Which beloved celebrity's mysterious death is still being investigated by police more
than 40 years later?
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Whitney Houston was a powerhouse singer, winning multiple Grammys, racking up No. 1 singles,
and breaking chart records like it was easy.
While most people would look at Houston's career and think she'd reached the pinnacle
in every way, according to the Guardian, she had a very complex relationship with fame.
In 1989, she was booed at the Soul Train Awards for being, in her own words, "not Black enough."
Some radio stations wouldn't play her music because of this perception, and she got the
nickname "Whitey Houston."
Band member Kirk Whalum said,
"I don't think she ever recovered from it.
It was one of those boxes that was checked, that when she ultimately perished it was because
of those boxes."
Fame wasn't nice to Houston in other ways as well.
By the end of her life, after turbulent relationships and drug use that led to cruel tabloid headlines,
people could see Houston was not okay.
She died in 2012, the night before the Grammy Awards, in a hotel bathtub.
While rumors swirled about the reasons, Entertainment Weekly reported her death was ruled an accidental
drowning, while, quote, "heart disease and chronic cocaine use were contributing factors."
"Watchoo talkin 'bout, Willis?"
Gary Coleman might have found fame on "Diff'rent Strokes," but as he told a reporter for the
Las Vegas Sun in 1999, it had effectively ruined his life.
"That, 'Whatchoo talkin' 'bout,' ugh.
If I could go back 14 years and not say that line, I'd do it.
Realistically, I hear that line at least twice per day.
It has become part of the national vernacular."
While Coleman still got relatively steady acting work, most of the roles he was offered
weren't the kind of thing he really wanted to do.
He explained,
"Playing myself gets really old, really quick [...] I like good humor.
I like being the pivotal character, the supporting character who gives comic relief.
At heart, I'm a scene-stealer.
I'm just waiting for my next opportunity."
It was only when he died from injuries sustained in a fall down the stairs in 2010, aged 42,
that the world found out how much Coleman hated the situation he'd found himself in
in life.
According to the BBC, his will instructed there would be no funeral, and the only memorial
could be a wake – but one arranged by people who hadn't made money off him when he was
alive and were able to, quote, "look each other in the eyes and say they really cared
personally for Gary Coleman."
Jenni Rivera had a full and multifaceted career, selling millions of albums, hitting No. 1
multiple times on the Latin Album Chart, starring in a successful reality show, and sharing
her expertise as a coach on the Mexican version of "The Voice," according to CNN.
But she didn't downplay what it took to be so successful.
She said,
"I'm very happy for the success that I've had, but I've worked so hard at it.
It's not that I feel that I deserve it.
You kind of work hard and you have expectations, so I'm living my expectations right now.
[...] [I]t's great, it's beautiful."
Tragically, in 2012, a private jet crashed into a mountain in New Mexico, killing Rivera
and everyone else on board.
She was 43.
The plane she was traveling in was also 43 years old, reported CNN, and sustained major
damage the previous decade, most likely making it unsafe.
Natasha Richardson came from a famous acting dynasty, and while this had plenty of perks
and helped open doors for her, there were also some downsides.
She told the New York Times about inviting her father, the director/producer Tony Richardson,
to come see her in one of her first paid acting jobs, performing in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
in London.
Instead of being proud, he trashed her performance.
She recalled,
"I'd thought I was so wonderful!
I cried, made excuses [...] He said I must find something more interesting than myself
in the character.
The next day he FedExed a copy of the play to me from Los Angeles, marked up with suggestions!"
Richardson went on to have a very successful career, as well as a happy marriage to fellow
actor Liam Neeson.
But tragically, she died in 2009, while on a skiing trip with her family, from injuries
sustained in a fall on the slopes.
The comedian and actress Gilda Radner is most famous for her work on "Saturday Night Live,"
but fans also loved that she married fellow funny person Gene Wilder, and their marriage
seems to have been wonderful.
While Radner was planning for a future and children with her new husband, she started
feeling unwell, reports The Guardian.
After seeing doctor after doctor who misdiagnosed her and downplayed her concerns or outright
dismissed them, Radner was finally diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986.
In her book "It's Always Something," she wrote,
"Cancer is probably the most unfunny thing in the world, but I'm a comedienne, and even
cancer couldn't stop me from seeing humor in what I went through."
Sadly, her cancer returned in 1989, and she died that year, aged 42, but not before sparking
a national conversation about women's health that saved untold lives.
"People weren't talking about ovarian cancer.
Till Gilda Radner died of what?
Ovarian cancer.
So now people want to know about it."
Before her passing, she wrote,
"I wanted a perfect ending.
Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't
have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it,
without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity."
In 1971, singer Marvin Gaye became a national figure with his acclaimed album "What's Going
On," which tackled some of the biggest and most difficult issues of the time.
In an interview that year, he told Disc and Music Echo,
"The material is social commentary but there's nothing extreme on it.
I did it not only to help humanity but to help me as well, and I think it has.
It's given me a certain amount of peace."
Tragically, the peace didn't last.
In 1984, he was shot to death by his father during an argument.
He was just 44 years old.
At Gaye's funeral, his friend Dick Gregory eulogized,
"Marvin told me, 'I like to raise people's consciousness.
I want to give them hope.'
Well, brother Marvin, you did that — with class and warmth and love.
You left us too soon, but any time would have been too soon."
Natalie Wood is famous for appearing in classic films like "Rebel Without a Cause" and "West
Side Story," Britannica records.
But she's also famous for her two turbulent marriages to the same man – Robert Wagner
– and the tragic, mysterious way that she died.
Wood drowned in the Pacific Ocean in 1981, aged 43.
She was on a boat with Wagner and her co-star Christopher Walken.
Exactly what happened is still unclear, although witnesses said they heard arguing that night,
but one thing we do know is that Wood wouldn't have gone in the water by choice.
She told Hollywood columnist Shirley Eder in 1977 that she had developed a lifelong
terror of the sea after a bad experience on a movie set.
"I had a mean director one time who threw me in the ocean.
I was terrified.
I was petrified, because we were in the open ocean."
While her cause of death was drowning, how it happened was originally labeled an accident.
In 2012, though, authorities changed the designation from accidental to "undetermined," and in
2018, it was changed again to "suspicious."
Wagner has categorically denied he had anything to do with his wife's death, but the truth
of that night has yet to be revealed.
Billie Holiday is considered one of the greatest singers and Jazz musicians in American history.
She was lauded by fans and critics and lionized by other singers, including Frank Sinatra,
who said,
"Billie Holiday was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me."
But outside of her career, Holiday's life was far from a fairy tale, with boyfriends
who took advantage of her, marriage to what NPR called a, quote, "wannabe gangster," drug
and alcohol addiction, time in jail, and blatant racism all disrupting her career.
In an interview in 1956, she explained that many jazz musicians died young because
"We try to live a hundred days in one day, and we try to please so many people.
Like myself, I want to bend this note, bend that note, sing this way, sing that way, and
get all the feeling, eat all the good foods, and travel all over in one day, and you can't
do it."
In 1959, Holliday died from cirrhosis and other complications from drug and alcohol
abuse.
In her last days she was swindled of her money, and was arrested and handcuffed to her hospital
bed on drug charges by authorities who denied her access to withdrawal medication.
She was buried in an unmarked grave, a tragic end for one of our greatest talents.
She was 44.
In an interview with PBS, Nat King Cole's daughter Carole said of her father's musical
impact,
"Perhaps there's a smile and warmth in the very sound of a Nat King Cole vocal that strikes
a personal chord with people."
Despite facing racism in the 1950s and '60s, Cole was a huge star, headlining films and
TV shows while becoming a beloved American institution.
However, his career would be cut tragically short.
According to the LA Times, in 1965, Cole checked into the hospital.
Suffering from lung cancer, his left lung was removed and he spent three weeks recuperating,
or so he thought.
In reality, the doctors now knew the cancer had spread beyond control and they had told
Cole's wife Maria.
She chose not to tell him, and kept the information from the press as well to make sure he didn't
find out.
After one last trip home to see his kids for a final time, Cole died of cancer at the age
of 45.
Judy Garland will forever be best known as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," but she had
a prolific career after that as well.
Unfortunately, things often didn't go well, like with her starring role in the 1954 remake
of "A Star is Born."
She started the production clean, but when the studio pushed her too hard, Garland turned
to drugs again.
Then, according to the film's director George Cukor, studio executives ruined the film.
"When we finally got the film into the can, we had what I considered one of Garland's
finest performances.
But the studio ran into trouble – the public thought the picture was too long – and so
they butchered it.
Absolutely butchered it."
It was her last really notable film role.The issues with drugs when performing was a pattern
that had plagued Garland since the beginning.
Her third husband Sid Luft wrote
"She confessed it was virtually impossible for her to sustain a work mode in front of
the cameras without taking some kind of medication."
Garland died in 1969, aged 47, of an accidental overdose.
In the liner notes of one of his albums, jazz great John Coltrane explained how he'd had
a spiritual awakening in 1957, and that he, quote, "humbly asked [God] to be given the
means and privilege to make others happy through music."
He certainly got his wish, although he could be his own worst critic.
Speaking about some of his early work with fellow jazz genius Miles Davis, Coltrane said,
"I am quite ashamed of those early records I made with Miles.
Why he picked me, I don't know."
Coltrane never rested on his laurels when it came to his music, even as he reached the
pinnacle of his career.
In 1966, he told a reporter,
"There is never any end [...] there are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get
at.
And always there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really
see what we've discovered in its pure state.
So that we can see more and more clearly what we are [...] we have to keep on cleaning the
mirror."
Less than a year later, he died from liver cancer, aged just 40.
John Lennon was still in his 20s when The Beatles broke up, which meant he had a lot
of creative years ahead of him.
And being a solo artist gave him complete control over the music he made and the kind
of songs he wrote.
He told Rolling Stone in 1971,
"I always wrote about me when I could.
I didn't really enjoy writing third person songs about people who lived in concrete flats
and things like that.
I like first-person music."
But even the freedom of his post-Beatles years stopped being fun, and Lennon took a lengthy
hiatus.
He told the Los Angeles Times in 1980 how he came to the decision:
"Finally, Yoko said, 'You don't have to do it anymore.'
I was shocked.
I had never thought that: Could the world get along without another John Lennon album?
Could I get along without it?
I finally realized that the answer to both questions was yes."
The time being what he called a, quote, "house husband" allowed Lennon to find joy in creativity
again.
He told the New York Times,
"In a way, we're involved in a kind of experiment.
Could the family be the inspiration for art, instead of drinking or drugs or whatever?
I'm interested in finding that out."
Sadly, he never had the chance to find out, as he was murdered in 1980.
He was just 40 years old.
As lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury was an international superstar, but that didn't
mean he let himself coast.
If watching a Queen concert was like looking at a work of art, there was a reason for that.
In 1981, Mercury told Melody Maker
"I'm a very highly strung person.
I like having fun, and my job is a very good release for me, but it's still my job and
I always take it very seriously.
And when you are highly strung and you take your work seriously, you're bound to appear
difficult to the outside world."
While he put his everything into his work, that didn't mean he thought there was some
dramatic meaning to making music.
He took it seriously because he wanted to make people happy.
As he told the interviewer,
"I like people to go away from a Queen show feeling fully entertained, having had a good
time.
I think Queen songs are pure escapism, like going to see a good film — after that, they
can go away and say that was great, and go back to their problems."
Tragically, Mercury died from AIDS in 1991.
He was 45.
Elvis Presley is one of the most iconic performers of all time.
When he returned to Las Vegas in 1969 to perform again after a long hiatus, he was asked how
he stayed looking so young.
He answered,
"One of these days I'll probably fall apart.
I feel, I've just been lucky."
Sadly, Elvis did fall apart, and with the eyes of the world on him.
After he died in 1977, a hospital employee told Rolling Stone that the King had been
treated there throughout the decade.
"They were treating him for everything — hypertension, enlarged colon, gastroenteritis, stomach inflammation
[...] one doctor said Elvis might have had systemic lupus [...] He also had a severe
liver condition."
In the end, his body gave out.
He was just 42.
Paul Walker might have started out as a teen heartthrob, but the "Fast and the Furious"
franchise made him a huge star.
And he knew better than to take his career success for granted, telling the Los Angeles
Times in 2011,
"I have the good fortune that this thing has hit again and the franchise has managed to
keep me viable all these years.
As opposed to completely disappearing, I'm still here.
And now the verdict is out on me.
It's like, 'What are you going to do with it, guy?'"
Well, one thing he did, with the money anyway, was buy cars and drive fast, just as in the
films.
He told the Australian outlet Girl, asked him,
"I race all the time.
I was just at the track on Wednesday.
I gotta drive a truck or I'm going to speed.
I can't drive a car.
That's trouble."
"What's the fastest you've ever driven?"
"Just under 200.
I did 197."
In 2013, Walker died in a car crash.
He was 40.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the best actors of his generation, and over his career,
he chose to play some very difficult roles which took him to dark places.
In 2008, he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross that acting those characters was harder than people
might realize.
"I think that the amount of concentration — sometimes the amount of personal exploration
— it takes to do something well, can be not pleasant [...] like hard work is.
That doesn't mean that you don't want to do it, or that you don't love it, or that it's
not ultimately satisfying [...] There's always something about that job that's exhausting,
and that's what's exhausting about acting, is the level concentration over very long
period of time."
Hoffman was also open about the other hardest thing in his life, his sobriety.
The actor had been to rehab and explained to Gross that he couldn't drink in moderation.
"It's not a great pleasure for me to have a couple of glasses of wine.
That just — that's kind of annoying [...] Do you know what I mean?
Like, why aren't you having the whole bottle?
[...] That's much more pleasurable."
Tragically, the Los Angeles Times reports Hoffman fell back into substance abuse and
died of a heroin overdose in 2014, aged 46.
Steve Irwin was a big part of many Millennials' childhoods, introducing them to animals and
Australia, and the world of kooky reality TV stars.
But the kookiness was calculated to get people to pay attention to the important lessons
he was trying to impart about the natural world.
He told Scientific American.
"I believe that education is all about being excited about something.
Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.
That's the main aim in our entire lives is to promote education about wildlife and wilderness
areas, save habitats, save endangered species, etc.
So, if we can get people excited about animals, then by crikey, it makes it a heck of a lot
easier to save them."
Unfortunately, after putting himself in dangerous situations more times than you could count,
in 2006, one of those animals would kill Irwin.
In what Biography calls a "freak accident," the Crocodile Hunter was stabbed in the chest
by a stingray while filming a documentary.
He died shortly thereafter, aged 44, but his children, including son Robert, continue his
legacy today.
"The way he approached wildlife was incredibly unique and I think he really changed the world."