Take yesterday's obituary for L'Wren Scott, the fashion model and designer who committed suicide. The NYT obit was quite capably penned by Bruce Weber, one of their stalwart obituary writers. Over the years, Mr. Weber has had to make strenuous declarations that he is not "that Bruce Weber," a famous photographer. He's even written a piece how he keeps getting mistaken for the photographer. And no doubt, unless he's holding an array of cameras, that Bruce Weber has had to strenuously declare he's not that Bruce Weber, the one who currently writes about dead people in the NYT.
So, there are two Bruce Webers, whose names can be encountered when writing and photography subjects come up. Given that, what are the chances that the obituary writer Bruce Weber would get to use his name as part of an obituary on someone who is not Bruce Weber, but who was connected to them at one point. The other Bruce Weber, the photographer.
Alert the media. It has happened.
Mr. Weber, in yesterday's obituary on Ms. Scott, mentions that she was encouraged by the photographer Bruce Weber to further pursue her modeling career by moving to Paris from Utah, where she was born and where Mr. Weber first photographed her. Her modeling and fashion designing career took off, to the point she ran her own fashion company and was an A-List celebrity romantically connected to Mick Jagger.
This coincidence doesn't have an official, or professional name. When an obituary is bylined by someone who has themselves pre-deceased the obituary's subject, this time-bending occurrence is called a "double-down."
It does happen, although somewhat rarely. Obituaries for noted figures are pre-written to the extent they can be, and bylined by that writer, waiting to go to press with updated text as needed when the subject does become deceased. This is done, because the more famous the figure the larger the obituary, and including everything might be difficult if it had to be done from scratch, while also making deadline.
Some famous "double-downs" that have appeared over the years occurred when Red Smith pre-deceased Jack Dempsey, and Red's byline appeared over Jack's obituary years later. Mel Gussow and Liz Taylor is another example. This was written about, nearly three years ago! in a posting. http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2011/03/this-name-is-familiardidnt-they.html
So, what can we call the same name phenomena of Mr. Weber including his own name in an obituary, and having it refer to someone else? "Double-Up" is offered to the committee that might exist to decide these things. Until then, we have more to go.
Back to the apparent suicide of Ms. Scott by the method gingerly described. The NYT doesn't report salacious, or gruesome details, but Mr. Weber does gently mention that Ms. Scott was found with a scarf tied around her neck, that was also tied to a French door handle, leaning forward on her knees. On the surface, it remains a complete wonder how a 6' 3" woman (or anyone above 3') can successfully do themselves in from a door handle, French door, or otherwise.
Death, or the mention of it, can produce gallows humor, and it certainly did when Maureen Dowd a few years ago recounted the story of the film director Billy Wilder aiming his anger at the very height-challenged, very famous Hollywood agent Swifty Lazar, by declaring: "That man should go hang himself from a Bonsai tree."
As funny and as cruel (cruelly funny?) as that statement is, it does coincide with our image of someone who is hung, that they are hung from an object above their own head.
I will report that a reading of other obituaries can reveal how the technique employed by Ms. Scott can prove fatally successful, as impossible as it might initially seem.
And the education is not over.
An adjoining obituary was written by Robert D. McFadden on Rachel Mellon, an heiress who passed away at 103. This is a very significant age, and Ms. Mellon was in every way connected with the upper social levels, most famously married to Paul Mellon, one of the world's richest and most philanthropic of people.
At 103, you come from an era of 1930s Turner Classic movies. And Ms. Mellon certainly did, and this was invoked by Mr. McFadden when he describes Rachel as a "dazzling figure in a swirling cotillion or at the taffrail of a steamer.
A what? Without knowing the exact definition, the taffrail can be inferred to be a ship's railing from which departing passengers wave vigorously to those on the dock, and the same spot that the same, now arriving passengers wave vigorously to the people on the dock at their destination, providing of course the ship doesn't run into an iceberg, or is not blown up by a German submarine. If that's the case, the people only get to wave once.
It turns out of course that he taffrail is the railing at the stern, upper part of a ship. Perfect place to wave from. But that's not all.
The obituary by Mr. McFadden is typical of those that will appear as the people he's pre-written about cross the line into their demise. Mr. McFadden is, at 77, I suspect retired, but is one of the great newspaper journalists, being awarded a Pulitzer for breaking news reporting. No one ever wrote a better lede than Mr. McFadden.
So, who was given the task of pre-writing Mr. McFadden's obit? You know someone has.
I can wait, as I'm sure Mr. McFadden can wait, but it would be the greatest if Robert McG. Thomas Jr.'s name appeared on the byline, himself a legendary NYT reporter and obituarist, who passed away all too soon at the age of 60 in January 2000.
Now that would be some "double-down."
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