Notable Passings, 2013, S-Z

Jerry Scott, 67, Manhattan-based singer-pianist and cabaret entertainer, won several MAC and Bistro Awards.

Alan Sharp, 79, screenwriter of dark thrillers such as “The Last Run,” “Night Moves,” and “The Osterman Weekend” and the historic drama “Rob Roy.”

Ashton Springer, 82, one of Broadway’s first major African-American producers, his credits include “Eubie,” “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” “A Lesson from Aloes,” “No Place to Be Somebody,” and the 1976 all-black revival of “Guys and Dolls.”

Jean Stapleton, 90, beloved portrayer of Edith Bunker on the groundbreaking sitcom “All in the Family,” appeared on Broadway in “Damn Yankees,” “Bells Are Ringing,” “Funny Girl,” and “Arsenic and Old Lace,” won an Obie Award for her performances in Harold Pinter’s “Mountain Language” and “The Birthday Party,” other Off-Broadway credits include John Osborne’s “The Entertainer” and Horton Foote’s “The Roads to Home” and “The Carpetbagger’s Children,” appeared in many productions at the Totem Pole Playhouse in her native Pennsylvania, played the nervous school receptionist in “Up the Down Staircase” (“Disregard all bells”) and the nasty secretary in “Klute” (“Mr. Goldfarb!”).

Sally Starr, whose Philadelphia kiddie TV show
 I watched on many afternoons after school

Sally Starr, 90, Philadelphia-area TV cowgirl and kiddie show hostess during the 1950s and ‘60s, introduced Popeye, the Three Stooges, and Clutch Cargo to generations of children.

Rise Stevens, 99, silver-voiced soprano who reached the height of her fame at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1940s and ‘50s, Carmen was her signature role, others included “Der Rosenkavelier,” “Die Fledermaus,” “Samson et Delia,” and “The Marriage of Figaro,” also appeared in the Hollywood films “The Chocolate Soldier” and “Going My Way,” starred in “The King and I” at Lincoln Center in 1964, voiced Glinda the Good Witch in the animated film “Journey Back to Oz,” a frequent guest on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Tonight Show.”

Maxine Stuart, 94, had a recurring role on the long-running daytime drama “The Edge of Night,” and appeared on “The Twilight Zone,” “Perry Mason,” “Doctor Kildare,” “Chicago Hope,” and “The Wonder Years” as Kevin’s piano teacher for which she received an Emmy nomination, her exploits as a struggling actress were chronicled in her friend Helene Hanff’s books “84 Charing Cross Road” and “Underfoot in Show Business.”

Maria Tallchief, 88, ballerina, star of the Ballets Ruse de Monte Carlo and City Ballet, muse for and third wife of George Balanchine, who created roles for her in his stagings of  “The Firebird,” “Swan Lake,” “Orpheus,” and many others, she also appeared in the film “Million Dollar Mermaid” as fellow ballerina Anna Pavlova.

Richard S. Thomas, 87, founder of the New York School of Ballet with his wife, Barbara Fallis, mentor to dancers such as Eliot Feld, father of the actor Richard Thomas.

Malachi Throne, 84, character actor with a recurring role as Robert Wagner’s boss on “It Takes a Thief,” also appeared on “Batman” as False Face (receiving no screen credit to conceal the identity of the actor in order to mystify and confuse viewers) and “Star Trek” as Commodore Mendez on the two-part “The Menagerie” episode. Other credits include “Kojak,” “Ryan’s Hope,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” “The Time Tunnel,” “Lost in Space,” and “Ben Casey.”

Paul Walker, 40, star of the “Fast and Furious” franchise.

Marcia Wallace on "The Bob Newhart Show"

Marcia Wallace, 70, comic actress best known as Carol the receptionist on “The Bob Newhart Show” and the voice of Bart’s teacher Mrs. Krapabble on “The Simpsons,” frequent panelist on “The Match Game,” other TV credits include “The Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island,” “Taxi,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Bewitched,” and many others.

Christopher Evan Welch, 48, busy actor principally in Off-Broadway roles, Obie winner for his Mitch in Ivo van Hove’s unconventional staging of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” his other numerous stage credits include “London Assurance,” “Festen,” and “The Crucible” on Broadway,  van Hove’s staging of “The Little Foxes” at New York Theater Workshop, “Our House” and “The Pain and the Itch” at Playwrights Horizons, “The Madrid” at Manhattan Theater Club, “Romeo and Juliet,” “Othello,” and “Measure for Measure” at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, films include “Lincoln,” “The Master,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Whatever Works,” and “Synechdoche, New York.”  

Ned Wertimer, 89, played Ralph the doorman on “The Jeffersons” and was a fixture on network TV from “Ironside” and “That Girl” to “Mork and Mindy” and “Simon and Simon.”

Esther Williams, 91, America’s Mermaid, appeared in numerous MGM films, swimming through eleaborate aquatic production numbers in between romances and songs, including “Dangerous When Wet,” “Million Dollar Mermaid,” “Easy to Love,” and “Neptune’s Daughter,” among her non-swimming films were “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and “Jupiter’s Darling.”

Snoo Wilson, 64, British playwright, his dark edgy works included “The Pleasure Principal,” “The Soul of the White Ant,” “Vampire,” “The Glad Hand,” “Darwin’s Flood,” and “Revelations.”

Jonathan Winters, 87, wildly imaginative comedian with hundreds of TV guest shots and voice-overs to his credit, created his own crew of zany characters including the demented granny Maude Frickert, headlined his own TV series and was a regular on “Mork and Mindy,” films include “The Loved One,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Miller Wright, 56, theater and nightclub publicist, his clients included Feinstein’s at the Regency, John Pizzarelli, Andrea Marcovicci, and Ann Hampton Callaway.

Lee Thompson Young, 29, former chld star who gained fame on The Disney Channel’s “The Famous Jett Jackson,” starred on TNT’s “Rizzoli and Isles.”

Notable Passings, 2013, M-R

Milo O'Shea as Friar Laurence
in the 1968 film version of "Romeo and Juliet"

Not only did Peter O'Toole pass away this year, but also Ruth Maleczech of Mabou Mines, Paul Rogers who won a Tony for Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming," porn star Harry Reems, and Milo O'Shea, who I interviewed in 1988 when he played Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet" at the Public Theater with Cynthia Nixon and Peter McNichol as the young lovers. (He also played the role in Zefferelli's brilliant 1968 film version.) I saw O'Toole in the 1987 revival of "Pygmalion" and he seemed to be as high as a kite the entire performance, as he did when presenting an Oscar with Sissy Spacek.

Ruth Maleczech, 74, Obie-winning actress, co-artistic director and co-founder of the avant-garde theatrical troupe Mabou Mines where she played King Lear as a Southern matriarch, received Obies for her design for “Vanishing Pictures” (with Julie Archer) and for performances in “Hajj” and “Through the Leaves,” outside of Mabou Mines, she co-directed “The Tempest” with Lee Breuer, her artistic and life partner, for the Public Theater at Central Park’s Delacorte stage, and appeared in “Henry IV,” “Woyzeck,” “First Love,” and “Belle Epoque.”

Notable Passing, 2013, H-L

This group of obits runs the gamut from a former stripper to the greatest actress of her generation (Julie Harris) to one of my favorite comic book artists to Trixie Norton (who was also a former stripper). Jane Kean played Trixie of "The Honeymooners" when Jackie Gleason recast the wives of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton with musical actresses so he could incorporate elaborate production numbers and comedy songs; Sheila MacRae was the new Alice. We would watch the Gleason show every Saturday night. It used to come on right after "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges ("By now my lungs were aching for air.") I saw Kean play Sally in a summer stock production of "Follies" at the Valley Forge Music Fair with Robert Alda, Vivian Blaine, and Selma Diamond. I was about 12 years old and had saved up my allowance to pay for the ticket (It had to be $10 or so.)

Gleason's variety show ran until the early 1970s and CBS  then replaced the middlebrow humor exemplified by Gleason, Lucille Ball, and shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction," and "Green Acres" to be replaced by more sophisticated sitcoms like "All in the Family," "MASH," and the Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore shows. These shows were much more adult, but I did miss the innocent silliness of Ralph and Ed, Alice and Trixie arguing in that tiny Brooklyn apartment. (There were many jokes about Trixie's past as an exotic dancer.)

Harris was also a sitcom actor, appearing in an awful piece of tripe about a family that made pickles. It was ridiculous, but she was brilliant of course and I suppose she had to pay the rent. I only met her once, when she was appearing Off-Broadway in a play called "The Fiery Furnace" and I got her autograph. She was charming and gracious. 

Haji, 67, Canadian actress and former exotic dancer who starred in several Russ Myers sexploitation films including “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” and “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” as well as John Cassavettes’ “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie,” her last film was the memorably titled “Killer Drag Queens on Dope.”

Helen Hanft, 79, leading actress of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, best known for Tom Eyen’s “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down,” also appeared in such plays as “Women Benhind Bars,” “In the Boom Boom Room,” and “Gus and Al,” and the films “Next Stop, Greenwich Village” and “Manhattan.”

Julie Harris and James Dean in "East of Eden"

Julie Harris, 87, winner of five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play (“I Am a Camera,” “The Lark,” “Forty Carats,” “The Last of Mrs. Lincoln,” “The Belle of Amherst”), one of the American theater’s treasures, she also starred in “Member of the Wedding,” “Marathon 33,” “Skyscraper,” “The Au Pair Man,” “Lucifer’s Child,” “The Fiery Furnace,” “The Glass Menagerie,” “The Gin Game,” and the film version of “Member of the Wedding” (Oscar nomination), other films include “East of Eden,” “The Haunting,” “Harper,” “Reflections in a Golden Eye,” Emmy Awards for “Little Moon of Alban” and “Victoria Regina,” played Lilimae Clements on “Knots Landing” and made several guest shots including “Columbo,” “Medical Center,” “The Big Valley,” and “The Virginian.”

Notable Passings, 2013, D-G

Joan Fontaine (l.) with her sister Olivia DeHavilland

Here's part 2 of notable passings in 2013. There are plenty of well known people in this installment including Joan Fontaine, Roger Ebert, James Gandolfini, Edyie Gorme, etc. There is one person who may have been forgotten: Kelly Garrett, not to be confused with the Charlie's Angels character, she was a terrific singer who appeared in three Broadway shows in the 1970s and seemed t be on TV all the time back then. I always loved her powerful voice.

Deanna Durbin, 91, songbird of Hollywood’s Golden Age, she warbled her way through such films as “Three Smart Girls,” “One Hundred Men and a Girl,” and “Can’t Help Singing.”

Roger Ebert, 70, influential film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, in 1975, he became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize, co-hosted popular film-review programs first on PBS, then in syndication, these included “Sneak Previews” and “At the Movies” with Gene Siskel, then, after Siskel’s death, “Roger Ebert & the Movies” with rotating co-hosts and “Ebert & Roeper” with Richard Roeper, also of the Sun-Times.

Tribute to William Windom and Others of the TV Past

William Windom in The Doomsday Machine on Star Trek

In my wrap-up of Notable Passings for the past year, it was inevitable I'd miss one or two. But I shouldn't have missed William Windom, who left us in the middle of 2012. Windom is probably best remembered as the cranky doctor for Cabot Cove on Angela Lansbury's long-running 1980s series Murder She Wrote. But during the 1960s and 70s, he was on practically every TV show from The Lucy Show to Star Trek to The Twilight Zone to Night Gallery to All in the Family. He was the star of two series, the TV version of the movie The Farmer's Daughter and My World and Welcome to It, based on the humorous writings and cartoons of James Thurber. The gently funny series about a cartoonist ran for only one season, but it won an Emmy for Best Comedy Series and Windom was named Best Comedy Actor.

Jack Klugman and Charles Durning Tribute

Jack Klugman with Tony Randall on Password,
with Allen Luden hosting

Of course as as soon as I post my end-of-the-year list of notable passings in the entertainment world (posted Dec. 24), two more great performers pass way before Dec. 31. Jack Klugman, 90, best known as Oscar Madison on the long-running TV sitcom "The Odd Couple," died on Christmas Eve and Charles Durning, 89, Tony winner and multiple Oscar and Emmy nominee, passed away on the same day. Both were around the same age and rose to prominence in the 1970s. Klugman had been a reliable character actor since the 1950s, appearing in such films as "Twelve Angry Men" as the lower-class juror, as Judy Garland's agent in "I Could Go On Singing," and as Jack Lemmon's A.A. sponsor in "Days of Wine and Roses." His highest pre-Oscar fame came from starring opposite Ethel Merman as Herbie in the original Broadway production of "Gypsy." He won an Emmy for a guest-starring role on The Defenders as a blacklisted actor. Then he was cast as the sloppy Oscar Madison, winning two Emmys when everyone thought Carroll O'Connor would be honored for his iconic Archie Bunker on "All in the Family." Playing off Tony Randall's super-prissy Felix Ungar, Klugman was natural and unforced in his put-upon reactions to Felix's neurotic neatness. They later appeared on Broadway for Randall's National Actors Theatre in "Three Men on a Horse" and "The Sunshine Boys." Even though Klugman's voice was nothing but a harsh whisper because of throat cancer, he put across his characters' crotchety energy.

I had just seen Durning in a cable broadcast of David Mamet's "State and Main" as the obsequious mayor of tiny Vermont town putting up with a crazy film crew. He could basically play anything. He first came to prominence as part of a stunning ensemble cast in Jason Miller's "That Championship Season" which transferred from the Public Theater to Broadway. Whenever you needed a father, a villain, or a best friend, he filled the bill. A rare instance of his playing a leading role was "The Dancing Bear," a 1977 TV drama for PBS's Visions series (a short-lived attempt at producing original American dramas). He played a version himself, a hard-working, average-looking actor trying to make a living, standing in line at unemployment, humiliating himself at an audition. Tyne Daly co-starred.

I saw him onstage in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (he won a Tony for his Big Daddy), opposite George C. Scott in "Inherit the Wind," and as Dianne Wiest's father in Wendy Wasserstein's "Third."

Notable Passings 2012

Maybe it's my age, but it seems a lot of celebrities and actors who were prominent when I was a kid have passed away this year. There are the more recognizable names such as Ernest Borgnine, Phyllis Diller, etc. but there were also people like Dick Turfeld who did the voice of the robot on Lost in Space, Dick Beals who did the voice of Gumby and Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Doris Singleton who had a recurring role on I Love Lucy. Individual tributes and reminiscences will follow in later blogs.

Here is an alphabetical listing of entertainment figures who left us during the year. 

Ian Abercrombie, 77, character actor best known as Elaine’s eccentric boss on “Seinfeld,” other credits included “The Wizards of Waverly Place,” “How I Met Your Mother,” and “Desperate Housewives.”

Richard Adler, 90, Broadway composer-lyricist, with his partner Jerry Ross, he wrote the scores for two of the longest-running hits of the 1950s, "The Pajama Game" and "Damn Yankees," he won a Tony for the score of "Kwamina" in 1961.

Norman Alden, 87, familiar TV and movie character actor whose credits ranged from the voice of Aquaman on “Superfriends” to one of the Joker’s henchmen on “Batman” to recurring roles on “My Three Sons,” and “Mary Hartman Mary Hartman.”

Cris Alexander, 92, musical actor, appeared in the original Broadway productions of "On the Town," "Wonderful Town," "Present Laughter," and "Auntie Mame," later pursued a career as a photographer, working in that capacity for New York City Ballet and Interview Magazine. 

Theo Angelopoulos, 76, award-winning Greek filmmaker, his most acclaimed movies were “The Bee Keeper” and “The Suspended Stride of the Stalk.”

R.G. Armstrong, 95, character actor who specialized in sheriffs and deputies in western films and TV shows such as “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” “The Westerner,” “Ride the High Country,” “Gunsmoke,” and “Have Gun Will Travel,” his numerous additional credits include “The Fugitive Kind,” “The Great White Hope,” “Predator,” “Heaven Can Wait,” and “Reds,” also appeared on Broadway in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Orpheus Descending,” and “The Miracle Worker.”

Jean Banks, 77, senior director of jazz and musical theater at BMI.

Billy Barnes, 85, composer-lyricist whose satirical revues “The Billy Barnes Revue” and “Billy Barnes’ People” played Broadway, Emmy nominated for his musical contributions to “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “The Danny Kaye Show,” Goldie Hawn’s “Pure Goldie” special, and Cher’s variety series.

Dick Beals, 85, actor whose boyish pipes provided the voice for such characters as Speedy Alka-Seltzer and Gumby.

Zina Bethune, 66, actor and dancer who balanced careers in both fields, starred in the TV series “The Nurses” from 1962-65 and danced with the New York City Ballet as a teenager, appeared on Broadway in “Grand Hotel” and opposite Harvey Keitel in the film “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?”

Etel Billig, 79, Chicago-based actor, co-founder of the Illinois Theatre Center.

Anita Bjork, 89, Swedish actor, for a time hailed as “the new Garbo,” shot to fame for starring in a 1951 film version of August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie,” starred in American films shot in Europe such as “The Long Search” and “Night People,” was directed by Ingmar Bergman in the film “Secrets of Women” and the play “Madame de Sade.”

Ernest Borgnine did the voice for Mermaid Man (left)
and Tim Conway was Barnacle Boy

Ernest Borgnine, 95, "average-joe" star whose imposing physicality could be either menacing or endearing, won an Oscar for his performance as a lonely butcher in "Marty," headlined the sitcom "McHale's Navy" from 1962-66, and had a recurring voice role on "Spongebob Squarepants." Among his over 200 film and TV credits were "From Here to Eternity," "Bad Day at Black Rock,"  "The Catered Affair," "The Dirty Dozen," "The Poseidon Adventure," and "The Single Guy." He won a SAG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

Ray Bradbury, 91, iconic science-fiction author who also wrote for the screen (John Huston's 1956 film version of "Moby Dick"), stage ("The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit," "The World of Ray Bradbury"), and television ("Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "The Twilight Zone," "The Martian Chronicles," "Ray Bradbury Theatre"). He won an Emmy for an animated adaptation of his novel "The Halloween Tree" and a special citation from the Pulitzer board in 2007.

Steve Bridges, 48, comic impressionist, playing President George W. Bush, he toured with Barbra Streisand and appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

Frank Cady, 96, TV character actor best known as general-store owner Sam Drucker on "Green Acres," "Petticoat Junction," and "The Beverly Hillbillies," also had a recurring role on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."