Spalding Gray

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Family

American entertainer, a humorist, satirist and stage monologist. TV show host. Called "the high priest of anxiety," he created a series of 15 monologues to perform throughout the United States, Europe and Australia, including "Monster in a Box," Gray's Anatomy," and the award-winning "Swimming to Cambodia." An electric performer, his one-man show is titled "It's a Slippery Slope." In the monologue, he tells of his mom's suicide, his dad's aloofness and his own preoccupation with health, hearing that voice in his head that says, "Remember, you are going to die." With candor, he reveals his shabby treatment of Ramona, the live-in girlfriend he eventually married while continuing an affair with another girlfriend, Kathie. Ramona eventually left him when Kathie had his baby son, whom he did not visit until the child was eight months old. In all, the performance reads like a wail from a therapist's couch. On 10/02/2002, Gray checked into a Manhattan hospital for a depression he had not been able to shake since a car accident in Ireland last year where re suffered severe head trauma. The playwright/actor went missing, his wife reported on Sunday January 11, 2004 at about 7 PM. Gray had last been heard from at about 9 PM the day before, when he called his Long island home and spoke with his 6-year-old son, saying, "I’ll see you soon." He was scheduled to fly to Colorado for a skiing vacation that day but the flight was delayed a day. He left his apartment to have dinner with friends that evening but never arrived. After being missing since January 10, 2004, Gray’s body was pulled from the East River in New York at 3 PM on Sunday, March 7, 2004. While the cause of his death is pending further investigation, authorities suspect that the playwright, who has a history of depression and suicidal tendencies, may have committed suicide. Link to Wikipedia biography