Death Comes in Threes And This Time They Came for Our Childhood
They always say death comes in threes.
Well, apparently this time death decided to come directly for our childhood.
Dolly Parton. Tim Curry. Peter Cullen.
Three people who, in completely different ways, were just there.
On the radio. In the movies. On VHS tapes. Saturday morning cartoons. Halloween marathons. Christmas movies. Disney. Country music playing somewhere in the background. Movies we probably watched before we were old enough to understand half of what was happening.
Within roughly 48 hours, we lost three voices from that world.
Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died August 25 at 80. Peter Cullen died August 26 at 85.
And the strange thing about losing people like these is that it doesn’t really feel like their work went anywhere.
Because it didn’t.
Dolly Parton: Way Bigger Than Country Music
Calling Dolly Parton a country singer is technically correct in the same way calling Walt Disney a cartoonist would be technically correct.
You’re leaving quite a bit out.
Dolly came from poverty in rural Tennessee and somehow built one of the most recognizable identities in American entertainment without ever appearing embarrassed by where she came from.
Then there are the songs.
“Jolene.”
“Coat of Many Colors.”
“9 to 5.”
“I Will Always Love You.”
That last one alone would have secured somebody’s place in music history.
Dolly wrote and recorded it in the 1970s. Nearly two decades later, Whitney Houston turned it into one of the biggest recordings in popular music history.
That’s songwriting immortality.
But Dolly wasn’t confined to Nashville.
She became a movie star.
9 to 5.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Steel Magnolias.
She became a television personality, businesswoman and the center of an entertainment empire that included Dollywood.
And somehow the rhinestones, enormous hair and jokes about herself occasionally overshadowed something important:
Dolly Parton was an exceptionally smart businessperson.
She understood ownership, publishing, branding and the value of maintaining control over her work long before artists publicly talking about those subjects became commonplace.
Then she did something arguably even more important with the money.
She gave a lot of it away.
Her Imagination Library grew into an enormous childhood-literacy program distributing free books to children. She supported disaster relief and medical research and donated $1 million toward research that helped support development of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.
That’s why Dolly became something increasingly rare.
She wasn’t simply famous.
People genuinely seemed to like her.
Country fans liked Dolly.
Rock musicians liked Dolly.
Hollywood liked Dolly.
Kids knew Dolly.
Grandparents knew Dolly.
People who couldn’t name five country songs knew Dolly.
She somehow spent decades becoming more famous without becoming less human.
That may ultimately be one of her greatest accomplishments.
Tim Curry: The Guy Who Somehow Appeared Everywhere
Then there was Tim Curry.
Trying to explain Tim Curry’s career by naming his most famous character doesn’t really work because everyone seems to have encountered a completely different Tim Curry.
For some people, he will forever be Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
For another generation?
He’s Pennywise.
Before Bill Skarsgård terrified a new generation of kids, Curry’s Pennywise was standing in a storm drain making children reconsider whether retrieving anything from a sewer was really worth the effort.
Then somebody else remembers him from Clue.
Or Annie.
Or Legend.
Or The Three Musketeers.
Or Muppet Treasure Island.
And for millions of kids watching Christmas movies every December, he’s the wonderfully suspicious hotel concierge trying to figure out what the hell Kevin McCallister is doing wandering around New York by himself in Home Alone 2.
Curry’s career stretched far beyond those films. He began professionally onstage in Hair, originated Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, appeared on Broadway in productions including Amadeus and Spamalot, earned three Tony nominations, recorded music and became an extraordinarily prolific voice actor.
That’s what made Curry special.
He could be terrifying.
Then hilarious.
Then sophisticated.
Then completely ridiculous.
Sometimes within the same performance.
And he understood something the greatest character actors understand:
You don’t necessarily need to be the main character to become the person everybody remembers.
After suffering a major stroke in 2012 that affected his mobility, Curry continued working, particularly through voice performances and appearances, rather than simply disappearing from public life.
His characters survived because Tim Curry never seemed interested in making them ordinary.
He went big.
And somehow it worked.
Every damn time.
Peter Cullen: The Voice That Told Us the Good Guys Were Here
Then came Peter Cullen.
And this one may hit childhood in the most literal way.
Because millions of people didn’t necessarily grow up looking at Peter Cullen.
They grew up hearing him.
Cullen became the voice of Optimus Prime beginning with the original Transformers animated series in 1984.
Not merely a voice.
The voice.
When Hollywood eventually turned Transformers into a gigantic live-action movie franchise decades later, Cullen returned.
Because replacing Optimus Prime’s voice would have felt almost like replacing Optimus Prime.
There was a reason the character sounded different from the stereotypical booming cartoon superhero.
Cullen said the inspiration came from his older brother Larry, a Marine veteran who advised him that if he was going to portray a hero, he shouldn’t simply act like some Hollywood tough guy.
Give him strength.
Give him dignity.
Give him compassion.
That philosophy eventually became inseparable from Optimus Prime, including the idea Cullen frequently expressed:
“Be strong enough to be gentle.”
That’s a surprisingly profound lesson to have hidden inside a cartoon about giant robots turning into trucks.
But Cullen’s childhood footprint didn’t stop with Transformers.
Because he was also Eeyore.
Think about that range for a second.
The commanding leader of the Autobots…
and the perpetually gloomy donkey wandering around the Hundred Acre Wood.
Cullen provided voices and vocal performances throughout animation, television and film, including work connected to Winnie the Pooh, Knight Rider and even the creature sounds in Predator.
For generations of kids, his voice became part of the soundtrack of growing up without most of us ever knowing the name of the guy making it.
That’s the strange magic of great voice actors.
You might not recognize them walking down the street.
But they can say three words and suddenly you’re eight years old again.
They Came for Our Childhood!
Celebrity deaths happen every year.
But occasionally there is a cluster that feels different.
This is one of those.
Because Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen occupied three completely different corners of popular culture while somehow overlapping across generations.
Dolly was playing somewhere in the house.
Tim Curry was lurking inside movies we watched repeatedly.
Peter Cullen was coming through the television speakers.
Music.
Movies.
Theater.
Television.
Cartoons.
Disney.
Horror.
Comedy.
Christmas.
Saturday mornings.
Three careers spanning decades and touching an absurd amount of popular culture.
And maybe that’s why this particular three feels like somebody just started deleting pieces of the background scenery from childhood.
Except they didn’t actually disappear.
Optimus Prime will still sound like Peter Cullen.
Pennywise will still be waiting in that storm drain.
Frank-N-Furter will still walk down that elevator.
Wadsworth will still explain what happened in Clue.
Kevin McCallister will still make Tim Curry’s face do that thing every Christmas.
“Jolene” will still beg another woman not to take her man.
Whitney Houston will still hit that impossible note in a song Dolly Parton wrote decades earlier.
Kids who weren’t even alive when Dolly recorded her biggest songs will still receive books because of something she built.
New generations will continue discovering all three without initially realizing the people they’re watching or hearing aren’t here anymore.
That’s the funny thing about leaving behind great work.
Eventually the person dies.
The work doesn’t.
So yes.
They always say death comes in threes.
This time they came for our childhood pretty damn hard.
Dolly Parton.
Tim Curry.
Peter Cullen.
Three completely different legends.
Three enormous pieces of popular culture.
And three reminders that sometimes the people responsible for the soundtrack, characters and voices of your childhood become so permanently embedded in culture that death doesn’t really get the final word.
Their legacies are already playing somewhere.
RIP. And seriously, let’s leave it at three.