Another one going too young...
LONDON -- The actor who starred in the television show "H.R. Pufnstuf" and played the Artful Dodger in the movie musical "Oliver!" has died.

His agent said Jack Wild had mouth cancer. He was 53.

Wild was discovered as a child playing soccer in a London park.



He later appeared in the London stage production of "Oliver!" and then in the film, which earned him an Oscar nomination at the age of 16. On "H.R. Pufnstuf," Wild played Jimmy, the hero of the show.

Wild struggled with alcoholism as an adult and he blamed his cancer on his heavy drinking and smoking.

After he was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, he had surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy which left him unable to speak.

Wild is survived by his wife, Claire Harding.

Okay, this is starting to get depressing.

Holy crap. What a sad week this has been. :cry:

I am especially saddened by this one.

I always read the newspaper first thing in the morning but are times when I pull the paper out of the mailbox and dump it DIRECTLY in the trash. I'm not kidding. Sometimes I just get my fill of bad news day after day. I'll go for a few days and not read a paper or watch CNN.

I was watching CNN this morning when I saw that crawl along the bottom of the screen that started, "Jack Wild, who starred on Oliver! and...". It got about that far when I thought, "Geezus...don't tell me..."

sometimes i will do a yahoo search of celebrity deaths for a certain year, say, 2003 and cannot believe some of the celebrities who have died that were never mentioned in the news or only briefly that if you blinked you would have missed it. i bet if you do the search for any year, lately, you will see a few names that will really surprise you.

http://www.blogwaybaby.com/Jack%20Wild.jpg

Thanx for the 'Wild' ride, Jack!

- GJS

Oh, THAT's who he was! Jimmy!

Damn.

After telling my wife he had passed, I had to find photos of him online so she'd know who I was talking about. She'd never even heard of H.R. Pufnstuf.