During 1982, a Warner Bros, casting director approached Ngor about participating in a forthcoming feature film, The Killing Fields. The movie was to be based on articles by Sydney Schanberg, who had been a New York Times Magazine correspondent in Cambodia during the regime of Lon Nol, the U.S.-favored Cambodian ruler before Pol Pot deposed him. Schanberg’s writing detailed his work with and respect for Dith Pran, his Cambodian assistant and interpreter. The film would also recount the horrific atrocities of the Pol Pot regime and their genocide against the Cambodians. Above all, the picture was to be a testament to human friendship and the will to survive oppressive odds. At first, Ngor was not interested in the part, but after interviews with the filmmakers he changed his mind, remembering that he had promised his late wife to tell Cambodia’s story to the world.
For his touching portrayal of Dith Pran, the first-time screen performer won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1984. In his acceptance speech, Ngor said he wished to “thank Warner Bros, for helping me tell my story to the world, to let the world know what happened in my country.” (He also won a British Academy Award for his performance in this harrowing movie.)
Thereafter, Ngor pursued an acting career in television and film. He was in episodes of Miami Vice, Highway to Heaven, China Beach, The Commish, and Vanishing Son, as well as such movies as The Iron Triangle (1989), Vietnam, Texas (1990), Heaven & Earth (1993), Fortunes of War (1993), Hit Me (1995), and The Dragon Gate (1996).
In 1987, Ngor’s graphic autobiography, A Cambodian Odyssey (written with Roger Warner), was published. As with much of the salary earned from his film work or from his lecture-circuit tours discussing the plight of the Cambodians, the royalties from his book were used to help his fellow country men and women—not only the refugees who had come to the United States, but those back in his homeland whom he visited periodically, bringing medical supplies and other necessities. Ngor was also very involved with the Cambodian community in Long Beach, California.
Dr. Haing S. Ngor in a jovial public moment.
© 1994 by Albert L. Ortega
Unmindful of his fame, Ngor continued to reside alone in the same simple two-bedroom apartment on Beaudry Avenue in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles, where he had been living in his pre-Killing Fields days. On Sunday, February 25, 1996, he was found shot to death (with two bullet wounds) outside his home in a dark parking lot. He had been returning from spending the day visiting friends in Long Beach. At first it was thought that the slaying was politically oriented, and many people feared that it could lead to retaliatory rioting. In April 1996, however, three suspects were arrested, charged with murder during the commission of a robbery gone bad. Just before he was killed, Ngor had given up his Rolex watch, but he had refused to part with a chain and locket containing a photo of his deceased wife. One of the suspects, age 21, was arrested on Friday, April 26, 1996, while the other two, both age 20, had been apprehended earlier on unrelated robbery charges. The three were allegedly members of a Chinatown-based gang that focused on home-invasion robberies and carjackings.
On April 16, 1998, after a lengthy trial, the three defendants were found guilty of first-degree murder and second-degree robbery charges. One of the trio was also found guilty of the special charge of murder during the commission of a robbery, which carried a sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole. Because of the relative youth of the defendants, the district attorney had not sought the death sentence in their case.
After the untimely death of Haing Ngor, who had suffered so much in his life, a memorial fund was established in his name by the not-for-profit American Refugee Committee.
A few years before his murder, Ngor, ever the activist, had said, “I don’t want history to blame me, saying Dr. Ngor has many opportunities, why does he not help? Now I know the value of the arts. The arts can explain everything possible to tell the world.” The humanitarian also observed, “Maybe in my last life before this one, I did something wrong to hurt people. But [in] this life, I paid back.”
Ramón Novarro
[Ramón Gil Samaniego]
February 6, 1899–October 31, 1968
In the 1920s, Hollywood boasted a trio of handsome matinee idols who could make women everywhere swoon: Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, and Ramón Novarro. By the end of the decade, Valentino had died and Gilbert’s career had been swept away with the advent of “talkies.” In contrast, the Mexico-born Ramón, with his dashing good looks, possessed a fine, if accented, speaking voice and could sing as well (his version of “Pagan Love Song” became a recording hit). His career continued to thrive well into the 1930s. As he grew older and acting styles changed, however, the roles grew fewer. Nevertheless, Ramón continued to work occasionally on TV during the 1960s. But then, on Halloween eve in 1968, he was murdered brutally in his Spanish-style Hollywood Hills home on Laurel Canyon Drive. The horrific bludgeoning of the former star gave Novarro the kind of headlines he had not had since he starred in the silent Biblical epic Ben-Hur (1925).
He was born Ramón Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico, in 1899, 1 of 13 children of a well-to-do dentist. The closely knit family later moved to Mexico City to flee the revolution that had begun in Durango in 1911. They relocated again, to Los Angeles, in 1917. When the father became gravely ill, Ramón became the head of the strongly Catholic household. Scrambling for an income, Ramón held assorted jobs: piano teacher, grocery store clerk, theater usher, and busboy at the Alexandria Hotel—all the while trying for an entertainment career (especially in the field of opera). For a while, Ramón was a café singer, worked as an extra in numerous films, and performed in a modernistic vaudeville ballet troupe. Eventually, he began winning more noticeable screen parts. He did a dance in Mack Sennett’s A Small Town Idol (1921), clad only in a loincloth and turban. He also had a bit part in the large-scale The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), starring Rudolph Valentino and directed by Rex Ingram. Ramon’s professional break came when Ingram cast him as the swashbuckling, suave villain of The Prisoner of Zenda (1922). The feature was a hit, and, with his roles in Scaramouche (1923) and The Arab (1924), Novarro was dubbed the screen’s newest Latin lover. Ironically, although Novarro was the idol of millions of women, he preferred the company of men.
In 1925, Novarro was earning $1,000 a week at MGM and was given the lead in their upcoming big-budgeted epic, Ben-Hur. It was the zenith of Ramon’s career. He built a 17-room mansion so that his parents and several of his brothers and sisters could come to live with him. For a while, he thought of leaving pictures to become an opera star or a Jesuit priest, but the talkie revolution allowed him to both act and sing, letting him expand his talents without leaving his profession. Ramón made a successful first talkie, the musical Devil May Care (1929), and his screen career continued with roles opposite Greta Garbo (Mata Hari, 1931) and Myrna Loy (The Barbarian, 1934).
Growing very restless with the changing Hollywood scene (as restless as MGM was becoming with him), Novarro went on a stage tour with his sister Carmen in Europe and South America. Once his MGM contract ran out, he directed and produced a Spanish-language feature in Los Angeles. He later tried a movie comeback (The Sheik Steps Out, 1937), but the result was more burlesque than the intended satire.
The 1940s found Ramón alternating between making an occasional motion picture abroad, staying at his 50-acre ranch near San Diego, touring in summer stock, and (late in the decade), doing character parts in Hollywood features. His final movie role was in Heller in Pink Tights (1960), although he made infrequent TV appearances throughout the 1960s.
By the late 1960s, the gray-haired Novarro was approaching 70. This devout Catholic, who went through periods of depression and guilt over his homosexuality, lived a quiet existence in his Hollywood Hills home. Attended by his longtime friend and secretary, Edward Weber, Ramón found distraction in alcohol (he had several drunk-driving arrests) and the services of male hustlers.
Ramón Novarro (left) at the height of his fame as the star of
the silent film The Student Prince (1927). Character actor Jean Hersholt shares the scene.
Courtesy of JC Archives
On the morning of October 31, 1968, Weber summoned the police to Novarro’s home. They found the living room in a shambles and the bedroom a bloodbath. The former star was lying dead on his king-sized bed, nude, his body bruised from head to toe. His ankles and wrists were tied with an electric cord and there was a zigzag mark (perhaps an “N” or “Z”) on his neck. On the mirror was scrawled “Us girls are better than fagits.” A broken black cane had been placed across the actor’s legs. Underneath the bloody corpse, the police noted the name “Larry” scribbled in large letters on the sheet. (The name “Larry” was also found written on a telephone pad nearby.) In a neighbor’s yard, they found a heap of bloody clothing.
It turned out that the Larry referred to had known Novarro. Larry had told his 22-year-old brother-in-law, Paul Ferguson (from Chicago) the rumor that Ramón had $5,000 in cash stashed in his house—actually, that was the sum the celebrity had spent on redecorating his music room. Paul was on the loose in Hollywood, having been dumped by his wife and in need of money. Joined by his 17-year-old brother, Tom, Paul arranged for a rendezvous for pay at Novarro’s house. When they arrived around 5:30 P.M., the three began drinking. Weber came to the house with cigarettes for Novarro at 6:00 P.M. But after giving his employer the package at the door, he left without going into the house.
When drunk, Paul—who despised himself whenever he hustled—became extremely violent. In the bedroom, when Novarro reportedly tried to sodomize him, Paul began to beat the nude actor viciously. Tom then dragged the unconscious Novarro to the shower to wash off the blood. Novarro briefly regained consciousness, infuriating the drunken Paul, who then smashed the riding cane over the actor’s head and shoulders. Novarro fell to the floor and, shortly thereafter, suffocated in his own blood. The brothers dragged his body to the bedroom and tied it to the bed in a clumsy attempt to make it look like a woman had been with Novarro and then murdered him. It was Paul who had written Larry’s name on the sheet and the notepad and had scribbled the mirror message. They even placed a condom in the dead man’s hand. The only money they found in Novarro’s house was $45. The young men tore off their bloody clothes, put on others taken from Ramon’s closet, and, while fleeing, flung their blood-soaked clothing over a fence into the neighbor’s yard.
With the notoriety from his murder, more than one thousand people paraded by Novarro’s open coffin on November 4, 1968, the day of his funeral. He was buried in a simple family grave at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.
In following up clues, the police checked a 48-minute phone call that had been made on the murder night from Novarro’s house to Chicago, and found that it had been made by Tom Ferguson. With that and other evidence (including fingerprints at the scene of the crime), the police arrested the brothers in Bell Gardens (near Los Angeles) on November 6, 1968. At their July 1969 trial, which lasted for six and a half weeks, the Ferguson brothers were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Eight years later, however, the 25-year-old Tom was granted an early parole. In short order, he returned to prison for the rape of a 54-year-old woman. He is scheduled to be released in 2001. Paul Ferguson served several years behind bars and then was released. He too is now back in prison in Missouri, also for rape.
Rebecca Schaeffer
November 6, 1967–July 18, 1989
Other Hollywood personalities have been murdered over the decades, but the senseless shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989 stirred the public to more than the usual amount of sympathy and outrage. Perhaps it was because the promising actress was 21, very beautiful, and headed for great things; her assassin was a crazed fan who had been stalking her for years, obsessed by his unrequited love for her.
Rebecca was born in 1967 in Eugene, Oregon, the only child of a psychologist and a writer. As a child growing up in Portland, she was active in the local synagogue and thought briefly of becoming a rabbi. By age 14, she was modeling and considering an acting career. When a TV movie (Quarter-back Princess, 1983) was shot on location in McMinnville, Oregon, she won a tiny role. At age 16, Rebecca took off on her own for New York City. She attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, and in 1984, she had a small continuing role on the soap opera One Life to Live. She then went to Japan to model—there, her relatively short height (five feet, seven inches) wouldn’t be an obstacle. Upon returning to New York, she was cast by Woody Allen in a brief part in Radio Days (1987).
Rebecca became a prime-time TV personality when she was cast as Pam Dawber’s 16-year-old sister in My Sister Sam (1986–88). With her career ascending, she made the sex farce Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989), went to Italy for the two-part TV movie Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990), and back in the United States was directed by Dyan Cannon in the movie The End of Innocence (1990).
On Tuesday, July 18, 1989, at 10:15 A.M., Rebecca was at her apartment, at 120 North Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood, about to leave for an audition for The Godfather, Part III (1990). She was going to read for director Francis Ford Coppola. The doorbell rang, and because the intercom system was broken, Rebecca answered the ring in person. Dressed in a black bathrobe, she opened the glass security door to the two-story apartment building. After talking briefly with the visitor, she went back inside when he left. He soon rang the bell again, however. Rebecca came down and asked him to leave, but when she tried to end the conversation, the young man aimed a handgun at her. The shot hit her in the chest and she collapsed. Paramedics rushed her to nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
On July 22, 1989, Rebecca was buried at Ahavai Sholom Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. Rabbi Joshua Stampfer eulogized that Rebecca “brought in her short life more joy to more people than most of us achieve in a lifetime.” Among the two hundred people attending the service were Pam Dawber and her husband, actor Mark Harmon. As the casket was lowered into the ground, Rebecca’s father, Benson, grieved, “Oh Rebecca. We’re always thinking of you. We will always think of you.” Then, he and other relatives each tossed a ceremonial shovel full of dirt into the grave. Schaeffer’s boyfriend, Bradley Silberling, and her best friend, Barbara Lusch, gave everyone copies of Schaeffer’s poems (which they had typed the night before).
Within a short time after Rebecca’s murder, the Los Angeles police had compiled information about a “bookish-looking” suspect whom neighbors had observed in front of Schaeffer’s apartment building several hours before the shooting. The man had been holding up a picture of Schaeffer and asking passersby where she lived. After the murder, the suspect had fled the scene. The next day, on July 19, 1989, police in Tucson, Arizona, detained 19-year-old Robert John Bardo for creating a disturbance on public streets. During his arrest, he made statements that linked him to the Schaeffer case.
As the facts were pieced together, it became evident that Bardo, a one-time Tucson janitor and fast-food restaurant worker, had all but worshiped Rebecca. He had begun writing fan letters to her in 1987. (Years earlier, he had been obsessed with Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old Maine girl who gained fame by writing to the premier of Russia. Bardo had traveled to Manchester, Maine, to meet her, but had been prevented by police, who detained him as a runaway minor.) Bardo received an autographed picture of Rebecca in response to writing her in care of My Sister Sam; he interpreted that as evidence of a special rapport existing between himself and the actress. In late June of 1989, Bardo paid a Tucson detective agency $250 to trace Rebecca’s whereabouts (accomplished through a quick search of the California Department of Motor Vehicles database).
Now that he had her address, Bardo quit his job in Tucson and took a bus to Los Angeles. He showed up one day at the Burbank Studios with a five-foot-tall teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers for Schaeffer. A security guard at the front gate tried to dissuade the young man from continuing his quest. Next, with a gun that Bardo’
s brother had purchased for him (and which he had then taken without permission), Bardo arrived at Schaeffer’s building. He talked briefly with her, they shook hands and he left. Having forgotten to give his idol a letter and a compact disc he had for her, he returned and rang the bell again. When she politely tried to get him to leave by saying, “I don’t have much time,” he became offended and pulled the .357 Magnum gun from his shopping bag. While she screamed, “Why? Why?” Bardo fired, and then ran away. He later testified in court that he “almost had a heart attack” when he learned that night on TV that Rebecca was dead.
In his September 1991 trial in Los Angeles, it was determined that the defendant, who had a history of mental problems, suffered from schizophrenia. But it was ruled that he was not legally insane at the time of the killing. The Superior Court judge found Bardo guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of murder in “special circumstances” (lying in wait to kill the actress). Because Bardo had waived the right to a jury, the death sentence was not an option; instead, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Rebecca’s parents had attended each day of the trial. After the verdict was read, Mr. Schaeffer stated outside the courtroom, “Rebecca will not come back to us as a result of the verdict, but I feel that justice was done.”
One of the repercussions of Rebecca’s tragic death was that a California law was passed restricting public access to Department of Motor Vehicle information. Using her daughter’s needless death as an example, Mrs. Schaeffer became a vocal advocate of handgun control laws nationwide. The Los Angeles Police Department also formed a Threat Management Unit to surveil and track suspected stalkers.
The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols Page 19
