Morbid Movie Resource Alert: Ronald Bergan – Master of the Film Obituary

It’s always sad when movie people we love die, and we maybe see a paragraph at most about them in the news headlines. Sometimes we never hear about the person’s passing until we look the name up on IMDb and notice a dismaying and surprising date of decease.

The British newspaper The Guardian devotes more time and care to its obituaries than is typical nowadays and it’s most apparent and most welcome in the film obituary department. These notices are mostly written by scholar and author Ronald Bergan, who devotes more than a respectful amount of space to each decedent. For instance, most of the news stories about actor Alex Rocco’s recent passing mentioned that the actor who played Moe Greene in THE GODFATHER had died and little more. In Bergan’s obituary Rocco receives eleven substantial paragraphs, and we find out a bit about his early life on the streets as a low-level gangster.

Bergan is a conscientious and excellent writer. He honors the departed person with his attention to the nuances of their lives and work.

You can see (and bookmark) his archive of obituaries here.