Our Daily Dead

San Jose Mercury news
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. - Actress Debralee Scott, a regular on the TV sitcom “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and frequent face on the 1970s game show circuit, has died. She was 52. Scott died of natural causes April 5, three days after her birthday, at her home in Amelia Island, said her sister Jeri Scott, a talent manager in Beverly Hills. The exact cause was not released.

Scott came from a family of show business insiders. Her eldest sister, Scott Bushnell, produced many of director Robert Altman’s films. Middle sister Jeri Scott is an agent turned manager. The two older Scotts moved to San Francisco from their home town of Elizabeth, N.J., as young adults. A few years later, their father said their younger sister Debralee was “getting restless” and he asked if she could join them, Jeri Scott recalled Friday.

“She was 16. She was supposed to finish high school, but I doubt she showed up,” Scott said. “It was the ’70s in San Francisco. It was wear a flower in your hair.” Scott eventually met an agent in Los Angeles, and got her first major role on “Mary Hartman” at age 22. She later played the role of Hotsy Totsy on the show “Welcome Back Kotter” and appeared in two of the “Police Academy” movies.

She had been engaged to John Dennis Levi, a police officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. Scott had just moved to north Florida to be with her older sister. Funeral plans were pending.
The Best of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman Volume 1 One

Report in Nature magazine today supports that intense emotions, particularly anger can trigger potentially lethal heart beat irregularities. “I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth!”

Today newly departed, actually departed last month, but it’s a slow day on the death front. Guess that’s not all the bad news. While the official obituary lists Debralee Scott’s cause of death as “natural causes,” in fact, it appears that she drank herself to death
. Your ODDity for today is that, in addition to playing “Rosalie ‘Hotsy Totsy’ Totzie” on “Welcome back Kotter,” she also played a naked dead body
in the movie “Dirty Harry.” Art imitates life
(sorta.)

We ODDfellows promise get off this ODDkick of pimping for James McMurtry, but we’re in good company. In “Entertainment Weekly’s”
“The year in music”, Stephen King said, “Live in Aught-Three by James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards…The best live rock album of the year, generous at more than 70 minutes, and not a single bad track, although ‘Choctaw Bingo’ is still a standout.” For those of you with an iPod ( hello President Bush
) you can go to listen and buy
. If you don’t we’ve listed it to the left (left, left, left) under “ODD Recommends, Previous Picks.” ODD reminds us that we are alive by recognizing death, Stephen King makes us feel alive by scaring the hell out us. Check out Stephen’s radio station
.

Good-bye Debralee, you should have listen to the words of James McMurtry, “Whiskey don’t make liars, it just makes fools.” Stay cool.