An entertainer forgotten during Storm of deaths

In my write-up on Karl Malden last week, I alluded to the all-Michael Jackson coverage that seemed to overwhelm and minimize (if not blot out) the many other celebrity deaths that occurred during the same time period, most famously Malden, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett.

In fact, we were so Michael Jacksoned for a week or two there (can a Jackson cable-TV channel be far off?) that the death of one performer — a favorite of mine when I was young — slipped right under my radar.

I was made aware of this when I got my July 10 Entertainment Weekly magazine in the mail — the one with Jackson on the cover, of course. It arrived later than usual, and I had already filed the Malden column, deliberately bypassing the well-covered Jackson, McMahon and Fawcett.

So I read the EW editorial, which chronicled the many celebrity deaths of the previous week, all of those named above, plus comic Fred Travalena, infomercial guru Billy Mays — and Gale Storm.

Gale Storm? Say what?

I thumbed through the issue and found no less than 28 pages devoted to Jackson, plus 3 1/2 pages on Fawcett, three quarters of a page for McMahon and a quarter for Mays.

Really? The infomercial guy gets a quarter page and Storm gets only the mention of her name in the magazine's editorial?

I mentioned this to a friend, casually suggesting that it's what comes of dying during a busy week of celebrity deaths. I remember when Laurence Olivier died, way back a couple of decades ago. The great voice artist Mel Blanc died the day before, and while stories about Olivier were everywhere, Blanc was virtually ignored.

Timing is everything.

Then my friend added that it might have something to do with the fact that Storm had outlived her celebrity by several decades.

For those of you asking, "Gale Who?" — well, you've proved his point.

If she had died young or at the height of her fame or even a single generation later, it might have been a different story. But Storm was actually seen very little after her second sitcom ended in 1960. She performed in plays and concerts; she wrote a well-received autobiography (in which she revealed that she had battled alcoholism) — but she was only on TV infrequently.

Gale Storm. Yes, it's a kitschy name, intended to be catchy during an era when everyone took a "stage name." Hey, do you think Woody Allen is his real name? Or Doris Day is hers?