Cosby Show, died of heart failure on 30 May, aged ninety-three. Her other credits include Change of Mind and Play Misty for Me. Taylor portrayed “Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North” in the 1970s Broadway musical The Wiz.
American leading man James Arness (James King Aurness), best remembered for his role as “Marshall Matt Dillon” on the long-running Western series Gunsmoke (aka Gun Law, 1955– 75) and a number of spin-off TV movies, died on 3 June. He was eighty- eight. Arness’ film credits include Two Lost Worlds, The Thing from Another World (as “The Thing”) and Them!. His younger brother was actor Peter Graves.
British character actress and comedienne Miriam Karlin OBE (Miriam Samuels) died after a long battle with cancer the same day, aged eighty-five. She appeared in The Goons’ comedy Down Among the ‘Z’ Men, Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera (1962), A Clockwork Orange, Jekyll & Hyde (1990) and Children of Men. On TV, Karlin starred in the supernatural sitcom So Haunt Me (1992–94).
Ninety-year-old Wally Boag (Wallace Vincent Boag) and ninety-one-year-old Betty Taylor, who co-starred as sweethearts Pecos Bill and Slue-Foot Sue five days a week for nearly three decades in Disneyland’s Golden Horseshoe Revue, died on 3 and 7 June, respectively. The show is officially the longest-running stage production in entertainment history (1955–86). Boag also appeared in Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber and The Love Bug (1968).
British TV actor Donald [Marland] Hewlett died of pneumonia on 4 June, aged ninety. He had suffered from epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease for many years. Hewlett appeared in episodes of Sherlock Holmes (1965), The Avengers, Doctor Who (“The Claws of Axos”) and The New Avengers.
Canadian-born actor Paul Massie (Arthur Dickinson Masse), best known for playing an ugly Dr Jekyll and a handsome Mr Hyde in Hammer’s The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (aka Jekyll’s Inferno, 1960), died of lung cancer in Nova Scotia on 8 June, aged seventy-eight. He also appeared in an episode of TV’s The Avengers. He retired from acting at the age of forty to teach drama at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Seventy-nine-year-old voice and theatre actor Roy [William] Skelton, who not only voiced the popular British children’s TV puppet characters George and Zippy for Rainbow (1973–92), but also the Daleks and Cybermen in Doctor Who, died of pneumonia the same day. He had suffered a stroke five months earlier. Skelton was also the voice of a robot in an episode of Out of the Unknown, the “Mock Turtle” in a BBC version of Alice in Wonderland (1986), “Henry Swift” in the two Ghosts of Albion animated webseries and George and Zippy again in 2008 for the first episode of Ashes to Ashes. He started supplying voices for the various aliens on Doctor Who in 1966, and he continued until “Remembrance of the Daleks” in 1988.
Seventy-two-year-old Indian-born British character actor Badi Uzzaman (Mohammed Badji Uzzaman Azmi) died of a lung infection on 14 June in Pakistan. He appeared in The Sign of Four (1987), Stephen Gallagher’s Chimera, and Gulliver’s Travels (1996), along with episodes of The Singing Detective, Screen One (“Frankenstein’s Baby”) and Torchwood.
Thirty-four-year-old stuntman Ryan [Matthew] Dunn, best known as one of the moronic Jackass team on MTV, died on 20 June when he crashed the Porsche he was driving drunk at 3 a.m., killing himself and his passenger, twenty-nine-year-old Zachary Hartwell. The car had been travelling at speeds of up to 140 mph and the crash turned the vehicle into a fireball. Dunn also had small roles in Invader and Welcome to the Bates Motel.
Just one more thing. veteran Hollywood actor Peter [Michael] Falk, best known for his Emmy Award-winning role as the wily raincoat-wearing, cigar-smoking police Lieutenant in NBC-TV’s Columbo (1971–2003), died on 23 June, aged eighty-three. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Falk’s movie credits include Brigadoon (1966), Castle Keep, Murder by Death, The Great Muppet Caper, Wings of Desire (1987), The Princess Bride, Vibes, The Lost World (2001), Shark Tale, When Angels Come to Town and Next. He also appeared in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Falk’s right eye was surgically removed at the age of three because of cancer.
British stage and screen actress Margaret [Maud] Tyzack CBE died of cancer on 25 June, aged seventy-nine. Her credits include 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Legacy, Quatermass (aka The Quatermass Conclusion), Until Death and The Thief Lord, along with episodes of TV’s The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Indian-born British leading man Michael Latimer, who starred in Hammer’s Slave Girls (aka Prehistoric Women), died the same day, aged sixty-nine. He also appeared in episodes of the TV series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Avengers (“A Touch of Brimstone”), Sexton Blake, The New Avengers and Hammer House of Horror, along with Gene Roddenberry’s TV pilot movie Spectre and the SF film Project: Alien (aka Fatal Sky).
American child actress Edith [Marilyn] Fellows died on 26 June, aged eighty-eight. She had made around thirty films by the age of thirteen and was the subject of a high-profile custody case in 1936. Her credits include Jane Eyre (1934), Lilith and The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985), and she also appeared in four episodes of TV’s Tales of Tomorrow.
Eighty-one-year-old Hollywood actress Elaine Stewart (Elsy H. Steinberg) died after a long illness on 27 June. A former 1950s Playboy pin-up turned TV hostess, she starred opposite Gene Kelly in MGM’s Brigadoon (1954) and her other movie credits include The Adventures of Hajji Baba and Most Dangerous Man Alive.
British actress Anna [Raymond] Massey OBE died of cancer on 2 July, aged seventy-three. The daughter of actor Raymond Massey and the younger sister of Daniel Massey, she appeared in Peeping Tom, ITV Play of the Week (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”), Bunny Lake is Missing, De Sade, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, The Vault of Horror (based on the EC comics), Rebecca (1979), Around the World in 80 Days (1989) and Haunted (based on the novel by James Herbert), as well as episodes of TV’s Dead of Night, Tales of the Unexpected, Mistress of Suspense, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Strange. She was married to actor Jeremy Brett from 1958 to 1962, and her godfather was director John Ford.
American character actor, poet and playwright Roberts [Scott] Blossom, who memorably played psychopathic backwoods killer “Ezra Cobb” in Deranged (1974), died on 8 July, aged eighty-seven. He was also in Slaughterhouse-Five, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Resurrection, Christine (based on the novel by Stephen King) and Always, along with episodes of Amazing Stories, Tales from the Darkside and the 1980s The Twilight Zone series.
Indian-born British actress Googie Withers (Georgette Lizette Withers) CBE died in Australia on 15 July, aged ninety-four. Her credits include Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), Dead of Night (1945) and Miranda.
