Sad Goodbyes

Steve Forrest, immortalized for viewers of a certain age as Lt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson on the short lived but affectionately recalled SWAT, passed away on May 18th. For those unfamiliar with his work, Mr. Forrest was sort of a (pre-comedy) Leslie Nielsen or Lee Majors sort of actor. Mr. Forrest basically began his career…

I just saw this, and I'm too exhausted to do a proper write-up right now. Still, and although it's entirely just that Mr. Klugman will be mostly remembered as Oscar Madison and Quincy, I know I'm not alone is recalling his appearances on The Twilight Zone. Mr. Klugman's bread and butter were derived from…

Actress Deborah Raffin, a regular star of TV mini-series and B-movies in the '70s, '80s and '90s, has passed away. Ms. Raffin is best known on these pages as the ludicrously young and predictably doomed romantic lead opposite the elderly Charles Bronson in the early Jabootu subject Death Wish III. Beginning her career on…

  Well, crap. You know you've created an indelible comedy character when you're more remembered for that instead of playing such genre characters as The Phantom of the Opera (admittedly, in one of Hammer's lamer movies) and Captain Nemo (in the rather more spectacular Mysterious Island). Yet Mr. Lom will surely always be best…

FoJ Marsden has informed me of the sad passing of actor Lance LeGault. Once the movie and (particularly) TV universe offered a myriad of character actors like this, those guys whose names you always didn’t know but whose faces you surely did. Every time one of the ever diminishing number of these actors leaves…

This is getting seriously depressing. Emi Itô on the right. Miss Itô died nearly a month ago, on June 15th, but the news just filtered down to me. I'm sure many of you were already aware of it. For the rest of us, it's sad tidings of another old friend departing us. Ms. Itô…

Extremely sad news, as one of the very last of the greatest Hollywood character actors, Ernest Borgnine, has passed away. In this extremely long and busy career, Mr. Borgnine played it all. He specialized in great villains, but he also played some of the best lovable coots ever. Moreover, if you call up an…

Not just Andy Taylor (in what is probably one of the five greatest sitcoms of all time) or Mattlock, although either--especially the first--would be enough. I really loved his show Salvage 1, in which he played an entrepreneur who launched his own private space rocket to the moon despite government interference. Mr. Griffith also…

One of the screen's last great heavies, Richard Lynch, has passed away. Most famous for his slightly scarred visage, the result of a gruesome, drug-related fire in 1967 that badly burned 70% of his body, Mr. Lynch beat the odds and fully recovered from the nearly fatal incident. A successful stage actor at that…