> > For some reason, I've always heard that stars...movie, TV,
>
> > et al...always seem to die in groups of three. Has anyone
> > else heard this rather gruesome saying before?
> >
> That saying's been around for years. I think it was used in
> a "Dirty Harry" movie once.
>
If you're superstitious, consider this: movie star Carole Lombard
died in a plane crash in 1942, along with twenty-one other people
including her mother and an MGM publicist who was traveling with
them. Lombard's mother, a believer in numerology, wanted to take
a train from Indianapolis (where Lombard had been selling war bonds)
back to California. Her reason: she thought the number three unlucky;
their flight was TWA Flight 3, the plane was a DC-3, there were three
people in their party, and Lombard was 33 years old. But Lombard was
anxious to get home to Clark Gable, so she suggested a coin toss; she
won, they took the plane, and it crashed into the side of Mt. Potosi
just outside Las Vegas, killing everyone aboard. (There's more to this,
which you can access at any Lombard website; I'm posting this much only to
give another example of the superstitions behind the number three.)
But back to Curt Gowdy, Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, and Dennis Weaver:
regardless of the significance of the number three, the sad thing to me
is that we keep losing really good actors, sportscasters, news anchors,
talk-show hosts, etc., and few people are coming along who are as
talented, IMO.