RIP: Dr. Clarence Agress dies at 103
**He is credited as Phil Silvers' doctor on set!
Dr. Clarence M. Agress passed away February 24 at Cottage Hospital. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 10, 1912, to Max Agress and Jennie Bain Agress, he grew up in Dallas, Texas, and graduated as high school valedictorian. After graduating from Harvard, he was awarded Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honor society, in his junior year of medical school at the University of Texas. In his fifth year of training at LA County Hospital, he was asked to be Chief Resident in Medicine.
In WWII, Dr. Agress volunteered as part of the Army's 38th Evacuation Hospital and spent two and a half years in the China-Burma-India theater. As a specialist in tropical diseases, he wrote the first papers on Mite Typhus and Atabrine poisoning. Discharged as a Major, he was asked by the world renowned Myron Prinzmetal to join his practice. This was the beginning of his care for Hollywood's most famous. His first two patients were Lana Turner and William Randolph Hearst. His client list went on to include Peter Sellers, Steve McQueen, James Mason, Ann Baxter, Gov. Pat Brown, Louis Armstrong, George C. Scott, Quincy Jones, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Cornel Wilde, and so many others, even owning a yacht with Walter Matthau.
Dr. Agress was a charter member of the American College of Cardiology, founded the world-respected Department of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, established the first Coronary Care Unit on the West Coast. In his research lab, he formulated the first chemical test for a heart attack, the Transaminase Test. He was acknowledged by the American Heart Association as the research doctor responsible for Thrombolysis, dissolving clots out of obstructed heart arteries. His discovery was the basis of today's treatment of acute heart attack that saves countless lives.
During the Apollo Phase of the NASA program, Dr. Agress was funded to invent the heart monitor that Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon. Aside from nearly one hundred published medical articles, Dr. Agress wrote Energetics, one of the first books to show the salutary results of exercise for heart patients. It also promoted what is known today as interval training.
A true Renaissance man, Dr. Agress painted beautifully and kept his artist studio in the garden. A wonderful story teller, he wrote ten novels. He loved to travel, attended the Olympics in Sydney at 88, went on his third safari at age 97. He sang and carved, gardened and cooked. He was an excellent golfer with a perfect swing.
At the age of 88, Dr. Agress retired and at the age of 89 moved to Santa Barbara with his wife Joan. Two wives and his sister preceded him in death. He is survived by his wife, his two daughters Carol (David Zaslow) and Edith (Tom Buie), four grandchildren two of whom are doctors, and six great grandchildren. Greatly admired, greatly loved, greatly missed.
His wife Joan wants to thank the people who gave him extraordinary and respectful care these last eighteen months - Carl Lopez, Julio Mendez, Francisco Mendez, Rafael Perez. She also wants to acknowledge the compassionate, intelligent, diligent care of the nursing staff, third floor, Cottage Hospital.
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