Remembering
For some reason December 26 appears to be a bad day for entertainers and actors: an unusually large number have died on this day. There are three I want to mention, briefly.
My family home is in County Westmeath, Ireland, and so I have to mention singer Joe Dolan, who died on this day in 2007. If you don’t know Joe Dolan, you don’t understand Westmeath.
December 26 was also the day on which two of my favourite actors died: Jason Robards (2000) and Nigel Hawthorne (2001). Robards was stunning as the crypto-Nixon in Washington Behind Closed Doors (why isn’t there a DVD of this?), and Hawthorne was simply amazing in Yes Minister.
If you’re an entertainer or actor, take care today.
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This entry was posted on December 26, 2010 at 1:48 am and is filed under culture. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Jason Robards, Joe Dolan, Nigel Hawthorne
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December 26, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I think the reason it is a bad day for entertainers is that it is bad for everyone. The evidence for the US, as far as I know, is that the days in which mortality peaks are around Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving and other major holidays. New Years Day is the most “popular” day to die.
It’s partly as people tend to be more active those days and this can set off cardiac arrests and also people are more likely to be on the road so more car accidents.
There is also a paper (by Slemrod & Kopczuk, 2003) which argues that in the US people delay dying ’till New Year’s Day as it generates a lower effective rate of inheritence tax for their family.
Stay safe.
January 2, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Dear Ferdinand ,
Happy New year, would it be possible to photograph Knockdrin Castle some time fairly soon , I am hoping to have the book published by end of year
Kind Regards
Donal O’Brien