Other recent card-related deaths include:

Marcia Strassman, who played Gabe Kaplan's wife in Welcome Back Kotter and had an auto card in Rittenhouse's Complete Highlander set.

Jan Hooks, who was on Saturday Night Live and Designing Women. She had a couple of cards in the Starpics SNL set.

Don Keefer had a Twilight Zone auto and was in the Hooray for Hollywood set.

Polly Bergen was on a 1953 Who-Z-At Star card. (There can't be many left alive from that set.)

Norma McCarty was Ed Wood's wife and appeared in the Kitchen Sink Ed Wood Players set.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bill Mullins,

Thank you for that memorial list. May they all rest in peace. I have all of the cards you mentioned except for the Polly Bergen. Not to shabby if you appear on a card as an adult in 1953 and make it all the way to 2014. Talk about leaving a world different than the one you'd arrived in.

Queen Elizabeth was in the 1952 Look N See set, and she's still hanging in there.

I don't think I know of anyone who is still alive that is on an older American nonsports set.

Bobby Doerr is on a 1938 Goudey baseball card, and is still alive.

Olivia de Havilland is in a 1936 UK set, and Maureen O'Hara and Luise Rainer have some 1930s cards I believe.

Luise Rainer, who won back-to-back Academy Awards in 1936 and 1937, and appeared in nonsports cards as far back as 1935, just passed away at age 104. She was the oldest living Oscar winner.

Hopefully, this will be the last one of these for 2014.

Edward Herrmann just passed away. His career was so long and deep that it surprises me that I can't find any trading cards he was on. Tons of credits on IMDB but two that I especially remember were the head vampire from "Lost Boys" and the founder of St. Eligius, Father McCabe, from "St. Elsewhere". A fine actor in everything I ever saw him in.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Mullins:
Luise Rainer, who won back-to-back Academy Awards in 1936 and 1937, and appeared in nonsports cards as far back as 1935, just passed away at age 104. She was the oldest living Oscar winner.

Yes I've been reading about Luise Rainer who was possibly the last A-list actress from her era to leave this Good Earth... In two weeks she would have made it to 105 yrs old!

And the first of 2015 . . .

Mario Cuomo is a former governor of New York and just passed away. He was touted as a Democratic candidate for president, but never ran. He had a few minor trading cards -- a Tuff Stuff magazine insert of presidential possibilities, a 1994 Upper Deck card featuring him playing baseball as a student. I vaguely suspect he was in the Decision 92 set, although he doesn't show up in Jeff Allender's checklist of that set -- perhaps he is pictured but not in the card title. (I'd have to dig out the set to be sure.)

And now Beverly Hillbillies star Donna Douglas has just died. She was also in one of the classic Twilight Zone episodes, "Eye of the Beholder". She has several autographs but her signature Twilight Zone card #A-2 will always be tops for me. It's just an iconic TZ image.

"Eye of the Beholder" was on just on last night as part of a New Year's Day marathon, so we caught to end of it. That episode was a masterpiece of mood and suspense and has been acknowledged as such pretty much since the day it aired.

So beautiful in so many ways, and always famously wonderful to not only the real-life "critters" of the animal kingdom, but to us card collectors, as well. The TV's Coolest Classics and Twilight Zone Series 1 autograph cards she signed were already treasures to me, and now even more so, with signatures as lovely as the lady herself, which is truly saying something.
Rest in peace, Donna Douglas, for whom becoming an angel will be especially easy, I think.

Almost 4 years to the day of this:
http://nonsportupdate.infopop....4605353/m/4397053695

Anne Francis was in not just one, but two of my all-time favorite TZ episodes. Thanks again to Steve Charendoff and Rittenhouse for honoring (and putting a little money into the pockets of) these and many other fine actors, especially in their later lives, while providing fans and collectors with truly wonderful keepsakes of them in the process.

And now Little Jimmy Dickens is gone:

Bess Myerson, a former Miss America who was in a 1952 Bowman set, just passed away.



And I somehow missed that Mary Ann Mobley, who appeared on chase cards in several recent Press Pass Elvis sets, died last month.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bill Mullins,

And I just read that actor Rod Taylor died...
I thought he was outstanding in The Time Machine.

When I was growing up, that movie was unforgettable & has remained a personal fav over all these years.

Rod Taylor was a personal favorite of mine, although the majority of his starring roles was in the 60's. The Time Machine is probably the one most seen by si-fi fans, but Hitchcock's The Birds is also a good one.

Apart from that I would recommend Fate Is The Hunter, a great old movie with a message. It was never released on VHS or DVD, but the movie channels carry it once in awhile.

Taylor signed only once for The Twilight Zone set and I consider it one of my best autograph cards. RIP Mr. Taylor.

I was glad to see him cast as Churchill in what turned out to be his final film, 2009's "Inglourious Basterds" by Quentin Tarentino. The story goes that Tarentino went to ask him personally to play the role, to which Rod Taylor told him Albert Finney lives just down the road and had played Winston like six times previously, so why not ask him? Tarentino replied that if Rod Taylor turned him down, he'd go ask Albert Finney. It was a fitting cinematic conclusion for the esteemed Mr. Taylor, I think, to wrap it up with a role in an Academy Award winning film.

Another his fan-favorites is "Darker Than Amber". Back in the days when we were in the rare video market, we were always on the lookout for that one as there was always a tremendous amount of interest in it on the rare occasions that one could be found. I believe we found two of them total in about 10 years of scouring the now long gone video stores.

Rest in peace, Rod Taylor. In a way, he did travel through time, 84 years of it anyway, albeit in one direction.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

I would recommend Fate Is The Hunter, a great old movie with a message. It was never released on VHS or DVD, but the movie channels carry it once in awhile.

This film is available on dvd in the UK.

Both Fate is the Hunter and Darker than Amber are on you tube if anyone wants to watch them.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
Both Fate is the Hunter and Darker than Amber are on you tube if anyone wants to watch them.

Thank you, that's great info. I remember seeing Darker Than Amber also, it's a detective film, but it's been a long time.

Speaking about your other post, I've noticed that the UK seems to get a lot of films and TV shows on DVD first, at least before it goes to the region that I can play in the US. As an example, I watched the series Death in Paradise for the first two seasons, but the recent third season has not been released. It is available on UK region players, but there is no info as to when I will be able to buy it. The same thing happened with the Whitechapel series, the first show was released to the US, but the next two series never officially came out here.

Rod Taylor was in two films with Yvette Mimieux, Time Machine and Dark of the Sun, and they were my favorite films by him.
Dark of the Sun was a war film set in the Belgian Congo Uprising. Very dark but one of Taylor's best action films. In my opinion, there is only one version of The Time Machine that is any good, the one starring Rod Taylor.

Anita Ekberg, who appeared in the 1957 Topps "Hit Stars" set, along with numerous other film-related sets abroad, has just passed away.