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Robert Sterling, the dashingly handsome actor who co-starred with his wife Anne Jeffreys as a stylish pair of fun-seeking ghosts in the 1950s TV sitcom "Topper," has died. He was 88.
Sterling, who had a decade-long battle with shingles that kept him bedridden the last five years, died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Brentwood, said his son, Jeffreys Sterling.
A budding star at MGM in the early 1940s who appeared in dozens of films over the years, Sterling achieved his greatest fame on television in "Topper," in which he and Jeffreys played George and Marion Kerby, a married couple who were killed in an avalanche while on a European skiing vacation.
The Kerbys, along with their would-be rescuer -- a brandy- swilling St. Bernard named Neil -- returned as ghosts to their former home, since occupied by dignified banker Cosmo Topper (Leo G. Carroll) and his wife, Henrietta (Lee Patrick).
The situation comedy, which was based on a novel by Thorne Smith and a 1937 film starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, aired on CBS from 1953 to 1955, followed by a year of evening reruns on ABC and NBC.
A onetime clothing salesman who attended the University of Pittsburgh, the black-haired,...