RIP James Carlos Blake

 

Legacy

January 20, 2025

 

James Carlos Blake, regionalist novelist, whose heart and writing skill were on both sides of the border, died Saturday, January 11, 2025. He was 82.

Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 1943, he was a descendant of a prominent creole family in Mexico City, whose complex and colorful history was often the basis for novels, short stories, and essays. At fourteen, he became an American citizen in Miami.

As a young man, he was not always well-behaved, but after joining the army and deploying as a tunnel rat to the frozen borderlands of the Koreas, he returned a more thoughtful man, and went to college. And he began to write.

"I'm attracted to and write about people who are very resentful of submitting themselves to authority that they don't think is warranted," he told an interviewer. Despite the violent nature of his protagonists, they are always thinkers. "All my characters are intelligent," he said."I've never been interested in alcoholics, druggies, or crazy people, because they are not exercising free will." Sex and violence were hallmarks of his work, he said, because "they are the two great engines of the world."

His historical criminal protagonists, from John Wesley Hardin ("The Pistoleer"), a notorious Old West gunfighter, to Rodolfo Fierro ("The Friends of Pancho Villa"), Villa's segundo and on-demand executioner, to Harry Pierpont ("Handsome Harry), John Dillinger's best friend and constant accomplice, Blake endowed with high intelligence, insight, a big problem with authority, and a dark sense of humor.

His 2012 novel, "Country of the Bad Wolfes," introduced the saga of the fictional Wolfe family, a borderland clan who actions came from a tendency to violence and hell-raising. Four Wolfe family novels followed.

In 2021 he suffered a traumatic brain injury, and after twenty years in Arizona, he returned to Florida to live under the care of a brother.

Throughout his literary career, he wrote inventive, lucid, and tangible prose.

He wrote seven hours a day, seven days a week.

Blake James Carlos

Born: 5/26/1943, Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Died: 1/11/2025, Venice, Florida, U.S.A.

 

James Carlos Blake’s westerns – author:

The Pistoleer – 1995

The Friends of Pancho Villa - 1996

Wildwood Days - 2000

Country of the Bad Wolfes – 2012

Dans la peau - 2012

Pistolero - 2015

RIP John Erwin

 

John Erwin, Voice Actor in ‘He-Man’ and ‘Archie’ Cartoons, Dies at 88

He also recurred on the Clint Eastwood series ‘Rawhide’ and was finicky as Morris the Cat on TV commercials in the 1970s.

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

January 31, 2025

 

John Erwin, the reclusive actor who provided the voices for the heroic title character in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the vain frenemy Reggie Mantle in a series of Archie cartoons, has died. He was 88.

Erwin died of natural causes “around Dec. 20” in his home in Camarillo, California, his reps at the PR firm Celebworx announced.

For nearly a decade starting in 1969, Erwin was heard in dozens of TV commercials as the snarky Morris the Cat, the finicky orange tabby who would eat nothing but the 9Lives brand of cat food. The hugely successful campaign was created by the Leo Burnett advertising firm.

Earlier, Erwin was seen on camera when he recurred as the cattle driver Teddy on CBS’ Rawhide, starring Clint Eastwood.

For Filmmation, Erwin voiced the blond, muscular He-Man (and his alter ego, Prince Adam) on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from 1983-85 and on She-Ra: Princess of Power from 1985-87. He also played the villain Beast Man and other secondary characters on the syndicated shows that were based on a line of Mattel toys.

“Working with John Erwin was a ballad of irreverence, professionalism and surprise,” Alan Oppenheimer, who starred as the evil Skeletor on He-Man, said in a statement. “He was a series actor, writer, performer of commercials, musician, painter and an all-around lovely gentleman, an indelible addition to my life.”

Added Melendy Britt, the voice of She-Ra (He-Man’s twin sister), “For 40 years, John Erwin was not only my brother onscreen, he was my friend.”

Born on Dec. 5, 1936, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Lee Erwin played various characters, including a paratrooper and chaplain, on the 1956-57 syndicated series Citizen Soldier.

He joined Rawhide in 1959 during its second season and went on to appear on 22 episodes of the Western through 1965. Meanwhile, he portrayed a soldier in the Civil War-set 13 Fighting Men, starring Grant Williams.

Erwin first voiced Reggie in 1968 on the Saturday morning CBS/Filmation cartoon The Archie Show and continued with that character on various other animated series, including Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, through 1978.

He worked on the cartoons Groovie Goolies, Foofur and Spacecats and in the film Babe (1995) and came out of retirement to voice He-Man one last time on a 2005 episode of Family Guy.

Erwin also served as an announcer/narrator on such TV shows as Here’s Lucy and Malcolm & Eddie and in films including Looker (1981), Everybody’s All-American (1988) and Back to the Future Part II (1989).

Survivors include “his loving family of children and grandchildren,” his PR firm noted. His family did not want to provide a photograph of him.

Despite pleas from his fans over the years, Erwin never appeared publicly on the convention circuit to talk about his He-Man days, and Oppenheimer, speaking in 2014, said that was because he was “very shy.” He once asked his co-star to go on the road with him to London.

“I said to him, ‘If Skeletor and He-Man worked together, the line would be from London to Edinburgh,’” Oppenheimer recalled. “He just wouldn’t do it; he really likes his solitude. And he says, ‘I don’t even look like He-Man.’ I said, ‘I don’t look like Skeletor, and nobody cares.’ But I can’t get him out.”

ERWIN, John

Born: 12/5/1936, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Died: 12/20/2024, Camarillo, California, U.S.A.

 

John Erwin’s westerns – actor:

Rawhide (TV) 1959-1965 (Teddy)

Fighting Men – 1960 (Corporal McLean)