A grim subject we often touch on is how surreal it feels when our favorite celebrities die. After all, they remain perfectly young and healthy whenever we revisit them in reruns of various shows and films. And it can be heartbreaking to look at the vibrant person on our TV screen and realize they’ll never act in anything ever again.
Lately, we’ve been thinking about this and how it relates to our most beloved ‘70s sitcoms. These were men and women who helped pioneer television as we know it. In short, they made TV history, and it’s worth remembering how they died and, more importantly, how they lived.
Who are the 70s sitcom stars whose deaths we’ve never gotten over? Keep reading to find out!
John Ritter
John Ritter is, of course, someone whose career wasn’t limited to 70s sitcoms. But well before he could headline later shows like 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, he was impressing all of us as a star on the classic show Three’s Company. He ultimately won an Emmy for his performance in a show with a very scandalous premise (at least, for the 70s): that his character was pretending to be gay so he could rent an apartment with two women who often dressed in very skimpy clothing.
Ritter began experiencing some health difficulties in 2003, and he left the set of 8 Simple Rules to go to the ER. It looked like he might have had a heart attack, but doctors then realized he had an internal tear known as an aortic dissection. Sadly, this revelation came too late, and the acclaimed actor ended up dying on the operating table at the age of only 54.