Lee van the actor when did he die
Executive summary
Lee Van Cleef, the American actor best known for his roles in spaghetti Westerns, died on December 16, 1989, in Oxnard, California [1] [2]. Contemporary obituaries and biographical records report an apparent heart attack as the immediate cause of death, with throat cancer listed as a secondary cause on his death certificate [1] [2] [3].
1. The date and place recorded by major sources
Multiple authoritative and contemporaneous sources record Lee Van Cleef’s death as December 16, 1989, at a hospital in Oxnard, California, and list his age at death as 64; this date appears in newspaper obituaries and biographical entries such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wikipedia and other film databases [2] [4] [1] [5].
2. Reported cause and immediate circumstances
Reports from the time and later biographies consistently state that Van Cleef collapsed after suffering cardiac distress and was pronounced dead following what officials described as an apparent heart attack, and that he had a longstanding history of heart disease and had a pacemaker installed in the early 1980s; his death certificate also lists throat cancer as a contributing condition [6] [1] [3].
3. How contemporary outlets corroborated the event
The death was covered by major national outlets the day after it occurred: The New York Times ran an obituary on December 17, 1989, the Los Angeles Times reported he was stricken late Friday and died Saturday morning in Oxnard of an apparent heart attack, and the Washington Post also published the details; these independent contemporaneous reports align on date, place, and heart attack as the proximate cause [2] [4] [6].
4. Consistency in film and reference databases
Long-form film references and databases—IMDb, TMDB, Find a Grave and specialized film sites—also list December 16, 1989, as Van Cleef’s date of death and repeat the heart-attack cause, and many cite burial at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills [7] [5] [8] [9]. These secondary sources draw on the same press reports and public records and therefore echo the consensus established by the major newspapers and the actor’s death certificate [2] [3].
5. What the reporting does and does not settle
The available reporting and public records converge on the date, place and proximate cause of death, but some finer medical details—such as the precise interaction between his chronic heart disease, pacemaker history and the role of throat cancer—are summarized differently across sources; contemporaneous obituaries cite heart attack as the immediate cause and list throat cancer as secondary on the death certificate, which is the limit of what these sources report [1] [3] [2].
6. Legacy note: why the date matters
Van Cleef’s December 16, 1989 death marked the closing chapter of a career that moved from small Hollywood villain parts to international stardom in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, a fact repeatedly noted in obituaries and career retrospectives that use the date as a pivot to reflect on his cultural impact and on-screen persona [2] [4] [10].