Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

Tony and Emmy Award-winning stage and screen actor Barnard Hughesdied after a short illness on July 11th, aged 90. His film credits include Sisters, Rage, Oh God! , Disney’s Tron, Maxie, The Lost Boys and such TV movies as Dr. Cook’s Garden, The Borrowers (1973) and The UFO Incident . He also appeared in episodes of Way Out and Tales from the Darkside .

Swiss-German actor Kurt Kreuger(aka “Knud Kreuger”) often cast as Nazi officers in movies, died of a stroke in Los Angeles on July 12th, aged 89. He appeared in such films as Secret Service in Darkest Africa and The Spider (1945), and during the 1950s he was Twentieth Century-Fox’s third most requested male pin-up. He moved to TV in the 1960s, appearing in episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Get Smart (“House of Max”) and Wonder Woman , before later becoming a hugely successful Beverly Hills realtor.

American burlesque comedian and Oscar-winning supporting actor Red Buttons(Aaron Chwatt) died of vascular disease on July 13th, aged 87. In a career that spanned seven decades, his credits include Five Weeks in a Balloon, Gay Purr-ee, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, C.H.O.M.P.S., When Time Ran Out, 18 Again!, The Ambulance , the TV movies The New Original Wonder Woman and Alice in Wonderland (1985), and episodes of Suspense and Fantasy Island . Buttons was onstage the night in 1942 New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered the police to close down comedian Billy Minsky’s club, the city’s last burlesque show.

American stage and screen actress Carrie Nye(Carolyn Nye McGeoy) died of lung cancer on July 14th, aged 69. The wife of US talk show host Dick Cavett, she appeared in Creepshow, Too Scared to Scream, Hello Again and the TV movie Screaming Skull .

Veteran character actor Jack Warden(John H. Lebzelter) died on July 19th, aged 85. A former teenage boxer (under the name “Johnny Costello”), he appeared in The White Buffalo, Heaven Can Wait (1978, for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Topper (1979), The Great Muppet Caper, Alice in Wonderland (1985) and episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, Bewitched and The Invaders .

Veteran character actor Robert Cornthwaitedied on July 20th, aged 89. Best remembered for his roles as various doctors in The Thing from Another World, Monkey Business, The War of the Worlds (1953) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , he also appeared in Kiss Me Deadly (uncredited), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Devil’s Daughter, The Six Million Dollar Man, Futureworld, Time Trackers, Matinee (uncredited), The Naked Monster and episodes of TV’s Men Into Space, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Munsters, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Get Smart, Batman (as villain “Alan A. Dale”), Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Beauty and the Beast and The Pretender .

Oscar-nominated Japanese-American film and TV actor Mako(Makoto Iwamatsu) died of oesophageal cancer on July 21st, aged 72. He appeared in The Island at the Top of the World, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, RoboCop 3, Highlander III the Sorcerer, Bulletproof Monk and episodes of TV’s I Dream of Jeannie, The Green Hornet, The Time Tunnel, Wonder Woman, Supertrain, The Incredible Hulk, A Man Called Shane, Fantasy Island, Voyagers!, The Greatest American Hero, Faerie Tale Theatre, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne and Charmed . In 1965 Mako co-founded East West Players, the United States’ first Asian-American theatre company.

Former child actress and model J. Madison Wright[Morris] died of a heart attack the same day, aged 21. She had just returned from her honeymoon. Mostly known for her TV work, her first major role was playing True Danziger in the NBC-TV series Earth 2 (1994–95). After an X-ray revealed she had an enlarged heart and she was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, Morris had a heart transplant in 2000.

Classical music composer and teacher Dika Newlin,who later became an actress and unlikely punk rock performer, died on July 22nd, aged 82. A singer and keyboard player with the alternative rock band Apocowlypso in the 1980s, she composed the music for the horror film Mark of the Devil 666: The Moralist and appeared in the 1995 movie Creep .

British professional jockey turned film stuntman Mick Dillondied on July 23rd, aged 80. In 1961, Dillon and two other stuntmen took turns wearing the monster suit for Gorgo . He also played one of the deadly plants in The Day of the Triffids (1963) and was inside a Dalek for Dr Who and the Daleks .

52-year-old Michael Sellers,the son of British actor Peter, died of a heart attack on July 24th, twenty-six years to the day after his father died of the same condition at the age of 54. The first child of the actor’s marriage to actress Anne Howe, Michael Sellers was left virtually penniless following his father’s death and he subsequently wrote the biographies PS I Love You (1981) and Sellers On Sellers (with Gary Morecambe, 2000).

Johnny Weissmuller, Jr,the son of the Olympic swimmer famous for his movie portrayal of Tarzan in the 1930s and ’40s, died of cancer on July 27th, aged 65. A former US Navy underwater demolition expert, the six-foot, six-inch actor appeared in a number of TV shows and movies, including George Lucas’ THX 1138 and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor . He co-authored the biography Tarzan: My Father with Bill Reed.

Square-jawed leading British actor and “King of the Voice-Overs” Patrick Allen(John Keith Patrick Allen) died on July 28th, aged 79. Born in the British protectorate of Nyasaland (now Malawi), he grew up in Canada and America before arriving back in the UK in 1953, where he got a small role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder . He starred as the eponymous adventurer in the 1963 TV series Crane , and his other film credits include 1984 (1956), Hammer’s Never Take Sweets from a Stranger, Captain Clegg (aka Night Creatures ) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Night of the Generals, Night of the Big Heat (aka Island of the Burning Damned), The Body Stealers (aka Thin Air ) and Persecution (aka The Terror of Sheba ). His also re-voiced Leon Greene’s character “Rex” in Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out . On TV Allen appeared in episodes of Out of This World, The Avengers, Journey Into Darkness, The Champions, Journey to the Unknown, U.F.O., Thriller and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (as “Colonel Sebastian Moran”). His distinctive gravel-voice was used by the Ministry of Defence on twenty “Protect and Survive” videos, to be shown on TV in the event of a nuclear attack, and these were sampled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood for their #1 single “Two Tribes”. He was married to actress Sarah Lawson since 1960.

57-year-old Kim McLagan(Patsy Kerrigan, aka “Kim Kerrigan”), a swinging ’60s London fashion model and the former wife (1966–75) of The Who drummer Keith Moon (who died of a drug overdose in 1978), was killed in Texas on August 2nd when she apparently jumped a stop sign in her car and was hit by a truck. In 1978 she married Small Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan.