Goodbye Manolito

 I just heard that Henry Darrow has died, aged 87 - and it's only now, looking at his Wikipedia entry, that I discovered that his ancestry was Puerto Rican.

He was a familiar face on TV when I was younger, often playing Latino or Native American characters - there was a TV movie called Brock's Last Case where Richard Widmark retired from being a police detective and started running an orange grove in California, for instance, assisted by Henry Darrow's character (who I think was accused of murder, bringing Richard Widmark out of retirement to clear his name).   He also appeared briefly in The Invisible Man (starring David McCallum), and a host of other popular series of the 1970s.

He appeared in Star Trek TNG as a Starfleet Admiral whose body had been taken over by maggot eating aliens, and also as Chakotay's dad in Voyager.

But I liked him best as Manolito Montoya in the High Chapparal.  I always did like the roguish bad boys with a heart of gold.

Goodbye to The Virginian

I grew up in the era where one of the main genres of TV show was the Western. I loved Bonanza, the Big Valley, High Chaperral - and The Virginian, starring James Drury.
James Drury has just died, aged 85. I've been looking at his screen credits, and he was in a lot of Westerns, but I hadn't realised that he also appeared in Forbidden Planet as one of the crewmen of the C-57D.
The article in Variety says that, in recent years, he toured Western events, talking about the Old West and cowboy values.

California Fires Threaten Famous Movie Locations

California is burning.
The wildfires are destroying whole towns (the entire town of Malibu has been evacuated), and over a thousand people are missing. There have been many deaths, and thousands of people have lost everything.
So it's really only a small footnote to the situation to be concerned that Sherwood Forest is in danger - or at least, the stand in for Sherwood Forest that was used for locations in the 1938 Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland movie The Adventures of Robin Hood (still my favourite Robin Hood film).
The area is actually known as Bidwell Park, and 5 acres of Upper Bidwell Park are burning. South of the Park, around the town of Chico, 700 acres have burned.
Meanwhile, at the Paramount Ranch, the Western town outdoor set has also burned down, according to Backlots blog. It's been used as a movie set for 90 years, most recently for the series Westworld.