Death Toll, 2025
And you thought 2016 was bad
It’s interesting how in 2016, everyone seemed to take emotional splash damage from those who died, from Prince, to Bowie, to Patrick MacGoohan and Carrie Fisher.
Granted, they were a lot of celebrity deaths back in 2016. It almost felt personal after a while.
This year, there were still a lot of celebrities who died, but few seem to notice.
I don’t know if we’re all inured to it by now, or if these celebrities were so old, and out of the public eye, that everyone thought they were dead already.
The following are the ones that I know of and can speak to. TCM ran a list that lasted nearly seven minutes, and I didn’t know half of them. So if I missed someone who deeply impacted you, my apologies and condolences.
Jim Shooter (Dead at 73)—Started writing for DC Comics at 14, and didn’t stop doing comics ever since then. He wrote Secret Wars (from the 80s). He enforced deadlines in Marvel when he worked there, and that was apparently a new concept at the time. And he is lauded by darn near everyone in comics who goes back that far. And yes, there are some current idiots in the comic book industry who don’t know who Jim Shooter was, and they are a problem.
Lalo Schifrin. (Dead at 92)—The man who composed the Mission Impossible theme. His IMDB page has a few hundred entries. I think he was working until the day he died.
Clive Revill (dead at 95)—Like all character actors, you may not know him by name. But you may remember him in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Guy of Gisbourne in their Robin Hood Q/Vash episode. But he was my favorite Columbo villain, an IRA gun runner and professional writer. He was my favorite Doctor Doom (in a video game of all things). He should have been Alfred in Batman for more than a few cartoon episodes of BTAS. He made for a marvelous Lord High Executioner in The Mikado and he stole the show in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer as Wellington Wells. I’m a little sad he only played one alien, once, in Babylon 5.1
Brigitte Bardot (Dead at 91)— French Actress, apparently still starting fights until the end. Who knew?
Roberto Orci (dead at 51)— Ouch. 51. Writer, Producer. From Hercules and Xena and Jack of All Trades, to Alias, Fringe, Scorpion, the new Hawaii 5-0, Ender’s Game and Star Trek. I first knew him as the co-worker with Alexander Kurtzman, the guy who’s busy destroying Star Trek lately. I had wondered what happened to Kurtzman’s writing, since he wasn’t doing too bad with Orci … apparently, Orci had been busy dying of kidney failure. That at least makes sense. William Link didn’t do much after Richard Levinson died.2
Gene Hackman (95)—This one hurt, less because of his body of work (which was still impressive) but it was just such a sad death. And his wife too. Ugh.
Val Kilmer (65)—Just ouch. He was still relatively young. I didn’t really like most of his work except for Doc Holliday and maybe Batman, but yikes.3
George Wendt (76)—I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. He was never thin. And we should be surprised he lasted as long as he did.
June Lockhart (100)— God love her, she lived that long. Another one who I thought was dead a while back. But no, she kept kicking. From Lassie and Lost in Space, all the way to Babylon 5 and beyond. She was an actress with surprising range. I’m just sad I didn’t get to see it that often.
Samantha Eggar (86)—It felt like she was around forever. The earliest role I remember her from is The Collector with Terrence Stamp. She was also a victim of being in Doctor Doolittle, which didn’t hold up well over time. But she was in everything from The 7% Solution to a Columbo episode, to being Captain Picard’s sister-in-law.
Terrance Stamp (86)—Do I need to say more than KNEEL BEFORE ZOD! But if you ever get a chance, look up the films he did as David Audley, spy. Such a great voice. He was wasted in The Phantom Menace, and I wish he had done more animated work, even video games.4 But if you never saw him in The Collector, you can contrast that with almost anything else he did and grasp just how much of a range he had.
Tom Stoppard (87)— Writer. Such an odd body of work. He wrote Shakespeare in Love and Brazil. He was a script doctor on Revenge of the Sith, and you can kind of tell because some of the dialogue was better than Attack of the Clones. He did The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, which was off the wall. There were some turkeys. But he definitely did wat he wanted.
Joe Done Baker (89)—known for the original Walking Tall, as well as being in two different roles in the James Bond franchise, both as a villain to Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights) and a CIA officer opposite Pierce Brosnan.
Richard Chamberlain (90)—This man was the King of the Miniseries, Doctor Kildare, Shogun in the 80s, the only Jason Bourne I will ever acknowledge. He made for a great Musketeer opposite Christopher Lee. If you can, do try his Count of Monte Cristo. While the films weren’t good, I liked his performance as Allan Quartermain. He lasted even to episodes of Leverage and Chuck, which were fun, surprising appearances.
Olivia Hussy (73) — Now this is a weird career that was all over the place. Romeo and Juliet, check. Stephen King’s It, check. From Mother Theresa to Agatha Christie, to a strange little slasher movie in the 70s. And somehow, she only had fifty films to her credit. I presume she did more Broadway than I ever heard of, but IMDB doesn’t really track that.
Harris Yulin (87)— Ghostbusters II, Buffy. You’d know him if you saw him.
Graham Greene (73)—the actor, not the author. I greatly enjoyed him in Maverick. And pretty much everything else I saw him in.
Tony Roberts (85)—probably best known for his Woody Allen films. It seems like he was the second banana in a lot of those. Maybe most of them, especially the earlier works.
Wings Hauser (77)—an actor I know best from 80s and 90s TV guest spots. I didn’t even realize he was that old.
Claudia Cardinale (87)— Italian Actress
David Johansen—Remember the Ghost of Christmas Past from Scrooged? That was him.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (75)— now this is a career that was all over the place. From Babylon 5 to Mortal Kombat, to The Phantom, to James Bond. Now that’s variety.
Kenneth Colley— Admiral Piett from Star Wars. Also had a solid entry in the Inspector Morse series. He had a surprisingly good acting range. I’m surprised I didn’t trip over him more often.
Michael Madsen (67)—Ouch. That young. I don’t know what killed him really. And his career was … varied. But I will always remember him for his role in this offbeat little show called Vengeance Unlimited, which didn’t even last a whole season. But I was fond of it.
Now, after that, there are names I know, but never really cared about. Seriously, some people left more of an impression than others.
Udo Kier (81)—Granted, I always mistook him for Bellock from Raiders of the Lost Ark…
Robert Redford … died. Sorry, but I think I liked him in The Sting, and in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Those are the only films of his that I own.
Diane Keaton … My father liked Annie Hall. And I think she was in the Godfather?
David Lynch. There are people I know who liked his work. No, I didn’t watch Twin Peaks. I’ll grant that his Dune was better than the most recent version, even if Sting did scream way too much.
Rob Reiner… he didn’t screw up William Goldman’s screenplay to William Goldman’s own novel. And he didn’t screw up Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, which had been a stage play before a film. So I’ll give him that, as a director, he never screwed up good screenplays.
But yikes this year was a bloodbath.
Yes, I know it’s going to get worse as the years go on. But yikes. Some of these people were too young. And yes, with modern medical technology, I think under 80 is too young.
But anyway…
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Episode: Born to the Purple
Do I have to explain Levinson and Link? They created Columbo, Ellery Queen, Murder, She Wrote, and did the films Murder by Natural Causes, Rehearsal for Murder, Guilty Conscience.
He also absolutely RUINED Simon Templar in the worst possible rendition of The Saint.
He was the last Prophet in Halo 3.