Dan Moran: Fame is fleeting — and fickle

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Updated: January 1, 2011 2:35AM

Looking back on the year that was, HCD Research — a New Jersey-based company that takes the pulse of communications in our world — reported this week that we were oversaturated on Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods, but were properly saturated with Gary Coleman.

Posting the results from various surveys taken during 2010, HCD reported that 81 percent of respondents said Woods’ extramarital woes received “too much” media coverage, while 63 percent felt the same way in the long aftermath of Jackson’s June 2009 demise. Both are significant numbers that understate the case.

Meanwhile, when asked about the May 28 passing death of Zion’s own Gary Coleman, only 24 percent of respondents thought the news received too much coverage, while 67 percent felt it was “appropriate.” In other words, fame is not only fleeting, it is fickle.

With that, let us delve into our annual look back at those newsworthy departures that might have slipped our mind while we waited for the last of the Chilean miners to cheat the Grim Reaper:

Tsutomu Yamaguchi (Jan. 4): Either the luckiest man alive or the unluckiest — on Aug. 6, 1945, he was in Hiroshima on business when the first atomic bomb was dropped, and three days later, he was back at his desk in Nagasaki when the second bomb fell. He was 29 at the time and lived to be 93.

Erich Segal (Jan. 17): “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Whether that quote from “Love Story” makes your eyes well up or roll upward, he wrote it.

J.D. Salinger (Jan. 27): The author whose name was preceded by the word “reclusive” published his last work in 1965, meaning Greta Garbo, who released her final film in 1941 and died 49 years later, still holds the celebrity recluse record.

Peter Graves (March 14): “Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

Robert Culp (March 24): In the mid-1960s, he was nominated for an Emmy three years in a row for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Series, and lost each year to his “I Spy” co-star, Bill Cosby.

John Forsythe (April 1): “Once upon a time there were three little girls who went to the police academy. They were assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me. My name is Charlie.”

Manute Bol (June 19): Chicago Bulls fans with long memories will surely recall the epic 1986 fight between the 7-foot-7-inch Bol and the 7-foot-1-inch Jawaan Oldham. To those who did not witness it, one term sums it up: flailing arms.

Gloria Stuart (Sept. 26): She was a young lady of 87 when she played the 100-year-old Rose in “Titanic.” She would live to see her own 100th birthday.

Stephen J. Cannell (Sept. 30): The man who gave us “The Rockford Files.” And also stuff like “The A-Team” and “21 Jump Street,” but still.

Solomon Burke (Oct. 10): Jake and Elwood blew the roof off the Palace Hotel Ballroom in “The Blues Brothers” with “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” co-written and first recorded by Burke in 1964.

Dino De Laurentiis (Nov. 10): The Hollywood titan who produced “Serpico,” “Death Wish,” “The Shootist” and any number of respectable films, but most of us thank him for Jessica Lange and the 1976 version of “King Kong.”

Leslie Nielsen (Nov. 28): “I am serious — and don’t call me Shirley.”

Once again, may they rest in peace, whether or not we read too much about them.