Rod Steiger dead......

....Another guest star gone.

Who's Rod Steiger? Sorry...

Austin

He played Captian Tenille in "Simpson Tide" (3G04). He forms a bond with Homer and leaves him in command of the submarine, then he is fired out of a torpedo hatch.

He is famous for his Oscar winning performance in "In the Heat of the Night", and his role in "On the Waterfront".

It seems that this is happening a lot lately... insane conspiracy theories, anyone? Is the Head of the Spaceology Department at the Correspondence College of Tampa out there somewhere?

For the sake of listing things:

All deceased guest stars:

Audrey Meadows, George Fenneman, Linda McCartney, Jim Varney, Tito Puente, Steve Allen, Joseph Calleja, Werner Klemperer, Joey Ramone, Jack Lemmon, *George Harrison, *Stephen Jay Gould, *John Entwistle, *Ron Taylor, *Rod Steiger.

* indicates that they have yet to be entered at http://snpp.com/guides/departed.html#2

Dee Dee Ramone also recently passed away. The Ramones appeared on the show, but Dee Dee was not credited as being amoung them. Anyone know why?

Steiger brings the list to 15, currently. I wonder if this is perhaps a record? I don't know where I would begin to look to find a comparison, but what other shows have lost so many guest stars during their run? Additionally, over half of them died "young"... ie, before reaching the end of their 60s.

Worth noting that of the eight that died young, six were musicians. (Excludes Jim Varney and Stephen Jay Gould.)

Somebody claiming to be fishy wrote in news:[email]:

In later seasons the writers have thought they can get better ratings by having lots and lots of guest stars. As the number of guest stars increases, it's only natural to expect more deaths amongst the group.

OT: Actuarially, one should expect about two of the 1600 or so players who make it past the final cuts of NFL training camps to die before the next 365 days are over. Yet any time an active professional athlete dies, it's shocking.

See, people keep saying this, but don't really look it up... has there really been an increase in guest stars as the years have gone on? The answer is "not really":

I am omitting season one, as it wasn't a full season.

Season Two: 18 guests Season Three: 27 guests Season Four: 21 guests Season Five: 19 guests Season Six: 24 guests (not including clipshow) Season Seven: 24 guests Season Eight: 18 guests Season Nine: 27 guests Season Ten: 33 guests Season Eleven: 20 guests

(Note that I count bands as a single star... they are distributed fairly evenly. I don't have numbers for 12 and 13, but my rough counts put them both around 25-30. If anyone has a complete list of season 12 and 13 then I will take a look at the 12 seasons.)

So, yes, if you look at the average of the first five (21.8) and the last five (24.4), then there is a slight increase (less than three).

Right... so now we know... over the first ten full seasons, the number of guest stars remains fairly steady.

The Simpsons have always featured a lot of guest stars, right from the start. Like it or not, it is nothing new. Moreover, the number of stars playing themselves hasn't really increased either... 17 of the 21 season four guests played themselves, and 19 of the 27 in season three. That is pretty consistent with later seasons.

I think the guests stars are more poorly used in the new seasons. Audrey Meadows' part was good; so were "Sam Etic"'s and "John Jay Smith." When the guest stars get reduced to the lines "Yoink. I'm Andre Agassi," that's a throwaway guest star. Most of the time, if people appear as themselves, it's contrived or disappointing.

When I saw Edward Norton was going to guest, I was really crossing my fingers that he was going to do something great. And he did... but he showed up only in Act III (I think). Which I'd like to say was a good enough appearance, but he's such a great actor that I can't help feeling as if that was a waste to only bring him in at the end and quickly usher him out again.

Anyway, as long as guest stars aren't making a token appearance and as long as they do a good job, bring them on. But if it's only so they can say their names, there's just no point.

I agree with this. Donald Sutherland's part in Lisa the Iconoclast was great... he played a role, well, and was critical to the plot. I thought that Joshua Jackson was a great use of a guest star, as Jesse in Lisa the Tree Hugger. There are still some really fully fledged guest characters, but also a lot of wasted talent.

In article , fishy wrote:

that's because Dee Dee was no longer a member of the Ramones when the episode was made, he had quit after he had fallen off the drug wagon again and had been busted for possession. CJ was the bassist in the Ramones when "Rosebud" was made, although I believe only Joey, Johnny and Marky actually voiced themselves in that scene.

I wonder if they'll dedicate DABF19 to him...or is that too long of a wait?

larry grenier wrote:

Dee Dee Ramone left the band in 1989 to become a rapper. He was replaced by C.J Ramone, who is the one appering at Mr Burns' birthday.

Dee Dee's rapper carreer failed, but he kept contributing songs to the Ramones.

Oh..and have the Rolling Stones KILLED!!

/ras --What gave me away? Was it the hoyven or the mayven?

Ahhh, thank you. That wasn't clear in any of the obituaries I read. What made him think that he could be a rapper? Yikes.

Somebody claiming to be fishy wrote in news:[email]:

Maybe Vanilla Ice made him think it. :-)

That's odd... that isn't what Vanilla Ice made -me- think... ;)

Urge to kill... rising...