Gregg Toland

popular name: Jacques Chazot

date_of_death: July 12, 1993

age: 64

cause_of_death: Throat Cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Mr. Chazot began his career in earnest as a star dancer at the Opera Comique in Paris from 1956 to 1963 and choreographed or produced many ballets. His wit made him a popular guest on television talk shows. He was also known for his satirical writing about Parisian high society, symbolized by a fictional young snob named Marie-Chantal. He was a perennial figure in that society, and he used to say, "People love me because when I enter a room I create the effect of a sudden shower of rainbow confetti." In short, Chazot was a professional dandy, his slender figure shown off to its best advantage in a Saint-Laurent purple velvet dinner jacket. He preferred the weightless nourishment of his butterfly mind to the stupefying richness of French haute cuisine. He had been known to enter famous restaurants and order a glass of water (but with a sprig of fresh mint) and a post-prandial cigar. Like Ronald Firbank, he could dine appreciatively on a single green pea. He was a close friend of the writer Francoise Sagan, whom he reportedly almost married in 1964, despite his avowed homosexuality, and was often seen in the company of people like Maria Callas, Princess Grace and Marie-Helene de Rothschild. Upon his death he was interred at Cimetirie de Monthyon in France.

popular name: Brittany Murphy

date_of_death: December 20, 2009

age: 32

cause_of_death: Pneumonia with secondary factors of iron-deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication resulting in cardiac arrest

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Brittany Murphy was an actress and singer who is best remembered as the rich, airhead teen in the movie Clueless (1995). She went on to star or co-star in such movies as Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Spun (2002), Just Married (2003), Uptown Girls (2003), Sin City (2005), and Happy Feet (2006) before her baffling sudden death at the young age of 32.

popular name: James Cagney

date_of_death: March 30, 1986

age: 86

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: James Cagney was one of greatest actors, dancer, entertainer and performer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. Cagney is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), City for Conquest (1940) and White Heat (1949). To avoid being typecast as a gangster in every film, he was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film (and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played opposite Art Carney. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described him as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera". Today fans of the great actor can visit the grave of James Cagney at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.