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.