Deadline R.I.P.

Peter Gilmore, an actor who appeared in a number of the UK’s top TV dramas in the 1970s and 80s as well as the Carry On series of film comedies, has died at the Trinity Hospice in London after a long illness. He was 81 and died February 3. He is perhaps best known as James Onedin in the BBC series The Onedin Line that aired from 1971 to 1980. Set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886, it followed the rise of a shipping line named after its owner and his family. Gilmore starred in 91 episodes and Anne Stallybrass, whom he later married, played his wife in the series. He also appeared in Doctor Who, The Persuaders!, Ruth Rendell Mysteries and Heartbeat. Born in Leipzig in 1931, Gilmore came to the UK at the age of six and was raised in Yorkshire. He left school at 14 to follow his dream of becoming an actor. In 1958 he got his first major part as Sir Waldo in the TV series Ivanhoe. He then appeared in West End musicals including Lock Up Your Daughters, Follow That Girl and The Beggar’s Opera before moving into TV and film. 

Patty Andrews, last surviving member of the Andrews sisters, has died. She was 94 and died today at her home in Northridge, CA. The phenomenally popular singing trio that entertained U.S. troops during World War II even announced the war’s end … Read More »

Emmy-winning set decorator Leslie Frankenheimer has died. Also the wife of entertainment attorney John Frankenhemer, she died January 22 after a long battle against leukemia, according to the Academy of … Read More »

Don Groves is a Deadline contributor based in Sydney.

Australian actor-writer-director Bille Brown, who performed on Broadway and the West End and in the films Killer Elite, The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader and Fierce Creatures, died Sunday in a Brisbane hospital. He was 61 and had been battling bowel cancer. William “Bille” Brown began his career in the early 1970s at the Queensland Theater Company with Geoffrey Rush, among others. In 1976 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in productions at London’s Aldwych and Haymarket Theaters and with the Chichester Festival Theater and English National Opera. He had two further engagements with the RSC, from 1986–88 and 1994–96. He was an artist-in-residence at the State University of New York in 1982 and made his Broadway debut in 1986 in Michael Frayn’s Wild Honey with Ian McKellen. Read More »

Veteran character actor Harry Carey Jr., who appeared in numerous TV shows and movies including nine of director John Ford’s classic Hollywood Westerns, died December 27 at age 91 in Santa Barbara, Reuters reported. A frequent … Read More »

Longtime Hollywood literary agent Mickey “The Cowboy” Freiberg died yesterday at his West Los Angeles home after a three-year battle with brain cancer, his family said. He was 72. Freiberg represented numerous award-winning clients throughout a 40-plus-year career, including the late Budd Schulberg who won a screenwriting Oscar for 1954′s On The Waterfront, author Homer Hickam whose book Rocket Boys became the basis for the 1999 film October Sky, and Ron Powers, who co-authored Flags Of Our Fathers, the book on which the 2006 Clint Eastwood-directed war film was based. He also represented Joe Pistone, the former FBI special agent who worked undercover as Donnie Brasco, The Bonanno Family (Mafia Marriage) and the late Bill Bonnano, co-author of The Good Guys with David Fisher. One of Freiberg’s proudest projects was the David Permut-produced film Youth In Revolt, based on the novel written by C.D. Payne and brought to Permut by Freiberg’s daughter Miranda when she was 17 years old. The comedy was released in 2010 by Dimension Films, with the younger Freiberg attached as co-producer and starred Michael Cera, Steve Buschemi, Ray Liotta and Zach Galifianakis. Read More »

Screenwriter Don Rhymer, whose credits included 20th Century Fox Animation’ hit Rio and the CBS comedy Evening Shade, has died. He was 51 and his longtime friend Dave Gallagher told the LA Times that Rhymer died Wednesday of cancer at USC’s … Read More »

Dann Cahn, a pioneer of the three-camera method of filming and editing TV sitcoms, has died. Cahn also was the last surviving member of the original creative team behind the landmark series I Love Lucy. He was 89 and died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in west Los Angeles. Cahn worked on Lucy‘s entire six-season run from 1951 to 1957. Unlike series that preceded it, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s show used three motion picture cameras instead of one. The multicamera technique allowed for a show to be filmed continuously and in sequence, like a stage play. The amount of footage overwhelmed editors at the time, according to the LA Times, and they located a cutting-edge device that had been created for the quiz show Truth Or Consequences. When it was delivered to Desilu, Cahn called it a “monster” because it wouldn’t fit into the editing room so they put it in the prop room. “It was a Moviola with four heads — three for picture and one for sound,” Cahn told Editors Guild Magazine in 2006. Cahn eventually became editing supervisor at Ball and Arnaz’s production company Desilu, where he supervised editing of a slate of TV shows that included Our Miss Brooks, The Real McCoys, The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp, The Untouchables Read More »