Natural Causes
Hollywood Forever in Hollywood, California © 2001 by Albert L,. Ortega
[William Alexander Abbott]
October 2, 1895–April 24, 1974
During the 1940s, the slapstick comedy duo Abbott and Costello were the public’s favorites, helping audiences to forget the turmoil of World War II. The uproarious screen team made a great deal of money because they were in such high demand. However, neither actor was wise enough to invest his earnings well, and both men had a costly fondness for gambling. It led to tremendous heartache, especially for Bud Abbott, who survived his chubby partner by 15 painful years.
William Alexander “Bud” Abbott was born on October 2, 1895, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, one of four children. His father, Harry, was a publicity advance man for the Barnum and Bailey Circus, and his mother, Rae, was a bareback rider with the famous tent show. After a scattered school education—he dropped out of the system altogether at age 10—Bud began his show-business career as a Coney Island amusement park shill. (He also had stints as a lion tamer and race-car driver.) Later, he became an assistant box-office treasurer for the Casino Burlesque House in Brooklyn. Bud loved the burlesque house and soon became a producer of shows, but even more quickly concluded that he could do the burlesque comedy routines as well as any performer he had seen onstage. Therefore, he began performing in front of the footlights. Bud chose to be the “straight man” in his act because that paid more than being the clowning partner.
The tall, thin Abbott and the short, pudgy Costello had been performing separately in burlesque when they first teamed up on the Minsky burlesque show circuit in 1936. The duo became popular with personal appearances at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier, on Kate Smith’s radio program, and on Broadway in Streets of Paris (1939). They made their feature-film debut with Universal Pictures in One Night in the Tropics (1940). By the time of their slapstick comedy Buck Privates (1941), Abbott and Costello were big movie stars. Throughout the 1940s, whether in movies, on radio, or in personal appearances, they seemingly could do no wrong at all with entertainment-hungry audiences.
Bud Abbott, Cathy Downs, and Lou Costello in The Noose Hangs High (1948).
Courtesy of JC Archives
The 1950s were another matter. By then, the public had fastened onto the newer and younger duo of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as their new comedic favorites. As a pair, Bud and Lou made their last feature for Universal Pictures, called Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, in 1955. By then, their long run on TV’s variety program The Colgate Comedy Hour was over and their own half-hour comedy series was already two years in the past.
As their fame diminished, their personal problems increased. Costello’s poor health—a result of rheumatic fever, hypertension, and being overweight—deteriorated further. Abbott and Costello reunited for one last movie, Dance with Me, Henry (1956), a sloppy comedy done cheaply at United Artists. With their careers in the doldrums, what had once been a friendly rivalry between the two comedians—friendly as long as the well-meaning Abbott gave in to the egotistical Costello’s artistic and financial demands—developed nasty overtones. The longtime pair broke apart. Lou, who had long ago come to think of himself as the major talent of the two, made solo TV guest appearances and starred in The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock. Before that picture could be released, however, Costello died of a heart attack on March 3, 1959.
Lou had hardly been buried when the Internal Revenue Service intensified its pursuit of the grief-stricken Abbott. The IRS demanded over $750,000 in back taxes. To appease the government, Bud was forced to sell (at a loss) his estate in Encino, California, as well as his two-hundred-acre ranch in the area. His wife, Betty, sold her jewelry and furs, and the actor relinquished his remaining share of profits from the old, lucrative Universal movies. The frantic Abbott informed the press, “I’ll have to start all over.” He begged his fans to donate 50 cents per person to help out, but the appeal had little result. The discouraged Bud teamed with Candy Candido, a show-business veteran whom he hoped could be a successful replacement for Costello. After a few test engagements, Abbott had a recurrence of epilepsy. The attacks—when combined with his other ailments and his heavy drinking—left him too weak to pursue the attempted comeback.
In 1964, Abbott suffered a series of strokes. In 1967 he was well enough to supply one of the voices for a two-hundred-volume series of five-minute Abbott and Costello TV cartoons, but it was the finale to his lengthy show-business career. In 1972 he broke his hip and was confined to a wheelchair for his remaining days. During his last year, Bud stopped drinking altogether, but then he developed cancer. Early on the morning of April 24, 1974, he died at the age of 78. After a small funeral, his remains were cremated and the ashes scattered at sea. Betty, his wife of 56 years, was forced to sell their modest home to pay additional tax bills; even so, the debts continued to plague her until her own death in 1981.
To his final days, a bereft Abbott puzzled about his temperamental partner, “I never understood Lou. I never knew why he broke us up so suddenly.”
[James Gilmore Backus]
February 25, 1913–July 3, 1989
Veteran actor Jim Backus chased after show-business fame for many decades. It finally happened for him in the 1960s—when he played the cartoon-character voice of the myopic old grouch Mr. Magoo. He could not shake the subsequent typecasting: “Every time I start to be a serious actor,” he sighed, “I lose out because someone—usually a producer—says I’m Magoo.”
James Gilmore Backus was born into a well-to-do family in a posh suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. His father owned a very successful machinery company, but Jim had show-business ambitions and left for Manhattan, where he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. There, in 1941, he met his wife-to-be, Henny, an artist and actress. He did stage and radio work before going to Hollywood for a brief role in The Pied Piper (1942). After serving in World War II, he returned to Los Angeles, doing more radio work and beginning an active screen career in 1949. Backus once described his movie characters as a procession of “best friends—the guy who always drove the bride to the church, but never married her.” One of his favorite roles was that of James Dean’s father in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). In the late 1950s, he recorded a novelty album, Dirty Old Man; one cut, “Delicious,” made it to the Top 40 music charts.
It was on TV, however, that Backus became best known. He played Joan Davis’s long-suffering husband in the situation comedy I Married Joan (1952–55). He first portrayed the nearsighted, raspy-voiced Magoo in the animated TV special Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962). This led to the animated TV series Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo (1964–65), and to further specials, as well as to theatrical and TV shorts. Adding to his laurels, Jim was cast as the pompous Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island (1964–67), and was seen as the overbearing J. C. Dithers in the new Blondie TV series (1968–69).
In the 1980s, Backus appeared in several TV movies and made his last acting appearance in 1983 on Trapper John, M.D. By the mid-1980s, Backus was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Already the author of his life story, Only When I Laugh (1965), he and Henny coauthored Backus Strikes Back (1984) and Forgive Us Our Digressions (1988), hilarious yet touching reminiscences dealing lightly with his debilitating disease.
On June 13, 1989, Backus was admitted to St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, suffering from double pneumonia complicated by his progressive Parkinson’s disease. He died on July 3, 1989, survived by his wife. He was buried at West-wood (Village) Memorial Park.
Ironically, it is not for his career-limiting curmudgeon Mr. Magoo that Jim Backus is best remembered today. Rather, it is his acting stint on Gilligan’s Island that has gained him immortality with TV viewers.
August 6, 1911–April 26, 1989
Popular Hollywood luminaries have risen and fallen over the years. Few of them, however, have ever made as much impact as Lucille Ball, America’s favorite zany redhead. Yet, it was not her two decades of nonstop filmmaking that accomplished that for Ball. Instead, it was I Love Lucy, the 1950s TV sitcom she engineered to bring herself and her husband, Desi Arnaz, closer together. On the small screen, the larger-than-life Lucy proved to be a delightfully resourceful comedian. Week after week, she demonstrated that she was a wonderful mixture of the qualities that produced greatness in such other funsters as Milton Berle, Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Gleason, and Harold Lloyd.
The future superstar was born Lucille Désirée Ball in Celoron, just outside of Jamestown, New York, in 1911. Her father died when Lucy was four; Mrs. Ball remarried but her new marriage ended in divorce. She supported her two children (Lucy and her younger brother Frederick) by working in a local dress shop. Mrs. Ball wanted Lucy to play the piano, but her daughter was already drawn to show business.
In 1926, Lucy moved to New York City to study drama. She failed in her studies, but refused to abandon her dreams. The tall, shapely blond was fired during rehearsals for a new Broadway musical because she was a clumsy dancer. But again, she wouldn’t quit. She turned to modeling, which ended because she became severely ill and had to spend nearly two years recuperating at home in Jamestown.
Bouncing back, the lanky Lucy came to Hollywood’s attention when she modeled for a cigarette advertisement. She became one of producer Samuel Goldwyn’s “Goldwyn Girls,” dressing up the background of Eddie Cantor musicals such as Roman Holiday (1933). When that career path led nowhere, she moved over to Columbia Pictures and then, months later, on to RKO Pictures, where she finally found a safe harbor.
At RKO, Lucy learned her skills during a long apprentice period. With supporting roles in the all-star Stage Door (1937) and Having Wonderful Time (1938), Lucy began to make her mark. Good pictures or bad, she kept turning out movies, sometimes seven in a single year. She was becoming RKO’s B-movie queen. While making Too Many Girls (1940), Ball fell in love with her costar, Desiderio Arnaz y de Acha—better known as Desi Arnaz, the bongo-playing Cuban heartthrob. On November 11, 1940, the couple eloped in Greenwich, Connecticut.
By the time Lucy left RKO in 1942, she was earning $1,500 weekly. She always knew when to jump ship; this time she moved over to the lofty Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. MGM transformed her into a glamorous redhead and showcased her in the musical DuBarry Was a Lady (1943). Instead of continuing with other prime roles, however, her career at the illustrious film factory stagnated. In 1947, the 36-year-old Lucy faced career facts. If she couldn’t be a big movie star, how about trying another medium? In fact, she tried several! She toured onstage in Dream Girl and that same year took on a radio comedy series, My Favorite Husband, which became a hit on the airwaves.
By now, Lucy’s marriage to Desi was sinking. Both husband and wife were too career-oriented to give their union the time it needed, and the hard-living Desi had a wandering eye. Nevertheless, on July 17, 1951, Lucy gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée. To salvage their failing marriage, Lucy coaxed Desi (an astute businessman) into joining her on the TV sitcom I Love Lucy, a variation of her radio show My Favorite Husband. It debuted on October 15, 1951. The slapstick escapades of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo and their neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz (played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance), hit the nation’s funnybone. When Lucy became pregnant again, it was worked effectively into the comedy’s story line. She gave birth to Desi Jr. on January 19, 1953.
Donald Woods and Lucille Ball in Beauty for the Asking (1939).
Courtesy of JC Archives
By the late 1950s, I Love Lucy had run its course, but it had made so much money that Lucille and Desi were able to buy RKO Studios and make it a division of their own production company, Desilu Productions. Sadly, however, America’s favorite couple were divorced on May 4, 1960. While on Broadway doing the musical Wildcat (1960), Ball met comedian Gary Morton; they were married in 1961. Forever addicted to the limelight, Lucy returned in two further comedies, The Lucy Show (1962–68) and Here’s Lucy (1968–74). As time passed, however, it grew harder for the aging Lucy to compete with fresher faces. Her final theatrical feature, Mame (1974), was a disaster on all levels. Thereafter, she took the path of many veteran stars: talk programs, game shows, and numerous award specials.
In the mid-1980s Lucy’s health began to fail severely. Although she was now in her 70s, the tough veteran refused to give up. She made a dramatic TV movie, Stone Pillow (1985), playing a pathetic bag lady. Compulsive and demanding both at home and at work, Lucy was determined to prove she could do it all again. In the fall of 1986 she returned in a new TV series, Life with Lucy. But what had been funny to audiences in the 1950s—when she was far younger—didn’t work 35 years later. The sitcom was yanked after only a few months.
The professional humiliation did more damage to Lucy’s spirit than the stroke she suffered in May 1988. She rallied from that crisis, however, and appeared on the Oscar telecast that aired March 29, 1989, trading quips with her longtime friend and frequent costar Bob Hope. Despite her growing catalog of ailments, Lucy still did not want to retire.
On April 18, 1989, Lucy had a heart attack, but refused to depart her Beverly Hills home for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center until she had applied her makeup. She underwent eight hours of open-heart surgery. Although she survived the ordeal, the prognosis was not good. Friends and fans rallied with thousands of messages of encouragement. On the evening of April 25, as her husband Gary left her hospital room, she said, “Good night, darling. See you in the morning.” Those were her final words to him. She died at 5:04 A.M. on April 26 of a massive heart attack. When Morton was given the bad news, he said tearfully, “I’ve lost my best friend.”
According to Lucy’s final wishes, there was no funeral service. She was buried at Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills. On Monday, May 8, 1989, a three-city set of tributes was held for Ball at eight P.M., the night and time of all her long-running, highly successful TV shows. At St. Monica’s Catholic Church in Santa Monica, at New York City’s St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church, and at Chicago’s Old St. Patrick Church, fans and friends united to memorialize the late comedian. In December 1991, a full-sized statue of Lucy was unveiled at the Television Academy’s Hall of Fame Court in North Hollywood, California.
William Frawley died in 1966, Vivian Vance in 1979, and Desi Arnaz in 1986. With Lucy’s passing, the last of the famous I Love Lucy gang had gone. At least those remarkable reruns are there to constantly remind old and new generations of Lucy’s fantastic talent. In 2001, the U.S. Postal Service issued a solo Lucille Ball stamp as part of its “Legends of Hollywood” series. (Ball had previously been seen on a stamp in the Postal Service’s “Fabulous ’50s” series, in tandem with Desi Arnaz.)
February 3, 1933–August 5, 1955
When Suzan Ball arrived in Hollywood as a Universal-International would-be starlet, she was promoted as “The New Cinderella Girl of 1952.” In the next four years, she costarred in several studio features and had a very promising career. But at age 22, unfortunately, she died of cancer.
Suzan was born near Buffalo, New York. She was not only a descendant of Massachusetts Pilgrim leader John Alden, but she was also a second cousin of screen and TV legend Lucille Ball. Her family moved briefly to Miami, Florida, in 1938, but later returned to Buffalo. In 1947, they relocated to North Hollywood, California, where Suzan went to high school. She was an avid choral-club performer and hoped to become a professional singer. She finagled an appearance on Richard Arlen’s Hollywood Opportunity, a local TV show, which led to her joining Mel Baker’s Orchestra for the next three years. When her parents moved north to Santa Maria, Suzan remained in Los Angeles. She won a job as a harem girl in the low-budget Aladdin and His Lamp (1952).
Through an acquaintance, actress Mary Castle, Suzan got an audition with Universal and was signed to a studio contract in October 1951. She had a bit part in Gregory Peck’s The World in His Arms and then a starring role on-screen as a blackmailing dance-hall gal in the Western Untamed Frontier (1952). Suzan had a brief romance with that movie’s male lead, Scott Brady.
During the filming of City Beneath the Sea (1953), Suzan fell deeply in love with the older actor Anthony Quinn. She relentlessly pursued the married (but womanizing) actor, but their well-publicized romance lasted only a year. During that time, they costarred in East of Sumatra (1953), in which Suzan’s character was to perform an exotic dance on-screen. Wanting to impress Quinn, she insisted that she did not need her dance double, Julie Newmar, for the scene. Suzan did the intricate steps herself. Halfway through, she misjudged a step, falling to the cement floor on her right knee. It hurt a great deal, but she soon forgot about it. Later, when she was back east on a personal appearance tour, she banged the same knee again in a minor auto mishap.
By now, Suzan had broken off her romance with Quinn and was dating fellow contract player Richard Long. While she was making her next picture, War Arrow (1953), Suzan’s physician informed her that she had developed a tumor in her right leg. Off camera, she relied on crutches to get around, but otherwise refused to take the throbbing pain seriously. She tried new doctors, but each of them told her that unless a miracle occurred her leg would soon have to be amputated. She and Long (they now planned to marry) refused to accept the diagnosis. After the accident-prone Suzan slipped at home and broke her leg, she was operated on. Even though surgeons thought they had removed all the cancerous tumors, the malignancy continued to spread. Soon, the leg had to be amputated.
On April 11, 1954, Suzan and Richard were wed in Santa Barbara. She walked down the aisle using her new artificial limb. The next month, the couple worked together on an episode of Lux Video Theatre. Suzan played a wheelchair-bound victim who is able to walk by the end of the show. Director George Sherman, who had worked with Suzan in War Arrow, cast her opposite Victor Mature in Chief Crazy Horse (1955). When the studio wanted to substitute Susan Cabot in the role, Sherman insisted that Ball be retained: “She doesn’t act with her legs, she acts with her face, with her mind, with her spirit.”
Despite the physical pain, Suzan continued her career, going on a nightclub tour with Long to Palm Springs and Phoenix. While rehearsing an episode of the TV show Climax, she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. The cancer had spread to her lungs. Soon Suzan was constantly—and heavily—sedated, and her personality changed drastically. Her distraught husband fell into a brief relationship with Suzan’s fulltime nurse, Kay Biddle.
On the evening of August 5, 1955, as Richard sat by his dying wife, she awoke, murmured “Tony,” in reference to her former lover Anthony Quinn, and passed away. Funeral services were conducted at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Pallbearers and ushers at the funeral included actors John Agar and Hugh O’Brian. Nearly 20 years later, Long, who had gone on to marry the actress Mara Corday, died of a heart attack on December 21, 1974.
March 8, 1902–October 26, 1962
Minority performers have usually had a very difficult time getting ahead in the motion-picture industry, especially in the first several decades of the twentieth century. Louise Beavers worked her way up from the bottom rung of studio jobs to become a respected character star. Even when stuck with a stereotypical role as a domestic, she always rose to the challenge. She gave dimension to her cardboard characters and provided her costars a real person with whom to trade dialogue on-screen.
Louise was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1902. When she was 11, the family moved to California, where she graduated from Pasadena High School. Her mother was a voice teacher and trained Louise from an early age. Her relatives hoped that Louise would go into concert performance, but she fooled them by joining an all-female minstrel show. She had occasional vaudeville jobs and briefly tried nursing, but found her daily tasks too depressing. She also worked as a dressing room attendant for a celebrity photographer, and this later got her hired as the maid to Leatrice Joy, one of Paramount Pictures’ top stars in the 1920s. When not helping her employer, Louise also found work as a movie extra.
Louise made her first real impression on audiences as the cook in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927). After she was cast as Mammy Julia in Coquette (1929, starring Mary Pickford), the squarely built Louise was never without movie work. She was momentarily sidetracked when the chic screen star Lilyan Tashman asked her to be a personal maid. Before long, however, Louise returned to her true love—acting. In the early 1930s Beavers made a dozen films a year, working hard to shine. She displayed a marvelous comic timing while sparring with saucy Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (1933).
Louise’s golden moment in motion pictures came with Imitation of Life (1934), in which she and Claudette Colbert play lifelong friends who help each other to raise their daughters. It was the first major Hollywood movie to humanize a black individual (and allow him or her so much screen time). Beavers should have received an Academy Award nomination for her performance, but the bigotry of the day ensured that she did not. With her newfound success, she went on a personal appearance tour: doing a scene from Imitation of Life, singing songs, and dancing. She was always well-received by audiences.
But then it was back to the grind of playing more on-camera maids. Louise’s favorite such part was as Bing Crosby’s wise housekeeper in Holiday Inn (1942), in which she sang “Abraham” with the famed crooner. She added zest to Cary Grant’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) and offered a touching performance as the baseball player’s mama in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950).
Ben Carter and Louise Beavers in Young America (1942).
Courtesy of JC Archives
Beulah had been a popular radio series starring Hattie McDaniel, the actress who had won a Best Supporting Oscar for playing Scarlett O’Hara’s “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind (1939). For the TV version in 1950, Ethel Waters starred first, and then McDaniel took over. As of April 29, 1952, however, it was Louise who delivered the famous catchphrase, “Somebody bawl for Beulah?” In February 1957 she made her real stage debut in Praise House, which opened in San Francisco. She was the psalm-singing Mammy, but neither the role nor the play offered her much opportunity to shine. So it was back to being a cook and maid onscreen.
After years of dealing with diabetes, Louise (who was five feet, four inches tall and now weighed 190 pounds) entered a Los Angeles hospital. She died of a heart attack on October 26, 1962, survived by LeRoy Moore, her husband of many years. She had recently finished a club engagement in Las Vegas with Mae West, a lifelong pal. Louise was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles.
On February 17, 1976, Louise Beavers was posthumously inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in ceremonies held at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. It was a belated tribute for an admirable talent whom the film industry of the time refused to allow to shine in the limelight, but whom it could not hold down.
[Beverly Louise Neill]
February 20, 1929–August 16, 1989
In 1963, the New York Times declared her character “the only woman on nighttime television who is her own woman, successful in her own right, and who doesn’t bask in the reflection of some man.” The praise was directed to Amanda Blake, who from 1955 to 1974 played Miss Kitty Russell, the worldlywise proprietress of Dodge City’s not-so-proper Longbranch Saloon on the popular TV Western series Gunsmoke.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Amanda began her acting career in a school play at the age of seven. After performing in theater stock and radio, she was signed to an MGM contract in 1949. But her secondary roles in studio films—Duchess of Idaho (1950), Lili (1953), The Glass Slipper (1955)—were far from stellar. In 1955 she was already performing on television when she auditioned for the role of self-sufficient Miss Kitty. Amanda soon joined James Arness (Marshall Matt Dillon), Milburn Stone (Dr. Galen Adams), and Dennis Weaver (Chester Goode) for Gunsmoke, which was to become one of TV’s most enduring weekly properties. In 1959 Amanda was nominated for an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress (Continuing Character) in a Dramatic Series.
By 1974, Blake, who had already been married four times, was living in Phoenix, Arizona (where the devout animal-rights activist kept 10 rare cheetahs, a lion, and a bird sanctuary), and commuting to Hollywood for the show. Finally, she said, “God, if I have to put that damn bustle and those curls on one more time, I’m gonna snap.” Withdrawing from the series (which lasted one more season), she reasoned, “Nineteen years is a hell of a long time for someone to be stuck behind a bar.” (She would, however, return for a TV movie reunion: Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge, in 1987.)
Thereafter, Amanda was seen mostly on game shows and as a TV series guest star. In 1977, the once-heavy smoker underwent surgery for cancer of the tongue. As a result, Amanda was forced to learn to talk anew and became an avid American Cancer Society spokesperson.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan presented Amanda with the annual Courage Award of the American Cancer Society. That same year, in April, she married for the fifth and final time. Her new spouse was Mark Spaeth, a Texas real-estate developer and Austin city councilman. Unknown to Amanda, the bisexual Spaeth had been diagnosed with HIV two months before their marriage; he soon developed full-blown AIDS. She and Spaeth divorced and Amanda moved back to Los Angeles from Austin, Texas, where they had briefly resided. (Spaeth died in 1985.)
In 1987 Amanda herself was diagnosed with HIV. To keep the tragic news from the media, she moved to a ranch near Sacramento, California, that was owned by Pat Derby (the animal trainer from Gunsmoke). During 1988, she suffered a severe case of pneumonia, began losing weight, and experienced constant pain. In July of 1989, the now-bitter, greatly suffering Amanda was admitted to Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento. She used her given name of Beverly Neill.
Amanda Blake passed away on August 16, 1989, at 7:15 P.M., with her dog Butterfly at her side. The press was informed that her death was the result of her long battle with cancer. Only belatedly, after a reporter came upon the actual facts of the case, was AIDS revealed as the true cause of Amanda’s death. Friends were asked to make donations to the Amanda Blake Memorial Fund, which benefited the Performing Animals Welfare Society (PAWS). In late November of 1991, memorabilia from her estate was auctioned off in North Hollywood, California, with proceeds going to PAWS.
A scene from The Glass Slipper (1955) with Elsa Lanchester, Amanda Blake, Lisa Daniels, and Leslie Caron.
Courtesy of JC Archives
June 5, 1895–September 12, 1972
For many decades’ worth of film lovers, William Boyd will forever be associated with his beloved character, the Western cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. In Boyd’s long-lasting sagebrush series, which came after years in the cinema as a handsome leading man, Boyd was the gallant cowboy—sporting distinguished white hair and a black outfit—who always rode to the rescue in the nick of time astride his faithful horse Topper. He became a role model for generations of admirers, and even now is immortalized on various Internet websites. On-screen, Hoppy was the type of guy who didn’t swear, drink, or smoke. He rarely kissed his screen heroine. He never killed the villains; instead, he smartly captured them. Boyd’s alter ego became so famous that at times, he joked, he felt he had lost his own identity.
Andy Clyde, William Boyd, and Rand Brooks prepare for action in Silent Conflict (1948), the 61st entry in the Hopalong Cassidy Western film series.
Courtesy of JC Archives
William Lawrence Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, in 1895, the son of a laborer. The family moved to Oklahoma when he was 10; William’s parents died while he was still in his teens. When William had to quit school to find work, he discarded his dream of becoming an engineer. Thereafter, he plodded through an assortment of odd jobs ranging from oil rigger to lumberjack, and even orange picking. He wanted to enlist in World War I, but a heart ailment disqualified him from military service. By then, William had found his way to Hollywood, where he was doing walk-ons in silent movies. He won a bit part in Cecil B. DeMille’s Old Wives for New (1918), which led to increasingly larger parts in other DeMille screen extravaganzas, including the Biblical epic King of Kings (1927). By now, the dedicated actor had made his mark as a handsome leading man with distinctive, prematurely silver hair. Boyd’s salary escalated and he lived lavishly, buying mansions and yachts. He managed to make the transition to talkies successfully, as a contract leading man for Pathé (which later became RKO Radio Pictures).
Bill was as much the playboy offscreen as on. He married actress Ruth Miller in 1921; they divorced in 1924. In January 1926, he wed actress Elinor Fair, with whom he costarred in The Volga Boatman (1926). He and Elinor divorced in 1929. When that decree became final, Boyd married actress Dorothy Sebastian, his leading lady in His First Command (1929).
When bad luck hit in late 1933, Boyd’s world all but collapsed. Another (less famous) actor named William Boyd was arrested during a wild party and booked on possession of illegal whiskey and gambling equipment. In several newspaper accounts of the incident, it was suggested that a sex orgy had been in progress. By mistake, a photo of the better-known Bill Boyd was printed with the story, instead of the likeness of the scandal’s real object. As a result, Bill’s career immediately disintegrated. He lost his money and became a heavy drinker. Turned loose by RKO, he was reduced to making a few inconsequential poverty-row pictures.
Finally, Boyd got a much-needed break. The veteran movie producer Harry “Pop” Sherman was about to film (for Paramount Pictures) a batch of budget Westerns based on Clarence E. Mulford’s popular Hop-a-long Cassidy novels. Initially, Sherman intended to use character actor James Gleason (or even budding debonair British actor David Niven) in the title role, and thought of casting Bill as the major villain. Bill, however, convinced Sherman to give him the lead. Part of the deal between producer and star included a promise by the actor that he would end his boozing and abandon his wild ways.
No one anticipated that the first entry, Hop-a-long Cassidy (1935), would be so well received. After its release, there was little attempt to conform the screen hero to Mulford’s original character (a crusty individual who had a limp, hence his nickname Hop-a-long). As refashioned by Boyd, Hopalong (as he was now called) became a moral and temperate cowman who treated women gallantly and bad guys roughly. He always rode the trails with two sidekicks (initially Jimmy Ellison and George “Gabby” Hayes).
Action audiences especially liked the Hoppy Westerns because there were no plot delays for bothersome song interludes, unlike the movies of contemporaries such as Gene Autry. In the early entries, a stunt double was used to perform Boyd’s riding scenes in the long shots. Boyd, who initially detested horses, practiced his riding skills and eventually became a decent rider, although never a true horseman. After divorcing Dorothy Sebastian in 1936, Boyd was married for the fourth and final time to actress Grace Bradley on June 5, 1937.
Between 1935 and 1948, 66 Cassidy movies were made. Pop Sherman produced the first 54, and Boyd supervised the last dozen on his own. In 1948, Boyd was smart enough to see the future in television. He hocked all his assets to acquire full rights to the Hopalong films and character. The Hoppy movies were popular programming in the early days of TV, and Boyd became a multimillionaire from the merchandising tie-ins and the new half-hour entries he produced in 1951–52. In 1952, as a favor to his longtime mentor, Cecil B. DeMille, he made a guest appearance in the latter’s circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth. It would be his last movie appearance.
Bill sold off his interest in the Hopalong property in the late 1950s at a huge profit. He made occasional guest appearances after that, but always insisted that youngsters not be charged to see him. He donated generously to children’s hospitals, once saying, “The way I figure it, if it weren’t for the kids, I’d be a bum today.” During the last decade of his life, he and his wife lived quietly in California, spending summers in Dana Point and winters in Palm Desert. By now, Bill had developed Parkinson’s disease and remained in seclusion, wanting his fans to remember him as he had been. After he had a cancerous tumor removed from a lymph gland, he refused to be photographed.
William Boyd died on September 12, 1972, at South Coast Community Hospital in South Laguna, California, of a combination of Parkinson’s disease and congestive heart failure. He is buried in a large marble crypt in the Sanctuary of Sacred Promise at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.
An interesting coda to the Hopalong Cassidy saga began in 1973. Paramount Pictures had failed to renew the copyrights for 17 of the Bar 20 Western features. In 1973 Film-video Releasing Corp. chose to distribute these entries to TV. The company purchased a $1 million Fireman’s Fund insurance policy set to start January 1, 1974, as protection against possible liability for any claims. William Boyd Enterprises—and its primary plaintiff Grace Bradley Boyd—notified Filmvideo Releasing that they controlled the television rights to the Hoppy movies and that Filmvideo should stop its alleged unfair competition. After a series of court battles, Boyd Enterprises won a $960,000 judgment, but Filmvideo declared bankruptcy. The claim was then assigned to the insurance firm, which refused to pay, insisting that the policy was not in effect at the time of the original suit. Finally, in 1995, two decades after initiating its claim, Boyd Enterprises was awarded $3.3 million, in addition to costs and expert witness fees. Thus ended the courtroom saga, and another victory at the fadeout for Hopalong Cassidy.
[Nathan Birnbaum]
January 20, 1896–March 9, 1996
July 26, 1902–August 27, 1964
Certainly one of the most successful marriages of the twentieth century was that of George Burns and Gracie Allen. In one of his many published autobiographies, Burns (born Nathan Birnbaum on January 20, 1896) noted, “You know, lots of times people have asked me what Gracie and I did to make our marriage work. It’s simple—we didn’t do anything. I think the trouble with a lot of people is that they work too hard at staying married. They make a business out of it.” George always credited the daffy (onstage, anyway) Gracie—known as “the smartest dumbbell in the history of show business”—as the real brains of their hugely successful act.
In his B.G. (“Before Gracie”) show-business years, Burns employed a variety of pseudonyms, later claiming that he feared being asked to leave the premises if managers remembered him from other performances! For a time, he had a Latin dance act, and was even paired for a while with a trained seal. In late 1922, cigar-chomping George and petite Gracie (already an experienced, if not particularly successful, performer) were introduced by mutual friends and soon became a team. At first, she played the straight man in their vaudeville act and he delivered the comedy lines. Audience reaction led them to switch roles. They were married in 1926 and three years later, made their first film short at Paramount Pictures’ facility in Long Island, New York. The studio soon was featuring the couple in such comedies as Six of a Kind (1934) with W. C. Fields and We’re Not Dressing (1934) with Bing Crosby.
Burns and Allen gained their greatest fame with their weekly radio showcase, which began in 1932. The radio show, as would be the format of their later TV series, was composed of sketches of their domestic and professional life. The couple ended the decade with a final joint screen appearance at MGM in Honolulu (1939). Thereafter, George temporarily retired from pictures while Gracie continued to make an occasional film. After Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), she too withdrew from the demanding medium (both George and Gracie hated to get up early, put on makeup, et cetera). They continued successfully in radio and, in 1950, began their long run on television with The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. By this time, their adopted children, Sandra and Ronald, were approaching adulthood, with Ronnie attempting his own show-business career.
Ben Blue, Gracie Allen, and George Burns trip the light fantastic in College Holiday (1936).
Courtesy of JC Archives
In 1958, a worsening heart condition led Gracie to abandon show business permanently, allowing herself more time to devote to gardening, painting, and her family. George continued on—sometimes as a solo act, other times with a new stage partner (Carol Channing, Ann-Margret), or with a new TV-series costar (Connie Stevens).
In 1964, shortly after Burns began production on his upcoming TV sitcom Wendy and Me, Gracie suffered a heart attack. She passed away, with George at her side, on August 27, 1964. Although Gracie was Catholic, the funeral service was held at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. (Burns, who was Jewish, could never be buried next to his wife in consecrated Catholic ground, but he could be under Episcopalian rites.)
Gracie was buried in a mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. For years, George continued to visit Gracie’s crypt, where he would bid hello to his “sweetheart.” As he explained, “I tell her everything that’s going on. I don’t know if she hears me, but I do know that every time I talk to her, I feel better.”
Once asked how he coped with life after Gracie, George responded, “You know, you cry and you cry and you cry, and finally there are no more tears. Then you go back to work.” George continued to be professionally active, negotiating business deals regarding his old TV series and doing a club act. In 1975, he returned to filmmaking in The Sunshine Boys and won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his efforts. This led to more pictures such as Oh, God! (1977) and Going in Style (1979). Undaunted by his advanced age, he wrote books, recorded albums, did his nightclub act, and appeared on TV talking about the old days and life with the wonderful, immortal Gracie.
Burns would jest about his longevity, insisting, “I’m going to stay in show business until I’m the only one left.” But in 1994, he suffered a head injury during a bathtub mishap. It was the beginning of the end. On January 20, 1996, George celebrated his centennial birthday, but was a bit annoyed that ill health prevented him from attending the much-publicized festivities.
Two months later, as the end drew near, George began dictating farewell notes to relatives and close friends. On March 8, as he lay in bed reviewing photos of himself and dear Gracie, he reportedly told his nurse companion: “I hope Gracie looks young and beautiful when we meet again. And I hope I’m not stuck with looking like the one-hundred-year-old man I’ve become since she left.”
At 10:00 A.M. on March 9, 1996, George passed away quietly at his two-story colonial Beverly Hills home on North Maple Drive. His longtime manager and friend, Irving Fein, reported, “There was no pain or suffering. After George drew his last breath, he had a smile on his face.”
George was buried with a thousand dollars in cash and a trio of cigars in one pocket of his suit, and a card deck in the other “in case a bridge game should come up.” He resides at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, in a crypt beneath Gracie’s, so that through eternity she would keep “top billing.”
October 31, 1950–March 4, 1994
At six feet, three inches, and often weighing 350 pounds, the Canadian-born John Candy was a big man in many ways. He was big-hearted, very talented, energetic, and greatly cherished by family and friends. His untimely death robbed the world of a key entertainer whose comedic (and dramatic) abilities had allowed him to become a major star in TV and film. It was a tragedy that he passed away in his prime; he should have been around to brighten the world a lot longer than his 44 years.
John Franklin Candy was born in 1950 in Toronto, Ontario, to Sidney James Candy and Evangeline (Aker) Candy. A few years after John’s birth, his dad died. His mother, aunt, and grandparents raised him in the East York part of Toronto. The likeable, blond-haired youth attended local Roman Catholic parochial schools, playing football and hockey on his high school team. (It was only after injuries sidelined Candy from athletics that he began to pack on the pounds.) His chief delight at the time was comedy, having reveled in the antics of such comic greats as Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, Jack Paar, and Alec Guinness. Two of his special idols were Jackie Gleason and Oliver Hardy. By the time Candy was a high school junior he was acting in school plays. This passion continued while he was studying theater and journalism at Toronto’s Centennial Community College (from 1969 to 1971).
To make ends meet, John undertook assorted odd jobs ranging from store clerk to traveling salesman. He did his first professional theater work as a member of a children’s theater company. He found more outlets to perform on Canadian TV (where he made some commercials) and in underground theater. During this period Candy became friendly with Dan Aykroyd, another struggling young Canadian actor. It was Aykroyd who suggested they audition for Chicago’s renowned Second City improvisational-comedy troupe, which was opening a branch in Toronto. John so impressed the management that he was asked to join the main company in the Windy City.
At that time, the Second City troupe in Chicago boasted members such as John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray. Candy spent nearly two years with the group (which soon included Dan Aykroyd). He then returned to Toronto, where from 1974 to 1977 he was part of the Canadian Second City set that included Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Rick Moranis. By 1977, the Canadian branch was performing its sketches on its own TV show, called SCTV. The half-hour program was soon syndicated in many markets. In 1981, the NBC network produced a 90-minute version of the show. John was both a performer and one of the writers for SCTV. In 1981 and 1982 he won Emmys for his writing contributions to the series. Meanwhile, in April 1979 he wed Rosemary Margaret Hobber, a potter. They would have two children, Jennifer and Christopher.
In 1983, NBC canceled SCTV. Although the Cinemax cable channel continued the program on its outlet, John chose not to remain with the show, as he wanted to focus on his budding film career. By this point he had already been in several Canadian- and American-made features. He was in the surprise box-office hit The Blues Brothers (1980), playing a parole officer chasing after the title characters (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd). His first lead screen role was in the haphazard Going Berserk (1983), which showcased fellow members of the SCTV troupe.
It was, however, Splash (1984), directed by Ron Howard, that made Candy a known commodity to filmgoers. He played a bon vivant whose younger brother (Tom Hanks) falls madly in love with a mermaid (Daryl Hannah). While making Summer Rental (1985), John became concerned about his ballooning weight, and managed to lose 75 pounds—although he failed to keep them off. He reteamed with Tom Hanks for Volunteers (1985) and joined Eugene Levy in Armed and Dangerous (1986); they played security guards who combat organized crime.
For every fiasco that Candy appeared in, such as Who’s Harry Crumb? (1989), there was a good picture. In director John Hughes’s Planes, Trains 
Automobiles (1987), Candy matched moments of humor and pathos with Steve Martin. John costarred with longtime pal Dan Aykroyd in The Great Outdoors (1988). To the surprise of many, Uncle Buck (1989), which featured John as the boisterous uncle of a young Macauley Culkin, grossed $60 million.
Besides making his numerous motion pictures, John found time to host a weekly two-hour radio show entitled Radio Candy, and in the fall of 1989 had a Saturday morning cartoon show (Camp Candy) on the air. Always busy, the energetic Candy maintained family homes in both Toronto and Los Angeles. A devout football and hockey enthusiast, John became a part-owner of the Toronto Argonauts in 1991. As he approached 40, a midlife crisis led him to start psychoanalysis.
Two of John’s more serious screen roles in the early 1990s were Only the Lonely (1991), with Maureen O’Hara as his feisty mom, and Cool Runnings (1993), in which he coaches a Jamaican bobsled team. For the Canadian TV movie Hostage for a Day (1994), Candy not only starred in the feature, but produced and directed it as well.
Although he often hid it with jokes (he once said, “Even my name is high-calorie”), the oversized Candy was always self-conscious about his fluctuating weight. Sometimes his fear of dying of a heart attack (as his father had done) made John go on a strict diet, avoiding the junk food and sweets that packed on the pounds. He’d even work out at a gym. Usually, however, such a regimen would be short-lived and John would again balloon to more than 325 pounds.
In December 1993, John went on location to Durango, Mexico, for the Western spoof Wagons East! He hated being away from his wife and two children. Making two back-to-back pictures in the last 12 months had kept him away from his family for all but three weeks during the last year. John insisted that after this one, no more movies would part them.
By now, much to the chagrin of his doctors, John’s weight had jumped to a mammoth 375 pounds, leaving him with a 59-inch waistline. He brought his own chef to the location site, insisting that he was going to “eat healthy.” But as filming got underway, he returned to his old habits. It was difficult to find a horse that could support John’s weight during the movie’s riding scenes. Adding to his problems, he was suffering great pain from his broken-down hip joints, which he was in need of surgery to repair.
On Friday, March 3, 1994, Candy had a long day of filming in 80-degree heat. The last scene, which had John crashing into tables and chairs, went through several retakes. Candy didn’t complete work and return to his $3,000-a-month rental house until around 10:00 P.M. After a spaghetti dinner that capped a day-long foodfest, John took a shower. Then, dressed in his bathrobe, he came out of his hillside home and chatted briefly with a night watchman. He told the guard: “I’m so tired. All I want to do is go home and be with my family.” (John had two scenes left to complete on the project and was planning to return to California by March 11.)
The next morning at about 8:00 A.M., John’s bodyguard Gustave Populus phoned the star. When there was no reply, he obtained the keys to the building and went in. After pounding on the bedroom door for a few minutes, he opened it. There he found Candy lying on the bed, in a position that indicated he’d tried to get up but had fallen back down. He had suffered a massive—and fatal—heart attack.
By 1:00 P.M., Dr. Guillermo Pacheco Valenzuela, the medical examiner for the state of Durango, had arrived. He estimated that the star had died sometime between 5:00 and 7:00 A.M. At the urging of John’s widow, who called from the United States, there was no autopsy. Once the official investigation was over, a local priest offered the last rites for John. At about 4:00 P.M. an ambulance took John’s body away. A private jet plane carried the body back to Los Angeles.
Candy’s funeral was held on March 21, 1994, at St. Martins of Tours Church in Los Angeles, near his suburban home at 1630 Mandeville Canyon. Among those in attendance were (besides John’s family) actors Martin Short, Chevy Chase, Jim Belushi, George Wendt, Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, Rhea Pearlman, Tom Hanks, Mariel Hemingway, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, and director Harold Ramis. After the mass and prayers, Dan Aykroyd delivered the eulogy, saying, “John was a friend you could celebrate with at the drop of a hat. He was a salesman, a father, and a fine, fine comic.... In a word, John was a grand man.” Candy’s body was later interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, in Room 7, Block 1 of the mausoleum.
Despite some bad ventures along the way, Candy’s estate was worth a reported $20 million. It included, among other items, his 14-room Los Angeles home, a 35-acre ranch in his hometown of Newmarket, Ontario, and a 20 percent share of the Toronto Argonauts.
In August 1994, John’s Wagons East! was released posthumously (as would be Canadian Bacon, a polite satire made just before the Western). The delay in distributing Wagons East! had been to include John digitally in scenes that had not been completed before his death. Daily Variety judged that this final offering did not record Candy’s finest hours, reporting that “everyone’s creative burners were on very low heat for this woeful outing.”
What a sad finale to such a promising career!
[Louis Francis Cristollo]
March 6, 1906–March 3, 1959
“He-e-e-e-e-y, Ab-bott!” For many years, this was the onstage cry for help from the chubby, lovable Lou Costello, the clowning half of the hugely popular comedy team of Abbott and Costello.
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, to an Irish mother and an Italian insurance-agent father, the lean and tough Lou grew up to be a fine athlete. At P.S. 15, Lou, already the class clown, developed his trademark catch phrase: “Oh, I’m a bad boy.” In high school, he excelled at basketball, not academics; impatient to begin real life, he quit school to travel to Hollywood. There he hoped to fulfill his dream of following in the cinematic footsteps of his idol, comic genius Charlie Chaplin. Instead, Lou found himself relegated to jobs as an extra and (because of his athletic prowess) doing stunts, including a job doubling for the comely Dolores Del Rio in a sequence for Trail of ’98 (1928) at MGM.
Discouraged by his lack of success, Lou left movies around the time talkies became prevalent, drifting into vaudeville and burlesque around the country. In this period he developed his stage persona—a Dutch immigrant who is confused by American slang and mucks up directions he’s given. In 1936, now far more portly, he was teamed with ex-lion tamer and former race-car driver Bud Abbott for a new comedy act on the burlesque circuit. Audiences quickly came to appreciate the unique chemistry between the tall, thin Abbott and the short, pudgy Costello. Unlike other comics who played burlesque engagements, Abbott and Costello always kept their act clean; it would prove to be a major factor in launching them into other forums.
Brought to Hollywood in 1940, the duo soon became box-office magnets with a series of military comedies, including In the Navy (1941), with the Andrews Sisters. The lanky Abbott played the straight man in the act, while the young-looking, pranksterish Costello was the dumb but sweet butt of Bud’s schemes. (When the act first formed, Abbott received 60 percent of their salary; but in the mid-1940s, Costello reversed the team’s split, insisting that he was the mastermind and chief crowd-pleaser of the team. Abbott typically went along with such demands—despite his masquerade as the smooth-talking con guy, he was a mild man at heart.)
In 1943, at the height of World War II, Abbott and Costello were at their career zenith. After completing a successful warbond selling tour, Lou became ill. His ailment was diagnosed as rheumatic fever. Lou was confined to bed for several months, putting their next picture on hold and causing Abbott to suspend their weekly radio show (he struggled for a few weeks as a solo act). Then, on November 4, 1943, tragedy struck. Two days before the first birthday of Costello’s third child, Lou Jr., the infant fell into the family’s swimming pool and drowned. Later, Lou and Bud raised funds to establish the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation for Underprivileged Children.
Costello eventually returned to work. But their new movies proved less successful, and the off-camera tensions between the two escalated. (On one occasion, Lou poured a bottle of beer over Bud’s head and cracked, “Now you look as wet as you act!”) The duo broke up in 1945, but managed to patch up their professional differences and go on to new box-office success with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
As moviegoers found new screen favorites—especially Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis—the veteran comics moved over to television successfully, debuting in the new medium in January 1951 on the Colgate Comedy Hour. As with their movies, the team was initially very popular, but overexposure and repeating the same routines diminished their popularity. By 1956, both their television and movie careers had seemingly sputtered to a finish. The pair starred in a Las Vegas stage revue; Abbott’s recurrent drinking problem was evident during the unsuccessful engagement. When the team split apart—permanently—shortly thereafter, Costello said that he intended to go it alone in show business: “I worried about Bud for 20 years.” Costello’s solo appearances, however, were not professionally reassuring.
On February 26, 1959, Lou suffered a heart attack and was rushed to Doctors’ Hospital in Beverly Hills. Family and friends were in constant attendance, but Abbott did not visit his teammate. Costello’s health continued to decline and he was offered last rites, but refused the ritual.
On March 3, 1959, Costello was feeling better, and persuaded his longtime manager, Eddie Sherman, to go out and buy him a strawberry ice cream soda. Sherman did so, and when he returned to the hospital room, he and Costello talked about future plans. After finishing the drink, Lou remarked, “That’s the best ice cream soda I ever tasted,” and then died of another heart attack.
At the time of Costello’s death, his expartner Bud was suing him for $222,000 regarding their joint TV series, a sum that Abbott felt was due to him. When he learned of Lou’s passing, Abbott said, “Why didn’t someone tell me he was sick?” Bud was among many Hollywood celebrities—including Ronald Reagan, Red Skelton, and Danny Thomas—attending the requiem mass for Lou at the family’s North Hollywood church. Costello was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles, in a crypt near his son, Lou Jr. In December of that same year, Lou’s grieving wife Anne (whom he had wed in 1934) died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, Lou’s final picture (The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock) had been released posthumously and quickly disappeared from theaters.
Shortly before he expired, Lou had settled a long-standing tax problem with the Internal Revenue Service. His former partner Bud, however, was plagued by back taxes until his own death 15 years later. As manager Eddie Sherman would recall of his high-earning, high-spending clients, “They thought it would never stop. They spent it all each year, forgetting that they had a partner, Uncle Sam.”
[Lucille Fay LeSueur]
March 23, 1904–May 10, 1977
She was a rotten mother according to daughter Christina’s book, Mommie Dearest, but she was a consummate movie star. Once she had invented herself for the silver screen, she allowed that fabrication to rule her everyday life. She was compulsive on-screen and off, but her magnetic strength made her fascinating to watch at any point in her lengthy movie career. Throughout life, the four-times-married actress was as voracious about men as she became about consuming vodka. Her death was listed as a heart attack, but friends insisted that she was dying of cancer, and that, weary from suffering, she had orchestrated her own ending. Seemingly her death, as her life had been, was arranged efficiently and according to her own timetable. It was the Joan Crawford way. It was the only way.
Lucille Fay was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1904 (various sources list 1905, 1906, and 1908) to a French-Canadian laborer, Thomas LeSueur, and a Scandinavian-Irish woman, Anna Bell (Johnson). An earlier child named Daisy had died in infancy, and there was a brother named Hal. Early in Lucille’s life, Thomas abandoned his family, and her mother remarried a man named Henry Cassin. The household relocated to Lawton, Oklahoma, and Lucille (known as Billie) became Billie Cassin. After a brush with the law, Cassin moved his family to Kansas City, but his wife left him soon afterward. Billie endured a painful childhood, shunted from school to school and from one fleabag hotel room to another. By age 11, she was at a private school, Rockingham Academy, working as a kitchen drudge to pay her board and tuition—anything to get away from her overbearing mother and tyrannical brother.
By 1922, Billie was enrolled at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, again working her way through school, and feeling too dumb to remain. She quit and went back to Kansas City, where she became a shopgirl and then was hired for the chorus of a traveling show. When the production folded, Billie went to Detroit (where rumor has it that she was arrested on prostitution charges, although no record of such an offense has ever been found), and then on to Chicago.
Going from Chicago nightclub dancer to Broadway chorus girl took a year, but by 1924, the still-pudgy Lucille was on Broadway in The Passing Show of 1924, earning $35 weekly. By the start of the next year, she had finagled a screen test and been signed to a contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at $75 a week. After a few brief appearances in Hollywood pictures, she gained a new name—Joan Crawford—as the result of a studio publicity contest. Her career was now officially launched, and she made her first major mark playing a vivacious flapper in the silent Our Dancing Daughters (1928). Always anxious to improve herself, Joan married actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in 1929, not only because he was young and handsome, but also because he was the son of Hollywood’s unofficial king, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and the stepson of its queen, Mary Pickford.
In the early 1930s, Joan altered her screen image to suit the new times, excelling in rags-to-riches romances like Possessed (1931) and Chained (1934). Her offscreen romance with her also-married costar Clark Gable would flicker on and off for many years, but it would never end in marriage. Crawford and Fairbanks divorced in 1933. Two years later, she married the polished Franchot Tone, a Broadway actor who was then under MGM contract. That mismatched union lasted four years, although they remained friends after their 1939 divorce. In 1938, Joan was actually labeled box-office poison by movie-theater owners but bounced back in a succession of strong film roles: The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), and A Woman’s Face (1941). Meanwhile, in 1940, she adopted a three-month-old child, first called Joan Jr. and then named Christina. In mid-1942, she wed the unremarkable actor Phillip Terry, and, that same year, the impossible happened: after 18 years with MGM, the studio let Crawford go.
Joan Crawford promotes the nursery service for war-industry workers sponsored by the American Women’s Voluntary Services during World War II.
Courtesy of JC Archives
If glamorous MGM had no further use for Joan, then Warner Bros., the hard-boiled film factory, did—as a threat to reigning studio queen Bette Davis. Nevertheless, it took more than two years for Crawford to find the proper vehicle at Warner Bros. Joan abandoned her famed shoulder-pad outfits (custom-made by the fashion designer Adrian) for a simpler look and won an Oscar for her high dramatics in Mildred Pierce (1945). The following year she and Terry divorced, and Crawford changed the name of their adopted son from Phillip Jr. to Christopher. In 1947, Joan adopted two other girls, Cynthia and Cathy, whom she labeled twins even though they were born a month apart. Crawford remained with Warner Bros. until the early 1950s. Then, cut loose, she made a successful thriller (Sudden Fear, 1952) at RKO, earning her a third and final Oscar nomination.
In May 1955, Joan married the dynamic Pepsi-Cola president Alfred N. Steele, and launched a new career for herself as a high-powered corporate goodwill ambassador. She thought Alfred would be her life’s mate, but he died of a heart attack in 1959 at age 57. With few screen parts being offered to her, the aging actress worked hard as a Pepsi executive.
Some reviewers called her comeback movie the triumph of two old has-beens, but Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) was proof that two veteran stars (Crawford and Bette Davis) could work cinema magic. The twisted horror story of a uniquely Hollywood nightmare was a surprise hit at the box office. It gave a new forcefulness to Joan’s remaining moviemaking years in the ’60s, which included such movies as Strait-Jacket (1964) and Berserk! (1967).
By the mid-1970s, Joan, alienated from her children, was living a subdued lifestyle alone in New York City, having been forced out of her Pepsi promotional post. She had become a Christian Scientist and had stopped drinking. Joan maintained a small circle of friends, but withdrew from public appearances. She told a gossip-columnist intimate, “I don’t have to go out anymore. I don’t have to be on display. I’ve served my time as the public Joan Crawford. Now for the first time in her life, Joan Crawford is doing exactly as she pleases.” No longer dying her graying hair brown, she spent much of her time watching TV soap operas and bewailing the fact that Hollywood had forgotten her.
The last months of Crawford’s life are full of fact, fiction, and lots of legend. In early 1977, she injured her back while housecleaning (one of her favorite pastimes). In February 1977, she began giving away personal effects, items which she insisted she would “no longer need.” By that May, Joan had become very ill, had lost a good deal of weight, and needed the constant attention of a physician and a daily nurse. She spent Mother’s Day (May 8) bedridden. The next day she gave her beloved Shih Tzu dog to friends who lived in the country, asking them to care for it. According to a close associate, Joan arose early on Tuesday, May 10, and asked her maid and another helper if they had eaten breakfast. She was about to have her usual wake-up meal of tea and graham crackers. As the cup of tea was placed on her night table, she quietly passed away. It was about 10:00 A.M. Friends later commented that on this day, Joan was extremely well-dressed, suggesting that she knew the end had arrived. (One rumor has it that Joan also made sure to inform her lawyer beforehand.)
Many people wondered why no autopsy was performed on Crawford—who had been a superstar, after all—to clear up the matter of her death. The local assistant medical examiner explained, “I didn’t think the circumstances called for one. There was nothing in my evaluation to lead me to suspect in any way.... I do know the location of the body, in her own bed, and she appeared to be well looked after. There was no disarray, no disorder. . . . The replies to all the questions I asked made me feel the cause of death was natural.”
According to Joan’s final wishes, she was cremated (some insisted the rush was to hide the cause of her death). Her ashes were interred in an urn next to Alfred Steele’s in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Memorial services were conducted in New York (on Friday the 13th) at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home in Manhattan. Three of her four children (Cathy, Christina, and Christopher) attended the simple ceremony, at which Joan’s Christian Science practitioner read Bible selections. A far more elaborate memorial service was held on May 17, 1977, at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City. More than 1,500 people attended the occasion, which was officiated by Reverend Dr. Walter Donald Kring. He read Joan’s favorite essay, “Desiderata,” by Max Ehrman. Eulogies were delivered by Joan’s former costars Geraldine Brooks and Cliff Robertson. Pearl Bailey sang “He’ll Understand.” Daughters Christina and Cindy attended the service; son Christopher and daughter Cathy did not. Yet another tribute service was held in Beverly Hills.
Joan’s will, made much of in Christina’s book and movie of the same name, Mommie Dearest (1981), stated: “It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina, for reasons which are well known to them.” Crawford left $77,500 each in trust funds for Cathy and Cynthia. Christopher and Christina contested the will and settled for a total of $55,000. As part of the compromise, a plaster bust of Joan (inscribed “To Christina”) was given to her eldest daughter.
In mid-1993, Joan’s Mildred Pierce Academy Award was sold at auction for a whopping $68,500. In 1998, Crawford’s outspoken daughter, Christina, by now the operator of a bed-and-breakfast business in Idaho, published a 20th-anniversary updated version of her highly controversial Mommie Dearest. Promoting the tell-all book, Christina insisted, “I have no regrets about telling my story. It put the focus on child abuse for the first time. . . . It’s helped many people.”
November 6, 1949–September 8, 1991
When actor Brad Davis passed away on September 8, 1991, the industry was shocked that he had died so young, at age 41, and that the cause of death was AIDS-related complications. (Allegedly he contracted the deadly virus from a dirty needle used for drug taking.) For six years, he had kept his illness a deep secret from everyone except his wife and his doctors, so that he would not be blacklisted in the entertainment business and could continue acting. (Davis had even refused early treatment for the disease, fearing industry gossip; he also dropped many of his friends, worried they might suspect the truth of his physical condition.) In a book proposal written shortly before his “sudden” death and published in a Los Angeles newspaper two days after it occurred, Brad described Hollywood’s double standard. It was an industry “that gives umpteen benefits and charity affairs with proceeds going to [AIDS] research. But in actual fact, if an actor is even rumored to have HIV, he gets no support on an individual basis. He does not work.” Keeping his lethal disease in the closet, Davis got acting jobs almost to the end. Not since Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS in 1985 had the movie business—and the world at large—been so focused (albeit temporarily) on the epidemic disease.
Davis was born in Tallahassee, Florida. Growing up, he acted in high school plays. When he won a talent contest for music, he relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. Later, Brad studied in New York at the Academy of Dramatic Arts and made his off-Broadway debut in Crystal and Fox (1973). In subsequent seasons, he was in such productions as The Elusive Angel and Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and, years later, appeared in Los Angeles in The Normal Heart, as the lover of a man dying from AIDS. (That play’s author, Larry Kramer, would eulogize Davis: “He brought fury and overwhelming love to the role of Ned. He was also one of the first straight actors with the guts to play gay roles.”)
Brad Davis, the star of Midnight Express (1978).
Courtesy of JC Archives
In 1974–75, Brad spent ten months in the TV soap opera How to Survive a Marriage, which showcased his sensual good looks (albeit not those of a traditional tall, handsome leading man). After other TV productions, he made his feature-film debut in the highly acclaimed Midnight Express (1978). For his powerful performance as an American drug smuggler jailed in a horrific Turkish prison, Davis won a Golden Globe Award. His acting career should have zoomed upward, but instead, it stalled. This was due mostly to his drug and alcohol dependency, and as he later admitted, the sudden fame that had swelled his ego and caused him to make wrong career decisions. Nevertheless, he was impressive in the few roles he could obtain, especially in Chariots of Fire (1981). Davis gave charged performances as the attorney general in Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985) and as a racist in Chiefs (1985), both of them television miniseries. In TV’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1988), Brad shone as the overwhelmed, twisted Captain Queeg. He was in the movie comedy Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989) and played opposite Jill Clayburgh in Unspeakable Acts (1990). His last work was in Hangfire (1991) and in the cable-TV movie A Habitation of Dragons (1992), which was completed in June 1991.
Not that long before the end, Davis decided to go public with his plight, but then became too weakened physically to do so. Instead, he chose to spend his remaining days quietly at home with his family. He died in September 1991, ending his life by assisted suicide (an overdose of pills from a still-anonymous friend). He was then living in Studio City, California, with his longtime spouse, casting agent Susan Bluestein, and their daughter Alexandra (born in 1983).
The funeral service was private and quiet, but the memorial tribute was anything but. Amid tremendous media coverage, it was held on September 20, 1991, at Hollywood’s James A. Doolittle Theatre, with some 250 people in attendance. Coworkers and industry figures not only reminisced about Brad’s rich career, but spoke directly about the AIDS phobia that was rampant in the entertainment industry. His widow later stated that she was being open about Brad’s illness because “he didn’t want to be one more person who said he died of something else. . . . He didn’t want to be one more faceless person.”
Six years later Susan’s book, After Midnight: The Life and Death of Brad Davis— which she said fulfilled her promise to Brad to write his story—was published. Among the revelations was that Brad had overcome childhood mother-son incest (his mother’s way of getting back at her alcoholic spouse), survived in his first years in New York City as a street hustler (which led to a nervous breakdown), and overcame his addiction to alcohol and drugs, if not to sex, by joining 12-step programs in 1981.
December 8, 1925–May 16, 1990
In 1989, when his new autobiography, Why Me?, was published, the previously high-living, fast-spending Sammy Davis Jr. confided, “The guy from 25 years ago doesn’t exist anymore. The guy from 10 years ago doesn’t exist anymore. And I hope 10 years from now, I’ll be able to say that this guy doesn’t exist anymore. He’s a better being, a more caring person.” Soon thereafter, “Mr. Bojangles,” a heavy-duty cigarette smoker, was diagnosed with throat cancer. Show-business friends rallied with a lavish benefit special that was telecast in early 1990, but by then Davis’s disease had grown to fatal proportions.
Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. contemplate a tough situation in Salt & Pepper (1968).
Courtesy of JC Archives
On May 16, 1990, after too many months of severe suffering, Sammy Davis Jr., the consummate entertainer, passed away. The service—one of the best-attended celebrity funerals in recent times—was held in the Hall of Liberty’ at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California. Rabbi Allen Freehling conducted the nondenominational service, with Reverend Jesse Jackson delivering the eulogy. Among the honorary pallbearers were Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra. Notables attending the memorial included Gregory Hines, Liza Minnelli, Dionne Warwick, Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Carroll O’Connor, and Little Richard. After the service, Davis’s bronze casket was taken to Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, where the “world’s greatest entertainer” was buried in the family plot next to his father and his adopted uncle, Will Mastin.
For the multitalented Sammy Davis Jr., who had spent so much of his life struggling uphill in the white-dominated entertainment industry, the battle was over. For his family, it was just beginning.
The lantern-jawed, diminutive Davis was born in New York’s Harlem neighborhood in 1925. Both parents were in show business, working at the time in Will Mastin’s troupe. When Sammy Jr. was two and a half, his parents split up and he remained with his dad. He soon joined his father in Mastin’s vaudeville act. Later, Sammy, his dad, and “Uncle” Will formed the Will Mastin Trio.
Sammy’s two years (1943–45) in World War II military service taught him anew how to cope with racial bigotry. After the war, the revived Will Mastin Trio broke several racial barriers on the cabaret circuit, but they always had to fight discrimination.
By 1954, Sammy had become the focal point of the act, with his flashy dancing, singing, impressions, and the several instruments he played. He even had his own recording contract. Then, on November 19, 1954, at 8:00 A.M. he almost died in a car accident; he did lose his left eye. It was at this point that, encouraged by his Jewish pals Eddie Cantor and Jeff Chandler, Sammy converted to Judaism. Upon recovery from the accident, Sammy focused totally on his career—always working, always giving 100 percent. He became a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, and starred on Broadway in Mr. Wonderful (1956), Golden Boy (1964), and Stop the World, I Want to Get Off (1978). His boundless energy led him to make several films, ranging from musicals (Porgy and Bess, 1959; Sweet Charity, 1968) to gangster drama (Johnny Cool, 1963) to comedic junk (One More Time, 1970). He headlined three TV variety shows (1966, 1973, 1975–77). He was everywhere!
The hard-living Sammy’s married life was a merry-go-round. He wed singer Loray White in early 1958; they divorced 15 months later. Much was made of his interracial marriage to Scandinavian actress May Britt on November 13, 1960. Their daughter, Tracey, was born in 1961, and they adopted two sons, Mark and Jeff. By late 1968, the couple had divorced, and May was given custody of their children. In mid-1970, dancer Altovise Gore became the third and final Mrs. Davis.
Having gone through several political phases, Sammy eventually dropped a lot of his glitter and glitz to display a newfound social consciousness. In 1986 the new, toned-down Sammy performed in concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and teamed with Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli in a world tour. In 1988, his father died and Sammy underwent hip surgery. Several months before Davis himself passed away, he and Altovise adopted a 13-year-old son, Manny.
When Sammy’s will was filed, there were assets of $2 million in real estate and another $2 million in personal property, as well as insurance polices totaling nearly $6 million. But his debts were also huge; he owed well over $5.7 million in federal taxes, which dated back to IRS tax disallowances in 1972. The financial mess led to a great deal of squabbling between the estate’s executors and various beneficiaries. In September 1991, as part of the probate sale, Davis’s 22-room Beverly Hills mansion (once worth $4.25 million) was put on the depressed real-estate market for $2.72 million. Later that month, at a prestigious Los Angeles auction house, much of the memorabilia Sammy had acquired over a crowded lifetime was sold off, with items such as his gold record, “The Candy Man,” going for $10,000. About eight hundred people attended the sale, which brought in $439,000. Finally, in the spring of 1997, Altovise Davis and the IRS reached an undisclosed agreement regarding the tax liabilities still pending against the entertainer’s estate.
If Sammy could have predicted the financial chaos his death would generate, one wonders if he would ever have said in later years, “You have to be able to look back at your life and say, ‘Yeah, that was fun.’ The only person 1 ever hurt was myself and even that I did to the minimum. If you can do that and you’re still functioning, you’re the luckiest person in the world.”
[Maria Magdalena Dietrich]
December 27, 1901–May 6, 1992
“I know that I, myself, could never see Marlene [Dietrich] without her moving me and making me happy. If that’s what makes her mysterious, it’s a beautiful mystery.”
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Aside from the psychotically determined Joan Crawford, no movie legend of Hollywood’s fabulous Golden Age worked harder to retain her glamorous allure than Marlene Dietrich. Illusion was the essential ingredient of the celebrated Marlene, and she craftily maintained her facade of exotic beauty well into her 70s. Bursting upon the international film scene with The Blue Angel (1930), she spent the next half-century reshaping her public image to suit the changing times. Throughout the years, she performed successfully in all types of media: film, radio, recordings, and stage.
But there was much more to the shrewd, complex Dietrich than her public facade suggested. She understood herself far better than her adoring fans ever fathomed her. Once, after a retrospective showing of her feature films at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, she told the enthralled audience: “I don’t ask whom you are applauding—the legend, the performer, or me. I personally liked the legend. Not that it was easy to live with, but I liked it.” On another occasion, she confided to her Beverly Hills neighbor, actor Van Johnson: “I’m a hausfrau, a cook—not that sequined clown you see on the stage.” A highly intelligent realist and humanist, she acknowledged frequently that her arduous years of entertaining Allied troops during World War II was “the only important thing I’ve done.”
Another of Marlene’s intriguing facets was her long-standing reputation as a temptress. Over the years, Dietrich—who lived apart from her accommodating spouse of many years—boasted such lovers as actors Maurice Chevalier, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., George Raft, Jean Gabin, and Yul Brynner, as well as novelist Erich Maria Remarque. She also had sexual liaisons with Edith Piaf, Edward R. Murrow, General George Patton, John F. Kennedy, and Joe DiMaggio. For the charismatic actress, however, it was the attention of the celebrated, the powerful, and the intellectual that sated her appetite, not merely her own sexual gratification.
Having devoted many years to orchestrating the myths surrounding her life, it is characteristic of the hedonistic Marlene that, when advancing years forced her to abandon show business in the late 1970s, she would embark with gusto on a final phase of her life—seclusion. As with everything else she did, Marlene undertook her new role with unswerving determination. Once she left public life, she remained sequestered in her relatively compact Paris apartment, unlike her longtime movie rival Greta Garbo, who ventured out into the Manhattan streets until near the end of her life in 1990.
In complete retirement, Dietrich permitted only a chosen few to visit her in her last dozen years. She was determined that the world should remember her as the sophisticated, seductive actress Marlene Dietrich, not as a frail old woman. The ruse obviously worked, as Dietrich today continues to be the inspiration for stage musicals abroad and on Broadway, cabaret act recreations, and even a very expensive—by German standards—celebrity screen biography, Marlene (2000), starring Katja Flint.
Maria Magdalena Dietrich was born on December 27, 1901, in Schoneberg, Germany, a suburb of Berlin. She was the second daughter of Prussian policeman Louis Erich Otto Dietrich and Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josephine Felsing. Maria’s father died when she was nine, and his widow was soon remarried to Edouard von Losch, an officer in the German army. Throughout her highly disciplined childhood, it was her mother (Maria called her “the good General”) who exerted the most influence upon her younger daughter. She was always exhorting the girl to “do something” with her life.
From an early age, Maria was fascinated with motion pictures and wanted to become an actress. As a teenager, she took violin lessons and at age 16, had her first affair—with her much older music teacher. In the post-World War I era, Berlin was disrupted by riots and revolution. Therefore, Maria went to Weimar in 1919 to study violin at the Konservatorium. But a wrist injury ended her musical ambitions and she turned to acting. By 1921 she was studying drama in Berlin and earning minor roles in stage dramas and revues. Still enchanted with movies, Maria, who had altered her first name to Marlene, haunted the film studios seeking acting assignments. One of her earliest screen parts was in Die Tragodie der Liebe (1923), starring Emil Jannings. She was given a small role by assistant director Rudolf Sieber, who had become entranced with the plump, vivacious young actress.
On May 17, 1924, Marlene married Sieber (four years her senior) in Berlin. The following January, their only child, Maria, was born. But marriage and motherhood did not change Dietrich, who already had a reputation as a bisexual jazz baby. In 1927, she was in the Berlin cast of the American musical Broadway, starring Willi Forst (with whom she had an affair). Forst introduced her to the city’s young intelligentsia, including future film director Billy Wilder and novelist Erich Maria Remarque.
Marlene was appearing in a musical revue, Two Bow Ties (1929), when Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg arrived in Berlin to film Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). Von Sternberg saw Dietrich perform onstage and cast her as the decadent cabaret singer who ruins a middle-aged professor (played by Emil Jannings). The night the movie premiered in Berlin to acclaim, Dietrich, buoyed by a Paramount Pictures contract, left for Hollywood. Both her husband and young daughter remained in Berlin.
Marlene Dietrich in one of her typical 1930s glamour poses.
Courtesy of JC Archives
Paramount envisioned Dietrich as the rival to MGM’s Greta Garbo and immediately Americanized their much-touted foreign contractee. By the time she appeared in her first American-made feature, Morocco (1930), Dietrich had created the exotic image that was to remain her trademark for the next several decades. With her Svengali-like director, von Sternberg, Marlene made four other features, which ranged from the deliciously ridiculous (Shanghai Express, 1932) to the completely dreary (The Devil Is a Woman, 1935).
During her first year in Hollywood, Marlene maintained a bachelor’s life. But in the spring of 1931, she brought her daughter Maria to Hollywood, telling the press that her six-year-old girl was just four. As for her absent husband, Rudi, he moved to Paris in 1932 to be with Tamara Matul, a Russian dancer. (Rudi and Tamara would remain together till her death in 1968.) When von Sternberg’s wife, Riza, divorced her husband later in 1931, Paramount had to pay her off because she had filed charges of libel and alienation of affection against Dietrich. Meanwhile, Marlene had an assortment of affairs. Some of her more famous lovers during this time were lesbian socialite and author Mercedes de Acosta and former silent-film star John Gilbert (just before his death in 1935). Both of these people had been former lovers of Dietrich’s great competitor, Greta Garbo.
By the mid-1930s, Dietrich had broken her ties with von Sternberg. She refused Adolf Hitler’s blandishments to return to Germany and star in movies for the Third Reich. Instead, she appeared to advantage with ex-lover Gary Cooper in Desire (1936). After the tiresome Angel (1937), however, Paramount and Marlene called it quits.
Always the survivor, Dietrich made a stunning comeback as a saleable Hollywood commodity in Universal’s comic Western Destry Rides Again (1939). The new Marlene was an earthy saloon chanteuse who could get rough and dirty. She spent the early 1940s making a series of raucous romantic entries, often teamed with John Wayne—a good example is The Spoilers (1942).
Marlene had become an American citizen in 1938. When the United States entered World War II, she became one of Hollywood’s most active entertainers for the war effort. She worked tirelessly at the Hollywood Canteen, participated in war-bond drives, made radio broadcasts in assorted languages for the government to air in Europe, and made recordings (including “Lili Marlene”) in German, which were dropped behind enemy lines. She entertained for the USO both in the United States and in Europe, selling $100,000 worth of her jewelry to finance her expedition. For lifting the spirits of Allied fighting men during World War II, she later received the U.S. Defense Department’s Medal of Freedom. (One of Marlene’s grandsons, J. David Riva, coproduced a documentary, Her Own Song [2001], which dealt with Dietrich’s tireless contributions on behalf of the Allies in World War II.)
After the war, Marlene went to France, where she and her on-again, off-again lover, French film star Jean Gabin, costarred in Martin Roumagnac (1946). After several other, lesser films, Dietrich accepted that her days as a leading lady in movies were nearly finished. By now, her daughter Maria had found happiness with a second husband, William Riva, who was fostering her acting career. In 1948 Maria had her first child, which led the ever-enterprising Marlene to create a new persona for herself as “The World’s Most Glamorous Grandmother.”
In the early 1950s, Dietrich starred in a radio series, Cafe Istanbul, and made recordings and a minor movie (Rancho Notorious, 1952). More importantly, she turned to cabaret performing throughout the world, proving to be a sensation in her provocative see-through shimmering gowns and singing in her inimitable throaty voice. In 1957 she enjoyed a dramatic success on-screen in the courtroom thriller Witness for the Prosecution. Her last sizeable screen assignment was in the all-star Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). In 1962, when daughter Maria quit acting and moved to Europe with her husband and four children, Marlene purchased a Paris apartment for herself.
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Marlene continued her one-woman show, bringing the stylized production to Broadway in 1967. In the eyes of the public, Marlene was defying the laws of nature by maintaining her glamorous beauty well into her 70s. (She kept secret her facelifts and junkets to Switzerland for youth-rejuvenation treatments. Also, the public was never made aware of the elaborate undergarments she wore beneath her “form-fitting” gowns to retain the semblance of a seductive figure, or that she pulled her hair into a painfully tight bun beneath her wig to give her face a youthful appearance.) As the 1960s progressed, Marlene suffered increasingly from hardening of the arteries, which made standing for long periods (as required by her show) an agonizing ordeal. She also became increasingly deaf; this caused her to often sing flat because she could not hear the orchestra properly.
Marlene continued undaunted through the early 1970s, receiving five thousand dollars a performance. In 1972, however, she began suffering a series of mishaps. She fell onstage, partly because it was hard to move in the confining flesh-colored sheath she wore beneath her magnificent dress. It was the first of several falls; the others would require skin grafts. Finally, after breaking her hip, a steel ball was inserted into Marlene’s hip socket and a bar riveted through the bone of her upper thigh. In her final appearance on a British stage, in 1975, she had to leave the stage in mid-performance due to excruciating pain in her bad leg. Months later, her cabaret career ended in Sydney, Australia, where she was hospitalized for months after another fall.
Dietrich played a Prussian madam in David Bowie’s Just a Gigolo (1979) because her brief scenes could be shot at a makeshift studio a few blocks from her apartment. She earned $250,000 for two days of work. It was to be her final on-camera appearance.
Thereafter, Marlene became a recluse in her high-rise apartment at 12 Avenue Montaigne, across the street from the Plaza Athenee Hotel. She refused to deal with the media. When enterprising reporters left notes at her door begging for an audience, she would leave typed notes that Marlene Dietrich no longer lived in Paris. Often, when longtime friends came to France, they would call the star, coaxing her to allow them to visit. Occasionally she would relent and agree, but usually at the last minute she would phone, pretending to be her own maid, and insist that the actress had left town.
Actor Maximilian Schell, Dietrich’s Judgment at Nuremberg costar, had become so fascinated with the legendary actress that he produced a documentary of her career. Marlene allowed him to interview her at her apartment on the condition that she was only asked to provide occasional off-camera commentary. In the highly regarded result, Marlene (1984), Dietrich refused to acknowledge any fact or chronological event that contradicted her carefully engineered mythology.
Since Marlene declined to go out in public, her fans had to settle for second-hand information. It leaked out that the superstar maintained a very simple regimen. She would typically awake at 5:30 A.M. and blow her police whistle to let her live-in secretary know she wished for her cup of Earl Grey tea. According to the helper, “At 6:00 A.M., the Scotch would be going down. . . . It was impossible saying no. . . . Anyway, she had two bottles under her bed. She was brilliant until 10:00 A.M., then zonk—she’d collapse....” The star spent much of her waking hours reading or watching TV news programs. (She hated her old movies on TV, insisting “They were terrible, terrible kitsch.”)
One of her frequent distractions was making her famous calls to friends (and strangers) around the globe, often tallying up a $5,000-monthly phone bill as she chatted about world events or discussed (usually in the third person) remarks she had read about herself in the media.
Her self-indulgent autobiography, Marlene, was published in 1987, the same year that she became completely bedridden. Dietrich would remain so for her last five years. She kept to her rigid daily schedule, allowing only a few chosen souls to visit and do her bidding. (Even her daughter Maria was supposed to make an appointment before arriving at Chez Dietrich.) Although Marlene still received royalties from her recordings, finances proved pressing. When almost all of her jewelry had been auctioned off, she began to sell pieces of art—a Picasso painting went for $750,000 in 1988.
In December 1991, the world-class hermit celebrated her 90th birthday. Long since alerted that the star was in failing health, the media waited for the inevitable to happen. But Marlene remained in control until the last. Nevertheless, when she suffered a stroke in March 1992, she completely lost her appetite and soon weighed only 70 pounds.
In May 1992, her grandson Peter flew to Paris to be at Marlene’s bedside. On May 6, when he arrived, she was dressed in a white nightgown and pink bedjacket. He asked if she would like to go into the living room of her three-room apartment (it would be her first time there in five years). She nodded yes. He carried her to the sofa, where she gazed at the many celebrity photos on the walls. Later, Marlene spoke briefly to her daughter by phone, even swallowing a scant spoonful of soup. According to Peter, after saying “Maria,” she closed her eyes “as if she wanted to have her afternoon nap. And she was gone.” The following day, May 7, the Cannes International Film Festival opened with the year’s events dedicated to Marlene Dietrich.
In her final years, Dietrich had been obsessed with her own death. She once told her daughter that when she died, Maria was to remove her body in a garbage bag so the press would not see it. Instead, Dietrich’s body was taken from her fashionable apartment draped in the French Tricolor. On May 14, 1992, a simple memorial service was held at the Church of Madeleine in Paris. Among the attendants were Maria, her husband, and their four sons, as well as two of Marlene’s great-grandsons. In eulogizing her, Reverend Philippe Brizzard commented, “She was a woman of unflinching moral principle who lived like a soldier and would have liked to die like a soldier. Marlene was highly discreet, secretive. Her secret belongs to her alone. She will share it with God.”
Maria placed a wooden crucifix, a St. Christopher’s medal, a star of David, and a locket enclosing photos of Dietrich’s grandsons in the casket beside her mother. The lid was then sealed and the French flag draped across its mahogany surface. Marlene was sent home to Germany to be buried, with an American flag draped on her coffin. In Berlin, the city’s flag was placed on the casket. On May 16, 1992, she was buried in the Friedenau cemetery in Schoneberg, next to her mother’s grave. Among the mourners attending was Maximilian Schell. As she was laid to rest he said, “Dear Marlene, welcome home.” Among the floral tributes was a wreath from German movie director Wim Wenders, inscribed with the words “Angels Don’t Die.”
Typically, Marlene had the final word on this occasion. Back in September 1984 she had written, “When they finally close the coffin on me the world will be crying and sighing for me. Forget the sighing and crying. It’s only one sighing that matters to me. Of someone who’s watching over me.”
Marlene’s will, among other bequests, left her jewelry (worth about $350,000) to her daughter, and proceeds from any dramatization of her life were willed to her grandson John Paul “in recognition of his continuing to correspond with me.” The contents of Dietrich’s New York apartment would be auctioned off in late 1997, bringing into the estate an amazing $659,023.
In the months following Marlene’s death, several biographies of the screen legend were published, including Maria’s 790-page memoir, Marlene Dietrich by Her Daughter. Attempting to explain her enigmatic parent, Riva wrote in her tome, “I don’t use the word ‘mother’ for Dietrich. That is a special word that implies love shown to one person, and that is not what I remember.” In the course of her gossipy, very detailed book, Riva recalls her mother urging her on one occasion to have an abortion, reasoning that “Children are nothing but trouble.” In analyzing the subservient roles both she and her father (who died in 1976 at his California chicken farm) endured, Maria summarized, “If you adored her, you took whatever she had to give you.”
June 29, 1901–March 6, 1967
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. They belonged together like strawberries and cream. After eight screen musicals together, the world expected them to be forever joined at the hip, whether in movie operettas or in off-camera life. In reality, Eddy had a professional career long before he paired with Jeanette, and he continued to perform long afterward. Eddy even departed this earth doing what he did best—singing.
The blond baritone Nelson Eddy was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His parents were choir singers in their spare time and his maternal grandmother, Caroline Kendrick, had been an opera singer. His parents separated when he was 14 and Nelson moved to Philadelphia with his mother. He soon quit school to find work, usually taking jobs with local newspapers. By the early 1920s, however, he had concluded that he wanted to sing for his living. He made his debut on the Philadelphia stage in 1922 and took voice lessons abroad in the mid-1920s. Nelson moved to New York City to perform opera, frequently going on the concert circuit to make extra money. While performing in San Diego in 1933, he was spotted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; they placed him under contract.
He made three feature films before his first pairing with Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta (1935). The lavishly staged operetta, despite its cloying innocence, was a resounding hit and established the mold for several follow-ups, including Maytime (1937), New Moon (1940), and the couple’s final joint picture, I Married an Angel (1942). Away from MacDonald, and with less success, he had been a solo star in Let Freedom Ring (1939) and other films. After 1942, he made other movies without her, such as The Phantom of the Opera (1943) and his last, Northwest Outpost (1947). Despite their now-divergent careers, their adoring public continued to think of Eddy and MacDonald as a love team. It didn’t seem to matter that in 1937 Jeanette had married actor Gene Raymond, and in 1939, Nelson had wed Ann Denitz Franklin, the divorced wife of producer Sidney Franklin.
Nelson Eddy in the 1950s, during his postfilmmaking career as a nightclub singer and recording artist.
Courtesy of JC Archives
Now past his movie leading-man period, Eddy focused on radio, TV, and recordings, as well as the lucrative nightclub circuit. He was matched frequently with Gale Sherwood, both in the United States and on tour abroad. When Jeanette MacDonald died of a heart attack on July 15, 1965, Nelson sang their trademark song, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” at her funeral, which was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
On March 5, 1967, Eddy and Sherwood were headlining at the Blue Sails Room of the Sans Souci Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He had just concluded a song and was launching into another. Abruptly, his voice failed him. He asked the audience of four hundred, “Will you bear with me a minute? I can’t seem to get the words out.” He turned to his accompanist and said, “Would you play ‘Dardanelle?’ Maybe I’ll get the words back.” After a few moments of pained silence, he blurted out, “I can’t see. I can’t hear,” and then collapsed. He was carried offstage while hotel employees phoned for emergency medical assistance. By the time the city fire-and-rescue squad arrived, Eddy was unable to talk and his right side was paralyzed. The stroke victim was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital. There, early on the morning of March 6, he died. His wife was notified at their Los Angeles home of his passing. Eddy was buried in a grave adjacent to his mother’s at Hollywood Memorial Park (a cemetery later renamed Hollywood Forever).
Ironically, the day before his fatal stroke, Nelson—always the consummate professional—informed the press, “I’m working harder than I ever have in my life. I love it. I hope to keep going till I drop.”
[John Elroy Sanford]
December 9, 1922–October 11, 1991
On his hit TV series Sanford and Son (1972–77), one of Redd Foxx’s recurring bits of shtick was to pretend to be having a heart attack. Clutching his chest and staggering bowlegged, he would shout to his dead wife, “I’m comin’ Elizabeth! I’m comin’!” When he collapsed on a soundstage during rehearsals of his new TV series, The Royal Family, in October 1991, cast and crew thought he was just clowning around. He wasn’t. Within a few hours, the famed comedian was dead.
Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1922. When he was four, his dad disappeared, leaving John, his older brother Fred Jr., and his mother, Mary, to fend for themselves. After a few years, his mother went off to Chicago to live with her new boyfriend—one of Al Capone’s bodyguards. Young John and his trouble-prone older brother were sent to live with their grandmother, a full-blooded Native American, who lived in a wooden shack in the black ghetto of St. Louis. At school, John was made fun of by his classmates for being so light-skinned. Eventually, in 1933, his mother sent for him to come live with her in Chicago.
By the age of 12, Sanford, who hated school and loved the world of entertainment, had created a washtub band with two pals. They headed for New York in 1939, where—known as “The Bon-Bons”—they performed on subways and street corners. Along the way, Sanford acquired the nickname “Chicago Red,” because of his light-colored skin and hair (and also to separate him from his pal “Detroit Red,” the very young Malcolm X). When things got really tough financially, Sanford worked as a dishwasher or busboy and pushed carts in the garment district.
Sanford soon adopted the stage name of Redd Foxx, using the surname of baseball player Jimmy Foxx (the insinuation that he himself was a “foxy” dresser didn’t hurt, either). He began his career years on the Chitlin’ circuit (African-American nightclubs and vaudeville houses), making appearances at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. In the early 1940s, he was a master of ceremonies at Gamby’s, a Baltimore club, where he perfected stand-up comic routines that dealt in the humor of the ghettos. Later in the 1940s, he teamed in a vaudeville act with Slappy White.
In 1951, Foxx relocated to Los Angeles, leaving behind his wife, Evelyn Killibrew, whom he had married in the mid-1940s. On the West Coast, as before, he often could not find jobs because of racial discrimination in the entertainment industry. When he was broke, he worked as a sign painter. In 1955, Redd married singer Betty Jean Harris and adopted Debraca, her daughter by a previous marriage. That same year, looking for outlets for his raucous “blue” routines, he made a comedy album, Laff of the Party, which quickly earned him an underground reputation for salty, wicked humor. This was the first of many hip records he was heard on. Redd’s routines would make him a role model for many other comedians, including Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, who would work in Foxx’s L.A. nightclub in the 1970s.
It was host and celebrity commentator Hugh Downs who gave Foxx his break by having him as a guest star on the Today TV show in 1964. The groundbreaking network appearance proved that this raunchy African-American comedian could appeal to audiences of any race or social level. Foxx was now on his way to success. In 1970, he signed a three-year Las Vegas nightclub contract worth almost $1 million. When he played a cantankerous junk dealer in the movie Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), producer Bud Yorkin noticed him and signed the raspy-voiced Foxx to play a similar (but more endearing) character in the upcoming TV sitcom Sanford and Son. During this period he and Betty Jean divorced.
After his show ended in 1977, Redd hosted a TV variety show in 1977–78 and then returned to playing his irascible junk dealer in Sanford (1980–81). He continued to do his lucrative stand-up act in Las Vegas. Then, in the 1980s, Redd had highly publicized battles with the Internal Revenue Service, which seized much of his assets to collect nearly $3 million in back taxes. Eddie Murphy, a longtime admirer of Foxx, cast him in Harlem Nights (1989), and later, as executive producer, cast Foxx (opposite Della Reese) to play a retired Atlanta mail carrier in a new TV sitcom, The Royal Family, which premiered in September 1991. The ratings weren’t great, but Foxx’s return to prime-time TV was welcomed. Part of his new salary was earmarked to pay off his IRS debts.
On Friday, October 11, 1991, when he arrived at Paramount Studios’ stage 31, Foxx told crew members that he felt funny, that he “might have a touch of something.” Then he went about his business and seemed to forget about it. At 4:10 P.M., during a rehearsal break, Redd shot off one of his wisecracks, did what seemed a pratfall, and then lay on the floor—not moving. Everyone assumed it was a gag. After a few moments, Della Reese shouted, “Get up, Redd . . . Get up!” The unconscious star, now in cardiac arrest, was taken to Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died at 7:45 P.M., never having regained consciousness. At his bedside when he passed away were his fourth wife, Ka Ha Cho, and his longtime stage partner, Slappy White. Most of the cast and crew were gathered in the waiting room.
Foxx’s body was flown to Las Vegas for burial. At the open-casket memorial service held on October 15, 1991, his longtime pal and coworker Della Reese said that at the time of his death, Foxx “was very happy . . . He was doing what he wanted to do.” Among the other celebrities attending the tribute were Slappy White, boxer Mike Tyson, singer Joe Williams, and Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. One of those who spoke in fond memory of Redd was comedian Flip Wilson—or was it? He proved to be an impersonator. “I knew it wasn’t Flip,” Della Reese said later, “but there were a lot of people there who loved Redd, and it would have been a mess if I had stopped the service.... I have nothing against impersonators, but this was not the time or the place. . . . [The impersonator exhibited] absolutely no respect. And Redd Foxx deserved respect.”
Clark Gable and Myrna Loy on the set of Parnell (1937).
Courtesy of JC Archives
[William Clark Gable]
February 1, 1901–November 16, 1960
For many—except for Elvis Presley—Clark Gable was and always will be The King. His appealing, swaggering masculinity was a trademark that many movie actors have mimicked, but few have equaled. Gable reached his peak as the charming scoundrel Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). He made his mark as a lady-killer on the big screen. Offscreen, he lived up to his reputation in aces. In 1960, he had just completed a difficult movie project on location, The Misfits (1961), opposite a very trying Marilyn Monroe. He returned home to his pregnant fifth wife, Kay Spreckels, and was looking forward to a peaceful future as a first-time dad. Unexpectedly, however, he was felled by a heart attack and soon died. The Hollywood legend himself had gone with the wind.
Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, and began his show-business career in his teens as a theater handyman. He labored as a tool handler in the Oklahoma oil fields but quit to join a Kansas City theater stock company. In time, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked as a telephone repairman. One day Gable fixed the phone of drama coach Josephine Dillon, who took an interest in him. He married Dillon—who was 14 years his senior—in late 1924. Meanwhile, he obtained bit parts in silent pictures.
By 1930—the year he and Dillon divorced—Gable was making a name for himself playing Killer Mears in the stage hit The Last Mile. By all accounts, the role had been engineered by his wife-to-be, Houston socialite Maria (Ria) Franklin Prentiss, whom he married in mid-1931. She was 11 years older than Clark.
Several film studios tested Gable, but concluded that he lacked the necessary charisma, especially because of his floppy ears. But MGM had a change of heart and signed him in 1931. That year, in Dance, Fools, Dance, he teamed with established star Joan Crawford for the first of eight pictures together. (In real life, they had an on-and-off love affair for years.) Clark won his first and only Oscar, for the screwball comedy It Happened One Night, on loan to Columbia Pictures in 1934.
Gable and Carole Lombard first worked together on-screen in 1932, in No Man of Her Own, but it was not until 1936 that they “found” each other. By then he was separated from his second wife, and when their divorce became final in early 1939, he and blond beauty Lombard were married. This was the same year that Clark starred in Gone with the Wind, the epic of the old South that many authorities still consider Hollywood’s most “perfect” motion picture. The role did much to ensure Gable’s immortality.
Although Gable and Lombard were frequently described as the ideal married couple, there were rumors that Clark continued to play around after their marriage. Certainly both personalities were very strong-willed and used to being the center of attention. It was Gable who reneged on a bond-selling tour to the Midwest after the United States entered World War II in 1941. Ever the good sport, Carole went instead. Flying back to Los Angeles, her plane crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing all aboard. Gable never forgave himself for indirectly causing her demise.
Mrs. Kay Gable holds her two-week-old son, John Clark, in April 1961. The father, movie star Clark Gable, had died the previous November of a heart attack.
Courtesy of Photofest
During World War II, the aging Gable, who had been drinking heavily to drown his grief over Carole’s death, enlisted in the air force as a buck private and served as an aerial gunner in fighter planes. After the war, he returned to picture-making with Adventure (1946), a bomb, and then The Hucksters (1947), a hit. He married a Lombard look-alike, Lady Sylvia Ashley (Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s widow), in late 1949. But she soon grew tired of living “under a shadow,” and they divorced in 1952. In 1955, when Gable left MGM, he returned to the top 10 box-office list with such action pictures as Soldier of Fortune at Twentieth Century-Fox. He also married that year for the fifth and final time, to Kay Williams Spreckels, the divorcée of a sugar-fortune heir.
In the late 1950s, Clark made December-May romantic comedies such as Teacher’s Pet (1958), opposite Doris Day. Then Gable found the meaty screen role he had been searching for: the aging wrangler who corrals wild mustangs in The Misfits. It was a prestige production, with a script by the famous playwright Arthur Miller, direction by veteran John Huston, and a cast that included Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. The out-of-shape Gable was so enthusiastic about the assignment and his $800,000 salary that he embarked on a crash diet. By the time shooting began, the six-foot, one-inch megastar had slimmed down from 230 to 195 pounds.
Filming on location in the brutal Nevada heat proved to be a nightmare for all concerned. The terribly insecure Monroe was feuding with Miller, her playwright husband, and was even more exasperating than usual on the set. Anxious to prove he was still a virile leading man, Gable insisted on doing many of his own stunts. In the scorching heat, he allowed himself to be dragged through the dust by a wild horse. The grueling scene (which required several retakes) left him bloodied, rope-burned, and bruised. In mid-October, he returned to Hollywood for two additional weeks of filming. When the movie was finished at last, Clark told a business associate, “Christ, I’m glad this picture’s finished! She [Monroe] damn near gave me a heart attack.”
Two days later, on November 6, 1960, while changing a tractor tire, Gable suffered what he thought were stomach pains. His wife, Kay, rushed him from their Encino, California, ranch to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital for emergency treatment. Medical tests revealed that he had suffered a mild coronary thrombosis. He was hospitalized, with the pregnant Kay moving into his private suite to be near him, and he seemed to be recovering. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, himself a heart-attack survivor, sent Gable a telegram: “Be a good boy, Clark, and do as the doctors tell you to do.” But on November 16, 1960, at about 11:00 P.M., as he was flipping through a magazine, Clark’s head nodded back. He had died from a second heart attack.
With the U.S. Air Force participating in his Hollywood funeral, Gable was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. With his wife’s approval, he was laid to rest in a crypt next to that of Carole Lombard in the Great Mausoleum. His will left everything to Kay, with the exception of a house in North Hollywood that he bequeathed to his ex-wife Josephine Dillon (who died in 1971). Five months later—on March 20, 1961—Kay gave birth to Gable’s only child, a boy named John Clark Gable. Kay herself would die of a heart attack in 1983, and John would grow up to become a race-car driver and sometime screen actor.
Clark Gable’s last words on-screen in The Misfits had been: “Just head for the big star straight on. The highways under it take us right home.”
