Georgia Engel

popular name: Margaret Kelly

date_of_death: September 11, 2004

age: 94

cause_of_death: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Margaret Kelly, known as Miss Bluebell, was an Irish dancer who was the founder of the Bluebell Girls dance troupe. At the age of 14, Kelly left school and joined a Scottish dance troupe called the Hot Jocks. Nine months later, she was contracted to the Scala in Berlin by noted producer Alfred Jackson, manager of the Jackson Girls. Kelly remained at the Scala for 5 years. Beginning in 1930, Kelly danced in Paris for the Folies Bergère. In 1932, when she was 22, she created her own troupe there called the Bluebell Girls. Bluebell found her greatest triumph in the Nevada desert when she and Donn Arden brought the Bluebells to the Las Vegas strip. Miss Bluebell caught Vegas fever, and her show exploded into an extravaganza that included live camels, jugglers, Roman gladiators, illusionists, ice skaters, strong men and waterfalls. She sold out the Stardust Hotel and the MGM Grand. In six decades she left a legacy that recruited and trained 14,000 Bluebells, set up troupes over the world, received countless awards including the Legion d’honneur and the Order of the British Empire (OBE), had an audience with the pope, and was the subject of a book and BBC documentary.

popular name: Bob Crane

date_of_death: June 29, 1978

age: 49

cause_of_death: Homicide - blunt force trauma

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Robert Edward Crane was an actor, drummer, radio personality, and disc jockey known for starring in the CBS television comedy Hogan's Heroes about the hilarious high jinks of prisoners in a concentration camp during WW II. In the early 1960s, he moved from radio into acting, eventually landing the lead role of Colonel Robert Hogan in Hogan's Heroes. The series aired from 1965 to 1971, and Crane received two Emmy Award nominations. Crane's career declined after Hogan's Heroes. He became frustrated with the bit parts he was offered such as The Love Boat, Ellery Queen, Police Woman and the short-lived The Bob Crane Show. Crane returned to performing in dinner theaters when his body was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment while on tour in June 1978 for a dinner theater production of Beginner's Luck. The murder remains officially unsolved. His previously uncontroversial public image suffered due to the suspicious nature of his death and posthumous revelations about his personal life.

popular name: Fred Allen

date_of_death: March 17, 1956

age: 61

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Fred Allen was an American comedian with a talent for ad-lib. His absurdist topically-pointed radio program The Fred Allen Show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the Golden Age of American radio. After 30 years on the radio, Fred Allen, a 52-year-old comic known for wry jokes, bow ties, and baggy eyes, made the cover of Time magazine. Intellectuals loved Allen, as did his peers in comedy. Radio rival Edgar Bergen acknowledged him as “the greatest living comedian.” Some people would have given the nod to Jack Benny, and Allen might have agreed; the two had been friends for years and were professionally linked by a fake feud they waged on their respective radio shows. But for Allen even to have been in the running with the great Benny shows his high standing at the time. Even though Allen had built up a weekly audience of 20 million listeners, his decline from popularity was swift. By the late 1940s and early 50s, television was well on its way from novelty (172,000 sets in use in 1948) to necessity (17 million sets in 1952). Not just radio networks but movie theaters, nightclubs, and restaurants were losing business to the upstart. Second, there was a problem with Allen's appeal - even he admitted he had a face for radio. Allen spent his final years as a newspaper columnist/humorist and as a memoirist and rented a small New York office to work six hours a day without distractions. He was also a panelist on "What's My Line?" for two years when he suddenly died of a heart attack on streets of New York City. He was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.