7 Renowned people who died in 1991

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Freddie Mercury

(Singer/Songwriter)

5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991 (Aged 45)

Mercury was a legendary British singer and is widely seen as one of the greatest frontmen of all time.

He is also considered to have given some of music’s best live performances,  most notably at Live Aid in 1985.

The flamboyant Queen frontman was responsible for writing many of their hits, including ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, ‘Somebody to Love’, and ‘We Are The Champions’.

Mercury died from AIDS at the age of 45, only publicly confirming he had contracted the disease the day before his death.

He has been posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, and UK Music Hall of Fame.

Dr. Seuss

(Author)

2 March 1904 – 24 September 1991 (Aged 87)

Dr. Seuss, real name Theodor “Ted” Geisel, was an American illustrator and prolific children’s author.

He is best known for books such as The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Green Eggs and Ham, and Horton Hears a Who!

During World War II, Seuss took a break from children’s writing and worked on numerous short films, one being Design for Death, which won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Seuss is one of the most celebrated children’s authors in history, with over 600 million copies of his books being sold around the world.

He died from oral cancer at the age of 87.

Gene Roddenberry

(Writer/Producer)

19 August 1921 – 24 October 1991 (Aged 70)

Roddenberry was a hugely influential American writer and producer, creating the legendary Star Trek television series.

In his early life, he was a fighter pilot during World War II, flying over 80 combat missions.

After the war, he flew commercially for Pan American World Airways for three years before quitting to pursue his dream of being of becoming a writer.

For the next few years, Roddenberry worked as a speechwriter for the Los Angeles Police Department, which led to him working on his own screenplays.

Star Trek aired for the first time in September 1966, becoming a groundbreaking show for the genre.

He became the first writer/producer to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.

Roddenberry died from a heart attack at the age of 70. In 1992, some of his ashes were flown into space on the Space Shuttle Columbia.

He was posthumously inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Frank Capra

(Director)

18 May 1897 – 3 September 1991 (Aged 94)

Capra was a legendary Italian-American director, who emigrated to the USA from Italy in 1903, going on to make films such as It’s A Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

During his career, Capra won 6 Academy Awards in total, 3 for Best Director, while in 1982, he was given the Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute.

Outside of directing, Capra became influential within the industry, becoming head of the Directors Guild of America, and serving as president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

After World War II, Capra’s films fell out of favor with the public, and he aired his disillusionment with Hollywood’s changing culture. He directed his final film in 1964.

Over the years his films gained new-found respect, with some hailed as all-time classics.

Capra died from a heart attack at the age of 94, having suffered a number of strokes in his final years.

Miles Davis

(Musician)

26 May 1926 – 28 September 1991 (Aged 65)

Davis was a hugely influential American musician, whose career, spanning 50 years on the trumpet, saw him become one of the most acclaimed jazz performers of all time.

Throughout his career, Davis worked with numerous musicians who became stars in their own right after.

His albums have sold millions of copies, and are credited with being among the greatest jazz albums ever made.

In 1990, Davis was given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, while he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Davis died at the age of 65, having suffered from pneumonia and respiratory failure.

In the early 1950s, he had suffered from heroin addiction, which he over overcame by the mid-1950s.

Graham Greene

(Author)

2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991 (Aged 86)

Greene was a British author widely recognized as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.

Among his best-known works are The Power and the Glory, Our Man in Havana, Brighton Rock, and The End of the Affair.

In the early part of his career, Greene worked in various editorial jobs, before spending over thirty years traveling the world as a freelance journalist, enabling him to explore and inhabit the world in which he based many of his novels.

Prior to, and during, World War II, Greene was recruited by and worked with MI6.

Throughout his life, Greene suffered from depression, which greatly affected his life and writing. The same can also be said for Catholicism, to which he converted in 1926.

Greene spent his final years living in Vevey, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, a town where Charlie Chaplin also lived at the time.

He died of leukemia at the age of 86.

Fred MacMurray

(Actor)

30 August 1908 – 5 November 1991 (Aged 83)

MacMurray was a prolific American actor who starred in over 100 films.

His most notable films are Double Indemnity, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Caine Mutiny and the TV series My Three Sons.

In 1987, MacMurray became the first person to be honored as a Disney Legend.

Having been a life-long smoker, he suffered from throat cancer for more than the last decade of his life.

MacMurray died from pneumonia at the age of 87.