Actress Deborah Raffin Dies At 59
LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — Deborah Raffin, an actress who also ran a successful audiobook company with the help of her celebrity friends, has died. She was 59.
Raffin died Wednesday of leukemia at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, her brother, William, told the Los Angeles Times. She was diagnosed with the blood cancer about a year ago.
Raffin, the daughter of 20th Century Fox contract player Trudy Marshall, had roles in movies such as "Forty Carats," "Death Wish 3" and "Once Is Not Enough." She also starred in television miniseries, most notably playing actress Brooke Hayward in "Haywire" and a businesswoman in "Noble House," based on the James Clavell saga set in Hong Kong.
She also appeared in many TV movies, perhaps most notably 1976's "Nightmare in Badham County," in which she and a fellow UCLA student (played by Lynne Moody) are brutalized in a small Southern town's jail.
The actress also had recurring roles in several TV series, most notably "7th Heaven."
Raffin and her then-husband, music producer Michael Viner, launched Dove Books-on-Tape in the mid-1980s, which blossomed into a multimillion-dollar business. The company's first best-seller was Stephen Hawking's opus on the cosmos entitled "A Brief History of Time."
Raffin's job was getting celebrities to provide voices for some of the books. Among them were the nonfiction bestsellers "Anatomy of an Illness" and "The Healing Heart," both by Norman Cousins and read by Jason Robards Jr. and William Conrad, respectively.
Raffin also compiled celebrities' Christmas anecdotes for a 1990 book, "Sharing Christmas," which raised money for groups serving the homeless. It included stories from Margaret Thatcher, Kermit the Frog and Mother Teresa.
Raffin and Viner sold the company in 1997 and the couple divorced eight years later. Viner died of cancer in 2009.
Raffin is survived by her two siblings, William and Judy Holston; and a daughter, Taylor Rose Viner.
Services are set for Sunday in Culver City.
(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
