Summer of Death: And That Other Person Died, Too

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. In 2003 John Ritter, he of Three's Company fame, passed away just hours before Johnny Cash, but during the next day's highly musical tributes he mostly figured in as a footnote. NEXT PAGE: Mother Theresa & Princess Diana. In 1997 legendary do-gooder Mother Theresa passed away just days after frequent do-gooder Princess Diana. Whose funeral services do you remember? NEXT PAGE: Dead Presidents & Everyone. Then there's the singers who lost out to dead presidents: James Brown to Gerald Ford during Christmas of 2006, and Ray Charles to Ronald Reagan in June of 2004. And while we're talking presidents, Narnia author C.S. Lewis' death barely registered a blip on the radar coming as it did on the same day as J.F.K.'s assassination. NEXT PAGE: Hesse & Monroe. In August of 1962 Nobel Prize winning author Hermann Hesse passed away just four days after Marilyn Monroe was declared dead of an apparent drug overdose. In this case, Hesse may not have complained too much about the pairing. NEXT PAGE: Marx & Presley. In August of 1977 Groucho Marx hit the jackpot, passing away just days after Elvis Presley was found dead on the floor of his suite (and simultaneously launched a decade 'Elvis is Alive' tabloid covers). NEXT PAGE: Mantle & Garcia. And in August of 1995 Mickey Mantle death from cancer followed deadhead Jerry Garcia's by four days. August is a deadly month for famous people, apparently! The lesson to be learned from all this? You can pick neither your family nor your obituary page fellows. And no matter what you accomplish in life, how you are heralded for it, and by how many, basically comes down to whether or not you manage to share your last breath with some who's leaving a larger stage than you.

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Summer of Death: And That Other Person Died, Too

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