The Kwouk and the Dead

Or

Cato Killin’

Herbert Tsangtse "Burt" Kwouk, best remembered as Inspector Clouseau’s long-suffering manservant Cato, has died of cancer at the age of 85. The running gag through 6 of the Pink Panther movies was that Cato was supposed to attack the Inspector when he least expected it in order to keep Clouseau alert. The ensuing brawl would trash the apartment, only to be interrupted by a ringing phone, which Cato would calmly answer "Inspector Clouseau's residence," before handing the phone to Clouseau and then getting whacked. The two referenced this relationship in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu with Sellers saying to Kwouk, "Your face is familiar," in the film’s opening scene. He also played the leader of a group of robot Chinese Mandarins developed by the alien Monarch to study human behavior in the Doctor Who serial Four to Doomsday. In keeping with the movie industry’s malleable understanding of Asia, he played a Chinese nuclear expert in Goldfinger, a Japanese operative of SPECTRE in You Only Live Twice, and a Vietnamese general in Air America. 

Onward Trusty Steed

Patrick Macnee, best remembered as Professor Plocostomos in Lobster Man from Mars, has died at the age of 93. Macnee was schooled at Eton before being expelled for being a bookmaker and selling porn, gateway vices for life as an actor. Muddling through limited TV and movie “Hey, it’s that bloke” roles, he got his big break as John Steed, first trusty sidekick, then Big Bowler in Charge on The Avengers, a swinging ‘60s blend of British eccentricity and high camp. The mysterious Mr. Steed never carried a gun, opting for quips and unleashing leather catsuited fury in the forms of Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, and Linda Thorson. A second go-round with Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt was less successful, and the less said of the movie, for which Macnee only lent his voice, the better. Other roles included Sir Godfrey Tibbett, who found himself on the wrong end of Grace Jones in A View to a Kill, the voice of the Cylons' Imperious Leader in Battlestar Galactica, Sir Denis Eton-Hogg in the This Is Spinal Tap, and in various films, Macnee pulled off the rare feat of playing both Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. 

Vlad Tidings

(Props to Don)

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Stop Hammer Time

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The Man Who Could Cheat Death (for Awhile, Anyway)

Christopher Lee, best remembered as the Russian commandant in Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, has died at the age of 93. On screen, he took on James Bond (as Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun), Professor Van Helsing (in the Brides of Dracula), Yoda (as Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus in the prequel trilogy best left forgotten), Dennis Nayland Smith (as Fu Manchu in 5 films, including the MST3K’ed The Castle of Fu Manchu) and Gandalf (as Saruman in about 157 hours of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien sesquicentennialogy), not to mention countless riled up villagers as Dracula and Frankenstein’s Creature in various Hammer Films creations. All of which paled in comparison to his real life badassery as a member of Britain's Special Operations Executive, a crack commando unit tasked by Winston Churchill himself to "set Europe ablaze," whose actions remain classified to this day. Holding the Guinness World Record for Tallest Leading Actor at 6 foot-5, Lee appeared in more than 260 films, in which he used some of the seven languages in which he was fluent, and scored a knighthood. He parodied his persona as a mad scientist in Gremlins 2: The Next Batch, and paid homage to Hugh Hefner in his role as the free loving, public nudity and human sacrifice endorsing hedonistic pagan leader Lord Summerisle, he played an expert scuba diver who drowned within minutes of entering the water in Airport ’77 and played a Nazi U-boat commander in 1941. At the age of 87, he then recorded a metal album, in which he played his great-great-ancestor Charlemagne. 

Thank Heaven

(Props to Monty)

Or

Looking for Heir Jourdan

Louis Jourdan, who overcame the cliché of being a French dandy to battle Swamp Thing, has died at the age of 93. He suaved it all up in The Paradine Case, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Gigi. Not in his CV are the German propaganda films he was ordered to make after France’s capitulation in World War II, as he instead escaped to unoccupied France and joined the resistance. In his later career, he turned Alec Holland into the Swamp Thing as Dr. Anton Arcane, DC Comics’ answer in assonance to all that Marvel Comics’ alliteration, while continuing the tradition of evil geniuses with post-graduate degrees and calling into question the screening process at the world’s evil universities. He may be best remembered for his role as Kamal Khan, the fake Faberge-collecting, backgammon-cheating, nuclear war-starting exiled Afghan prince in Octopussy.

7 UP, 6 Feet Down

Geoffrey Holder, best remembered for extolling the virtues of 7-UP as the un-cola, is now an un-spokesperson, succumbing to pneumonia at the age of 84. The Trinidadian-born dancer was a ballet and Broadway fixture before serving as Baron Samedi, one of Dr. Kananga’s crew in Live and Let Die. He won Tony Awards for Direction and Costume design for The Wiz, the first black man to ever even be nominated in either category. He also choreographed the Season 5 opening credits for The Cosby Show. With Richard Kiel, Holder is the 2nd Bond henchman to die in the last month. 

It’s a Condolence Card! It’s a Condolence Card!

Or

It's Safe to Go Back in the Water

(Props to Monty)

Or

Kieled Over

(An epitaphany shared by me, Monty and Steve)
Richard Kiel, best remembered as the hairy caveman that time forgot in Eegah!, has died at the age of 74. The acromegalic actor was the mechanically mouthed Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, the only Bond villain to make a return appearance other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld; the Kannemit emissary with a cookbook in The Twilight Zone classic “To Serve Man;” the crybaby inmate in The Longest Yard, Voltaire, henchman to Dr. Miguelito Loveless, played by dwarf Michael Dunn, in The Wild Wild West; and the giant, unstable fan in Happy Gilmore. The 7-foot-1 beanpole had been a leading contender to play The Incredible Hulk, and had even filmed part of the pilot, before producers wanted someone more muscular and went with Lou Ferrigno. 

The Way He Was

(Props to Monty)

Or

Stung

Or

Nobody Does it Better, but Plenty Have Done it Longer

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One, Who Is Feeling No Sensation

Marvin Hamlisch, godfather of sampling, has died after a brief illness at the age of 1968. At the age of 7, he was the youngest ever admitted to the Julliard School and to the end he had the appearance of the band room geek who never outgrew it. Unlike the band room geeks left dangling from atomic wedgies, Hamlisch hit his stride, winning three Oscars, four Emmys, four Grammys and a Pulitzer (one of only 2 to claim PEGOTs), while emerging as an engaging personality who could visit Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and not send viewers to the bathroom. In addition to ripping off Scott Joplin to Fareed Zakaria his way to an Oscar for the score to The Sting, he filled countless elevators with misty water-colored memories after writing Barbra Streisand’s signature song The Way We Were (another Oscar winner), gave James Bond one of his best theme songs with Nobody Does it Better, and composed Theme Song for Peaboy for Late Night with David Letterman.

Decomposing

Thwarting evil geniuses will be a lot less entertaining with the death of John Barry, 77. Barry helped imprint the cool on the James Bond franchise composing and the distinctive Bond theme and producing the scores to 11 films, including From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. Barry also won 5 Academy Awards as composer of Born Free, Dances With Wolves, Out of Africa and The Lion in Winter and a Razzie for The Legend of the Lone Ranger. Non award-winning films on his resume include Chaplin, The Ipcress File, The Quiller Memorandum, Body Heat, Midnight Cowboy and Howard the Duck.

Waiting No More

Graham Crowden, best known as Tom Ballard the vaguely daft retiree who served as a foil to crotchety Diana Trent on the BBC sitcom Waiting for God, has died at the age of 87. Crowden was offered the role of the Doctor on the BBC series Dr. Who after Jon Pertwee retired, but the stage vet declined to commit to a single role for an extended period, and producers went with the much younger and more comical Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor. He showed up as an antagonist to Baker’s Doctor in one series and had a cameo as a British naval officer in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Come Back to the Live Times, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Or
Rebel without a Saus-age
(Mad Props to Lori Ann)

Or
Big Dead Jim

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At the Bottom of This Grave Lies a Dead, Dead Man

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Come Back to the Five and Died, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
(Variation on a Theme from Phil)

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Somebody Call Abe Frohman
(Merit a Monty)

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Well, you said you didn't want to know how the sausage was made!
(More fanfare for Phil)

Or
Whyte Out
Jimmy Dean, Rowlf the Dog’s right-hand man in the 1960s, has died at the age of 81. The country singer is best remembered for not singing his 1961 hit Big Bad John, which won the 1962 Grammy for Best Country & Western recording. The crossover success of the song helped secure Dean a spot as Johnny Carson’s first guest host of The Tonight Show, which in turn helped get him his own talk show, with Jim Henson under the desk working the sock puppet, which he used to help start the careers of Patsy Cline and Roy Clark and bring other country stars to a mainstream audience. He maintained his success in signing about the doomed with another Top 40 hit: PT 109, about John F. Kennedy’s naval career. After his show ended, he sort of acted, with his best known role was as the Howard Hughes-esque tycoon Willard Whyte, held hostage by Bambi and Thumper and rescued by James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. Most remember him now as the founder of the Jimmy Dean Sausage company, which was profitable within 6 months of launch, in part due to Dean’s folksy humor in the commercials. He got fired when the company started targeting a younger audience, so he is blameless for the company’s latest abomination: the Chocolate Chip Pancake and Sausage on a Stick (even better with Baconnaise). Dean is to be interred in a piano-shaped mausoleum. Beats a sausage casing.

No Doctor

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The Doctor is Out

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Physician, Heal Thyself

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No, Mr. Bond, I Expect to Die
Joseph Wiseman, best known as the portrayer of a summa cum laude graduate from Evil Medical School, has died at the age of 91. As Dr. Julius No, Wiseman set the template for the refined, megalomaniacal overly talky ubervillian hidden in a semi-secure lair in an exotic locale who can’t quite put away James Bond. He had been the last living Bond nemesis from the Sean Connery canon films. Other roles included the titular Mr. Minsky in The Night They Raided Minsky’s, mobsters on MacGyver and The A-Team, and a starring role in The Twilight Zone episode One More Pallbearer, as a wealthy man trying to get revenge on those who had wronged him by offering space in a bomb shelter during a fictional nuclear attack in exchange for apologies. They refuse, leaving him alone in the shelter and in his psychic break from reality (or stresser, as they would say on Criminal Minds), he imagines an actual attack has occurred.

Ghostley or Ghostlier

Ex-merelda

Or
Decomposing Woman

Or
It seems that Alice Ghostley is even more so these days
(Props to Monty)
Alice Ghostley, the professional ditz who was the poor man’s Dody Goodman, has died at the age of 81ish. Ghostley is best remembered as having replaced Marion Lorne’s Aunt Clara on Bewitched when the actress died unexpectedly. Ghostley played recurring character Esmerelda, the Samantha and Durwood Stephens’ maid and baby-sitter, a shy neurotic witch whose spells never worked and who cause havoc when she sneezed – think Willow as a domestic. Ghostley was used to replacing beloved characters, having replaced Aunt Bee on Mayberry R.F.D. Thirty years later, she proved her acting chops as the addled Bernice and had to convince viewers she was hot to trot for Meschach Taylor’s Anthony Bouvier on Designing Women. She won a Tony as best supporting actress in 1965’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” and took home an Oscar in 1970. She didn’t actually win one, but accepted Maggie Smith’s for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” Other roles included Dorothy Zbornak’s loony mother-in-law on The Golden Girls, Mrs. Murdock, the shop teacher on Grease and reprised her occult classic status as Sabrina, the Teemage Witch’s Great-Granny. With Ghostley’s death, the only surviving cast member from Bewitched, not counting the child actors who played Sabrina and Adam, is Bernard Fox, who played Dr. Mumbai (nee Bombay).

Alice’s death gives my The Die is Cast squad a ghost of a chance as I pull into 16th.

Wheel of Time Stops Rolling
Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series of novels so popular among parent’s basement dwellers, has died at the age of 58. Jordan, the bane of Mike Burger’s pop culture trivia career, described the sweeping saga of Rand al’Thor, who battles the evil that threatens to take over his land, in 11 intricately plotted novels with characters so richly drawn that readers never needed to develop social skills to interact with other humans. When not ripping off J.R.R. Tolkein, Jordan also took a stab at picking up where others had left off with the Conan the Barbarian series, penning Conan the Invincible, Conan the Triumphant and Conan the Victorious. At the time of his death, Jordan had been working on Conan the Wicked Awesome.

A Bip in the Eternal Night

Or
The Rest is Silence

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A Mime is a Terrible Thing to Waste

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Silenced
(Kudos to Monty)

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Would anyone like to say a few words? Anyone?
(Accolades for Joe)

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Eternal Silence of the Spotless Mime
(Honorifics for Phil)
Marcel Marceau has decided to end his mime career doing trapped in a box, dying at the age of 84. International accolades poured in over the last few weeks, which surprised me, as I expected a more muted response. Marceau played on the naivete of his audience in his “craft.” He could never flub a line, and audiences were left to decide for themselves what the act was. Unwilling to admit they had wasted hundreds of dollars on a silent, pancaked depressing clown, they convinced themselves they had seen high art with shades of genius, while Marceau walked against the wind all the way to the bank.

Blackhawk Down

Or
Crumpled Dollar Bill
(Whoop whoop for Craig)
The Chicago Blackhawks might actually have a chance to succeed as tight-fisted bastard owner Bill Wirtz has died at the age of 77. The Wirtz family bought the Blackhawks in 1954 and in 1966 Bill took over as team president. The Original Six stalwart hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since, has advanced past the second round in the playoffs just 9 times in Wirtz’s 40 seasons and over the last 9 seasons, in a league where every team makes the playoffs, has missed the playoffs 8 times. Wirtz was beloved for his loyalty to his front office personnel, and with results like those, why would you ever make a change? Wirtz steered clear of bidding wars to stock his roster while watching his own stars seek their fortune elsewhere. Fans have stayed away from the United Center in droves – the team averages only about 12,000 a night in a 20,000-seat arena – and Wirtz’s refusal to televise home games has allowed many Chicagoans to forget they even have a team.

Tomorrow Never Dies, But Secretaries Certainly Do
(Another cap tip for Craig)

Or
Declare the Moneypennys on Her Eyes

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Spent
(Egregious esteem for Monty)

Or
Maxed Out
(Raves for Monty)

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A Penny Grave is a Penny Returned
(Tributes for Craig)
Lois Maxwell, best known as the randiest secretary in London, has died at the age of 80. Maxwell played Miss Moneypenny, eternally pining for James Bond in 14 films, second only to Desmond Llewellyn as Q in 18. She also played a version of herself, along with Bernard Lee, better known as the first M, in the Neil Connery vehicle Operation Double 007 (no typo, hence the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment).

Oerter’s Aorta Outta Order

Or
End of Discus-ion
(I’ve run out of witty congrats, but that one was Joe’s)

Or
Nothing Gold can Stay
(Whatever – thank Craig for that one)
Al Oerter, the greatest discus thrower ever, has died at the age of 71 from vascular disease. Oerter represented the U.S. in the Olympics in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968, each time overcoming injury, but given little chance to win when competing against the reigning world record holder, and each time winning the gold medal, the first to win in 4 consecutive Olympics and the only athlete to improve on his record each time. Twelve years after his last Olympics, at the age of 43 he set a personal best in the 1980 Olympic trials and was named an alternate on the team, but with Jimmy Carter deciding that if he couldn’t escape the malaise no one could, he watched with the other forced boycotters from home. At 47, he reached the finals of the 1984 Olympic trials before a torn calf muscle forced his withdrawal.