Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

American actor and comedian Sid Melton(Sidney Meltzer) died of pneumonia on 3 November, aged ninety-four. His film credits include Lost Continent (1951) and The Atomic Submarine . Melton portrayed “Ichabod ‘Ikky’ Mudd” on TV’s Captain Midnight (1954–56), and he also appeared in episodes of Adventures of Superman, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Munsters and I Dream of Jeannie .

Cynthia[Jeanette] Myers, who posed as a Playboy “Playmate of the Month” when she was just seventeen, died on 4 November, aged sixty-one. She studied acting with Jeff Corey and was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as well as playing an uncredited native girl in Hammer’s The Lost Continent (1968), based on the novel by Dennis Wheatley.

Former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion “Smokin’” Joe Frazier(Joseph William Frazier) died of liver cancer on 7 November, aged sixty-seven. He had a role in the 1987 horror-comedy Ghost Fever .

British actor Richard[Lindon Harvey] Morant, the nephew of Bill Travers and son-in-law of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. by his first marriage, died of an aneurysm on 9 November, aged sixty-six. He appeared in the films The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1976) and The Company of Wolves , as well as episodes of TV’s The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Bedtime Stories, The Mad Death, Jack the Ripper (1988) and The Legend of the Lost Keys . Morant also played the eponymous space hero in the second series of the 1984 children’s SF game show Captain Zep — Space Detective . As well as being an actor, he also sold bespoke carpets and rugs from his London gallery.

Malaysian-born British stage and screen actress Dulcie GrayCBE (Dulcie Winifred Catherine Bailey) died of bronchial pneumonia on 15 November, aged ninety-five. She made her film debut in the early 1940s and appeared in A Place of One’s Own, Wanted For Murder (aka A Voice in the Night ) and an episode of TV’s Tales from the Crypt . As an author, she wrote twenty-four books (mostly theatrical crime novels) and contributed eight stories to Herbert van Thal’s The Pan Book of Horror Stories series. Her short fiction was collected in Stage Door Fright: A Collection of Horror and Other Stories (1977). Gray was married to fellow actor Michael Denison for fifty-nine years.

Ninety-three-year-old Austrian-Hungarian-born actor Karl Slover(Karl “Karchy” Kosiczky), one of the last surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz (1939), died the same day from cardiopulmonary arrest. The four-foot, four-inch Slover, whose father sold him to a troupe of vaudeville performers when he was nine, was the smallest Munchkin. He played four parts in the classic movie: the “Munchkin Herald #1”, “Sleepyhead”, a singing Munchkin and a soldier. He also appeared in Bringing Up Baby and The Terror of Tiny Town .

Distinguished British actor John NevilleOBE died of Alzheimer’s disease in Toronto on 19 November, aged eighty-six. He emigrated to Canada in 1972, and his film credits include Unearthly Stranger, A Study in Terror (as “Sherlock Holmes”), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (in the title role), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1993), Shadow Zone: The Teacher Ate My Homework, The Fifth Element, Johnny 2.0, The X Files, Urban Legend and Spider . He also appeared in episodes of such TV series as Shadows of Fear, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (as Austin Freeman’s “Dr Thorndyke”), Star Trek: The Next Generation, Viper, The X Files (in a recurring role as “The Well-Manicured Man”), F/X: The Series, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes and the pilot for Odyssey 5 .

Susan Palermo[-Piscitello] died of brain cancer on 23 November, aged fifty-nine. For many years she was Vice President of Operations for Sandy Frank Productions, and more recently she worked as an actress, musician, producer and/or special effects artist on such low budget horror films as Zombies! Zombies! Everywhere, Post Mortem America 2021 and Road Hell .

American character actor Bill McKinney(William Denison McKinney), best known for his role as a crazed Mountain Man in Deliverance , died of cancer of the oesophagus on 1 December, aged eighty. His many other credits include She Freak, Angel Unchained, Cleopatra Jones, The Strange and Deadly Occurrence, Strange New World, Back to the Future Part III, It Came from Outer Space II, The Green Mile, Hellborn (aka Asylum of the Damned ), Looney Tunes: Back in Action, 2001 Maniacs and The Devil Wears Spurs , along with episodes of I Dream of Jeannie, Galactica 1980 and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles . McKinney also voiced the role of “Jonah Hex” on an episode of the animated Batman TV series.

American comedy actor Alan[Grigsby] Sues, a regular on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in the late 1960s and early 1970s, died of a heart attack the same day, aged eighty-five. He appeared in the movies Oh! Heavenly Dog and A Bucket of Blood (aka The Death Artist , 1995), while his other TV credits include episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Wild Wild West, Fantasy Island, Time Express (with Vincent Price), Misunderstood Monsters and Sabrina the Teenage Witch . On stage, Sues portrayed “Professor Moriarty” in the 1975 Broadway production of Sherlock Holmes .

Dependable American character actor and TV director Harry Morgan(Harry Bratsberg, aka “Henry Morgan”), best remembered for his Emmy Award-winning role as “Colonel Sherman T. Potter” in the long-running CBS-TV series M*A*S*H (1975– 83), died of pneumonia on 7 December, aged ninety-six. During his extensive career, Morgan appeared in The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, Dragonwyck (with Vincent Price), Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt (scripted by Leigh Brackett), Disney’s Charlie and the Angel and The Cat from Outer Space, Exo-Man, Maneaters Are Loose! The Wild Wild West Revisited and More Wild Wild West , and Dragnet (1987), along with episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Night Gallery , the revived The Twilight Zone and a recurring role on 3rd Rock from the Sun .

Child actress Susan Gordon, the daughter of producer/director Bert I. Gordon, died of cancer on 11 December, aged sixty-two. She appeared in her father’s films Attack of the Puppet People (aka Six Inches Tall ), The Boy and the Pirates, Tormented and Picture Mommy Dead . Her other credits include a TV version of Miracle on 34th Street (1959) and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Twilight Zone .

1930s American character actress Louise Henry(Jesse Louise Heiman) died on 12 December, aged 100. She appeared in Charlie Chan on Broadway and Charlie Chan in Reno . She retired from the screen in 1939.

Argentina-born actor Alberto de Mendoza(Alberto Manuel Rodríguez Gallego Gonzáles de Mendoza) died of respiratory failure in Spain the same day, aged eighty-eight. He began his film career in 1930, and his many credits include The Ghost Lady (1945), La bestia humana, Horror Express (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing) and the 1974 version of And Then There Were None .