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

by Parish, James Robert

  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.

  George Burns

  [Nathan Birnbaum]

  January 20, 1896–March 9, 1996

  Gracie Allen

  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.”

  John Candy

  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!

  Lou Costello

  [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.)