Georgia Engel

popular name: Allan Sherman

date_of_death: November 20, 1973

age: 48

cause_of_death: Respiratory failure

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Allan Sherman was an American musician, satirist, actor and television producer who became known as a song parodist in the early 1960s. In the fall of 1962, if an album sold 10,000 copies, Warner Bros. Records considered it a success. Then Allan Sherman released My Son The Folk Singer, an album of Jewish themed parody songs that sold close to 400,000 copies in three weeks on the way to over one million sales. Among the single recordings that helped to push his annual income beyond $500,000 at the height of his popularity were “Crazy Downtown,” and “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh,” which described the horrors of a summer camp and won for Mr. Sherman a Grammy Award in 1963 for the best comic performance. But just as quickly as his star rose, Mr. Sherman's saw his popularity vanish post JFK and with the rise of Beatlemania. Audiences lost their desire for his particular form of comedy and the British Invasion dominated the airwaves. In his final years, Sherman's alcoholism and weight gain caused severe deterioration of his health; he later developed diabetes and struggled with lung disease. In 1966, his wife Dee filed for divorce and received full custody of their son and daughter. Sherman lived on unemployment benefits for a time and moved into the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital for a short time to lose weight. He died while entertaining his friends during the night of November 20, 1973, at his West Hollywood home.

popular name: Audie Murphy

date_of_death: May 28, 1971

age: 45

cause_of_death: Plane crash

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: He wanted to join the Marines, but he was too short. The paratroopers wouldn't have him, either. Reluctantly, he settled on the infantry, and ultimately became one of the most decorated heroes of World War II. He was Audie Murphy, the baby-faced Texas farm boy who became an American legend. Dropping out of school in the fifth grade to earn money picking cotton, he was 16 years old when his mother died and watched as his siblings as they were doled out to an orphanage or to relatives. Seeking an escape from this difficult life, Murphy enlisted in the Army in 1942 — falsifying his birth certificate so that he appeared to be 18, one year older than he actually was. By the end of World War II, Murphy had become one of the nation's most-decorated soldiers, earning an unparalleled 28 medals (including three from France and one from Belgium). Murphy had been wounded three times during the war. In May 1945, when victory was declared in Europe, he had still not reached his 21st birthday. In 1949 Audie Murphy published his acclaimed autobiography, To Hell and Back, then spent the next 21 years in Hollywood, most famously portraying himself in the movie of the same name. Mostly he played Westerns. Despite a steady stream of income, Murphy's horseracing addiction led to financial difficulties, though he refused to appear in commercials for alcohol and cigarettes, thinking it a bad influence on children. Upon his death, he was laid to death with honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC.

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.