mummified state of the eighty-one-year-old actress’ body indicated that she could have been dead for nearly a year. The July 1959 Playboy Playmate appeared in Sunset Boulevard (uncredited), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), Attack of the Giant Leeches (aka Demons of the Swamp), Beach Party (uncredited), What’s the Matter with Helen? The Dead Don’t Die! (scripted by Robert Bloch) and Evil Spirits, along with an episode of TV’s One Step Beyond.
William Campbell, who portrayed Klingon commander “Koloth” in the classic Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”, died on 28 April, aged eighty-seven. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13 (aka The Haunted and the Hunted), Hush. Hush Sweet Charlotte, Portrait in Terror, Blood Bath (aka Track of the Vampire), Pretty Maids All in a Row and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, along with episodes of TV’s The Wild Wild West, Star Trek (“The Squire of Gothos”), Shazam! The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Next Step Beyond, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (reprising his role as “Koloth”) and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. From 1952 to 1958 he was married to Judith Campbell Exner, a paramour of President John F. Kennedy and Mafia figure Sam Giancana.
Veteran Hollywood character actor and director Jackie Cooper (John Copper, Jr.) died after a short illness on 3 May, aged eighty-eight. He began his career as a child actor in 1929, and is best known for portraying Daily Planet newspaper editor “Perry White” in Superman (1978) and its three sequels. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1931 when he was just nine years old, and his other credits include Chosen Survivors, The Invisible Man (1975) and episodes of TV’s Tales of Tomorrow, Suspense, The Twilight Zone and Ghost Story. Cooper was also an Emmy Award-winning director, with the Holmes and Yo-Yo pilot and the TV movie The Night They Saved Christmas to his credit.
American actress Mary Murphy, who co-starred with Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953), died of heart disease on 4 May, aged eighty. A former shop assistant, she began her acting career with uncredited appearances in When Worlds Collide, My Favorite Spy and The Atomic City, before moving on to such films as The Mad Magician (with Vincent Price) and episodes of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Honey West and Ghost Story. In 1956 she was married to actor Dale Robertson for just three months.
German-born actress Dana Wynter (Dagmar Winter), who helped Kevin McCarthy battle the pod people in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), died of congestive heart failure in California on 5 May, aged seventy-nine. Her other credits include the Gene Roddenberry TV movie The Questor Tapes and episodes of Suspense, Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Wild Wild West, The Invaders, Get Smart, Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries and Fantasy Island.
Rugged American character actor Ross Hagen (Leland Lando Lilly) died of prostate cancer on 7 May, aged seventy-two. His films include Wonder Women, Night Creature (with Donald Pleasence), Angel, Avenging Angel, Prison Ship (aka Star Slammer), Warlords, B.O.R.N. (which he also co-scripted and directed), The Phantom Empire, Alienator, Time Wars (which he also wrote and directed), Dinosaur Island, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds, Bikini Drive-In, Cyberzone (aka Phoenix 2), Night Shade, The Elf Who Didn’t Believe, Invisible Dad, Jungle Boy, The Kid with X-ray Eyes and Sideshow, along with episodes of Captain Nice, The Wild Wild West, The Invaders and Kung Fu. Hagen made around twenty films with director Fred Olen Ray, and he also directed Reel Terror (1985) featuring footage of John Carradine and Victor Buono.
Dolores Fuller (Dolores Agnes Eble), who was director Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s muse and leading lady in such cult classics as Glen or Glenda (aka I Led Two Lives), Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster, died after a long illness on 9 May, aged eighty-eight. Her other films include Mesa of Lost Women, The Ironbound Vampire and The Corpse Grinders 2, along with an episode of TV’s Adventures of Superman. As a lyricist, Fuller also co-wrote thirteen songs for Elvis Presley, including “Rock-a-Hula Baby” for the film Blue Hawaii. Her autobiography, A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood and Me (co-written with Stone Wallace and her husband, Philip Chamberlin) was published in 2008. Sarah Jessica Parker portrayed Fuller in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994).
British character actor Edward [Cedric] Hardwicke, the son of actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke, died of cancer on 16 May, aged seventy-eight. Following the departure of David Burke, in 1986 he took over the role of “Dr John Watson” opposite Jeremy Brett’s consulting detective in the series The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1968–88), The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1991–93), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994) and the TV movies The Sign of Four (1987) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988). He also recreated the role on the West End stage in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes in 1989. Hardwicke began his career as a child actor, and his other films include A Guy Named Joe (uncredited), Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia), Venom, Disney’s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, Photographing Fairies (as “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”), Shadowlands, Appetite, The Alchemists (based on the novel by Peter James) and yet another remake She (2001), plus episodes of TV’s Invisible Man (1959), Sherlock Holmes (1968), Hammer’s Journey to the Unknown, Wessex Tales, Thriller (1974) and Supernatural (“The Werewolf Reunion”).
Veteran Australian actor Bill Hunter died of cancer on 21 May, aged seventy-one. His credits include The Return of Captain Invincible (with Christopher Lee), Moby Dick (1998) and On the Beach (2000), along with episodes of Space: Above and Beyond and Two Twisted (“Arkham’s Curios and Wonders”). Hunter also contributed voice work to Disney’s Finding Nemo and Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.
American actress Tallie Cochrane (Lillian Rose Cochrane) died of cancer the same day, aged sixty-six. Under various pseudonyms, such as “Toni Talley”, “Viola Reeves”, “Dandy Thomas”, “Chic Jones”, “Talie Wright” and “Silver Foxx”, she appeared in a number of sexploitation films, including Wam Bang Thank You Spaceman, Tarz & Jane Cheeta & Boy and Devil’s Ecstasy. She also had small roles in Slapstick (of Another Kind) and Frightmare (aka The Horror Star). Cochrane worked as a make-up artist on Track of the Moon Beast.
Sixty-year-old American actor Jeff Conaway (Jeffrey Charles William Michael Conaway) died of pneumonia exacerbated by substance abuse on 27 May. Having battled drug and alcohol addiction since he was a teenager, Conaway was found unconscious at his home sixteen days earlier and remained in a medically induced coma until his family terminated his life-support. He appeared in Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, Bay Coven, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Ghost Writer, The Sleeping Car, Mirror Images, Alien Intruder and Curse of the Forty-Niner. On TV Conaway was a regular on Wizards and Warriors (1983) and Babylon 5 (1994–98), and he also guest-starred in episodes of Tales from the Darkside (“My Ghostwriter — the Vampire”), Monsters, Freddy’s Nightmares, Shades of LA and three Babylon 5 spin-off movies.
American actress Clarice Taylor, who played Bill Cosby’s mother on TV’s The
