the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

xpost That would be someone like Betty White or George Burns, someone famous who lives long enough to eventually be famous for being old.

A bunch of '70s movie icons are getting up there. Jack Nicholson is 85, Dustin Hoffman is 84, Robert Redford is 85, Woody Allen is 86, Warren Beatty is 85, Roman Polanski is 88, Donald Sutherland is 86, Shirley MacLaine is 88, Tippy Hedron is 92.

"Back in high school, one of the items in our D&D game was a "Leisure Suit of Knowledge" (based on Burke's fave on-camera wear) that added a couple of point in intelligence and wisdom."

Did you also have a "Carl Sagan orange hiking jacket of wonderousness"? Apparently it was a Sierra Designs 60/40 parka. You learn something every day. Check out Robert De Niro dressed as a 2000s indie musician, but in 1978:
https://www.outinunder.com/content/story-sierra-designs-6040-mountain-parka

Also, and I apologise for the double post, it's surprising that Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and Warren Beatty are the same age. I always assumed Nicholson was of the same generation as Gene Hackman, e.g. about ten years older than the other big stars of the 1970s. He was in black and white Roger Corman films.

I suppose it's because he always played world-weary characters. I still haven't seen The Last Detail. Does it have a lot of bad language by modern standards? That's what it was infamous for at the time.

For the record Jack Nicklaus is 82, but it's not surprising that he's still alive because he was a top athlete.

Maybe not that famous, but Jonathan Haze, who played the lead role in Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960) is still alive at 93.

xp one of the podcasts i listen to keeps talking about the film Tippi Hedren made with a bunch of big cats hanging around her house
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083001/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_68
during which i think the entire cast got at least partially mauled. So maybe is surprising that she has lived so long.

Both Tippi Hedren and Jayne Mansfield had children mauled by lions.

I did not know until I listened to Karina Longworth's series on "Dead Blondes" that Jayne Mansfield was Mariska Hargitay's mother.

xpost That would be someone like Betty White or George Burns, someone famous who lives long enough to eventually be famous for being old.

A bunch of '70s movie icons are getting up there. Jack Nicholson is 85, Dustin Hoffman is 84, Robert Redford is 85, Woody Allen is 86, Warren Beatty is 85, Roman Polanski is 88, Donald Sutherland is 86, Shirley MacLaine is 88, Tippy Hedron is 92.

Bob Barker still alive at 98.

xp also apparently fucking children is good for longevity

Johnny Rivers will (hopefully) turn 80 in November.

Patrick Gleeson, synthesist and member of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi, 87.

Johnny Rivers will (hopefully) turn 80 in November.

Hadn't heard about him in years!

I guess that's why he's a secret aging man!

Bill Medley, 81

Richard O'Sullivan and Mike Yarwood at Brinsworth House where they are residents. Brinsworth House is a residential and nursing retirement home for theatre and entertainment professionals in Staines Road, Twickenham, west London, England 🎭 pic.twitter.com/MG1uBQXM5k

— 🇬🇧📺 Classic British TV 📺🇬🇧 (@Classicbritcom) June 15, 2022

Wow, they look exactly like those "what celebrities will look like when they're older" or "what Elvis would look like now, if were still alive" mock ups the tabloids occasionally indulge in.

Rod Argent

Nice to see a photo of Richard O'S... poor guy was only 59 when he started living in that place :/ He would have seen Charlie Drake and Fluff Freeman come and go.
And "retired from public life" younger than I am now. (Me also).

He's looking a lot better than he did in that spate of "You won't believe wha Richard O'Sullivan looks like now" tabloid articles a few years ago.

Robin Askwith goes to see him a lot so it doesn't surprise me, but nice to see other people surprised by it.

Alexander Butterfield, the guy who revealed the White House taping system during the Watergate hearings. He turned 89 in April.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Butterfield

― clemenza, Saturday, August 29, 2015 9:21 PM (six years ago)

Now 96.

So wonderful to see the great @drdemento, who stopped by my show last night at the @wiltern! pic.twitter.com/IVSgu4kP9C

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) June 20, 2022

He doesn't really look all that much older than what I pictured him looking like 35 years ago!

LaMDA lol

Hemingway's second son, Patrick, 93.

He doesn't really look all that much older than what I pictured him looking like 35 years ago!

Nor does Al!

Pianist-composer Tashiko Akiyoshi is still performing and recording at 92.

*Toshiko

Michael Eavis, 86

Erich von Daniken (87) for some reason

Arthur Scargill

and Denis Healey is 98 years old!

― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, April 22, 2015 2:33 PM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

already been posted itt but Arthur Scargill

― Is Jack Nicholson really qualify as "Partyman"? (jim in glasgow), Wednesday, May 4, 2016 11:18 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Still going! Scargill not Healey that is, I somehow thought he was long gone.

Mo Ostin, record company exec (95). Crazy to think that Frank Sinatra hired him to run Reprise Records in 1960; and that Ostin worked for the Verve label before it was even called Verve.

Arthur Scargill

Came here to post this too, what the utter fuck. haha good on im.

Georgie Fame, 78. Had the idea he was way older, and also dead.

June Lockhart turns 97(!) today.

me expounding the reasons erich von daniken is still alive

https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ancient-aliens.jpg

June Lockhart turns 97(!) today.

Terry Riley, who just turned 87

von Daniken is a good one. I first heard of him when I was a kid in the 80s and at the time I assumed that he was an old guy for some reason.

Also from the von Däniken realm of supermarket paperbacks, Hal Lindsey, who wrote - or as it turns out now - co-wrote The Late Great Planet Earth, continues on at age 92. His book was a favorite of Bob Marley's and influenced Bob Dylan at the time of his Christian period.

Peter Blake, 90

On the subject of 1970s non-fiction bestsellers I was surprised to learn that Stewart Brand is still alive. He edited the Whole Earth Catalogue and later went on to found The WELL. He strikes me as one of those pre-internet cyber-futurists who were almost entirely pushed aside when the actual internet happened, because "the street finds it own use for things". Along similar lines Ted Nelson is also still alive. He devised Project XANADU, which was going to be the World Wide Web except that the World Wide Web happened instead. They're both in their eighties.

I've always mentally pictured The WELL as the stereotypical "generation starship where the inhabitants have forgotten their mission and turned into rival tribes", although I'm speaking out of my bottom because I've never been a member. I assume it was a clique of people who wrote for Mondo 2000 and nowadays send angry letters to the New York Times etc. The kind of people who have positions of power on ICANN and secretly run the internet. But I could be wrong.

I assumed Brand was dead because there's a new biography of him out. (Reviews have been mixed.)

Because of this thread and on the topic of 1970s bestsellers, I looked up Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull - he is alive at 86

Somewhat related, Tom Robbins is still alive at 89

Mel Brooks. Publishing an autobiography at the age of 95.

― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, November 28, 2021 11:49 PM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Happy 96th birthday!

mel b still also one of only a tiny no. of ppl to use twitter correctly:
https://i.imgur.com/EJHoE3k.png

PJ Proby. I was absolutely certain he'd died years ago but he's still performing ... at 83.

By using Twitter correctly do you mean not following anyone from your official account if youre a celebrity?

i mean not following anyone at all whoever you are