…yup. They died prematurely. Though my example is even more twisted.
So I’m going through my Twilight Zone watch. I’m watching the season five ep “Ring A Ding Girl”. Who is this Maggie McNamera*??? She’s gorgeous and the ending of the episode caught me off guard so maybe i was a little emotional.
So I look her up. First thing I see is she died before reaching fifty. “F**K.”
Then I see she killed herself. “F******K”
So i read about her and find that after that TZ episode she only worked in TV for one more year before dropping out of show business. She was nominated for an Academy Award just 11 years earlier in her very first movie! For the next 15 years she worked as a typist to help make ends meet.
*The actress who played her sister, Mary Munday, was quite good too.
I see she was married to writer/producer/director Tom Gries, whom I remember from my two favorite TV shows in 1966, ***Batman **and The Rat Patrol. He died at the age of 54, from a heart attack while playing tennis.
*The star of Rat Patrol, Christopher George, also died of a heart attack, at the age of 52. It was apparently a result of an accident on the show’s set.
If you can find it, look for “The Moon Is Blue,” one of her first credits. She was absolutely adorable in that and more than held her own against William Holden and David Niven.
Yes, this happens to me. My wife is tired of me saying, “Hey, you know that (girl/guy) playing the lead? She died just after they made this.”
And so forth.
I often look up guest spots to see if I’ve seen them elsewhere and once in awhile, we learn they died. There is a Buffy episode about a guy who makes a Frankenstein-monster-girllfriend(Some Assembly Required). The main guest actor killed himself.
My friends and I, when watching movies together, quite often chorus “Hey, you’re DEAD!” when a now-deceased actor comes on screen. We’re not nice people, obviously.
Back in the day, I had a pen pal who was a big fan of the early-1970s series “Alias Smith and Jones”, and specifically the actor Peter Deuel, who committed suicide. She told me that she had recently (at the time) watched an MST3K episode where they were lampooning a movie where Deuel had a bit part, and at some point opened a coffin containing an extremely decrepit mummy. At that moment, one of the robots said something like, “So, THAT’S what happened to Pete Deuel!”
From the film ‘Up the Down Staircase’. Came out in 1967 but I saw it for the first time about a year ago. I remember the lovestruck teen girl character Alice, played by Ellen O’Mara. While average looking, there was something about her appearance and demeanor that made her as cute as a button. I felt that “Oh, what a damn shame” feeling when finding out she appeared on screen very little after that movie, and died in her early 50s.
I didn’t watch The Godfather until 2005 or so and I kept thinking to myself, “John Cazale is nailing is Fredo. How come I never see him in anything else?” Turns out he died of cancer before the the release of what would be his final movie, The Deer Hunter.
Cathy O’Donnel lived only to 46. The few things I saw her in showed me she had a fine talent. Her first role was as the girlfriend/wife of the sailor who had lost his hands, in The Best Years of Our Lives. She was also Judah’s younger sister in Ben-Hur.
I’ve had the almost-opposite thing happen to me. I’ve seen old movies knowing an actor or actress is dead and thinking they died prematurely under tragic circumstances only to find out they lived well into their 80s or 90s.
Huh.
Quite saddening watching a film whose lead you know will have died almost immediately after the movie was made. Apparently, the writer/star of Il Postino, Massimo Troisi, postponed heart surgery so that he could complete the film. The day after filming was completed, he suffered a fatal heart attack.
I didn’t “discover” The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York until the early 2,000s (I know! what rock had I been living under?!)and was so thrilled by Kirsty MacColl’s voice and performance for the video, only to find out she had tragically died a few years prior.
It’s not a show, it’s music related, but last year I was reading an old issue of Bass Player magazine from the 1990s that had an interview with Mick Karn, who was the bassist of the band Japan, which I had never heard of at the time. I googled them and this video, Methods Of Dance, was the first one I watched - I was absolutely blown away by his amazingly creative and distinctive style. Then I looked him up on Wikipedia and was disappointed to find that he died back in 2011. He was 52, which I would consider premature.
Jeff Buckley’s rendition of “Hallelujah”, released in 2008 and responsible for making the Leonard Cohen song such a part of life, was so wonderful that I looked up what else this bright new star was doing. He had died ten years earlier, in a stupid accident.
We’re quoting something but damned if I can remember what it’s from.
We were watching an old episode of To Tell The Truth from 1963 and the truth teller was Jay Sebring, Hair Dresser to the Stars. We always like to look up the contestants, in a where are they now way. Turns out he had very bad daysix years later, poor guy.
A few years ago I was introducing someone to the cheesy delight from the 90s that was Xena: Warrior Princess
Which lead me to do a little “where are they now” googling, where I learned that the actor who played Ares, Kevin Smith died right before his first Hollywood movie.
