The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols

by Parish, James Robert

  In death, Judy no longer had to prove anything to anybody, least of all to herself. She had become a show-business immortal.

  John Gilbert

  [John Pringle]

  July 10, 1895–January 9, 1936

  “It is getting so that reviewing a John Gilbert picture is embarrassing.... It isn’t that Mr. Gilbert’s voice is insufficient; it’s that his use of it robs him of magnetism, individuality, and strangest of all, skill.”

  A 1930s movie critic wrote the above. Like many contemporary moviegoers, he had become disenchanted with John Gilbert—the “Perfect Lover” in the heyday of the silent movies—as he ambled unremarkably through talkie features. In his first sound movies, Gilbert’s voice didn’t match people’s expectation of what he should sound like; they never forgave him. Neither did Louis B. Mayer, his MGM studio boss, who wrangled for years with his swaggering star and did his devious best to humiliate him into abandoning his lucrative filmmaking contract. Unable to cope with his career slide during the 1930s, Gilbert turned increasingly to alcohol and reckless romantic pursuits. His dissolute lifestyle led to many disappointments. Years before his heart gave out in 1936, his spirit had already evaporated.

  The future star was born John Pringle in Logan, Utah, in 1895, the son of touring stock-company actors. As an infant, he was often made an impromptu cast member of his parents’ productions. When he was 14 his mother died. After the family money ran out, he was on his own (in San Francisco and Seattle), sometimes living on the street and, as he said, “hungry enough to eat out of garbage cans.”

  Once John’s miserable childhood was behind him, he pursued his ambition of breaking into movies. Through his father’s contacts, John began making movies at Triangle Pictures, first in bit parts and then in small roles. He was in William S. Hart’s Western Hell’s Hinges (1916) and by the next year—now billed as Jack Gilbert—he was the leading man of The Princess of the Dark (1917). Dropped by the studio in 1918, he made several films for minor companies. Meanwhile, in August 1918, in Hollywood, he married Olivia Burwell, a movie extra.

  Very determined and versatile, Gilbert pursued his career, more interested in script-writing and directing than in acting. He sporadically displayed his literary skills, as when he cowrote Metro’s The Great Redeemer (1920). He was signed to a lucrative deal directing movies on the East Coast, all of them to star Hope Hampton. But the first (Love’s Penalty, 1921) was a failure and Gilbert reneged on his contract, fleeing back to Hollywood. He returned to acting (which he often stated he disliked) under a three-year Fox Films contract that would last until 1924. He became increasingly popular with moviegoers in The Count of Monte Cristo (1922), Cameo Kirby (1923), and The Wolf Man (1924).

  Gilbert and his wife Olivia had long been separated when they divorced in 1921. That same year he wed actress Leatrice Joy. Their marriage was stormy, and in August 1924 she sued for divorce, citing his bad temper and drinking. Their daughter, Leatrice Joy, was born a few weeks later. The divorce was made final in mid-1926.

  The newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Gilbert, gambling that he could be their answer to Paramount’s Rudolph Valentino. He was the dashing, prodigal prince in The Merry Widow (1925) and scored a huge hit in the World War I drama The Big Parade (1925). Now a major star, he made Flesh and the Devil (1927), the first of several features with Swedish import Greta Garbo. There is contention about how serious their off-camera romance was, but rumors of their “love” affair boosted their movies’ box-office appeal. John was now earning $10,000 a week, which made him Hollywood’s highest paid star.

  In 1929, Gilbert faced the inevitable—making his talkie film debut. He and Norma Shearer burlesqued the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The sequence was shot in color, but it didn’t hide John’s stilted performance or the unromantic, high-pitched timbre of his voice. The film His Glorious Night (1929) was Gilbert’s professional death knell. While his career was crumbling about him, he married stage actress Ina Claire in Las Vegas in May 1929. But long before they divorced in August 1931, the union had soured.

  John Gilbert shares an on-screen moment with his fourth wife, actress Virginia Bruce, in Downstairs (1932). Courtesy of JC Archives

  Before MGM had realized that his screen future was bleak, Gilbert had negotiated a hefty new agreement ($250,000 a picture). When studio executives saw how badly John was doing in sound pictures, they sought to buy out his contract (he declined) and, later, to force him to take a pay cut (he again refused). Although Gilbert was inept in Way for a Sailor (1930), he was more than acceptable as the villain of Downstairs (1932), based on a script he had written years before. His costar in that little-seen picture was the beautiful young MGM actress Virginia Bruce, whom he married in 1932. Their daughter Susan Ann was born the next year. In 1934, the couple divorced.

  It was said that petulant, childish Jack Gilbert brought out the protective instinct in women. Greta Garbo, now MGM’s most prestigious star, rejected Laurence Olivier as her leading man in Queen Christina (1933). She insisted that Gilbert be given the romantic lead opposite her, even though his contract with the studio had already ended. He was listless and awkward in the new Garbo picture and after its production, he quietly left MGM—again.

  After months without work, he signed for a secondary role (at a much reduced salary) in Columbia Pictures’ The Captain Hates the Sea (1934), playing a disillusioned, alcoholic writer. During the filming of this modest offering, the director had trouble with the hard-drinking Gilbert. When released, both the picture and Gilbert were quickly dismissed. It was his moviemaking finale.

  Despite the fact that he had brought much of his grief on himself, Gilbert’s last years were as cruel as anything Hollywood could have possibly concocted on-screen. By now, he was dating the married Marlene Dietrich, who mothered the heavy-drinking ex-matinee idol. She would say later that he frequently complained of chest pains but then dismissed them.

  Having already had a collapse while swimming in his pool six weeks earlier, Jack became quite ill on January 8, 1936. He was confined to bed under a nurse’s care in his hacienda-style mansion at 1400 Tower Road in Bel Air. The next day he had a full-fledged heart attack. The Fire Department’s rescue squad attempted to revive him with an inhalator and adrenaline shots. (According to some accounts, Marlene Dietrich was in bed with Gilbert at the time he expired, but she beat a hasty retreat before the police and media arrived on the scene.)

  An Episcopalian funeral service was held on January 11, 1936. After cremation, Jack’s remains were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. He was now officially part of Hollywood’s past, as he had been unofficially since the advent of “talking pictures.”

  William Holden

  [William Franklin Beedle Jr.]

  April 17, 1918–November 16, 1981

  A few years after William Holden’s grotesque death, a psychotherapist who once had treated the movie superstar observed, “In my 16 years of dealing with chronic drug and alcohol abusers, Bill was the sickest person I ever treated. He was the sweetest, classiest guy you could ever want to meet, but when he was strung out on drugs and alcohol, he could be a monster.” All his life, Holden brooded because, as he said, “Dad never showed me any love or caring.” In spite of his material success, Holden was generally discontented. He was certain he had to prove his machismo constantly, that he was as bad a father as his own dad had been, and that his life would end catastrophically. His depression fueled his wanderlust; his substance abuse made him obnoxious and physically abusive. Holden’s life ended with both a bang (of violence) and a whimper (of loneliness).

  At one point in his successful acting career, William was known as “Golden Holden.” To the public, it certainly seemed that he led a charmed life. He was born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in 1918 in O’Fallon, Illinois. At age four, he moved with his family, which included two younger brothers, to Monrovia, California, where his father had accepted a new job as a chemic
al analyst. William was more interested in sports than acting, both in high school and later at South Pasadena Junior College. On the South Pasadena campus, however, he got talked into performing in a stage production. A Paramount Pictures talent scout spotted the handsome, six-foot young man during a performance. This led to a $50-a-week studio contract and a new name, William Holden. Columbia Pictures borrowed him for the lead in Golden Boy (1939). His costar was the veteran actress Barbara Stanwyck, who took a great liking to Holden and helped him tremendously throughout the production.

  Columbia Pictures was so impressed with Holden’s performance on-screen that it made a deal with Paramount to share the actor’s contract. During the shooting of Arizona (1941), he wed actress Brenda Marshall, who had a daughter, Virginia, by a previous marriage. The Holdens would have two children: Peter, in 1943, and Scott, in 1946. During World War II, William served in the military, primarily as the star of Defense Department documentaries. When he returned to Hollywood, he was Oscar-nominated for his heavily dramatic role in Sunset Boulevard (1950). He won an Academy Award as the cynical war-camp prisoner in Stalag 17 (1953). During the 1950s, the hard-drinking Holden already had a reputation for violent outbursts and being a moody loner; despite still being married to Marshall, he became involved romantically with two of his costars: Audrey Hepburn, with whom he made Sabrina (1954), and Grace Kelly, who teamed with him in The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and The Country Girl (1954).

  In the late 1950s, the weather-beaten Holden relocated to Switzerland for tax purposes and began to make most of his pictures abroad. He invested his money in several overseas business projects, including the founding of the Mount Kenya Safari Club near Nairobi, Kenya. William became a committed African-wildlife preservationist and devoted much of his free time to traveling around the globe. He enjoyed a romance with Capucine, the French actress who costarred in two of his lesser films, The Lion (1962) and The Seventh Dawn (1964). In 1966, he was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in Italy, following an accident in which the other driver died. He received a fine and a suspended sentence.

  Holden and Brenda Marshall finally divorced in the early 1970s. During much of the decade he was involved romantically with actress Stefanie Powers. His movie choices seemed capricious, and with rare exceptions, like The Wild Bunch (1969) or 1976’s Network (for which he was Oscarnominated), they were beneath him. His last feature appearance was in the cynical comedy S.O.B. (1981). He was to have starred in That Championship Season, but didn’t live to take the 1982 assignment, and Robert Mitchum was substituted.

  William Holden plays cards with his wife, actress Brenda Marshall, in the late 1940s.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  By 1981, when he was in the United States at all, Holden divided his time between a home in Palm Springs, California, and a condo apartment on the fifth floor of the Shorecliff Towers, at 535 Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. He had held an ownership interest in the 12-story building for years. No one thought much of it when Holden, a perpetual loner, disappeared from his Palm Springs residence and wasn’t heard from for days. But eventually the star’s butler, Brian Keating, became concerned. At the urging of Patricia Stauffer (Holden’s on-again, off-again romantic interest), Keating drove to Santa Monica to check up on Holden. When the building manager wouldn’t admit Keating to the star’s unit, the police were summoned. Upon entering the actor’s dwelling, they found him sprawled on the bedroom floor in a large pool of blood. He had been dead for four to five days.

  Because the case was so high-profile, it was handled by Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas T. Noguchi, the “coroner to the stars.” As Noguchi’s investigation uncovered, Holden had been drunk at the time of his death. He had evidently gotten out of bed and tripped on a small scatter rug. In his fall, he had banged his head against a night table, gashing the right side of his forehead. Holden had attempted to stem the blood flow with Kleenex. He had passed out some 5 to 10 minutes later, never reaching for the bedside telephone. The coroner assumed either that the drunken star had failed to realize the severity of his wound, or that his deep sense of privacy had prevented him from calling for help. As fate would have it, Holden’s maid had been on vacation that week; otherwise she might have discovered the dying actor.

  As often happens when a celebrity dies under abnormal circumstances, rumors abounded that Holden’s demise might not have been accidental. It was conjectured that he was a victim of organized crime (there were alleged links between the underworld and some of his business enterprises) or that his friendships with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon had led him into covert government work that he had talked about too much.

  The bulk of Holden’s estate was placed in trust for his ailing mother, his ex-wife and their two sons, and his stepdaughter. He bequeathed his property in Africa to the Kenyan government to establish a wildlife preserve. He gave $50,000 to his actress friend Capucine (who years later killed herself), and the same amount to Patricia Stauffer. He left $250,000 to Stefanie Powers, who has carried on as president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation in Kenya.

  Director Billy Wilder, Holden’s longtime pal, sighed: “If someone had said to me, ‘Holden’s dead,’ I would have assumed that he had been gored by a water buffalo in Kenya, that he had died in a plane crash while approaching Hong Kong, that a crazed jealous woman had shot him and he drowned in a swimming pool. But to be killed by a bottle of vodka and a night table—what a lousy fadeout for a great guy.”

  Veronica Lake

  [Constance Frances Marie Ockleman]

  November 14, 1919–July 7, 1973

  As the catchy song in the musical Gypsy advises, “You gotta have a gimmick.” Certainly, five-foot, two-inch, 92-pound Veronica Lake did: her famous peek-a-boo silver-blond hairdo, which fell seductively over her right eye. It made her a celebrated movie star during the World War II years. But as her popularity evaporated in later years, she drank to forget her failing career. Even after she withdrew completely from the film industry that had so callously discarded her, she continued to drink heavily. Ultimately, her bad habit did her in.

  Veronica was born Constance Ockleman in Brooklyn, New York, in 1919. After her seaman father died in 1932, her mother married Anthony Keane, a staff artist with the New York Herald-Tribune, and Constance adopted her stepfather’s surname. For a time, the family lived in Montreal, Canada, where the silently rebellious Constance attended a convent school. Later, they went to Miami, Florida, where she graduated from high school. In a state beauty contest Constance was named Miss Florida, but was disqualified later because she was underage.

  In the summer of 1938, she accompanied her parents and cousin to California. Her mother enrolled her in elocution classes and the shy daughter grudgingly obliged. She came to a friend’s audition at the RKO studio, and it was Constance who won a tiny role in Sorority House (1939). By the time of Eddie Cantor’s Forty Little Mothers (1940), Constance had adopted her over-the-eye hairstyle, which supposedly came about accidentally when it cascaded over one eye while shooting a scene.

  By the summer of 1940, Constance had been hired by Paramount for an aviation drama, I Wanted Wings (1941). She also had a new professional name, Veronica Lake. By the time she returned to Hollywood from Texas, where she was completing the movie, she had decided to marry MGM art director John Detlie, whom she had met just months before. They wed on September 27, 1941, not alerting her mother, the studio, or anyone else. Veronica was already known as a temperamental performer at the studio, but Paramount forgave her when I Wanted Wings was a big hit. Lake was promoted as the latest bigscreen love goddess. The press wrote so often about her unusual hairstyle that it became a craze with women throughout America.

  During the filming of Sullivan’s Travels (1941), the studio learned Veronica was pregnant and almost removed her from the picture. (Her daughter Elaine was born in August 1941.) Paramount had had difficulty in finding leading ladies who were petite enough to pair with the compact (five-foot, four-inch) Alan Ladd. Th
is was a major reason that Veronica was cast opposite him in This Gun for Hire (1942). The film noir thriller was extremely popular and marked the beginning of the popular Ladd-Lake screen teaming. In I Married a Witch (1942), she demonstrated she could handle comedy. At home, however, her husband could not abide being “Mr. Lake;” they fought constantly, even when he joined the army and was stationed in Seattle, Washington.

  Veronica was pregnant during the making of The Hour Before the Dawn (1944). On the last day of shooting, she tripped over a sound-stage cable and began hemorrhaging. She recovered and the child (William Anthony) was born in July 1943, but died seven days later of uremic poisoning. Before 1943 ended, Lake and Detlie divorced.

  Since the studio (which was paying her a meager $350 a week) gave her little screen work in 1944, Veronica spent her ample free time dating a variety of suitors, ranging from billionaire Howard Hughes to millionaire Aristotle Onassis. Instead of marrying any of them, she wed Hungarian-born film director Andre De Toth on December 17, 1944. Their son, Michael, was born the next October, and their daughter, Diana, in 1948.

  Veronica was having increasing problems with her Paramount employers. She rebelled by sleepwalking through her screen parts, even after she negotiated salary raises to $4,000 weekly. Neither Lake nor De Toth were good at budgeting their incomes and, by 1948, Veronica again was having financial and domestic problems. In midyear, her mother sued her, not only for back payments of a $200-weekly support agreement, but to increase the amount of the agreement to $500 per week. Veronica settled out of court to end the media circus.