RIP Laird Koenig

 

Laird Koenig, ‘The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane’ Writer, Dies at 95

Variety

By McKinley Franklin

July 17, 2023

 

Laird Koenig, who wrote “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane,” died in Santa Barbara on June 30, Jamie Dixon, the son of Koenig’s collaborator Peter L. Dixon, told Variety. He was 95.

Koenig was an American author and screenwriter whose novel was adapted into the 1976 Jodie Foster-led horror movie “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.”

He was born on Sept. 14, 1927, in Seattle, and would go on to attend the University of Washington. Koenig worked in advertising before being approached by Peter L. Dixon, whom he would collaborate with extensively throughout his career, and went on to write for the adventure television series “Flipper.”

Koenig also wrote the screenplay for “The Cat” which starred Roger Perry, and the 1969 production of “The Dozens” which starred Al Freeman Jr., Morgan Freeman and Paula Kelly.

He notably wrote the screenplay for several Terence Young Films, including “Red Sun,” which starred Charles Bronson, “Bloodline,” which starred Audrey Hepburn, and “Inchon” with Ben Gazzara.

Several of his novels were adapted for the big screen, including his 1970 novel “The Children Are Watching,” which was turned into the 1978 “Attention Les Enfants Regardent,” the 1978 book “The Neighbor,” which became the 1982 film “Killing ‘Em Softly,” and the 1968 telefilm “Rockabye.”

His other novels include “Islands” (1980), “The Disciple” (1983), “The Sea Wife” (1986), “Rising Sun” (1986) and “Morning Sun: The Story of Madam Butterfly’s Boy” (2012).

His further writing credits include films such as “Tennessee Waltz” and TV series including “The High Chaparral” and “Intrigues.”

He is survived by his niece, Lisa, and his nephew, Mark.

KOENIG, Laird (Laird Philip Koenig)

Born: 9/14/1927, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Died: 6/30/2023, Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A.

 

Laird Koenig’s westerns – writer:

The High Chaparral (TV) – 1970

Red Sun - 1971

RIP Randy Fullmer

 

Walt Disney Animation Studios Producer, Randy Fullmer, Passes Away at 73

Laughing Place

By Tony Betti

July 11, 2023

 

News broke yesterday that long-time Walt Disney Animation Studios effects animator and producer of titles like Chicken Little and The Emperor’s New Groove, Randy Fullmer, had passed away.

What’s Happening:

Yesterday, July 10th 2023, word passed through colleagues and fans that long time animator and producer at the Walt Disney Animation Studios, Randy Fullmer, had passed away at the age of 73.

A CalArts alum, Fullmer found himself at Don Bluth Studios in the early 80s, crafting special effects for Dragon’s Lair and Space Age after running his own animation business producing education films and segments for Sesame Street.

In 1987, he joined the team at Walt Disney Feature Animation (now Walt Disney Animation Studios) after a three-month contract working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (reportedly, working on the Toontown sequences in the film) that extended into an 18 year career at the studio.

There, he served as an effects animator on Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid, and moving to effects supervisor on The Rescuers Down Under, and visual effects supervisor on Beauty and the Beast. After that, he was an artistic coordinator on The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

It was after Hunchback that Fullmer worked on a project he is most recognized by animation and Disney fans everywhere, serving as producer for a film called “Kingdom of the Sun” which was notoriously troubled and under Fullmer’s control, became the fan-favorite film, The Emperor’s New Groove.

Teaming up with New Groove’s director Mark Dindal once again, the collaborative pair also created one of the first 3D Computer Animated films for the studio, Chicken Little.

After Chicken Little, Fullmer retired from animation in favor of a different artform you can see in his documentary that he produced, Restrung, where we see him crafting small-batch bass guitars. In the film (and a moment you can see in the trailer below) Fullmer says that it was his time as a producer at Disney that made him realize he wanted to be an artist again, turning his passion for crafting guitars into a full-time occupation.

FULLMER, Randy (Randall Wyn Fullmer)

Born: 4/27/1950, Richland, Washington, U.S.A.

Died: 7/ /2023, Santa Clarita, California, U.S.A.

 

Randy Fullmer’s western – artistic coordinator, SFX animator:

Brave Starr - 1987 [SFX animator]

Pocahontas - 1995 [artistic coordinator]

RIP Jimmy Weldon

 

Jimmy Weldon Dies: Voice Of Hanna-Barbera’s Yakky Doodle Duck Was 99

 

DEADLINE

By Greg Evans

July 11, 2023

 

Jimmy Weldon, a 1940s-era disc jockey and later kids TV host and voice actor whose ability to mimic a Donald Duck-like quacking voice led to his signature portrayal of a classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon duckling named Yakky Doodle, died July 6 in Paso Robles, California. He was 99.

Weldon, a Texas native born Ivy Laverne Shinn, was a World War II vet who had participated in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp when, after his military service, he sought work in radio, landing a job at a Chickasha, Oklahoma, station. It was there he began using the Donal Duck impression he’d been honing for years, turning the routine into a character named Webster Webfoot.

The character caught on with listeners and within a few years led to Dallas kids TV show called The Webster Webfoot Show, featuring Weldon operating a baseball-capped duck puppet.

After a move to Hollywood in the early 1950s, Weldon, along with Webster, was hired by producer Ralph Edwards to host a short-lived kids version of the game show Truth or Consequences, followed by a succession of other similar gigs throughout the decade.

Weldon’s Webster voice made him a natural for a new duck character envisioned by the Hanna-Barbera animation studio, and in 1961 Yakky Doodle debuted on the studio’s third half-hour series The Yogi Bear Show, joining other characters including Yogi, Boo Boo and Snagglepuss. Yakky, a cute but feisty yellow duckling with bright green wing feathers, shared his segments with pal Chopper the bulldog (voiced by Vance Colvig in a gruff Fred Flintstone style), the canine forever protecting little Yakky from the ravenous Fibber Fox (Daws Butler, impersonating neurotic comic Shelley Berman) or Alfy Gator (Butler again, this time doing Alfred Hitchcock).

While Yakky would be Weldon’s most popular creation, he’d go on to voice characters on other Hanna-Babera series for several decades, including in the series Challenge of the Superfriends, Fred Flintstone and Friends, and Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo.

Weldon also made single-episode acting appearances on series including The Waltons, Diff’rent Strokes, B.J. and the Bear and The Rockford Files, among others.

WELDON, Jimmy (Ivy Laverne Shinn)

Born: 9/23/1923, Dale, Texas, U.S.A.

Died: 7/16/2023, Pasadena, California, U.S.A.

 

Jimmy Weldon’s westerns – actor:

The New Daughters of Joshua Cable (TV) – 1976

The Oregon Trail (TV) – 1977 (Ludlow)

Father Murphy (TV) – 1982 (official)

RIP Andrea Evans

 

Andrea Evans, ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘Passions’ Star, Dies at 66

"Daytime's Diva of Dirt" famously portrayed Tina Lord on the ABC soap but had to quit when she was threatened by a stalker.

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

July 10, 2023

 

Andrea Evans, the popular soap opera star known for her turns as Tina Lord on ABC’s One Life to Live and Rebecca Hotchkiss on NBC/DirecTV’s Passions, has died. She was 66.

Evans died Sunday at her home in Pasadena after a battle with breast cancer, casting director Don Carroll told The Hollywood Reporter.

Evans came to fame by playing Tina — People magazine nicknamed her “Daytime’s Diva of Dirt” — on One Life to Live from 1979-81 and from 1985-90. However, she had to abruptly quit the soap after a stalker accosted her in the lobby of the show’s Manhattan studio in 1987 and later sent her death threats, some of them written in blood.

The fear “forever changed me. There’s no way it could not,” she told People in 2008.

Evans returned to the world of daytime as Tawny Moore on CBS’ The Bold and the Beautiful in 1999-2000, then spent the next eight years as Rebecca on Passions through its 2008 conclusion.

She followed with two other brief stints as Tina on One Life to Live in 2008 and 2011 — when her character remarried John Loprieno’s Cord Roberts — and came back as Tawney, too, for a 2010 episode of The Bold and the Beautiful.

On CBS’ The Young and the Restless, she played Patty Williams from 1983-84 and Tawny for an installment in 2010.

At the Daytime Emmys, Evans was nominated for outstanding ingenue in a drama series in 1988 for One Life to Live and outstanding performer in a “new approaches” drama series in 2015 for playing Vivian Price on DeVanity, an internet series.

Her last acting credit came on the Prime Video series The Bay; she was on that show from 2017-2020.

Born on June 18, 1957, in Aurora, Illinois, Evans attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While still in college, she was hired as an extra on Brian De Palma film The Fury (1978).

She later appeared in such features as A Low Down Dirty Shame (1994), Ice Cream Man (1995) and Hit List (2012) and on game shows including The $10,000 Pyramid and Hollywood Squares.

Evans worked for the City of Hope and various animal rescue organizations and recently completed a memoir, My One Life to Live, Carroll said.

Survivors include her husband, Steve, and their daughter, Kylie.

EVANS, Andrea (Andrea Lynn Evans)

Born: 6/18/1957, Aurora, Illinois, U.S.A.

Died: 7/9/2023, Pasadena, California, US.A.

 

Andrea Evans’s western – actress:

The Awakening Land (TV) - 1978 (Fay Morrison Wheeler)

RIP Özkan Uğur

 

Turkish music icon, actor Özkan Uğur passes away aged 69

Daily Sabah

By Anadolu Agency

July 8, 2023

 

Turkish musician and actor Özkan Uğur passed away on Saturday aged 69, a top official in the country confirmed.

"We lost (our) beloved Özkan Uğur. We will not forget this voice that came from the heart, befriending whomever listened," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced on Twitter.

"We are filled with sorrow. I wish Allah's mercy on him and my condolences to his family and fans," Koca concluded.

Uğur was 69 years old and had been receiving treatment in Istanbul.

​He was a member of Turkish pop and rock trio MFÖ along with bandmates Mazhar Alanson and Fuat Güner.

Uğur also played roles in several movies, including Yavuz Turgul's "The Bandit," and Cem Yılmaz's "G.O.R.A.," "A.R.O.G." and "Mild West (Yahşi Batı)."

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also issued a statement on Uğur's death, extending condolences to his loved ones, fans, and fellow artists.

"I wish Allah's mercy on Özkan Uğur, the beloved voice and cinema artist of our country, winner of the Presidential Culture and Art Grand Award in the field of music," the president said.

UGUR, Özkan

Born: 10/17/1953, Istanbul, Turkey

Died: 7/8/2023, Istanbul, Turkey

 

Özkan Uğur’s western – actor:

Yahsi Bati - The Ottoman Cowboys – 2009 (Cochise)

RIP Betta St. John

 

The London Tmes

July 7, 2023

R.I.P Betta St John, the raven-haired, blue-eyed musical stage and film star, who died on June 23, 2023, aged 93. She got her start in Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s "Carousel" (1945), before the duo cast her as the exotic Liat in "South Pacific" (1949), with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza.

She'd later have two turns opposite Gordon Scott in "Tarzan and the Lost Safari" (1957) and "Tarzan the Magnificent" (1960), cited by fans as he best of the latter ‘Tarzan’ film adventures.

Born Betty Jean Striegler in Hawthorne, California, her parents signed her up as part of the Meglin Kiddies Troupe (other famous students included Shirley Temple and Judy Garland) in the hope she could became a child sensation. Her first offer was to play a child Munchkin in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), but her parents turned it down as they were travelling at the time.

Later that year, she debuted as the little girl who sings Marlene Dietrich’s song "Little Joe" in "Destry Rides Again" (1939), with James Stewart and Una Merkel. Afterwhich she acted with the Our Gang kids in "Waldo's Last Stand" (1940). Next came "Lydia" (1941) and "Jane Eyre" (1943), making friends with fellow newcomer Elizabeth Taylor. From there, she headed off to Broadway.

It was whilst in London in 1952 that she married British actor and opera singer Peter Grant, returning to Hollywood the same year for a contract with MGM. She played second lead to Deborah Kerr in "Dream Wife" (1953); was Miriam in "The Robe"; joined Ricardo Montalban in "The Saracen Blade" (1954); and was Princess Johnanna in "The Student Prince" (1954).

She was loaned to RKO for "Dangerous Mission" (1954), then moved to Europe, acting in the British mystery drama "Alias John Preston" (1955), then went to Italy for "The Snorkel" (1958). Betta saw out her film career playing opposite Christopher Lee in the horror films "Corridors of Blood" (1958), starring Boris Karloff and "The City of the Dead" (1960).

Betta retired in 1962, devoting her life to her family and charitable causes. When she was widowed in 1992, she moved back to California, then settled back in the UK in 2019.

St. JOHN, Betta (Betty Jean Striegler)

Born: 11/26/1929, Hawthorne, California, U.S.A.

Died: 6/23/2023, London, England, U.K.

 

Betta St. John’s westerns – actress:

Destry Rides Again – 1939 (singing girl in wagon)

The Law vs Billy the Kid – 1954 (Nita Maxwell)

The Naked Dawn – 1955 (Marie Lopez)

RIP Margia Dean

 

Margia Dean, B-Movie Actress Known for ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ and More, Dies at 101

She did lots of work at Lippert Pictures, including the first two features directed by the legendary Sam Fuller and 'Superman and the Mole Men.'

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

July 6, 2023

 

Margia Dean, who co-starred in the cult sci-fi classic The Quatermass Xperiment and appeared alongside the likes of Clint Eastwood, Vincent Price, Esther Williams and George Reeves in other movies, has died. She was 101.

Dean died June 23 in her apartment in Rancho Cucamonga, California, her niece Denyse Barr told The Hollywood Reporter.

From 1948-56, Dean worked in about 20 features for producer Robert L. Lippert, founder of the B-movie studio Lippert Pictures, thus earning the nickname “The Queen of Lippert.”

She acted for Sam Fuller in two of those films, the first two features he ever directed, in fact — I Shot Jesse James (1949), in which she portrayed a saloon singer, and the Price-starring The Baron of Arizona (1950).

Based on a popular BBC serial, Hammer Films’ The Quatermass Xperiment (1956), directed by Val Guest and starring Brian Donlevy, told the story of an astronaut (Richard Wordsworth) who crash-lands back on Earth and morphs into an alien organism that threatens mankind.

Dean played the astronaut’s wife, who foolishly helps him break out of a hospital. “I go mad in it,” she noted in a Western Clippings interview.

Dean also acted with Richard Arlen in Grand Canyon (1949), with Reeves in Superman and the Mole Men (1951), with Charles Chaplin Jr. in Fangs of the Wild (1954), with Eastwood in Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958), with Brian Keith in Villa!! (1958) and with Williams in the circus-set The Big Show (1961).

She appeared in some 60 movies during her two-decade career.

With family roots in Greece, Marguerite Louise Skliris was born in Chicago on April 7, 1922, and raised in San Francisco. Her father, Evangelis, was a lawyer.

After acting on the stage as a kid, she won a Women’s National Shakespeare Contest at age 15 and Miss San Francisco and Miss California titles before competing for the 1939 Miss America prize, finishing first runner-up to Patricia Donnelly.

“I won the talent contest in that pageant by doing Shakespeare when I should have sung! I have a torchy kind of voice,” she said. “After I lost to Donnelly, I was told singing would have been better — as spouting Shakespeare wasn’t the type of thing a Miss America could go around the country doing.”

She returned to San Francisco to finish up at Galileo High School, acted at the Biltmore Theatre in downtown Los Angeles and made her big-screen debut in Republic Pictures’ Casanova in Burlesque (1944), starring Joe E. Brown and June Havoc.

Her first big role came in the sequel Shep Comes Home (1948), financed by Lippert. They later became involved with each other, she explained in Mark Thomas McGee’s 2014 book, Talk’s Cheap, Action’s Expensive: The Films of Robert L. Lippert.

“I knew what I was doing was wrong. I was running around with a married man,” she recalled. “I don’t think I ever loved him, but he was crazy about me. He gave me all this work, and he was pleasant to be with. He made it easy for me.”

Her résumé also included Red Desert (1949), Ringside (1949), F.B.I. Girl (1951), The Lonesome Trail (1955), Raoul Walsh’s The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), The Secret of the Purple Reef (1960), 7 Women From Hell (1961) and Moro Witch Doctor (1964), her last acting credit.

Dean also was a producer on The Long Rope (1961), starring Hugh Marlow, and The Horror of It All (1964), starring Pat Boone. She then served as a vice president in a real estate/construction firm and owned a dress shop in Brentwood and a coffee shop in Beverly Hills.

Dean lived for six decades in a home in the Hollywood Hills before relocating to Dana Point, California. “She was a remarkable, brilliant and generous lady with exquisite taste,” her niece said.

Survivors include her husband, Spanish architect, author and singer Felipe Alvarez, 92, whom she met in a café on the Sunset Strip and married in Mexico in August 1965 (hear him sing to her here); nieces Denyse, Christina, Lisette, Irene and Olga; and nephews José, Richard and Miguel.

Dean’s first husband was Hal Fischer, a standout basketball player and coach. After their six-year marriage ended in ⁠1945, she dated the prince Aly Khan, the third husband of actress Rita Hayworth.

DEAN, Margia (Marguerite Louise Skliris)

Born: 4/7/1922, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Died: 6/23/2023, Rancho Cucamonga, California, U.S.A.

 

Margia Dean’s westerns – producer, singer, actress:

Grand Canyon – 1949 (Margie)

I Shot Jesse James – 1949 (saloon singer)

Red Desert – 1949 (Hazel Carter)

Rim Fire – 1949 (Lolita)

Tough Assignment – 1949 (girl in newsroom)

Bandit Queen – 1950 (Carol Grayson)

The Baron of Arizona – 1950 (Marquesa)

The Return of Frank James – 1950 (Marge) [singer]

Fangs of the Wild – 1954 (Linda Wharton)

Last of the Desperados – 1955 (Sarita McGuire)

The Lonesome Trail – 1955 (Pat Wells)

Frontier Gambler – 1956 [singer]

Stagecoach to Fury – 1956 (Ruth)

Badlands of Montana – 1957 (Emily Branton)

Ambush at Cimarron Pass – 1958 (Teresa Santos)

Villa! – 1958 (Julie) [singer]

The Long Rope – 1961 [producer]