Just saw a commercial for David Letterman. Apparently tonight Willie Tyler & Lester will be making an appearance. I was surprised, I could have sworn I remember hearing about Willie Tyler dying about 10 years ago. I had the same reaction when I saw Twiggy as a judge on America’s Next Top Model. I have a clear memory of her dying of a cocaine overdose sometime in the early 80’s.
Who did you think was dead, until you saw them again?
Quite a number in fact (over the years). I woulda sworn that Larry Hagman met his
maker a couple of years ago, but some quasi-random surfing last night to the IMDB
showed that he’s still with us. I dunno if it is my Swiss-cheese memory or I’m slipping
between realities…
You weren’t too far off, Hagman had a liver transplant that saved his life in 1996. I seem to recall the Hollywood ET Insider Report shows saying he was “near death”, but I don’t know how close he was to going to the big ranch in the sky.
At my college graduation in the late 1990s, when they were giving out honorary degrees, I think that hundreds of us had this reaction at the same time. You could hear the murmur in the crowd…“Arthur Miller’s still alive?!”
(Yes, I know he’s dead now.)
Been competing in any bat’leth tournaments lately? 
I saw Willie and Lester at a comedy club… 4 years ago? He/They had just won a national venriloquism compeition in Vegas.
Is Abe Vigoda still alive?
I had this reaction to a recent thread about The Pogues and Shane MacGowan touring:
“Shane’s still alive?”
I opened the thread and saw I wan’t the only one.
Jack Palance is still alive!
For me, it’s often old political figures: John Anderson, Howard Baker, Griffin Bell, Earl Butz, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ramsey Clark, Chuck Colson, Al Haig, Howard Hunt, Henry Kissinger, Melvin Laird, Jeb Magruder, Robert McNamara, James Schlesinger, Stansfield Turner
Don Ho is still making Tiny Bubbles.
For years I thought Diana Rigg was dead. But no, not only was she not dead when I thought, she’s still not dead now!
Imagine my dismay when I realized that Gordon Lightfoot was still alive after 2 years of thinking he succumbed to some sort of cancer. 
McNamara is still alive? (Checks Google…) Well, I’ll be dammed, he is!
Dead or Alive, the website that tracks whether famous people are still with us:
http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/pages-nf/main
I OP’ed this thread about Cheeta, Tarzan’s chimp sidekick from the old 1940s movies. He’s going to be 75 in April!
I thought Bob Hope was dead long before he really was.
I’ll be damned. I didn’t know that Glenn Ford and Steve Howe bit it.
Larry Hagman always confuses me too because he went through Liver problems right around the same time as Mickey Mantle and Mick died.
I think I always associate the two events.
Lady Bird Johnson always gets me.
The last time I saw him, he was riding a bicycle-built-for-three with John Tesh and William Shatner (on Conan O’Brien’s 10th anniversary special).
From Wikipedia: “In 1982, Vigoda enjoyed a little extra publicity when People magazine erroneously declared him dead. Vigoda took the error with good humor, posing for a photograph showing him sitting up in a coffin, holding the magazine in question. Since then his erroneous death has remained a running joke for Vigoda.”
and
"Greg Galcik created the website abevigoda.com in May 2001, which was a single page displaying “Abe Vigoda’s status” which reports whether Abe Vigoda is currently alive or dead. In 2002, Galcik recorded a gothic rock song Abe Vigoda’s Dead, a parody of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus.
Didn’t I hear something about Paul McCartney being dead? 