I don’t know why I feel compelled to observe the deaths of celebrities the way I do. I only know that I always have, going all the way back to a couple of brief sentences I scribbled in an old pocket calendar on the day Elvis Presley died in 1977. (I was seven years old at the time.) A former girlfriend once told me she thought I was morbid for having such an interest in the passing of people I didn’t even know. I see it differently, of course. No, I didn’t personally know the people I write tributes for, but that doesn’t mean I feel no attachment to them, no grief at the thought that they’re gone, or that their lives — or at least their work — has had no direct effect on my own. Given my interests and obsessions, movie and television actors, novelists, screenwriters, artists, composers, and rock stars have often had more effect on me than many of my own relatives.
In any event, a lot of things got away from me in 2010, including a great many topics I wanted to blog about, and my patented celebrity obits comprise a pretty large subset of those lost blogging opportunities. That’s a tremendous source of frustration for me; I feel like I’ve failed at some kind of calling, as pretentious and self-important as that probably sounds. But I feel what I feel, right?
To try and make up a little for my “In Memoriam” failings, I will now present a list of all the celebrities who died in 2010 that I felt worthy of mentioning. They all deserve more than a bullet point, but I’m afraid that’s all I have time to give them. A handful of them did get a little more, up toward the first of the year, before the Summer Work Apocalypse got its claws into me. Those people’s names are hyperlinked to the relevant posts.
And to anyone who may agree with that long-gone girl and thinks I’m being morbid, I assure you I really did feel some connection to everyone on this list, even if it was simply a sense of familiarity due to their faces being on TV all the time as I was growing up.

• Art Clokey, stop-motion animator (Gumby); died January 8, age 88
• Miep Gies, brave and noble woman (hid Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis and saved Anne’s famous diary after the family was discovered and captured); January 12, age 100
• Teddy Pendergrass, R&B singer; January 13, age 59
• Robert B. Parker, mystery novelist (Spenser and Jesse Stone series); January 18, age 77
• Jean Simmons, classic Hollywood actress (Spartacus, among many others); January 22, age 80
• Pernell Roberts, actor (Bonanza, Trapper John, MD); January 24, age 81
• Zelda Rubenstein, actress (Poltergeist); January 27, age 76
• J.D. Salinger, author (The Catcher in the Rye) and famous recluse; January 28, age 91
• Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack (“My Sharona”); February 14, age 57
• Andrew Koenig, actor (Growing Pains) and son of Walter Koenig (Star Trek); February 25, age 41
• Corey Haim, actor (The Lost Boys) and ‘80s icon; March 10, age 38
• Merlin Olsen, football player, actor (Little House on the Prairie), and favorite son of Utah (alum of Utah State University); March 10, age 69
• Peter Graves, actor (the original TV version of Mission: Impossible, Airplane); March 14, age 83
• Alex Chilton, lead singer of The Box Tops (“The Letter,” a number-one song in 1967 when Chilton was only 16 years old); March 17, age 59
• Fess Parker, actor (Davy Crockett) and 1950s icon; March 18, age 85
• Robert Culp, actor (I, Spy, The Greatest American Hero); March 24, age 79
• John Forsythe, actor (Dynasty, the voice of Charlie on Charlie’s Angels); April 2, age 92
• Meinhardt Raabe, actor (The Wizard of Oz — he was the Munchkin who pronounces the Wicked Witch of the East “really most sincerely dead”); April 9, age 94
• Dixie Carter, actress (Designing Women) and wife of actor Gerald McRaney (Rick Simon on Simon & Simon); April 10, age 70
• Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee for 21 years; April 21, age 89
  (Ed. Note: Samaranch isn’t the sort of guy I would normally recognize, except he’s the one who announced that Salt Lake City would host the 2002 Winter Games from the front door of our City and County Building.)

• Lynn Redgrave, actress (Tom Jones, Georgy Girl); May 2, age 67
• Lena Horne, singer, actress, and civil rights activist; May 9, age 92
• Frank Frazetta, painter and illustrator of many iconic 1970s paperback covers; May 10, age 82
• Ronnie James Dio, lead singer for Black Sabbath and Dio; May 16, age 67
• Art Linkletter, TV host; May 26, age 97
• Gary Coleman, actor (Diff’rent Strokes); May 28, age 42
• Dennis Hopper, actor (Easy Rider, among many others) and 1970s icon; May 29, age 74
• Rue McClanahan, actress (The Golden Girls); June 3, age 76
• Al Williamson, comic-book artist (Marvel’s adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, many variations of Flash Gordon); June 12, age 79
• Jimmy Dean, singer (“Big Bad John”), actor (Diamonds Are Forever), and sausage king; June 13, age 81
• Daniel Schorr, globetrotting journalist, NPR commentator, and “official enemy” of Richard Nixon; July 23, age 93
• Tom Mankiewicz, screenwriter (Superman: The Movie); July 31, age 68
• Patricia Neal, classic Hollywood actress (The Day the Earth Stood Still); August 8, age 84
• Rich Cronin, lead singer of the ‘90s band LFO (“Summer Girls”); September 8, age 36
• Harold Gould, actor (Kid Twist in The Sting, among many others); September 11, age 86
• Kevin McCarthy, actor (original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers); September 11, age 96
• Eddie Fisher, singer, TV personality, father of Carrie Fisher; September 22, age 82
• Gloria Stuart, actress (The Invisible Man [1933 version], Titanic [1997 version]); September 26, age 100
• Arthur Penn, director (Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man); September 28, age 88
• Tony Curtis, classic Hollywood actor (Some Like It Hot, Spartacus, The Defiant Ones, etc.); September 29, age 85
• Stephen J. Cannell, television writer and producer, novelist; September 30, age 69
• Solomon Burke, R&B singer (“Cry to Me,” “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”); October 10, age 70
• Barbara Billingsley, actress (Leave It to Beaver, 1950s icon, and mother of 1980s icon Ralphie (A Christmas Story; October 16, age 94
• Tom Bosley, actor (Happy Days); October 19, age 83
• Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse magazine, producer of infamous historical epic/porno film Caligula; October 20, age 79
• James MacArthur, actor (original Hawaii Five-O); October 28, age 72
• Jill Clayburgh, actress (Silver Streak, Starting Over, Semi-Tough); November 6, age 66
• Dino De Laurentiis, film producer (Barbarella, Serpico, King Kong [1976 version], Flash Gordon [1980 version], Conan the Barbarian,Dune); November 10, age 91
• Irvin Kershner, director (The Empire Strikes Back); November 27, age 87
• Leslie Nielsen, actor (Forbidden Planet, Airplane, The Naked Gun); November 28, age 84
• Don Meredith, football player, TV personality, and actor; December 5, age 72
• Blake Edwards, director (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Pink Panther series, Victor/Victoria); December 16, age 88
• Steve Landesberg, actor (Barney Miller); December 20, age 74
• Fred Foy, old-time radio announcer (The Lone Ranger); December 22, age 89
• Teena Marie, singer (“Lovergirl”), Rick James’ protégé, and Motown’s first white act; December 26, age 54