In Memoriam

Our SAG-AFTRA local recently lost five distinguished members:

A. Donald Cross, a longtime Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA member, died in San Francisco on Sept. 26 at age 89. Acting was Cross’ first love, and after raising a family and working for more than 28 years as a speech pathologist, he returned to the stage and screen. He acted in lead roles at The Magic and The Willows Theatre Company. Onscreen, he appeared in films such as The Zodiac, Don Juan in Hell, and Eye on the Sparrow; the television series Midnight Caller and numerous commercials. Cross was a fixture at SAG-AFTRA and Equity membership meetings over the years and was known for greeting colleagues with his enormous smile.  

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Art Finley, a broadcast veteran for more than 50 years, died Aug. 7 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was well known as the broadcast personality Arthur Finger and as Mayor Art, who hosted the children’s show Toonytown on Stockton’s KOVR and then the Bay Area’s KRON during the 1950s and 60s. Finley joined KRON’s news department in 1966 as a producer and hosted the weekly political interview program, Speak Out. He spent the latter half of his career in radio, primarily at KGO and KCBS as a news anchor and host of Nightbeat, and was known for his witty-yet-probing interview style. He also worked in radio in San Diego, Virginia and Canada before retiring in 1998. Finley served on the board for AFTRA San Francisco and is remembered for introducing "loss of voice" benefits to the union contract in 1964. 

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Joan Mankin, a beloved Bay Area actor and clown for over four decades, died Sept. 26 in San Francisco at age 67. The stage was her home and she appeared in lead roles with the American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and many others. It was her alter-ego clown, Queenie Moon, however, that endeared her to Bay Area audiences. She was a company member of Make-a-Circus and The Pickle Family Circus, and taught clowning and physical theatre at Dell’Arte International, San Francisco Clown Conservatory and San Francisco State University. She appeared in the films The Bee Season, Desert Hearts and Mini Supreme. Active in Actors’ Equity, Mankin served on the Bay Area Advisory Committee from 1999 through 2010.   

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Laura Marquez, the Emmy-winning KGO-TV reporter who later went on to work for ABC News in Washington on World News Tonight, Good Morning America and Nightline, died June 18 at the age of 56 at home in Novato. Marquez was a San Francisco native and studied broadcast journalism at UCLA. She began her professional career as one of the first hires at CNN, and after stints in Tennessee and Virginia as an on-air reporter and news anchor, she returned home to San Francisco in 1989 to work at KGO. Her big break at the station came in 1989 during the Loma Prieta earthquake, when she was assigned to report from the Marina District fire station during the World Series game. When the earthquake struck and caused massive damage to the Marina, Marquez reported ahead of every other station. She moved to the ABC network in 2003 but kept one foot in the Bay Area as the network’s Bay Area correspondent.  

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Robert Parnell, respected stage and screen actor, died Nov. 10 at age 80 in Novato. A full-time actor in the Bay Area since the early 80s, Parnell graced the stages of TheatreWorks, The Magic and Marin Theatre Company, among many others. He was especially well known for his performance as Selsdon in the long-running hit Noises Off at Marines Memorial Theatre. He appeared in films such as Made in America (directed by Richard Benjamin) and Hearts and Souls (with Robert Downey Jr.), and in the lead role in Marty Higgins’ The Magic Boat; movies-of-the-week A Whisper Kills and Back To The Streets of San Francisco; television series’ Midnight Caller, Nash Bridges and Wolf, among others; and many commercials.

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This item was originally featured in the March 2016 local newsletter.