Anne Boleyn.
King Tut.
Abraham Lincoln.
I remember Alan Turing more for how he died than anything else, but select few people know who he is.
I really don’t agree with the mention of Kurt Cobain. I wasn’t partial to Nirvana (I much preferred Pearl Jam), but they pretty much started and defined grunge. It may be passe now, but you couldn’t turn around without hearing them in the early to mid 90’s.
Now, on a bit of a different angle to this thread, we wouldn’t have a clue who Courtney Love was if Kurt hadn’t offed himself. We’d just be thinking “Who was that girl that was married to Kurt Cobain?”
You gotta be kidding.
The man who gave the Gettysburg Address, who led the country through its bloodiest war, and who wrote the Emancipation Proclaimation. You’re saying we wouldn’t remember him if he hadn’t been shot while at the theater?
I’m not so sure about that. There were guys out there making a living as Elvis impersonators even before Elvis died. One of them (can’t remember his name) rushed out a “tribute” song entitled “The King Is Gone” right after E pinched that fateful loaf, and it shot to the top of the charts.
Also, Janis Joplin definitely belongs on this list. “Me and Bobby McGee” didn’t hit the charts until after she died, and I’m not sure she had any hits before her death. It was one of those situations where after she died, people started saying “Oh yeah, I’ve been listening to her stuff for years” (A nod to Bill Murray for that line.)
I have a few other nominees:[ul][li]Sacco and Vanzetti. Just a couple of faceless Italian immigrants until their execution as anarchists turned them into icons.[/li][li]Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Same sorta deal.[/li][li]Vincent Van Gogh Maybe his work would still be celebrated, but after all, he only sold one painting while he was alive, and the tragic aspects of his death are clearly part of his appeal.[/li][li]Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldberg.[/li][li]Joan of Arc. Might still be famous, but that whole burning at the stake thing definitely added to her mystique.[/li][li]Hank Williams. Would still be celebrated as a father of country music, but his untimely death increased his standing.[/li][li]Patsy Cline. Same deal.[/li][li]Brian Piccolo.[/li]Hank Gathers.[/ul]
Computer pioneer and gay-geek icon. I don’t, however, know how he died (or I do know and can’t remember…fuzziness abounds).
Slightly poor taste, but Matthew Shepard, James Byrd, Amadou Diallo, Sacco & Vanzetti.
Sorry, but Janis was considered the premier female rock singer for some time before her death. Music wasn’t just hits back then (and “Piece of My Heart” was a success long before she died). Her death only added to her reputation.
Actually, I can think of several people whose untimely death did nothing to make them more famous: Duane Allman, Laird Cregar, Carole Lombarde, Thelma Todd, and George Gershwin, for instance. They were all well-regarded at the time of their deaths, and their reputation today has little to do with it.
Though undoubted no one would have heard of Virginia Rappe if she hadn’t died.
Wasn’t she the victim in the Fatty Arbuckle scandal?
The most photographed woman in the world is more famous because she is dead??? I think she was probably the most famous person in the world BEFORE she died. She would have only gotten more famous if she had remarried, when William had become king with her looking on, moved to New York, etc. etc.
Now Dodi Fayed, he is definitely more famous from being in that fatal car crash.
Also, no one has mentioned Jon-Benet Ramsey. I bet most people didn’t even know there was a child beauty pageant industry before news of her murder surfaced.
Virginia Rappe was indeed the victim of the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, and has also been the victim of the “blame the victim” syndrome. She was no two-bit tart, she was an actress with about 6 years’ experience and some very good reviews behind her. She died of an intestinal infection (caused either by a burst bladder or as the result of a botched abortion some weeks earlier) after the party—and, while Arbuckle didn’t directly cause her death, he and his friends should have been fouind guilty of negligent manslaughter. They left her in the hotel room for three days and never got her to a hospital because they were afraid of a scandal (which happened anyway).
Yeah, yeah, RC, I know; you were listening to her stuff for years before she died… 
Now if Joan Baez or Grace Slick had died in '70, and Janis were still around, whose legend do you think would be biggest?
And I’m sorry, but I never got the appeal of Janis Joplin anyway. She did a great job on three or four songs, but the rest of her stuff is un-listenable, IMHO. Plus, her vocal-cord-abusive manner of singing would have probably destroyed her voice within a couple of years, even if she had lived.
Judge Crater? Well, maybe he didn’t die…anybody know who this dude was?
What about John Brown, who led the Harper’s Ferry rebellion just before (or perhaps during the beginning of…I’m fuzzy on the date) the Civil War?
Only thing I do remember about him is:
A. captured by the Army and hanged.
B. “John Brown’s body lies ‘a moulderin’ in the grave…”
Mary Jo Kapecke, Lisa Steinberg, Ron Goldman, Nichole Brown Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey–all unknown until they were dead.
Judge Crater was, I believe, a New York State Supreme Court Justice.
Oh, to the murder victim list, add all the Manson victims—even Sharon Tate would be no more remembered than, say, Barbara Parkins, if she hadn’t been done in.
He was a New York state court judge. Got into a cab one day in the middle of New York City and was never seen again. There was a bit of a microscandal because the last person to have seen him wasn’t his wife, but a showgirl that he’d had dinner with.
Ah, DRY, one of my favorite Dopers disputes me…I’m crushed…
I guess I mean, he’d have been a more obscure ruler. After all, how many people know who Emperor Karl was? (He was Ferdinand’s nephew, who became emperor in 1916.)
As I recall, Turing was a codebreaking pioneer as well during WWII, and held a high security clearance with the British. Some years later, during the course of a minor robbery comitted against him, he admitted a sexual relationship with the (male) suspect - a crime in Britain at that time. When he realized that he had outed himself (and remember that security clearance!) he suicided out of shame. The PBS dramitization that I saw suggested that the method was some sort of poisoned fruit. A very sad ending for one who served the Allies so well during the war.
I knew what you meant, and you are, of course, correct.
I simply disputed your statement that the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire (dwindling as it was) would have been known to history if he actually ruled.
However, it’s really doubtful he would have been as famous as he is now, and so Franz Ferdinand does belong on this list.
Another who belongs on the list is Mata Hari.
By the way, it belatedly occurs to me that the thread really should have read “People more famous because they died when they did”. I mean, everyone dies.
Oh, and Guinastasia is one of MY favorite posters as well!
Janis’ album “Pearl” was already a hot seller when she assumed room temperature.
Will Rogers crashed in Alaska at the right time, however.
How could I forget Jonathan Larson, creator of the musical RENT? He had just seen the first full dress rehersal runthrough, given an interview to the New York Times, went home and was found dead two hours later.
It turned out he had been to two NYC hospitals the previous week complaining of chest pains. The first told him it was food poisoning and made him vomit; the second said it was a virus. Turned out he had an anyaism (spelling?) that ripped a 12 inch tear into his aorta. This clearly should up on the X-rays one of the hospitals took.
Anyway, his death made RENT the musical of the decade. I’ll always wonder if it would have been such a success had Larson not died, and if he would have done anything else.