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!