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.