Does it ever freak you out a little watching an old film knowing.........

[Gothic Sponge]

the whole cast is long dead? Mortality sucks!

[RobertSeattle]

1. YES

I've thought that for years. Even if you see a 1930's movie with a young child in it, there a strong chance they are long gone.

Another thing that fascinates me is that this whole mortality thing seems pretty darn perfect - evolution doesn't seem to have allowed "mistakes" where someone or something gets an immortality gene by chance.

[WI_DEM]

2. not really, but now that you mention it

maybe it will.

[Kahuna]

3. Yes! To see a young and vibrant, Cary Grant, or Katharine Hepburn..

Audrey Hepburn or Barbara Stanwyck or Gary Cooper can be a real bummer. Of course if Cary or Gary was around today, I'd be stalking them. :D

Edited to add another of my favorite dead movies stars. I love Charlie Chaplin. He was so adorable and cool. Even into his old age. :cry:

[calico1]

4. Yes, all the time!

They look so alive and vibrant and you realize they died a long time ago. Or even if they are not dead, I will see for example a young Mickey Rooney when he was just a kid and its hard to think of him as the very old man he is now.

[SoCalDem]

5. My husband loves the "Dead Movie Stars Channel" (AMC)

I am always telling him that they are all dead :)

[murielm99]

6. No.

I am glad that their talent has been preserved, and we can see them today.

They have achieved immortality in their own way. Why mourn that?

I like looking at old pictures, too. I think it brings us a little closer to the humanity of the people from the past.

I never met my grandmother. She died when my mom was ten. But I have pictures of her, and they make me feel like I at least know who she was.

I also have a picture of my mom holding me when I was less than a year old, and she was nineteen.

She was a slender, red-haired, teenaged war bride. Now she is 75. I feel like I know her a little better, seeing that picture.

We all die. We should all try to leave a little something behind for future generations.

[mitchum]

7. Especially when it's a porn flick and....uh....y'know...

[Gothic Sponge]

8. DOH!!!!!

I've been there. ;)

[Radical Activist]

12. that she's your mothers age?

yeah. ew

[Westegg]

9. Wow, I think about this A LOT. Glad I'm not the only one...

I was watching a film from the '30s the other day and pondering the fact that most in the cast had probably died before I was even born. Yeah, mortality sucks. You look up at the screen and there's Myrna Loy, say, looking and sounding bright and pretty and full of life, and then you realize you're watching an optical illusion. 24 frames of celluloid per second projected through a machine. If you were to hold up an actual piece of the film it would just be a strip of plastic with clumps of chemically treated silver nitrate arranged quite cleverly on it. That is all. Myrna must just be a pile of bones now, in a box six feet under. Or ashes. Makes one want to believe in an after-life or reincarnation or something. I used to. Don't anymore.

[Gothic Sponge]

11. Yeah, Myrna Loy died in 1993

She was born in 1905...She did live a long life.

[vicman]

10. That's exactly why...

I can't watch anything with Nicole Kidman in it.

[Gothic Sponge]

13. ????????

[TreasonousBastard]

14. No more than...

reading works by dead authors.

These people are not friends or relatives of mine, they're doing a job. It is unfortunate that Charles Laughton will never make another movie, but life goes on, and we should be at least a little grateful that they made movies, and didn't just work the stage.

Anyone ever wonder just how good the Booths were as actors, or some of the older Barrymores. Or just what was so special about Jenny Lind's voice?

At least with this 20th Century crew we have a record forever.

[Sequoia]

15. Or that you're olden than they were when you first saw the movie

Yea, when I see Marlon B. in "Streetcar" or something, I think...darn I'm older than he is now when that was.