Gary Coleman -- Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis? -- Dennis Hopper -- Oh, wow, what the hell was that, man? -- have both passed away. Coleman, never in good health, from long-time problems stemming from dialysis and steroids, Hopper, from prostate cancer.
Both men were much lower on the celebrity chain than once they had been.
Coleman, whose growth was stunted early because of treatment for kidney failure, played young, and then faded after his TV turn in Diff'rent Strokes, about two black kids adopted by a rich white guy. He fell upon hard times and never really recovered.
Hopper, best known for Easy Rider and being a bad boy, had a long body of work, going back to Rebel Without a Cause.
They always seem to come in threes, celebrity deaths. I'm wondering who will be next ...
Art Linkletter died earlier this week.
ReplyDeleteBrass
Apparently you died earlier this week, too. Or at least, one web site told us you had.
ReplyDeletehttp://protoncharging.com/gb/2010/05/28/real-ghostbusters-writer-stephen-j-perry-confirmed-murdered/
Yeah, I have been following this. Actually, that Steve probably died a couple weeks ago. All they have found so far, according to the reports I've seen, is an arm, and if you get to hair-splitting, finding an arm does not prove murder -- habeas corpus and all -- so the police took their time before they called it homicide.
ReplyDeleteI put up a note about that here, and on several comic book blogs and the wikipedia listings for that Steve and this one. It's easy to conflate us, since we both wrote kidvid at the same time. But he did ThunderCats and I never did; I did a bunch of west coast animation and he never did. HIs middle initial was "J," mine "C." And as of this moment, I'm still here.
Someone posted this on Digg in the thread on the death of Steve Perry:
ReplyDeleteCeleb deaths of May:
Ronnie James Dio (May 16th, 2010)
Gary Coleman (May 28th, 2010)
Dennis Hopper (May 29th, 2010)
Stephen Perry (May 30th, 2010)
This month SUCKS.
The three already happened. Dennis Hopper was the third.
ReplyDelete1. Frank Frazetta
2. Ronnie James Dio
3. D-Hop
All were legends in their perspective medium and changed the flow of how it is utilized today.
Gary Coleman, yes sad, however, did "little" to affect his medium
Speaking of medium....
ReplyDeleteA 'little person' was running a fortune telling scam in Vegas, ripping people off before leaving town.
The marks got upset and alerted Police, who are now looking for a small medium at large...