Bob May (Robot in Lost in Space) R.I.P.

Bob May, the fellow inside The Robot on Lost In Space, died at age 69. "Farewell, Will Robinson."

'Lost in Space' actor Bob May dies at 69 in Calif. (Thanks, Antinous!)

• [Stefan Jones]

  Bob May once appeared on a game show with the rest of the cast. It might have been “Family Feud.” I recall him being a nice funny fellow.

• [OM]

  “Bob May once appeared on a game show with the rest of the cast. It might have been “Family Feud.” I recall him being a nice funny fellow.”

  …Yep. Family Feud. IIRC, it was back when Guy Williams was still alive, and he’d flown in from Brazil to do the show. Wasn’t all that long before he croaked, too.

• [Belabras]

  …and we’ll never hear ‘Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!’ again in quite the same way.

• [TheMostHorrible]

  RIP.
  I’m sorry he had to suffer the loss of his home and a stroke in his last days.

• [Stevezilla]

  Bob May was a real sweet guy. A few years ago I worked on a Sci Fi convention in LA. Bob was also there and spoke to me and my team during the setup on one morning. I remember his really fun stories about his career and the things that went on behind the scenes at LIS and other shows he worked on. I’m really sad to hear about the tragic events he suffered in the recent past. RIP, Bob. You’ll be missed.

• [Anonymous]

  And something I didn’t learn until recently, that young Will Robinson (Mr. Mumy) was partly responsible for the novelty song “Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.”

  Learn something new every day.

• [SomeGuy]

  Wait a minute….there was a guy in there? Riiiight. Next you’re gonna say that Chewbacca was just some tall dude in a furry suit.

• [Takuan]

  he did the suit, not the voice. RIP, noble arm waver!

• [gtron]

  I dunno about lamenting a guy in a suit… it’s not a real big deal being in a chewbacca suit and ‘acting’ (except for the discomfort)- I was asked to audition for the robot in Will Smith’s take on I Robot… so I re-read the story, tried to calculate what the casting agent would like to see, learned my lines and off I went… the casting agent gave me a few hints and I tried it, then she said, no, more subtle – I would have to say it was tough to understand what the hell she wanted, since she had seen pics of the ‘character’ and had an idea where the director was going, but I was still seeing 60′s PKDick in my head, and not the ‘robot’ they created. anyway, you basically wear a blue body suit and hit your marks and everything else is digitally placed on top of you in post production. even if I would have gotten the part, I wouldn’t expect anyone to lament my passing many years on – can YOU recall that actor or what he looked like in real life? there’s certainly not much skill involved, a reasonably good athlete with a little experience on a set and 1/2 a brain can do this job – (and no, I am NOT comparing the cultural significance of the two productions, especially not here ;)

• [J France]

  First McGoohan, then Montoblan and now Mr May.

  It’s been a terrible few weeks for icons I admired, or whose work I really, really enjoyed. Very sad news.

• [OM]

  …There was a guy in the Robot suit, and it was Bob May. Neither Bob nor Dick Tufeld – who voiced the Robot – never got the screen credit because Irwin Allen wanted to give the impression/illusion that the Robot was *really* a robot. He did, however, get credited during the 70′s and 80′s when the show was in reruns, albeit in the show listings of TV Guide. After a brief one-liner blurb about what Smith fracks up in the episode, Billy Mumy, Jonathan Harris, and Bob May were usually the only cast members to get listing credit when space permitted.

  …One reviewer of the Lost in Space movie noted that one of the major reasons the film tanked at the box office was that Bob May wasn’t in either Robot suit. Considerin how R2-D2 the “good” Robot was, it was probably for the best as Bob would have had to have lost a few limbs including his head to have pulled that one off.

  The power pack’s been unplugged, and while the voice of the Robot yet lives, the heart has passed on. Rest easy, Bob May!

• [EH]

  #3 he wasn’t just partly responsible, he was half of the act! they also produced wild man fischer’s recordings for rhino. another tidbit: when they played live, barnes & barnes’ (or whatever name they were performing under at the time) drummer was miguel ferrer, eminently memorable as “bob morton” in “robocop.”

  • [Anonymous]

    The same Miguel Ferrer of Twin Peaks fame as Albert? Well, I’ll be. I also recall a very young Bill Mumy(one of the Barnses) as the freaky kid in the Twilight Zone episode “Its a Good Life”

• [misterdna]

  When I was a kid, I my cousin would pretend to be the Bionic Woman, and I would pretend to be the Robot from Lost In Space. I never knew there was a single person who “was” the Robot…