VLADEK SHEYBAL, 69, Polish actor who appeared for many years in British movies and television, died Oct. 16 following an abdomenal hemorrhage. Best known as Kronsteen, chess champion and master planner for SPECTRE in “From Russia With Love,” his film debut, Sheybal went on to play sly villains in many other pictures, including “Billion Dollar Brain,” “Puppet on a Chain,” “Scorpio,” “The Wind and the Lion,” and “Red Dawn.” He was also one of several Bond film veterans to appear in “Casino Royale,” and acted in episodes of nearly every leading British TV series.

BILL WILLIAMS, 77, veteran film and TV actor, died Sept. 21 in Burbank, Calif. Star of the syndicated TV action series The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951-55) and Assignment: Underwater (a 1960 Sea Hunt knockoff), Williams also co-starred with Betty White in Date With the Angels (a 1957-58 sitcom) and played Texas John Slaughter in several episodes of Walt Disney Presents.

     After breaking into movies in the 1940s, Williams appeared in such films as “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” “The Stratton Story,” “Son of Paleface” and “Rio Lobo.”  His countless TV roles include episodes of Science Fiction Theater, The Millionaire, Gunsmoke, 77 Sunset Strip, The Wild Wild West, Batman, Perry Mason, Dragnet, Ironside, The FBI, Police Woman and many more.

     Survived by his wife of 46 years, actress Barbara Hale of Perry Mason fame, and son William Katt, star of The Greatest American Hero.

JOHN ANDERSON, 69, craggy-faced, sonorous-voiced character actor, died Aug. 7 from a heart attack. Though he appeared in some notable films (including “Psycho” and “Ride the High Country”), Anderson was best known for hundreds of TV roles in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, The Fugitive, M*A*S*H, Lou Grant and many more. He also appeared in Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Maverick, The Rifleman, The Virginian, Kung Fu and nearly every other western ever made, including his recurring role as Virgil Earp on ABC’s Wyatt Earp series.

LAURENCE NAISMITH, 83, British character actor, died June 5, 1992 in Southport, Australia after a brief illness. His many film credits include roles in “Jason and the Argonauts,” “A Night to Remember,” “Sink the Bismarck,” “The Trials of Oscar Wilde,” “The Three Lives of Thomasina” and “Camelot” (as Merlin). Adventure fans will remember him as Judge Fulton, the retired magistrate who brought Tony Curtis and Roger Moore together to fight crime in The Persuaders, and as Sir Donald Munger, the diamond expert consulted by M and James Bond in “Diamonds Are Forever.”

PETER BROCCO, 89, character actor often cast as the absent-minded scientist in episodes of Superman, The Outer Limits, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek  and countless other shows, died Dec. 27 after a heart attack.  He also appeared in more than 80 films, including “Spartacus,” “Our Man Flint,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”

JACK KELLY, 65, star of the classic TV series Maverick, died Nov. 7 following a stroke. Kelly appeared as Bart Maverick throughout the show’s five-year run, first with James Garner, then Roger Moore and finally Robert Colbert. He was later a regular in the short-lived Get Christie Love and Hardy Boys series, and did countless guest shots, including episodes of Wagon Train, Kraft Suspense Theater, Batman, Ironside, Hawaii Five-0, Alias Smith and Jones and Garner’s The Rockford Files. He also made cameo appearances as Bart Maverick in the unsuccessful Young Maverick and Bret Maverick series, and in last year’s “The Gambler Returns” mini-series.  His film roles included “The Country Girl,” “To Hell and Back” and “Forbidden Planet.”

STERLING HOLLOWAY, 87, veteran actor and Disney cartoon voice, died Nov. 22 of cardiac arrest. His film career spanned the decades from silent comedy shorts through 1977’s “Thunder and Lightning,” peaking with countless character roles in the ’30s and ’40s.  On television he played Waldo the eccentric inventor on The Life of Riley and various twitterpated scientists on The Adventures of Superman, also appearing in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Disneyland, Burke’s Law, The Andy Griffith Show and many others. His voice work for Disney began with the role of the stork in “Dumbo” and included the Cheshire cat in “Alice in Wonderland,” Kaa the snake in “The Jungle Book” and Winnie the Pooh in the Pooh theatrical shorts and TV shows.

ROBERT SHAYNE, 92, known to every kid with a TV as Inspector Bill Henderson in The Adventures of Superman, died Nov. 29 of lung cancer. During his 60-year acting career, Shayne appeared opposite Ethel Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn on Broadway, was featured in such Warner Bros. films as “Mr. Skeffington” and “Christmas in Connecticut,” starred in Poverty Row stinkers for Republic and Monogram, and had a role in the last serial made at Republic, 1955’s “King of the Carnival.” Other film roles included “Hollywood Canteen,” “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Invaders from Mars,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “North by Northwest,” “Million Dollar Duck” and “Tora! Tora! Tora!” His TV appearances were infrequent following Superman’s demise, but in 1990, in a bow to earlier TV super-heroes, the producers of The Flash cast him in two episodes as Reggie the blind news vendor.

CHUCK CONNORS, 71, popular TV hero of The Rifleman and other series, died Nov. 10 of lung cancer. He was a baseball player with the Los Angeles Angels in the early ’50s when he started to take occasional acting jobs. Connors appeared in films such as “Pat and Mike” and “Target Zero,” and on TV in episodes of G.E. Theatre, The Loretta Young Show and The Adventures of Superman before hitting it big in 1958 with The Rifleman, which ran on ABC until 1963. None of his subsequent series—Arrest and Trial, Branded, Cowboy in Africa and The Yellow Rose—were so successful. His other film roles included “Geronimo,” “Old Yeller,” “Flipper,” “Move Over Darling,” “Soylent Green” and “Airplane 2: The Sequel.” He was nominated for an Emmy for his role as a slave owner in Roots, and appeared in episodes of Night Gallery, Police Story, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Name of the Game and Murder, She Wrote. One of his final parts was a recurring role as the evil source of the wolfman curse in Werewolf, one of the first series on the Fox network.

GLENN CORBETT, 59, television actor seen in Route 66 and many other shows, died Jan. 16 of lung cancer. He replaced George Maharis as co-star of Route 66 after a brief run in It’s a Man’s World, and followed with NBC’s short-lived The Road West. In the ’80s he had a recurring role in Dallas. Between series he became a familiar guest star in segments of Star Trek (the highly regarded “Metamorphosis” episode), The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Kraft Suspense Theater, Twelve O’Clock High, The FBI, Gunsmoke, Night Gallery, Alias Smith and Jones, Police Story, and many others.

PINKY LEE, 85, children’s TV icon, died April 3 of a heart attack. The Pinky Lee Show was one of the rages of early TV, though it ran less than three years. At his peak of popularity, Lee was on the air weekday afternoons for 15 minutes as well as a half-hour Saturday mornings. That grueling schedule ended with his celebrated collapse on the air in September 1955, often attributed to a heart attack but actually the result of a severe sinus infection and sheer exhaustion. His show ended the following June, when NBC moved The Howdy Doody Show from weekdays to Lee’s Saturday morning spot. Lee went on to host Gumby for a few months, but the era of live children’s shows was ending. He hosted a local Los Angeles kids show in the ’60s, and appeared in nightclubs and theaters and on The Ed Sullivan Show, usually in something resembling his old vaudeville and burlesque acts.