Harriet Nelson

Anne Francis, who costarred in the 1950s science-fiction classic "Forbidden Planet" and later played the title role in "Honey West," the mid-1960s TV series about a sexy female private detective with a pet ocelot, died Sunday. She was 80. Francis, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007 and underwent surgery and chemotherapy, died of complications of pancreatic cancer at a retirement home in Santa Barbara, said Jane Uemura, her daughter. Friends and family members were with her, said a family spokeswoman, Melissa Fitch.

Skip Young, who appeared as the usually inept Wally in the television series "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet," has died at his home. He was 63. Young was found by family members Wednesday morning, San Bernardino County Deputy Coroner Linda Myers said. Myers said Young had been in ill health for several years "but death was very sudden." He died of a heart attack; diabetes was a contributing factor, she added.

Ben Brady, 94, a writer and producer in the early days of television who also worked in radio, died March 20 at his home in Los Angeles. Brady, a New York City native, wrote daytime radio serials to support himself while attending law school at St. Lawrence University. While practicing law, he wrote scripts for such radio shows as "The Thin Man," "Mr. & Mrs. North" and "Inner Sanctum."

Television women, particularly the housewives, have sure changed over the years, unfortunately for the worse. In the earlier years of TV they may have been passive, somewhat naive and subservient, but at least they were friendly, normal and family oriented. Now they've become aggressive, confused, argumentative, weird and even violent. They have regressed from Mrs. Cleaver to the "Axe Lady" ("A Killing in a Small Town"), a housewife who made a point about the inherent dangers of repressed childhood; from Donna Reed to the "Log Lady" ("Twin Peaks")

Jack Douglas, an Emmy Award-winning comedy writer and a frequent guest and foil for Jack Paar on the old "Tonight Show" has died. He was 80. Douglas died Tuesday in a Los Angeles hospital, where he was admitted with pneumonia, said Mary Ann Sauvage of George Schlatter Productions. "He saw the world from a different angle than the rest of us. He was not only funny, he was nice," said George Schlatter, creator and producer of television's "Laugh-In."

With a cool breeze blowing in off the steel-gray ocean below, Harriet Nelson stood on the deck of her cliff-top Laguna Beach house and remembered warmer days. "Ozzie would swim way out past the rocks, and then he'd swim all the way down there," she said, pointing to the rocks off Victoria Beach to the north and then down to Blue Lagoon a half mile to the south. "When we first came down here he'd swim twice a day and play volleyball with all the kids," she said, adding with a throaty laugh: "He'd knock his brains out. Ozzie had to win, you know.

Federal investigators waited Thursday to interview an injured pilot and co-pilot in an effort to learn what caused the northeast Texas plane crash that killed singer Rick Nelson, his fiancee, four members of his band and his soundman on New Year's Eve. Friends and relatives of some of the dead band members said the DC-3, reportedly more than 40 years old, had been beset by engine troubles for several months.