Book Review: Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 2018

For many years, Harris Lentz has been collecting celebrity passings and compiling them in a book. Not content with merely offering stats, Harris gives capsule biographies to every one of his subjects. Of course every year features its share of superstars and icons who pass away, but Harris gives as much attention to small timers, providing pertinent info for each. His books are tremendous research tools.

The year 2018 was when we lost such beloved movie and TV stars as Burt Reynolds, Aretha Franklin, Stan Lee, Penny Marshall, Tab Hunter, John Mahoney, Harry Anderson, Dorothy Malone, and John Gavin. We said goodbye to favorites like Charlotte Rae, Jerry Van Dyke, Ken Berry, Bill Daily, Joe Campanella, Sondra Locke, and Chuck McCann.

Connie Sawyer, Mary Carlisle, and Patricia Morrison were past 100 but left us too soon. Other very old actors who said farewell were Marty Allen, Nanette Fabray, Lassie Lou Ahearn, Gloria Jean, Jerry Maren, Ann Gillis, Eugene Francis, Will Jordan, Susan Miller, Charlotte Rae, and Jean Porter.

The music world lost Tony Joe White, Otis Rush, Marty Balin, Roy Clark, DJ Fontana, and Geoff Emerick. And 2018 was an unfortunate year for suicides, including Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, Margo Kidder, Mark Salling, John Paul Steuer, and Avicii.

Harris Lentz collects all of these and more with a discussion of their lives and careers and a list of their credits. We get to know more about the ones with whom we are familiar, and learn a lot about those whose names are only fleeting memories. As with all of his annual Obituary books, the research and information contained therein is priceless.

On a personal note, at the beginning of each book, Harris Lentz lists personal friends and family members who died that year. I lost my son in 2018. Harris was kind enough to include him in that list for this book. I spoke to Harris personally about this, but would like to also state in this review how moved I was at that inclusion.

All of Harris's books are published by McFarland. This latest one is available HERE.