Robards is one of 3 actors who died before the real life person they won Oscars portraying. The other two are:
*Gary Cooper (d. 1961) and Alvin York (d. 1964), Sergeant York
*Haing S. Ngor (d. 1996) and Dith Pran (d. 2008), The Killing Fields
Sam Shepard is one of 3 other people who died before the real life person they were nominated for an Oscar portraying. The other two are:
*Susan Hayward (d.1975) and Lilian Roth (d.1980), I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
*Jennifer Jones (d.2009) and Elizabeth Comber (aka Han Suyin, d.2012), Love Is a Many-Splendoured Thing.
Strictly speaking, this one doesn’t count, but I’ll use it anywasy.
90% of what Patrrick Dennis wrote about “Auntie Mame” was fictional, and he admitted it. The other 10% was based on his adventures with his eccentric aunt Marion Tanner.
IF we think Mame Dennis = Marion Tanner (and that’s not at all clear), well, Dennis’ zany aunt outlived both Rosalind Russell and Lucille Ball, who played her in movies.
Just started looking at sports movies. Baseball icons Rogers Hornsby and Joe McCarthy both outlived the actors who played them in Ronald Reagan’s “The Winning Team.”
Jackie Gleason, who played Minnesota Fats in The Hustler, died in 1987. Rudolf Wanderone, the real-life pool player who used the name Minnesota Fats, died in 1996.
The snag here is that Walderone only started calling himself Minnesota Fats after the movie was released. Prior to that, he had used several nicknames, including New York Fats, Chicago Fats, and Broadway Fats. He claimed that the character in The Hustler was based on him. On the other hand, Walter Tevis, the author of the original novel, denied that and always insisted that he had made up the Minnesota Fats character.
The amazing British actress Lucy Gordonhad the talent and the looks to become a household name. Until she killed herself in 2009 just as her career was starting.
Before that she played French singer Jane Birkin in the movie Gainsbourg. Birkin is, luckily, still among us.
Frank Vincent, who passed away this week, played Mafia hitman Frank Marino in Casino. The role was based on real life Mafia enforcer-turned-informant Frank Cullotta, who is still alive.
As long as we are including movies based on real people there is Robert Montgomery. He played Lt John Brickley in They Were Expendable who was based pretty closely on John Bulkeley. Bulkeley was a Medal of Honor recipient and future admiral. Montgomery died in 81, Bulkeley died in 96.
John Wayne’s character was also based on a real person. Capt Robert Kelly outlived Wayne by 10 years.
A 1991 TV movie “Separate But Equal” about the Brown vs Board of Education case, Cleavon Little played Robert Lee Carter, a lawyer for the NAACP. Little, despite being 22 years younger than Carter (who was later nominated to a District Court judge by Richard Nixon), died in 1992. Carter died in 2012.
Ah true crime. That reminds me of another one. Joe McGinness wrote the bestselling book Blind Faith about the case of Robert Marshall who hired a hit man to kill his wife. The well done mini-series starred Robert Urich as Robert Marshall and Joanna Kerns as his wife. Urich died in 2002. Robert Marshall died in prison in 2015.
It was a local crime so everything about the show, book, and people involved got covered. One interesting side note about the mini-series. Roby Marshall was the son and acted as a consultant on the show. Joanna Kerns introduced him to her tv daughter Tracy Gold. Gold and Marshall have been married for over 20 years.
A weird thing about that case is the guy who allegedly pulled the trigger for the murder was found not guilty but the husband who hired him was convicted.