Yesterday, I was talking about premature obituaries. These are obits that somehow get released to the public before the celebrity in question is actually dead. Sometimes, it happens when technicians or reporters just accidentally press the wrong button. Sometimes, the celebrity had been ill and perhaps the media outlet is just hoping to get the jump on everyone else. Sometimes, it is just a joke gone bad.
Despite how it happened, here are a few more untimely obituary releases:
Melody Maker magazine had the macabre idea to publish an Alice Cooper concert review in the form of a fake obituary in the early ‘70s. So many fans didn’t get the joke that Alice Cooper had to issue a statement, assuring them that he was indeed still alive.
Joltin Joe DiMaggio had been ill with lung cancer when NBC accidentally ran text at the bottom of the screen in January 1999, announcing the Yankee Clippers death. The only problem was, while he was gravely ill, Joe was still alive and watching the broadcast. He would not die until March 8th of that year.
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Writer Ernest Hemingway was involved in two plane crashes in Africa and was seriously injured. However, some paper reported that he had actually been killed. Despite having a ruptured kidney, sprained limbs, crushed vertebrae, and a burnt scalp, it is said that Hemingway read his own obituary in the paper several days after the crash.
We all know wrestling is fake, but a fake death storyline and a real life suicide/murder unfortunately coincided in June 2007. After a scene where WWE chairman Vince McMahon was seen in a limo that exploded, a tribute to him was published on the official WWE web page on June 11, 20078. I guess the writers of WWE planned to milk the whole “McMahon’s dead thing” for all it was worth, scheduling a televised memorial that was canned after it was learned that wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife, young son had been killed. We would later learn that Benoit killed his family then himself. McMahon, announcing their deaths on television, admitted that his stunt was faked.
There is even a so-called “CNN.com Incident” in which pre-written obituaries were available on a non-password protected CNN development web site on April 16, 2003. The obits included Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. What was really funny was they had used fragments and templates of obits, which made Castro’s obit read that he was a “lifeguard, athlete, and movie star” (accidentally copied from Ronald Reagan’s obit) and that Dick Cheney was the “UK’s favorite grandmother” (taken from Queen Elizabeth’s obit).