Irving Thalberg, film producer
Carole Lombard died at age 33 in a plane crash.
Selena was murdered at age 23.
Relocated to Cafe Society.
Clifford Brown - 25
Seriously? No one’s mentioned Buddy Holly? To me, he’s the prime example of these “what if” questions. He was 22 when he died, and had already shaped the music world and influenced legends (the Beatles and Bob Dylan both cite him as one of their biggest idols). And he died right before Everything Changed. Sure, maybe he would’ve gradually faded away like other rockabilly stars. Or maybe . . .
There were a lot of jazz musicians who died young. Bix Beiderbecke was only 28 when his alcoholism caught up with him. Charlie Parker died at the age of 34. Eddie Lang was 30 when he died during a tonsillectomy. Charlie Christian was only 25 when tuberculosis claimed him. Chick Webb died at 30, Clifford Brown at 25, Bunny Berigan at 33, Chu Berry at 33. There are plenty of other examples.
Some of these people would probably have continued to make significant contributions to music had they lived longer. Charlie Parker was so inventive that it’s hard to believe he would have become stagnant. Charlie Christian was an early innovator on electric guitar, and I think he would have kept going.
It’s hard to say what Bix would have done if he’d lived longer. He was intensely interested in the classical impressionist composers (like Debussy), and you can hear elements of it in some of his music. It’s possible that he would have created some form of jazz of that type, or that he would have abandoned jazz for something else.
On the other hand, Eddie Lang might not have been able to adapt to the new directions that jazz was taking at the time of his death. He played acoustic guitar in a style suited to traditional jazz and dance bands. I suspect the swing era wouldn’t have been kind to him.
Haven’t there been quite a few celebrities dying at that age? It’s even become a meme.
And let’s not forget Philip Seymour Hoffman, dead at 46. Cory Monteith of Glee was 31. And Adolf Hitler was only 56 when he died, although his death was never proven. (Well, he was a celebrity among certain circles. Still seems to be too.)
Hank Williams died when he was 29.
…y’know, two out of three of those means he would have starred in movies where he was strangled by an ape, with a 1-in-3 chance of being in a movie where he was gutted by a robot and then electrocuted.