The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals

by Michelle Morgan

  “There is no doubt in our minds that McCoy killed [Teresa] Mors,” stated police. There were some doubts in the jury’s minds, however, and after seeing Selby demonstrate a dramatic re-enactment of his girlfriend’s last moments, as well as a surprise appearance by ex-wife Dagmar Dahlgren, they remained split between first degree murder and acquittal.

  Finally, Selby was convicted of manslaughter and stayed in prison until 1932. When he left, he spoke to reporters. “I’m through with the prize ring, the matrimonial ring, and the ring of ice in glasses,” he told them, before leaving for Michigan and a job with the Ford Motor Company.

  He was not quite finished with women, however, as he married Sue Cobb Cowley in 1937. Unfortunately the new start he had hoped for in Michigan was never a peaceful one and eventually, on 18 April 1940, he decided to end his life in the Hotel Tuller in Detroit. Before taking a fatal overdose, he sat down to write a short note: “To all my dear friends, I wish you the best of luck. I’m sorry I could not endure this world’s madness.” He then signed it with the simple words, “My very best to you all, Norman Selby.”

  4

  Lucille Ricksen, the Adult Child Star

  While it is always sad when someone dies young, no matter who they are, the tale of Lucille Ricksen is particularly distressing, especially as at the time of her death she had barely reached puberty. However, she had been acting as an adult for some years prior to her passing. Hollywood is a land of make-believe – of fairy tales and glamour – but for Lucille Ricksen it was the stuff of nightmares, and it ultimately broke up her family and cost her life.

  Born as Ingeborg Ericksen in Chicago, Illinois, on 22 August, her actual birth year is something of a mystery, but is most likely 1910. Almost from the day she was born, Lucille (as she became known) was working in the industry, first as a baby model and then, aged five, as an actress. Rather disturbingly, however, while some of the photographs she posed for were “cute” and show the smiling Lucille sporting ringlets in her hair, others are slightly less appealing. For instance, in one photograph of the child aged about five, she is seen posing provocatively next to a window, a lace scarf being the only thing covering her tiny body. How or why this disturbing photograph was ever taken is something of a mystery but it certainly shows the shape of things to come as she got older and moved into her movie career.

  By the time the child was eight years old, the pressures of running Lucille’s career and a home were becoming extremely tiring for her mother, also called Ingeborg. Normally one would expect that if the child’s career was getting in the way of family life, the mother would perhaps scale down the amount of work she had, but not Ingeborg. She was one of the first real showbiz mothers, and instead of taking her daughter away from the camera, she decided that the best thing to do would be to divorce her husband, leave Chicago and move herself and her two children to the bright lights of Hollywood where she planned for Lucille to be more successful and even busier than ever before.

  It is not known if Lucille was happy with this situation, but we do know that once in the city, the young girl’s career took off in a big way. Her name was changed to Lucille Ricksen and she was chosen by producer Samuel Goldwyn to appear in a series of comedy shorts with titles such as Edgar’s Hamlet, Edgar Camps Out and Edgar, the Explorer. These films ran from 1920 to 1921 before there then came the chance not only to act in a feature, but also to work alongside her brother Marshall when she was cast in The Old Nest, a film based on a story written by Rupert Hughes, the uncle of Howard Hughes.

  Lucille impressed everyone with whom she worked. She had the opportunity of not only working with Rupert again several years later, but also becoming extremely good friends too. She was also a hit with movie fans and would often tour the country, chatting to children, appearing in theatres and attending celebrity events. The child seemed to enjoy the attention and the work, and as a result recorded her news meticulously in her scrapbook whenever she had a spare moment. She was living a lovely, fairytale dream; yes, she was busy and her childhood was not like that of other children, but she was having fun with it anyway. For a while . . .

  As Lucille turned twelve, her work on camera began to change and the studio altered her image from that of a cutiepie, ringlet-wearing kid to a sophisticated adult player, before casting her in films such as Human Wreckage (1923), a film about drug addiction, as well as allowing her to play the “sweetheart” role in The Judgment of the Storm (1923). In February 1923, the Covington Republic newspaper called Lucille “The youngest leading lady on the screen”, and described her as having big brown eyes and a wealth of blonde hair. They even printed her real age – twelve – but this would not last for long. In an attempt to make it more acceptable that she was now being offered grown-up roles, the studio had to make her a fully fledged “woman” and, before she knew it, they were saying that she was sixteen years old, when in actual fact she was still four years younger.

  Disturbingly, the studio did not seem to see anything wrong with this, and would often cast her as the “devoted but excessively jealous young wife” alongside much older stars. In one particular film she was even cast as a young woman who is beaten up and generally abused by her bully of a husband; while on the cover of Picture Play magazine, she appeared wearing a large hat, with her bare shoulder, arm and some of her back visible. The wrong signals were clearly being given out and with so many fully fledged adult actresses and models around there was, of course, absolutely no need to use a child in a grown-up role. The reason the studio insisted on doing so remains a mystery, and it is equally concerning that it appears that at no time did her mother step in and tell the studios that Lucille was far too young for such dramatic roles.

  The leap from child actress to adult at the age of just twelve very definitely had a lasting effect on Lucille Ricksen and it is clear that the types of parts being given to her only succeeded in priming the vulnerable young girl for all manner of disturbing real-life situations. It is interesting to note that at this point in time, Lucille stopped carefully cutting out and lovingly presenting her newspaper clippings, and now began tearing the pages out and just throwing them into the scrapbooks. Something had changed both on and off the camera, and for young Lucille Ricksen the glamour had ceased and her life would never be the same again.

  If anyone had the least bit of concern for the child actress, nobody seems to have come forward to say so, and the adult roles and scripts continued to arrive at her door. Tragically the young girl seemed to develop a succession of crushes on her co-stars during this time, which – it has been said – were possibly even reciprocated, although the actors in question knew that Lucille was not yet past the age of consent. A case in point is an announcement in the pages of Billboard which said that Lucille had married actor Sydney Chaplin in the autumn of 1923. This seems absurd considering her age and there is no absolute proof that it happened, especially considering that no official comment was ever made about the “marriage” and, after the announcement, there was never any mention of it again.

  Still, Billboard must have had some reason to believe that the thirteen-year-old actress was marrying thirty-eight-year-old Chaplin. The two must surely have been close enough for people to think they could have been an item, and Lucille herself once told an interviewer that while working together, they had a “perfectly screaming time”.

  By the time 1924 arrived, the child actress was being put into one film after another, and working long, hard hours at the studio. After completing no fewer than ten films in seven months, she was absolutely exhausted and in desperate need of a rest, but still Hollywood called and insisted she work. Sadly, this was the beginning of the end for Lucille Ricksen, whose young body could handle no more of the gruelling schedule that had been thrust upon her since almost the day she was born. As a result of exhaustion, the poor girl collapsed and was confined to bed at home, where her concerned mother kept a vigil and vowed to keep the studio and newspapers away from her daughter until she was better
. It was too little, too late, however, and her condition just got worse and worse. The story of her breakdown was eventually leaked and it fell to her doctor, J. F. McKitrick, to announce exactly what he believed to be wrong with the child:

  She crowded too much work into too short a time, and overtaxed her capacities . . . The result is that she has had a complete physical and nervous collapse – so complete that she has not rallied from it as she should.

  Lying in her bedroom – or as she called it, her “sunshine room”, Lucille enjoyed receiving visitors such as her brother Marshall and the actress Lois Wilson. “Please won’t you all be so happy,” she told them, “I know I will be well soon.”

  Unfortunately the child just grew worse and worse, and in February 1925 things took a tragic turn when her mother suddenly collapsed in Lucille’s bedroom, dying in front of the stunned child and her brother Marshall. The shock of this tragic event was too much for the child to bear, and several days later she sank into a coma, from which she sadly never recovered.

  With their father not living with the children, and their mother now passed away, it was decided that family friends, actor Conrad Nagel and producer and author Rupert Hughes, would become the children’s guardians. However, this arrangement was not to last long, as sadly on 13 March 1925 Lucille Ricksen passed away, a victim – according to the newspapers – of a broken heart. Her death certificate stated that the girl died of pulmonary tuberculosis though sadly this has not stopped disturbing rumours that her breakdown, illness and death were all really the results of a botched abortion undertaken shortly before her initial collapse.

  Of course, no newspaper reported such a thing at the time, and instead they were full of articles and tributes from many of Lucille’s co-stars and friends. Lois Wilson led the way by claiming that she had “never known anyone so full of joy”, while many others described her as a sweet-natured girl who gave happiness to everyone she met.

  Flowers flooded into the home, and a simple but impressive funeral was planned at the Gates, Crane and Earl Chapel, where Lucille’s memorial was to take place. On the day of the funeral itself, the venue was full of celebrities who had known or worked with Lucille Ricksen. Flowers from Mary Pickford, Sydney Chaplin, Rupert Hughes and Lois Wilson surrounded the coffin, while many more lay in anonymous tribute around the church. In accordance with her wishes, Lucille Ricksen’s body was cremated, and then both her ashes and those of her mother were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, where many other stars would be laid to rest in the years to come.

  Just days later came the news that while still only a teenager, Lucille Ricksen had left an estate of $50,000 in the form of life insurance and $10,000 from personal property. This shocked everyone as she was relatively poor at the time of her death and, in fact, Hollywood producer Paul Bern had stepped in to pay for her nursing care for quite some time. Tragically it would seem that the child was now worth more in death than she had been in life, and her father Samuel was set to inherit it all.

  Although she had not lived with him since she was eight years old, Samuel Ericksen had recently moved to Los Angeles – presumably to be close to his children. After losing firstly his ex-wife and then Lucille, the man had had enough of the so-called bright lights of Hollywood and was now intent on gaining back custody of his eighteen-year-old son, Marshall, who was still under the care of Rupert Hughes and Conrad Nagel. Samuel greatly distrusted the two men and made it clear to Marshall that he wanted him to give up his own acting career and concentrate on his education instead. To that end he decided to use the majority of his inheritance from Lucille for the education of his son, but first he would have to win him back.

  To help in his quest, he hired a lawyer, Griffith Jones, who told reporters that Samuel Ericksen had objected to his children being associated with older people within the movie industry, and had “proved himself to be an extremely kind and loving parent and intensely interested in the welfare of the children”. Both Hughes and Nagel were surprised at these developments, and Hughes released a statement to explain why they had stepped forward as guardians in the first place.

  It read in part, “Mr Nagel and I were named in the petition with the full consent of the father. We were actuated by sympathy and a wish to help the children in their difficulties. I have had no information that Mr Ericksen desired to enter a protest to our guardianship.”

  But protest he did, citing the fact that the guardianship had never been legally sworn as Lucille had passed before it could be heard. The custody case for Marshall Ricksen went to court on 16 April 1925, with Samuel Ericksen’s main charge being that Rupert Hughes could not be a suitable guardian, since he had recently written a piece entitled “Why I Quit going to Church”. In the article Hughes had said that anyone who believed in the Bible had either never read it or was actually lying; Ericksen took great offence at this, stating that Hughes must obviously be an atheist and therefore an unsuitable candidate for looking after a teenage boy.

  However, he did not bank on a revelation from Hughes himself, who told the court that before Lucille’s death both she and Marshall had summoned him to their home and begged him and Nagel to take charge of their affairs in order to protect them from their father. Ericksen was obviously shocked to hear such a thing, but it was enough to swing the vote in Hughes’s favour, and Judge J. Perry Wood gave him and Nagel joint custody of Marshall Ricksen.

  During the coming years, the boy was given emotional support from the two men and he went on to attend university and later became a lawyer. He never spoke about his early life in Hollywood or his sister – the memories of both being far too raw in his mind. His father Samuel, meanwhile, tragically passed away on 25 April 1928, just over three years after his ex-wife and daughter.

  Described by the Los Angeles Times as having an “enthusiasm as strong as her frame was slight”, Lucille Ricksen gave everything to her career and lost her life and family to the trappings of Hollywood. She was perhaps the first example of the tragic consequences of putting a child into the limelight, but she most certainly was not the last. The exact circumstances surrounding her death will never be known, but one thing is for sure, if she had just been allowed to be a child instead of an adult at the age of twelve, her short life would have inevitably been far happier.

  5

  The “Almost Perfect” Murder

  As covered in the first chapter, in 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was accused of raping and killing a young actress called Virginia Rappe at one of his infamous parties. The court case that followed is still talked about nearly a hundred years later, yet another huge Hollywood court case that took place just six years later has long since been forgotten. Until now.

  In 1927, Paul Kelly was an up-and-coming actor, described by the media as “dashing” and “debonair”. Born on 9 August 1899 in Brooklyn, his career began as a child actor aged seven, and he quickly became a big star at the Vitagraph Studios. Unlike many actors since then, Kelly made the transition from child actor to leading man very successfully and went on to star on the New York stage in plays such as Seventeen and Whispering Wires. Still, as a result of his looks and talent, Hollywood came knocking on his door and it was not long before he was working at Paramount, making something of a splash in The New Klondike (1926) and Special Delivery (1927).

  By March 1927, the gossip columnists were announcing the news that the hot young actor was destined for huge success and that Warner Brothers were anxious to sign him for their next picture. He was about to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but sadly nobody could have predicted just what atrocities were going to happen next . . .

  Ray Raymond was a stage actor and singer, who by 1927 had been married to actress Dorothy Mackaye for seven years, having met her in New York when they were both appearing in a production called Blue Eyes. Together they lived and worked in New York and Hollywood, and welcomed the arrival of their daughter Valeria who by 1927 was four years old. However, by all accounts the marriage was not a
happy one, and this was confirmed by Mackaye herself who later declared: “I know it’s not right for me to say, but he was unkind to me. He was always accusing me about Paul Kelly, but his accusations were untrue.”

  The accusations involving the actor stemmed from a friendship they had began in New York long before Dorothy had met Raymond. The two had kept in touch for many years, but while she claimed it was purely platonic, Raymond was convinced she was having a passionate affair and forbade his wife from seeing the actor any more. He was shocked by her response, however, when not only did Dorothy refuse to give up her friendship, but also blatantly continued seeing him in the full knowledge of her husband. “Paul was my friend,” she later told police. “Our friendship was so clean, lovely and beautiful that I didn’t want to give him up.”

  This refusal to cool her association with Kelly (which she described as “a sort of sisterly love”) did not go down well with Raymond, particularly when it was rumoured that the actor had asked Dorothy to divorce her husband and marry him instead. Mackaye later laughed off the whispers by declaring that if there had been any talk of marriage with Kelly, it was purely a joke, although she did admit that her marriage to Raymond had been under strain but that they had been unable to divorce because of financial problems.

  While Dorothy dismissed any marriage talk between Kelly and herself as a joke, Ray Raymond did not see the funny side. Once again he told Dorothy that under no circumstances must she ever see him again, though in the end this seems to have been a great mistake, because instead of deterring her, it only succeeded in making Mackaye even more determined to keep the relationship going. If she enjoyed humiliating her stressed husband in a very public way, she was certainly making a good job of it.