What celebrity death(s) hit you the hardest?

Tom Petty.

He'd been my favorite musician since I was a little kid. I used to watch MTV constantly back then and he had some of the coolest music videos and best songs. Full Moon Fever was the first album that I ever owned by any artist. I ended up seeing him in concert four times, but it would've been more if I could have. That man had basically provided much of the soundtrack for my life.

When he announced the band's 40th Anniversary tour, I really wanted to go but I was struggling to get out of debt at the time and just couldn't justify the expense. So I told myself that I would just make sure that I caught him the next time around. He died one week after that tour ended. I'm still kicking myself for that and sometimes I still feel really sad when I hear his music, especially the line "I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive" from The Traveling Wilburys' "End of the Line."

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Darren Shahlavi (left with Donnie Yen). I had woken up on my 36th birthday and read he had died. It was announced one week after his actual death (January 14, 2015). Just two months before, he had worked on his final role as Eric Sloane in the reboot, Kickboxer: Vengeance with Alain Moussi and Dave Bautista. He lived his dream of starting his career in Hong Kong then making American martial arts films and got to face off against his idol, Donnie Yen, in Ip Man 2. He died of arteriosclerosis at the age of 42.

I was shocked and still to this day, can't believe it. I had the pleasure of chatting with him via e-mail in the early naughts. One of the nicest guys out there...played badasses on screen, but an awesome guy off-screen.


Darren, Gina Carano, and Alain Moussi on the set of Kickboxer: Vengeance

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Princess Diana was her own kind of celebrity & I was devastated when she was killed.

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Natalie Wood was very hard for me. Angela Lansbury was rough too. And I'm still in denial about Mary Tyler Moore.

It bothers me every time another rock star dies especially Tom Petty and Tina Turner.

Bill Paxton's passing probably hit the hardest for me as he was only 61 at the time. He was (and still is) one of my very favorite actors who never failed to deliver, IMO. Also, Bob Saget, not because I was a huge fan or anything but because it was, like Paxton's death, really unexpected, and was (at least at the last I'd heard) due to an accidental head trauma.

And lately, Treat Williams' totally unexpected accidental death due to a motorcycle/car collison. Really like that guy as an actor and by all accounts he was a very kind person.

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

Yeah, Frank didn't see a doctor until he started having low back pain. By that time his prostate cancer had spread too far.

Here's a picture of the Mothers of Invention from 1968 taken in the dumpster outside of the Shrine Auditorium in L.A. Doc is at the bottom right. From top left to right, clockwise, are Jimmy Carl Black, Don Preston, Bunk Gardner, Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood, Ian Underwood, Art Tripp, Frank Zappa, Roy Estrada, and Lowell George.

That is a great pic! Didn't first see him until '74.

I'll second that, great photo Doc! Damn, that's too bad about Zappa not going to see a doctor about his back pain until it was too late.

I don't remember if we talked about this before, but you're probably the one person at MoFo who will get this: For me the celebrity death that hit me the hardest was someone most people these days haven't heard of, Dorothy Kilgallen.

By chance I started watching the old What's My Line? (1950-1967) and got hooked, really hooked. I ended up watching every episode that was available on YouTube, all 757 surviving episodes. Watching 1 or 2 each night I spent the next year and a half binge watching the show. As I did this I really got to know the panelist, their lives, their ups and downs...and I learned that one of them had died during the show's run, Dorothy Kilgallen on November 8th 1965.

As the months rolled by for me, years would pass for the panelist as the show ran 17 years. It would be spring, then summer, fall, then winter and another year would pass by... It was like watching friends starting off young, growing and then growing old. With Dorothy I watched her trails and tribulations, from her estrangement from her husband, to her huge fight with the host of the show John Daly. I watched as Dorothy started suffering from health problems and had tremors on the show. All of that was tragic enough to see, but as I started watching the 1965 season I knew each episode brought Dorothy one step closer to her end. I swear that episode when the host John Daly announced that Dorothy had died, hit me like a ton of bricks...doubly so as I was dreading that moment for months. I loved that show but I couldn't watch it again, too painful.

Dorothy learned the truth about the JFK assassination - she had to be eliminated.

Some would agree with you. I did extensive reading about her death and of course seen her on the show...and watched her problems with alcohol and pills take it's toll. I don't believe she was assassinated neither did any of her family members (husband and kids) who were in the house with her the night she died.

Though I wasn't into film back in 2007, I imagine that Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day was pretty shocking.

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Natalie’s death was/is very hard since there’s so much uncertainty about what actually happened to her. Sad part for me was she always said she was afraid of water.

CR, I couldn't agree more. As you know I was always a big fan of What's My Line. We watched every episode until I went away to music conservatory in 1962. In more recent times, when they became available, I went back and watched all the ones that I missed.

It's funny. As a kid I thought Kilgallen was homely. But as I've gotten older I think she was HOT! And I loved her cute personality. Arlene was a kick in the pants; Cerf was enjoyable; and Daly kept it all rolling. Everyone on the show had class and standards. So there could not be a show like that today.

For the past several years there has supposed to be a movie dramatizing Dorothy's life and her running afoul of the CIA. But so far, nada. It must be in development hell or "something". Dorothy was the only reporter allowed to interview Jack Ruby when he was in prison for killing Oswald. She knew a lot of secrets, and was about to publish a book on the subject. I do not believe that she committed suicide.

But I never get weary of What's My Line!!

Dorothy got Epsteined.

John Dunsworth

Yeah, Treat Williams was tough because it wasn't of natural causes.

Eddie Van Halen's passing was very sad...

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