Has there ever been a real-life situation in which a famous person didn’t die in their home (and I mean a nice homey-home with a warm fire going in the fireplace and pets lying on their bed) and wasn’t surrounded by family members?

I’m asking because each and every time a celebrity death is announced we’re always told that the passage-into-infinity hasn’t happened in a hospital and that the deceased was absolutely surrounded by family and loved ones.

Don’t most people die in hospitals, and often in the wee hours when family members are home sleeping?

Not once has a celebrity passed while family and friends were out to dinner or otherwise and only a professional caregiver was there…right? Do I have that right?

“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” — Orson Welles.

Very few of us are going to die as pleasantly as we’d like to. Death usually happens under circumstances we can’t foresee, much less plan for, and sooner than we’d like. And the likelihood that you’re going to die while lying comfortably in bed between recently-washed sheets is almost nil. The odds are that your final throes are going to either be painful or traumatic or grotesque, and possibly a combination of all three.

By the way: There used to be a stand-alone site called Cinemorgue, which featured listings and descriptions of thousands of death scenes that are alphabetized by the names of actors and actresses.

Cataloguing endless death was apparently too much work for someone, and so Cinemorgue became Cinemorgue Wiki, which allowed readers to submit their additions and corrections directly.

I’d forgotten how many times Elke Sommer was gruesomely killed on-screen. Two skiiing accidents, shot three times (machine gunned in 1969’s The Wrecking Crew, the Dean Martin-Matt Helm movie), blown up, and bludgeoned to death.

Almost all movie deaths, it seems, are brutal, bloody, sudden, ghastly, traumatic and otherwise unpeaceful. Nod-off deaths — like Sir Cedric Hardwicke ‘s passing in The Ten Commandments — have been few and far between over the last 40 years. Is real-life death ever smooth and easy? Only if you do yourself in with pills.