Mark Goddard, the actor best known for his role as Major Don West on the late 1960s TV sci-fi adventure series “Lost in Space,” died on Tuesday, October 10, 2023, he was 87. Goddard died of pulmonary fibrosis at a hospice center in Hingham, Mass., his wife, Evelyn Pezzluich, announced on Facebook.
Goddard was hospitalized with pneumonia days after celebrating his birthday, said Pezzluich. He was transferred to a rehabilitation center where doctors discovered that he was in the final stages of pulmonary fibrosis.
Major West was the pilot of a spaceship carrying a family of five, a stowaway, and a robot in the far distant future — the year 1997. On their way to help colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, their ship went seriously off course, leaving the cast marooned on a different, inhospitable one (though luckily the atmosphere was suitable for human life). The show ran for three seasons, from 1965 to 1968.
Bill Mumy, who co-starred with Goddard on Lost in Space, paid homage to his late costar Friday on Facebook, remembering Goddard as a “truly beloved friend and brother to me for 59 years.”
“The last words we exchanged were ‘I love you,'” Mumy wrote, adding, “Mark was a truly fine actor. Naturally gifted as well as trained. I know he sometimes felt constricted by the campy frame that LIS constrained him within, but he also embraced and loved it… There’s a part of me that envisions him having a martini in heaven right now with Jonathan Harris, Kevin Burns, Guy Williams, and other comrades who left this world of woe before him. There’s a part of me that believes he’s in a better place now. A much better place.”
In a 1998 feature adaptation of the series, Goddard, Lockhart, Cartwright, and Kristen also made a memorable cameo in the 1998 film adaptation of Lost in Space, which starred Matt LeBlanc as Don West.
Following his time on Lost in Space, Goddard also appeared on General Hospital as Derek Barrington over the span of 11 episodes from 1985 to 1986. Other credits include One Life to Live, The Doctors, The Detectives, Barnaby Jones, Perry Mason, Johnny Ringo and Blue Detective.
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