Photo: A “Nightmare Before Christmas” hearse/snow globes listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $275.

Queen of the Dead—dateline November 7, 2011

•  If you loved Green Acres as much as I did (and if you didn’t, why not?) you will be saddened to hear of the death (on November 2, at 94) of Sid Melton, who played proudly incompetent carpenter Alfred Lord Monroe (to Mary Grace Canfield’s Ralph Waldo Monroe). The Monroe Brothers were just two of the delights in that bizarre post-modern treat, a brilliant oasis in the desert of 1960s sitcoms. The fireplug actor was born in Brooklyn and maintained that Warner Brothers cab-driver aura, acting in such films as The Chance of a Lifetime, George White’s Scandals, Body and Soul, On the Town, White Heat, The Garment Jungle, Designing Woman, The Joker is Wild and Lady Sings the Blues. Melton appeared on nearly every TV show of the 1950s-70s, and had recurring roles on Captain Midnight, Bachelor Father, Make Room for Daddy, and The Golden Girls (in flashbacks, as Estelle Getty’s husband Sal). But he will always be a Monroe Brother to me.

•  Socialite and actress Cobina Wright, Jr., 90, died on September 1, it was just announced. The daughter of a New York stockbroker and his socially ambitious wife, Cobina (along with Brenda Frazier) became a nationally publicized celebutante in the late 1930s (they were poked fun at by everyone from bawdy nightclub comics “Brenda and Cobina” to, decades later, Green Acres—Alf and Ralph—see above—occasionally called each other Brenda and Cobina). Cobina proved herself a charming actress in a handful of 20th Century-Fox films in the early 1940s: Moon Over Miami, Charlie Chan in Rio, Week-End in Havana, Footlight Serenade among them. After losing her beau Prince Phillip to Princess Elizabeth, she married an automobile tycoon and left the limelight.

•  A Prairie Home Companion’s sound-effects master, Tom Keith, 64, died on October 30. I haven’t listened to the show in 20 years (will someone explain how to “podcast” to this old lady?), but I fondly recall Keith’s wonderful foley talents, as well as his engaging acting skills. Host Garrison Keillor recalled, “Whenever Tom came onstage for a sketch, I could see the audience’s heads turn in his direction. They could hear me but they wanted to see Tom, same as you’d watch any magician.”

 •  Another longtime business gone: the 52-year-old clothing chain Syms (which also ran the 102-year-old Filene’s Basement) announced this week it is going out of business. New Yorkers fondly recall founder Sy and his daughter “Mawcy” Syms voicing their commercials (“An educated consumer is our best customer”), and who will fund all those public TV shows now? Forty-six stores closing, 2,500 people out of work. TV viewers have been long entertained by the annual Running of the Brides, a Filene’s wedding-gown discount that always made for a good fluff piece on slow news days. Marcy (Sy died in 2009) announced, “We have been faced with increased competition from large department stores that now offer the same brands as our stores at similar discounts; a proliferation of private label discount chains; a decline in buying opportunities as brand name labels have reduced overruns by improving their supply chain management – all combined with the worst economic downturn in our lifetimes.”

— Eve Golden