Eighty-nine-year-old British character actress Sheila [Mary] Burrell died on 19 July, after a long illness following a serious stroke two years earlier. Sir Laurence Olivier’s cousin and a long-standing member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, she appeared in such films as Hammer’s Man in Black and Paranoiac, Afraid of the Dark and Jane Eyre (1996), plus episodes of Colonel March of Scotland Yard (starring Boris Karloff), Adam Adamant Lives! Out of the Unknown, The Avengers, Spooky, Tales of the Unexpected and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Burrell was married to actor Laurence Payne from 1944 to 1951.
Mexican-born actress Linda Christian (Blanca Rosa Welter), described as “The Anatomic Bomb” by Life magazine, died of colon cancer on 22 July in California, aged eighty-seven. A former beauty contest winner, her credits include Tarzan and the Mermaids and The Devil’s Hand (with her younger sister Ariadna Welter), along with episodes of Climax! (“Casino Royale”, the first James Bond adaptation) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Best known for her various romantic liaisons with wealthy playboys, racing drivers and bullfighters, she married and divorced actors Tyrone Power and Edmund Purdom.
A former corporate lawyer, independent oil producer, cattle rancher and local politician before he became a character actor, G. (Gervase) D. (Duan) Spradlin died on 24 July, aged ninety. He appeared (usually as authority figures) in Hell’s Angels ’69, Zabriskie Point, Maneaters Are Loose! Apocalypse Now, The Formula, Intruders, Ed Wood (as “Reverend Lemon”) and episodes of TV’s Search Control, Kung Fu, The Greatest American Hero and Dark Skies.
Dukes of Hazzard star Christopher Mayer (George Charles Mayer III, aka “Chip Mayer”) died the same day, aged fifty-seven. He also appeared in episodes of TV’s Weird Science, Xena: Warrior Princess, Sliders, Silk Stalkings and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Val Warren (Valmore Warren), who won a National Horror Makeup Contest in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine to play a teenage werewolf in the AIP film Bikini Beach (1964), died of complications from cancer on 25 July, aged sixty-nine. An author, illustrator and musician, he edited the early 1960s fantasy film fanzine Kaleidoscope and wrote the 1979 book Lost Lands, Mythical Kingdoms and Unknown Worlds. Warren was also an authority on Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
Welsh-born character actor Richard [de Pearsall] Pearson died on 2 August, aged ninety-three. His films include Scrooge (1951), Svengali (1954), How I Won the War, Macbeth (1971), Alice Through the Looking Glass (1973), Disney’s One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, The Blue Bird (1976), Whoops Apocalypse and Men in Black II (as the voice of “Gordy”), and he appeared in episodes of Stranger from Space, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1960), Mystery and Imagination (M. R. James’ “Lost Hearts”), Sherlock Holmes (1968), Out of the Unknown, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Hammer House of Horror (“The Thirteenth Reunion”) and Tales of the Unexpected. Pearson was also the voice of “Mole” in The Wind in the Willows (1983–88) and Oh! Mr Toad (1989–90).
Former NFL football star-turned-actor Bubba Smith (Charles Aaron Smith), best known for his role in the Police Academy movies, died on 3 August, aged sixty-six. The six-foot, seven-inch Smith appeared in Black Moon Rising, Blood River, and episodes of Wonder Woman and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He was also a regular on the 1984 TV series Blue Thunder.
Forty-eight-year-old Francesco [Daniele] Quinn, the son of actor Anthony Quinn, died of an apparent heart attack while jogging in Malibu on 5 August. He portrayed “Vlad Tepes” in the 2003 film Vlad, and his other credits include episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and The Glades. Quinn also provided the voice of “Dino” in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Distinguished British stage and screen actor John Wood CBE died on 6 August, aged eighty-one. He made his film debut in the 1952 Hammer thriller Stolen Face, directed by Terence Fisher, and he went on to appear in The Mouse on the Moon, One More Time, Slaughterhouse-Five, WarGames, Agentii 009 ja kuole-man kurvit, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Ladyhawk, Shadowlands, Citizen X, Richard III (1995), Jane Eyre (1996), Rasputin (1996), The Avengers and The Little Vampire. On TV his credits include The Hooded Terror and episodes of Tales of Mystery, Saki, Out of the Unknown, The Avengers, Doomwatch, The Storyteller: Greek Myths and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In 1974 Wood appeared on stage in the title role of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival of William Gillette’s 1899 melodrama Sherlock Holmes.
In early August it was announced that British TV actress Anne Ridler had died. She had been suffering from throat cancer for some years. Best remembered for her distinctive voice in the series Terrahawks (1983–86), she also appeared in episodes of One Step Beyond, Doctor Who (“The Wheel in Space”), Moonbase 3, Tom’s Midnight Garden, Bedtime Stories and The Tomorrow People.
Former British child actor turned TV producer and director John Howard Davies died of cancer on 22 August, aged seventy-two. At the age of eight he starred in David Lean’s classic Oliver Twist (1948), and the following year he was in The Rocking Horse Winner (based on the short story by D. H. Lawrence). In later years he produced such comedy series as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies, Fawlty Towers and The Good Life.
Child star Sybil Jason (Sybil Jacobson) died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on 23 August, aged eighty-three. The South African-born actress was brought to Hollywood from Britain in the mid- 1930s by Warner Bros., who starred her opposite Al Jolson in The Singing Kid and several other films. After the studio let her go in 1938, she appeared with screen rival Shirley Temple in The Little Princess and The Blue Bird (from which many of her scenes were cut, reportedly at the demand of Temple’s mother), before she retired from the screen.
The body of American actor Michael Showers was found floating in the Mississippi River, near New Orleans’ French Quarter, on the morning of 25 August. He had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis five months earlier and had been suffering from depression and anxiety. The forty-five-year-old Showers had a recurring role as police Captain John Guidry in the HBO series Treme. He also appeared in Kiss of the Vampire (aka Imortally Yours, 2009), The Collector and Hammer’s The Resident (with Christopher Lee), along with an episode of TV’s The Vampire Diaries.
American actress Eve Brent (Jean Ann Lewis), who portrayed “Jane” opposite Gordon Scott’s “Tarzan” in the TV fix-up movies Tarzan and the Trappers and Tarzan’s Fight for Life (both 1958), died on 27 August, aged eighty-one. Her other films include Female Jungle, The Bride and the Beast, The White Buffalo, Fade to Black, BrainWaves, Date with an Angel, The Green Mile and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (uncredited). On TV she appeared in episodes of Adventures of Superman, The Veil (hosted by Boris Karloff), Highway to Heaven, Tales from the Crypt, Twin Peaks, Weird Science and Roswell High.
Former model turned actress Cobina [Carolyn] Wright, Jr., who co- starred in Charlie Chan in Rio (1941), died on 1 September, aged ninety.
American actress Annette Charles (Annette Cardona), who played “Cha Cha DiGregorio” in Grease (1978), died of lung cancer on 4 August, aged sixty-three. She also appeared in episodes of The Flying Nun, The Bionic Woman, Man from Atlantis and The
