The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins, Craze actress Julie Ege
Born in the Norwegian town of Sandnes on Nov. 12, 1943, Ege made her screen debut in 1967 in a couple of bit parts. After a brief appearance in the James Bond flick On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, starring George Lazenby, she went on to a minor career in mostly Z-grade European films.
Among those were Every Home Should Have One (1970), starring Marty Feldman; Graham Stark’s The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971), in the “Gluttony” section; Bob Kellett’s Up Pompeii (1971), in which Ege played a character named “Voluptua”; Freddie Francis’ Craze (1974), starring Jack Palance and Diana Dors; and Percy’s Progress (1974), about a man (Leigh Lawson) who got the world’s first penis implant.
In the 1980s Ege underwent a mastectomy. She trained as a health-care worker, eventually becoming a registered nurse.
Premature Burial, The Raven actress Hazel Court
Hazel Court, the leading lady of numerous B-horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s, died at age 82 on April 15 at her home near Lake Tahoe, California.
Roger Corman used Hazel Court’s physical assets – among them her good-looking face, impressive cleavage, and a voice capable of eardrum-shattering screams – to good advantage in Premature Burial (1962), starring Ray Milland; The Raven (1963), in which she costarred with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre; and Masque of the Red Death (1964), opposite Price and fellow British seductress Jane Asher.
Born on Feb. 10, 1926, in Sutton Coldfield, England, Court appeared in stage productions before being signed by the J. Arthur Rank Organisation.
Among her other films are Counterspy (1953), opposite Dermot Walsh; Devil Girl from Mars (1954), opposite Hugh McDermott; Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), starring Peter Cushing; and Fisher’s The Man Who Could Cheat Death, with Anton Diffring.
On television, she had guest roles in, among others, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, and Rawhide.
As per online sources, her final film appearance was in an uncredited cameo in The Final Conflict.
Her recently completed autobiography, Hazel Court – Horror Queen, will be published in the United Kingdom.
Walt Disney animator Ollie Johnston
Ollie Johnston Jr., the last of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men” – veteran animators of the old school nicknamed after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s description of the U.S. Supreme Court – died at a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington, on April 14. He was 95.
Among Johnston’s most important creations were the characters of Bambi and Thumper for Disney’s 1942 animated feature Bambi, the Three Good Fairies for Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Mowgli and Baloo for The Jungle Book (1967).
He also worked in a number of other Disney features, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), the penguin-waiters sequence in Mary Poppins (1964), and The Rescuers (1977).
The California-born (in Palo Alto on Oct. 31, 1912) Johnston received the National Medal of Arts in November 2005. He and friend and fellow animator Frank Thomas (left photo) were the subject of the 1995 documentary Frank and Ollie, directed by Frank’s son Theodore Thomas. (More on Frank and Ollie.)
“Ollie’s death truly marks the end of the ‘Golden Age’ of hand-drawn Disney character animation that blossomed in the 1930s,” said Oscar-winning animator and historian John Canemaker. “He was a great and nuanced animator who could handle sentiment and comedy with equal aplomb, as well as a sweet and generous mentor to many.”
John Canemaker’s quote: Los Angeles Times, which offers a thorough obituary and several photographs.