Heather O’Rourke 32
River Phoenix 37
Rebecca Schaeffer 40
Kurt Cobain 41
Diana Spencer 46
Dorothy Stratten 48
Anissa Jones 50
Sid Vicious 50
Ian Curtis 51
Freddie Prinze 53
Janis Joplin 64
Jim Morrison 64
Brian Piccolo 64
Jimi Hendrix 65
Bruce Lee 67
John Lennon 67
Buddy Holly 71
James Dean 77
Charles Lindbergh Jr. 77
Elvis Presley 78
Anne Frank 79
Martin Luther King Jr. 79
Marilyn Monroe 81
John F. Kennedy 90
Jean Harlow 97
Clyde Barrow 99
Anastasia Romanova 106
Fascinating list!
The one I find most interesting is JFK. In theory, he could be alive at 90 today. In reality, though, his health was always suspect (despite public perceptions to the contrary), so I tend to doubt that he ever could have survived into old age.
For many of these, too, I think part of their mystique derives from the fact that we don’t perceive of them as ever aging past their prime. Would James Dean still be an icon of cool if we occasionally saw his wrinkled old face show up on an Entertainment Tonight interview? I suspect not.
What prompted me was the realization that Anne Frank and Martin Luther King, two people that you never think of as contemporaries, were born within the same six month period.
Arthur Ashe, Geraldo Rivera, Mick Jagger and I were all born the same month. One of us is still cool and filled with energy. One of us got his nose broken on TV. One of us is deceased. One of us won at Wimbleton. And two of us had our photo in the newspaper together when I retired. (I’ll never tell.) We are the same age as Jim Morrison (whose grave I visited in Paris) and Janis Joplin – 64.
Rita Hayworth – 89
Jimmy Stewart – 100 on May 20
John Wayne – 101 in May
Clark Gable – 107
Zasu Pitts – 114
Lionel Barrymore – five days short of 130
Che Guevara would be 80.
Jayne Mansfield - 75 (she was only one year older than my mother!)
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria would be 145 if he were alive today!
William McKinley would be 165!
And Abraham Lincoln would be 199!