Natasha Richardson, actress and wife of Liam Neeson. She fell over while taking a beginner’s ski lesson and hit her head. She said she was fine, twice refusing medical help, with paramedics thinking she was fine and leaving. Then she took a turn for the worse three hours later at her hotel, was taken to a hospital and then to another hospital where she died the next day.
Yet another plane crash death that was nevertheless odd: Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was killed when his small plane (that he presumably was piloting)flew into the 30th floor of a New York City apartment buildingduring a flying lesson.
Art Spiegelman is well known within the comic book community, not so much elsewhere. Sleazy Scandals of the Silver Screen (I botched the title, sorry) was an anthology comic book, circa 1989, by several underground cartoonists. Spiegelman edited it. I’m not very familiar with Kenneth Anger’s work, but it sounds like this particular story drew on it heavily.
Another unusual aircraft death: Payne Stewart along with the pilots and other passengers died of hypoxia when their plane depressurized in flight. The plane eventually crashed when it ran out of fuel, but everyone inside was dead by then.
Thank you. I recognize Spiegelman’s name. Anger’s book collects review comments like those at goodreads (here). For example, “most of the stories Anger relates are based on rumor and speculation”, etc.
Michelle Vogel’s 2012 book Lupe Velez: The Life and Career of Hollywood’s “Mexican Spitfire” looks to me to be better researched and to have more positive reviews from its readers. See for example amazon. Also, Will McKinley comments on Anger and on Vogel’s book, and Michael G. Ankerich has an interview with Vogel.
Astronaut Karl Heinze died climbing Mt. Everest…and is buried there.
Napoleon, Prince Imperial, grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was speared to death by Zulus.
Jerome Napoleon Charles Bonaparte, great-grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, died after tripping and breaking his neck while walking his wife’s dog in Central Park, in 1945.
SNL actor Charles Rocket went to a graveyard at midnight and slit his own throat.
And today’s “you cannot make this shit up” story:Bone snatcher Michael Mastromarino dies of bone cancer
So composed it’s obviously a magazine-destined reconstruction or reenactment.
I posted the Lupe Velez story first, with a caveat; the evidence is plentiful that she was found in disarray in the bathroom, having vomited before she died. The glosses that she jammed her head in the toilet and drowned are just that - glosses from a couple of lurid 80s Hollywood-trash books.
But I’ll bet one authentic Mexican wooden peso that that’s neither an authentic photo of Velez nor a good representation of how she was found.
I was scheduled to interview him ten days later. His publicist kept putting me off. It all added up, in retrospect, but still bothers me a great deal.
A reporter who was writing a (never published) biographical article told me that he’d learned that throat-cutting is the most self-hating form of suicide.
Andy Kaufman, a non-smoker, died young of lung cancer after repeatedly saying he would like to fake his own death, causing many fans to believe he did just that (which though he did not wouldn’t be any weirder than some of his previous stunts).
The exact circumstances of Natalie Wood’s death have been investigated for 30 years and probably will not ever be known (other than to Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken, assuming they were sober enough to remember).
Shirley Hemphill (character actress best known for What’s Happening?) and Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier (who gained fame from the documentary Grey Gardens) both died of natural causes but were both dead for days before their bodies were discovered.
Boris Sagal, who was an important TV miniseries director in the '70s and early '80s and was the father of Katey Sagal (and her twin sisters who were famous briefly in the '80s) was decapitated by a helicopter on the set of a miniseries he was directing. (It was obviously the last miniseries he directed.)
I just realized the irony of the OP’s name and my post. “Rocket Surgery” indeed.
Curtis Sliwa, doing his morning radio show, told the newscaster off-air about Michael Kennedy’s death, and the guy just laughed and said “Yeah, right.” He then went to read the news on air, said “Michael Kennedy has died” and there was about twenty seconds of totally dead air before Sliwa just cracked up laughing.
It was probably funnier when you heard it.
Influential novelist, Sherwood Anderson, died from swallowing a toothpick on a cruise.
I thought it was funnier when Sliwa passed out on Mary Ann Popp’s show.
I remember it. There was a lot of “gallows humor,” with many people wondering facetiously if the Segway was still standing up when they found it at the bottom of the river.
Death by Glass
Joe Flynn’s (Captain Binghamton on McHale’s Navy) wife died in 1974 when she dropped a glss milk bottle, slipped on the milk and cut her throat on the shards.
Charles McGraw (the gravelly-voiced gladiator teacher in Spartacus) fell through a shower door and also exsanguinated.
Della Reece almost met this same fate when she walked through a sliding glass patio door. After years of recovery, she made a warning PSA (although she was wrong about wire glass being a safe alternative)
Garry Hoy became a celebrity (or should someone whose fame is a caution be called a “scarelebrity?”) by his glass-related death by misadventure.
Also not true celebrities: thousands of birds killed each year by flying into glass
Not a huge celebrity, but he had some fame and his death was bizarre and ironic enough to make him bigger: Health and fitness expert J.I. Rodale was a guest on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, when he was in his early 70s, and during his interview predicted he would live to be 100. He died of a heart attack before getting out of his chair.
And, of course, running guru Jim Fixx died of a massive heart attack as well, while running.
I think we should have some more posts about the Segway guy.
My favorites thus far are the killer hay bale, killer monkey, and Tate/Manson family murder. Well maybe “favorites” sounds morbid. They’re the ones that strike me as most bizarre. I knew about the Manson one already, of course, and the ones that immediately came to mind (Carradine’s adventures in wanking, Duncan’s tragically long scarf) have already been mentioned. So yeah, I have nothing to add.
Wouldn’t be the first.
If historical figures count as celebrities, Union General John Sedgwick had a famous death in the opening moments of the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. He was furious that artillery would not position cannon where he told them to and when he asked why they told him Confederate sharpshooters stationed within sight would pick them off in a heartbeat. Sedgwick’s last words were "“I’m ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance!” before he was shot dead by one of the Confederate sharpshooters that couldn’t hit an elephant at that distance.
Jacky Boxberger was a French track athlete who finished 6th at the 1968 Olympics in the 1500. While a minor celebrity, his death was quite bizarre. He was killed by an elephant in Kenya. From the link: