Automobile accidents claim thousands of lives each year in the United States and around the world, and over the decades they have been the cause of death for a number of celebrities. Included in these grim statistics was an American sex symbol who is the mother of one of today’s most famous television actresses, a singer whose big hit still resonates on the radio, a beloved character from the James Bond franchise, a comedian who used his wild looks and loud voice to entertain millions, and several Major League Baseball players, no less than three who ironically played with and against each other in the National League and were all Hall of Famers. Here are some famous people that died in car crashes.
Law and Order Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay was three and a half years old when her world-famous mother, Jayne Mansfield, was killed in an automobile accident in June of 1967. Mariska was actually in the vehicle, along with her siblings, as the 34 year old Mansfield, her boyfriend-lawyer, and her driver was heading to New Orleans from Biloxi, Mississippi in the wee morning hours. The children were all in the back seat, with the adults in the front, when the car ran into the rear of a tractor-trailer truck that was slowly moving because it was in back of another vehicle spraying mosquito fogger. Mansfield, star of screen and TV, an American icon for her buxom and beautiful looks, was killed instantly, as were her two companions in the front seat. Their car actually went under the semi, the top sheared off. Mansfield was not decapitated, as the rumor was, but she did suffer massive head trauma; the children luckily survived with only minor injuries.
Harry Chapin’s 1974 number one hit “The Cat’s in the Cradle” still plays on the radio today, a song about a father who had little time for his son. Chapin was just 39 on July 16th, 1981, when he started weaving about on the Long Island Expressway in heavy traffic. Theories abound about the cause of his erratic driving, with some people feeling Chapin had a heart attack. Whatever the cause, his Volkswagen Rabbit was hit by a trailer truck and the gas tank ruptured. Harry was rescued from the ensuing fire by passersby, but attempts to revive him at a local hospital were unsuccessful.
If you have seen any of the James Bond films, you are more than familiar with British actor Desmond Llewelyn, the man who portrayed “Q”, the fellow who worked in a laboratory and provided Bond with all his neat gadgets. Llewelyn was 86 in 1999 when his car crashed head-on into another vehicle near the English town of Berwick, in East Sussex. Although the other driver survived, Desmond succumbed to his car crash injuries shortly after.
Comedian Sam Kinison first came to national prominence in 1985, after a stint on the “David Lettermen Show. Kinison, who would rant, scream, and look as if he was having a fit on stage, all while wearing wild outfits as he wound through his monologues, had been married only six days when he was killed in an accident with a drunk driver. Kinison and his wife were in his Pontiac Trans Am when it was hit near the Arizona-California border on Route 95. Sam wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and the force of the impact caused his chest to strike the steering wheel so hard that it caused lethal damage. The 39 year old Kinison did not make it to the hospital alive, but his wife Malika managed to survive.
Mel Ott and Carl Hubbell were one-time New York Giants’ teammates, while Frankie Frisch played for the Giants with Ott before moving on to the St. Louis Cardinals. All three would make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but the trio also shared a much more deadly bond. They all were killed in car crashes. Ott was the first to go, crashing his vehicle near Louisiana and dying from his terrible injuries a short time later, at the age of 49 in 1958. Ott at the time was the all-time home run leader in the National League with 511. Frisch passed away in 1973; the “Fordham Flash” was on his way home from Florida to Rhode Island when his car left the road in Elkton, Maryland. The 74 year old Frisch was a star switch-hitting second baseman who owned a lifetime .316 average. Hubbell, who struck out five future Hall of Famers in a row in the 1934 All-Star Game using his famous screwball, was killed in Mesa, Arizona at the age of 88 when his car ran into a metal pole, leaving him with fatal head and chest injuries. Finally, former Yankee player and manager Billy Martin, who clashed openly with owner George Steinbrenner and stars such as Reggie Jackson, died in an auto accident on Christmas night, 1989 at 61 years old. Martin was a passenger in a truck driven by a friend when it skidded off an icy road in Binghamton, New York, killing the man who was “the proudest Yankee of them all.”
