HAPPY BIRTHDAY
KAREN STEELE (1931 - 1988)
ANNE BARTON (1924 - 2000)
JACK KRUSCHEN (1922 - 2002)
WENDELL COREY (1914 - 1968)
MICHAEL REDGRAVE (1908 - 1985)
EDGAR BUCHANAN (1903 - 1979)
ROD LAUREN (1940 - 2007)
The fledgling singer appeared on both Ed Sullivan and Dick Clark's variety showcases between the years 1959 and 1960 and earned a mild hit along the way (#31 on the Billboard chart) with "If I Had a Girl" in 1960.
In 1963 alone Rod made six films, all of them lowbudget in nature but a couple finding cult infamy. In the cheapjack shocker "Terrified" (1963) he plays a young college student who, with others, are trapped in a ghost town with a masked psychopathic killer. In "Black Zoo" (1963) it is veteran actor Michael Gough who imperils Lauren's life as a demented animal owner who triggers his caged pets to attack. The third horror flick is his best known, "The Crawling Hand" (1963), in which the hand of a deceased astronaut comes to life and wreaks havoc.
In 1964, Lauren went to the Philippines for the filming of "Once Before I Die" (1966), and while there met Nida Blanca, a then-rising Filipino film star. He shunted back and forth between the Philippines and Southern California for over a decade before finally marrying Ms. Blanca in 1979. He then took permanent residence in Manila. Ms. Blanca was the U.S. star equivalent of a Doris Day or Debbie Reynolds. Rod functioned as his wife's escort as his own career had dissipated.
On November 6, 2001, Ms. Blanca was viciously stabbed to death in a parking garage. In November of 2003 Rod (who had long returned to his real name of Roger Strunk) was to be charged with her murder after authorities claimed he hired an assassin to kill his wife who had threatened to divorce and disinherit him. In a shot to the poor Manila justice system, authorities allowed Rod to return to the U.S. before charges could be filed against him. Claiming his mother, who lived in Tracy, California, was dying of cancer and he needed to be with her, he managed to resist extradition and resettled in Tracy. More recently he was employed as a camera operator for the city of Tracy's public-access station, Channel 26. The pressures of the ongoing investigation, however, finally took its toll and he ended it all on July 11, 2007, by jumping to his death from a second floor motel balcony in Tracy. He was 67.
