. . . And of course now we had Lester Maddox and Strom Thurmond within hours of one another . . .
Joe Dimaggio died the day after Stanley Kubrick (March 7, 1999), and I think the Kubrick praises were cut a little short while everyone was singing, “where have you gone Joe Dimaggio?” And poor Peggy Cass, who died the same day as Dimaggio, probably was never even mentioned for her brilliant stint as a To Tell the Truth panelist!
It was part of the lore back when James Dean died that he had told people “I’ll be the third” after John Hodiak and some gal whose name escapes me at the moment had just recently died.
Yeah. Hodiak was not quite a matinee idol, nor was the gal I can’t remember…
In 1934, when starlet Dorothy Dell died, all her obits mentioned that she’d attended the funerals of stars Lilyan Tashman and Lowell Sherman that months and asked, “I wonder who Number Three will be?” So the legend goes at least that far back.