The name G.D. Spradlin might not ring any bells, but if you’re a movie lover, you knew his face. He was the general who gave Martin Sheen his assignment in Apocalypse Now, as well as a senator in The Godfather, Part II and a minister in Ed Wood.

When I was your age, television was called “books.”

Peter Falk, best known as Columbo, the legendary television detective, has passed away at the age of 83.

At Celluloid Heroes, we remember him as the kindly grandfather in The Princess Bride. Even before Columbo, I remember him in Blake Edwards’ epic comedy, The Great Race.

Celluloid Heroes would like to pause to acknowledge the passing on Friday of actor James Arness, star of the landmark television series Gunsmoke as well as two favorites among fans of 1950 sci-fi cinema: The Thing from Another World and Them!.

This news has inspired me to revisit one of my childhood favorites, Them!. I’ll have a piece on that movie posted on Wednesday.

Celluloid Heroes also pauses to remember Patrick McGoohan, star of the great British TV series, The Prisoner. His movie career was long and varied as well, including Ice Station Zebra, Silver Streak and Braveheart.

Celluloid Heroes pauses to remember Ricardo Montalban, who died today at the age of 88. He was, of course, most famous to television viewers for Fantasy Island and extolling the virtues of “Soft Corinthian leather,” but to this moviegoer, he will always be Khan Noonian Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Señor Armando in the Planet of the Apes movies.

The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

While he was not a filmmaker or an actor, Arthur C. Clarke’s contribution to film was immeasurable for his role in the making of a single film, that being Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. His sequel, 2010, was also made into a film by Peter Hyams, but it was that 1968 masterpiece that showed the world how science fiction could be taken seriously by a serious filmmaker and wasn’t just the province of pulpy juvenilia.

I’m deeply saddened to report that actor Roy Scheider (Jaws, The French Connection, All That Jazz) has passed away at the age of 75. He starred in some of the great movies of my childhood and youth and he will be sorely missed.

See also:

• 2010: The Year We Make Contact
• Blue Thunder

Michelangelo Antonioni, the director of Blow-Up and L’Awentura, has died at the age of 94.

Legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, director of The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander, Scenes from a Marriage and Saraband, has passed away. Almost universally recognized as one of the single greatest filmmakers of the first century of film, Bergman directed more than sixty theatrical and television films since the 1940s.