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  • Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Actor, Dies at 95

    Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Actor, Dies at 95

    Actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., best known for his roles in the television series 77 Sunset Strip and The F.B.I., passed away at his ranch in Southern California on Friday. He was 95.

    In a statement, the actor’s daughter Stephanie Zimbalist and son Efrem Zimbalist III said, “We are heartbroken to announce the passing into peace of our beloved father, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., today at his Solvang ranch. He actively enjoyed his life to the last day, showering love on his extended family, playing golf and visiting with close friends.”

    Zimbalist Jr. was born on November 30, 1918 in New York City to Russian-born violinist Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. and Romanian-born operatic soprano Alma Gluck. The actor attended Yale University in the late 1930’s and then served five years in the United States Army during World War II. He received a Purple Heart for a leg wound sustained during the battle of Hürtgen Forest. A year later, Zimbalist returned to New York and made his Broadway acting debut in The Rugged Path, starring Spencer Tracy.

    Zimbalist’s stint on Broadway segued into a career in Hollywood, and the actor signed a contract with Warner Bros. in 1956. His first lead role came in 1958 as detective Stuart “Stu” Bailey in the popular police procedural 77 Sunset Strip, which ran until 1964. In 1959, Zimbalist garnered the Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer – Male”.

    Here is a clip of the opening credits of 77 Sunset Strip:

    Zimbalist was likely best known for his starring role as Inspector Lewis Erskine on The F.B.I., which ran from 1965 to 1974.

    Zimbalist maintained a strong personal relationship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover while the show was in production. Hoover demanded technical accuracy for the series, and that FBI agents be portrayed in the best possible light. Actors who portrayed agents also had to pass a background check, and Zimbalist himself spent a week at the FBI academy at Quantico, Virginia before production of the series began. Hoover later designated Zimbalist as the image for actual FBI agents to model their personal appearances after.

    Fellow actors took to Twitter to offer their condolences:

    In addition to son Efrem and daughter Stephanie, Zimbalist is survived by four grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • 1957 Murder Cold Case Appealed by Lifer

    1957 Murder Cold Case Appealed by Lifer

    In 2012, former police officer Jack McCullough was convicted of the 1957 kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph, a case that ran cold for almost 60 years. Now an Illinois court is considering an appeal filed by McCullough, whose lawyers claim that an eye-witness to 1957 events was having a “romantic notion.”

    A key witness of the crime was Ridulph’s childhood friend Kathy Sigman Chapman, who is now in her sixties. Chapman claimed she had seen McCullough, then a teenager, giving Ridulph a piggyback ride in Sycamore, Illinois before she disappeared. In a 72-page appeal, McCullough’s lawyers contest that Chapman’s memories of Ridulph’s vanishing were so deeply ingrained into her mind that she could have mistakenly identified McCullough five decades later. The case was once the oldest unsolved murder in the United States, before McCullough, formerly John Tessier, was arrested in July, 2011.

    Chapman testified during the trial that on December 3, 1957, a teenager who called himself Johnny had approached her and Ridulph. Chapman went home briefly to get mittens, and upon her return both Johnny and Maria were missing. Ridulph’s body was found the following spring roughly 120 miles away. The case received national attention, and the FBI became involved under J. Edgar Hoover.

    Here is a 48 Hours documentary on the case:

    The case was reopened decades later, after Janet Tessier, McCullough’s half sister, contacted Illinois State Police. Janet Tessier had been a caretaker of McCullough’s biological mother Eileen Tessier, who had been dying of cancer. On her deathbed, Tessier’s mother confessed that McCullough murdered Ridulph. McCullough was then arrested at a retirement community in Seattle where he’d lived and worked.

    Prosecutors said McCullough, now 74, choked Ridulph with a wire and stabbed her, and he was found guilty. Though, McCollough’s lawyers have testified that Eileen Tessier, who was in the end stages of cancer, was sedated, “emotionally disturbed,” sometimes “basically comatose” and at other times “pleasantly confused.”

    McCollough’s appeal states that by allowing prosecutors to introduce “irrelevant, but highly prejudicial evidence, no rational trier of fact would have found the defendant guilty.”

    Image via YouTube