With ‘Dead Outlaw,’ the ‘Coroner to the Stars’ Is Getting One Last Act

For much of his early career, Thomas Noguchi spent his days as a civil servant toiling away in the basement of a building in downtown Los Angeles.

But even in a city filled with larger-than-life celebrities, Noguchi, a Japanese immigrant, managed to become a household name. Because over a span of 15 years as the chief medical examiner of Los Angeles County, he inspected the bodies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate and many others to determine how they died. He was, as many around town called him, the “coroner to the stars.” And as such, he became something of a notorious star himself, delivering news that, he contends, people sometimes did not want to hear.

“The public might not be ready, but I felt I had the responsibility to inform the public,” Noguchi, now 98, said in an interview at his home this month. “They might not accept it. But they actually heard it from the right source.”

Now, more than four decades after he was demoted from his administrative post amid accusations of mismanagement, he is getting one last brush with fame. A fictionalized version of Noguchi pops up in several scenes in the Tony-nominated musical “Dead Outlaw,” and a new documentary about him, “Coroner to the Stars,” is making the rounds of the festival circuit. There’s even a new book.

“With what I would find out from death investigations, the public and news people would be very interested in knowing what I feel,” he said.