I'm Sorry You Couldn't Be Here Tonight: Of Celebrities and Death and the Number Three

It’s inevitable. Whenever a celebrity dies, bloggers, twitter jockeys and water-cooler sages speculate on who the second and third ill-fated star will be, adhering to a long-held superstition that celebrities die in threes. "Everything from the Bible to the Universe operates on order and numerical principles to varying degree," according to Donna Porter, an editor for the Associated Content website. "Some examples in Christianity include the Holy Trinity, the Three Wise Men and the Resurrection of Christ." She also noted that the number three means completion, from the day divided into morning, noon and night to life defined by past, present and future.

Some believe that the popular myth that celebrities die in groups of three might have originated with the deaths of musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Jiles "The Big Bopper" Richardson Jr., who perished together in a 1959 plane crash. Eleven years later, rock and roll reeled again under the triple-play exit of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, within a year’s span.

Which brings up an interesting question. What is the time limit for the rule of three when it comes to celebrity deaths? Is there an unwritten codicil that states the three must die within a week of each other, or does the same month, even a year, qualify them?

Recently, in three days, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson passed away. This is not a celebration of lives lived nor a peek at scandals buried. Such stories can be found in abundance elsewhere. Our desire in the moviehouse is to play fast and light with the departed, spotlighting particular vignettes others might have overlooked.

Ed McMahon (March 6, 1923 - June 23, 2009)

It’s no secret that beyond the velvet ropes of "The Tonight Show" studio, Johnny Carson shied away from the lure of the spotlight elsewhere. Director Martin Scorsese tried in vain to cast him as the talk show host abducted by a demented Robert De Niro in the gleefully dark "The King of Comedy," but Carson’s polite refusal opened the door for Jerry Lewis, who backed his way into arguably the best performance of his career.

On the other side of the desk, the eternally gregarious Ed McMahon never hesitated to exercise his acting chops in front of television and motion picture cameras. One of his earliest big screen roles came in "The Incident" (1967), a grim, starkly filmed (in black-and-white) drama that tapped into the urban anxiety over violence on the subway. The same nerve would be prodded seven years later in the pulse-pounding (albeit wryly satirical) "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw and Jerry Stiller (not to be confused with the soulless 2009 remake featuring Denzel Washington and John Travolta).

Two street punks - portrayed by Tony Musante (who would later make his mark in the ‘70s TV cop show craze, which included "Starsky and Hutch," "Kojak" and "Baretta," with a starring role in "Toma") and, in his screen debut, Martin Sheen - mug a man at knife point one night in New York City, then hop on a subway and spend the ensuing 100 minutes terrorizing the riders in the car.

The frightened passengers include Beau Bridges as an injured soldier on leave, Brock Peters (best known for playing Tom Robinson in "To Kill a Mockingbird") as a racist African-American, Ruby Dee as his wife, Jack Gilford and Thelma Ritter as an elderly Jewish couple, Donna Mills (future star of TV’s "Knots Landing") as a teenage virgin, and Ed McMahon and Diana Van der Vlis ("Ryan’s Hope") as an upper class couple (below).

Although the scenes inside the subway car were shot inside a painstakingly researched mock-up, the New York City Transit Authority denied the filmmakers permission to shoot on its property, so background footage was shot on the subway with hidden cameras, until police became suspicious when they heard the whirring of the concealed hardware.

Six years later, Ed McMahon appeared in the Jim Brown blaxploitation flick "Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off" (1973) as a mob boss in aviator sunglasses and dreadful ‘70s leisure suits.

One web wit mentioned that "in this movie, you get to hear him simulate sex moans." On a similar note, critic Leonard Maltin noted that McMahon gave the role "more than it deserves."

In 1977, McMahon delivered one of his most enjoyable performances as a cocktail-tippling business executive in "Fun with Dick and Jane," starring George Segal and Jane Fonda. The 2005 remake, with Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni, targeted the Enron financial fiasco, while the (superior) original, which came out at the onset of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, was deemed, by A.V. Club reviewer Nathan Rabin, a "My Generation laugh-in."

Worth the price of admission alone is the hilarious scene where a sloshed McMahon fires an equally soused Segal in between shared fits of laughter.

Farrah Fawcett (February 2, 1947 - June 25, 2009)

After leaving her one-season role in "Charlie’s Angels" to pursue big-screen dreams, Farrah Fawcett appeared in a rapid succession of easily forgotten films ("Somebody Killed Her Husband," "Sunburn," "Saturn 3," "The Cannonball Run"), supplemented with occasional guest appearances on the "jiggle" TV show that made her face and feathered mane famous. She eventually remolded her career and persona with a series of acclaimed dramatic roles, including the 1981 miniseries "Murder in Texas," the 1983 Off-Broadway production (and 1986 film version) of "Extremities," and the television movies "The Burning Bed" and "Small Sacrifices."

She again won praise for her difficult role in "The Apostle" (1997) as the wife of a Pentecostal preacher, portrayed by Robert Duvall, who also directed. Duvall told Texas Monthly, "That woman knows how to act." That same year, she managed to sabotage much of the respect she had so deservedly garnered with a notorious appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman," June 6, 1997.

In celebration of her 50th birthday, Fawcett used her naked body as a paint brush to create artwork for a Playboy pay-per-view special and magazine pictorial and was appearing on "Late Show" to promote the event. (She had previously disrobed for the magazine in a much-discussed photo spread in December 1995.) The New York Times obituary for Fawcett stated succinctly that she "appeared ditsy to the point of incoherence."

A perennial favorite on viral video, the disjointed conversation between Fawcett and Letterman (with impromptu interjections by smarmy bandleader Paul Shaffer) included her rambling account of being pursued up an embankment in Central Park by a mob of fans "really pulling my legs and shoes and things."

Letterman responded, "You’re lucky to be alive."

When she was interrupted by a loud chuckler in the audience, she uttered, "Shit, what is with him? What is it?"

Out of the blue, citing her mother’s birthday and her son’s as the same date, she said, "That means my mother’s mother and I had to conceive on the same day." Which led directly to the non sequitur of how she "wanted to paint with my body."

The glassy-eyed Fawcett gushed, "I have to tell you, I did the most incredible gluteus maximus…It’s so good. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done." The host and viewer were unsure if she was talking about the finished work or her own anatomy when she said, "It’s very expressive. It’s round, and then it has like movement, you know, movement, so it’s like energy."

Suddenly aware of the scale model of New York City buildings behind Letterman’s desk, she exclaimed, "Wow! I really thought I was looking out the window!"

Fawcett later denied she was on anything, attributing her bizarre behavior to nervousness in the presence of the intimidating host. She alternately claimed it had all been an act. Late in December 1998, she returned to "Late Show" (below) and was immediately greeted by Letterman asking, "Remember me?" She replied, "We are forever joined at the hip." In an interview that struck People magazine as "tame, almost scripted," Fawcett admitted she had some "trepidation" over returning. "All those big words," Letterman remarked. "I’ve been studying," she replied with a broad, knowing smile.

Following Joaquin Phoenix’s infamous February 2009 appearance on "Late Show," when the guest spent most of his ten-minute non-interview "chewing gum," according to Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal, "and seemingly monitoring transmissions from his home planet," David Letterman famously noted, "Joaquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight. We owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett.."

Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 - June 25, 2009)

Stephen King, writing in the July 10, 2009 issue of Entertainment Weekly, recalled that Michael Jackson first approached him in 1993 with an idea for "the absolute SCARIEST music video ever." According to King, Jackson said, "Stephen, we must do this. We’re going to shock the world."

King said, "I’m always interested in trying something new, and for me, writing a mini-musical would be new." The story that Jackson proposed "was about a mob of angry townspeople," in King’s recollection, "buttoned-down suburbanites, not torch-carrying peasants, who want the ‘weirdo’ who lives in the nearby castle to leave town. Because, they say, he’s a bad influence on their children."

The mob is led by the Mayor of Normal Valley (above), a pompous pastry puff of a white man, played, beneath layers of masterful makeup (concocted by six-time Academy Award-winning creature-effects makeup artist Rick Baker), by Jackson, who also portrays, more or less as himself, the mysterious occupant of the eerie castle, a "child-friendly" loner called Maestro (below).

King admitted he did not know at the time that "rumors about Jackson and child abuse had begun to circulate," but he said he "probably would have pressed ahead even if I had."

Director Mick Garris, who has enjoyed a long collaboration with King, including the miniseries "The Stand" and "Stephen King’s The Shining" (not to be confused with Stanley Kubrick’s production with Jack Nicholson), started the initial filming for what would become known as "Michael Jackson’s Ghosts." The shooting, however, shut down after three weeks, for reasons not remembered by King, then resumed three years later, in 1996, with Stan Winston taking over as director.

Five-time Oscar-winner Stan Winston (below, with Arnold Schwarzenegger) was a visual effects wizard, sculptor and special-effects makeup artist, widely recognized for his work in such film franchises as "Terminator," "Predator" and "Jurassic Park."

In 1989, Winston directed his first motion picture, "Pumpkinhead," a surprisingly atmospheric chiller that won him the Best First Time Director award at the Paris Film Festival.

"Ghosts" boasts never-before-seen special effects and includes elaborate dance routines performed by Jackson and assorted ghouls, along with an early appearance by rapper Mos Def. The 40-minute film, which entered the record books as the longest and costliest music video of all time, featured songs to promote two consecutive Jackson recordings, "HIStory" and "Blood on the Dance Floor." It was released in theaters accompanying the Stephen King thriller "Thinner" and came out on VHS in 1997. (Pictured below are Michael Jackson and Stan Winston at the Cannes Film Festival.)

Watching the video, in the words of Stephen King, "You’ll…see Jackson’s sadness and almost painful desire to please. ‘Yes, I am strange,’ his eyes say, ‘but I am doing the best I can, and I want to make you happy. Is that so bad?’"

Odd Man Out

David Carradine died June 4, 2009, which prematurely kept him out of the loop of the previously mentioned departures by three weeks, making him as singularly a nonconformist in death as he was in life. His passing, however, recalls, in light of tonight’s screenings in the moviehouse, a particular film appearance which is long overdue its deserved place in the spotlight.

Cult movie connoisseur Michael J. Weldon, in his tome The Psychotronic Video Guide, dubbed 1984’s "The Warrior and the Sorceress" "an outer space post-nuke samurai western." Carradine stars as Kain (not to be confused with his role as Caine in the ‘70s TV series "Kung Fu"), aka the "Dark One," a laid-back sword-for-hire and the sole survivor of his race (below), who alternately offers his mercenary skills to two rival factions in an otherworldly village (actually an Argentina location).

If it sounds familiar, it’s because the script was a boldfaced rip-off of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai classic "Yojimbo," which also inspired Sergio Leone’s "A Fistful of Dollars" with Clint Eastwood, and Walter Hill’s "Last Man Standing" starring Bruce Willis. "Yojimbo" itself was said to have been inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harvest, although Kurosawa stated that a major source for the plot of his movie was the 1942 film noir "The Glass Key," based on Hammett’s novel of the same name.

In his 1995 memoir Endless Highway, David Carradine noted, "Since it’s supposed to happen on another planet, we thought the swordplay should look like nothing anyone had ever seen before," so he helped work out a "very special style…a combination of classical French fencing, taekwondo, kung fu, Philippine stick fighting, and some stuff we made up." Three days into shooting, miscued swordplay resulted in Carradine shattering his right hand in five places, which led to his learning how to wield his weapon left-handed (above).

"The movie went well," Carradine recalled in his book, "though it never played much in theaters because of an odd decision on the part of the director. He was obsessed by the body of the actress who played the priestess, so he costumed her in a topless outfit. Everywhere you looked, there was this bare-breasted woman. Since the picture appealed primarily to kids, censorship dictated it would never really reach its audience. It has, however, become a perennial hit on cassette."

Argentina-born Maria Socas portrayed the titular sorceress, who, for reasons never explained, has lost all her powers. The movie was originally called "Kain of the Dark Planet," but studio head Roger Corman changed it to "The Warrior and the Sorceress." "Which was odd," Carradine remembered, "since there was no sorceress in it, only a priestess," but "Roger said market research had told him the new title would sell more tickets."

The film, which also had "Conan the Barbarian" on its mind, features, to quote critic John Stanley ("the Leonard Maltin of horror") from his book Creature Features, such "oddities" as "a giant octopus-monster, a green lizard that whispers into the ear of its master, and a four-breasted dancing assassin."

Carradine said, "If you get a chance, by all means take a look at it, if not for the exotic bare-breasted priestess, for the exotic left-handed swordplay."

Near the end of his 600-page memoir, David Carradine mused, "My life has been filled with action, adventure, glory, and disgrace, romance, farce and pathos, damnation and salvation…I’ve led a life full of extremes. I’ve gone as far I can go in many respects - sometimes right over the f---ing edge…

"After all the triumphs and failures, the lovers, the detractors, I still am not finished, not hardly started really…I’d better get on with it, get back out there on that endless highway and give them some more hell.

"I don’t have forever, as far as I know."