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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”.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | No Comments »

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”.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 22, 2026.

Monday, June 22nd, 2026

Another one of those “it got busy up in here” obit watches.

James Bradley, author (Flags of Our Fathers).

I haven’t read the book, but the Saturday Movie Group watched the movie. I can’t put it any better than Lawrence did: “I wanted to see a movie about the flag raising, not a movie about a bond drive.”

James Burrows, sitcom guy.

Mark Singer (paywall link: sorry), New Yorker writer. Among his works: the Ricky Jay profle.

Also among his works:

Mr. Singer is also the author of “Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin” (1996), an expanded version of a New Yorker profile of a drug smuggler, murder suspect and media manipulator, that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award; and the collection “Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists and Others” (2004).

Unmentioned in the obit: Brett Kimberlin is the guy who claimed to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle.

However, Singer “decided that [he] had been lied to repeatedly by Kimberlin.” Singer concluded that Kimberlin “was not telling the truth about Quayle.” In print, Singer said he believed Kimberlin had known someone who had claimed to sell marijuana to Quayle and had then appropriated the story as his own.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. WP.

Clive Davis, music guy.

Posted in Books, History, Music, TV | 2 Comments »

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”.)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

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.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 11, 2026.

Thursday, June 11th, 2026

Lance Rentzel. He was 82.

Mr. Rentzel started out with the Vikings, but didn’t do that well, mostly due to injuries. He was traded to the Cowboys, and was a solid player. Quoting Wikipedia:

On May 2, 1967, Rentzel was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for a third-round draft choice (#76-Mike McGill). Rentzel was converted into a flanker, where he became not only an immediate starter over Pete Gent but also one of the best wideouts in the NFL. Rentzel led the team in receptions with 58 for 996 yards (two yards less than Bob Hayes). If Rentzel had gotten four more yards and Hayes two more, it would have been the first time in NFL history that a team had two 1,000-yard wide receivers. In the tenth game of the season against the Washington Redskins, Rentzel had 13 receptions for 233 yards. His 13 receptions set a franchise record and stood for 40 years until it was broken by Jason Witten in 2007. The 233 yards were good enough for third on the team at the time (now sixth). Rentzel also starred in the 1967 NFL Championship, known since as the “Ice Bowl”, scoring a fourth-quarter, go-ahead touchdown later negated by the Green Bay Packers’ game-clinching drive.

He was on top of the world. He married Joey Heatherton in 1969. But he had a problem.

In 1966, he exposed himself to two young girls in St. Paul. That incident didn’t get a lot of attention, and he pled down to “disorderly conduct”. But in 1970, he exposed himself to a 10-year old girl in University Park, Texas. That got more attention: Ms. Heatherton divorced him, and he was traded to the LA Rams. He was less successful there, and was suspended at the start of the 1973 season after being convicted of possession of marijuana. (He was still on probation for the indecent exposure charge.)

He also wrote a book, When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow, which I have in a box somewhere but haven’t read.

“Doctor Who”.

The British broadcaster has canceled a Christmas special previously announced for later this year, and showrunner Russell T. Davies has confirmed his exit.

There were rumors a few weeks ago that the Christmas special was going to be cancelled, as the BBC and showrunners couldn’t find anybody who was willing to play “Doctor Who”.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 5, 2026.

Friday, June 5th, 2026

James Handy, actor. Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), “Gideon’s Crossing”, and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.

Max Kleven. Man, he had one heck of a career. Stunt work on “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Come Back Charleston Blue”, second unit director on “Rollerball” and “Silver Streak”, and acting credits on “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…

…and he was a “Mannix” five-timer, too.

This just in: Anthony Head. Other credits include “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”, “NYPD Blue”, and “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 22, 2026.

Friday, May 22nd, 2026

The archiving service I use has been having problems for the past few days, and I’m running low on NYT share links.

Kyle Busch. ESPN. Oddly, I don’t see any coverage of this in the NYT: it looks like they’ve shuffled off the coverage to their sports vertical, “The Athletic”, which they make you pay extra to read.

41 seems awfully young these days.

Edited to add: Shortly after this went up, the NYT posted an actual obit in the obituary section. I apologize that this is paywalled, but, as I said earlier, archive.is is having problems and I only have three share links left until June 1. (No, they don’t roll over from month to month. I wish.)

Kirk Foyle. He was a local man: Tuesday night, he was eating on the patio at Green Mesquite (one of our local barbecue restaurants), when a tree fell on him. He died from his injuries the next day.

Tomorrow is promised to nobody, whether you’re a NASCAR driver or a barbecue eater. Be prepared.

Sam Sianis. He owned and ran the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, also known as the “Cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger cheeps cheeps Pepsi!” place from SNL. (Though my understanding is that sketch was also heavily influenced by the Belushi family, who were in the restaurant business as well.)

The Billy Goat Tavern is also famous for triggering Cubs fans.

Mr. Sianis’s uncle Billy bought the bar — which was originally across from Chicago Stadium (now United Center) and called the Lincoln Tavern — in 1934. After a goat wandered in the door, he renamed the bar the Billy Goat and adopted the animal as a pet.
The goat, called Murphy, became something of a celebrity himself. In 1945, the elder Mr. Sianis brought him to Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, at Wrigley Field.
It began to rain. Murphy began to stink. The Cubs’ owner, Philip K. Wrigley, kicked them out.
As he was leaving, Billy Sianis put a curse on the team, vowing that it would never win a championship. When the Cubs lost the Series that year, he sent a note to Mr. Wrigley: “Now who stinks!”

…

In 1984, when the Cubs were contesting the National League championship, the team relented and allowed Mr. Sianis bring a goat onto the field.
But the Cubs did not win a World Series until 2016.
Watching the tiebreaking seventh game that year from the tavern, Mr. Sianis banished the curse by ringing the bell that had been worn by Murphy in 1945. The current goat stood beside him, looking as nervous as the rest of the crowd. Then it urinated on the floor. Mr. Sianis led it away.
“Don’t touch the goat,” one fan said, according to The Financial Times. “It’s bad luck.”

“Then it urinated on the floor.” I cannot tell a lie: one of the reasons I enjoy NYT obits so much is the telling details.

Posted in 1970s, Food, Goats, Mammals, Obits, Sports, TV, Urine | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 15, 2026.

Friday, May 15th, 2026

Joe Sedelmaier, commercial director.

Among his works:

And this one:

And this one:

I can’t embed it, but here’s a link to his Southern Airways “Steerage” commercial. For some reason, that commercial reminds me of…every Southwest flight I’ve been on.

Claudine Longet, actress and singer.

The enchanting, doe-eyed Longet recorded albums of breathy pop for A&M Records before she sang the Henry Mancini-Don Black song “Nothing to Lose” in Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968), in which she portrayed an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers.

I’ve heard this is actually a pretty good movie, but have never seen it.

A onetime Las Vegas showgirl, Longet had married “Moon River” crooner [Andy] Williams in December 1961 and appeared on his long-running NBC variety show and Christmas specials, often with their three children.

After she and Williams divorced (amicably), she took up with a skier named Vladimir “Spider” Sabich.

… Longet and the kids were living with the California-born Sabich at his chalet in Starwood, Colorado, when she shot him on March 21, 1976, in his bathroom with a .22-caliber German‐made gun that had been purchased by his father. She claimed the gun accidentally discharged as he was showing her how it worked.

He died on the way to the hospital. She was criminally charged, but local law enforcement completely botched the case. She ended up being convicted of “criminally negligent homicide”.

She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail (she was able to serve most of her sentence on weekends).
The Sabich family later filed a civil suit against Longet for $1.3 million, but the case was settled out of court. Longet agreed not to speak publicly about Sabich or the murder and to never publish a book about her life and the trial, and her career as a singer and actress was done.

@jack.hutton

The Claudine Longet Ski Invitational 1976 SNL A classic. #SNL #classic #1976 —

♬ original sound – Jack Hutton

Edited to add: I know the NYT is watching this space. Because as soon as I put up my own obit for someone, the NYT puts up theirs. Guys, let’s not fight. I’d be willing to entertain a job offer, though I would insist on working remotely.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 6, 2026.

Wednesday, May 6th, 2026

Screenshot

NYT.

Mr. Turner put together a top-notch crew that helped him win the 1977 America’s Cup races off Newport, R.I. But he did so only after coming close to being thrown out of the races once he had been accepted. “During the Cup eliminations,” Time magazine reported, “he flirted with every girl in sight, crawled pubs with his crew, got tossed out of chic clubs and restaurants for boozy behavior and turned Newport’s blue bloods positively purple.”
The Cup organizers forced Mr. Turner to apologize publicly to one elite club, the Spouting Rock Beach Association, for accosting female members. “I wish to apologize profusely because I certainly did have a couple drinks too many that Saturday night,” Mr. Turner wrote to the club president.
But on winning the Cup, he surrounded himself with young, attractive women and was too drunk to finish a victory speech at a nationally televised news conference.

…

Still crushed by debt, Mr. Turner sought to squeeze profits from his MGM library by colorizing classic black-and-white movies in what turned out to be a misguided attempt to increase their appeal among younger viewers. He was attacked by the press, filmmakers, movie buffs and politicians as a cultural philistine. Stung, he ended up colorizing only a few films, among them the 1941 Humphrey Bogart detective movie “The Maltese Falcon,” before abandoning the plan amid condemnation by many actors and directors, including the filmmakers Billy Wilder and Woody Allen.

…

He wooed [Jane Fonda – DB] — just after her divorce from the liberal activist and California state legislator Tom Hayden — by emphasizing their similarities, including as the children of a suicidal parent (in Ms. Fonda’s case, her mother) and their friendships with icons of the far left, like Mr. Castro. She later wrote in a memoir that she had been dazzled by his charisma, which she likened to “a 3-D stereophonic, Shakespearean-level, sound-and-light show.”
The couple married in 1991 — the third marriage for each — and in subsequent years, Mr. Turner devoted more of his time to environmentalism and global peace, while Ms. Fonda virtually retired from Hollywood to devote herself to Mr. Turner and his new causes.
Their marriage lasted 10 years, with Ms. Fonda saying his insatiable need for other women and her own deepening spirituality, including an embrace of Christianity, were underlying causes.

Posted in Boats, History, Media, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 14, 2026.

Tuesday, April 14th, 2026

Sid Krofft. THR.

The shows could feel hallucinogenic, and many older viewers read drug references into them that the Kroffts maintained were not intentional. (Titles like “Pufnstuf” did not make that argument more believable.)
“If we did the drugs that we’ve been accused of doing all these years, we wouldn’t be here answering your questions,” Mr. Krofft said in an interview with The Washington Post in 2009.

Lawrence sent over an obit for noted SF writer Ian Watson. I don’t have much to add to this, as I have not seen this reported elsewhere.

Valerie Lee. She was one of the children who played Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz”. It gets a little confusing, at least for me, but as best as I understand it: they recruited some child actors to play adult Munchkins alongside the actual little people in “Oz”.

About a dozen children of average height were hired so they could be used for background fill. Sources differ on the number of children used for these roles ranging anywhere from 10 to 12. The names used for the women are maiden names with known aliases present in italics and quotation marks.

According to Cox, Priscilla Montgomery Clark, 96, another child Munchkin, is the last surviving person to have appeared in The Wizard of Oz.

John Nolan, actor. Other credits include “The Sweeney”, “The Prisoner”, and “Return of the Saint”.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 30, 2026.

Monday, March 30th, 2026

Dr. Henry C. Lee, forensic scientist. He may have been most famous for testifying at the OJ trial.

Dr. Lee testified for the defense, saying that there was “something wrong” with the way the Los Angeles Police Department had handled the blood that was collected as evidence.
His testimony supported the defense team’s suggestion that the evidence could have been tampered with and that officers might have planted Mr. Simpson’s blood at the crime scene.

…

In the mid-1980s, in the so-called preppy murder case, Dr. Lee was hired by the team defending Robert E. Chambers Jr., who was accused of murdering Jennifer Levin in Central Park. Dr. Lee was never called to testify because he told Mr. Chambers’s lawyer, Jack Litman, that his client was “guilty as hell.” Mr. Chambers pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1988.

…

In 2007, the judge in the murder trial of Mr. Spector ruled that Dr. Lee, a consultant for the defense, had removed something from the crime scene and hidden it from the prosecution.
Prosecutors contended that it was a piece of fingernail that would have shown that the actress Lana Clarkson had resisted having a gun placed in her mouth before being shot at Mr. Spector’s California home. The defense claimed that she had shot herself.
The judge did not hold Dr. Lee in contempt, and Dr. Lee denied taking anything from the crime scene. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Mr. Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009.
In 2023, Connecticut’s attorney general agreed to a $25 million settlement with two men who had spent three decades in jail after being convicted of murder. Those convictions, which were overturned in 2020, had been based in part on testimony by Dr. Lee regarding the supposed presence of blood on a towel. A federal judge ruled that Dr. Lee had fabricated the evidence, saying that there was no corroboration that he had conducted any blood tests on the towel.
Dr. Lee defended himself in a statement, saying, “I have no motive nor reason to fabricate evidence.”

Mary Beth Hurt. Other credits include “Law & Order”, “Law & Order:SVU”, and “Lady in the Water”.

James Tolkan. Other credits include “They Might Be Giants”, “Bone Tomahawk”, “Serpico”, “Prince of the City”, and “The Hat Squad”.

Letizia Mowinckel, historical footnote. She bought clothes for Jacqueline Kennedy.

Impressed by her friend’s style and thrift, Mrs. Kennedy enlisted Mrs. Mowinckel to obtain clothes discreetly from French designers and send them to the White House. During the election, the press had criticized the chic Mrs. Kennedy for favoring foreign designers. She chose the American designer Oleg Cassini, long known for his work with Hollywood stars, as her personal couturier during her husband’s presidency, but her taste for Parisian fashions was unabated.

Among the clothes she bought: the pink Chanel suit.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One just before it returned to Washington, and Mrs. Kennedy, who stood next to Mr. Johnson, refused to remove the suit. Mrs. Johnson recalled, “Then with something — if you can say a person that gentle, that dignified, had an element of fierceness — she said, ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack.’”

Posted in History, Law, Movies, Obits, Science, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 24, 2026.

Tuesday, March 24th, 2026

For the record: NYT obits for Valerie Perrine and Brian Doherty.

Burning in Hell watch: Kermit Gosnell. I have my own opinions about abortion, which I’m not going to impose on anyone here. But the Gosnell case, as I recall, made even people who were pro-abortion sit up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is going too far.”

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 23, 2026.

Monday, March 23rd, 2026

Valerie Perrine, actress. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and “W.C. Fields and Me”.

For the historical record: Robert S. Mueller III. WP.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 20, 2026.

Friday, March 20th, 2026

Chuck Norris. THR. “The World Bows: Remembering Chuck Norris 1940-2026” from Black Belt.

Other credits include the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, “Sons of Thunder”, and “Firewalker“.

Ed Bernard, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Shaft” (the movie), “Cool Million”…

…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Murder”, season 7, episode 22. He was “Bull Evans”.)

Jane Lapotaire, British actress.

For the historical record: NYT obit for Alvin Greene. (Previously on WCD.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

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