John Phillip Law, Played Sinbad, Dead at 70
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 15th, 2008
John Phillip Law, a tall, blond actor who cut a striking figure as the blind angel opposite Jane Fonda in 1968’s Barbarella (below), as Sinbad in 1974’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (above), and as Harry Holt with Bo Derek in 1981’s Tarzan the Ape Man, has died. He was 70.
Law died Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at his Los Angeles home, his ex-wife, Shawn Ryan, said. The cause of death was not announced (although privately, on various celebrity obit forums, a fast-moving cancer is being blamed).
Born in Los Angeles on September 7, 1937, to L.A. County Deputy Sheriff John Law and actress Phyllis Sallee, Law decided to become an actor after taking drama classes at the University of Hawaii.
He moved to New York in the early 1960s, studied with Elia Kazan at the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater and landed bit parts on Broadway. He went to Europe and found work in a handful of Italian films, where he caught the attention of Norman Jewison. The director cast Law as Alexei Kolchin, a young Soviet submariner who wins the heart of a teenage baby-sitter in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, his 1966 Cold War comedy set in New England.
Law’s next break came in Roger Vadim’s science-fiction fantasy starring Fonda, who was then married to the director. Equipped with oversize, feathery wings, Law’s bronzed angel Pygar shields Fonda’s gun-toting, go-go-boot-wearing heroine in her intergalactic adventures.
After gaining notice for his roles in Hurry Sundown (1967), The Sergeant (1968) opposite Rod Steiger, and The Red Baron (1970), Law starred as the ruthless Robin Stone in The Love Machine, a 1971 version of Jacqueline Susann’s pulp novel. The movie flopped.
Law, who mastered Italian and Spanish in his European travels, worked steadily in Hollywood and abroad, appearing in such action-adventure movies as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), The Cassandra Crossing (1977) and Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), among others. He also had a stint playing Jim Grainger on the daytime television drama “The Young and the Restless.”
At the beginning of his career in the ’60s, Law lived in a 1924 Los Feliz mansion with his brother Tom, who had been the road manager for Peter, Paul and Mary. The brothers rented rooms to up-and-coming singers and artists, including Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and Tiny Tim, turning the home into a vibrant salon of emerging pop-culture icons. Life at the Castle, as it was known, was documented in Flashing on the Sixties, a 1987 collection of photos and text by Tom’s former wife, Lisa Law.
Law appeared in the documentary, Ray Harryhausen: Working with Dinosaurs (1999), discussing his role having worked in the Sinbad film, where he is pitted against Harryhausen’s mythical creatures and creations.
Besides his brother, Law is survived by daughter, Dawn Law, and a grandson.
Services will be private.
Source: “John Phillip Law, 70; actor played opposite Fonda in ‘Barbarella'” by Claire Noland, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer. Published May 15, 2008.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I was incredibly impressed as a kid when I first saw “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad”. All the exotic places and incredible monsters Sinbad and his crew faced! A truly great movie, and I really liked the idea of a group of friends sharing the danger together—and not all of them surviving— I still do I suppose, and Hollywood forgot about that concept until it was brought back with “Independence Day”
And yes, OBVIOUSLY I saw “Barbarella” too—at a later age 🙂
Rest in Peace
He also portrayed the Italian pulp anti-hero Diabolik in 1968’s laughable “Danger: Diabolik.”
Rest in peace, Mr. Law, and my condolences to his loved ones.
As always, I really hate hearing that. Like red_pill_junkie, I was lucky enough to see Golden Voyage at the theatre, and even if I’d never seen it since, it would stay with me. And without being a comedy actor (that I know of), he still managed to put a real sense of humor into the part. Just the strange things that he did add up to a real list – Golden Voyage, Diabolik, Barbarella, others I’m not thinking of. And of course the sensitive Russian sailor in The Russians Are Coming.