THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Phillip Law was the strikingly handsome movie actor who captured attention as an angel in the futuristic “Barbarella” and a lovesick Russian seaman in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,”
With vivid eyes, blond hair and imposing physique, Mr. Law was much in demand by filmmakers in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
He gained wide notice in 1966 with Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner and Theodore Bikel in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” Norman Jewison’s cold war comedy in which a Soviet submarine runs aground off a peaceful New England island town. The French director Roger Vadim put Mr. Law’s looks to good use in his 1968 science fiction film “Barbarella,” which starred Jane Fonda, then Vadim’s wife, as a sexy space traveler in the faraway future. Mr. Law wore wings to portray Pygar, a blind angel.
His career also included television and varied foreign and American films, like “The Red Baron” (1971), “The Hawaiians” (1970) and “Hurry Sundown” (1967). Mr. Law was a California native, born in 1937 to the actress Phyllis Sallee and her husband, a police officer. After some extra work as a child, his interest in acting was renewed in a college drama class.
He appeared onstage in New York for a while before breaking into the movies, spending some time working with the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center.
Da The New York Times, 16 maggio 2008
