Golden-Globe winning actor Mark Damon has died at 91-what was his cause of death?

Golden-Globe winning actor Mark Damon, who starred in the 1960 movie House of Usher, has died at 91. His daughter Alexis Damon Ribaut told The Hollywood Reporter that he had passed away from natural causes in Los Angeles. 

Mark Damon was born Alan Harris in Chicago on April 22, 1933 and studied at Fairfax High School and then UCLA in Los Angeles where he shared a room with legendary Hollywood actor Jack Nicholson. Mark Damon, who studied acting with Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner, moved to Rome after earning himself an MBA at UCLA.

According to Variety, “When he returned to the States he founded Producers Sales Organization to bring American independent films to international distributors, helping launch the American Film Market and Independent Film & Television Alliance.”

Mark Damon won a Golden Globe for his role in the 1960’s movie House of Usher, the film was directed by Roger Corman who passed away last week. In the movie, he played the part of the fiancé of a woman whose brother desperately tries to stop them from marrying. 

Before starring in the House of Usher, Mark Damon had parts in the 1950 movies  Young and Dangerous, The Party Crashers and Life Begins at 17. He was also cast in Westerns when he went to Italy at the age of 28 and revealed in a previous interview that “Cowboys had to be tall and blond, and I’m not that tall. I had very dark hair at the time, but they said, ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re American.’ I said OK and learned to ride a horse.”

Mark Damon decided to give up acting as he felt he was becoming typecast and Westerns were out of favour and took a job with an Italian film distributor. When he returned to the States in 1977 he founded the production and sales company Producers Sales Organization. 

The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "Following Das Boot and The NeverEnding Story, PSO handled foreign sales for Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1982) and ‘s Once Upon a Time in America (1984).”

Unfortunately PSO went bankrupt but Mark Damon went on to found Vision International, alongside Jon Peters and Peter Guber, this was bought by Credit Lyonaisse. Mark Damon also was one of the founders of the American Film Marketing Association now known as the Independent Film & Television Alliance.

In 2008, Mark Damon published a book, From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster: The Neverending Story of Film Pioneer Mark Damon. According to the synopsis for the book on Amazon, “Now we learn his story for the first time - as a smouldering sex symbol in the Hollywood of the '50's and '60's, leading to his years in Rome as an Italian playboy and Spaghetti Western cowboy at the height of "La Dolce Vita", and his return to Hollywood in the 1980's to become the inventor of independent film financing.”

When it came to his personal life,  survivors include his second wife Margaret Markov, they wed in 1976, his son Jonathan, daughter Alexis Damon Ribaut and his son-in-law Mathieu Ribaut.