Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

Obit watch: July 27, 2026.

Monday, July 27th, 2026

Lawrence sent me this a few days ago, but I didn’t have a link I felt like using until now: John C. Dvorak, prominent computer columnist.

I almost want to make an argument that Dvorak was a “troll” in the Internet sense of the word before there was an Internet. I’m not sure I can or want to defend that argument, but people who were around at the height of Mr. Dvorak’s career might remember some of his more trollish moments.

E.J. Peaker, actress. No “Mannix”, but she had a lot of other cop and cop-related credits: “Quincy, M.E.”, “Get Christie Love!”, and “The Streets of San Francisco”, among others.

Zale Parry. She didn’t have a lot of credits beyond “Sea Hunt”, but she was an early scuba pioneer:

In 1953, the couple helped launch Scientific Underwater Research Enterprises, which tested underwater equipment that would be sold to consumers. Two years later, she became the third woman certified as an underwater instructor in Los Angeles County.
Parry said she attempted her record-setting dive in August 1954 “to prepare a technical paper on the subject of nitrogen narcosis since we could not find enough subject matter. We wanted to give a good, true picture of what happens. The event changed my life.
“All it took was three miles off the shores of Avalon, Santa Catalina Island with a slight afternoon chop and a dive to 209 feet to a sandy rippled bottom with a strand of bull kelp and one discarded Schlitz beer can … From there on, the radio, television, newspapers and magazines had agents calling for interviews and fun game shows.”

Obit watch: July 22, 2026.

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026

Hal Williams, actor. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “Harry O”, and “Sanford”.

(Did you know they tried to make a sequel to “Sanford and Son” without Lamont? I did not.)

He was 91.

I saw this story earlier today, but didn’t make the connection until Lawrence sent me an obit: Kaylee Hottle. She was 18, and died in a car accident.

I usually try to stay away from the credits in the headline, but her only other credit in IMDB is an episode of the “Magnum, P.I.” remake. (Something called “What Doesn’t Kill Us” is listed in pre-production.)

Obit watch: July 20, 2026.

Monday, July 20th, 2026

It has been a bad few days for sports.

Garfield Sobers, cricket player.

Although initially considered primarily a spin bowler, Sobers, who was known as Garry, swiftly showed himself to be a brilliant batsman as well. He scored 365 runs against Pakistan in 1958 at just 21. It was the highest total in the history of Test matches, the most important games in international cricket. The feat took 10 hours.
Scoring 100 runs in an innings is considered a spectacular performance, while 50 is a great one. Sobers had an average score of 57 runs per innings in his 93 Test matches. He finished his career with 8,032 runs in Tests from 1953 to 1974, a record at the time.
As a bowler, he also excelled. He could bowl both fast balls and slower, spinning balls and get batters out by taking their wickets both ways — an unusual feat in the sport. He took four wickets on his debut and kept them coming throughout his career. He finished with 235 wickets in his 93 Test matches, the sixth-highest career total at the time.

Once he began playing more organized cricket, his bowling was honed by the profit motive: A coach would put a shilling on the stumps that bowlers aimed at and give it to young Garry if he knocked it off. “That was a lot of money in the early ’50s, especially for a young boy who was given four cents a day for his lunch,” he wrote in a 2002 memoir, “Garry Sobers: My Autobiography.” “A penny equaled two cents, so a shilling was worth 24 cents. Riches indeed!”

Of all of his performances, the one that is perhaps most remembered came in 1968, not for the West Indies but for a club team, Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, in England. Facing the first of the six balls that make up an “over,” Sobers smacked the ball out of the field of play to score six runs. He did the same on the next five balls as well.
Six balls, six sixes. Perfection. It was the first time in the long history of top-level cricket that it had ever been done.

ESPN.

Hannah Rapp, boxer. She was 26.

Authorities said [a driver – DB] passed two bicyclists, Rapp and her boyfriend, at high speed and with just a foot to spare, causing the boyfriend to raise his arms and yell toward the vehicle, reported KBTX, citing an affidavit.
He then allegedly slammed on his brakes, skidded to a stop, put the vehicle in reverse, and rapidly accelerated backward, striking Rapp and knocking her into the roadway, deputies allege.
The rear hatch of [the driver’s -DB] car was crushed inward, and the rear window was completely shattered, while investigators also found separate skid marks at the scene caused by the vehicle apparently braking and then backing up, the affidavit notes.
[The driver – DB] claimed he heard the cyclists yell and throw their hands up, and, believing they were trying to flag him down, braked hard to come to a stop, according to the affidavit.
He told investigators he started backing up and didn’t see Rapp until the last moment before hitting her.
When asked how fast he was reversing, [the driver] said, “15 miles per hour,” according to the affidavit.
Physical evidence at the scene, including the skid marks and severity of the damage, didn’t match [the driver’s – DB] claims and indicated heavy impact, investigators wrote.

I’m not naming the driver here (though he is named in the article) as I believe he is entitled to the presumption of innocence. However, the Post claims he has a lengthy criminal record.

He has been charged with manslaughter: frankly, given the described circumstances, I would think a murder charge is justified. But I Am Not A Lawyer.

Obit watch: July 17, 2026.

Friday, July 17th, 2026

Brenda Fricker, actress.

Other credits include “A Time to Kill”, “Quatermass” (1979), “The Quatermass Conclusion” (1979), and “Angels in the Outfield”.

I’m a little behind on this, but: Janice McNair, co-founder of the Houston Texans. NFL.com. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Obit watch: July 14, 2026.

Tuesday, July 14th, 2026

Sam Neill. Other credits include “Event Horizon”, “The Hunt for Red October”, and “In Cold Blood” (the 1996 mini-series: he was Alvin Dewey).

I have not seen this anywhere else, but Smith and Wesson posted a nice tribute to the late Dr. Roy Jinks on Linkedin.

Random notes: July 12, 2026.

Sunday, July 12th, 2026

A catch-all for several things:

Happy 46th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night! I think I may have used this before, but it has been a minute I believe:

Obit watch: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). NYT. WP (archived). Lawrence.

You know, for a movie that is often called one of the worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture1…”The Greatest Show On Earth” is actually pretty swell. Is it better than “High Noon”? I don’t know that you can make a head-to-head comparison, but I thought “Show” was much more fun. And sometimes that’s what you want out of a movie: fun. (And I say this as a person with conflicted views about circuses.)

While we were watching it, I mentioned that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had gone out of business in 2017. I went to double-check my dates…and ran into an interesting philosophical question.

While RB&BB closed in 2017, they restarted in 2023 according to Wikipedia. But: the new shows do not have clowns, animals, or a ringmaster.

Which raises the question: if you don’t have animals, clowns, or a ringmaster, are you still Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus? Heck, are you even still a circus at all?

The long version of the Lucille Ball story from IMDB.

We all know that Jimmy Stewart was one of the greats, but he’s brilliant in this. Especially since he spends the entire film in clown makeup, for reasons.

And how many movies can you think of that have a love…pentagon? Brad is in love with Holly, who loves him. But she takes up with The Great Sebastian, who returns her affections (though, honestly, it seems like The Great Sebastian would return the affections of anything female). He also has a past with Angel, who also falls for Brad, but is claimed by the pathologically jealous elephant trainer Klaus. (I wonder if this is patient zero for the evil elephant trainer in fiction. See also.)

This film is listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Moves Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson’s book “The Official Razzie® Movie Guide.”

John Wilson should go eat a bowl of something disgusting.

(more…)

Obit watch: July 11, 2026.

Saturday, July 11th, 2026

Antoinette Bower, actress. Other credits include “The Starlost”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission: Impossible”…

…and three episodes of “Mannix”. (“Deadfall“, parts 1 and 2, season 1, episodes 17 and 18. She was “Gail Mason”. “Shadow of a Man“, season 2, episode 16. She was “Barbara Sanderson”.)

Randolph Mantooth. NYT

The pair took paramedic classes, where they learned how to insert an IV, and trained with the fire department. Cinader wanted the show to be funny but told his actors that “when the [station alarm sounds], funny is left at the door. You are now a professional,” Mantooth noted. “We never got away from that.”
He added: “We never went home with Johnny Gage, we never went home with Roy DeSoto, we didn’t hear about Johnny Gage’s drunk father beating his mother. Who cared about that? [The show] was about the job.”

While that may be technically correct, there was certainly a lot of discussion of Roy DeSoto’s home life and Johnny Gage’s dating life. Their personal lives were not complete ciphers.

After “Emergency!,” Mr. Mantooth was an advocate for emergency medical workers, speaking at firefighter and paramedic symposiums across the country. He was given an award by the International Association of Fire Chiefs in 2022 honoring his work to promote the profession.

He and Tighe had the same agent, shared a motor home during the entire run of their show and became great friends. The series ended, Mantooth said, because his and Tighe’s original seven-year contracts had expired, Tighe didn’t want to continue and Mantooth didn’t want to go on without him.
When Mantooth raced home in 1978 to find his ranch in the Lobo Canyon area of Agoura Hills engulfed in flames, Tighe was already there, trying to get the animals safely off the property. Tighe later served as the best man at Mantooth’s 2002 wedding to actress Kristen Connors.

In his TV Academy Foundation interview, Mantooth got emotional talking about how in the ’70s he was saved by paramedics who figured out he had carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a malfunctioning house furnace and how other emergency personnel brought his sister back from the dead after she was injured in a car accident in the ’80s.
“Do I respect paramedics? Do I respect firefighters?” he asked. “There’s a debt I owe them that I probably can’t ever pay back. But I’m gonna try.”

Other credits include “Walker, Texas Ranger”, “Battlestar Galactica” (1979), and “The Bold Ones: The Senator” (the two-part episode “A Continual Roar of Musketry”: as I’ve noted before, Harlan Ellison praised this episode highly in one of the “Glass Teat” essays).

Peter Van Norden, actor. Other credits include “The New Odd Couple”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Madman of the People”.

Obit watch: July 9, 2026.

Thursday, July 9th, 2026

Bonnie Tyler. NYT.

Things I did not know, sort of in order of surprise:

  • Jim Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.
  • He wrote it for Meat Loaf.
  • As part of a vampire musical.

After seeing Meat Loaf singing on TV, she told Muff Winwood, a producer at the label, that she should work with Mr. Steinman, who wrote all the tracks on Meat Loaf’s blockbuster 1977 debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” including the hits “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
“Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it,’” Ms. Tyler later recalled. “‘I just want you to ask him,’ I said.”
Intrigued by her voice, Mr. Steinman invited her to his apartment in Manhattan to run through “Total Eclipse of the Heart” — which, he told her, he had originally written for an unfinished musical about the vampire Nosferatu.
With its rock-opera bombast bordering on the Wagnerian, the song seemed like a natural fit for Meat Loaf. But “around the time we were recording,” Ms. Tyler later told The Guardian, “Meat Loaf had lost his voice.”

The accompanying video, extravagant even by 1980s standards, was shot in a former asylum in Surrey, England. Conjuring a mood of gothic horror with ninjas, half-clad football players and altar boys with glowing eyes mixed in — “turn around, bright eyes,” indeed — it seemed to play once an hour on MTV, at the height of that network’s influence.

Obit watch: July 8, 2026.

Wednesday, July 8th, 2026

Louise Lasser.

Other credits include “McCloud”, “Medical Center”, and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”.

Joby Baker.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, Baker escaped injury in the immediate aftermath when the house he was living in was hit by friendly fire. He and his stepmother quickly left the islands, taking the RMS Aquitania with thousands of other evacuees to San Francisco, he recalled in 2022.

Other credits include “12 O’Clock High” (the series), OG “Dragnet”, “Run, Joe, Run”…

…and “Mannix”. (“The Sound of Darkness“, season 3, episode 10. He was “Rudy Marin”.)

Obit watch: July 1, 2026.

Wednesday, July 1st, 2026

Victor Willis, of the Village People.

And, since we’re coming up on America250!, a tribute to one branch of the armed services:

Thing I did not know:

From 1978 to 1982, Willis was married to Phylicia Ayers-Allen, now Phylicia Rashad, who played Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. On Nov. 17, 2007, Willis married Karen Huff, a lawyer and entertainment exec.

Obit watch: June 29, 2026.

Monday, June 29th, 2026

Ann Blyth, actress. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Name of the Game”, and “The Twilight Zone” (the original).

Obit watch: June 25, 2026.

Thursday, June 25th, 2026

Dr. Roy G. Jinks passed away last night. I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to link to at the moment.

Dr. Jinks was a driving force in Smith and Wesson collecting. Arguably, he was the driving force. He was one of the founders of the Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association. He was a long time S&W employee, working in multiple positions within the company (including as their official historian for quite a while). He did more to preserve S&W history than any other person. And he wrote the definitive (though about 1980) history of S&W.

This is a great loss. I will perhaps have more to say about this in the coming days. I will say that we were (sort of) friends, in the sense that he could probably have picked me out of a police lineup, and we talked pretty regularly at the Symposiums.

Shirley Lord, writer.

Excuse me. That’s “bosomy dirty book writer Shirley Lord“, as the late lamented (by me, anyway) “SPY Magazine” used to refer to her.

Lawrence gave me copies of a couple of her books one year. I have to say, “steamy” is a pretty accurate description of those books. I also would accept “kinky”.

Obit watch: June 18, 2026.

Thursday, June 18th, 2026

FotB RoadRich sent over two obits:

Daveigh Chase. Other credits include “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”, “Cold Case”, “S. Darko”, and “Without a Trace”.

Margaret Kerry. Other credits include “Clutch Cargo”, “The Sickle or the Cross”, and “The New 3 Stooges”.

Obit watch: June 16, 2026.

Tuesday, June 16th, 2026

NYT obit for Jane Yolen. (Previously.)

Anne Schedeen, actress. Credits other than one of the worst shows ever to air on television include “Ironside”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”.

William Smithers, actor. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…

…and “Mannix”. (“Eight to Five, It’s a Miracle”, season 1, episode 21. He was “Salvatore Pucci”.)

Obit watch: June 13, 2026.

Saturday, June 13th, 2026

Gene Shalit. THR. I realize that there’s a “don’t speak ill of the dead” factor here, but the THR story reads like a hastily and slightly re-written press release from the family.

I do remember liking the guy when I was a young person watching the “Today” show, and I’m impressed he lived to 100.