Summer of Death: And That Other Person Died, Too

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by Glynnis MacNicol | 9:41 am, August 27th, 2009

» 6 comments

celebdeaths Well the Summer of Death is officially coming to a close, and it looks like we’ve made it! There is an old saying that celebrity deaths come in groups of three, but this summer they’ve been coming in pairs; the deaths yesterday of Ted Kennedy and Dominick Dunne being the most recent in a summer that has been punctuated by famous funerals.

After Dunne’s death was announced the New York Times David Carr twittered: “Dominick Dunne wld be pissed he died on same day as Ted Kennedy and had to share…a piece of work, but fun as hell.”

The same might be said of Farrah Fawcett who lost the death coverage match (along with the Iran protesters) in spectacular fashion to Michael Jackson.

Then there’s Don Hewitt, whose death followed CBS colleague Walter Cronkite by just over a month, but as the country had already been saturated by glory days of journalism/CBS coverage seemed to merit more muted reaction than might otherwise have been.

Who else has been overshadowed in death? We’ve put together a gallery looking back at the last half century of famous passings.

See more celebrity death matches here.

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Celebrity Death, David Carr, Dominick Dunne, Don Hewitt, Elvis Presley, Farrah Fawcett, Gerald Ford, Groucho Marx, James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Mother Theresa, Princess Diana, Ray Charles, Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Walter Cronkite

libra blue

I am not surprised. It just goes to show you that more times than not people are more interested in hearing about notorious and “glamorous” scumbags than they are in hearing about intelligent, decent, and truly talented individuals who lived a life of little or no scandal.
http://lauriebethsgrotto.wordpress.com Laurie Beth

Ellie Greenwich died yesterday, too. Just throwing that out there.
KatrinasmediaAngel

And if you go back even further in history John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day – July 4, 1826 talk about coincidence.
Cinematom

Don’t forget that Aldous Huxley also died on November 22, 1963…………and, Robert Mitchum died on July 1, 1997 (at age 79), just less than 12 hours before James Stewart on July 2, 1997 (at age 89). Stewart got most of the coverage and Mitchum got the short end of the coverage. And then there’s great film directors Michelangelo Antonioni (94) and Ingmar Bergman (89), who both died on July 30, 1989. Coverage slightly to Bergman, in this case.
Cinematom

Correction…Antonioni and Bergman died on July 30, 2007, not 1989….
http://trickletown.vox.com/ Trickletown

Two great entertainers ; Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. died on the same day in 1990.