Dying Young a Great Career Move

The saying goes that "the good die young." I don't know whether that is true. The implication is that "good people" die young, because they are just too pure to live in this cruel world. However, in some cases, those who die young may seem "good" to us, simply because they didn't live long enough to succumb to the worldly temptations that would corrupt them.

More often, those who die young were not necessarily all that good. But, for some reason, they are exonerated by their own premature demise. Dying unexpectedly is apparently more effective than baptism, at washing away a person's sins.

A current headline/case-in-point is the murder of actor Robert Blake's wife. Bonny Lee Bakley, by all accounts, was no angel, and there are police records and a long list of scammed victims to corroborate it. Yet, Blake's attorney and anyone who has dared hint at Bakley's seedy background, has been blasted by her family as well as some in the legal field and media.

I am, in no way, attempting to justify anyone's murder. But, just being dead does not automatically change the way this woman lived her life. What we often call "dragging a person's name through the dirt" is merely stating the facts.

Whoever killed Blake's wife, had his/her own motive, and I'm guessing it was not because Bonny Bakley was impersonating Mother Teresa. It brings to mind a lesson and quote from Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. As Augustus McCrae hung his friend Jake Spoon alongside the horse thieves with whom he'd been traveling, Gus told him, "Ride with an outlaw, die with him."

Since this column is, after all, a reflection of life in the 1960s, let's consider some '60s icons whose untimely demise was the best thing that ever happened to their careers.

Marilyn Monroe, who would have been 75 years old this month. Predictably, there was no shortage of media tributes to mark the occasion. She died at 36, when her bust measurement still exceeded her age. But, had she lived far past that number, she would probably be much like her roommate/peer Shelley Winters - an overweight, former sex symbol, writing "kiss and tell" books about the men in her life.

Elvis Presley - Had he not died at 42, he would likely have faded away a la Jerry Lee Lewis.

James Dean - If a car wreck had not forever freeze-framed the actor in our minds as the restless, risk-taking 24-year-old "rebel without a cause," today, he would (ironically) probably be a Robert Blake.

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