Somebody mentioned Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and I did what I often do with old movies I’ve seen. I went to IMBD and looked to see which cast members were dead and which were still alive.
(Most surprising result I ever found? When I saw Rififi for the first time a few years back and then found out that director Jules Dassin was still alive over fifty years later.)
So anyone else ever do this or is it just me? And for those of you who haven’t done it, would your reaction be “What kind of sick person would want to do that?” or “Why the heck didn’t I think of that?”
I do it so often that I’ve mused about datamining IMDB and setting up a website that specifically focuses on the vital status of the casts of television shows and movies. When I mentioned it to the other half he said “Why would anyone want to look at that” and I figured it was just me
Think of the statistics you could calculate and display! Graphs! Charts! Lists! Dead celebrities! What’s not to like?
I sometimes think of trivia question like that. I think the best is ‘how many of the Twelve Angry Men are still alive?’[spoiler]Only one, Jack Klugman.
On the other hand, two of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly are still alive. Clint Eastwood is 81 and Eli Wallach is 95.[/spoiler]
I can remember at least once remarking how many of the leads in a certain movie died relatively young (can’t remember the movie), but I wouldn’t go out of my way to research that sort of thing.
How about movies where one of the major stars was dead before the film was even released? *Giant *, The Crow, and *The Dark Knight *come to mind immediately.
It’s actually fairly common and not new at all. In fact, George Carlin (who’s now deceased himself) built an entire routine around it. He even performed it on the first episode of SNL in 1975.
I don’t necessarily think there’s always something sick about it. When you get to a certain age, you often find yourself doing this when you’re watching an older movie that came out sometime during your lifetime and notice many, if not most, of the main cast members are dead. If some of the deceased cast members are in your age range, it’s often coupled with the realization, “Holy shit, I’m old!”
I have to think there’s a little tension every time Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr get together, with each wondering, Which of us will be the last man left standing…?
Is anyone left from Gone with the Wind besides Olivia DeHavilland? I think even the kid who played Bonnie is dead from that movie. How 'bout Beau Wilkes? Or the guy who falls down in the mud on the march out of Atlanta? Anybody?
not sure how interesting/morbid you might find this website, but this one has been on my radar for a while; it lists every remotely-famous celebrity and their date of death:
Yeah, I never did it the way in the OP, but I try to keep an eye/ear out on actors and their lives. I didn’t know Jules Dassin was still alive, and same for Ernest Borgnine, until relatively recently.
Some other thread here had a tidbit that Ward Bond (“featured player” in many John Ford movies among a whole bunch of other very good movies) was dead at 57 by 1960/1959 – that was shocking to me.
She was also Andy Hardy’s girlfriend. Speaking of which … Mickey Rooney is still alive.
Yeah … I play this “game”. IFC played the “Larry Sanders Show” a while back and I couldn’t help noticing how many dead people appeared on that show. And it’s less than 20 years old.
While some others like Rutherford are still ticking.
I have always sort of done this - even when looking at old B&W photos.
However, sometimes when watching an old film from the 30’s or 40’s, I will think that most likely everybody in this film is long since dead - even those teenaged actors walking by in the background.
Morbid - yeah, but somehow I think those actors might like knowing some dude is watching them in a movie from his sofa in Las Vegas in 2011. Considering these films were made long before TV was invented, I am sure they never thought they would be appearing to millions of viewers on a semi-regular basis (depending on the popularity of the film) for decades to come. Remember - back then, films came into the movie theaters and then, after that first run, pretty much disappeared or were destroyed.
