Perry Lopez, Jack Nicholson's nemesis in CHINATOWN, dead at 78.

Robert DoQui, part of Robert Altman's stock company and the memorable pimp King George in COFFY, dead at 74.

Both actors were ubiquitous on network television during the '60s and '70s, so much so that, like many other familiar faces, they almost seemed like part of the family, because they were in your house so much.

Perry Lopez was the Erik Estrada of his time (the mid-‘50s), a Latin heartthrob with good looks and a full head of dark, combed-back hair. He was a New Yorker, so I’ve always assumed he was Puerto Rican, although I’ve never been able to confirm this. He was Spanish Joe in Raoul Walsh's BATTLE CRY (1955), a marine recruit who gets to make out with gorgeous Anne Francis, much to the heartbreak of bookish John Lupton. He was often cast as Mexicans, Indians and Italians. He played one of Charles Bronson’s Indian brothers in Delmer Daves' DRUM BEAT (1954) and would later reteam with Bronson in two films in the late 1980s, DEATH WISH 4 and KINJITE. He was a mafioso in another Alan Ladd movie, HELL ON FRISCO BAY (1955). (He was in four Alan Ladd movies.) He played Mendoza, the inside man in I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES (1955), the part played by Cornel Wilde in the original, HIGH SIERRA. He played a Puerto Rican hoodlum who harasses John Saxon in CRY TOUGH (1959), a low-budget drama about Puerto Ricans in New York but filmed in California—and Lopez may have been the only actual Puerto Rican in the cast (if, of course, Lopez was PR). He played an Indian in Elvis’ FLAMING STAR and a Pole, Tony Curtis’ brother, in TARAS BULBA.

He was memorable in everything I’ve seen him in. I’ve always wondered why he never became a bigger star or never got the right “CHIPS”-type TV part to make him a household name. Maybe he came up a little too soon. Or maybe Henry Silva, a New York actor of somewhat similar ethnic background who’s older than Lopez and came on the scene around the same time, got all the good parts. Silva played a wider range of roles, including a few Asian characters (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE RETURN OF MR. MOTO) and many memorable criminal/villain roles (THE TALL T, A HATFUL OF RAIN, JOHNNY COOL), so was able to carve out a more visible niche for himself. (I always thought Silva was Puerto Rican, but the IMDB quotes him as insisting he’s of Sicilian and Spanish descent.)