Any year’s necrology calls for a cocktail of sadness and celebration, and 2024—which saw the exits of heroes (Alexei Navalny), villains (O. J. Simpson), and an A-to-Z range of notables from Jim Abrahams (co-creator of the uproarious Airplane! and The Naked Gun) to Philip Zimbardo (creator of the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment), with a Kennedy (Ethel) right in the middle—was no exception, as the departed included such entertainment-industry mainstays as Teri Garr, Alain Delon, Bob Newhart, Shannen & Shelley (Doherty & Duvall), Donald Sutherland, Richard Lewis, Chita Rivera (that voice), Maggie Smith (actually, that voice), James Earl Jones (no, wait, that voice), Dabney Coleman, producer and author Lynda Obst, Phil Donahue, Gena Rowlands, low-budget cult auteurs Roger Corman and Paul Morrissey, Marshall Brickman, last surviving “Honeymooner” Joyce Randolph, as well as an A-B-C of writers—Alice (Munro), (Paul) Auster, Barth (postmodernist John), Bradford (best-selling Barbara Taylor), (Robert) Coover, and, sure, let’s at least continue to D (Durang, Christopher), but if that’s not enough literary loss, we’ll add Lewis Lapham, Lance Morrow, and Tom Shales before moving on to the leader of a pack of musicians, the Shangri-Las’ Mary Weiss, plus the profoundly influential Quincy Jones and John Mayall, yé-yé idol Françoise Hardy, Dickey & Cissy (Betts & Houston), Liam Payne, producer Shel Talmy (without whom no Who or Kinks as we know and love them), Eric Carmen, Kris & Karl (Kristofferson & Wallinger), David Sanborn, Phil Lesh (now officially Dead), and—better mention him PDQ!—Peter Schickele, to sports figures (Roman Gabriel, of the N.F.L.; the N.B.A.’s Dikembe Mutombo, Bill Walton, and Jerry West; from baseball, peerless Willie Mays, Fernando Valenzuela, Rocky Colavito, Rickey Henderson, and, sliding hard into the afterlife, Pete Rose; and marathon-world-record-holder Kelvin Kiptum, who ran out of road way too soon), to the impossible-to-categorize Richard Simmons and Ruth Westheimer, and so many others that space (ours) and patience (yours) preclude mentioning, except—because these are serious names—Kinky Friedman, Mitzi Gaynor, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, Gary Indiana, Martin Mull, Mojo Nixon, Sugar Pie DeSanto,the Amazing Kreskin, and finally (always room for just one more) Melanie.
George Kalogerakis, a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL, worked at Spy, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. He is a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and a co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War
