Actor George Segal passes away at 87 after heart surgery (news).

Actor George Segal has sadly passed away at 87 after heart surgery in the USA.

George appeared in a lot of films of my youth – not many SF works – but his contributions included movies such as The Terminal Man based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, where Harry Benson, a scientist, undergoes surgery to insert a microcomputer in his brain to get rid of violent seizures. However, the surgery does not go as planned.

He also appeared in 2012, the science-fiction disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich.

There were plenty of cri-fi, spy-fy, war flicks, and comedies to add to the roster.

Faves of mine include The Quiller Memorandum (1966) – spy stuff – The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) rom-com in scary Barbra Streisand-Vision – and the fab war movie The Bridge at Remagen (1969) with Robert Vaughn, oddly cast, as the German commander of the defending forces.

George actually served in the United States Army, playing in a band called Corporal Bruno’s Sad Sack Six. He also broke the movie industry tradition in California by refusing to change his Jewish surname to something WASPie-sounding. Good on you, George.

He married his former George School boarding school classmate Sonia Schultz Greenbaum in 1996 and is survived by her and his two children from an earlier marriage.

They certainly won’t be turning out anymore like George Segal in the much diminished Hollywood machine. See you on the other side of the great bridge, G.S.