Windom of Heaven

William Windom, best remembered as the guy who was very happy getting Cabot Cove, Maine to say “Ah,” has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 88. After leaving Zork State/The College of Middle Earth/Williams College, Windom put his Midwestern local news anchor looks to use after the war on radio, TV and the stage. He was the prosecutor slapping around Gregory Peck’s inept Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, starred as the major in Five Characters in Search of an Exit, possibly the worst-ever episode of The Twilight Zone, he was Commodore Matt Decker who died trying to defeat the planet killer in The Doomsday Machine on Star Trek, but mostly he was Dr. Seth Hazlitt, friend of Jessica Fletcher and archnemesis of Amos Tupper, on Murder She, Wrote. And of course he pretended to be Ray Krebb’s father Amos on Dallas, before revealing Jock was really Ray’s father, elevating Ray from ranchhand to bastard scion and potential heir to the Ewing Oil fortune and meaning that all those times Ray was rolling around in the hayloft with Lucy, Gary’s little girl, he was really nailing his own niece.

Rhue-ined

Madlyn Rhue, a veteran character actress who kept a career going for more than a decade despite an escalating battle with multiple sclerosis, died Dec. 18 at the age of 68. First diagnosed with MS in 1977, she concealed her illness as the result of a car accident and later arthritis to avoid losing work. When she finally came forward in 1985, she became a spokesperson for MS and also earned a recurrent role as a wheelchair-bound ballistics expert in the forgotten Houston Knights. She also landed a recurring role as town librarian Jenny O'Neill on Murder, She Wrote, after Angela Lansbury found that she was in danger of losing her Screen Actors Guild health insurance as a result of her diminishing roles. She appeared in dozens of TV series, with perhaps her best-known turn as a Starfleet officer in the classic Star Trek episode Space Seed, where she is charmed by Ricardo Montalban's superhuman Khan Noonian Singh. She nearly helps him capture the Enterprise and opts to join him in exile on Ceti Alpha 6, where her death helps foster the rage that results in another attack on the Enterprise in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, a masterpiece of overacting. (I'm a geek; sue me.)

-- kudos to Tammy for not overlooking what I had

The Sun Will Not Necessarily Come out Tomorrow

Dorothy Loudon, long-time Broadway actress, and Tony winner as Miss Hannigan, evil orphanage matron, died Saturday of cancer at the age of 70. She lost Tonys in 1969 and 1979, both times to Angela Lansbury, one of many eerie connections with Lansbury in her career. Loudon replaced Lansbury in the Broadway version of Sweeney Todd and she was a guest star during the 1986 sweeps inspired Murder, She Wrote - Magnum, P.I. crossover. Mrs. Fletcher comes out of the closet?