Harris Yulin (November 5, 1937 – June 10, 2025)

Harris Yulin, the acclaimed character actor who
starred in films including Scarface and
Ghostbusters II, has died.

Over the course of his career, the California-
born actor played more than 100 roles on stage
and screen, including working extensively on
Broadway.
 

Yulin’s family and his manager, Sue Leibman,
announced that he died June 10 in New York
City of cardiac arrest. He was 88.

Brian Douglas Wilson (June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025)

On June 11, 1979, John Wayne, famous for starring in countless westerns, died at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a
decade.

The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset,
Iowa, and moved as a child to Glendale, California. A football star
at Glendale High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years.

After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended
director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs were
bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his beloved pet dog.

Wayne’s first starring role came in 1930 with The Big Trail, a film
directed by Raoul Walsh.

Then 34-year-old director Steven Spielberg reportedly drew on
his own experiences as an unusually imaginative, often-lonely
child of divorce for his science-fiction classic E.T. the Extra-
Terrestrial, which was released on June 11, 1982.

For Spielberg, E.T. marked a return to territory he had first
visited with the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(1977).

E.T. had stupendous success at the box office, eventually
raking in some $435 million (it was re-released in 1985 and
a special 20th-anniversary edition was issued in 2002).

Steven Spielberg with E.T.