Dead Celebrity Alert

Joseph Pevney, who directed some of the best-loved episodes of the original “Star Trek” television series, has died. He was 96.

Pevney died May 18 at his home in Palm Desert, said his wife, Margo.

Pevney directed 14 episodes of the 1960s series, including “The City on the Edge of Forever,” in which Capt. Kirk and Spock travel back in time to the Depression, and “The Trouble With Tribbles,” in which the starship Enterprise is infested with cute, furry creatures. …

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Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as “Sock it to me!” has died. He was 86. …

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The creator of the popular religious children’s television show “Davey and Goliath” has died. …

Along with Gumby creators Art Clokey and Ruth Clokey Goodell, Sutcliffe created the Sunday-morning series to spread a religious message without losing younger viewers with overly complicated concepts …

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Jim Hager, one of the Hager Twins who satirized country life with cornball one-liners on TV’s “Hee Haw,” died in Nashville, the show’s producer said Friday. He was 66.

Hager was at a coffee shop when he collapsed Thursday, Sam Lovullo said. He said he had been told that by Jon Hager, the surviving twin. …

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The actor Simon MacKenzie was best known for his leading role in the long-running Gaelic television soap, Machair, in which he played the dignified head of a further education college. …

He is survived by his long-term partner, Charlie Curran.

Simon MacKenzie, actor and activist for the Gaelic culture, was born on December 4, 1949. He died of cancer on April 8, 2008, aged 58 … Read full obituary

Actor, writer and musician Gordon Clyde was known to radio listeners for his satirical and topical piano and song spots on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Woman’s Hour. He also had his own weekly show on the BBC World Service. …

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Johnny Byrne was one of the most prolific and best respected TV and screenwriters of our time. He wrote for many of British television’s classic series, including All Creatures Great and Small and Doctor Who. As well as writing, he created the hugely successful rural policing drama Heartbeat. …

Johnny Byrne, television screenwriter, was born in 1935. He died of cancer on April 2, 2008, aged about 77 … Read full obituary

Widely remembered for his excessive corpulence on stage and television, Willoughby Goddard spent over 40 years never trying to disguise it. … He could play judges, professors, mayors, landlords, managing directors and chairmen; he could also play sundry characters of no importance whatever. … He was the the bulky Mr Holmes in Jack Roffey’s whodunnit, No Other Verdict (Duchess, 1954), and as the “massive vulgarian” Gowing in The Diary of a Nobody (Arts), six chapters of the book by George and Weedon Grossmith, Goddard was able to “talk to his hosts with conviction” in a show adapted by Basil Dean and Richard Blake. … Read full obituary

The body of a man, believed to be missing TV presenter Mark Speight, has been found in a remote area of London’s Paddington station, police have said.

Officers are treating the death as “unexplained” but have confirmed that the man had not been hit by a train.

Mr Speight, 42, disappeared last Monday, three months after the death of his fiancee, Natasha Collins, in the bath of the flat they shared in London. … Read full story

Michael Hill, BBC producer and writer, was born on June 17, 1923. He died on March 16, 2008, aged 84 … Read full obituary

Stanley Kamel, well known for playing Dr. Charles Kroger on the hit USA series “Monk,” has died… Kamel was found dead in his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday. He was 65. …

Kamel has appeared in numerous TV roles over the past three decades, including “The West Wing,” “Six Feet Under,” “Melrose Place,” “The Golden Girls,” “Days of Our Lives” and “Murder One.” … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Abby Mann, writer of socially conscious scripts for movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted screenplay for “Judgment at Nuremberg,” has died at 80. …

Mann also won multiple Emmys, including one in 1973 for “The Marcus-Nelson Murders,” which created a maverick New York police detective named Theo Kojak. The film, starring Telly Savalas, was spun off into the long-running TV series “Kojak.” … Read full obituary

Last of the Summer Wine and Porridge actor Brian Wilde has died aged 80. …

Wilde’s son Andrew told the Press Association news agency his father suffered a fall about seven weeks ago and had not recovered. … Read full obituary

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Ivan Dixon, an actor, director and producer best known for his role as Kinchloe on the 1960s television series “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died. He was 76. … Read full obituary

March 8, 2008 — Malvin Wald, a prolific writer for film and television best known for co-writing the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 1948 film “The Naked City,” died Thursday of age-related causes at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his son, Alan. He was 90. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Car-building legend Boyd Coddington, whose testosterone-injected cable TV reality show “American Hot Rod” introduced the nation to the West Coast hot rod guru, has died. He was 63. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — David Groh, the handsome, hardworking character actor who was best known as the easygoing man Rhoda Morgenstern married and divorced during the run of Valerie Harper’s hit 1970s sitcom “Rhoda,” has died. He was 68.

Groh died Tuesday of kidney cancer in Los Angeles, his sister-in-law Catherine Mullally said Thursday. … Read full obituary

LONDON, England (AP) — Actor Barry Morse, who played a detective pursuing the wrongly accused Dr. Richard Kimble in 1960s TV series “The Fugitive,” has died, his son said Tuesday. He was 89. …

The actor’s Web site estimated he played more than 3,000 roles on radio, TV, stage and screen over a seven-decade career. … Read full obituary

Actress Shell Kepler, who for years played the gossipy nurse Amy Vining on the TV soap opera “General Hospital,” died Feb. 1 in Portland, Ore. She was 49. … Read full obituary

Dwight Arlington Hemion, a television director and producer best known for his musical specials who won 18 Emmy Awards and was nominated a record 47 times, died Monday at his home in Rectortown, Va. He was 81. … Read full obituary

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) — Margaret Truman, the only child of former President Harry S. Truman who became a concert singer, actress, radio and TV personality and mystery writer, died Tuesday. She was 83. … Read full obituary

TV actor Christopher Allport has been named as the third victim killed by the snowstorms roaring towards Southern California.

Skiing enthusiast Mr Allport, 60, was reported missing after a trio of “freak” avalanches. His body was found near the Mountain High ski resort in Wrightwood.

The veteran character actor had appeared on US shows including ER, Felicity, and Matlock. … Read full obituary

Lois Nettleton, an actress whose dramatic and comic dexterity in theater, film and television earned her wide public recognition and deep professional respect for more than a half century, died on Friday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 80. The cause was complications of lung cancer…

Her extensive work in television included the role of Norma in “The Midnight Sun,” a 1961 episode of “The Twilight Zone” …

Ms. Nettleton was divorced from Jean Shepherd, the radio host and author; they met when she called his show. She left no immediate survivors. … Read full obituary

Allan Melvin, a character actor best known for playing Sam the Butcher on “The Brady Bunch,” has died. He was 84.

Melvin died of cancer Thursday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, said Amalia Melvin, his wife of 64 years. … Read full obituary

Suzanne Pleshette has died.

Her attorney and family friend, Robert Finkelstein, says the husky-voiced actress died of respiratory failure at her home Los Angeles. She was 70.

The star of movies and Broadway found her greatest fame on TV’s long-running “The Bob Newhart Show,” portraying the comic’s witty, sarcastic wife. … Read full obituary

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