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:
“The fact that illness is associated with the poor—who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst—reinforces the association of illness with the foreign: with an exotic, often primitive place.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Of Heaven of Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,”
—William Morris (1834–1896)