We See Dead People 

Even that phrase, kicking the bucket, is one of the ways we mock death. Give it an odd name and it doesn't seem as bad: Kick the bucket, buy the farm, pass on, meet your maker, croak, give up the ghost, breathe your last, slip this mortal coil, walk the last mile.

The age of mass media and celebrity culture has made our relationship with death even more complicated and, frankly, confusing. We become so familiar with media celebrities, the state of their lives starts to seem important to us. How many times has this happened to you? You're watching TV with some friends and someone is interviewing a famous old actor when one of you says, "Jesus, I thought he was dead." Or even weirder: someone refers to one of your favorite celebs as "the late So-and-so," and you find yourself in that surreal media culture state of realizing you had forgotten the celeb had hitched a ride to the afterlife. And then, of course, there's that collection of well-known people who seem like they should have died by now.

These days, one of the things that define the members of a particular generation is the list of celebrities they grew up with. Boomers? The Beatles and JFK. Gen Xers? Van Halen and Reagan. Gen Yers? Hip hop and Clinton. Pre-boomers? Sinatra and Roosevelt. You feel as if you know these people, but the feeling usually depends on the celebs staying in the public eye. Fame is fleeting, and "out of sight, out of mind" often translates into "Hey, I haven't seen [celeb's name] for a long time; maybe she's dead."

"Celebrities don't have "lives' like we do," says Dr. John Crane, a communications professor at UNCC. "Their existence is determined by the availability of their image."

"We put celebrities on a pedestal," explains Dr. James Peacock, a sociology professor at UNCC. "We take in their mannerisms, dress and speech. If the celebrity isn't continuing in that role, the only reason must be death."

In this land of opportunity, some folks have found a way to profit from celebrities' deaths. Greg Smith, for instance, started Grave Line Tours in Hollywood in 1987. He charges $40 for a two-and-a-half hour guided tour, in a 1969 hearse no less, of all the famous sites where stars such as Peter Lorre and Janis Joplin left the planet. For those who like their walks down memory lane a little more high-tech, they can access the Dead People Server, which gives the user up to the minute information about whether any celebrity in question is still with us or has moved on to the next dimension, and we don't mean Hollywood Squares.

At CL we're jumping on the "mock death" bandwagon, just for Halloween. What follows are three lists: people whose appearance in the media during the past year led at least one of our staff members to say, "I thought he/she was dead"; people who some of us forgot were dead; and celebs who seem like they should already be dead. Hopefully, we'll answer the questions besieging you: Is Gerald Ford still beaning people with golf balls? Was Mickey Rooney just a bad dream? Is heroin-using rocker Scott Weiland still with us? You know that Suzanne Somers went from Three's Company to pioneering the firm butt and thigh industry, but what about Mr. Furley? I mean Don Knotts. . . or was it Barney Fife? Read on.

We Thought They Were Dead

Eddie Fisher: Popular singer of the 1950s with several Top 10 hits, married to Debbie Reynolds before becoming one of Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husbands. He recently published an autobiography, proving beyond doubt that he's not dead yet.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Guru of transcendental meditation most noted for his connection with the Beatles during the late 1960s. His techniques are alive and well, but we were surprised to hear that he is, too.

Gerald Ford: Accident-prone and math-challenged American president who somehow found himself in the White House after Nixon's resignation. A CL staffer thought he had died in a skiing accident (go figure).

Shelley Winters: Big sassy broad, liberal activist and movie actress whose prodigious affairs are almost as entertaining as her films, such as Alfie, Lolita and The Poseidon Adventure. We thought she'd checked out a long time ago (and some of us wish she had).

Elvis Presley: The King of rock & roll. Some people swear he's still alive, but who knows?

Kirk Douglas: Fine Hollywood actor with several major roles to his credit, including Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life, and Spartacus; he's also the father of Michael Douglas. The release of his new memoir shocked one staffer who thought Douglas had died of cancer years ago.

Tony Randall & Jack Klugman: Television's Odd Couple. Hell, a real life odd couple, too. Are you sure they're not dead?

Ricardo Montalban: Leading Latin actor of the 60s and 70s; played Khan in Star Trek, was host of TV's Fantasy Island, and did car ads in which he talked about "Corinthian leather." He recently popped up in Spy Kids 2, which was a shock to the staffer who was certain Montalban had died a decade ago.

Mike Douglas: Host of highly popular daytime talk show from 1964-80, as well as singer of the schmaltzy hit "The Men In My Little Girl's Life." Someone here thought he was out of her life.

Henry Boggan: Former popular talk show host on WBT, Boggan was of the old "don't offend anyone whatsoever" school of talk shows, a far cry from the current epidemic of yelling weasels. At least the new guys don't talk about things like banana bread recipes, though. Boggan's not pushing up daisies, he's just retired and moved to the coast.

John Kilgo: When The Leader announced that longtime local media personality Kilgo was coming back to the weekly newspaper, one of our staff's first reaction was, "He's dead, isn't he?"

Paul Harvey: Longtime radio commentator with an unmistakable voice which, contrary to what one editor thought, is still in good shape.

Carl Reiner: Legendary comic writer, performer and director, his role in Ocean's Eleven came as a shock to more than one of our writers.

Styx: When their summer concert appearance was announced, our first reaction was, "Didn't they die in a plane crash or something? No? Oh well, maybe next time."

Lauren Bacall: Even though a writer thought she had died of lung cancer a few years ago, Humphrey Bogart's great love, movie actress/ Broadway star /teen model still turns up in a film from time to time; look for her opposite Nicole Kidman in the upcoming Dogville.

Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice: One of the greatest of all college halfbacks, this UNC football player was the state's biggest sports hero in the immediate postwar era, but for some reason we thought he had passed on a few years ago. When he recently made a list of all-time great Redskins players -- and was referred to in the present tense -- we were thrilled.

Allen Norwood: Don't ask our editor why he thought he had heard that this writer for the Observer was a ghost of his former self. "I don't know," he explained, "maybe my subconscious thought he'd died when I quit reading his dull articles a few years ago."

Frankie Valli: The falsetto-meister of the Four Seasons is alive and kicking, contrary to a staff member's hallucinations.

Little Anthony: What is it about car wrecks and celebrities? One writer "could have sworn I heard" this popular and soulful 60s singer had lost his life in one.

Tony Joe White: Deep South singer/songwriter from the very early 70s, most noted for the song "Poke Salad Annie." He showed up recently in a TV movie and we thought we'd seen a ghost.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr: Midline actor who starred in some OK movies, plus the TV shows 77 Sunset Strip and The FBI. Not a bad guy or anything, just one of those people you can't believe is still around.

Gabe Kaplan: Annoying actor who tried too hard to be cute and cynical at the same time, he's known for being the Mr. Kotter who was welcomed back by, among others, John Travolta in the lame 70s TV show. Another imaginary car accident victim.

Diahann Carroll: Film, stage and TV actress and singer who was the first African American to star in her own television series (Julia, 1968), Carroll contracted breast cancer in 1998 and someone at CL thought she had died of it. Or could it be they can't believe someone could have survived being married to singer Vic Damone?

Janet Leigh: The popular actress of the 50s and 60s who became well-known for playing the showering knife attack victim in Psycho, she's also the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis. Maybe it's her famous death scene that led some of us to assume she had checked out of this vale of tears.

Buddy Hackett: The king of Vegas-style, overly lengthy jokes, surely this portly comedian's been dead for at least a decade. No? Talk about outta sight, outta mind. . .

Lester Maddox: Segregationist clown who achieved fame for threatening civil rights demonstrators at his Georgia restaurant with pick-ax handles, he parlayed his infamy into the Peach State's governorship. When his 80-umpteenth birthday was recently announced on NPR, we thought, "No way -- that jackass has to have been dead for years." But then we reflected further and mused, "Why in God's name is Lester Maddox being talked about on NPR?"

Mickey Rooney: Only frequent viewers of Turner Classic Movies would know he's still around, since he's always on the station rhapsodizing about the good ole days.

Isaac Hayes: The smooth buttered-soul voice of 70s blacksploitation, he wrote the soundtrack to Shaft, and now he provides the voice of Chef on South Park.

Doug Mayes: The area's first TV newscaster, on WBTV's Esso Report, and then later at WSOC-TV, Mayes was a mainstay of Carolinas television for decades. He's retired and relaxing these days, although he's not as completely relaxed as one of us thought.

Boy George: Androgynous frontperson for the 80s band Culture Club, he's now a permanent fixture on all VH1 specials. Someone thought he'd died a couple of years ago of, no, not a car wreck, but. . .you guessed it, a drug overdose.

Gallagher: Smarmy comedian who invented the "sledge-o-matic" to smash watermelons, and somehow convinced enough people that this was so funny he could base a whole career on it.

Bryan Adams: Canadian rocker didn't die in a plane crash, as someone here believed, but after the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack, everything did go downhill. We don't miss him, we just thought he was dead.

Abe Vigoda: The poster child for any "I Thought He Was Dead" list. Every year for two decades now, we figured this Barney Miller stalwart had passed away, and every year the old coot proves us wrong.

Olivia de Havilland & Joan Fontaine: Amazingly, these incredibly competitive sisters, both Oscar-winning stars in their time, are both still living. Like Efrem Zimbalist, they're not bad folks or anything, you just can't believe they're still hanging in there.

Karl Malden: The consummate potato-nosed supporting actor (A Streetcar Named Desire, Patton, etc.) still pops up as an Academy spokesman, but that's about it.

Fay Wray: Yes, believe it or not, the King Kong scream queen is still with us, at the age of 95.

Michael J. Pollard: The Bonnie and Clyde henchman -- the sort of guy you assumed would have died of a drug overdose back in the 70s -- is actually quite the busy actor. . .in little-seen, straight-to-video flicks, anyway.

Ed Asner: Maybe it's because he seems like a hard-driven, Type A personality you'd expect to have fallen dead of a heart attack, but Ed "Lou Grant" Asner's continued presence in our physical realm just doesn't seem possible.

George Lindsey: He played Goober on The Andy Griffith Show and then scaled the heights of international mega-stardom on, umm, Hee Haw. And then he died of acute alcoholism, right? Well. . .no, not really, no matter what one of our staffers thought.

Cale Yarborough: This three-time NASCAR national champion and four-time winner of the Daytona 500 did not, repeat, did not die in a racing crash in California, as one editor thought. Yarborough, in fact, is now running the Cale Yarborough Executive Racing School in Florida.

Lou Holtz: Best known for his great coaching days at Notre Dame, not to mention his support of rightwing yahoos like Jesse Helms, we thought he'd slipped the bounds of earth several years ago. Imagine our surprise when he was announced as the new football coach for the University of South Carolina. Give him credit -- for a dead guy, he sure knows how to turn around a lifeless football program.

Dick Van Dyke: The star of the 60s sitcom which many critics consider the most well-written TV show of them all, he was missing in action and presumed dead for some time. Then he started cranking out identical plot lines on Diagnosis Murder, which, come to think of it, is a good series name for this formerly deceased TV icon.

Angela Lansbury: Longtime Broadway and film star, and, late in life, the star of long-running mystery show Murder She Wrote. We can't really say why we thought she was dead; she just seemed like someone who was probably dead. You know how it is.

Jerry Lee Lewis: His "great balls of fire" killed his career when word got out that he'd married his 13-year-old cousin. He resurrected his professional life by going country, and followed that up with dead wives, nearly fatal stomach problems, you name it. It just seemed as if one of The Killer's many problems should have destroyed him by now.

J.D. Salinger: The reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye, Franny & Zooey and not much else worth a damn in the last 35 years, had his mysterioso reputation sullied when revelations of relations with an underage fan surfaced a few years ago. When we heard about it, it was like learning about a ghost having an affair. At this point, he might as well be dead.

Alice Cooper: You couldn't tell by looking at this 70s shock rocker that he's still among the living. So we were almost right.

John Kenneth Galbraith: Long John Galbraith, JFK's favorite economist as well as a respected writer and diplomat, has kept a low profile lately; not six-feet-under low, but low nonetheless.

Don Larsen: The former New York Yankee is the only man to have pitched a perfect game in the World Series. We would have bet a week's salary that Larsen had drunk himself to death a few years ago. Turns out he's not finished yet.

Mary Tyler Moore: Don't know why one of us thought the former Laura Petrie and Mary Richards had gone to that facelift in the sky, since she shows up at awards presentations and the like pretty often.

Art Linkletter: A veritable god of early TV (Art Linkletter's House Party, People Are Funny, etc.), and then famous for his daughter jumping out a window while on LSD, Linkletter has apparently been dipping into Dorian Gray's bag of tricks. He's over 90 and still travels the country giving "inspirational" speeches and spends one week every year surfing in Hawaii. Jeez, wish I was that dead.

Walter Cronkite: It's true. When the Novello Festival announced a few years ago that Uncle Walter, the ultimate TV news anchorman, would be coming to town, we were taken aback. We were so sure he was dead, we'd actually been going around feeling sad about it. Imagine our embarrassment.

Peter O'Toole: The Lawrence of Arabia star has literally looked like death in such latter-day vehicles as Caligula and Creator (doubtless due to the alcoholism that long plagued his life), but he, or what's left of him, still turns up in an occasional feature.

Katharine Hepburn: Perhaps the oldest "Golden Age of Hollywood" star still living, this screen legend, at 95, is retired to her home in Connecticut. One of our staffers, though, is adamant: "I don't care what it says, she's dead as a door nail. She's gotta be."

Willie Nelson: Preserved by drugs -- that's the only explanation for this singer/songwriter's longevity.

Idi Amin: The former Grand Poobah muckety-muck of Uganda and part-time cannibal, Amin was one of the great political villains of our time. We thought he'd been killed when his miserable excuse for a government was overthrown. But no-o-o-o, he's living in the lap of luxury in that land of rich, debauched playboys, Saudi Arabia, homeland of Osama bin Laden.

Jim Nabors: When a news program recently mentioned that Jim "Gomer Pyle" Nabors -- aka The Hillbilly Mario Lanza, and rumored to have been Rock Hudson's last lover -- was living well in Hawaii, we almost choked on our hotdog.

Tommy Lasorda: Someone thought the excitable former Los Angeles Dodgers' manager had died some time ago of "stomach cancer, or an ulcer, or a burst appendix, some midsection thing." Actually, Lasorda has heart trouble, but as far as we know, his digestion's OK despite all the Italian food.

Richard Dreyfuss: No idea where the idea came from, but one of us thought hyperactive actor Dreyfuss had been "killed in South America, I think in Paraguay."

Rodney Dangerfield: Even here, the now-ancient comedian gets no respect.

We Forgot They Were Dead

James Stewart: This Hollywood legend lives on so vibrantly through his many classics that it's hard to believe he ever left us.

Herve Villechaize: The apparently really brilliant little guy who will nonetheless be remembered for saying, "Da plane, da plane" in Fantasy Island, killed himself in 1993. Remember?

Cleavon Little: Primarily known as a stage actor, the star of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles died of colon cancer in 1992.

Lucille Ball: Sorry, but it'll be a long time before it seems possible that this comic genius (as well as former hubby Desi Arnaz) is really gone.

Andre the Giant: The seven-feet-four professional wrestler and part-time actor (The Princess Bride) died in 1993, but when someone joked that Andre was going to fight Mike Tyson, I had to be reminded that he'd been gone for nearly a decade.

Sammy Davis, Jr.: I must have been asleep when they announced Davis' death from throat cancer in 1990 -- for some reason, it just won't register.

Milton Berle: The former Mr. Television hasn't been dead that long (April 2002), but I was explaining who he was to my daughter recently and she had to remind me that the manic comedian had recently bought the farm.

Seems like they should be Dead

Bob Hope: The ultimate choice for this category, Hope is apparently never going to die. How old is he? Well, he was making movies in the 1930s. The last time we saw a picture of him, he looked like Ramesses' mummy climbing out of his sarcophagus. Hey, Bob -- Bing's waiting for you to join him for that last big road movie.

Dan Rather: A really useless figure, Rather hasn't inspired trust, or even credibility, in years, ever since that "What's the frequency, Kenneth" thing. Plus, he always seems to be on the verge of cracking up; who needs that in an anchorman?

Bobby Knight: Just because he is who he is.

John Belk: With Charlotte going through so many rapid changes the past 10 years, it seems positively weird when this former mayor, a veritable embodiment of Old Charlotte, pops up in the news.

Bob Denver: Formerly known as Maynard G. Krebs, Gilligan, Pothead and forever known to his friends as The Cretin, Denver still carries on. Why, no one can figure out.

Michael Jackson: You should have to look human to continue living.

Donald Trump: He's become such a skin-crawling self-caricature, it's time to hang up the whole act.

David Crosby: There should be a maximum number of brain cells you're allowed to kill before you have to check out.

Strom Thurmond: Excuse me, but he's only alive because his handlers have him living in a hospital so his death won't give SC Governor Hodges a chance to appoint a Democrat to replace him. Politics (and politicians) don't get any more grotesque than this.

Ted Kennedy: Why is it always the smarter members of a family who get assassinated?

Jesse Helms: Hasn't he done enough damage for one lifetime?

Keith Richards: He's got to have the strongest constitution in history. He's tried to smoke, drink, snort, shoot and screw himself to death every day for about 40 years, and is still going out on tour with the Stones. He obviously wants to be dead, he just can't quite get there.

Marlon Brando: This former acting great has become such a complete wacko, he probably doesn't even realize he's still breathing.

Jerry Lewis: Did you seem him during his last Labor Day telethon? Jeez, give it up, buddy.

Jimmy Swaggart: Adulterous evangelist cousin to Jerry Lee Lewis; it must be in the genes. Way past due.

Axl Rose: It just seems that someone that self-destructive shouldn't still be here.

Gene Wilder: Richard Pryor's redheaded partner from several comedies, as well as one of Mel Brooks' favorite actors, this likable comedian has seemed out of it ever since the death of wife Gilda Radner.

Dick Clark: The king of payola is supposedly "ageless," but last New Year's Rockin' Eve, he had more wrinkles than Rose Kennedy. What? She's dead? You're kidding.

The following also contributed to this article: Matt Brunson, Tim Davis, Lynn Farris, John Grooms, Lindsey Herman, Adam Hyatt, Molly McKinney, Tara Servatius, Ann Wicker.