Photo: Archive Photos/2008 Getty Images
New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow wrote an extensive, moving obituary of Elizabeth Taylor that the paper published today. He has also been dead for almost six years. That’s just one of the inevitable quirks that happen because of a common newsroom practice where writers file obituaries well in advance so that when the famous figure in question finally expires, the new outlet will have a life story ready to go. Coincidentally, Gussow’s last piece for the Times — which he wrote three weeks before his 2006 death from bone cancer — was another obituary, written about author Saul Bellow. [NYT via MCN]