Sacco and Vanzetti come to mind also.
[Moderating]
I’m trying, and failing, to think of any way that this could be any more crude and tasteless. Even by the standards of locker room humor, which we’ve been trying for years to move away from, this would probably be over the line.
I’ll be discussing this with the other mods, but in the meanwhile, this is at least a very stern Mod Note.
Indeed. I would much rather have “suicide” than “liked to half-choke-himself-while-jacking-off-and-miscalculated” in my obit. What’s weird is that I don’t know most of these death causes (though I do know the Michael Hutchence rumors.) Marilyn Monroe? You can point a gun to my head, and I would have no idea as to her death. Could be more a factor of my age, though, as she was long gone before I was born.
The point about Robin Williams isn’t that “it was depression, not suicide”, it is that “he had a nasty deadly disease and chose to check out before it got a lot worse”, IMHO. I consider “taking your life shortly before the disease gets you” to be in a different category than suicides of people who are physically healthy.
My grandfather suffered from depression and took his own life with a handgun. But if the gun hadn’t been around, he’d likely have had many mostly-good years. Whereas Robin Williams was in bad shape and it was only going to get worse until the bitter end. Those feel very different to me.
I think of it as just a sad ending to a very defining life. I remember her movie roles and the stories of her life. She was a highly recognized superstar before her death. However, as time goes by it is her death that more and more people will remember. Her movies are old, conspiracy theories about her death abound. I suppose eventually anyone who doesn’t die of natural causes may only be defined by their death at some point in the future.
Ditto, although I’m not certain whether my life overlapped with hers or not. But I’m surprised how many of these are people that I’ve heard of, but i have no idea how they died. I feel like only a few really fit “deaths that sort of define a person”.
Jesus is a good example, though.
One of the greatest/worst sick jokes relating to tragic events, in my humble opinion, is, “If Mama Cass had just given that ham sandwich to Karen Carpenter, they’d both be alive today!”
While we’re at it, I’ll add John Belushi.
The OP is looking for examples where the deceased was famous BEFORE dying (which makes Stockton Rush an edge case), but if we can include people who became famous by dying, Kitty Genovese is certainly one. Although, as the Wikipedia page indicates, the original narrative was probably inaccurate.
ETA: Dammit, before posting I searched on Belushi and for answers to the Mama Cass post, but did I check on Kitty G? Nope. Well and truly ninja’ed!
OK, so with me, Kurt Cobain was a big one. Does it define him? No. But “sort of”." I guess. I remember when I heard about it. I was a freshman in college, it was a big deal among me and a friend that used to send postcards to each other.
I think John Denver always wanted to be a bird (most likely, an eagle). His death in that airplane is just about how you’d expect him to go.
It kind of immortalized his music. I mean, I absolutely loved Nirvana’s two big albums(Nevermind and In Utero), but I have no real idea if they would have remained a popular and influential band had he lived and they kept going.
Here’s one whole thread on dementia and self-euthanasia.
And another that starts on a different topic and morphs into the same topic.
In both of which a lot of people agree they’d totally prefer to kill themselves than suffer through the end game of dementia. IOW there totally are righteous suicides.
What those ~200 posts also demonstrate is that our society has some severe hang-ups about what ought to be, for those of at least semi-sound mind, a completely acceptable personal decision.
I really do think they would have. The jumps from Bleach → Nevermind → In Utero just represented so much growth to me. But, alas, we shall never know …
It seems likely, but we’ll never know. I really think Nirvana would have continued to evolve and change dramatically.
Alice in Chains has been fortunate to return more or less in shape after Layne Staley’s death. While I wasn’t a huge fan of their last album, the previous two “new ones” are quite good. It helps that a ton of the vibe of Alice in Chains came from Jerry Cantreel, who is still in the band writing most of the songs. It also still has the same drummer and bassist, only replacing Layne Staley.
Note: One other former member of Alice in Chains died as well, but he was not in the band even when Layne was still there around 1992-95 or so.
I don’t have any names to add, but I wanted to revisit the OP:
That said, there are a number of names mentioned with which I would disagree that their deaths overshadowed their fame (or infamy). For instance, Hunter S. Thompson was mentioned a couple of times. Yes, it was a bizarre death, but he had wrote some damn good books and articles, and these are what I remember him for, not the manner of his death. Robin Williams is another one who I, at least, remember him for his humor and acting roles, not how he died. I would put Elvis in this same category; yes, he died on the toilet, but I rarely, if ever, think about that when I think about Elvis and his career. And I think that John Lennon’s music is much, much larger than his death.
Obviously, YMMV.
Ryan White.
He was the kid in the 80’s who got AIDS from a blood transfusion, was ostracized, and then died.
retracted
Out of the popular 90’s fare, I find Nirvana’s music to stand the test of time the best (and I never was a fan as such): they really made classics. This has nothing to do with Cobain’s death, and the music would be played regardless, I think.
Also, I think John Lennon and Elvis do not belong here at all: world’s most famous and celebrated artists who happened to die early, decades after their era-changing impact.
Even Marilyn Monroe doesn’t make the list, IMHO, nor many others. Or what Puzzlegal said.