Actress Virginia Carroll and TV Producer Harvey Frand Pass On

Virginia Carroll
Virginia Carroll, an actress who appeared in B-Westerns and serials, passed on July 23 at the age of 95.

Virginia Carroll was born in Oklahoma on February 14, 1910. She was a department store model in Los Angeles, which led to her casting as in a bit part as a fashion model in her first film, Roberta, in 1935. She appeared in her first leading role in the B-Western A Tenderfoot Goes West in 1936, playing opposite Jack LaRue. Carroll's career in film would consist largely of such B-Westerns, including The Phantom Cowboy, The Masked Rider, and Riders of the Whistling Pines . She appeared alongside such cowboy stars as Don "Red" Barry, Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry. She made several Westerns opposite Johnny Mack Brown. Carroll also appeared in bit parts in major motion pictures, including Waterloo Bridge and Model Wife. She also appeared in a few serials, including The Mysterious Dr. Satan (which grew out of a planned Superman serial from Republic Pictures which fell through), Dick Tracy Returns, G-men vs. the Black Dragon, and Daughter of Don Q. In the serial Superman (1948) Virginia Carroll became the first woman to play Martha Kent, the adopted mother of Superman.

Carroll made her television debut in a 1952 episode of The Adventures of Superman. She went on to make guest appearances on Fireside Theatre, Studio 57, The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Roy Rogers Show, Dragnet, and Perry Mason.

Harvey Frand
Harvey Frand, who produced such television shows as the Eighties version of The Twilight Zone, The Pretender, and the Western The Lazarus Man, passed on July 28 at the age of 68. The cause was respiratory problems.

Harvey Frand was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1941. He started in television there at NBC News. Frand would move onto Warner Brothers, where he was the executive overseeing the production of the series Harry-O. His experience on the show spurred his interest in television production. He produced a revival on Broadway of Sweet Bird of Youth, which ran from December 29, 1975 to February 8, 1976.

The Devlin Connection, Rock Hudson's last series, which debuted in 1982, would be the first show which Frand produced. He produced 34 episodes of the Eighties version of The Twilight Zone, which ran from 1985 to 1988. He also worked on the Eighties series Beauty and the Beast, starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. In the Nineties he produced The Young Riders, the short lived Western the Lazarus Man starring Robert Ulrich. He would also produce The Pretender and the short lived show Strange World. The final show on which Frand served as producer was the re-envisioning of Battlestar Galactica, which ran on the Sci-Fi Channel from 2004 to 2009.