Jerry Lee Lewis DD at 87

[Dan Druff]

Jerry Lee Lewis, best known for his "Great Balls of Fire", has croaked at 87. He claimed to have had "the flu" on October 16, when he couldn't attend the ceremony inducting him into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Yesterday, an incorrect report went around that he died, but then he actually died today.

Jerry was best known for his wild piano playing style which was later somewhat imitated by artists such as Elton John.

He was considered one of the pioneers of early rock-and-roll, but his career fell apart in the late 1950s when the news got out that he married his 13-year-old cousin. Jerry was 22 at the time. That girl, Myra Gale Brown, is 78 today and still alive. She wrote an autobiography in 1982, which was later turned into a 1989 movie called "Great Balls of Fire" -- which I actually saw in the theater while on a (bad) date. Winona Ryder played Brown in the movie, and Dennis Quaid played Lewis. I saw the movie in West Hollywood on the same day actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered (July 18, 1989). The murder took place on the same street as where my date lived, so I happened to be on that street on the day Schaeffer was murdered. I was not there until many hours later, though, so I didn't see any police activity, and only learned of it the next day in the LA Times.

Jerry was married 7 times.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/enter...ead/index.html

[RichardBrodiesCombover.]

I would have bet anything he had died years ago

[gut]

I would have bet anything he had died years ago

Him and Angela Lansbury, I would have sworn that they both had been dead 15 years.

[Dan Druff]

I would have bet anything he had died years ago

Him and Angela Lansbury, I would have sworn that they both had been dead 15 years.

There were two like that for me.

Phyllis Diller seemed ancient when I was a little kid in the 1970s. I was shocked in early 2012 to see that she was still alive (she died later that year). This wasn't just an incorrect perception on my part, due to being a kid. Here's how she looked in 1966, six years before I was born.



Pretty amazing that she lived another 46 years after that.



The other was George Gaynes, the dad on Punky Brewster. He was an old man on the show, which began in 1984. However, I also knew him from a guest role on Hawaii Five-O, where he played a grandfather in 1970 (!!)

I was sure he had croaked a long time ago, but he lived all the way until 2016.


Both Gaynes and Diller lived a long time (she was 95, he was 98), but also looked old prematurely, so you had the incorrect impression that it was impossible for them to be alive in the 2010s.