Michael Wright Died of a Disease Most Doctors Never See

The Announcement

Michael Wright, the actor who played Eddie King Jr. in The Five Heartbeats, died in Los Angeles at 70. His wife, Susan Wright, announced his death on social media. “It is with profound sadness and an unimaginable heaviness in my heart that I share the passing of my beloved husband, Michael Wright,” she wrote.

The cause was given as heart failure and complications from Marchiafava-Bignami disease.

A Diagnosis Almost Nobody Publishes

Marchiafava-Bignami is a rare progressive neurological disorder affecting the corpus callosum, the structure connecting the brain’s two hemispheres. Most physicians will not encounter a case in a full career.

Families very often decline to name a rare neurological diagnosis, and the reasons are understandable. Naming this one is a decision with a consequence, because the small number of families living with it have almost no public reference points, and a name attached to a recognizable person is how those reference points get made.

The Performance People Still Quote

The Five Heartbeats came out in 1991 and did modest business. It has since become one of the most-rewatched films of its era, and Wright’s Eddie King Jr., the group’s lead singer whose talent and self-destruction run on the same track, is the reason. It is a performance people can recite.

The Range Behind It

Wright was born April 30, 1956 in New York City and trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. He appeared in The Wanderers, in the V miniseries, in Sugar Hill and in The Principal, and he had a substantial run on HBO’s Oz, a series that asked its cast to sustain a level of intensity across years rather than scenes.

What the Family Chose to Say

Susan Wright’s statement is brief and it is about a marriage. It also carries the diagnosis, in a sentence, without elaboration. Both of those choices belong to her, and the second one is the reason a disease with almost no public profile has a recognizable name attached to it this week.

References: Actor Michael Wright, known for ‘The Five Heartbeats,’ dies at 70 | Michael Wright, actor known for ‘The Five Heartbeats,’ ‘Sugarhill’ and ‘Oz,’ dies at 70 | Michael Wright Dead: ‘Five Heartbeats,’ ‘Sugar Hill’ Actor