And Now it’s Lesley’s Turn to Die

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You Would Cry Too, If It Happened to You

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It's My Funeral Party

(Props to Monty)

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It's My Parting (and I'll Die if I Want to) 

(Kudos to Patrick)
Lesley Gore, best remembered as one of Catwoman’s minions in 2 episodes of Batman, has died of lung cancer at the age of 68. A smoky-eyed pop tart of the 1960s, Gore recorded “It’s My Party,” and the rare sequel song, “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” the feminist anthem “You Don’t Own Me,” and the Marvin Hamlisch-composed, Grammy nominated, "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows." After a long period of “What ever happened to?”, she composed songs for the soundtrack for Fame, including the Oscar-nominated “Out Here on My Own.” 

Mr. Deep Freeze

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The Good, the Bad and the Dead

Eli Wallach, best remembered as the third Mr. Freeze on Batman, has died at the age of 98. He outlived all but one of The Magnificent Seven, reminding us that evil will always triumph over good, because good has worse health care, and leaves only Clint Eastwood from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He stole Carroll Baker from Karl Malden in Baby Doll, had a front row seat for Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable playing out the string in The Misfits, and saw Francis Ford Coppola shovel dirt on the legacy of The Godfather as Don Altobello, who gets a poisoned cannoli as his reward for trying to double-cross Michael Corleone. Other roles included a bitter screenwriter in the only parts of The Holiday worth watching, a blackilisted TV writer in the only scenes worth watching in Studio 60, and an aged banker in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which still didn’t make that worth watching.

Sunsetted

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86 Sunset Strip

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who was indirectly responsible for the disaster at Waco, has died at the age of 95. The star of the long-running series The FBI, Zimbalist was honored several times by the agency, who said that his performance inspired many men and women to join, some of whom may have been in positions of authority in 1990 during David Koresh’s barbecue gone awry. Other roles included a hipster PI with beatnik part-time flunky/parking lot attendant Edd “Kookie” Byrnes in 77 Sunset Strip, a recurring gig as a con artist in Remington Steele opposite daughter Stephanie, the voice of Alfred Pennyworth in several Batman cartoon series, an airplane captain in Airport 1975 who is blinded by a mid-air accident, putting head stewardess Karen Black in the pilot’s seat based on strict laws of succession. Airport 1975 and another Zimbalist feature, The Crowded Sky, provided prominent grist for the parody mill in Airplane!, and Zimbalist followed Leslie Nielsen’s against-type performance in that film with his own in Hot Shots!

Abdicated

Malachi Throne, one of the last surviving special guest villains from Batman, has died at the age of 84. As False Face, Throne was almost unrecognizable behind a semitransparent mask when he wasn’t wearing other disguises to pull off his criminal engagements. Throne also had a unique tie to another iconic 1960s series, as he played the voice of The Keeper in the unaired Star Trek pilot, The Cage, then also playing a commodore when some of the pilot’s footage was used in a later episode The Menagerie. His appearance in Star Trek at all was ironic, as he had originally turned down Gene Roddenberry’s offer of the role of Bones McCoy. Other roles included Robert Wagner’s Boss on It Takes a Thief, the voice of the Star Wars trailer, the Israeli Foreign Minister on The West Wing, who gets blown up as retribution for the Bartlett Administration assassinating Qumari Foreign Minister Abdul Shareef.

With Great Death Comes Great Burial

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Can You Hear Me Now?

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Sorry Charly

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Come Back, Shame
Hollywood snitch Cliff Robertson has died at the age of 88. Robertson won the Oscar in 1969 playing the titular Charly, continuing Hollywood’s tradition of soothing its guilt over mocking the handicapable by handing out Oscars to every non-special actor who does a half-way decent job depicting a differently abled character. Even then, Robertson was careful not to go full retard in his depiction of Charly, a “just a little slow” bakery employee who undergoes experimental surgery to become smarter and finds that hyperintelligent people are rapey goateed douchebags. Other gigs included the Batman baddie Shame, a Shane-less parody of the Alan Ladd classic, the Twilight Zone classic creep out “The Dummy,” which single-wooden-handedly established the omniscient ventriloquist dummy genre, and “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” where he wanders from 1847 Ohio into 1961 New Mexico in search of penicillin for his ailing son. Robertson spent four years as persona non grata after turning in Columbia Pictures president David Begelman for forging his name on a check. Begelman was head of MGM before the justice-obsessed Hollywood elite had let Robertson out of the doghouse for turning on one of their own. Most recently, he spent 10 years hawking AT&T and guiding Spider-Man from beyond the grave as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben.

Eartha to Earth, Dust to Dust

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Earthen Kitt
(Kudos for Monty)

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Nine Lives Are Up
(Whoop whoop for Monty)

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Santa Corpsey
(Additional honorifics for Monty)
Holy return to the cemetery, Batman. The second ex-Bat baddie this month has gotten thwacked as Earth Kitt, the third Catwoman, has died at the age of 81, fittingly enough on Christmas Day, as so many of us were sick and tired of hearing Santa Baby on the all-Christmas every day since Halloween radio stations. The sultry chanteuse and self-proclaimed "sex kitten," made the catlike purr her signature, and was dubbed the "most exciting woman in the world" by Orson Welles. A versatile performer, she won two Emmys (for the Disney concoction The Emporer’s New School) while nabbing a third nomination as well as nominations for several Tonys and two Grammys. She also had a cameo as Freya in the Tim Robbins’ opus Erik the Viking.

Brigadoomed

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Living in a Van Down by the River Styx
(Props to Monty, gone but not forgotten)
Van Johnson, Hollywood’s Hal Newhouser, has died at the age of 92. His boyish charm and good looks made him a star in the 1940s while the prime acting talent was overseas in uniform. He was so popular with the bobby-soxer set that he was called the Voiceless Sinatra. But he found himself on the back bench when the war ended. His first major role was a pilot with Spencer Tracy as his guardian angel in A Guy Named Joe. During filming, Johnson was nearly killed in a car crash, and the steel plate in his head kept him from serving during World War II. Johnson belied his boy next door image when he seduced the wife of his best friend, Keenan Wynn, in 1947; the former Mrs. Wynn later said she loved Van, but would have never married him if she knew he was gay, and they divorced in 1968. He turned down the role of Elliott Ness in The Untouchables, and had a less glamorous role in another TV cops and robbers creation as one of the worst Batman baddie this side of King Tut: lute-playing electronics wiz The Minstrel. Other roles included a pilot in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and played the lieutenant who enacted The Caine Mutiny and a tourist who stumbles upon the enchanted Scottish village of Brigadoon.



Steve’s 5 year wait pays off, as he is the first Pooligan to have the first two hits of the year on the same list and Steve@themovies takes an early lead, while my Digger Detmuller’s Traveling Caravan rolls into second.

Say Goodnight, Frankie

(An epitaphany shared by Monty)

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Riddle me Death

(Props to Tammy Dotts)

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If It’s a Gorshin, It’s Gotta Be Dead

(Shout out to Monty)

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What has a Green Question-marked Suit and Grey Skin?

(More kudos for Monty)

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Riddled with Cancer

(Shamelessly stolen from stiffs.com)

Riddle me this:
It can't seen, It can't be smelt,
It can't be heard, It can't be felt.
It hide behind stars and under hills;
Empty holes It fill.
It come before and end after,
Ends life, kills laughter.

The answer is darkness, and Frank Gorshin, probably best known as the Riddler on the camp classic ‘60s Batman series, has got all he can handle. Originally a minor character in the Batman comics, Gorshin’s manic and Emmy-nominated performance as The Riddler made him one of Batman’s most frequent foes. Gorshin spent 50 years on stage, and was principally known as one of the all-time great impressionists. His performance as George Burns in the Rupert Holmes-penned Say Goodnight, Gracie drew rave reviews. Despite battling lung cancer, emphysema and pneumonia, Gorshin kept working to the end of his life, appearing in the season finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation that aired two days after his death. The Las Vegas-set series returned Gorshin to the scene of his greatest triumphs, first as an opening act for Frank Sinatra, and later as a headliner. Gorshin also had the good fortune to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show the night he introduced The Beatles. Gorshin observed the frenzied crowd and asked, "How do all these girls and guys know I'm here tonight?" Other career highlights included the black-and-white faced Commissioner Bele on Star Trek, master criminal Kellogg on Buck Rodgers and Fair Deal Dan on The Munsters.