November 29, 1941 - April 5, 2008
Today marks the two year anniversary of the passing of tough-guy actor Stephen Oliver, who played Lee Webber on the TV series PEYTON PLACE but is probably best remembered to Temple of Schlock readers for his lead role in Russ Meyer's MOTOR PSYCHO! and also for his appearances as aging beach bully Dugan Hicks in the Crown International comedies THE VAN and MALIBU BEACH. I mention this because my buddy Bob Plante called Oliver on February 28, 2008 to interview him for the Jack Starrett book we've been working on for over 10 years, and found out that Oliver had just been told a few minutes earlier that he only had 5 weeks to live. Sure enough, five weeks and a handful of days later Oliver succumbed to gastric cancer at age 66. Most sources erroneously cite March 5th as his date of death, which led to some confusion last month when Bob posted a part of his conversation with Oliver as a "two years ago today" post at his blog, Chateau Vulgaria, when the actual date of death was April 5th. We decided to wait the extra month and make it official, and later today we'll probably go to the IMDb and try to correct the mistake, but for now let's all have a moment of silence and then head over to Chateau Vulgaria to read Bob's interview with the late Stephen Oliver.
He's great as Dugan, especially in Malibu Beach. Bit of a one-note character in The Van, but he gets some shading in Malibu Beach.
ReplyDeleteHe was my neighbor in N. Beverly Glen Canyon 1966-68. A really decent tough guy. Funny, I just got the idea TODAY to google whatever happened to that actor guy, Steve with the big Polish nose. We never saw him the month or so when he was rich as he'd go places to be seen....but the month before the NEXT quarterly residual check he'd hang around with the hippies in the Glen. He would drink bourbon 12-16 oz at a time & go all over on his bike. RIP Sweet One!
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