Alice Drummond obit

Ghostbusters librarian actress Alice Drummond dies aged 88

She was not on the list.

Actress Alice Drummond, best known for playing the librarian in the original Ghostbusters film, has died at the age of 88.


Her friend June Gable said the actress died from complications after a fall she sustained two months ago.


Drummond's other film credits include Doubt, which starred Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, and Awakenings, with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.


She also played Ross and Monica's grandmother in an episode of Friends.


Drummond was born Alice Elizabeth Ruyter on 21 May 1928.


In 1950, she married Paul Drummond, with whom she moved to Manhattan. The couple divorced in 1976.


She became known as a theatre and television actress before landing her first feature film role in the 1970 comedy Where's Poppa?


Drummond went on to appear in films such as Synecdoche, New York and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective alongside Jim Carrey.


Her most recent film appearance was in the 2010 comedy Furry Vengeance, which starred Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields.


But it was her appearance in the original Ghostbusters film, released in 1984, which she is likely to be best remembered for.


In the opening scene, Drummond is seen as a librarian who is terrified by a spook among the bookshelves before being questioned by Bill Murray's character.



Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Notes

1970 Where's Poppa? Woman in Elevator

1974 Man on a Swing Mrs. Dawson

1977 Thieves Mrs. Ramsey

1978 King of the Gypsies Zharko's Nurse

1980 Hide in Plain Sight Mrs. Novack

1981 Eyewitness Mrs. Eunice Deever

1982 The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas Governor's Secretary

1984 Ghostbusters Librarian

1988 The House on Carroll Street Woman at Hearing

1988 The Suicide Club

1988 Funny Farm Mrs. Ethel Dinges

1988 Running on Empty Mrs. Powell

1989 Animal Behavior Site Committee #1

1990 Tales from the Darkside: The Movie Carolyn (segment "Cat From Hell")

1990 Awakenings Lucy

1993 Money for Nothing Mrs. Breen

1994 Ace Ventura: Pet Detective Mrs. Finkle

1994 Nobody's Fool Hattie

1994 I.Q. Dinner Guest

1995 Jeffrey Grandma Rose

1995 To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar Clara

1996 Walking and Talking Betsy

1996 Just in Time Edith Short film

1997 Commandments Mrs. Mann

1997 'Til There Was You Harriet

1997 Office Killer Carlotta Douglas

1997 In & Out Aunt Susan

1999 Just the Ticket Lady with Cash

1999 The Love Letter Postal Clerk

1999 I'll Take You There Stella

1999 Advice from a Caterpillar Diner Grandmother

2000 Joe Gould's Secret Helen

2001 The Rising Place Aunt Millie

2003 Pieces of April Grandma Dottie

2004 House of D Mrs. Brevoort

2005 The Honeymooners Miss Benvenuti

2008 Chronic Town Elizabeth

2008 Synecdoche, New York Actress Playing Frances

2008 Doubt Sister Veronica

2009 Motherhood Edith

2009 After.Life Mrs. Hutton

2010 Furry Vengeance Mrs. Martin

2011 Open House Ruthie Short film, (final role)

Television

Year Title Role Notes

1967 Dark Shadows Nurse Jackson Recurring role (5 episodes)

1970 New York Television Theatre Episode: "The Sandbox"

1971-1973 Where the Heart Is Loretta Jardin TV series

1972 Particular Men Mrs. Ewing TV film

1977 The Best of Families Mabel Baldwin TV miniseries

1977 Great Performances Mrs. Varney Episode: "Secret Service"

1978 Ryan's Hope Susie Simpson Episodes: "1.714", "1.719", "1.720"

1979 Sanctuary of Fear Grace Barringer TV film

1981 Park Place Frances Heine Main role (4 episodes)

1981 Love, Sidney Tina Episode: "Hello, Yetta"

1984 American Playhouse Hiss' Secretary Episode: "Concealed Enemies, Part I: Suspicion"

1984 Night Court Mavis Tuttle Episode: "Harry and the Rock Star"

1984 Great Performances Gay Wellington Episode: "You Can't Take It with You"

1986 The Equalizer Kind Woman Episode: "Nocturne"

1987 Night Court Alice Beeker Episode: "Murder"

1988 Kate & Allie Mrs. Rinde Episode: "The Band Singer"

1989 Nikki and Alexander Mrs. Klein TV pilot

1989 The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd Juror Episode: "Here's a Major Organ Interlude"

1989 Money, Power, Murder. Helen TV film

1990-1991 Lenny Mary Callahan Regular role (16 episodes)

1992 Frannie's Turn Rosa Escobar Main role (6 episodes)

1993 Daybreak Anna TV film

1994 Grace Under Fire Nana Lil Episode: "With This Ring"

1994 Law & Order Zelda Episode: "Mayhem"

1995 New York News Episode: "Thin Line"

1996 Cosby Mrs. Bagley Episode: "Neighborhood Watch"

1998 Trinity Mrs. Bingham Episode: "Pilot"

1999 Earthly Possessions Old Woman in Jalopy TV film

2000 Spin City Sondra Spencer Episode: "Suffragette City"

2002 Ed Mrs. Shroeder Episode: "Memory Lane"

2004 The Jury Hannah Francis Episode: "The Honeymoon Suite"

2005 Boston Legal Lydia Tuffalo Episode: "The Ass Fat Jungle"

2007 Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day TV film

Van Williams - # 146

‘Green Hornet’ Star Van Williams Dies at 82

He was number 146 on the list.

Van Williams, star of the 1966 TV show “The Green Hornet,” died last Monday in Scottsdale, Ariz., of renal failure. He was 82.

“He had a wonderful, caring, and kind heart,” his wife of 57 years, Vicki Williams, told Variety. “He was a wonderful husband, he was a fabulous father, and a devoted grandfather.”

Williams was a diving instructor in Hawaii when he was discovered in 1957 by producer Mike Todd, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor at the time. Williams was persuaded to come to Hollywood and try his hand at acting, and earned his big break on the ABC private detective show “Bourbon Street Beat.” He played Ken Madison, a character he later recycled for another detective show, “Surfside 6.”

In 1966, Williams signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to star in “The Green Hornet” as both the titular masked crusader and his newspaper editor alter ego, Britt Reid. He was ably supported by his martial arts master sidekick Kato, played by Bruce Lee, and by his weaponized car, Black Beauty. Williams played the role straight, signaling a departure from the lampoon comedy of Fox’s earlier “Batman” series.

Williams appeared in iconic shows such as “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” as well as in the young adult-targeted “Westwind,” which centered around the adventures of the Andrews family who sailed around the world on a yacht.

After his acting career dropped off in the late 1970s, Williams became a reserve deputy sheriff and a volunteer fire fighter at the Malibu station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Actress Pat Priest (“The Munsters”), Williams’ longtime friend and neighbor, said Williams was her mentor.

“We had many fun dinners around our dining room table,” Priest told Variety. “We laughed a lot and he was my mentor in helping me with memorabilia shows. He was very special. We saw him last year and we have wonderful memories.”

Producer Kevin Burns, who worked with Williams on a relaunch campaign for “Batman” and “Green Hornet” in 1989, told Variety that Williams had singed his lungs while working as a volunteer fire fighter, and suffered from bronchial problems and back injuries.

“Through it all he remained strong and rarely spoke of what he went through. He was a great guy and a class act all the way,” Burns said in his Facebook post.

Williams is survived by his wife; three children, Nina, Tia, and Britt; and five grandchildren.

Filmography

Surfside 6 cast: Troy Donahue, Lee Patterson, Van Williams and Diane McBain

Film

    Tall Story (1960) - Young Man in Shower (uncredited)

    The Caretakers (1963) - Dr. Larry Denning

    Batman (1966) - President Lyndon B. Johnson (voice, uncredited)

    Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) - Green Hornet Director (final film role)

Television

    Colt .45 in "The Sanctuary" (1959) - Tom Rucker[20]

    Bourbon Street Beat (1959–1960) - Ken Madison

    Surfside 6 (1960-1962) - Ken Madison in the same time slot

    The Tycoon (1964-1965) - Pat Burns

    The Dick Van Dyke Show (1965) - Corporal Clark Rice

    The Beverly Hillbillies (1965) - Dean Peters

    The Green Hornet (1966–1967) - Britt Reid/the Green Hornet

    Batman : includes three cross-over episodes (1966-1967) - The Green Hornet

    The Big Valley (1968) - Sheriff Dave Barrett

    Nanny and the Professor (1970) - Mr. Parsons

    Mannix (1970) - Executive #1

    Gunsmoke (1974) - Quincy

    Westwind (1975–1976) - Steve Andrews

    The Streets of San Francisco - "The Thrill Killers, Part 1" (1976) - Officer Morton

    Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected - "Devil Pack," Season 1 Episode 3 (1977) - Sheriff

    Centennial - "The Scream of Eagles" (1979) - George

    The Rockford Files - "Love is the Word," Season 6 Episode 6, (November 1979) - Lt. Dwayne Kiefer

Frtiz Weaver obit

Fritz Weaver, Tony-Winning Character Actor, Dies at 90

 

He was not on the list.

Fritz Weaver, a Tony Award-winning character actor who played a German Jewish doctor slain by the Nazis in the 1978 mini-series “Holocaust” and an Air Force colonel who becomes increasingly unstable as the nation faces a nuclear crisis in the 1964 movie “Fail Safe,” died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his son-in-law, Bruce Ostler.

Mr. Weaver won a Tony in 1970 for his role in Robert Marasco’s drama “Child’s Play,” about the malevolent environment at an exclusive Roman Catholic school for boys.

Mr. Weaver and Pat Hingle played teachers of wildly different temperaments who inevitably became adversaries. Mr. Weaver was the fierce disciplinarian, Mr. Hingle his easygoing rival.

But winning the Tony did not catapult Mr. Weaver into stardom. “What I remember is a vast silence from the phone,” he said, “because people said, ‘We won’t offer it, now, because we can’t offer him enough money.’ ”

From the 1950s on, Mr. Weaver was a familiar presence on television shows like “Studio One,” “Playhouse 90,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

He appeared in two episodes of “The Twilight Zone” — “The Obsolete Man” and “Third From the Sun,” in which he played a scientist who plots to take his family aboard a rocket to escape their planet before a nuclear war.

He was nominated for an Emmy for his performance in the NBC mini-series “Holocaust,” playing Dr. Josef Weiss, the patriarch of a Jewish family who is denied his livelihood, is sent to the Warsaw ghetto and then to Auschwitz to die.

Mr. Weaver made his Broadway debut in 1955 in “The Chalk Garden,” Enid Bagnold’s play about the woes of an aristocratic British family. He won laughs and a Tony nomination with his portrait of the fussy household butler.

A review in The Boston Globe said: “Mr. Weaver boasts sound basic equipment; a natural ease on the stage, aristocratic good looks and a resonant baritone, which he attributes to a family line that boasts a number of opera singers.”

He went on to appear in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Great God Brown” (1959) and the Phoenix Theatre’s 1960 staging of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV,” in which he starred as the world-weary British monarch.

His other Shakespearean roles included Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth. For the latter role, The New York Times said in 1973, Mr. Weaver was almost unrecognizable, having been transformed from a “thin, fine-drawn, long-fingered” figure into a “robust, burly Macbeth.’’

His theater credits also included the 1979 revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Price”; Lanford Wilson’s “A Tale Told” (1981), part three of a trilogy about a feuding Missouri family, in which he played the clan patriarch with what Frank Rich in The Times called “an often startling mixture of pathetic senility and foxy viciousness”; and Mr. Wilson’s “Angels Fall” (1982).

In later years Mr. Weaver turned increasingly to voice-over work, serving as narrator of, among other specials, “The Rape of Nanking” (1999) and “Unsung Heroes of Pearl Harbor” (2001), as well as many shows on the History Channel.

One of his last roles was in the 2015 Adam Sandler film “The Cobbler.” He also appeared in the 2016 film “The Congressman,” starring Treat Williams.

Fritz William Weaver was born on Jan. 19, 1926, in Pittsburgh, the son of John Carson Weaver and the former Elsa Stringaro.

After graduating from the University of Chicago, where he majored in physics, he came to New York and enrolled in acting classes at the Herbert Berghof Studio. In 1954 he made his Off Broadway debut in “The Way of the World” at the Cherry Lane Theater.

His first marriage, to Sylvia Short, ended in divorce. He married the actress Rochelle Oliver in 1997. She survives him, as do his daughter, Lydia Weaver; his son, Anthony; and a grandson.

Mr. Weaver was often cast as an aristocratic villain. In “The Day of the Dolphin” (1973), directed by Mike Nichols, he played the head of a shadowy company supporting researchers (George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere) who are studying dolphin intelligence. His sinister goal was to use trained dolphins to attach explosives to the presidential yacht.

He also appeared in the movies “Marathon Man” (1976), “Demon Seed” (1977), “Creepshow” (1982) and “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1999).

In a 1988 interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Weaver spoke about the challenges actors face.

“When you play the great roles, you get spoiled and think you’ll have a whole career playing nothing but great roles, and of course you can’t,’’ he said. “You play a lot of junk most of the time. Television is junk, most of it.”

But he reveled in performing Shakespearean roles.

“The old boy — he’s the one who makes the maximum challenge to the actor,’’ he said of Shakespeare. “That high charge on all the lines that he writes — you’ve got to measure up. You can’t just saunter into that stuff; you’ve got to bring your whole life into it.”

Select filmography

Film

 

    To Trap a Spy (1964) – Andrew Vulcan (archive footage)

    Fail Safe (1964) – Colonel Cascio

    The Borgia Stick (1967) – Anderson

    The Maltese Bippy (1969) – Mischa Ravenswood

    A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970) – Roger Meredith

    The Day of the Dolphin (1973) – Harold DeMilo

    The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975) – Andrew Borden

    Marathon Man (1976) – Professor Biesenthal

    Black Sunday (1977) – Corley

    Demon Seed (1977) – Alex Harris

    Captains Courageous (1977) – Harvey Cheyne Sr.

    The Big Fix (1978) – Oscar Procari Sr.

    Martian Chronicles (1980) – Father Peregrine

    Nightkill (1980) – Herbert Childs

    Jaws of Satan (1981) – Father Tom Farrow

    Creepshow (1982) – Dexter Stanley (segment "The Crate")

    Power (1986) – Wallace Furman

    The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) – John Reynolds

    This Must Be the Place (2011) – Cheyenne's Father (voice)

    Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (2013) – Hugo Black

    We'll Never Have Paris (2014) – Phillipe

    The Cobbler (2014) – Mr. Solomon

    The Congressman (2016) – Harlan Lantier (final film role)

 

Television

 

    Beyond This Place (1957) – Charlie Castle

    Way Out (1961, Episode: "William and Mary") – Dr. Landy

    The Twilight Zone (1961, Episodes: "Third from the Sun" / "The Obsolete Man") – William Sturka / Chancellor

    The Asphalt Jungle (1961) – Victor Vanda

    Dr. Kildare (1963) – Arthur Hobler

    The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) – Andrew Vulcan

    Twelve O'Clock High (1964) – Col. Peter Raff

    Rawhide (1964) – Jonathan Damon

    The Fugitive (1966, Season 3 Episode 28 "A Taste Of Tomorrow") – Joe Tucker

    Combat! (1966) – Major Chaplain Ernest Miller

    Gunsmoke (1967) – Marshal Burl Masters

    The Invaders (1967, Episode 30 "The Captive") – Deputy Ambassador Peter Borke

    The Big Valley (1967–1969) – Hebron Grant / Burke Jordan

    Cannon (1971) – "The Nowhere Man"

    Night Gallery (1971) – Dr. Mazi (segment "A Question of Fear")

    Mission: Impossible (1966–1971) – George Berlinger / Emil Skarbeck / Erik Hagar / Imre Rogosh

    Mannix (1968–1973) – William Avery / Dr. Cameron McKenzie

    Kung Fu (1974) – Hillquist

    Great Performances (1974) – Creon (Antigone)

    The New Land (1974, Episode: "The Word is: Giving" – unaired)

    The Streets Of San Francisco (1975) – Ted Whitlock

    Wonder Woman (1977) – Dr. Solano

    Holocaust (1978) – Dr. Josef Weiss

    Hawaii Five-O (1979) – Dr. Harvey Danworth

    The Martian Chronicles (1980) – Father Peregrine

    Magnum, P.I. (1980) – Captain J. Cooly, USN

    Don't Eat the Pictures (1983) – Osiris

    Tales from the Darkside (Episodes: "Comet Watch" (1986), "Inside the Closet" (1984)) – Sir Edmund Halley / Dr. Fenner

    Murder, She Wrote (1984–1987) – Paris Inspector Hugues Panassié / Edwin Dupont / Judge Lambert

    The Twilight Zone (1985, Episode 13; segment "The Star") – Father Matthew Karsighan

    Dream West (1986) – Sen. Thomas Hart Benton

    I'll Take Manhattan (1987) – Mr. Amberville

    Friday the 13th: The Series (1989, in the two-part episode of the third-season opener named "The Prophecies") – Asteroth

    Matlock (1989) – Pastor James Hubert

    All My Children (1992) – Hugo Marick

    Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994, S2:E25 "Tribunal") – Kovat

    The X-Files (1996) – Senator Albert Sorenson

    Frasier (1998) – Sir Trevor Ainsley

    Law & Order (1991–2005) – Nathan Fogg / Larry Weber / Philip Woodleigh