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Curious
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Dick Miller, a character actor who starred in Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood and whose six-decade career included all of Joe Dante’s movies, died today in Toluca Lake, CA. He was 90.
His résumé includes more than 150 film and TV credits ranging from 1950s westerns to 2000s features including Dante’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Burying the Ex. Along the way he appeared in films by such acclaimed directors as Martin Scorsese (New York, New York), James Cameron (The Terminator), Ernest Dickerson, Jonathan Demme, Allan Arkush, Jonathan Kaplan, John Sayles along with such popular Dante-helmed pics as Innerspace, Gremlins and The Howling.
Born on Christmas Day 1928, the Bronx native and Army veteran likely is best remembered for starring as Walter Paisley, the dimwitted busboy-turned-cause célèbre sculptor in Corman’s 1959 graphic cult-classic Beat satire A Bucket of Blood. After accidentally killing his landlady’s cat, Walter casts it in plaster and has his “creation” mistaken as a great work of art. The actor went on to appear in many of Corman’s movies of the next two decades, including playing flower gobbler Vurson Fouch in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
On the small screen, he guested in such memorable series as Dragnet, The Untouchables, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, The Virginian, Mannix, McCloud, Police Woman, Police Story, Soap, Alice, Taxi, Police Squad!, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, NYPD Blue and ER.
Miller is survived by his wife of 60 years, Lainie; daughter Barbara; and granddaughter Autumn. Plans for a memorial service are pending.
