Cemetery with crosses - legends lost but remembered

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This page is our personal hall of fame. A reminder to us all that even though considered a B-genre, Spaghetti Westerns were full of great characters, played by great people. Many have passed away, and while we are young growing up re-watching all these classics, many more will probably leave us. May they be remembered. What follows, is a work-in-progress, a growing list of legends who have passed away...

Sorted by last name: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

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FRESH GRAVES

  • THOMAS, Peter - 12/1/1925, Breslau, Silesia, Germany - 6/17/2020, Lugano, Switzerland

Film composer Peter Thomas died in Lugano, Switzerland on May 17, 2020, he was 94. He was the composer for such legendary series as "Raumpatrouille", "Derrick" and "Der Alte" as well as numerous works for films like "Der Hexer", "Der Zinker" and "Der eheimliche Mönch" or "Onkel Toms Hütte", "Thunder at the Border” and “ Steiner - The Iron Cross ”, to name but a few. He became one of the busiest composers in Germany in the 1960s. He also contributed soundtracks to several catalog films on the film label Darling Berlin of UCM.ONE by director Will Tremper ("The Endless Night", "Playgirl" and "Escape to Berlin").

He also created the film music for the horror classic " Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel" by Harald Reinl, which will be released in a remastered deluxe edition at M-Square Classics later this year. He worked tirelessly to the end - together with Walter Potganski (moviemax, Munich) - to reconstruct the previously unpublished soundtrack for a first release in this collector's edition. Thomas’ Euro-western compositions include ‘The Last Tomahawk” (1964); ‘Thunder at the Border” 1966; ‘My Friend Winnetou” (TV 1979).


  • PICCOLI, Michel (Jacques Daniel Michel Piccoli) - 12/27/1925, Paris, Île-de-France, France - 5/12/2020, Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, Normandy, France

Veteran French actor Michel Piccoli, renowned for a string of celebrated performances for directors such as Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle, died may 12, 2020 in France, he was 94. Piccoli’s acting career stretched back to the 1940s, but he began his association with major directors in Jean Renoir’s French Cancan in 1955. He was first cast by Bunuel a year later in Death in the Garden, where he played a priest; he would go on to act in a further six Bunuel films, including Diary of a Chambermaid, Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. However, the high point of his 1960s work was arguably Godard’s Contempt, in which he played opposite Brigitte Bardot as the scriptwriter hired to work on an adaptation of The Odyssey. n subsequent decades, Piccoli became a stalwart of French art films, appearing in Death in a French Garden (1985), Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang (1986) and Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991). In 2011 he played the reluctant pope in Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope, and one of his final appearances was in another Carax film, Holy Motors in 2012. Piccoli was married three times: first to Eléonore Hirt, then to singer Juliette Gréco (until 1977), and to Ludivine Clerc, who survives him. Piccoli appeared in the French Euro-westerns: “Terreur en Oklahoma” (1951) as Tommy Goudchote; “Don’t Touch the White Woman!” (1973) as Buffalo Bill and “Far West” (1973) as the Indian chief.


  • ERICSON, John (Joseph Alexander Ottokar Meibes) - 9/25/1926, Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany - 5/3/2020, U.S.A. Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.

German born American actor John Ericson died of pneumonia in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Born Joseph Meibes on Sept. 25, 1926, in Düsseldorf, Germany, Ericson studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in the same class as Grace Kelly, Jack Palance and Don Rickles. Ericson appeared on Broadway in the original production 1951 of Stalag 17, directed by José Ferrer, and he made his film debut in Teresa (1951), directed by Fred Zinnemann. Three years later, he starred with Elizabeth Taylor in Rhapsody (1954). Ericson played "Man Friday" Sam Bolt opposite Francis' private eye title character and a pet ocelot named Bruce on ABC's Honey West. John appeared in two Euro-westerns: “Vengeance of Pancho Villa” (1966) as Don Diego Alvarado/Diego Owens/Django and “Heads or Tails” (1968) as Will Hunter/Bill Abilene/William Huston/Black Talisman.

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