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Gene Hackman, the Academy Award-winning actor who starred in films including The French Connection, Crimson Tide and Superman, died Wednesday. He was 95.

Hackman and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, 63, were found dead at their home in Santa Fe, N.M., our sister site Variety reports.

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The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department has not provided a cause of death.

Stephen Kandel, the prolific screenwriter whose work over four decades in television spanned Sea Hunt to Star Trek, Batman to Barnaby Jones and Mannix to MacGyver, has died. He was 96.

Kandel died Oct. 21 of natural causes in his Boston apartment, his daughter Elizabeth Englander told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kandel also wrote multiple episodes of such shows as The Millionaire, The Rogues, Gidget, I Spy, Ironside, The Wild Wild West, It Takes a Thief, Dan August, The New Mike Hammer, Mission: Impossible, Room 222, The Magician, Medical Center, Cannon, Hawaii Five-o and Hart to Hart.

Plus, he co-created Iron Horse, a 1966-68 drama from ABC and Screen Gems that starred Dale Robertson, as a gambler turned railroad baron, Gary Collins and Ellen Burstyn.

“His résumé reads like a Baby Boomer’s dream list of must-see TV,” Tom Weaver wrote in his 2005 book, Earth vs. the Sci-Fi Filmmakers.

Kandel had a hand...

Dean Smith, who won a gold medal as a sprinter at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics before becoming a top-notch Hollywood stunt performer who worked on a dozen films starring John Wayne, has died. He was 91.

Smith died Saturday at his home in Breckenridge, Texas, after a battle with cancer, his friend Rob Word told The Hollywood Reporter.

Smith, who got into the business with help from James Garner, appeared in seven Paul Newman films, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), The Sting (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974).

The tough Texan, who loved to say he could “ride, run and jump,” doubled for good friend Dale Robertson on the 1957-62 NBC series Tales of Wells Fargo, the 1964 film Blood on the Arrow and the 1966-68 ABC series Iron Horse.

He also did the dirty work for Ben Johnson...

Harold Livingston, an American novelist who wrote the screenplay for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1979, died early Thursday morning, Bobby Livingston confirmed to Variety. He was 97.

“Star Trek: The Motion Picture” was Livingston’s most famous writing credit, and he also wrote for several TV shows, including “Mission: Impossible,” “The Six Million Dollar Man” and more.

“Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and sci-fi author Alan Dean Foster, who penned several “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” novels, also contributed to the story and script development alongside Livingston. The 1979 film was the first movie in the “Star Trek” franchise, and it starred the original TV series cast members, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Persis Khambatta and Stephen Collins.

The film was successful at the box office, earning 139 million worldwide from a 44 million budget, and Paramount ordered a follow-up, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan...

Motörhead have dropped a previously unreleased soundcheck recording of “Stay Clean” from 1981, one of the tracks off the metal trio’s upcoming 40th-anniversary reissue of their first live album No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith.

In addition to the original, legendary live album — culled from highlights from the group’s 1981 U.K. tour — the reissue boasts three more unreleased complete gigs from that trek: March 28th, 1981 at Leeds Queens Hall in Leeds, and March 29th and 30th, 1981 at Newcastle City Hall. The soundcheck of “Stay Clean” comes from the March 30th show...

Motörhead have dropped a previously unreleased live version of “The Hammer,” which will appear on the upcoming 40th anniversary reissue of their first live album, No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith, out June 25th.

This version of “The Hammer” — which Motörhead tear through in all their ragged, raw and pulverizing glory — comes from their March 30th, 1981 concert concert at Newcastle City hall in Newcastle, England. While a handful of tracks from that show made it on to the original No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith, the new reissue marks the first time the concert...

With six Oscar nominations (and one win), seven Globe film nominations, eight Emmy nods (and two wins), Burstyn knows how to pick her roles. If she likes a script, she asks about the director. Only when she watched Darren Aronofsky’s “Pi” did she get why she should take the role of the drug-addicted mother in “Requiem for Dream.” “Ok, I get it, the guy’s a poet,” she said. “Twice in my life at the end of a screening there was a 10-minute standing ovation,” she said, “‘Spitfire Grill’ at Sundance and ‘Requiem for a Dream’ at Cannes.” It yielded another Oscar nod.

With Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman,” she read the script by Hungarian playwright/screenwriter Kata Wéber, who drew upon her own silent reaction to a miscarriage. Burstyn watched Mundruczó’s Oscar submission “White God.” “I liked the script, investigated Kornél’s work,” Burstyn said.

Linda Cristal, the Argentine-born actress who played Victoria Cannon, wife of Leif Erickson’s stoic, heroic rancher Big John Cannon on NBC’s popular 1967-71 Western The High Chaparral, died in her sleep at her Beverly Hills home Saturday. She was 89.

Her death was reported to The New York Times by son Jordan Wexler.

Cristal had built a career as an actress during the 1950s in Mexico’s film industry when she was cast in an English-speaking role in 1956’s Comanche, directed by George Sherman and starring Dana Andrews.

Film and TV credits throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s included roles in Rawhide, Seven Sins, The Alamo, The Tab Hunter Show and Iron Horse, among others. For her performance in Black Edwards’ 1958 comedy The Perfect Furlough, she shared a New Star of the Year Golden Globe Award with Tina Louise and Susan Kohner.

Her highest profile role arrived in...

Herb Ellis, an actor and director known for helping Jack Webb create the iconic TV series Dragnet, died Dec. 26 in San Gabriel, Calif. He was 97.

Born Herbert Siegel in Cleveland, Ohio on Jan. 7, 1921, Ellis was a radio actor and director. His frequent collaborations with Webb included a pilot they wrote titled Joe Friday, Room Five which later served as the foundation for the iconic TV procedural Dragnet.

For the first eight episodes of the series, which debuted in 1952, Ellis played Officer Frank Smith opposite Webb before Ben Alexander took over the role until the series ended in 1959.

In addition to Dragnet, Ellis appeared in various other radio series including Dangerous Assignment, Escape, Tales of the Texas Rangers, and The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe.

On the movie side, Ellis appeared in notable films such as Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and Billy Wilder’s The Fortune Cookie.

In 1967, he returned...

When was the last time you thought about The Iron Horse? Or The Time Tunnel? How about The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.? All are television shows that premiered the second week of September in 1966, and all have effectively faded from memory. Not so with The Monkees, the groundbreaking TV-music-performance project that ran amok across the late '60s pop cultural landscape like Frankenstein's multimedia monster. 50 years later, it's still very much alive.

Earlier this year, the three surviving Monkees reunited in the studio with producer Adam Schlesinger – a veteran of the uber-poppy Fountains of Wayne and the tunesmith behind the brilliant...

When was the last time you thought about The Iron Horse? Or The Time Tunnel? How about The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.? All are television shows that premiered the second week of September in 1966, and all have effectively faded from memory. Not so with The Monkees, the groundbreaking TV-music-performance project that ran amok across the late '60s pop cultural landscape like Frankenstein's multimedia monster. 50 years later, it's still very much alive. Earlier this year, the three surviving Monkees reunited in the studio with producer Adam Schlesinger - a veteran of the uber-poppy Fountains of Wayne and the tunesmith behind the...

Westerns – the Great American Movie Genre. Yes, the Italian cinema has its Spaghetti Western - Cameriere, more Sangiovese, please! But we’re talking real, honest-to-John-Wayne American westerns here. The kind with a big, wide-open-spaces theme by somebody like Elmer Bernstein, Alfred Newman, orLerner and Loewe. Morricone magic is better served with the aforementioned grape of Chianti – and movies where the dubbed dialog doesn’t quite match up with the actors’ mouths.

The soundtrack of “The Horse Soldiers” rides in on the strains of “Dixie” and out to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” You not only get a western, you get a Civil War movie, too. And John Wayne’s in both of them.

Heck, you even get John Ford directing at no extra charge, and a story that was ripped from the headlines of the Vicksburg Post, circa 1863. A western? In Mississippi? That’s right, pilgrim. Mississippi was once The West.

Dale Robertson, best remembered for his roles in television and movie Westerns, has died. His niece Nancy Robertson tells the Associated Press her uncle died Tuesday at a hospital in La Jolla, CA following a brief illness. He was 89. Dale Robertson had small roles in films beginning in the late 1940s, including The Boy With The Green Hair and Flamingo Road. He went on to play Jesse James in Fighting Man Of The Plains before moving into television in the 1950s. His best remembered series were Tales Of Wells Fargo, Iron Horse, and Death Valley Days (1968-70). He also played the lead role in the first of A. C. Lyles’ second feature Westerns, Law Of The Lawless. He continued working in TV in the 1970s and 1980s, landing roles in the popular night-time soap operas Dallas and Dynasty. His final role was Zeke in TV’s Harts Of The West.

Taciturn hero of film and television westerns

In Hollywood, in the days when men were men, Dale Robertson, who has died aged 89, was considered the epitome of masculinity. In the Clarion Call episode from O Henry's Full House (1952), a giggling, snivelling crook, played by Richard Widmark, whom Robertson, a cop, has come to arrest, keeps calling him "the beeg man". Robertson, an ex-prize fighter, was indeed "beeg" – tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome, with a gravelly voice. He was tough but fair to men, and courteous to ladies, particularly in the many westerns in which he starred in the 1950s, and in his most famous role, that of special investigator Jim Hardie in the TV series Tales of Wells Fargo.

He was born Dayle Lymoine Robertson, in Harrah, Oklahoma, and attended Oklahoma Military Academy, Claremore, where he was named "all around outstanding athlete". During the second world war, he served with Patton's Third Army,...

Oklahoma City — Dale Robertson, an Oklahoma native who became a star of television and movie Westerns during the genre's heyday, died Tuesday. He was 89.

Robertson's niece, Nancy Robertson, said her uncle died at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., following a brief illness.

Dale Robertson had bit parts in films including "The Boy with the Green Hair" and the Joan Crawford vehicle "Flamingo Road" before landing more high-profile roles such as Jesse James in "Fighting Man of the Plains."

In the 1950s, he moved into television, starring in series such as "Tales of Wells Fargo" (1957-62), "Iron Horse" (1966) and "Death Valley Days" (1968-70).

Robertson continued to work in TV in the 1970s, and in the 1980s he landed roles in the popular night-time soap operas "Dallas" and "Dynasty."

In 1993, he took what would be his final role, as Zeke in the show "Harts of the West," before retiring from...

Dale Robertson, a veteran of movies and TV Westerns of the 1950s and ’60s who played “the left-handed gun” on NBC’s Tales of Wells Fargo, died Wednesday of lung cancer and pneumonia in a San Diego hospital. He was 89. An Oklahoma native and member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Robertson also starred as gambler-turned-railroad tycoon Ben Calhoun in Iron Horse, which ran on ABC from 1966-68, and as the Texas billionaire title character in NBC’s 1987-88 adventure series J.J. Starbuck, from Stephen J. Cannell Productions. The tall, handsome Robertson also had recurring

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Actor and talk show host Gary Collins died over the weekend at the age of 74. Collins made his movie debut in The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) and co-starred in the TV Western Iron Horse from 1966 to 1968. He also starred in a number of shorter-lived TV series in the 1960s and '70s, including The Wackiest Ship In The Army (1966-67), The Sixth Sense (1972), and Born Free (1974). He was also in the 1970 movie Airport and made guest appearances on several shows, the most recent being Dirty Sexy Money in 2009. Collins truly found his niche ...

Emmy award winner Gary Collins, a fixture of American television, has passed away at the age of 74 in Biloxi, Ms. According to TMZ, the Charlie's Angel's star passed away at the Biloxi Regional Medical Center around 1:00 Am from natural causes. Collins was the former Miss America emcee who was also a television actor and host. His work in classic TV series like Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Iron Horse, hosting the Miss America Contest and his Hour Magazine talk-show are what so many of us remember tonight. Collins was married to Mary Ann Mobley for 45 years, and together they had a daughter. He has two children from his first marriage to Susan Peterson.

Gary Collins death at age 74 Collins -- best known in the United States as a television / Miss America Pageant host; elsewhere, as an actor in dozens of television series and a number of TV movies -- died earlier today, Saturday, October 13, of "natural causes" while in Biloxi, Mississippi. Collins was 74 years old. In recent years, he was involved in drunken-driving accidents and spent a few days in jail. (A little more information below.) Born in Venice, California, on April 30, 1938, Collins began his show business career while still serving in the U.S. Army, stationed in Europe. His film career didn't go very far: a mere ten movies over the course of four decades. The most notable among those was George Seaton's Airport (1970), an all-star blockbuster and Best Picture Oscar nominee in which Collins had a small role. Collins television work: countless television series and several movies On the other hand,...

Gary Collins, who won a Daytime Emmy in 1984 for hosting Hour Magazine and worked a variety of acting and emceeing gigs in a career that spanned five decades, died of natural causes early Saturday in a Biloxi, Miss., hospital. He was 74.

Collins scored a total of six Daytime Emmy nominations during Hour Magazine‘s eight-year run in the 1980s, and hosted the Miss America pageant from 1985-1989.

In the 1960s and early ’70s, he starred in series such as Iron Horse, The Sixth Sense, and Born Free. Later, he appeared in episodes of The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels,...

Randy rides west.

Westerns – the Great American Movie Genre. Yes, the Italian cinema has its Spaghetti Western - Cameriere, more Sangiovese, please! But we’re talking real, honest-to-John-Wayne American westerns here. The kind with a big, wide-open-spaces theme by somebody like Elmer Bernstein, Alfred Newman, or Lerner and Loewe. Morricone magic is better served with the aforementioned grape of Chianti – and movies where the dubbed dialog doesn’t quite match up with the actors’ mouths.

The soundtrack of “The Horse Soldiers” rides in on the strains of “Dixie” and out to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” You not only get a western, you get a Civil War movie, too. And John Wayne’s in both of them.

Heck, you even get John Ford directing at no extra charge, and a story that was ripped from the headlines of the Vicksburg Post, circa 1863. A western? In Mississippi? That’s right, pilgrim.