Famous people whose deaths affected you

[ZenMonkey]

Inevitably in a thread about some celebrity's death, someone will chime in with "I never knew him, so I don't care." Nothing wrong with that point of view, although I could live without those posts.

But sometimes there are people you only know from their professional work, yet when they die, you feel a personal loss. With all the high-profile deaths lately, few of which have affected me much except for one (which doesn't count because I had a minor personal connection), I've been thinking about people I never knew, but whose deaths affected me emotionally. Here's a few off the top of my head.

Mel Blanc. The reason I have little nostalgia for '80s cartoons like most of my generation is that I was a Looney Toons snob. When Mel Blanc died I just couldn't believe that incredible voice would never be heard from again. I was 16 when he died and I cried when I saw this in a magazine shortly afterward:

Ella Fitzgerald. Again, someone I mainly knew through her voice, although of course I'd seen footage of her. In college I formed a really strong connection with her music, and my thesis script was even called "Ella Sings Mood Indigo." She had been in very poor health because of diabetes, but her death when I was living in San Francisco still shocked me. The New York Times obituary my mother sent me had a Hirschfeld drawing, which I think was this one, but in any case it also got me crying.

Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein. We lost these two giants of film composition within a month of each other in 2004 and it really got to me. When I see a movie one of them has scored, I often think about it. I know, this is even more pretentious than the other two; sorry, film music is among my geeky obsessions.

Hmm, I guess all of these have to do with music and sound.

 

[Tiq]

Oliver Postgate.


Why? Well... charlie brooker explains so much better than I could.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

My roommate has a big framed version of that Speechless image. :tear:

This past July 4th Steve McNair hit me a little hard. When I was a kid and first getting into football, he was my favorite player and hero and always seemed like the greatest guy. So it was a little bit of a double whammy of him cheating on his wife and kids AND getting shot in the face. I know now that he wasn't the greatest guy, but fuck.

 

[North_Ranger]

Admittedly... Princess Diana. I don't know how big she was at your side of the puddle, but here in Europe news about royalty is big. And compared to the stuffy princes and princesses of other royal families... well, Diana Spencer was something different.

I'm certain there's more, but I just can't think of one right now.

 

[Bellygrub]

Jim Henson. I was 12 when he died but he was my idol. I wanted to be a Muppetteer like other kids wanted to go to the Moon or play Pro Football. I was depressed for about a week. I can still remember my Mom getting angry at my "moping" around the house for no reason.

 

[Vytamindi]

George Harrison I had received "One" for Christmas my freshman year of high school. Man, I loved that CD. It wasn't my first exposure to the Beatles, but for some reason it clicked.

The next couple of years I developed a HUGE crush on George Harrison. I got my dad's 12 string and tried to hack out some chords, failing, but trying any way as well as falling in love with music and its composition.

Then, my senior year, he died. Mom told me to come watch the news one morning before school and I tried so hard not to cry. It was the first celebrity who I really felt made a difference in my life, and knowing that he would never know that, knowing that I could never tell him thank you for how he made me love music... that just killed me.

Now, when Paul McCartney dies, I will be a freaking wreck.

 

[Cajungal]

Ella Fitzgerald and Shirley Horn. I still well up when I hear/sing this song dedicated to her (shirley):

 

[North_Ranger]

Pertti "Spede" Pasanen, a Finnish comedian and actor, whose prolific film and TV appearances meant that just about anyone born between 1970 and 1990 would grow up knowing who he was.

 

[Cajungal]

Heheh, that's funny. Hard to beat smooshing desserts in people's faces.

 

[ThatNickGuy]

Owen Hart: Not only one of the most entertaining wrestlers, but from all the stories I'd heard about him before and especially after his death, one of the nicest guys in the dirtiest business. And then he got killed doing a stupid gimmicky stunt. Wrestling was never the same for me, after that, and I started preferring just seeing classic wrestling bouts between two guys instead of silly gimmicks like coming down on a wire and such. Not personality gimmicks, because those sell and are still great.

Chris Benoit: And this is pretty much what did it for me as far as losing most of my interest in wrestling. At the time, Benoit was definitely one of my favourite wrestlers. He was Canadian, he wrestled for the sake of pure wrestling, and pound for pound, probably one of the most talented guys in the business with a flawless style. He was everything that was great and pure in the business.

And then he killed his wife, his 7 year old son and himself.

I remember walking around in a daze for weeks, trying to understand it. Hell, I still don't understand. Here's one of my favourite wrestlers and even now, two years later, I still can't sit down and enjoy his work because all I think about is that he killed an innocent woman and a 7 year old boy.

I can still enjoy a lot of the older wrestling, the stuff I grew up on, but still can't to this day watch a Benoit match.

 

[North_Ranger]

Heheh, that's funny. Hard to beat smooshing desserts in people's faces.

I'd show you more, but they're all in Finnish. Particularly I would have loved to show you a bit from a movie where Spede's character (a sardonic comic relief of a grease-monkey) sets up an organisation for world peace. He'll expand it one person at a time, and if someone won't join, he'll PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE and then ask again.

 

[Andromache]

I had a drink on Carlin's behalf.

 

[Cajungal]

That's one that hit my brother hard. He was depressed for a while when that happened.

 

[Andromache]

every time I want to get sad at carlin's death, I picture him down there, screaming up at us, and I can't help but laugh.

 

[Charlie Don't Surf]

Owen Hart: Not only one of the most entertaining wrestlers, but from all the stories I'd heard about him before and especially after his death, one of the nicest guys in the dirtiest business. And then he got killed doing a stupid gimmicky stunt. Wrestling was never the same for me, after that, and I started preferring just seeing classic wrestling bouts between two guys instead of silly gimmicks like coming down on a wire and such. Not personality gimmicks, because those sell and are still great.

Chris Benoit: And this is pretty much what did it for me as far as losing most of my interest in wrestling. At the time, Benoit was definitely one of my favourite wrestlers. He was Canadian, he wrestled for the sake of pure wrestling, and pound for pound, probably one of the most talented guys in the business with a flawless style. He was everything that was great and pure in the business.

And then he killed his wife, his 7 year old son and himself.

I remember walking around in a daze for weeks, trying to understand it. Hell, I still don't understand. Here's one of my favourite wrestlers and even now, two years later, I still can't sit down and enjoy his work because all I think about is that he killed an innocent woman and a 7 year old boy.

I can still enjoy a lot of the older wrestling, the stuff I grew up on, but still can't to this day watch a Benoit match.

Oof. I forgot the wrestling ones. When TNA was based in Nashville(and I lived in Nashville), I went every week. The promotion was small, so they did a few official meet and greet things where the wrestlers just milled around with the crowd hanging out and talking after the show. And a few unofficial ones before and after too. So nearly everyone that ever went through the promotion I talked to, shook hands, blabbered some form of "you're awesome!" to.

And then there was the stretch of time where people in TNA seemed to die every few months. Mad Mikey/Crash Holly, Malice/The Wall, Curt Hennig, I feel terrible but I think I'm forgetting maybe one or two. It was horrible, and they were all under 40(maybe not Hennig). The wrestling business is really brutal for your favorite guys dying suddenly.

 

[meyoumeyou]

Owen Hart:

I seriously became ten times the Owen Hart fan, post-death, after reading Mick Foley's first book. From him being a generally good guy, to the hilarious antics, it felt like something of a waste to only know about it after the fact.

 

[Wasabi Poptart]

Jacques Cousteau - When I heard of his death I actually sat down and cried. I used to watch his documentaries on TV like most kids would watch special holiday cartoons. You couldn't pry me away from the TV when he was on. I already loved the ocean as a kid, but he was a big reason why I wanted to study marine biology. He made me realize that there is a lot about our own planet that we don't know. Plus, scuba diving would not be what it is today if it wasn't for him.

 

[ElJuski]

Well obviously Vonnegut, until I realized the dude was one guy who would not want one fuckafuck mourning about him anyway.

 

[JCM]

Many, with the most recent one being Heath Ledger.... I once experimented with drugs, but it was seeing talent hitting its peak die out what made me decide not to touch drugs again.

Also Steve Irwin, for the sheer irony of it.

 

[Math242]

Freddie Mercury hit me really hard even tho everyone older knew it was coming

i was 12 in 1991 and my mom had just introduced me to Queen,

every time i listened to the show must go on, i was sad.

Marie Trintignant was also a shock because she was killed by one of my favourite artists, Bertrand Cantat.

Fuck yeah, i forgot about Heath Ledger, i was very very upset

 

[Covar]

Christopher Reeves.

Nothing like loosing someone I knew, but the man was my first exposure to Superman, and will pretty much always be Superman in my head.

 

[Cajungal]

^Me too (about Heath Ledger), because, besides the obvious sadness over someone so young leaving loved ones and a little daughter behind, I thought he was really going to go places.

 

[Lally]

There are a couple here that have already been mentioned that had a little personal impact on me (Heath Ledger, for one, since he was one of my teenage celebrity crushes and once I was an adult I appreciated him for beauty AND talent, and Freddie Mercury, even though I was only 7 when he died my parents were big fans of Queen and I grew up listening to their music... I wouldn't say it necessarily affected me emotionally at the time but it did later and still does to an extent). I remember being really torn up over Dale Earnhardt's death because my dad was (and still is) a HUGE fan and we watched the accident happen that killed him, and my dad was pretty bummed about it (no crying, but he was pretty bummed). I am by no means a NASCAR fan, but Dale Earnhardt was a very cool guy.

The celebrity death that has had the most impact on me, though, was LeRoi Moore, the saxophonist for Dave Matthews Band, who died last summer from complications from an ATV accident. Usually I save my slobbering fangirl antics for other outlets (like Twitter), but I am seriously and very shamefully a huge nut for that band, and LeRoi was an amazing musician. It wasn't bad enough that he died, but he died almost three years to the day after my sixteen year old cousin, who was like a little brother to me and actually lived with my family for a while, died from eerily similar injuries from an ATV accident. Even thinking about it makes me emotional. This August, I went to a Dave Matthews Band concert at the last venue LeRoi ever performed at, which happened to occur on the fourth anniversary of my cousin's death. The band acknowledged that that venue was special to them because it was the last place they all played together, and they played songs in tribute to LeRoi all night. It was a really chilling and beautiful time, and I am so so so grateful I was there.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Abe Vigoda, I thought he was the funniest thing about Barney Miller, I even watched his show Fish. He was also awesome in the Godfather and Godfather II...

Odd thing is, I can't remember exactly when he died.

 

[Shannow]

Abe Vigoda, I thought he was the funniest thing about Barney Miller, I even watched his show Fish. He was also awesome in the Godfather and Godfather II...

Odd thing is, I can't remember exactly when he died.

http://www.abevigoda.com/

 

[Chad Sexington]

Michael Crichton. He was the first 'grown-up' author I ever read (I first read Jurassic Park when I was 11) and the first author of a book where I could snobbishly say "The book was better." when I saw the movie.

Looking back, he is not as great an author as I once built him up to be, and I really, really hated his book Next, but man. When I heard he died, all my memories of falling in love with books and reading came back. I used to be the 'loner' kid and I'd just sit and read at lunch time at school, and half the time, it was a Michael Crichton novel.

If it wasn't for Crichton, I wouldn't be the reader I am, I'd never have taken up an interest in writing...

So yeah. I was a bit sad when I heard he'd died.

 

[ElJuski]

Micheal Chrichton died?? Missed that one...

 

[Shegokigo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selena

As a 14yr old girl, who grew up on Tejano music, her death was a huge hit to me. At the time I wasn't exactly fully aware of my sexual orientation or anything to that sort but I was extremely enamoured with Selena. Her voice, her music, her body, her smile. Everything about her was angelic to me. It was even harder as I had met her in person multiple times (she began her career in my area) and attended a few of her concerts. When I heard the news, I had just gotten out of school for the day and I was crushed beyond belief. I couldn't bear the tribute music on the radio, even to this day I have trouble listening to her music.

She was at the cusp of being one of the first major international music stars, before Shakira or any of the other Latin/American cross-over artists. She could have been so much more.... :tear:

 

[Frank]

Owen Hart: Not only one of the most entertaining wrestlers, but from all the stories I'd heard about him before and especially after his death, one of the nicest guys in the dirtiest business. And then he got killed doing a stupid gimmicky stunt. Wrestling was never the same for me, after that, and I started preferring just seeing classic wrestling bouts between two guys instead of silly gimmicks like coming down on a wire and such. Not personality gimmicks, because those sell and are still great.

Chris Benoit: And this is pretty much what did it for me as far as losing most of my interest in wrestling. At the time, Benoit was definitely one of my favourite wrestlers. He was Canadian, he wrestled for the sake of pure wrestling, and pound for pound, probably one of the most talented guys in the business with a flawless style. He was everything that was great and pure in the business.

And then he killed his wife, his 7 year old son and himself.

I remember walking around in a daze for weeks, trying to understand it. Hell, I still don't understand. Here's one of my favourite wrestlers and even now, two years later, I still can't sit down and enjoy his work because all I think about is that he killed an innocent woman and a 7 year old boy.

I can still enjoy a lot of the older wrestling, the stuff I grew up on, but still can't to this day watch a Benoit match.

I was about to post one of those douchebaggy, I don't think any celebrity death has affected me but I'm posting anyway, posts until this. Fucking Chris Benoit. His mother and my mother were friends and used to work together. I had (and still have in a box somewhere) a pile of signed shit of his from when I was massively into wrestling. We're even from the same part of Edmonton.

When all that shit went down, I didn't even know what to think. He was one of my heroes. I couldn't even begin to imagine what led to what happened. It was flabbergasting.

 

[Chad Sexington]

Micheal Chrichton died?? Missed that one...

Yeah, last... *quick Google* November. I heard it on the radio from the Worst DJ Ever, which is probably why I remember where I heard it. The guys at work would have the same station on every day, with this boring, douchey host... I digress.

 

[Silver Jelly]

Right now, I can think only of some people that were long dead before I heard about their death... The fist one is Isaac Asimov. He was the author that introduced me to the wonderful world of science fiction, and I patterned most of my writing style form his. A few years ago, while I was re-reading some stories on the first book of his I read (robot dreams? I don't know what the title is in english) and saw the date he was born in the little biography thing on the back of the book.
He could still be alive!
I headed to the internet, to see if this was the case. I was diying to send him some fan mail because he was so important to me as a reader and writer... and then I saw that he died from AIDS in 1992.
Damn... I felt sad, because, for a moment, one of my literary idols was still alive and breathing in my own present.

The other one is Marilyn Monroe. I always knew about her death, but after I watched a documentary about her life and death, I stated to get sad every time I see her (or hear her) on tv or wherever.

 

[ZenMonkey]

Can't believe I forgot this one:

Douglas Adams.

 

[Hailey Knight]

I was only 5 when Jim Henson died and I still remember it. It didn't have a big impact at the time, because I hadn't seen all his stuff then, even though I was watching a ton of it. Later on now, I miss seeing all the specials that would be on where he hosted or was showing behind the scenes of the Muppets.

Stan Winston has been the big one recently. His special effects work has ranged from Predator, Jurassic Park, Terminator, Iron Man, and a ton of others. I used to watch Movie Magic on Discovery channel and idolized him. I was so upset the day he died.

 

[Hailey Knight]

Damn, Ame, you scared me into thinking Stan Lee and Christopher Lloyd were dead.

 

[Rubicon]

Owen Hart: Not only one of the most entertaining wrestlers, but from all the stories I'd heard about him before and especially after his death, one of the nicest guys in the dirtiest business. And then he got killed doing a stupid gimmicky stunt. Wrestling was never the same for me, after that, and I started preferring just seeing classic wrestling bouts between two guys instead of silly gimmicks like coming down on a wire and such. Not personality gimmicks, because those sell and are still great.

Chris Benoit: And this is pretty much what did it for me as far as losing most of my interest in wrestling. At the time, Benoit was definitely one of my favourite wrestlers. He was Canadian, he wrestled for the sake of pure wrestling, and pound for pound, probably one of the most talented guys in the business with a flawless style. He was everything that was great and pure in the business.

And then he killed his wife, his 7 year old son and himself.

I remember walking around in a daze for weeks, trying to understand it. Hell, I still don't understand. Here's one of my favourite wrestlers and even now, two years later, I still can't sit down and enjoy his work because all I think about is that he killed an innocent woman and a 7 year old boy.

I can still enjoy a lot of the older wrestling, the stuff I grew up on, but still can't to this day watch a Benoit match.

Eddie Guerreo

If you know his real life stuff, Eddie fought hell with a stick and won. He became a hardcore drunk, drug user, you name it. And he defeated his inner demons, he got clean, he won his family's love and trust back, he was doing well in the wrestling business again, then he just suddenly died. No drugs in his system, no alcohol. Just the years of abuse from the drinking and drugs took they're toll on his heart and it just gave out on him.. That made me sad, cause it takes a big person to overcome such obstacles in life, succeed then basically have it bite them in the ass.

Andy Hallette (spelling?)

Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok Clan, The Host, or simply Lorne. Andy had the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. Fuck it if it's gay to say, this man could sing like an angel of heaven (no pun intended). I mean really, I could listen to him sing a freakin dictionary, he had a set of pipes on him. He battled heart disease and lost..at such a young age.. He is missed.

Superman (technicality)

Yea he didnt really die, his solar power just having been depleted but I was like, 11 when this came out. Superman was a fucking icon of the superhero community. He was the best of the best, big blue boyscout or not, he was a rolemodel, his values simple and easily understood. It was a shocker to see them off one of their if not their biggest character.. (them being DC).



I'm sure there are more but I can't remember them.