Mark Goddard is Dead to Me

He spent 20 years as a special ed teacher

Surprised it took the press so long to post this. This is from Bill Mumy's Facebook from yesterday.

Bill Mumy; yesterday at 2pm

I hate writing this.

R.I.P. to Mark Goddard. A truly beloved friend and brother to me for 59 years. I knew this was coming for the past few months. Shortly after a great phone chat he and I had on his 87th birthday in late July, I became aware that I would most likely never see or speak with him again. The last words we exchanged were "I love you."

Mark’s “real” name was Charles Harvey. Mine is Charles William. We called each other by those birth names often. We also called each other “Captain Panther” and “Fox” based on the crude childhood comic books I wrote and drew in my spare time while filming Lost in Space. He and I had a lot of great memorable times together during the three years of filming the series. We got into some pretty goofy trouble. Mark was a truly fine actor. Naturally gifted as well as trained. I know he sometimes felt constricted by the campy frame that LIS constrained him within, but he also embraced and loved it.

Mark was a sports nut. He passionately followed his Boston teams. He was a die hard Celtics fan. I’m a die hard Lakers fan. We teased each other about that classic rivalry and we both had great respect for many of the players on the teams we rooted against. He was ridiculously handsome and eternally boyish. Mark was very funny and spontaneous. He enjoyed having a good time. My deepest condolences and love to Mark's amazing and strong wife Evelyn and his wonderful children, Melissa, (Missy), Michael, Caleb and John.

There's a part of me that envisions him having a martini in Heaven right now with Jonathan Harris, Kevin Burns, Guy Williams and other comrades who left this world of woe before him. There's a part of me that believes he's in a better place now. A much better place.

But I still hate writing this. 🙏🏻🙏🏻❤️

He gave Suzanne Pleshette a hard time in A Rage to Live

On Dec. 1, 1963, Mark and his then-wife found the dead body of their friend Karyn Kupcinet. Karyn, found in her apartment, was believed to have died 2-3 days earlier.

Karyn Kupcinet (born Roberta Lynn Kupcinet; March 6, 1941 – November 28, 1963) was an American stage, film, and television actress. She was the daughter of Chicago newspaper columnist and television personality Irv Kupcinet, and the sister of television director and producer Jerry Kupcinet.

Kupcinet had a brief acting career during the early 1960s. Six days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, her body was found at her home in West Hollywood, California. With her death officially ruled an unsolved homicide, and occurring so close to the assassination, her name became one of hundreds added to the multiplicity of theories that emerged after the assassination.

Kupcinet's father publicly dismissed the theories linking his daughter to the president's death. In 1992, after NBC's Today program briefly referred via a caption to her alleged connection to the assassination, Irv Kupcinet described the broadcast as "an atrocious outrage" and "calumny". Karyn Kupcinet's death remains officially unsolved.

Oh for a second I thought this was the MTV VJ

R5 That was allegedly a big warning to Irv Kupcinet not to say or print any information that was contrary to the established JFK lone gunman narrative.

Yes, the conspiracy dons were worried about Irv Kupcinet.

We know.

If only the DL search function worked.

It works again, R10, such as it is.

R11, neither of the Mark Goddard threads show up in an internal search.

[Quote] We know.

Thank you Sybil

Angela Cartwright posted a lovely tribute on Instagram. Saw him on Broadway in The Act with Liza. Nothing role but he was HOT.

Aw damn. I didn't understand my feelings as a kid but I was always laser focused on him when watching the show. RIP

He was angry and so was Guy Williams. Dr. Smith was suppose to only be on the first couple of episodes, but he was so popular that they kept him on. The focus of the show shifted to Dr. Smith, the robot and Will Robinson. Guy and Mark were very resentful and it showed

My favorite episode was one where Don got knocked out and when he fell on the floor his back was to a wall and his left arm fell down between his legs and his hand fell right onto his crotch. I guess he felt it better to not move it because they would have had to reshoot the scene since he was supposed to be out cold. But that hand on his crotch sent my young loins into stratospheric levels of fire.

He raised Jack Nicholson's bio son Caleb as his own, after he married Susan Anspach. The online obits only mention a daughter, however.

One of the hottest photos I've seen of him

'They found Karyn's Body' AP news article with photo of Mark and his wife

He married my mom's best friend from college. I met him only once. I was working at The Museum of Television & Radio in Bev Hills and we did a Lost in Space event. He drank. And drank. Literally fell out of his chair on stage.

Years later, I learned about Karyn Kupcinet, and how he was the last person to see her alive. I always wanted to ask him about that. Ah well.

Reading about his early years in Hollywood, he had the LIFE. Roommates with Adam West, early on. Doing lots of guest shots on TV shows and supporting roles in movies. The late '50s and the '60s were the best time to live in Hollywood. I really romanticize that era here. Very Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.

David Lange an aspiring actor and brother of Hope Lange and actor Andrew Prine were considered suspects in Karyn Kupcinet.

in Kupcinet's murder (^.^)

Her death got linked to the Kennedy assassination in 1967, by researcher Penn Jones Jr. in his self-published book Forgive My Grief II (so cannot confirm the authenticity). He claimed the unidentified woman who called the telephone company executive from the vicinity of Oxnard, California, just twenty minutes before the shooting of the president in Dallas and stated that he was going to be shot, was Kupcinet. This led to her death being linked to the Kennedy assassination, as she knew too much and she would divulge the secrets. In the early 1990s, after the box-office success of JFK (1991), there was a wave of media attention about the JFK conspiracy. NBC’s Today Show broadcast a list of mysterious deaths at that time, in which Karyn was the first person mentioned on the list. Her father, Irv Kupcinet who knew Jack Ruby (person who shot Lee Harvey Oswald), vehemently denied this claim by NBC.

In 1988 Kupcinet's father Irv Kupcinet published a memoir in which he revealed that he and his wife believed that Andrew Prine had nothing to do with their daughter's murder but that he was suspicious of a person still alive. When he wrote his memoir Irv named David Lang a neighbor of his daughter who had twice confessed to friends he was guilty. Later when questioned Lang suggested he was kidding.

Prine posed for Viva in the 70s

(^.^) LANGE NOT LANG