So far in the first month of 2003 we have already lost Nell Carter, Al Hirshfeld, Maurice Gibb and Virginia Heinlein. Which years have seen the most celebrity deaths? I know “celebrity” is an arbitrary term with a loose definition, but I think anyone who is fairly well-known nationally or internationally for his or her work in movies, TV , music, writing, or politics would qualify. Does someone know of a web site that specializes in chronicling celebrity deaths?
EVERY year is the year with the most celebrity deaths, because in this day and age, there are far more people than ever before who qualify as “celebrities.”
Two hundred years ago, one hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, relatively few people ever became famous, even for a short time. Today, SOMEBODY new becomes famous (if only for Andy Warhol’s proverbial 15 minutes) every day.
Whenever Darva Conger or Rick Rockwell dies, that will be a “celebrity” death. Ditto for Richard from “Survivor,” for Kato Kaelin, for Heidi Fleiss, and a host of other people. Modern pop culture creates so many new “celebrities,” that it’s ineveitable: more “celebrities” will die, every year, than the year before.
No fair, astorian. You posted the same basic answer that I was about to post, except that you did it seemingly more concisely and coherently.
The only thing I’d add is that our celebrity culture burst into full swing with the advent of movies, vaudeville, and national touring companies about a century or so ago. While that original generation is already dead, we have, in addition to the instant celebrities, a generation of true celebrities of great age. Since, as you noted, the number of celebrities increased with each year of the past century, the number of deaths each year in this century will therefore also increase.
The Dead People Server keeps lists of famous people who have died each year from 1988 to 2003. For example, People Who Died in the Year 2002 Dead-or-alive has a list of People Who Died in the Year 2002, but I don’t know if they have other years.
Oh, and I should add the flip side to that. In the last part of the 19th century, newspapers rose to a new prominence in terms of circulation and influence. Not only were there giant newspapers with huge circulations in every city, but also literally dozens of specialized and “foreign”-language newspapers. These helped create a national culture of celebrity that included not only the entertainers that I mentioned before but sports stars, musicians, millionaires, criminals, society-page denizens and politicians. Some people got their equivalent of 15 minutes of fame as well.
While nothing compares to the fantastic extent of our current mass production of celebrities, the celebrity culture was in place with just about every aspect we currently understand a century ago. That helps explain why we can identify so many aged celebrities today. See Al Hirschfeld, who recently died just short of age 100.
1977 always stands out for me; Elvis and Groucho within a few weeks of one another.
Does Virginia Heinlein really count as a “celebrity?”
I’ll always remember the Summer of '73: all within a few weeks, we lost Betty Grable, Veronica Lake, Joe E. Brown, Robert Ryan, Ernest Truex (silent film and stage actor), character actor George Macready, makeup artist Wally Westmore, Lon Chaney, Jr., Bruce Lee, silent film actresses Eileen Percy and Mary Carr . . . Now, that was a lousy summer.