Cut-down and spliced from today’s L.A. Times obits:
Donna Hall Fishburn, a veteran Hollywood stunt double and horsewoman who worked in hundreds of westerns in a 40-year career in which she doubled for Barbara Stanwyck in “The Maverick Queen,” Debbie Reynolds in “How the West Was Won” and Doris Day in “Calamity Jane,” has died. She was 74. Fishburn once said she was too scared to become an actress. But doing anything on horseback never frightened her, although movie work sometimes took a toll. In “Cat Ballou,” she jumped off a train and hit a rock. And while she was working as a stuntwoman for Stanwyck on location for “Maverick Queen,” a horse fell on her. “Then,” as she once recalled, “I got food poisoning from the catering truck, and the next day they accidentally dropped me on my head. But they paid me well—and I got to see a lot of Colorado.” Fishburn, who did trick-riding in rodeos on the weekends and once appeared at Madison Square Garden, was among only a dozen or so women doing western stunt work in those days. Among her other feature film credits are “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Big Country” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang.” Fishburn also worked in numerous TV westerns, including “Kit Carson,” “The Lone Ranger,” “The Cisco Kid,” “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “Have Gun Will Travel.” “We couldn’t wait for the sun to come up and hated to see it go down,” Fishburn recalled of her movie days in 2000, the year she received a Golden Boot Award.
Jeff Corey, a gifted actor who was blacklisted for refusing to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s but emerged as one of the most sought-after teachers in Hollywood, has died. He was 88. Perhaps best-known for his post-blacklist roles in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “In Cold Blood,” “Little Big Man” and on the TV sitcoms “One Day at a Time” and “Night Court,” Corey died Friday morning at St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica of complications from a fall earlier in the week at his home in Malibu. After the war, Corey returned to Hollywood and resumed his busy career playing heavies in such films as “The Killers” and “Brute Force.” He also played the role of a psychiatrist in “Home of the Brave,” one of his best performances. Corey seemed ready for even better film parts as the second lead or top character actor, when he was subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which had been investigating Communist influence in Hollywood since 1947. The actor was scheduled to appear at the hearing in downtown Los Angeles in September 1951. He was 37 and had a wife and three daughters to support. But he took the 5th Amendment and didn’t work again as an actor in Hollywood for more than a decade, missing out on countless movie opportunities and what would later be considered the golden age of television. Corey himself wouldn’t start working again in films until 1962, when he was offered parts in the films “The Balcony” and “The Yellow Canary.” One of his students, Pat Boone, helped him get the part in “The Yellow Canary” by talking the legal department at Fox into taking him on. Over the next 35 years, Corey appeared in more than 70 films or television series. He also got chances to direct.