Anjanette Comer

Anjanette Comer died on May 28, 2026, at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 86. A death certificate filed with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, stated that she had battled leukemia and had heart issues. No separate public funeral notice was highlighted in the initial THR report.

The Hollywood Reporter published Mike Barnes's obituary on September 21, 2026, under the headline noting her work in The Loved One and The Appaloosa. Wikipedia updated her entry the same day. Her older sister, Jerra Tillman, was listed among survivors and declined to comment when contacted.

Tributes focused on her mid-1960s leading roles and on the unusual candor with which she had described her own career detours decades earlier.

Anjanette Comer was born on August 7, 1939, in Dawson, Texas, to Rufus Franklin Comer Jr. and Nola Dell "Sue" (Perkins) Comer. She grew up in a small Texas farming community and attended Dawson High School. At 16 she was voted queen of the Corsicana Fair and Rodeo, a local crowning that The Hollywood Reporter later cited as an early sign of her public presence.

She left Texas for Southern California to train at the Pasadena Playhouse, the regional school that launched many film and television careers. There she was spotted by agent Byron Raphael, who signed her and steered her toward television guest work. In a 1990 Los Angeles Times interview she recalled arriving in Hollywood at about 18: "I was from a small town in Texas. I didn't know it was supposed to be difficult."

The combination of Playhouse training, an early agent, and television exposure in 1962 and 1963 set up the Emmy nomination and film offers that followed within two years.

Comer attended Dawson High School in Dawson, Texas. She then studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where her stage work drew the attention of talent agent Byron Raphael.

Beyond the Playhouse, published sources do not detail college degrees. Later in life she returned to acting classes as she prepared a career comeback in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including stage work in Mark Medoff's off-Broadway play The Heart Outright.

Comer's first major television credit was a 1962 guest appearance on My Three Sons ("Heat Wave"), followed by The Donna Reed Show. In 1963 she appeared on Gunsmoke, Ben Casey, and Arrest and Trial. Her Arrest and Trial role as Annabelle Selinsky brought a 1964 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actress.

MGM featured her on Dr. Kildare and cast her as the female lead in Quick, Before It Melts (1964). Tony Richardson then chose her for The Loved One (1965) after a personal meeting; she had initially skipped an open audition she thought "ridiculous." The role of mortician Aimee Thanatogenos made her widely recognizable.

Sidney J. Furie's The Appaloosa (1966) paired her with Marlon Brando and John Saxon as Mexican peasant Trini Medena, a type of role she repeated as Kinita in Guns for San Sebastian (1968) with Anthony Quinn. Between those films she starred in Banning (1967) with Robert Wagner and Jill St. John.

The late 1960s and 1970s mixed ambition and retreat. She left Funeral in Berlin during production and was replaced. Features such as In Enemy Country (1968), Rabbit, Run (1970), and The Firechasers (1971) did not match her mid-decade heat, though The Baby (1973) later gained a cult following. Television kept her working: Columbo, Mannix, Mod Squad, Love American Style, Police Story, and many TV movies. Later credits included Jake and the Fatman, Streets of Laredo, The Practice, and A Bird of the Air (2011), her final listed film.

She later said she had become an "instant movie star" after a few television appearances and did not know how to handle the attention emotionally, a frank self assessment that framed both her early peak and her long, quieter second act.

Comer married author, screenwriter, and director Robert Klane in 1976. Klane's credits include Weekend at Bernie's, Where's Poppa?, Thank God It's Friday, and Fire Sale, in which Comer also acted. The marriage ended in divorce in 1983.

In the 1981 UPI interview she said she had no children. An earlier relationship with an actor, whom she did not name publicly in that interview, was the reason she gave for turning down Barefoot in the Park and Bonnie and Clyde and for leaving Funeral in Berlin on weekends.

By 1990 she was speaking to the Los Angeles Times from her parents' home in a Texas farming community south of Fort Worth, describing herself as divorced and preparing to return to Los Angeles after stage work. The Hollywood Reporter's 2026 obituary listed her older sister, Jerra Tillman, among survivors; Tillman declined to comment when contacted about the death.

Comer was unusually candid about ambition, regret, and the cost of putting a relationship ahead of work. In 1981 she told Vernon Scott that she had hated her career at the height of her fame and that she had been "crazy" to walk out on Funeral in Berlin. She also insisted she still believed she could regain a high point professionally: "I've done it before and I can do it again. I have to believe that so other people will believe it, too."

In 1990 she told the Los Angeles Times that personal problems, not a lack of talent, had driven her starts and stops: "My career was never my problem. I had personal problems to deal with." Happy to no longer be cast only as an ingenue, she said she felt she was "in her prime" as she prepared another return.

Co-star Marianna Hill later recalled Comer's methodical talk of creating an "inner life" for characters on The Baby, evidence of a serious craft ethic even on genre projects that some dismissed.

Film historians and obituaries place Comer's lasting mark on a short list of mid-1960s performances: the surreal Whispering Glades mortician in The Loved One, the Mexican peasant opposite Brando in The Appaloosa, and the earnest social worker in the strange horror film The Baby. Her Emmy-nominated Arrest and Trial work anchors the television side of the same story.

She is also cited as a cautionary Hollywood example of how personal choices can redirect a career that looked destined for durable stardom. Passing on Barefoot in the Park and Bonnie and Clyde, and leaving Funeral in Berlin, became part of the public narrative as much as the films she did complete.

For viewers who rediscovered her through cult cinema and classic-film programming, she remains a vivid screen presence from a brief window when Hollywood briefly treated her as an overnight leading lady.

Comer's principal industry recognition was a 1964 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actress, for Arrest and Trial (episode work as Annabelle Selinsky). The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences continues to list the nomination in her Emmy biography.

No Academy Award nominations are recorded for her film roles. Local early honors include being named queen of the Corsicana Fair and Rodeo at age 16 in Texas.

Contemporary coverage in the mid-1960s treated Comer as a rising glamour star. Vernon Scott's 1981 UPI feature asked "Whatever Happened to Anjanette Comer?" and captured her own account of walking away from major parts. Pat H. Broeske's 1990 Los Angeles Times "In Search Of" profile found her in Texas, preparing another return.

The Loved One remains the film most often clipped and quoted, especially the funeral-options monologue. The Baby has a second life among horror fans. Trailers From Hell and classic-trailer channels continue to circulate The Loved One and The Appaloosa material to new audiences.

The Hollywood Reporter's September 21, 2026, obituary by Mike Barnes, based on a Los Angeles County death certificate, became the primary public confirmation of her May 28, 2026, death.

Comer's most discussed professional controversy was her departure from Funeral in Berlin (1966). Cast opposite Michael Caine and photographed in Germany for publicity, she left the production on weekends to be with a boyfriend, according to her later interviews and The Hollywood Reporter. Producer Harry Saltzman replaced her with Eva Renzi. She later said the episode gave her "a reputation for being crazy."

Separately, she declined roles in Barefoot in the Park and Bonnie and Clyde that went to Jane Fonda and Faye Dunaway. She framed those decisions as loyalty to a relationship rather than studio conflict, but they became enduring "what if" footnotes in profiles of her career.

These episodes were controversies of reliability and priority, not of criminal or political scandal. No public legal controversies are documented in major obituaries.