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.