John Richardson, British Actor in ‘She’ and ‘One Million Years B.C.,’ Died From Coronavirus – Crossover 99

In addition to co-starring in the famous Raquel Welch film, he was about to succeed Sean Connery as James Bond.

This Tuesday British actor John Richardson died of coronavirus, according to media such as Cinema Retro. He was 86 years old and had not appeared on screen since the early 90s, having left behind several decades where he was a regular face in iconic series B productions. Born in Sussex in 1934, he began working in the late 50s, being that of The Demon’s Mask, the role that would make him famous and that would soon lead him to work in many films throughout the world, whether they were Spanish, British, American or Italian.

In Mario Bava’s cult classic, released in 1960, Richardson played the doctor whose blood helped wake up a vampire played by Barbara Steele. Shortly after this success, which anticipated the Giallo in Italian cinematography, the actor starred in The Goddess of Fire in 1965, where he played an archaeologist who discovered a lost city ruled by Ayesha ( Ursula Andress ). The film, produced by Hammer and with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the cast, was another commercial success that would lead to a sequel also starring Richardson but this time without Andress: Revenge of the Fire Goddess, released in 1968.

In 1966 Ricardson was under the command of our Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent in The Adventurer of Guaymas, and that same year he would star in another of his most famous films: A Million Years Ago, directed by Don Chaffey, co-starring Raquel Welch, and very remembered for Ray Harryhausen’s special effects. In ’67 he would star in the spaghetti-western John, the bastard, and by then he would be tried to succeed Sean Connery as James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. They finally elected George Lazenby, and although this actor did not repeat after the premiere of the film in 1969 the producers did not call Richardson again, opting for a returned Connery and later for Roger Moore.

At the end of the decade, he starred alongside Anita Eckberg in the Spanish A Shroud to Measure and in 1970 he was directed by the mythical director Vincente Minelli in Vuelve a mi lado, which also starred Barbra Streisand and Jack Nicholson. In later years Richardson would continue to settle in Series B, and within Italy, he starred in films such as Duck in Orange (1975), The Eye in the Dark by Umberto Lenzi (1975), and The Spawn of the Devil, in 1989.