Charles Herbert, Child Star Known for Roles in ‘The Fly’ and ‘13 Ghosts,’ Dies at 66
Source: NY Times
By SAM ROBERTS
Charles Herbert, who was 4 years old when he was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout on a bus while shopping with his mother and went on to become a top-earning child actor of the 1950s and ‘60s, died in Las Vegas on Saturday. He was 66.
The cause was a heart attack, according to his brother and only immediate survivor, Jerry Saperstein.
Mr. Herbert was supporting his parents by the time he was 5, appearing in more than 20 films and 50 television episodes in which he fended off all kinds of adversaries, from a robot to a human fly. He shared the limelight with Cary Grant, Sophia Loren and James Cagney.
He played a blind boy in a memorable episode of “Science Fiction Theater” in 1956, and appeared in a 1962 “Twilight Zone” episode in which a widowed father takes his children to choose an android grandmother.
FULL story at link.
Charles Herbert with Patricia Owens in the 1958 film “The Fly.”
Credit 20th Century Fox, via Everett Collection
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/arts/television/charles-herbert-child-star-known-for-roles-in-the-fly-and-13-ghosts-dies-at-66.html?emc=edit_th_20151105&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=58529908&_r=0
I have Martin Milner's autograph on a " 13 Ghosts" photo. The DVD has special glasses to allow you to see the ghosts.
http://www.steveandmarta.com/graveyards/tzcon2002.htm (The 2004 TZCon is here: http://www.steveandmarta.com/tzcon2004.htm)
Martin Milner was next, who was also there only on Saturday. We'd taken a screenshot of him from his role in the William Castle classic "Thirteen Ghosts," and he just about died laughing when he saw it, and told Steve he needed a class upgrade if that was his favorite film.
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/179095%7C0/13-Ghosts.html
The original theater experience of 13 Ghosts was quite different from video viewings today. The gimmick that Castle came up with for moviegoers was a practical user-held version of the Ghost Viewer that characters in the movie employed. Castle found the inspiration for his gimmick in a trip to the eye doctor. He writes in his book Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants Off America: Memoirs of a B-Movie Mogul, "wearing the heavy frames and looking through the assorted lenses, I felt I was in a strange, distorted world. With each new lens the doctor inserted, my vision became more blurred. Finally the right lens was inserted and everything suddenly cleared. I needed glasses, but I had the right gimmick for 13 Ghosts...ILLUSION-O." Castle said that "many months and thousands of dollars were spent trying to make ghosts appear and disappear. Forty tests were made, each one failing. I started to regret the waste of time and had about decided to shelve the entire idea when we finally succeeded - a simple pair of green and blue plastic lenses of just the right density made the ghosts appear miraculously." In addition to the fact that Castle got the lens colors wrong (they were red and blue), the producer seems to be embellishing his technological research here. The lenses used in the Ghost Viewer were the same as those used for Anaglyph 3-D movies, a technology that had already been around for decades. While the 3-D features of the 1950s used the superior Polaroid lenses, many short subjects and a few features had employed the Anaglyph method, so the knowledge of what color and density was needed to filter images on movie film was not a challenge for the makers of 13 Ghosts. (It should be stressed that 13 Ghosts was never in 3-D - the lenses were stacked and were not meant to filter each eye, but rather both eyes; the viewer allowed one to peer through either the red filter or the blue filter, but not both at once).
