Dead People Server
Not Dead Yet
Quash Those Dead People Rumors!
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There were very persistent rumors about
June Carter Cash and
Luther
Vandross being dead before 5/15/2003. Neither died before that date (despite at least one would-be "insider" saying that Cash died on 5/12/03!). Cash had complications following heart surgery and died on 5/15/2003; Vandross, after suffering a stroke in mid-April of 2003, died on 7/1/2005. Dead People Server will rarely be "first" with reporting a rumored death, it will be accurate instead.
An anonymous/pseudononymous death announcement in alt.obituaries and in certain Web sites are pretty much meaningless. Some people use message boards and the Web to spread rumors. I won't even bother to list such rumors here.
These folks are all not, I repeat not dead yet!
Scott Baio (actor) -- Not dead yet! On the day Chris Farley died, a persistent rumor that Baio died hit LaLaLand so hard that even his agent was spooked.
Mayim Bialik (actress) -- Not dead. TV's Blossom.
Tom Bosley (actor) -- Alive. Best-known as "Mr. C." in Happy Days, some people confuse him with David Doyle (Charlies' Angels) who has died.
Jimmy Buffett (singer) -- Not dead, just chillin'...
Steve Burns (kid show host) -- Alive. For some reason, there's a rumor running around that he's dead.
Frank Cady (actor) -- Alive. Mr. Drucker on Green Acres has often been reported as dead, yet other folks report that he is still out playing golf.
Frasier Crane ("alive") -- Erroneously reported dead on a Frasier episode after a minor car accident.
Richard Dawson (alive) -- Some people confuse him with Ray Combs, the Family Feud host who committed suicide.
Matt Frewer (actor) -- Alive, contrary to some rumor that he was murdered.
Harry Goaz (obscure actor) -- Alive. Played Andy Brennan on Twin Peaks - there was a persistent rumor about his demise making the rounds.
Larry Hagman (actor) -- Not dead yet. Yes, he's had an illness that required partial removal of
his new liver, but he says he's feeling OK and would like to work! (according to TV Guide, 6/2004)
Stephen Hawking (physicist) -- Not dead yet. He's had ALS for over 40 years, which is an extraordinarily long time to survive with this condition. Even remarried, paid off a bet he'd lost, and had his first
wife write a "tell all" book about him.
Whitney Houston (singer, actress) -- Not dead yet. In the wake of the
WTC bombing, a persistent rumor hit the nets that
Houston had died of a drug overdose (based on her
emaciated public appearances). Her spokeswoman
denied it.
Steve Jobs (CEO, geek) -- Not dead yet. Bloomberg inadvertantly ran his obituary on 8/27/08. He says he was cured of pancreatic cancer in 2004, but looked gaunt at an Apple meeting in the summer of 2008.
Holly Johnson (rocker) -- Alive, but is HIV-positive. Lead singer for Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Johnson has kept a low profile but is still alive.
Russell Johnson (actor) -- Alive. Erroneously reported in some places as dead due to some confusion after the death of his son a few years back.
James Earl Jones (actor) -- Alive. On the night that James Earl Ray died, Pittsburgh baseball announcer Lanny Fratere told thousands of listeners that James Earl Jones had died.
Milla Jovovich (actress) -- Alive. On Mar 16, 1999, Charemon Jonovich, the SO of Murphy Brown's Robert Pastorelli, was found shot dead, sparking the rumor that it was Milla Jovovich who had died.
Julie Kavner (actress) -- Alive.
Someone on alt.obituaries thinks otherwise, but...
B. B. King (blues great) -- Alive. A song writer named Pee Wee King wrote wrote The Tennesee Waltz
died in early 2000, and some people thought that meant BB.
Jerry Mathers (child actor) -- Alive. Another Jerry Mathers was killed in Vietnam in 1969, sparking persistant rumors
that "the Beav" had died in Nam.
Sir Paul McCartney (musician) -- Alive. Rumors of his death have swirled around for over 30 years. His wife Linda died of cancer in 1998.
Eddie Mekka (actor/dancer) -- Not hung on the Jamie Foxx Show, but his neck was apparently stretched a little more than planned. During a stunt for the show, in which his character was supposed to be hung by his scarf, the trick turned too realistic and sent Eddie into hypoxia.
Maureen O'Hara (actress) -- Alive. Someone at the IMDB
confused Maureen O'Sullivan (who died on Jun 22, 1998) with
the very much alive Ms. O'Hara for a few weeks after
Ms. O'Sullivan's death.
Ozzy Osbourne (rocker) -- Alive.
Someone decided to announce his death on 1/20/05 while Ozzy was visiting
his home in England.
Joe Piscopo (comic) -- Not dead yet. Has had cancer.
Ben Savage (actor) -- Not dead yet. Rumored to have died in a car accident in September 2006.
Craig Shergold (healthy person) - Alive and up to his neck in post cards. In the early '80s, he was sick with cancer and asked for people to send him post cards. Hundreds of thousands sent him cards. The child went into remission. His family asked for people to stop. The story mutated over the years, and took on a life of its own on the Internet.
Mollie Sugden (actress) -- Rumored to have died of a heart attack on Aug 31, 1998, but her agent spoke to her on the phone on Sep 9, 1998.
Dave Swarbrick (folk fiddler) -- Alive. The British paper The Daily Telegraph reported him as dead on Apr 20, 1999, while he was in the hospital fighting a lung infection.
Paul Vance (songwriter) -- Alive. A similarly named person who'd claimed to have written "Itsy Bitsy Yello Polka Dot Bikini" died in September 2006 but the actual
author of the song lives on.
Abe Vigoda (actor) -- Alive. People Magazine reported him as dead erroneously in passing in an article over 25 years ago.
Slim Whitman
(country singer) -- Alive. On his 84th birthday, the Tennessean announced he'd died, but deleted the article by the next day.
Edward O. Wilson
(entomologist/teacher/writer) -- Alive. Erroneously listed as having died by the San Francisco Chronicle in a March 2005 article.
"Weird Al" Yankovic (musical satirist) -- Not dead. Since a cartoon character in King of the Hill said he was dead, a few people are wondering. Weird Al, in "life imitating art," briefly did a kid's TV show, kind of the PeeWee Herman of the late '90s.
Errors in Dead People Server
Every once in a while, I screw up a status. Here are some I'm aware of:
Forrest J Ackerman (editor/fan) -- A British site reported his death on November 6, 2008. A number of us used this source to report his death without adequate verification. At the time, Forry was home receiving hospice care. He made it to his 92nd birthday on November 24, and died on December 4, 2008.
Charles Lane (actor) -- Dead (as of 7/07), but I thought he was dead before then, and had said so a bunch
of times over the years. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2005 and was interviewed on TV several times.
Marcia Strassman (actress) -- Alive.
I carelessly screwed up her record in February 2005 and fixed it in late March 2005. Or, I thought I did. Someone pointed out to me in March 2007 that I'd still killed off Marcia. It's fixed - this time, for sure!
Herman Stein (composer) -- Dead (as of 3/07), but I neglected to update his record in DPS until 2/08. However, he was reported as dead in the late '80s.
Death Rumors That Were Wrong at the Time But No Longer!
Joe DiMaggio (baseball great) -- He wasn't dead yet on Jan 24, 1999, when NBC erroneously broadcast his death following a New York Daily News report that Joltin' Joe was on death's door.
Ian Dury (rocker) -- He wasn't dead on August 26, 1998, when Bob Geldof announced on a radio show that Dury had already died of cancer.
Bob Hope (comedian) -- On June 5, 1998, a week after
Hope's well-publicized 95th birthday, Rep. Stump of Arizona read what he
thought was an AP report of Hope's death on the floor of the House. Just
another example that you can't believe anything you hear in Congress.
(There was an erroneous report at the AP site, but it contained the
boilerplate obit prepared in advance for famous people - it didn't contain
a date or a cause. Dick Armey didn't have the judgement necessary to
comprehend that it was an error, and passed the info to Stump, who likewise
lacked the judgement and announced the death which was then broadcast
on CSPAN to a somewhat confused nation. Most of the news services did not
carry this as "a fact" - only Reuters/Yahoo carried this report before
retracting it. Check your facts, folks!! A reader reported that
ABC News Radio announced Hope's death, went into a refrain of "Thanks for
the Memories," then corrected themselves!)
Steve
"The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin (zoo director) --
Not fatally wounded by an animal until 2006 (only celeb to die by stingray).
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon Windsor (Queen Mum) -- She lived to be 101, so some people thought a nosebleed brought her down. Instead, she survived her second daughter by over a month.
Victor Mature (actor) -- At least one film book killed him off before August 1999.
Robert Palmer (resistable performer) -- Dead. Died after a music critic with the same name died.
People Who Are Still Dead
Generalisimo Francisco Franco (military leader) -- As Chevy Chase used to say during the first year of Saturday Night Life, "still dead."
Andy Kaufman (comic) -- Still dead no matter
how many times Bob Zmuda (Andy's old partner) plays Tony Clifton and tries to say
otherwise - here's Andy's death certificate, something people can't fake.
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