Party” movies during the 1960s, died of heart-related complications on 6 January, aged seventy. He also appeared in Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (with Vincent Price), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (with Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone), Creature of Destruction, Planet Earth, Brave New World, Silent Night Deadly Night and The Golden Child, along with episodes of TV’s Thriller, Get Smart, The New People, The Immortal and Mr Merlin. His voice-work in cartoons included playing “Killer Croc” on Batman: The Animated Series and “Sky Lynx” on Transformers. In later years Kincaid became a model and artist.
American TV actor John [Carroll] Dye, who starred as the celestial “Andrew” in CBS’ Touched by an Angel (1994–2003), died of a heart attack on 10 January, aged forty-seven. He was also in the fantasy TV movies Once Upon a Christmas and Twice Upon a Christmas.
American actor [Horace] Paul Picerni, a regular on TV’s The Untouchables (1959–63), died of a heart attack on 12 January, aged eighty-eight. He appeared in House of Wax (with Vincent Price), only the trailer for The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the last “Bomba the Jungle Boy” movie, Lord of the Jungle, and Capricorn One, along with episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Men Into Space, Batman, The Immortal, The Sixth Sense, Ghost Story, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Project U.F.O., Fantasy Island, The Incredible Hulk and The Powers of Matthew Star.
Susannah York (Susannah Yolande Fletcher) died on 14 January after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. She was seventy-two. The British actress and author starred in Jane Eyre (1970), Robert Altman’s Images (based on her own children’s book, In Search of Unicorns), The Shout, Superman (1978) and sequels II and IV (as the Man of Steel’s mother “Lara”), The Golden Gate Murders, The Awakening (based on The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker), A Christmas Carol (1984), Daemon, Mio in the Land of Faraway (with Christopher Lee), Visitors and Franklyn. On TV she appeared in episodes of ITV Play of the Week (“The Crucible” with Sean Connery), Mystery and Imagination (“The Fall of the House of Usher” as “Madeleine Usher”), Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries (with Peter Cushing) and The Ray Bradbury Theatre.
Sixty-nine-year-old TV horror host Dr Creep (Barry Lee Hobart, aka “Dr Death”) died the same day, following a series of strokes. He hosted Shock Theater on Dayton, Ohio’s WKEF from 1972–85, and later on public-access TV between 1999–2005. The character also appeared in the shorts Joe Nosferatu: Homeless Vampire and Casting Bruce Campbell, along with the direct-to-DVD movie Necrophagia: Through Eyes of the Dead, and he was featured in the 2006 documentary American Scary. Hobart was the nephew of horror film make-up artist and stuntman Doug Hobart.
American actress Patti Gilbert (Patti Friedman) died on 15 January, aged seventy-nine. She played the wife of Victor Buono’s villainous “King Tut” in a 1967 episode of TV’s Batman, appeared in a couple of episodes of Get Smart and voiced “Princess of Sweet Rhyme” in The Phantom Tollbooth (1970).
Gruff American character actor Bruce Gordon, another regular on TV’s The Untouchables, died on 20 January, aged ninety-four. His credits include Roger Corman’s Curse of the Undead and Tower of London (1962), Hello Down There, Piranha (1978) and Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann, along with episodes of One Step Beyond, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (“The Mother Muffin Affair” with Boris Karloff), The Flying Nun, Get Smart and Tarzan (1968). Gordon also appeared alongside Karloff in the long-running Broadway play Arsenic and Old Lace (1941–44).
American physical fitness guru Jack LaLanne (Francois Henri LaLanne) died of respiratory failure and pneumonia on 23 January, aged ninety-six. Along with his own TV show (1951– 85), he appeared in More Wild Wild West, Repossessed, The Year Without Santa Claus (as “Hercules”), and episodes of such 1960s TV shows as Mr Ed, The Addams Family and Batman.
American comedian Charlie Callas (Charles Callias), best remembered for his zany sound effects, died in Las Vegas on 27 January. He was eighty-three. A TV talk show favourite and “Rat Pack” associate, the rubber-faced Callas’ credits include such movies as The Snoop Sisters, Silent Movie, Disney’s Pete’s Dragon (as the voice of “Elliott”, the dragon), High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, Hysterical (as “Dracula”), Amazon Women on the Moon, Vampire Vixens from Venus, Dracula Dead and Loving It and Horrorween, along with episodes of TV’s The Munsters, The Monkees, Legends of the Superheroes (as the voice of “Sinestro”), Silk Stalkings and A. J.’s Time Travelers.
TV character actor Michael Tolan (Seymour Tuchow) died of heart disease and kidney failure on 31 January, aged eighty-six. He appeared in episodes of Inner Sanctum, Diagnoses: Unknown (“The Curse of the Gypsy”), Play of the Week (“The Dybbuk”), The Outer Limits (“The Zanti Misfits”), Tarzan, The Invaders, Hammer’s Journey to the Unknown and Ghost Story.
Welsh-born TV character actress Margaret John died after a short illness on 2 February, aged eighty-four. She began her career in 1960 and appeared in episodes of Suspense, Mysteries and Miracles, Doctor Who (in 1968 and 2006), Menace, Doomwatch, Dead of Night, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Blakes 7, Shadows, The Boy Merlin, Tardisodes, Being Human, and Game of Thrones. John also portrayed “Mrs Hudson” in the early 1990s TV movies Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and Incident at Victoria Falls, both starring Christopher Lee as Holmes and Patrick Macnee as Dr Watson.
French actress Maria Schneider, best known for her role opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial Last Tango in Paris (1972), died of cancer on 3 February, aged fifty-eight. Her other film credits include Mama Dracula and Franco Zeffirelli’s 1996 version of Jane Eyre.
Japanese-born American actress, exotic dancer and martial arts expert Tura Satana (Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi), who starred in Russ Myer’s cult classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) died of heart failure on 4 February, aged seventy-two. She also appeared in Our Man Flint (uncredited), The Astro-Zombies, The Doll Squad, Mark of the Astro-Zombies, Astro-Zombies M3: Cloned and an episode each of TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.. Her life stories included being gang-raped when she was nine years old, first marrying at thirteen, posing for nude for photographs taken by silent screen comic Harold Lloyd, working as a stripper, turning down a marriage proposal from Elvis Presley, being shot by a former lover and breaking her back in a car accident.
American character actress Peggy Rea died of complication from congestive heart failure on 5 February, aged eighty-nine. She appeared in 7 Faces of Dr Lao, What’s the Matter with Helen? Lipstick, and episodes of TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, The Immortal and Monsters.
J. Paul Getty, III, the grandson of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, died after a long illness the same day, aged fifty-four. After being kidnapped and held to ransom in Italy for four months in 1973, he appeared in the Portuguese horror film The Territory (aka O Territorio, 1981).
Hollywood character actress Myrna Dell (Marilyn Adele Dunlap) died on 11 February,
