February 6, 2009
Star of Them! Dies
James Whitmore, the well-known actor of over 50 movies, and the star of such celebrated cryptofiction films as Them!, has died of lung cancer in Malibu, on February 6th, 2009, at the age of 87. He was diagnosed with the disease a week before Thanksgiving.
Born in White Plains, N.Y., on October 1, 1921, Whitmore later moved to Buffalo, N.Y., where he attended public schools until his senior year of high school, when he attended the Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., on a football scholarship.
He was surrounded by what he considered to be the most important in his life, which was his family. He was loved and admired for his work as an actor, but he was loved and admired for being a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather to all those who knew him and loved him. said his son Steve
In addition to his son Steve, Whitmore is survived by his third wife, Noreen; his sons James Jr. and Dan; eight grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren.
Whitmore’s Los Angeles Times obit can be found here.
Them! (1954)
Dr. Patricia ‘Pat’ Medford [played by Joan Weldon]: [observing the tunnel walls] Look! Held together with saliva!
Ben Peterson [played by James Whitmore]: Yeah! Spit’s all that’s holding me together right now, too.
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.
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