SF&Fantasy events July 6

Born

Geoffrey Rush was born on July 6, 1951, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.

No science fiction, but has created the iconic character Captain Barbosa in the fantasy films Pirates of the Caribbean I, last bit of II, and III.
He also played Casanova Frankenstein in Mystery Men (1999).

John Byrne is a comic book artist who was born on July 6, 1950, Walsall, England, UK. Wrote and drew the X-Men.

Deaths

Buddy Ebsen was born on April 2, 1908, in Belleville, Illinois,and died on July 6, 2003, in Torrance, California. Most famous as Jed from The Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones, he was the first choice for The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, but the aluminum paint that was used on him made him so ill he almost died, and he was replaced while in hospital by Ray Bolger.

He was also the telekinetic cook in the Twilight Zone episode, Prime Mover.

Cameron Mitchell was born on November 4, 1918, in Dallastown, Pennsylvania,and died on July 6, 1994.

In a long career, he made only a handful of SF appearances:

Movies
Space Mutiny (1988) - Cmdr. Alex Jansen
Frankenstein Island (1981) - Clay Jayson
Flight to Mars (1951) - Steve Abbott

TV
Project U.F.O." - Donald Worth in The Pipeline Incident (1978)
(aka Project Blue Book)
Death in Space (1974) (TV)

Malcolm Hulke (Doctor Who and Avengers scriptwriter), born in 1924, died on July 6, 1979.

From Wikipedia:
His first major television work was a series of 1950s children's science fiction serials - Target Luna, Pathfinders in Space, Pathfinders to Mars, and Pathfinders to Venus - which he co-wrote with Eric Paice for the British ABC network. The producer of the series was Sydney Newman, who was later responsible for the creation of Doctor Who as Head of Drama at BBC Television.

In addition to the Pathfinders series and Doctor Who (which he started writing for in 1967) Hulke contributed scripts to The Avengers, The Protectors, Danger Man, Crossroads, football soap United! and Gideon's Way.

His scripts for Doctor Who were noted for avoiding black-and-white characterisation and simplistic plotting. Military figures are usually presented unfavourably - Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Ambassadors of Death both have a general as the ultimate villain. One of his best-known contributions to the series is Doctor Who and the Silurians, which depicts an encounter between the human race and the remnants of a technological reptilian race that ruled Earth in prehistoric times in a way that avoids casting either side as heroes or monsters. Hulke's "Silurians" are the first non-human creatures to be presented as having individual personalities in Doctor Who since the un-named antagonists of his own The Faceless Ones more than three years before. Outside of Hulke's work they are the first since the Menoptra in 1965's The Web Planet.

He also contributed to Target Books' range of Doctor Who novelisations, adapting all but one of his scripts before his death, as well as 1973's The Green Death. Unlike many Target novelisations, which tended to offer little that wasn't in the camera script apart from the words "he said" and "she said" in the appropriate places, Hulke's novelisations were noted for providing a wealth of additional background detail and character depth.

He was a friend and mentor to Terrance Dicks, with whom he collaborated in 1962 on The Avengers episode "The Mauritius Penny", which was Dicks' first television credit; The War Games, Dicks' first Doctor Who script, and on the non-fiction book The Making of Doctor Who.