What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide!), Black Zoo, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, The Skull, They Came from Beyond Space, Berserk, Curse of the Crimson Altar (aka The Crimson Cult), Trog, The Corpse (aka Crucible of Horror), Horror Hospital, The Legend of Hell House (uncredited), Satan’s Slave (aka Evil Heritage), The Boys from Brazil, Venom, A Christmas Carol (1984), Arthur the King (aka Merlin and the Sword), The Serpent and the Rainbow, Nostradamus and the TV movie The Haunting of Helen Walker (based on “Turn of the Screw” by Henry James). He also appeared in episodes of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Wednesday Play (“Alice in Wonderland”), Doctor Who, The Avengers (“The Cybernauts”), Hammer’s Journey to the Unknown, The Champions, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Moonbase 3, Blakes 7, The Little Vampire (1986–87) and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
American dancer and novelist Dorothy Young, who worked as an assistant to stage magician Harry Houdini from 1925–26, died on 20 March, aged 103. She made her debut as the futuristic “Radio Girl of 1950”, but left the act two months before the escapologist’s death on 31 October, 1926. Young was the last surviving member of Houdini’s touring show.
Legendary Hollywood star Dame Elizabeth [Rosemond] Taylor died of complications from congestive heart failure on 24 March, aged seventy-nine. She had been hospitalised for six weeks. Born to American parents in London, England, Taylor’s family relocated to Los Angeles in 1939 where, within a few years, she became a child star at MGM. In later years she developed into one of the screen’s most iconic figures, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress. Her films include Jane Eyre (1943), Suddenly Last Summer, Doctor Faustus (1967), Hammersmith is Out, Night Watch, The Blue Bird (1976) and The Flintstones (1994). She also contributed voice work to the animated TV series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, The Simpsons and God, the Devil and Bob, and in later years became a spokesperson for AIDS research. Taylor was almost as well-known for her eight marriages as her movies, and her husbands included Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher and, most famously, Richard Burton (twice). It was revealed that the scheduled start time was delayed for almost fifteen minutes, after the actress left instructions that she wanted to be late for her own funeral.
American leading man Farley [Earle] Granger [II] died on 27 March, aged eighty-five. Best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951), he also appeared in Behave Yourself! (with Lon Chaney, Jr.), Full House (“The Gift of the Magi”), Hans Christian Andersen, Something Creeping in the Dark (aka Qualcosa striscia nel buio), Amuck! (aka Hot Bed of Sex), So Sweet So Dead (aka Penetration), Arnold and The Prowler (aka Rosemary’s Killer), along with episodes of TV’s The United States Steel Hour (“The Bottle Imp”), Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (“The Inn of the Flying Dragon”), Get Smart, Wide World Mystery (“The Haunting of Penthouse D”), The Six Million Dollar Man, Matt Helm, The Invisible Man (1975), Tales from the Dark Side and Monsters. In 1980 Granger also starred on Broadway in Ira Levin’s Deathtrap.
American child actress and singer Donna Lee [O’Leary], who appeared in Val Lewton’s The Body Snatcher and Bedlam, both starring Boris Karloff, died on 3 April, aged eighty-one. She also appeared (uncredited) as a member of the Donna Lee Trio in the 1936 mystery thriller A Face in the Fog.
Angela [Margaret] Scoular, the second wife of actor Leslie Phillips, died on 11 April, aged sixty-five. The bi-polar and alcoholic British actress feared that her bowel cancer would return (despite a successful operation in 2009) and killed herself by drinking drain cleaner. Scoular appeared in two James Bond films, Casino Royale (1966) and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, an episode of The Avengers, and starred as “Cathy” opposite Ian McShane’s “Heathcliff” in a 1967 BBC-TV serial of Wuthering Heights (the inspiration for the Kate Bush song and video).
British character actor Trevor [Gordon] Bannister, best known for his role as “Mr Lucas” in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served?, died of a heart attack while repairing his allotment shed on 14 April, aged seventy-six. He also appeared in such TV series as Object Z, Object Z Returns, The Man in Room 17 (“The Black Witch”), The Avengers, Doomwatch, The Tomorrow People, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Woof!.
American actor Jon Cedar died the same day, aged eighty. He appeared in episodes of TV’s The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Invisible Man (1975), The Incredible Hulk, The Greatest American Hero and Tales from the Darkside, along with the movies Stowaway to the Moon (with John Carradine), Time Travelers (1976), Day of the Animals, Capricorn One, The Manitou (based on the novel by Graham Masterton), By Dawn’s Early Light and Asteroid.
Canadian-born leading man Michael Sarrazin (Jacques Michel Andre Sarrazin) died in Montreal of cancer on 17 April, aged seventy. He starred in Eye of the Cat, The Groundstar Conspiracy, Frankenstein the True Story (as “The Creature”), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Earthquake in New York, The Second Arrival (aka Arrival II) and FeardotCom, and appeared in episodes of the 1988 Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Ray Bradbury Theatre, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Outer Limits, Poltergeist: The Legacy, Mentors (as Edgar Allan Poe) and Earth: Final Conflict. Sarrazin was in a relationship with actress Jacqueline Bisset for fourteen years.
British actress Elisabeth [Claira Heath] Sladen, who starred as “Sarah Jane Smith” in the BBC’s Doctor Who and her own spin-off series, died of cancer on 19 April, aged sixty-five. She first joined John Pertwee’s Doctor in the 1973 series “The Time Warrior”, and went on to appear alongside Tom Baker’s incarnation of the Time Lord until 1976. She recreated the role for the TV specials K-9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend (1981), Doctor Who: “The Five Doctors” (1983) and Doctor Who: “Dimensions in Time” (1993), along with the independent video, Downtime (1995), and various radio serials. She returned to Doctor Who as the inquisitive journalist in 2006 and subsequently got her own children’s spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–11). Sladen also appeared in the TV movies Gulliver in Lilliput (1982) and Alice in Wonderland (1986), as well as an episode of Doomwatch.
British character actor Terence Longdon (Hubert Tuelly Longdon) died of cancer on 23 April, aged eighty-eight. He appeared in the first four Carry On films, along with What a Whopper, The Return of Mr Moto, and episodes of The Avengers, The New Avengers, The Martian Chronicles and The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Longdon also starred as the titular charter pilot in the BBC children’s adventure series Garry Halliday (1959–62). He was married to actress Barbara Jefford from 1953 to 1960.
Sixty-six-year-old French actress, novelist and director Marie-France Pisier was found dead in the swimming pool at her home in Saint Cyr sur Mer on 24 April. Born in French Indochina (now Vietnam), her credits include The Vampire of Dusseldorf (1965), Luis Bunuel’s surreal The Phantom of Liberty and Celine and Julie Go Boating.
Cult American B-movie star Yvette Vickers (Iola Yvette Vedder) was found dead from heart failure in an upstairs room of her dilapidated Bendedict Canyon home in Los Angeles on 27 April. The
