We Are Being Entertained By The Dead

Radio, recordings, movies and television have changed something very fundamental in our lives. Before these mediums existed once a performer died you never could watch him or her in a performance again. Today we routinely listen to music from dead recording artists and watch long dead TV and movie stars. When you look at things this way it seems a little ghoulish, but we are so used to doing it, we don’t even give it a second thought and sometimes even look forward to relaxing, turning on the tube and watching a good John Wayne movie. One thing I have noticed is there were a few movie stars who had children who became stars and some of them look exactly like their fathers at a certain age. You would have actually thought they were the same person if you didn’t know better.

It is understandable that very old shows which featured older people would have become shows with dead casts, but there are plenty of television and movie celebrities who died way before their time. Here is a list of some of them: Β River Phoenix died at 23 years old, James Dean died at 24 years old, Marilyn Monroe died at age 36, Sal Mineo died at 37 years old, Natalie Wood died at 43 years old, Elvis Presley died at 42 years old, John Lennon died at 40 years old, Heath Ledger died at 28 years old, Vivien Leigh died at 53 years old, John Candy died at 43 years old, John Ritter died at 54 years old, Michael Jackson died at 50 years old, Bruce Lee died at 32 years old, John Belushi died at 33 years old, Judy Garland died at 47 years old, Gary Coleman died at 42 years old, Raul Julia died at 54 years old, Brandon Lee died at 28 years old, Natasha Richardson died at 45 years old, Heather O’Rourke died at 12 years old.

We all know we have no control over when we are going to die, but when celebrities die it upsets a lot of people, because they are in the public view and people begin to think of their own mortality. When most of us look at a movie when a deceased star or stars in it, we usually don’t dwell on the fact that the star is a dead person. As time goes by there are going to be more movies and television shows which will feature dead stars, because they will remain popular long after their stars have died. Let’s take the original Star Trek series for example. The show started 1966 and is still very popular today. It is 49 years old already and the stars that are still alive are aging. William Shatner was born in 1931. He is 84 years old. Leonard Nimoy was also born in 1931 and just died. DeForest Kelley died in 1999, James Doohan died in 2005, Nichelle Nichols was born in 1932 and is 82 years old, George Takei was born in 1937 and is 77 years old and Walter Koenig was born in 1936 and is 78 years old. Sometime within the next 20 years or sooner there probably will be no one left from the original series, but it is so popular it might just go on for many years after that. I wouldn’t be surprised if some new technology comes along and the original series gets enhanced.

I have to admit sometimes a television or show or a movie just seems to have the right cast and this helps make it memorable. When this happens with a television show, the show can remain popular seemingly forever. When it happens with a movie, the movie will remain popular far beyond the time anyone expected. The television show Lucy and the show Golden Girls along with many others proves this point. As far as movies go, the movie The Searchers with John Wayne seems to be on television every time I turn the set on. We are at the point now when some new technology comes along we may be able to convert these old movies and programs to fit that new technology allowing them to go on for many more generations. This is one of the first times in history younger generations even know who some of the actors were from years ago. I am sure if you asked people in their 20s who John Wayne or Lucy was, many of them would know.

We are used to seeing people who have died still performing, which brings me to this point. There is a movement to be able to make new movies and television shows using dead actors. We have the technology already. If anyone doubts this they just have to watch the commercials with Fred Astaire advertising a vacuum cleaner and this was in 1997.

Many of these old films and television shows will also have historical value because they show how people lived in certain eras. The old news videos and films are even more valuable, because they create a historical record of what was going on in the world. We have already seen some of this. Take the case of President Johnson. He said we entered the Vietnam War because of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and this was recorded. Later McNamara admitted it never happened and we also recorded that for posterity.