Published: July 08, 2009 01:23 pm      

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ...

With all the celebrity deaths lately — and we have certainly had a bumper crop — two seem to be sticking in my consciousness longer than the others: Billy Mays and Gale Storm.

I know, I know. I’m weird. The biggest pop star on the planet checks out and who’s on my mind? A pitchman and the star of a sitcom that was old when I was a kid.

Let’s start with Billy Mays. At first, I couldn’t figure out this guy’s appeal. You’d be watching TV and all of a sudden there he was, yelling about some cleaning product and making hand gestures that were never quite in sync with what he was saying. And his hair and beard looked painted on.

But he was huge. Look at all the products he sold. Advertising is not given to experimentation, and that includes with pitchmen. And he was the best. Billy Mays moved the merchandise.

How? Remember what I said about the shouting and the hand gestures and the hair and beard? That’s how. He was unforgettable. There was NO mistaking him for anyone else. Once that image was planted in your mind, it stayed there, and that’s more than half the battle.

Billy Mays got his start selling on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and then moved to the State Fair circuit. I’ve read that he garnered a sterling reputation in live sales because of his booming voice and friendly demeanor.

I think I’ll spend a little extra time in the Expo Hall when the State Fair comes around. I want to see if I can spot the next Billy Mays.

Now, Gale Storm — a name from the murky past that conjured up being home from school, bored out of your mind. Why? Because only if you were bored out of your mind (or too sick to move) would you watch the reruns of “My Little Margie.”

It was weird. As I recall it, Margie was the daughter of a dashing widower, and her chief task in life was to keep her father from having a good time with women. She was a troublemaker, in the Lucy Ricardo mold. That’s how it looked to me, anyway.

What weirded me out about “My Little Margie,” and a lot of old movies, too, for that matter, was the way her father, played by Charles Farrell, pronounced her name: “Mah-gie.” I got the same sort of weird vibe from the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz talking about “DAH-ra-thy.” I wondered why no one had properly instructed them in the pronunciation of the letter “r.”

Then I got a little older and learned they were all from Massachusetts, where they pahk cahs in Hahvahd Yahd, and that explained it.

Celebrity death is a weird thing. When it’s big — as the recent spate of them has been — we get sort of sucked into its vortex. It’s unavoidable. Whether you want to be or not, you’re aware of it, and you’re going to be reminded of it whether you like it or not.

Billy Mays. Gale Storm. Maybe they weren’t as high up the celebrity ladder as some of the others, but that doesn’t make them any less noteworthy. Remember what Publilius Syrus said back in the first century BC:

“As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.”

How true.

We just don’t all get 24-hour TV coverage.

© 2009 Mike Redmond. All Rights Reserved.