49-year-old American comedy actor Phil Hartman was shot dead at his home on May 28th, apparently by his wife in a murder-suicide. Best known for his roles (1986–94) on TV’s Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons (as the voice of Troy McClure and others) and the season-ender of 3rd Rock from the Sun, he co-scripted Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and appeared in Amazon Women on the Moon, Coneheads, So I Married an Ax Murderer, The Pagemaster and Small Soldiers.
WWF wrestler Sylvester Ritter aka “Junkyard Dog” died on June 2nd, aged 44.
American leading lady Josephine Hutchinson died in a New York nursing home on June 4th, aged 94. She starred as Alice in a 1932 Broadway production of Alice in Wonderland, played Elsa von Frankenstein in the 1939 movie Son of Frankenstein, and appeared in an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “I Sing the Body Electric” on TV’s The Twilight Zone.
Character actress Jeanette Nolan died from a stroke on June 5th, aged 86. Over a seventy-year acting career she starred in such films as Orson Welles’ Macbeth (1948), My Blood Runs Cold, Chamber of Horrors, The Reluctant Astronaut, The Manitou and Cloak & Dagger (with her husband John Maclntire), and appeared on TV in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders, Night Gallery, The Sixth Sense, Fantasy Island, The Incredible Hulk and Goliath Awaits.
Character actress Theresa Merritt, who played Aunt Em in the 1978 musical The Wiz, died after a long battle with skin cancer on June 12th, aged 75. Her other films include Voodoo Dawn and The Serpent and the Rainbow.
Mexican actor Roberto Canedo died on June 16th. He appeared in numerous movies, including Doctor of Doom, Santo contra el Estrangulador, Santo contra el Espectro de el Estran-gulador, La Mujer Murcielago and Santo contra la Hija de Frankestein.
Actor and singer Felix Knight, who appeared as Tom-Tom the Piper’s Son in the 1934 Laurel and Hardy fantasy Babes in Toyland, died on June 18th, aged 89.
Irish-born American leading lady Maureen O’Sullivan, the mother of actress Mia Farrow, died from a heart attack on June 23rd, aged 87. Best remembered for her role as Jane opposite Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan in six films, she also appeared in Just Imagine, A Connecticut Yankee (1931), Tod Browning’s The Devil-Doll, Too Scared to Scream, Peggy Sue Got Married and Stranded. She was married to director John Farrow.
Cowboy star Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) died of congestive heart failure on July 6th, aged 86. A member of the singing Sons of the Pioneers in the 1930s, he appeared in more than one hundred movies and TV’s The Roy Rogers Show (1951–56) with his horse Trigger (who died in 1966). A chain of fast-food restaurants was named after him in America.
Hugh Reilly, who played Timmy Martin’s father Paul in the TV series Lassie (1958–64), died after a long battle with emphysema on July 17th. He was 82.
The same day saw the death from brain cancer of 64-year-old American character actor Joseph Maher, who played Warren Beatty’s butler in Heaven Can Wait.
Hollywood leading man Robert (George) Young died on July 21st, aged 91. Although best known for his Emmy Award-winning TV shows Life With Father (1954–60) and Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969–76), he also appeared in The Black Camel (with Bela Lugosi), The House of Rothschild (with Boris Karloff), Tod Browning’s Miracles for Sale, The Canterville Ghost (1943) and The Enchanted Cottage. Young battled alcoholism and depression throughout his life, and attempted suicide in 1991. In later years he advertised Sanka decaffeinated coffee on American TV.
British-born character actress Binnie Barnes (Gitelle Barnes), who went to Hollywood in the mid-1930s, died on July 27th, aged 95. Her films include Murder at Covent Garden, The Three Musketeers (1939) and The Time of Their Lives.
Buffalo Bob Smith (Robert E. Smith), the host and voice of the eponymous puppet star of the first TV programme specifically for children, The Howdy Doody Show (1947–60), died of lung cancer on July 30th, aged 80.
American TV actress Sylvia Field Truex, who portrayed Mrs. Wilson in the CBS series Dennis the Menace (1959–63), died on July 31st, aged 97.
Hungarian-born actress Eva Bartok (Eva Sjöke) died in a London hospital from heart failure after a long illness on August 1st, aged 72. Formerly married to actor Curt Jurgens, she starred in The Crimson Pirate, Hammer’s Spaceways, The Gamma People and Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace.
Twelve-time Emmy Award-winning children’s TV presenter and ventriloquist Shari Lewis, who created the squeaky-voiced sock puppet Lamb Chop for the Captain Kangaroo show in 1957, died of uterine cancer and pneumonia on August 2nd, aged 65. A winner of a Peabody and the John F. Kennedy Center Award for Excellence and Creativity, at the time of her death she was producer and star of the PBS series The Charlie Horse Music Pizza.
The same day saw the death in a nursing home of 50-year-old David-Allen “Chico” Ryan, who sang and played bass with 1950s revival group Sha Na Na. He also appeared in the hit movie Grease.
44-year-old Canadian stuntman Marc Akerstream was killed on August 14th when a special effects explosion went wrong on the TV series The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. A piece of debris thrown into the air by the blast struck Akerstream on the head and he later died in hospital. The show is based on the 1994 movie The Crow, during the filming of which star Brandon Lee was killed in a freak firearms accident.
Stand-up comic and character actor Phil Leeds died on August 16th of pneumonia, aged 82. His film credits include Rosemary’s Baby and Ghost, and he appeared in numerous TV sit-coms such as Dream On, Ellen and Ally McBeal.
49-year-old Indian actress Persis Khambatta, who starred as bald-headed navigator Lieutenant Ilia in Star Trek the Motion Picture, died of an apparent heart attack in a Bombay hospital on August 18th. However, some reports claimed that the 1965 Miss India had no history of heart trouble (despite having undergone a bypass operation in 1983) and that she had been murdered. Her other films include The Man With the Power, Megaforce, Night-hawks, Warriors of the Lost World and First Strike.
American actor E. (Edda) G. (Gunnar) Marshall died on August 24th after a short illness. He was 88, and his many film and TV appearances include Vampire, Superman II, The Phoenix, Creepshow, Two Evil Eyes, The Tommyknockers, Under Siege, Lights Out (with John Carradine), Inner Sanctum, Studio One: “Donovan’s Brain”,Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Moment of Fear, Night Gallery and Tales from the Darkside. He won two Emmys for his role as attorney Lawrence Preston in The Defenders (1961–65), and in 1988 the liberal actor formed the environmentalist Preservation Party to support anti-development candidates in New York.