror for Turner Classic Movies. As co-writer of the original story for the 1950 atomic thriller Seven Days to Noon, he was one of the few composers to win an Academy Award for something other than music.

American book-cover illustrator Fred Marcellino died of colon cancer the same day, aged 61. For over a decade he produced more than forty covers a year, including Charles L. Grant’s The Ravens of the Moon, Clive Barker’s The Inhuman Condition and In the Flesh, Ray Bradbury’s Death is a Lonely Business and Peter Ackroyd’s First Light. He later illustrated classic children’s books.

British film poster illustrator Tom (Thomas) ‘Chan’ [William] Chantrell died on July 15th, aged 84. From The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse in 1938 to Star Wars in the late 1970s, he produced around 7,000 poster designs, averaging three posters a week. Hammer Films’ James Carreras would often commission his posters before the films were made, and Chantrell painted himself as the Count on Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, while his second wife Shirley appears as a radio operator onThe Bermuda Triangle and as a cannibal victim on Eaten Alive!

43-year-old author James H. Hatfield, whose book Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President was recalled and pulped by St. Martin’s Press in 1999 after it was discovered that he had lied about his credentials, was found dead of a drug overdose on July 18th. His earlier books include a number of unauthorized trivia challenges, biographies and encyclopedias (many co-written with George Burt) based around such movies and TV shows as Star Wars, Deep Space Nine, Lost in Space, The X Files and Star Trek The Next Generation. Hatfield had been found guilty in 1988 of plotting to kill his bosses at a Dallas real-estate firm in a failed car bombing and in 1992 of forging a signature to cash $22,000 in Federal cheques.

Norman Hall Wright, the last surviving writer of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (‘The Nutcracker Suite’ sequence), died on July 21st, aged 91. He also worked on various cartoon shorts and was a — sequence director on Bambi.

Lynrd Sknyrd bassist Leon Wilkeson died on July 27th, aged 49. The cause of death was under investigation.

Children’s author Elizabeth Yates died on July 29th, aged 95. In 1949 she ghost-edited the anthologySpooks and Spirits and Shadowy Shapes and included one of her own stories.

Science fiction and fantasy author Poul [William] Anderson died of prostate cancer around midnight on July 31st, aged 74. He had returned home that day after a month in hospital to await the end with his close family. After making his debut in Astounding in 1947, he wrote more than 100 books, including Vault of the Ages (1952), Three Hearts and Three Lions, The High Crusade, A Midsummer Tempest, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Tau Zero and two collaborations with Gordon R. Dickson (who died in January), Star Prince Charlie and Hokas Hokas Hokas. A winner of three Nebula and seven Hugo awards, his penultimate novel, Genesis, won the 2000 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Robert H. (Henry) Rimmer, author of the 1966 free-love novel The Harrad Experiment (filmed in 1973) and several volumes of The X-Rated Videotape Guide, died on August 1st, aged 84. His other books include The Zolotov Affair, Love Me Tomorrow and The Resurrection of Ann Hutchinson.

68-year-old Ron Townsend, co-founder and one of the lead singers of 1960s group 5th Dimension, died of renal failure on August 2nd after a four-year battle with kidney disease. The Grammy-winning group’s greatest hits include ‘Up Up and Away’ and ‘Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In’.

Author Frederick A. Raborg, Jr., who was a regular contributor to Marvin Kaye’s anthologies under the pseudonym ‘Dick Baldwin’, died on August 13th, aged 67. His stories appeared in Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, Ghosts, Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural and Devils & Demons, amongst other titles.

HarperCollins editor Robert S. Jones, whose authors included Clive Barker, died of cancer in New York on the same day, aged 47.

American composer Jack Elliott, who wrote the music for Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat and other 1970s TV shows, died of a brain tumour on August 18th, aged 74. His film credits include Oh, God! and the series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was loosely based on Elliott’s family.

Controversial British astrophysicist and SF author Sir Fred Hoyle, who coined the term ‘Big Bang’ to describe the creation of the Universe (a theory he always personally disputed), died on August 20th after suffering a severe stroke in July. He was 86. Founder of the Institute for Astronomy at Cambridge University and fellow of the Royal Society, Hoyle’s novels include The Black Cloud and Ossian’s Ride, and he co-wrote the BBC TV series A for Andromeda and its sequel,Andromeda Breakthrough, with John Elliott.

Comics artist Chuck Cuidera, who created Blackhawk at Quality Comics in 1941, died on August 25th, aged 86. He also created Blue Beetle and continued to ink Blackhawk after the title was sold to DC Comics until 1967. He worked on several other DC titles before leaving the field in 1970.

Philanthropist and publisher Paul Hamlyn (Paul Bertrand Hamburger), who became a multi-millionaire with his eponymous mass-market imprint, died on August 31st, aged 75. Among the books he published are Supernatural Stories for Boys, The Best Ghost Stories, The Best Horror Stories and Spinechilling Tales for the Dead of Night. He reissued Algernon Blackwood’s Tales of the Uncanny and the Supernatural and Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre under his Spring Books imprint, and was also chairman of the Octopus Publishing Group from 1971–97.

Pauline Kael, the influential film critic of the New Yorker magazine, died of Parkinson’s disease on September 2nd, aged 82. Her collected essays were published as I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Going Steady, Deeper Into Movies (winner of the National Book Award), Reeling and For Keeps.

54-year-old Douglas J. Stone, vice-president of Odyssey Press, which prints and mails The New York Review of Science Fiction, was aboard the doomed American Airlines Flight 11, which was crashed by terrorists into New York’s World Trade Center on September 11th.

Long-time fan and former president and co-founder of the Southern Fandom Confederation, Meade Frierson, III died of cancer on September 24th, aged 61. With his wife Penny he edited the influential H. P. Lovecraft fanzine HPL in the early 1970s.

George Gately [Gallagher], creator of the Heathcliff newspaper comic strip, died of a heart attack on September 30th, aged 72. From 1973 until he retired in the late 1990s, he drew the eponymous cartoon cat, before which he created the Hapless Harry strip.

E.C. comics artist Johnny Craig also died in September, aged 75. After entering the industry in the late 1930s, he joined E.C. in 1950 where he contributed to Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Pear, Two-Fisted Tales and other titles. His other credits include Warren Publishing’s Creepy and Eerie and various titles for Marvel and DC.

69-year-old Gregory [Hancock] Hemingway, the youngest son of Ernest, died of hypertension and cardiovascular disease on October 1st while being held at a women’s detention centre in Florida (he had apparently had a sex-change operation late in life and called himself ‘Gloria’). Hemingway had been arrested five days earlier for being naked in public and was charged with indecent exposure and resisting arrest. His book about his father, Papa: A Personal Memoir, was published in 1976.

Scottish illustrator Charles William Stewart died on October 3rd, aged 85. As well as producing artwork for Beckford’s Vathek and Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas, he also editedGhost Stories and Other Horrid Tales for the Folio Society, to which he contributed twenty watercolour plates.

Nuclear physicist, author and SF fan Milton A. Rothman died of heart failure on October 6th, aged 81. One of the hosts for the first SF convention in America, he chaired three Worldcons (including the one in 1953 that introduced the Hugo Award) and published fiction in Astounding under the pseudonym ‘Lee Gregor’.

British-born composer and songwriter Joel Lubin, best known for such songs as ‘Move Over, Darling’ and ‘Glass Bottom Boat’ for Doris Day, died of heart failure on October 9th, aged 84. During the 1960s he developed a number of music artists, including Jan and Dean, and he co-wrote ‘Tutti Frutti’ with Little Richard.

Poet, editor and literary critic Anne Ridler O. B.E. (Anne Barbara Bradby), who edited Best Ghost Stories for Faber & Faber in 1945, died in Oxford on October 15th, aged 89.

Oscar-winning American songwriter Jay Livingston, who with Ray Evans wrote such classics as ‘Buttons and Bows’, ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘Que Sera Sera’, died of pneumonia on October 17th, aged 86. The duo’s first big hit was ‘G’bye Now’ from Olsen and Johnson’s 1941 revueHellzapoppin’, which led to a ten-year contract with Paramount. Their TV themes include Bonanza and Mister Ed (which featured Livingston’s voice). Livingston also worked on the scores for When Worlds Collide andThe Mole People.

90-year-old TV writer Norman Lessing, whose credits include episodes of Shirley Temple Storybook (which he associate produced) and Lost in Space, died on October 22nd of congestive heart failure and complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Best known for his depictions of Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ on book covers, calendars and other media since 1984, British artist Josh (Ronald William) Kirby died unexpectedly in his sleep on October 23rd, aged 72. In a career that spanned fifty years, he produced more than 400 paintings, some of the best of which are collected inThe Josh Kirby Poster Book, In the Garden of Unearthly Delights, The Josh Kirby Discworld Portfolio and A Cosmic Cornucopia. Beginning in 1956 with a paperback cover for Ian Fleming’s Moonraker, he illustrated such authors as Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Alfred Hitchcock. Kirby won the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 1996, and amongst his other work he also produced film posters for Star-flight One, The Beastmaster, Krull, Morons from Outer Space, Return of the Jedi and an unused design forMonty Python’s Life of Brian.

Irish storyteller and stage actor Eamon Kelly died on October 24th, aged 87. His stories were collected by the Mercier Press.

American author Richard Martin Stern, whose novel The Tower helped inspire the 1974 movie The Towering Inferno, died on Halloween, aged 86.

British screenwriter and playwright Anthony Shaffer died of a heart attack in London on November 6th, aged 75. The twin brother of playwright Peter Shaffer, he is best known for his stage success Sleuth (filmed in 1971). His other screenplays include Hitchcock’s Frenzy, Absolution, a trio of Agatha Christie adaptations (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun and Appointment with Death) and the cult classic The Wicker Man (which he novelized in 1979).

Comics artist Gray (Dwight Graydon) Morrow died the same day, aged 67. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for several years and according to some reports took his own life. While illustrating various SF digest magazines and paperback book covers in the 1960s (including more than 100 covers for the Perry Rhodan series), he began contributing comic strips to Warren Publishing’s Creepy and Eerie. In 1978 he adapted several stories for The Illustrated Roger Zelazny, and a retrospective volume entitled Gray Morrow: Visionary appeared in 2001. He also worked on a number of newspaper strips, including Secret Agent X-9, Rip Kirby, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and was the longest-running artist on Tarzan, which he illustrated for eighteen years. He was reportedly despondent over his recent replacement on the strip by a new artist.

Ken (Kenneth) [Elton] Kesey, best known as the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (filmed in 1975) and the man who coined the term ‘acid’, died of complications from surgery for liver cancer on November 10th, aged 66. In 1966 Kesey fled to Mexico to avoid going to trial for marijuana possession and was eventually sentenced to six months in jail. He and his fellow ‘Merry Pranksters’ were the heroes of Tom Wolfe’s influential 1968 book about psychedelia, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

60-year-old horror author and film-maker Michael O’Rourke died unexpectedly on November 14th, possibly as a result of toxic mould poisoning. Two years earlier O’Rourke and his wife were evacuated from their home and a lawsuit is ongoing. His books includeDarkling, The Bad Thing, The Undine and The Poison Tree (under the byline ‘F.M. O’Rourke’), and he scripted the films Deadly Love (which he also directed), Hellgate and MoonStalker.

TV writer Peggy Chantler Dick, whose credits include Bewitched, died of heart failure on November 20th, aged 78.

Author and illustrator Seymour [Victory] Reit, who created Casper the Friendly Ghost with animator Joe Oriolo, died on November 21st, aged 83. Reit and Oriolo sold all rights to the cartoon character to Famous Studios for just $200 in the mid-19405, since when the franchise has generated millions through film shorts, TV series, movies and Harvey’s on-going comic book series. Reit also worked on such cartoons as Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and the Popeye and Betty Boop series, and he created the early 1940s comic strip characters Auro, Cosmo Corrigan and Super American, as well as drawing for Archie, Little Lulu and Mad Magazine.

Self-appointed busybody Mary Whitehouse, who formed the Viewers and Listeners Association in an attempt to censor films and television in Britain, died on November 23rd, aged 91. She won’t be missed by many.

TV scriptwriter and producer William Read Woodfield, whose credits include The Hypnotic Eye and the TV movies Earth II and Satan’s Triangle, died of a heart attack on November 24th, aged 73.

Former Beatles guitarist George Harrison died of cancer on November 29th, aged 58. His film appearances include Help! Yellow Submarine, A Magical Mystery Tour and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and he produced the latter along with The Time Bandits and other movies under his production company Hand-Made Films, which he co-founded. At the time of his death the singer/songwriter was reportedly worth £120 million, and his 1970 single ‘My Sweet Lord’ briefly topped the UK charts again, replacing the late Aaliyah’s ‘More Than a Woman’. It was the first time that a posthumous No.1 hit was replaced by another.

75-year-old comic-strip artist Dave Graue, who took over the syndicated strip Alley Oop from its creator Vincent T. Hamlin in 1973, was killed in a car crash near his home in North Carolina on December 10th.

British TV writer Alan Fennell died of cancer on December 11th, aged 65. After teaming up with Gerry Anderson on the comic strip adaptations of the puppet series Four Feather Falls andSupercar, he began scripting many of Anderson’s TV series, includingFireball XL5, Stingray, Joe 90, Thunderbirds and U.F.O. Fennell edited the children’s magazine Look-in from 1971–74 and in 1991 he became editor of Fleetway’s Thunder-birds comics.

Archie Comics artist Dan DeCarlo, who created Sabrina the Teenage Witch, died on December 18th, aged 82.

Writer and editor Keith Allen Daniels died of cancer the same day, aged 45. His SF and fantasy poetry appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Weird Tales and other magazines, and he founded Anamnesis Press in 1990.

British ghost story author and former television scriptwriter and playwright Sheila Hodgson died of a stroke on Christmas Day, just three days after her 80th birthday. During the late 1970s she wrote a series of supernatural plays, three of which were based upon ideas suggested by M. R. James in his essay ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’. These were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and subsequently published as stories in such periodicals as Blackwood’s Magazine and Ghosts & Scholars, as well as being reprinted in Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories XI and XVI, and Ramsey Campbell’s anthology Meddling With Ghosts. In 1998, Ash-Tree Press collected twelve of her tales featuring James as the central character in a volume entitled The Fellow Travellers and Other Ghost Stories.

Composer Florian Fricke, whose credits include Herzog’s Nosferatu, died of a stroke on December 29th, aged 57.

British author Victor [Joseph] Hanson died of complications from a stroke in mid-December, aged 81. Best known for his hard-boiled crime and Western novels, in the early 1960s he published The Twisters, Creatures of the Mist, Claws of the Night andThe Grip of Fear under the pseudonym ‘Vern Hansen’.

ACTORS/ACTRESSES

American character actor Ray Walston, best known as TV’s My Favorite Martian (1963–66) and the Devil in Damn Yankees (on Broadway and in the 1958 film), died on January 1st, aged 86. His numerous other credits include The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, Popeye, The Fall of the House of Usher (1980), Galaxy of Terror, O’Hara’s Wife, Blood Relations, Saturday the 14th Strikes Back, Blood Salvage, Popcorn, Addams Family Values, the 1999 My Favorite Martian movie, the Stephen King mini-series The Stand and a recurring role in Star Trek Voyager. He also narrated the title sequence of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories TV series (1985–87).

Character actress Nancy Parsons died after a long illness on January 5th, aged 58. She appeared in Motel Hell and on TV’s Nightmare Classics: Eyes of the Panther.

Film and TV character actor Scott Marlowe died of a heart attack on January 6th, aged 68. He appeared inThe Subterraneans and the TV movie Night Slaves along with episodes of The Outer Limits, Thriller, The Wild Wild West and many other shows.

65-year-old British stage and television actor Michael Williams, the husband of Dame Judi Dench, died of cancer on January 11th after a seventeen-month battle against the disease. He appeared in the RSC’s 1966 movie Marat/Sade, and between 1989 and 1998 he portrayed Dr Watson to Clive Merrison’s Sherlock Holmes for the entire canon of Sir Arthur Conan’s Doyle’s fifty-six short stories and four novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Canadian character actor Al Waxman died during heart surgery on January 17th, aged 65. His many credits include When Michael Calls, I Still Dream of Jeannie, Heavy Metal, Spasms (akaDeath Bite), Millennium and Bogus.

Hollywood musical comedy star Virginia [Lee] O’Brien died on January 18th, aged 79. Related to Civil War General Robert E. Lee, she appeared in sixteen movies between 1940 and 1947 and in 1955 had a small role in Francis in the Navy. She was married to Superman star Kirk Alyn (who died in 1999) from 1942–55.

Veteran Shakespearean actor Joseph O’Conor died in London on January 21st, aged 84. His films includeGorgo, Hammer’s The Gorgon and Devil Ship Pirates, andDoomwatch, and he appeared on TV in the 1973 adaptation of M. R. James’sA Ghost Story for Christmas: Lost Hearts and the recent children’s series The Belfry Witches.

American actress Sally Mansfield, who portrayed Vena Ray on the 1950s TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, died of lung cancer on January 28th, aged 77.

French leading man Jean-Pierre Aumont (Jean-Pierre Salomons) died on January 29th, aged 92. His many films include Siren of Atlantis, Cauldron of Blood (with Boris Karloff), Castle Keep, The Happy Hooker and Don’t Look in the Attic. One of his three wives was Maria Montez, whom he married in 1946 and with whom he had a daughter, actress Tina Aumont.

BBC television announcer and co-host (with Derek Bond) of the long-running weekly show Picture Parade, Peter [Varley] Haigh also died in January, aged 75. He married Rank starlet Jill Adams in 1957.

Actor Titus Moede, who appeared in Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Rat Pfink and Boo Boo and The Thrill Killers, died of colon cancer on February 6th. As ‘Titus Moody’ he was a pioneer in adult films.

Dale Evans (Frances Octavia Lucille Wood Smith), former band singer and the widow of Hollywood cowboy Roy Rogers, died of congestive heart failure on February 7th, aged 88. She had suffered a stroke in 1996 and was confined to a wheelchair. Known as ‘The Queen of the Cowgirls’, she appeared in twenty-eight films with her husband (who died in 1998) and they worked together on TV in The Roy Rogers Show (1951–57) and The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show (1962). She was named California Mother of the Year in 1967 and Texan of the Year in 1970. The couple lost three of their children, two of them in tragic accidents.

British character actor Reginald Marsh died on February 9th, aged 74. His numerous credits include It Happened Here, Berserk and the TV movies The Stone Tape andHammer House of Mystery and Suspense: Mark of the Devil.

Former European middleweight champion boxer and actor Tiberio Mitri was run over by a train on February 12th, aged 74. The Italian boxer, who famously survived fifteen rounds in the ring with Jake La Motta at Madison Square Garden, went on to appear in a number of films, including Ben-Hur (1959) and numerous spaghetti Westerns and peplums. Following the premature deaths of his son and daughter, he developed a drinking problem and was living among Rome’s homeless population.

British leading man Michael [Anthony] Johnson died on February 24th, aged 62. Best known as a television actor (notably opposite Herbert Lom in The Human Jungle [1963–65]), his only starring role on screen was in Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire (1971).

American character actress Rosemary DeCamp, who played James Cagney’s mother in Yankee Doodle Dandy despite being thirteen years his junior, died of pneumonia on February 20th, aged 90. She also appeared in Jungle Book (1942), William Castle’s 13 Ghosts, Saturday the 14th and the TV movie The Time Machine (1978).

American actress Peggy Converse, who starred in The Thing That Couldn’t Die, died on March 2nd, aged 95.

TV actor Louis Edmonds, who portrayed various members of the Collins family in the daytime soap operaDark Shadows (1966–71) and the movie House of Dark Shadows, died of respiratory failure on March 3rd, aged 77.

Edward Winter, who starred as Captain Ben Ryan in the TV series col1_0 (1978–79), died of Parkinson’s disease on March 8th, aged 63.

Obnoxious talkshow host and chain-smoker [Sean] Morton Downey, Jr. died of lung cancer and other respiratory problems on March 12th, aged 68. After composing such hit surf-rock numbers as ‘Pipeline’ and ‘Wipeout’ in the early 1960s, his syndicated TV series The Morton Downey Jr. Show debuted in the New York City area in 1987. He also appeared in more than twenty movies and TV shows, includingPredator 2 and episodes of Monsters and Tales from the Crypt.

Calypso singer Sir Lancelot (Lancelot Victor Pinard), whose credits include Val Lewton’s I Walked With a Zombie, The Ghost Ship and Curse of the Cat People, plus Zombies on Broadway and The Unknown Terror, died the same day, aged 97.

Hollywood actress and light comedienne Ann Sothern (Harriette Lake) died of heart failure on March 15th, aged 92. Her many films include Super-Sleuth, Lady in a Cage, Golden Needles and The Manitou, and she was the voice of the car in the TV fantasy sitcom My Mother the Car (1965–66). Sothern was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in The Whales of August (with Vincent Price). Her daughter, designer Tisha Sterling, was also an actress.

Voice actress Norma MacMillan, who was the voice of Casper, The Friendly Ghost in the 1950s Paramount cartoon series, died in Canada on March 16th, aged 79. She also voiced Gumby in the Claymation series Pokey and Gumby and Sweet Polly Purebread inUnderdog.

British leading man of the 1950s Anthony [Maitland] Steel died on March 21st, his 81st birthday. His credits includeHelter Skelter (1948) and West of Zanzibar (1954). Later in his career he appeared in The Story of O (1975) and portrayed film producer Lintom Busotsky (a role originally intended for Peter Cushing) in the 1980 R. Chetwynd-Hayes adaptation, The Monster Club. He was briefly married to Anita Ekberg.

American stage and screen actor Anthony Dexter (Walter Fleischmann) died on March 27th, aged 82. After being cast as Rudolph Valentino in the 1951 biopic, his career never recovered and he found himself in such films as Fire Maidens from Outer Space, The Story of Mankind, 12 to the Moon and Phantom Planet.

Alleged serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to more than 300 homicides and was the inspiration for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, also died in March. He was apparently the only man whose death sentence was commuted by Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

British stage, screen and television actress Jean Anderson died on April 1st, aged 93. Her occasional film credits include Disney’s The Three Lives of Thomasina, The Night Digger and Scream-time.

German-born stage and screen actor Brother Theodore (Theodore Gottlieb) died of pneumonia in New York City on April 5th, aged 94. A survivor of Dachau concentration camp, his film credits include Orson Welles’s The Stranger, Nocturna, the 1976 porno spoof Gums, The Invisible Kid and Joe Dante’s The ‘burbs. He also narrated A1 Adamson’s Horror of the Blood Monsters and voiced Gollum in the animated TV movies The Hobbit and The Return of the King. Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors was a 1975 paperback anthology co-edited with Marvin Kaye.

Oscar-winning American actress Beatrice Straight, who played the paranormal investigator in Poltergeist, died of pneumonia on April 7th, aged 86. She also won a Tony Award as Best Supporting Actress in the 1953 Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and was nominated for an Emmy for her role in the 1978 mini-seriesThe Dain Curse. She had a recurring role as the Queen of the Amazons in the 1977 TV series Wonder Woman.

American TV and film actor David Graf, best known for his recurring role in the Police Academy movies, died of a heart attack on the same day, aged 50. His other credits include Burnin’ Love and Skeleton.

Jerome Barr, estranged from his daughter Roseanne after she publicly accused him in 1991 of molesting her as a child, died of a heart attack on April 9th, aged 71. Barr, who had always denied the allegations, won a casino jackpot just days before his death.

New Zealand-born actress Nyree (Ngaire) Dawn Porter died suddenly in London on April 10th, aged 61. In Britain since 1960, she made her name as Irene in the 1967 BBC serial The Forsyte Saga and as the co-star of The Protectors (1972–74), and appeared in such films as AIP’s Jane Eyre (1970), the Amicus productionsThe House That Dripped Blood and From Beyond the Grave, and in the 1980 TV mini-series of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

Welsh-born comedian and singer Sir Harry [Donald] Secombe died of prostate cancer on April 11th, aged 79. From 1951–60 Secombe co-starred in the surreal BBC radio programme The Goon Show (as Neddie Seagoon) along with Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. His film appearances include Helter Skelter (1948), Down Among the Z Men, Svengali (1954) and The Bed Sitting Room.

British stage and screen actor Paul Daneman died on April 28th, aged 75. His film credits include Richard Lester’s surreal How I Won the War (1967).

Argentine actress Mabel Karr died in a Madrid hospital from complications from an infection on May 1st, aged 66. She starred in Jesus Franco’s The Diabolical Dr Z and The Killer Tongue.

Actress and singer Deborah Walley, who starred in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Beach Blanket Bingo, Ski Party, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, Sergeant Deadhead the Astronaut, It’s a Bikini World, the 3-D The Bubble andThe Severed Arm, died of oesophageal cancer on May 10th, aged 57. She had been diagnosed in February and was given just six months to live. Her other film credits include Spinout (with Elvis Presley). She also wrote children’s books and divorced actor John Ashley in 1966.

The same day, actress turned pot dealer Jennifer Stahl, who had a small role in Necropolis and appeared as a dancer in Dirty Dancing, was one of three people found shot to death in a drug deal that went wrong in a sixth-floor apartment above Manhattan’s Carnegie Deli.

87-year-old Italian-American crooner and former barber Perry Como (Pierino Roland Como, aka Nick Perido) died at his home in Florida on May 12th after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for two years. He appeared in a small number of films during the 1940s, and by the late 1950s was America’s highest-paid TV performer. With record sales of more than 100 million, his laid-back hits include ‘Catch a Falling Star’, ‘Magic Moments’ and ‘It’s Impossible’.

American actor and playwright Jason Miller, who won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for his 1973 play That Championship Season and was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist, died of heart failure in Pennsylvania on May 13th, aged 62. His other credits include The Ninth Configuration, The Exorcist III and such TV movies as The Dain Curse, Vampire (1979) and The Henderson Monster.

British leading man of the stage and screen, Jack Watling, died on May 22nd, aged 78. His credits includeMeet Mr Lucifer, Hammer’s The Nanny, 11 Harrowhouse and TV’sInvisible Man and Doctor Who (both opposite his daughter, Deborah).

Veteran TV character actor Harry Townes died in Alabama on May 23rd, aged 86. He played Dr Greenwood in the 1958 movie of Fredric Brown’s The Screaming Mimi and appeared in episodes of Inner Sanctum, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Climax! One Step Beyond, The Twilight Zone, Thriller, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, Night Gallery, The Sixth Sense and numerous others. He semi-retired from acting thirty years ago to become an Episcopalian priest in his home town of Huntsville.

French actor Jean Champion, whose many credits include TV’s Belphegor, died the same day, aged 87.

American actress and TV personality Arlene Francis (Arlene Kazanjian), best known as a panellist on the quiz show What’s My Line? died of cancer on May 31st, aged 93. Her occasional film appearances include Murders in the Rue Morgue opposite Bela Lugosi.

British film journalist and arts administrator David Prothero committed suicide in the summer. He contributed to Shivers, The Dark Side, Scapegoat and Kim Newman’s The BFI Companion to Horror as well as publishing his own magazine, Bloody Hell.

Stuntman Russell Saunders died on June 1st, aged 86. His numerous credits include The Thing (1951), Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure and Logan’s Run.

Comedienne-actress Imogene Coca died on June 2nd, aged 92. Best known for her TV appearances, with guest spots on Bewitched, Fantasy Island, Night Gallery and Monsters, she also had roles in several films, including Alice in Wonderland (1985). A former Broadway dancer, she was married to her second husband, actor King Donovan, from 1960 until his death in 1987.

Mexican-born Hollywood star and former boxer Anthony Quinn (Anthony Rudolph Oaxaca) died in a Boston hospital on June 3rd, aged 86. Best known for his 1964 film Zorba the Greek, he also appeared in Bulldog Drummond in Africa, Television Spy, The Ghost Breakers, Road to Morocco, Sinbad the Sailor, Ulysses (1955), The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1956, as Quasimodo), The Shoes of the Fisherman, The Magus, Ghosts Can’t Do It and Last Action Hero. On television he was in a 1951 episode of Lights Out and portrayed Zeus in five Hercules The Legendary Journeys TV movies in 1994. Married three times (once to Cecil B. DeMille’s daughter Katherine), he had at least thirteen children by five different women.

76-year-old stage, film and TV actor Carroll O’Connor, best remembered for his Emmy Award-winning portrayal of Archie Bunker on the CBS-TV sitcom All in the Family (1971–79), died of a heart attack brought on by complications from diabetes on June 21st. He also appeared in the TV movie Fear No Evil (1969), and such series asThe Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel and The Wild Wild West.

French-born actress Corinne Calvet (Corinne Dibos) died of a cerebral haemorrhage in Los Angeles on June 23rd, aged 75. Her film credits include Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons, Dr Heckle and Mr Hype, The Sword and the Sorcerer and the TV movie The Phantom of Hollywood. Actor John Bromfield was one of her five husbands, and she once filed a $1 million slander suit against Zsa Zsa Gabor for alleging that she was not French.

Hollywood star Jack Lemmon (John Uhler Lemmon III) died of a cancer-related illness on June 27th, aged 76. The two-time Academy Award winner, best known for his long screen partnership with Walter Matthau (who died almost exactly a year earlier), appeared in such early TV series as Suspense and the movies Bell Book and Candle, How to Murder Your Wife, Airport 77, The China Syndrome, JFK, Hamlet (1996) and, uncredited, in The Legend of Bagger Vance (which he also narrated).

71-year-old British character actress Joan Sims died the same day after a long illness and years of heavy drinking and depression. Best known as the star of twenty-four Carry On comedies (including Carry On Screaming), she also appeared inColonel March Investigates (with Boris Karloff), Meet Mr Lucifer, Disney’s One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing and The Canterville Ghost (1996), and was a regular on TV’s Worzel Gummidge (1979–81).

British actress Patricia Hilliard, who appeared in The Ghost Goes West (1936) and had a role in Things to Come (1936), died in mid-June, aged 85.

British character actor Jack Gwillim died on July 2nd, aged 91. Best known for his royal roles on stage, his films include Circus of Horrors, Jason and the Argonauts (1963, as King Aeetes), Hammer’s Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, Clash of the Titans and as Van Helsing in The Monster Squad. On TV his career ranged from A for Andromeda to Conan.

British stage and screen actress Eleanor Summerfield died on July 13th, aged 80. Her film credits include Scrooge (1951) and Disney’s The Watcher in the Woods.

Hollywood actress Molly Lamont, who appeared in Scared to Death (with Bela Lugosi), Devil Bat’s Daughter and Jungle Princess, died on July 15th, aged 91.

‘England’s Premier Ventriloquist’, Arthur Worsley, died on July 19th, aged 80. With his cheeky dummy Charlie Brown he worked with such acts as Laurel and Hardy, Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

Stage and TV actor Steve Barton, who played Raoul in both the original London and Broadway productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, died of heart failure in Germany on July 21st, aged 47. He also played the Beast in an Austrian production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, appeared in the short-lived 1993 Broadway musical The Red Shoes, and originated the role of Count von Krolock in Jim Steinman’s stage adaptation of Dance of the Vampires in Vienna in 1997.

American actor Alex Nicol died on July 28th, aged 85. He appeared in The Clones, The Night God Screamed, A *P *E and The Screaming Skull. He also directed the latter, along with Point of Terror.

British-born actor Christopher Hewett died of complications due to diabetes in Los Angeles on August 3rd, aged 80. Best known for the role of Mr Belvedere on TV from 1985–90, he also appeared in such films as The Producers, Massarati and the Brain andRatboy. For the final season of Fantasy Island (1983–84) he played Mr Roarke’s new sidekick Lawrence, after Herve Ville-chaize left the show.

64-year-old TV scriptwriter, producer and cartoon voice Lorenzo Music (Gerald David Music), who played Carlton the Doorman in Rhoda (1974–78), which he co-created, andGarfield the Cat on the Saturday morning series, died of cancer on August 4th. He won an Emmy in 1969 as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

British actress Dame Dorothy Turin, who played Peter Pan for two seasons (1971–72) on the London stage, died of leukaemia on August 6th, aged 71.

Hollywood leading lady Dorothy McGuire died of heart failure on August 13th, aged 85. She had broken her leg three weeks before. Her many films include The Enchanted Cottage (1945), The Spiral Staircase (1945, as the mute heroine), Disney’sThe Swiss Family Robinson, The Greatest Story Ever Told (as the Virgin Mary) and the TV movie She Waits.

Stage and occasional movie actress Kim Stanley (Patricia Beth Reid) died of uterine cancer the same day, aged 76. Her movies include Séance on a Wet Afternoon (for which she was nominated for an Oscar) and The Right Stuff.

Raymond Edward Johnson, who hosted the radio showInner Sanctum (1941–52) as the macabre Raymond, died on August 15th, aged 90. He also played the lead in radio’s Mandrake the Magician series.

Daytime soap opera star Gerald Gordon, who also appeared in the TV movie It Happened at Lakewood Manor, the original Twilight Zone series, Highway to Heaven and Knight Rider, died on August 17th after a long illness, aged 67.

Soul singer Betty Everett, who topped the US charts in 1964 with ‘The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)’, died on August 18th, aged 61.

American character actor Walter Reed (Walter Smith) died of kidney failure on August 20th, aged 85. Since making his debut in 1929 at the age of thirteen, he appeared in nearly 100 films and serials including Flying Disc Man from Mars, Government Agent vs. Phantom Legion, Superman and the Mole Men, How to Make a Monster, Macumba Love and The Destructors.

American character actress Kathleen Freeman died of lung cancer on August 23 rd, aged 78. Best remembered as the fearsome Sister Stigmata (aka ‘The Penguin’) in both Blues Brothers movies, she made almost 100 films, including Monkey Business, The Magnetic Monster, The Fly (1958), Psycho Sisters, Heart-beeps, Innerspace, Teen Wolf Too, Gremlins 2 The New Batch, Hocus Pocus, Nutty Professor II The Klumps, Shrek, and ten with Jerry Lewis (including the original The Nutty Professor). She was also a regular on the 1953–55 Topper TV series and was appearing in the Broadway production of The Full Monty at the time of her death.

Howard Hughes discovery and Hollywood’s leading film noir actress, Jane Greer (Bettejane Greer), died of complications from cancer on August 24th, two weeks short of her 77th birthday. Her films include Out of the Past, Dick Tracy (1945), The Falcon’s Alibi, Sinbad the Sailor (1946), Run for the Sun and the Lon Chaney Sr. biopic Man of a Thousand Faces. She was briefly married to actor/crooner Rudy Vallee, and her family was descended from the poet John Donne.

22-year-old American R&B singer and actress Aaliyah (Dana Haughton) was one of nine people killed on August 25th, when a ‘substantially overloaded’ light airplane crashed shortly after take-off in the Bahamas, where she had been filming a music video. The niece of Gladys Knight, she was rumoured to have married singer/producer R. Kelly when she was only fifteen. After appearing in Romeo Must Die, she starred in the Anne Rice adaptation Queen of the Damned and had just completed pre-production on the two Matrix sequels. Her parents subsequently launched a legal action against Virgin Records and several video production companies alleging negligence led to the plane crash.

75-year-old Spanish actor Francisco Rabal, who suffered from bronchitis, died of emphysema on August 29th on a flight from Montreal, where he had received a lifetime achievement award. His nearly 200 films include The Witches (1967), Umberto Lenzi’s City of the Walking Dead (aka Nightmare City), Treasure of the Four Crowns and Dagon.

American leading lady Julie Bishop (Jacqueline Brown, aka Jacqueline Wells) died on August 30th, her 87th birthday. After starting out as a child actress in silent films, she went on to appear in Alice in Wonderland (1933), Tarzan the Fearless (with Buster Crabbe), The Black Cat (with Karloff and Lugosi), Torture Ship and The Hidden Hand. Lionel Atwill was once her step father-in-law and her daughter is actress Pamela Shoop Sweeney.

Former American teen idol Troy Donahue (Merle Johnson, Jr.) died on September 2nd of a massive heart attack the 65-year-old had suffered while returning from a gym three days earlier. His film roles include The Man With a Thousand Faces, Monolith Monsters, Monster on the Campus, My Blood Runs Cold, Rocket to the Moon (aka Those Fantastic Flying Fools), Sweet Saviour, Seizure, The Love-Thrill Murders, Cyclone, Deadly Prey, Dr Alien, Bad Blood, The Chilling, Omega Cop, Shock ‘em Dead, Cockroach Hotel and The Godfather Part II. Amongst four divorces, he was married to co-star Suzanne Pleshette for a year, and in the 1970s became addicted to drink and drugs, spending a summer homeless in New York’s Central Park. In later years he gave acting lessons to passengers on a cruise line.

53-year-old American actress and photographer Berry Berenson, the widow of actor Anthony Perkins and younger sister of actress Marisa Berenson, was one of the ninety-two passengers and crew on American Airlines Flight 11, en route from Boston to Los Angeles, that terrorists crashed into the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11th. She appeared in such movies as Cat People (1982) andWinter Kills.

Former TV reporter, Beat poet, Second City founding member and belated character actor, Victor [Keung] Wong died in his sleep on September 12th, aged 74. His nearly thirty films include Big Trouble in Little China, The Golden Child, Prince of Darkness andTremors. He retired in 1998 after suffering two strokes.

46-year-old Lani O’Grady (Lanita Rose Agrati), best known for playing the eldest daughter in the TV series Eight is Enough (1977–81), was found dead at her California home on September 25th. The actress, whose other credits include Massacre at Central High (aka Blackboard Massacre), The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse and the TV movie The Kid With the Broken Halo, had suffered from panic attacks, agoraphobia and alcohol and drug abuse.

Actress Gloria Foster, who appeared as The Oracle in The Matrix, died of complications from diabetes in New York on September 29th, aged 64.

Early American TV sex symbol Dagmar (Virginia Ruth Egnor, aka Jennie Lewis) died on October 9th, aged 79. The buxom blonde appeared on Broadway with comedy duo Olsen and Johnson in the mid-1940s, and guested on TV alongside Jerry Lester, Morey Amsterdam and Milton Berle during the following decade. She retired in the 1970s.

American actor Otis Young died of a stroke on October 12th, aged 69. His films include The Clones, The Capture of Bigfoot and Blood Beach.

British actress Linden Travers (Florence Lindon-Travers), best remembered for her role as Mrs Todhunter in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, died on October 23rd, aged 88. Her other films include The Terror (1939), The Ghost Train (1940), The Bad Lord Byron and No Orchids For Miss Blandish, which was banned in Britain for several years. Her younger brother was actor Bill Travers.

British character actress Jenny Laird, who appeared in Village of the Damned (1960) and the TV movies A Place to Die and The Masks of Death (as Mrs Hudson, opposite Peter Cushing’s Sherlock Holmes), died on Halloween, aged 84. She also appeared in episodes of TV’s Doctor Who and Hammer House of Horror.

Actor and Tony award-winning composer Albert Hague, who played the cantankerous Mr Shorofsky in Fame and the spin-off TV series, died of lung cancer on November 12th, aged 81. In 1966 he scored the animated short Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (narrated by Boris Karloff), and also appeared in Nightmares, Space Jam and TV’s Tales from the Darkside.

American actor Byron Sanders, who appeared in The Flesh Eaters and also modelled for Salvador Dali’s ‘Crucifixion’, died the same day, aged 76.

Veteran British comedienne and character actress Peggy Mount died on November 13th, aged 86.

33-year-old British actress Charlotte Coleman, best remembered as Hugh Grant’s room-mate in Four Weddings and a Funeral, died of a severe asthma attack in London on November 14th. She also appeared in The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale and TV’s Worzel Gummidge, as well as providing voices for the feature cartoon Faeries.

79-year-old Australian actor and screenwriter Michael St. Clair died of a brain aneurysm while driving to an audition on November 22nd. He appeared in Skullduggery and the TV movie The Hound of the Baskervilles (1972), and scripted Mission Mars and co-wrote The Body Stealers (aka Thin Air).

Actor and opera singer Norman Lumsden, best known as author J. R. Hartley looking for a copy of his own book on flyfishing in the British Yellow Pages TV commercial, died on November 28th, aged 95. His first job was as a commercial artist for publisher Hodder & Stoughton, where he designed book covers for Leslie Charteris’s The Saint series and other titles. Benjamin Britten wrote the part of Peter Quince in his 1960 opera of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Lumsden in mind.

John Mitchum, the actor brother of Robert, died of a stroke on November 29th, aged 82. He appeared in Bigfoot, High Plains Drifter, Telefon and Escapes.

American character actress Pauline Moore, who played one of the bridesmaids in the 1931 Frankenstein, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on December 7th, aged 87. Her other credits include Charlie Chan at the Olympics, Charlie Chan on Treasure Island and Charlie Chan in Reno.

Veteran Indian actor Ashok Kumar [Ganguli], who appeared in more than 300 films during a career that spanned over sixty years, died of a heart attack on December 10th, aged 90.

Singer Rufus Thomas, best known for his novelty hit ‘Do the Funky Chicken’, died of apparent heart failure in Memphis, Tennessee, on December 15th, aged 84. The Rolling Stones covered his ‘Walking the Dog’ on their first album in 1964.

72-year-old British actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne died of a heart attack on December 19th after a two-year battle against pancreatic cancer. He won a Tony Award for his stage performance as C. S. Lewis in the 1991 Broadway production of Shadowlands and was forced to pull out of playing Jack the Ripper in From Hell (2001) when potentially lethal blood clots were discovered on his lungs prior to filming. He also appeared in DreamChild, Demolition Man, Richard III, Memoirs of a Survivor, Firefox and the 1981 TV movie of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and contributed voice characterizations to Water ship Down, The Plague Dogs and Disney’s The Black Cauldron and Tarzan.

American character actor Lance Fuller died in a Los Angeles nursing home after a long illness on December 22nd, aged 73. He portrayed the Metaluna Mutant in the classic This Island Earth, and also appeared in The She Creature (1956), Voodoo Woman, The Bride and the Beast, The Andromeda Strain and episodes of TV’s Thriller and The Twilight Zone.

American character actress [Anna] Eileen Heckart died after a three-year battle with cancer on December 31st, aged 82. Among her many roles, she appeared in both the Broadway and film productions of The Bad Seed, gaining an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the part of Mrs Daigle. Her other movies includeNo Way To Treat a Lady and Burnt Offerings. She retired from acting in 2000.

Swiss-born leading man Paul Hubschmid (aka Paul Christian) died in Berlin of a pulmonary embolism the same day, aged 84. He appeared in Bagdad, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Fritz Lang’s Tiger of Eschnapur (aka Journey to the Lost City), Funeral in Berlin, The Day the Sky Exploded and Skullduggery.

FILM/TV TECHNICIANS

British cartoon film-maker Alison de Vere died on January 2nd, aged 73. In 1967 she helped create the backgrounds for The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and made a cameo appearance as one of the photographed figures in the ‘Eleanor Rigby’ sequence.

American independent film producer/director James Hill died of Alzheimer’s disease on January 11th, aged 84. After working as a contract screenwriter at MGM, he joined actor Burt Lancaster and agent Harold Hecht in a production partnership. In 1958, he became Rita Hayworth’s fifth and final husband. The marriage lasted two years.

Following years of poor health (his death was prematurely announced in 1996), Spanish writer/director Amando De Ossorio died on January 13th, aged 82. His many films include Malenka The Niece of the Vampire, Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, Night of the Sorcerers, Horror of the Zombies (1974), Night of the Seagulls and The Sea Serpent.

Film exhibitor Ted Mann, who changed the name of Hollywood’s famed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to his own in 1973, died of a stroke on January 15th, aged 84. He also produced the 1969 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man and Krull, and was married to actress Rhonda Fleming.

Sam Wiesenthal, who was production manager to Carl Laemmle, Jr’s vice-president at Universal Pictures, died on February 11th at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital, aged 92. With Laemmle, he was responsible for All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and the studio’sFrankenstein and Dracula franchises. After Universal was sold in 1936, he moved on to other studios and later became an independent producer.

Screenwriter/director Burt Kennedy, best known for his comedy Westerns, died of cancer on February 15th, aged 78. He had undergone heart surgery the previous month, after which his kidneys had failed. Among his many credits are The Killer Inside Me, Suburban Commando and the TV movies The Wild Wild West Revisited andMore Wild Wild West.

Former president of production at Paramount, producer Howard W. Koch reportedly died of Alzheimer’s disease on February 16th, aged 84. His credits include The Manchurian Candidate, The President’s Analyst, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Heaven Can Wait (1978), Dragonslayer, The Keep and Ghost. During the 1950s he was a partner with Aubrey Schenck in independent production company Bel-Air, which produced such low-budget chillers as The Black Sleep, Pharaoh’s Curse and Voodoo Island, and he directed Frankenstein 1970 starring Boris Karloff.

French film director Robert Enrico, whose early films include the Oscar-winning 1961 short La Riviere Du Hibou (Incident at Owl Creek), based on the story by Ambrose Bierce, died of cancer in Paris the same day, aged 69. In America, his short film was shown as part of The Twilight Zone TV series.

American producer/director Stanley [Earl] Kramer, whose classic films include High Noon, The Caine Mutiny and Judgment at Nuremberg, died of pneumonia on February 19th, aged 87. His other credits include The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T, On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. During the 1950s he kept Lon Chaney, Jr. in high-profile films, while both Karloff and Lugosi were scrabbling for work.

German-born American cinematographer Ralf D. Bode, whose credits include Dressed to Kill, died of lung cancer on February 27th, aged 59.

The same day saw the death of film and TV producer Stan Margulies from cancer at the age of 80. His credits include Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Former actor, director and cinematographer John A. Alonzo died on March 13th, aged 66. After starring in The Hand of Death (1962), the Mexican-American cinematographer began as James Wong Howe’s camera operator on Seconds (1966) before working with such directors as Martin Ritt, Roger Corman, Roman Polanski, John Frankenheimer and Brian De Palma. He photographed parts of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, Blue Thunder, Terror in the Aisles, The Guardian, Meteor Man, Star Trek Generations and the live TV movie remake of Fail Safe (2000).

British film director Ralph Thomas, the older brother of the late Carry On director Gerald Thomas, died after a long illness on March 17th, aged 85. Best known for his series of Doctor comedies (1953–70), based on the novels by Richard Gordon, his other films include Helter Skelter (1948), The 39 Steps (1959), Hot Enough for June, Deadlier Than the Male, Some Girls Do, Percy, Percy’s Progress and Quest for Love (based on a story by John Wyndham). His son is producer Jeremy Thomas.

Motion picture designer and conceptual artist Mentor Huebner, who designed Robby the Robot for MGM’sForbidden Planet, died on March 19th after several vascular bypass surgeries on his right leg. He was 83, and among his more than 250 other credits are many conceptual drawings for Alfred Hitchcock’s films, The Time Machine (1960), Planet of the Apes (1967), King Kong (1976), Flash Gordon (1980), Blade Runner, Dune (1984), Cat’s Eye, The Addams Family, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, So I Married an Ax Murderer, Total Recall and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Early in his career he had worked at Disney as an animator, drawing the ‘Heigh-Ho’ sequence for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Cartoon director and producer William [Denby] Hanna, who with partner Joseph Barbera founded Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1957, died on March 22nd, aged 90. He had been in declining health for several years. Among the many TV shows he helped to create were The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Captain Caveman and Scooby-Doo, winning eight Emmys for his work. The duo began their collaboration in 1937 at MGM, where they won seven Oscars for Tom and Jerry before the studio closed down its animation department in 1957. They also combined cartoon sequences with live action for such films as Anchors Aweigh, Dangerous When Wet and Invitation to the Dance.

Lawrence M. Lansburgh, who joined Walt Disney in the mid-1940s and directed eighteen features and episodes of TV’s The Wonderful World of Disney, died on March 25th, aged 89.

Polish-born cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski was found dead in a Vancouver hotel room on March 26th, soon after completing the Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis.

67-year-old Larry Tucker who, with Paul Mazursky, co-developed, co-produced and scripted The Monkees TV series, died on April 1st of complications from multiple sclerosis and cancer. A former stand-up comedian, he appeared in Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor and produced and scripted Mazursky’s Alex in Wonderland.

French film director Jean-Gabriel Albicocco, whose credits include the 1966 international hit Le Grand Meaulnes (The Wanderer), died forgotten and destitute in Brazil on April 10th. He was 65.

French-born Canadian film and TV producer Nicolas Clermont, who as co-founder of Filmline International was responsible for the long-running Highlander series and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, died of cancer on April 11th, aged 59.

American visual effects artist Sean Dever died on April 13th, aged 32. His credits include such overblown blockbusters as Red Planet, Thirteen Days, The Sixth Day, Waterworld, Angels in the Outfield, True Lies, The Fifth Element, Flubber, My Favorite Martian, Sphere and Batman and Robin.

American film and television director Michael Ritchie died of complications from prostate cancer on April 16th, aged 62. His credits include The Island, The Golden Child, A Simple Wish and TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Italian director Giacomo Gentilomo died the same day in Rome, aged 92. His films include Goliath and the Vampires and Hercules Against the Moon Men.

Director, producer and writer Jack Haley, Jr., the son of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, died on April 21st, aged 67. He created MGM’s That’s Entertainment! series and numerous award-winning TV specials and documentaries based around the Golden Age of Hollywood (The Making of the Wizard of Oz, etc.). He also directed the 1970, 1974 and 1979 Academy Award shows and was once married to Liza Minnelli.

British screenwriter and director Ken Hughes died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in a California nursing home on April 28th, aged 79. A former cinema projectionist, his film credits include The Brain Machine, The Atomic Man (aka Time-slip), Joe Macbeth, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Casino Roy ale (both based on books by Ian Fleming), Sextette with an 86-year-old Mae West and the slasher film Night School (aka Terror Eyes).

Veteran animator Maurice J. Noble died on May 18th, aged 91. Co-director of the Oscar-winning short The Dot and the Line, he worked on such Disney classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Fantasia and Dumbo, and more than sixty Warner Bros, cartoons (including Duck Dodgers in the 24 y₂ Century). With business partner Chuck Jones he also produced many Dr Seuss (Ted Geisel) cartoons, including The Cat in the Hat, Horton Hears a Who and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.

83-year-old Herbert Wise Browar, former vice-president of production at Filmways Television, died of a cerebral haemorrhage on May 19th. He served as an associate producer on such popular TV shows as Mr Ed (1961–65) and The Addams Family (1964–66).

Italian director Alfonso Brescia died on June 6th, aged 71. He directed more than fifty films (often credited to ‘A1 Bradley’), including The Conqueror of Atlantis, The Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women, War in Space, Battle of the Stars, Iron Warriors and many more.

French cinematographer Henri Alekan, whose credits include Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, died on June 15th following a brief hospitalization for leukaemia. He was 92.

Michael Green, the chairman of leading independent British film distributor Entertainment, died on June 17th, aged 84. After co-founding Regal Films International in the late 1950s, he launched Entertainment Film Distributors in 1978, since when the company has released everything from Hellraiser to Lord of the Rings and produced the sci-fi flop Slipstream.

Entertainment attorney Paul Schreibman, who was responsible for making the deals with Toho to bring Godzilla, Mothra, Varan etc. to America, died on June 23rd, aged 92.

Oscar-winning special effects supervisor A. D. Flowers died from complications of emphysema and pneumonia on July 5th, aged 85. Chief of mechanical special effects at Twentieth Century-Fox for many years, his film credits include The Poseidon Adventure, Steven Spielberg’s 1941 and Apocalypse Now.

Disney animator Ted Berman died on July 15th, aged 81. He worked on Fantasia, Bambi, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and co-scripted and co-directed The Black Cauldron.

Producer Jules Buck, whose credits include What’s New Pussycat and The Ruling Class, died on July 19th, aged 83.

Record producer and songwriter Milton Gabler, who founded the independent jazz label Commodore Records in 1937 and produced Bill Haley and the Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in one take, died on July 20th, aged 90.

Film and TV director Alan Rafkin died of complications during heart surgery in Los Angeles on August 6th, aged 73. A former nightclub comic, he began his career in 1958 with such TV series as 77 Sunset Strip, directing more than eighty prime-time sitcoms along with a number of movies, including Ski Party, Angel in My Pocket and The Ghost and Mr Chicken.

Former film editor and TV producer Art Seid died on August 9th, aged 87. He edited Lost Horizon (1937) and A Taste of Evil.

Oscar and Emmy Award-nominated American sound designer and sound editor Richard Jay Shorr died of melanoma at his home in Paris on August 13th, aged 58. In 1979 he wrote and directed Witches Brew, a comic adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife, which was completed by Herbert L. Strock. Switching to sound production, Shorr also worked on The Day After, Die Hard, Poltergeist III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Highway to Hell.

Music editor Daniel Adrian Carlin died of lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis on August 14th, aged 73. His credits include Ghost, Ghostbusters, Fatal Attraction and All That Jazz.

Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers, best known for creating Mr Spock’s Vulcan ears on TV’s Star Trek (1966–68) and the make-up for the original Planet of the Apes (1967) and its sequels, died of diabetes complications on August 25th, aged 78. His many other credits include The Three Stooges in Orbit, The Human Duplicators, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Mephisto Waltz, Superbeast, Ssssssss, Phantom of the Paradise, Embryo, The Island of Dr Moreau (1977), Halloween II and TV’s Beauty and the Beast (1976). Chambers won an honorary Oscar for his work on Planet of the Apes, and he was also rumoured to have created the famous Bigfoot creature filmed by Californian ‘researchers’ in 1967.

Film editor and producer Thomas Ralph Fries, the son of producer Charles Fries, died of a protracted cardiopulmonary illness on September 10th, aged 47. His credits include The Martian Chronicles, Starcrossed, Bridge Across Time and Flowers in the Attic. In 1989 he produced Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge.

54-year-old American television producer David Angell and his wife Lynn were among the sixty-five passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 175, travelling from Boston to Los Angeles, that terrorists crashed into the South Tower of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11th. The co-creator and executive producer of NBC-TV’s Frasier, he also scripted episodes of the comedy shows Wings and Cheers, sharing six Emmy Awards for his television work.

Fred (Frederick) De Cordova, who directed Bedtime for Bonzo and Bonzo Goes to College starring Ronald Reagan and a chimpanzee, died on September 15th, aged 90. His fifty-year career included directing numerous TV shows (including episodes of Bewitched) a TV version of Blithe Spirit starring Noel Coward, Lauren Bacall and Claudette Colbert, and he was executive producer of Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show (1971–92).

Samuel Z. Arkoff, the cigar-chewing executive producer and co-founder (with James H. Nicholson, who died in 1972) of American International Pictures, died on September 16th, aged 83. His many films date from The Beast With a Million Eyes (1955) to Hellhole (1985), and include I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula, Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe series, The Amityville Horror (which grossed $65 million in America) and Dressed to Kill. His autobiography (with Richard Trubo), Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants, was published in 1992. Arkoff’s wife Hilda, who provided home-cooked meals for AIP wrap parties, died on July 26th.

Canadian-born film and TV director Gerald Mayer, the nephew of legendary MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, died of complications from pneumonia on September 21st, aged 82. His credits include episodes of Thriller, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Invaders, Tarzan, Six Million Dollar Man and Logan’s Run.

Computer special effects wizard Robert Abel, who created the slit-scan effect for the ‘Star Gate’ sequence in2001: A Space Odyssey and also worked on Disney’s Tron, died on September 23rd, five weeks after suffering a heart attack. He was 64.

William [‘Herbert’] Coleman, Alfred Hitchcock’s associate producer and right-hand man for a decade, died on October 3rd, aged 93. He worked on such titles as Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry andVertigo, and produced the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents andThe Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

British TV special effects director Jim Francis died on October 5th, aged 47. His numerous credits include Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Blakes 7, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Tenth Kingdom and such films as Hardware, Nostradamus and Grim.

American director, dancer and choreographer Herbert Ross, who often collaborated with Neil Simon, died of heart failure on October 9th, aged 76. After staging the musical sequences for the Cliff Richard films The Young Ones and Summer Holiday, he worked on Doctor Dolittle before becoming a director with such films asPlay It Again Sam, The Last of Sheila, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution andPennies from Heaven. From 1988–2001 he was married to Jackie Kennedy’s sister, Lee Bouvier Radzi-well.

Italian opera designer, film director, writer and illustrator of children’s books, Beni Montresor died on October 11th, aged 75. During the 1950s he worked at Rome’s Cine Citta studios, where Ricardo Freda asked him to design I Vampiri (aka The Devil’s Commandment!Lust of the Vampire) in 1956.

Music director and supervisor Raoul Kraushaar, who supplied music cues for such cartoons as Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, died on October 13th, aged 93. He was also involved in the music for SOS Coast Guard, Prehistoric “Women, Bride of the Gorilla, Untamed Women, Invaders from Mars (1953), Curucu Beast of the Amazon, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, Island of Lost Women, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and the Abbott and Costello TV show.

Known as the ‘father of television syndication’, Frederic W. Ziv died the same day, aged 96. Among the many shows his company created were Science Fiction Theatre, Sea Hunt and The Cisco Kid.

Sound supervisor Robert Reed Rutledge, who won an Oscar for his work on Back to the Future, died of a heart attack on October 15th, aged 53. His other credits include Star Wars, The Beastmaster and The Witches of Eastwick.

British film editor Ray Lovejoy, whose credits include Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, died on October 19th. His other films include The Ruling Class, Aliens, Krull, Batman and Lost in Space.

65-year-old Czechoslovakian director Jaromil Jires, whose best-known film is Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, died on October 24th after a long illness caused by head injuries sustained in a serious car accident.

John Roberts, who borrowed $1.8 million against his trust fund to co-produce Woodstock (1969), died of cancer on October 27th, aged 56.

American director Adrian Weiss, whose credits include Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s The Bride and the Beast, died on October 28th, aged 88.

British film director and producer Roy Boulting, best remembered for his affair with young star Hayley Mills, whom he later married, died after a long illness on November 5th, aged 88. With his twin brother John (who died in 1985) he became director of British Lion Films in the 1960s, and their films together include Thunder Rock, Brighton Rock, Seven Days to Noon, Twisted Nerve and Endless Night. Roy also directed Run for the Sun, another variation on ‘The Most Dangerous Game’. His son with Hayley Mills, Crispian, became the lead singer of the pop group Kula Shaker.

American TV director Paul Krasny died in Las Vegas on November 12th, aged 66. His many credits include episodes of Gemini Man, Logan’s Run, The Powers of Matthew Starr and Wizards and Warriors.

Former actor turned director Gunnar Hellstrom died of a stroke on November 28th, aged 73. His credits includeThe Name of the Game is Kill and episodes of TV’s The Powers of Matthew Starr.

British independent film distributor Charles Cooper, who founded Contemporary Films in the early 1950s as a supplier of high-quality foreign and artistic movies, died the same day, aged 91.

Former matador and maverick director Oscar ‘Budd’ Boetticher, Jr., best known for his ‘B’ Westerns starring Randolph Scott and Audie Murphy, died of multiple organ failure from cancer on November 29th, aged 85. His first wife was actress Debra Paget, and his other film credits include Escape in the Fog and the Boston Blackie entry One Mysterious Night.

Oscar-winning Italian costume and set designer Danilo Donati, who worked with such directors as Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini, died of heart failure on December 1st, aged 75. His other films include Flash Gordon (1980) and RedSonja, and at the time of his death he was working on the sets for Robert Benigni’s Pinocchio.

Animator Faith Hubley died of cancer on December 14th, aged 77. His films include Moonbird, The Hole and Of Men and Demons.

TV director Alan Crosland, Jr. died on December 18th, aged 83. His many credits include episodes of Men into Space, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Sixth Sense, The Gemini Man, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Cliffhangers: The Secret Empire and Automan.

American director and former editor Paul Landres, whose credits include The Vampire, The Return of Dracula (aka The Fantastic Disappearing Man), The Flame Barrier and TV’s The Veil: Destination Nightmare (with Boris Karloff), died of complications from cancer on December 26th, aged 89.

Hollywood producer Jack Grossberg died on December 28th, aged 74. His credits include The Producers, Sleeper, King Kong (1976) and Brainstorm, after which he became a unit production manager on such films as Back to the Future andLittle Monsters.

Animation director Ray Patterson died after a lengthy illness on December 30th, aged 90. After working at Disney on Fantasia and Dumbo he joined Hanna and Barbera at MGM in 1941, directing over sixty Tom and Jerry cartoons and the animated sequences for Anchors Aweigh. In 1967 he produced the animated TV series Spider-Man before moving to Hanna-Barbera, where he co-directed the cartoon feature Charlotte’s Web and helmed The Jetsons, Mr Magoo, Trollkins, The Flinstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, The Addams Family (1992–93) and numerous other shows.

Film and TV director David Swift, who began working at Disney as an assistant animator on such films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Dumbo, Pinocchio andPeter Pan and returned in the early 1960s as a live-action director, died on December 31st, aged 82. In the early 1950s he created the live TV seriesMr Peepers starring Wally Cox.

Hollywood producer Julia Phillips, the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, died of cancer the same day, aged 57. Her many hits include The Sting, Taxi Driver, The Big Bus and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When Steven Spielberg reportedly ‘kicked her off’ the latter, her career went into decline through drugs and alcohol. In 1990 she published her controversial autobiography You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.