Illness and Death
Gleason smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. He was touring in the lead role of Larry Gelbart's play Sly Fox in 1978 when he suffered chest pains, forcing him to leave the show in Chicago and undergo triple-bypass surgery. Gleason initially went to the hospital for chest pains, but was treated and released. After he suffered another bout the following week, it was determined that heart surgery was necessary.
Gleason delivered a critically acclaimed performance as an infirm, acerbic and somewhat Archie Bunker-like character in the Tom Hanks comedy-drama Nothing in Common (1986). The film proved to be Gleason's final film role, since he was suffering from colon cancer, liver cancer, and thrombosed hemorrhoids during production. “I won’t be around much longer”, he told his daughter at dinner one evening after a day of filming. Gleason kept his medical problems private, although there were rumors that he was seriously ill. A year later, on June 24, 1987, Gleason died at his Florida home.
After a private funeral mass at the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Miami, Gleason was interred in an outdoor mausoleum at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami. At the base is the inscription, "And Away We Go."
Read more about this topic: Jackie Gleason
Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:
“One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are also practiced in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death—that is, they attempt suicide—twice as often as men, though men are more “successful” because they use surer weapons, like guns.”
—Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940)