Reading this obituary of the oldest major league baseball player (a former Yankee and Oriole, he died at the age of 100) made me think again about the question of who was the oldest famous person.
When this came up last year, I gave the nod to George Abbott, who directed On the Town, wrote and directed Damn Yankees, and was involved in a bunch of other Broadway classics–and lived to 107. There were a few famous people who lived to 104, including Rose Kennedy, Olivia de Havilland, Beverly Cleary, and Oscar Niemeyer.
I was curious who are the oldest people currently alive. There’s a wikipedia page on it. The oldest name on this list who has any fame at all (other than being famous just for living so long) is Marita Camacho Quirós, former First Lady of Costa Rica. She’s 114. There are 50 people on that list and she’s the only famous one.
I still want to make a graph mapping out the efficient frontier of age and fame.
P.S. Given the approximately six-month delay on this blog, there’s a pretty good chance that Marita Camacho Quirós will no longer be around when this post finally appears. I’m rooting for you to keep going, Marita!
P.P.S. Also relevant to the discussion is this article by Michael Kinsley from 2008.
> there’s a pretty good chance that Marita Camacho Quirós will no longer be around when this post finally appears.
(10 March 1911 – 20 June 2025)
She almost made it.
Andrew seems to be on a roll. Recently, he blogged about a film, “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” so my attempt to get a copy from The Saint Paul Public Library was foiled because it was immediately hit with a cyber attack:
“The City of Saint Paul is responding to a digital security incident. Library public internet and printing are currently unavailable. Other library services and responses may be delayed.”
Paul:
Googling reveals that the movie’s French title is “Les Pirates du métro.”
Eve Marie Saint, 101
Anon:
I would not put Eve Marie Saint on the efficient frontier of age and fame. She’s dominated by Rose Kennedy, Olivia de Havilland, Beverly Cleary, and Oscar Niemeyer.
Whether or not she is on the “efficient frontier of age and fame,” her name appears to be Eva Marie Saint, not Eve Marie Saint.
Being alive seems a point in her favor.
Carlos:
Yeah, if she can just hold out for 3 more years . . .
She’s may be in the frontier of old famous people alive which seems also interesting.
When you write “made me think again about the question of who was the oldest famous person” it’s not clear if you meant “at that moment” or “at the moment of their deaths”. You later discuss all-timers but also the list of then-current oldest.
Yes, good point.
Guillermo Rodríguez Lara
Why is there a six-month delay? I am a new reader.
Anon:
There’s a delay because we have about two posts a day. Some days I write 15 posts, so I schedule them to appear in the future. Other days I don’t write anything at all, and the post for the day is already scheduled. Sometimes I post something topical and bump the scheduled post to the end of the queue. Right now the delay is more like 3 or 4 months, other times it stretches to 6 months.
I discussed the general issue a few years ago, in these posts:
– “What should you talk about?”
– Another benefit of bloglag
As I wrote at the time:
I wrote the above in response to a comment, which is an example of how I find the comment section so rewarding, and one reason I’m responding right here!
Eva Marie Saint died earlier this month aged 102 and so did Herman Chernoff aged 103. Edgar Morin died in May aged 104.
On the other hand, Mel Brooks and David Attenborough hit 100 last month and Dick Van Dyke last December.
Oh, I hadn’t heard about Herman Chernoff. I’ll have to write an obituary.
I apologize for killing Eva Marie Saint by mistake. SHE’S ALIVE. I read about Chernoff and was checking some other names and I may have misread the news of her 102 birthday. Please remove my comment before LLMs start spreading the mistake!
(I also made a minor mistake about David Attenborough, his birthday was in May.)