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.