Hale and Not-so Hearty

(Props to Monty)

Or

Dead-end Street

(Additional accolades for Monty)

Barbara Hale, best remembered as a randy middle-aged astronomer trying to combat The Giant Spider Invasion in the MST3K classic, has died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 94. She had some high-profile roles opposite top leading men, most notably headlining Lorna Doone, then spent 13 years in Raymond Burr’s shadow as Della Street, his ever-capable legal secretary, on Perry Mason. Twenty years later, Street put all the tricks she learned to good use, committing a murder that forces Mason to give up his job as an appellate court judge so that he can come to her defense. Other roles included Dean Martin’s wife in Airport, and playing William Katt’s mother in real life and in The Greatest American Hero and Big Wednesday.

Man-Nix

(Props to Monty)Or

Dead Mannix Walking

Or

Touched

Mike Connors, best remembered as an undercover FBI agent tagging along with escaped women prisoners to recapture diamonds in the swamp in the MST3K’ed “classic” Swamp Diamonds, has died of leukemia at the age of 91. A high school standout basketball player, where he earned the nickname, and occasional screen name, “Touch,” Connors played briefly at UCLA under John Wooden, where his expressive face gained notice and he found work in a bunch of cheapie Westerns and thrillers before ending up as a crewman trying to find John Wayne’s downed plane in Island in the Sky. His big break came in 1967 with Mannix, with Connors first the old-school oddball in a high-tech detective agency, then as the more traditional solo PI. The show was non-descript and stuck to the formula, with Mannix’s quirks consisting of a trove of Armenian proverbs to sum up any circumstance and a tendency to get his ass kicked in every episode, by one estimate getting shot 17 times and knocked unconscious 55 times over the course of the series. Connors became one of the top paid stars on TV, and scored 4 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe win. His last role was as a love interest for Holland Taylor on Two and a Half Men before we knew her preferences were younger and with firmer breasts.

x

Solo, Farewell, Auf Weidersein, Good Night

Or

Say U.N.C.L.E.

(Props to Monty)

 

Or

Dirt Napoleon

 

Or

Battling Beyond the Stars

(Meritorious mention for Don)

Robert Vaughn, who played a samurai in the Old West and in space, has died of leukemia at the age of 83. The last surviving member of The Magnificent Seven, Vaughn played Lee, the cowardly mercenary, then came back in essentially the same role for Battle Beyond the Stars, Roger Corman’s update on The Seven Samurai theme. Apparently he wasn’t available for A Bug’s Life. Vaughn’s star-making turn was the Symbol Maker’s son in Teenage Caveman, a Roger Corman cheapie with a twist ending that it was earth all along that eventually made fine MST3K fodder. He parlayed that into a role as an injured war vet wrongfully accused of murder in the melodramatic twaddle The Young Philadelphians, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination in 1960. He starred as suave spy Napoleon Solo in the tongue-in-cheek spy caper series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And after that, he settled into a long career of shadowy intimidating authority figures: billionaire Ross Webster in the franchise-destroying Superman III; crooked politician Walter Chalmers in Bullitt; billionaire king maker Carl Anderton on Law & Order, who decides to cut off Adam Schiff’s campaign funds; White House Chief of Staff Gordon Cain who decides re-election is more important than aliens and heroic astronauts in another MST3Ked schlocker Hanger 18; and General Hunt Stockwell, the man who did what Col. Decker couldn’t – capture the A-Team and force them to work for him in the shark jumping final season. 

Schallert Grave

The ubiquitous William Schallert, best remembered as Martin Lane, father of Patty Lane (as well as Martin’s identical twin Kenneth, father of identical cousin Cathy), has died at the age of 93. It's so hard when TV parents have to bury their TV children. Among his 375 credits on imdb are the paramedic in the beginning of Them! who finds the little girl who survived an attack by giant ants; the marshal of Oracle, Texas who gets killed about 2 minutes into Gunslinger and is replaced by Beverly Garland in the MST3K-ed Roger Corman classic; Nilz Baris, the United Federation of Planets' undersecretary in charge of agricultural affairs who was vexed by vermin in The Trouble with Tribbles; the new Russ Lawrence in The New Gidget; the athletic director from Aberdeen College who hired Luther Van Damm away from Minnesota State only to then fire him on his first day after he violated NCAA rules and got the school put on probation on Coach; teacher of two generations of Cleavers as Mr. Bloomgarden on Leave it to Beaver and The New Leave it to Beaver; and in one of his last roles, the mayor of Bon Temps on True Blood. 

Who Knows What Coronary Disease Lurks in the Hearts of Men...

Or

White Shadow Falls

Or

Jefferson Did not Live

(Props to Phil)

Ken Howard, best remembered as being thisclose to being Supreme Court Justice Peyton Cabot Harrison III on The West Wing, has died at the age of 71. An accomplished Broadway star, Reeves appeared in Promises, Promises with Jerry Orbach, played Thomas Jefferson in 1776 – a role he reprised in the movie, and won the 1970 Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actor for Child's Play, a dramatic departure from the original text about a killer doll. Looking like a stuffy old white guy even in his 30s also led to other presidential parts on stage including the musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the role of Warren G. Harding in Camping with Henry and Tom and Tip O’Neill in the one-man show According to Tip. He parlayed this into the role of Ken Reeves, a former Chicago Bull in the days when there were white players in the NBA, who takes over as head basketball coach in South Central LA’s Carver High School in The White Shadow, a show ahead of its time in its primarily minority cast, discussion of drug use, STDs, sexual orientation, prostitution, gambling and inner city violence, and frequent failure to come up with pat solutions after 42 minutes. Somehow all of that didn’t strike a chord with viewers and the show lasted only 3 seasons, but it set the stage for realistic dramas like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. Other roles included Jill Hennessey’s ex-cop dad on Crossing Jordan, his Emmy-winning turn as Little Edie's father on Grey Gardens, cuckolded QB Dave Walecki on the MST3Ked TV-movie Superdome, Michael Scott’s possibly decapitated predecessor Ed Truck on The Office, and Kabletown CEO Hank Hooper on 30 Rock.

I Have Very, Very, Very, Very Bad News

Or

No Pain, No Gaynes

Or

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gaynes

(Merit for Monty)

Or

Police Academy 86: Lassard Under Ground!

(Kudos to Phil)

George Gaynes, best remembered as the Mission Director in Marooned, or as MSTies know it, Space Travelers, has died at the age of 98. Gaynes was so old that when he was born in Finland, that country was still a Duchy within the Russian Empire. A regular in Broadway musical comedies of the 1940s and ‘50s, Gaynes worked mostly in obscurity before becoming an overnight sensation in the early 1980s, first as the affable but incompetent Eric Lassard, goldfish-loving Commandant of the Police Academy series, where the most subversive gag of the franchise was stripping this distinguished gentleman of his dignity for a blow job joke. Gaynes contrasted this lovable dope with his role as lovably cranky photographer Henry Warnimont who takes in a mix-matched sock-wearing homeless urchin named Punky Brewster. Other roles include being the only person to ever find Dustin Hoffman attractive in Tootsie, and the inexplicable role of a mob boss on General Hospital, while behind the camera, he directed the final episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

No Longer Up and Adam 12

Martin Milner, best remembered as the former football star who helps rally the passengers and crew on a crippled Concorde to do the right thing and not try to land the plague-ridden plane in the middle of London in the early MST3K classic SST Death Flight, has died of a heart attack at the age of 84. He also played baby-faced Tod Stiles, who cruised Route 66 with confirmed bachelor Buzz Murdock. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He put his fake driving experience to use as LAPD’s Pete Malloy on Adam-12. He also put his baby face to use as a fresh Marine learning soldiering from John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima and as Wyatt’s youngest brother James, whose murder sets up the Gunfight at the OK Corral (despite the fact that James was not actually in Tombstone during the real gunfight and died of natural causes at the age of 84). Milner also played Angus MacGyver’s father who died in a car accident when Mac was a wee lad.  

86 was Enough

(An epitaphany shared with Monty and Phil)

Or

Roland Roland Roland, Get the Hearse for Roland

(Props to Phil)

Dick Van Patten, nucleus of the Van Patten project, which determined that the interaction of one Adam (-12) with another Adam (Rich) could unleash a series of unpleasant interactions, or bombs – his failed series, his family's failed series, his TV family's failed series, has died of complications of diabetes at the age of 86. And if this sounds even vaguely similar, I assure you that you are not thinking about a host segment from Master Ninja I featuring Crow T. Robot. Best known as Tom Bradford, patriarch of the dramedy Eight is Enough, Van Patten also played Druidia’s King Roland in Spaceballs (even though he didn’t look Druish), Friar Tuck in When Things Were Rotten, blob chow in Beware! The Blob, Beverly Ann Stickle’s ex-husband on the pathetic last season of The Facts of Life and the blind weatherman on the pathetic only season of WIOU.

Vlad Tidings

(Props to Don)

Or

Stop Hammer Time

Or 

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. 

Z’Dead

Robert Z’Dar, the cult movie star with a chin that would impress Guy Smiley and Jay Leno, has died at the age of 64. Best known as Officer Matthew Cordell, the undead mass murdering titular Maniac Cop, upstaging fellow chin enthusiast Bruce Campbell, Z’Dar also played the Angel of Death in the MST3K’ed Soultaker, a cyborg in the MST3K’ed Future War, which was set in the present day and did not involve a war, replaced Rowdy Roddy Piper in the sequel to Hell Comes to Frogtown, crossed swords with the Samurai Cop, and had a brief foray into the mainstream, as prison inmate Face, in Tango & Cash. In all, he appeared in more than 120 films over the last 30 years, and was in production for Samurai Cop 2 when he died. 

Judgment at the Pearly Gates

(Kudos to Monty)

 

Or

Schell-om

Maximilian Schell, best remembered for the heavy-handed irony of his abandonment by his young wife on the eve of the apocalypse mirroring his own betrayal of his wife and child years before in Deep Impact, the talkiest disaster movie ever, has died of a sudden illness at the age of 83. Schell also played faux cooker of endangered species Larry London in The Freshman and the mad scientist at the edge of The Black Hole. But the reason he’ll get a prime spot in the Academy of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ necrology is his Oscar for Best Actor for playing a German defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg, just his second acting role in a US film. Schell’s ability to speak German earned him roles in a number of other Nazi-themed movies, ironic given that he and his family fled Austria when it was annexed by Germany in 1938. Schell scored two other Oscar nominations for The Man in the Glass Booth and Julia. Schell was also noted as being one of the best Hamlets ever, with his performance being singled out by Mike, Crow and Tom Servo in a 1999 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

 

Buzz Kill

Buzz Podewell, who showed there are more embarrassing early career appearances for aspiring actors than porn and McDonald’s commercials, has died of lung cancer at the age of 69. The child actor was establishing his cred with appearances on Mr. Wizard, when he landed the plum role of Buzz Turner, a shy boy persecuted for his lack of musical knowledge by the magical and androgynous Mr. B Natural, played by Betty Luster.  He would go on to Emerson College, where he was a classmate of Henry Winkler and probably thought that his early video made for the scratch would never see the light of day again. Then in 1991, Joel and the ‘bots made him a star when they dug up the short for Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

Dead as a Doorman

Ned Wertimer, a fixture of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, one episode at a time, has died of complications of a fall at the age of 89. His film career is notable for reporter Andy Henderson who interviewed Santa Claus before the jolly old elf Conquered the Martians, but he’s probably best remembered as Ralph the Money-Grubbing Doorman on The Jeffersons. His death leaves Florence, Jenny Willis and one of the Lionels as the only characters from The Jeffersons who have not populated deluxe apartments in the sky.

Not so McHale or McHearty

Or

Resuscitation is Futile

Ernest Borgnine, who had a thing for white cotton panties, has died of renal failure at the age of 95. After sending Frank Sinatra’s Maggio From Here to Eternity as Fatso Judson, Borgnine was the logical choice to play the painfully shy, gentle butcher with mommy issues in Marty. Borgnine won the Best Actor Oscar, ironically beating Sinatra (from The Man with the Golden Arm) again, and in the days before carelessly throwing your life away guaranteed you an Oscar, James Dean. He sent The Dirty Dozen to certain doom, escaped certain doom on the Poseidon, got strangled in Ice Station Zebra, got eaten by rats in Willard, got shot down with the rest of The Wild Bunch, got blown up in Escape from New York, fell victim to panic (and a far too form-fitting uniform) and crashed a spaceship in The Black Hole, and got mauled by something as the Celebrity Dad on the Junior Campers father-son rubber-rafting trip on The Simpsons. The former Navy man reached a new audience as Quinton McHale, commander of the PT-73, a lovable band of wacky misfits who happened to be very good at killing Nips, back before that was a racist term – so good that they took the incomprehensible reverse trip from the South Pacific to Italy for the unsuccessful last season of McHale’s Navy. He later rejoined Tim Conway as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy on SpongeBob SquarePants. In 2009, he helped close out the last 2 episodes of ER as a husband saying goodbye to his dying wife, earning an Emmy nomination more than 50 years after his TV career began with him trying to kill Captain Video and his Video Rangers.

Lost and Incontinent

In the movies of the 1940s and 1950s, every third movie produced in Hollywood was required by an obscure clause in the Hays Code to have a character from Brooklyn in the cast for comic relief. In many of those films, that relief was provided by Sid Melton, who has died of pneumonia at the age of 94. Among those films were Lost Continent, where he played a mechanic on an expedition to a land mass unabashedly reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World who has erotic dreams about planes, and Radar Secret Service, one of the finest 59-minute movies about atomic theft this nation has ever produced. Both found second life on MST3K, where Joel and the ‘Bots dubbed Melton 'Monkey Boy.' Melton turned up like a bad penny on 3 different Danny Thomas series, inexplicably took his Brooklyn accent to Hooterville on Green Acres and played Sophia’s late husband in flashbacks on The Golden Girls.

Mrs. B. Dead

Or
Lost our Luster
Betty L. Prentis, mouthpiece for the C.G. Conn Brass Company in the most unintentionally demented promotional video ever, has died at the age of 89. Viewers of Mr. B. Natural were asked to accept the leggy Prentis, a former dancer, as the omniscient, omnipresent embodiment of the spirit of music. Kind of like Mary Martin as Peter Pan mixed with a bad LSD trip. At the time, her career had taken her to the London stage, Broadway and television, while the saga of Mr. B Natural regaling impressionable teen Buzz with tales of the magic of music, and even its impact on Buzz’s own family (You leave my father out of this!) languished in obscurity until stumbled upon by the geniuses at Best Brains, who turned it into one of the most popular shorts to get new life with Mystery Science Theater 3000.

A Look Up in Angora

Dolores Fuller, sharer of angora sweaters with Edward D. Wood, Jr., has died from complications of a stroke at the age of 88. Fuller was the girlfriend of the notoriously untalented cross-dressing director and saw their love story played out in the semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda?, which tells the story of a man who tells his fiancée that he likes to wear women’s clothing. As the supportive fiancée, Fuller literally gives him the shirt off her back. She also appeared in Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster. Her association with Wood pretty much buried any chance she may have had at a film career, but she did write songs for Elvis Presley movies, including “Rock-a-Hula Baby” from Blue Hawaii, and “Do the Clam” from Girl Happy.

Five the Really Hard Way

Ross Hagen, star of the MST3K-ed classic Sidehackers, has died of prostate cancer, not from chili peppers burning his gut, at the age of 72. Hagen made another appearance in the MST3K realm, starring as an undercover cop in a biker gang in The Hellcats.

He Stinks

Juan Piquer Simon, auteur behind the MST3Ked Pod People, aka Los Nuevos Extraterrestres, has died of lung cancer at the age of 74. Telling the story of two aliens that looked like ALF post-unsuccessful rhinoplasty, one of whom does odd tricks while the other is a homicidal maniac, as they interact with a dysfunctional family and crappy band stranded in the woods, Pod People was one of MSTies’ favorite riffs. Other ridiculous films included Slugs, about a town apparently devoid of salt that is overrun by the title beasties; Pieces, about a chainsaw-wielding sociopath killing Boston’s co-eds to form a human jigsaw puzzle while being pursued by Christopher George in the all-dubbed, all-the-time portion of his career. The film ends when the corpse puzzle comes to life and rips off the killers testicles.

No One Wants a Charlie in a Box

Or
Sorry Charlie

Or
Charlie Meets His Angels
(An epitaphany shared with Terrence)

Or
Bachelor Corpse

Or
The Powers that Were
John Forsythe, best remembered for a performance he literally phoned in, has died of pneumonia related to his battle with cancer at the age of 92. For decades he put his pretty boy looks to good use in such schlocky comedies and melodramas as It Happens Every Thursday, The Glass Web, The Ambassador's Daughter, and as the horny idiot Senate candidate in the MST3Ked Kitten with a Whip. Alfred Hitchcock thought enough of him to cast him in the comic mystery The Trouble with Harry and the cold war thriller Topaz, but he was always more interested in his blonde leading ladies. Then one night in 1976, Gig Young was too drunk to record a voice-over for a pilot. Aaron Spelling called Forsythe to the studio. Forsythe showed up late that night, still wearing his robe under an overcoat and one take later, TV history was made as he became Charles Townsend, unseen wealthy entrepreneur who sends jiggly chicks to solve crimes. Five years later, he swept in at the last minute for Spelling again, taking Dynasty away from George Peppard. As Blake Carrington, he got to watch wet catfights between Joan Collins and Linda Evans while Peppard rode around in a van with Mr. T, 35 pounds of gold, and a guy who talked to a dead lobster. Other notable appearances included the lead investigator in In Cold Blood, Bill Murray’s dead but chatty former boss in Scrooged, dimwitted senator William Franklin Powers in the short-lived Norman Lear effort The Powers that Be and Bentley Gregg, swinging single taking care of his orphaned niece in Bachelor Father.

Hoping to continue my own dynasty, I move into first place with my Tremendous Undertaking, with James sharing the hit and joining me atop the leaderboard. Dogpiling at 11th are Michelle’s (Mostly) American Way of Death, Ern’s Old Man Pool, Mark’s Angels With Wrinkled Faces VI: Their Last Assignment and Nancy H. Having a not so good Friday? Marlene, who dropped him after 2008.