Lorene Yarnell was living in Norway with her fourth husband when she died.

Michael Jackson evolved many moves he borrowed from James Brown, but as unlikely as it seems, he may have cribbed just as many Off the Wall and Thriller gyrations from mime duo Robert Shields and Lorene Yarnell. For a brief, shining moment in the late ’70s (while Jackson was in his formative years), the mime couple, billed as Shields and Yarnell, became a television staple, dazzling audiences with a skill that is usually more of a punchline than a showstopper. Their body control was stunning, and it’s not surprising that Shields had studied with Marcel Marceau and Yarnell was a trained dancer.

Shields and Yarnell were married and then they weren’t, but they remained wedded professionally until Yarnell passed away this year at 66 from a cerebral aneurysm. The Times Magazine has a really well-written remembrance of her (and the Shields and Yarnell tandem) by Elizabeth McCracken in its annual “The Lives They Lived” issue. An excerpt:

“Shields and Yarnell practiced hours of nostril and eyebrow exercises in order to be believably mechanical. As the Clinkers, they are virtuosic and upsetting, human beings who can pass as robots, playing robots who wish to pass as human. It’s a parody marriage. The Clinkers know they’re supposed to embrace, but they can’t figure out how; they just carom off each other.

The robots, being robots, endure. Michael Jackson was a fan; he apparently modeled not only dance moves but also some of his many-buttoned military costumes on Robert Shields. Hip-hop dancers studied the Clinkers’ automatonics, setting them to music, and the Robot became one of the most lasting of all break-dancing moves. On city corners across the world, you can see street performers, spray-painted white and silver and brass, who for a quarter will ’bot for you, each a monument to Shields and Yarnell.”

Below is a clip, replete with a horrifyingly inauthentic laugh track, of Shields and Yarnell as the Clinkers.