Jesus Christ certainly would count it as a major boost in fame.
Reminds me of Craig Ferguson telling his alcoholic story.
“I woke up in my own urine…i mean I assume it was my own urine. I didn’t have it tested! I hope it was my own urine!”
I don’t know if Marie Provost got a career boost from dying, but she gained a belated increase in name recognition when Nick Lowe wrote a song about her.
Nick Lowe wrote a song loosely based on her case. He covered his ass by spelling her name “Prevost”.
https://www.suffolkgazette.com/about/
You couldn’t make it up. Suffolk is full of strange and wonderful stories, and while our tales are clearly intended as satire, they do get repeated by gullible mainstream media, including Sky News and national newspapers
Does this make the SDMB part of the “gullible mainstream media”?
Ooops, I misspelled her name (should be Prevost) in my post. As you say, Nick is the one who changed the spelling to Provost in the song.
One artist that didn’t get a boost (as far as I can tell) was Michael Hedges. An extraordinarily talented guitarist who died when his car slid off the road and over a cliff.
I suppose we could go so far as to include Edgar Allen Poe, whose strange manner of passing inspired a fanciful movie attempting to explain who “Reynolds” was.
It’s only available one one website with a ridiculous photo of the “assistant”. Every other article is also a joke article. Supposedly it happened just 3 years ago - why wouldn’t anyplace else have picked it up? When you Google any of the details (location, names, etc) it only goes back to that same article.
Jim Henson probably counts too. Though that’s more a comment on how health is covered in the media IMO. There is nothing particularly weird or outlandish about a healthy 53 year old being killed by a respiratory infection. That’s a far bigger risk than being killed by carjackers or burglars or other causes of death given much more attention by the media. Going to the doctor if you have a serious respiratory infection is far more likely to save your life than getting a concealed carry permit or a security system.
Similar to Carmen Miranda who had a major heart attack while preforming on The Jimmy Durante Show and died a few hours later in her hotel room.
Also Rock Hudson. I mean, on one level dying in a pandemic that killed 40+ million people is not particularly noteworthy. But for my generation (growing up in 1980s) I had absolutely no idea who he was as an actor and only knew about him because of the media coverage of his illness and death.
I didn’t check the other articles on the site. Like I said, my BS meter exploded, so that was enough for me, but your further notes confirm it.
ETA: Ah, looking at the rest of the site, it is quite obvious satire (though poorly done.)
My grandmother gave birth in 1934, then worked onstage with Harry Blackstone Sr. being sawn in half. Later she and her (5th) husband had to adopt two girls from a questionable Mexican adoption agency.
It must have been the sawblade.
Despite posting a couple of replies to this thread I’d argue the manner of his death hasn’t really overshadowed his career. A 95 year old man found dead in his home after several days isn’t that unusual. it’s only the fact his 63 year old wife was also found dead (and that as one of the world’s most famous actors you’d expect him to have very attentive well paid caregivers but that’s clearly not the case)
Unless the facts that come to light in the next few months are particularly crazy and horrible, it will be nothing but a footnote on his career
G.G. Allin made a career gimmick out of threatening to kill himself at the end of each show and then chickening out at the last second. The last time he did it, he went to a house party afterwards with a bunch of audience members and overdosed in the bathtub. I think he was better known for the schtick than for his actual music.
Dana Carvey created and performed on Saturday Night Live a character named Derek Stevens, who was a British rock star with a less-than-good work ethic, as seen in the “Chopping Broccoli” sketch.
A later sketch, which I can’t locate on Youtube, had Stevens’s management team trying to convince him that his best next career move would be to die. IIRC they show him a graph of the comparative popularity of Jim Morrison and Peter Frampton, with the former’s level staying high while the latter’s takes a sharp dive.
Adding to that, Johnny Puke took Polaroids of himself with Allen’s body.
Dead(Per Yngve Ohlin) talked about death and killing himself a lot. He was in the band Mayhem. He eventually did kill himself and his band mate found him. Instead of calling emergency services, he went and got a camera and took pictures, one of which ended up on a bootleg album cover.
Rumors persisted for years that his band mate ended up making a necklace out of his bone fragments, but this was a myth.
The amateur photographer later ended up being stabbed to death by a third bandmate.
Yes, I remember now you say it. I could not remember who killed who, etc. Varg went to prison for a long time, but was released awhile back. He is kind of a “white nationalist” of sorts or something now and releases music.
Fun group of people, you know with the burning down of churches as well.