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

by Parish, James Robert

  Contributing to Gilda’s peace of mind during her last years was her 1989 book, It’s Always Something. (She would also record an abridged audio version.) Originally, Gilda had intended to write about her life as an artist and housewife, but instead she wrote of her struggle against cancer. On the last pages of the insightful book, Gilda says, “I wanted to be able to write on the book jacket ‘her triumph over cancer.’... I wanted a perfect ending. . . . Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.”

  On Saturday, May 20, 1989, Gilda Radner passed away in Los Angeles. (She would be buried at Long Ridge Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.) That night, on Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin was host. He showed a 1978 clip of himself and Gilda spoofing a movie-musical number. At the end of the segment, he said tearfully, “Gilda, we miss you.”

  Following Radner’s death, Gene Wilder led an active campaign to raise public awareness of ovarian cancer and helped to found Gilda’s Club, a support network for victims of the disease. It has eight chapters in the United States and international branches in the works. In 1991, Wilder married Karen Webb, a speech pathologist. Then in 1999, not long after he had said that after a decade he didn’t want to discuss the topic of cancer anymore, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After a course of chemotherapy, he underwent a grueling stem-cell replacement procedure. Said actor and friend Mandy Patinkin: “He’ll do fine. Attitude is everything. He has the gift of laughter.”

  Kate Smith

  [Kathryn Elizabeth Smith]

  May 1, 1907–June 17, 1986

  For those who grew up during her lengthy heyday, singer Kate Smith symbolized everything that was good about America. Her voice was loud and pure and her patriotic image was all apple pie. If she was physically oversized—five feet, ten inches and well over 250 pounds—so was her talent. Throughout her career, comedians made fun of her weight, but no one could dispute Kate’s vocal range and ability. (Her singing remained constantly on pitch throughout 50 years of performing.) Kate was best known for her trademark songs “When the Moon Comes over the Mountain” and “God Bless America,” but she was equally at ease with 1960s pop tunes, such as “The Impossible Dream” and “More.” Like Al Jolson and Judy Garland, Smith was a distinctly American legend, the kind we used to take for granted but can’t seem to create anymore.

  Kate was born in 1907 in Washington, D.C., the second of two daughters born to the owner of an independent news dealership. It was in the nation’s capital that Kate had her first performing engagements. By the time she was a teenager Kate was already quite heavy, but she was an extremely nimble dancer. To please her parents, she trained as a nurse, but quit after a year. A local vaudeville job led to her being cast in Honeymoon Lane (1926) on Broadway. By 1930, she had been on radio, made a movie short, and had been recording for four years. She had a popular success in another Broadway musical, Flying High (1930), but was unable to enjoy it. The show’s star, comedian Bert Lahr, taunted Kate mercilessly about her weight—offstage and on. It was a pain that never left her, although she later learned to laugh with her detractors.

  During the run of Flying High she met recording producer Ted Collins, who began managing her career. (Throughout their many years together, their only contract was a handshake.) It was on her radio program, Kate Smith Sings (which began in March 1931), that Kate first used “When the Moon Comes over the Mountain” as her theme song. Before long, “The Songbird of the South” had become the most popular female singer on the airwaves. Like other radio stars, she tried films—both short subjects and features. But because of her more-than-ample figure, she couldn’t be a conventional movie heroine.

  Radio and recording star Kate Smith is applauded by guests Rosalind Russell (center) and Lou Costello (far right) at the conclusion of a broadcast in the early 1940s.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Kate quickly lost interest in filmmaking, but over the next few years her popularity as a radio personality and recording star increased. In 1938, she introduced Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on her radio show. When she appeared at the White House in 1939 to sing for the King and Queen of England, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced her with, “Your Majesties, this is Kate Smith. This is America.”

  During World War II, Kate sold more than $600 million in war bonds, and her career was at a peak. She returned to films to sing “God Bless America” in This Is the Army (1943). Her hit records included “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and “The White Cliffs of Dover.” It seemed almost impossible to turn on the radio without hearing one of her programs (variety, musical, or talk). In the fall of 1950, The Kate Smith Hour debuted on TV and became a weekday afternoon staple for four years. Her Kate Smith Evening Hour aired from 1951 to 1952. She returned with another evening show in 1960. That year, Upon My Lips a Song, her second autobiography, was published. (The first, Living in a Great Big Way, had come out in 1938.) By 1963, Kate was recording for RCA Records; on November 2, 1963, she performed at Carnegie Hall.

  It was in the early 1960s that Kate’s bad times began, however. Her mother had passed away in 1962. Ted Collins died in 1964, and that year Kate fell and fractured her ankle. During her recovery, she became a Roman Catholic; in 1965, she made her first trip to Europe, visiting the Pope at the Vatican. Slimming down and boasting a more contemporary wardrobe, Kate was a guest on various TV programs ranging from Dean Martin’s show to Sonny & Cher’s. Her religious album, How Great Thou Art, became a bestseller in 1966. She tried the nightclub circuit, made TV commercials, and generated a lot of attention as the perceived good-luck charm of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team.

  Ironically, it was in 1976, the year of America’s bicentennial, that Kate’s years of serious illness began. She had started the year as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena and appeared on the Donny Marie Show, Tony Orlando Dawn, and Hollywood Squares. Her final singing TV appearance was on a two-hour special, The Stars and Stripes Show, taped in Oklahoma City and aired on June 30. She sang “God Bless America.”

  Then, in late August 1976, everything fell apart. While at her New York apartment, Kate went into insulin shock. It was the culmination of medical problems that had been building for years. (In 1974, Smith had received radiation treatment for cancer; in recent years she had been plagued with diabetes, heart fibrillation, and arthritis.) She was hospitalized first in New York, then in Lake Placid (where she had kept a summer home for years), and finally, under an alias, at a hospital in Burlington, Vermont. As time passed, it became painfully evident that her mental faculties had been permanently impaired.

  By 1979, Smith was failing badly and her family (Kate never married) had her declared mentally incompetent. Her two nieces were named estate conservators. Kate was moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to live with her sister Helena and one of her nieces. Soon the other niece and her husband appeared, and before long the two conservators were involved in a highly publicized court battle over the handling of Smith’s assets. By now, Kate’s once-sizeable estate (estimated once to have been at between $10 to $35 million) had dwindled to less than $500,000. Many of her tangible assets were sold to pay for her upkeep. Her deteriorating condition was a result of organic brain syndrome, reflecting generalized cerebral arteriosclerosis.

  On May 1, 1981, her costar from This Is the Army, President Ronald Reagan, telephoned Kate to wish her a happy birthday. She had difficulty communicating with him, but was aware of whom she was speaking to. In September 1982, in a display of bad sentimentality, the frail, wheelchair-bound Kate was pushed onstage by Bob Hope during the Emmy Awards telecast. After the audience recovered from the shock of seeing how frail this beloved institution had become, it sang “God Bless America” in her honor. Meanwhile, Kate’s family’s publicized squabble over her estate continued to drag on. In January 1986, Kate’s right leg was amputated at a Raleigh hospital. On May 9, 1986, she underwent a mas
tectomy to remove a cancerous left breast. On June 17, 1986, about 2:00 P.M., her niece Kathy was visiting with her at her house when Kate, recovering from a recent fall, just stopped breathing.

  A funeral mass was held in Raleigh on June 19, and another on June 21 in Washington, D.C., at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Because of a dispute as to where to bury the star (she wished to rest at the cemetery in Lake Placid; her family wanted her to be buried in Washington), Kate’s body was placed in a temporary vault in North Elba, New York (near the town of Lake Placid). As had become customary during Kate’s last years, yet another dispute arose. Kate had requested that she be buried in a mausoleum, but the cemetery felt it would not be appropriate, given the tenor of the other-simpler—graves. The dispute was aired publicly, and when the matter was eventually settled, a small, tasteful mausoleum was constructed at the Lake Placid Cemetery. On Friday, November 13, 1987, Kate Smith, the God Bless America Girl, was laid to rest—finally.

  Lana Turner

  [Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner]

  February 8, 1920–June 29, 1995

  In the days when movie stars were really movie stars, Lana Turner was one of the first magnitude. At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, her home base from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s, she filled a special niche among its glamorous leading ladies. The studio cast Judy Garland as the perennial girl next door; Greer Garson as the ever-so-proper valiant British girl; Joan Crawford as the earnest shopgirl, tough broad, or cynical lady; Norma Shearer as the sophisticate; Hedy Lamarr as the pouting beauty just beyond any man’s real reach—and Lana Turner as the sex kitten. Turner inherited this mantle from the studio’s late blond bombshell, Jean Harlow (1911–37). For years, Lana sashayed through film after film—she was especially good in weepy melodramas. Coiffed and gowned to look like a million dollars on camera even when wearing a “simple” wardrobe, Lana was always a dazzling mixture of petulance, teary-eyed innocence, restrained smugness, and above all, full awareness that men would do anything to please her.

  Even more quintessential to the public’s enduring image of Turner was her impulsive, self-centered, and often immature nature. MGM, like an indulgent parent, catered to her mightily over the decades. Every so often, having second thoughts about the promiscuous, willful sex kitten they had created and pampered, the studio tried to curb her more outlandish acts of defiance and impropriety. Her whimsical personality (and sometimes too much liquor) led the gorgeous Lana into and out of eight marriages to mostly marginal mates, into a huge scandal when her gangland boyfriend Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death in her home, and into demanding throughout the years to be treated like a great movie star.

  As such, the chronicle of Lana Turner’s fabulous life—at least it always seemed so to the media, who adored the rash of news stories she provided, and to her many, many fans—reads like a Cinderella story with a strong dash of daytime soap opera. And for a finale, there’s something right out of a wholesome MGM picture—a dying lady turning to God for salvation.

  Turner was born in Wallace, Idaho, in 1920 (although she later insisted that she had really been born in 1921, and MGM had changed her birthdate to 1920 to make her seem older). Her father, Virgil, was an itinerant worker from Alabama when he met Mildred Frances Cowan in Wallace. They eloped and soon became parents to Julia (nicknamed Judy). When Judy was eight, the Turners relocated to San Francisco. In mid-December 1930, Virgil Turner, after winning at an all-night craps game, was found murdered. No assailant was ever apprehended. Judy (who had been boarded out to a family in Modesto, California, so Mildred Turner could work as a beautician and have her own life) returned to live with her parent. A few years later, mother and daughter moved south to Los Angeles and Judy enrolled at nearby Hollywood High School, where the future Judge Joseph Wapner was a classmate. By now, the beautiful teenager with the long auburn hair had an amazingly adult physique that won many male admirers.

  Never much for academics, Judy frequently cut classes. It paid off! One day, while skipping typing, she was sipping a coke at the nearby Top Hat Café. Her pert figure caught the attention of Billy Wilkerson, the founder and publisher of the Hollywood Reporter. He thought she should be in pictures, so he introduced her to an agent who found the newcomer work as an extra in A Star Is Born (1937). Next, Warner Bros, producer and director Mervyn LeRoy cast Judy in They Won’t Forget (1937). One of her four scenes as a high school student in this drama called for her to slink down the street wearing a form-fitting skirt and a tight, clingy sweater. She grabbed the attention of moviegoers and LeRoy signed her to a personal contract at $50 weekly. When he moved over to MGM in 1938, he took his discovery with him. By now she was sporting bright red hair and had changed her name to Lana Turner.

  Lana made her MGM debut in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), starring Mickey Rooney. The studio began grooming her for stardom. On the set of Dancing Co-Ed (1939), Lana and her costar, the erudite 29-year-old bandleader Artie Shaw, did not get along. But that didn’t stop her from going out on a date with Shaw later on. During the course of that evening, they decided to wed. The ceremony was held in Las Vegas on February 13, 1940. But seven months later, Lana and the much-married Shaw divorced, with the Hollywood grapevine speculating that a studio-endorsed abortion had played a part in their split-up.

  Lana had a big career boost with her role in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), costarring with Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr. Another of her trio of 1941 releases was Honky Tonk, a Western starring Clark Gable. Their on-screen chemistry was palpable and led to three other MGM vehicles together.

  Through the 1940s Lana reigned near the top of MGM’s hierarchy of actors, alternating between tripe (Keep Your Powder Dry, 1945), chic drama (Weekend at the Waldorf, 1945), sexy film noir (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946), and costumed adventure (The Three Musketeers, 1948). More telling was the parade of men in her life. She wed restaurateur and aspiring actor Stephen Crane in mid-1942. Their daughter, Cheryl, was born in July 1943, and the couple divorced in April 1944. Four years later Lana exchanged wedding vows with wealthy sportsman Henry J. (Bob) Topping, mainly intrigued by the large diamond he had given her to seal the deal.

  By the early 1950s, Hollywood was changing fast, as the studios adapted to the threat of television and tried to find ways to cope with declining movie attendance. MGM had a change of high command, but Lana remained in place. Her acting hadn’t improved in years, but her wardrobe and coiffures varied from picture to picture; moviegoers who went to see Lana’s new look were never bored. Her best role, and perhaps her best performance, was in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), an “insider’s look” at Hollywood. During the 1952 Christmas holidays, Turner divorced Bob Topping. The next September, she wed hunky actor Les Barker, but that unhappy union lasted less than four years.

  After the costumed claptrap of movies like The Prodigal (1955) and Diane (1956)—in CinemaScope and color—Lana and MGM parted ways. She was now in her mid-30s, a dangerous age for a movie star whose outer beauty was her fortune. But she showed the world she still had marquee value with Peyton Place (1957), a steamy depiction of small-town New England life. She was so good in the lead that she was Oscar-nominated.

  Turner was then dating 32-year-old Johnny Stompanato, a gigolo who had ties to gangster Mickey Cohen. The novelty of being with Johnny quickly wore off, but supposedly he threatened to scar Lana for life if she tried to break up with him. They were living at 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills in April 1958, and Turner’s 14-year-old daughter was home from boarding school. On Good Friday, April 4, 1958, Lana and Johnny had a no-holds-barred fight that, according to the official version of the case, led the frightened Cheryl to rush to the kitchen, grab a butcher knife, hasten to her mother’s bedroom, and stab Stompanato. The wound killed him and the scandal rocked the world. At Cheryl’s trial, the jury brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide. Although the case was now closed, speculation as to the true facts of the event continued on the Tinseltown grapevine for years thereafter. (In his 1996 book, The
Private Diary of My Life with Lana Turner, Eric Root claims that years after the fact, Lana told him, “I killed the son-of-a-bitch, and I’d do it again!”) In the meantime, Lana earned fresh marketability in the bottom-line-obsessed Hollywood.

  Imitation of Life (1959) ushered in a new period for Turner—as queen of the lavish “woman’s picture.” The movie made a bundle, and led to such fare as Portrait in Black (1960), By Love Possessed (1961), and Madame X (1966). Racking up more off-camera marriages, Lana wed department-store scion Fred May in 1960; the union lasted two years. Husband number seven was writer Robert Eaton. He was history by 1969, and in May of that year, Lana married for the last time, to hypnotist and dietician Robert Dante. They divorced that December and Lana, now approaching 50, decided she would become a “chosen celibate . . . I am not ashamed to say that I have no desire to marry again.”

  Lana Turner scrubs the barracks as Susan Peters receives a telegram with bad news in Keep Your Powder Dry (1945).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  If Hollywood didn’t want the aging Lana on the big screen, there was always TV, where she could be a well-paid parody of her old self. She went the TV-series route in an expensive failure, The Survivors (1970).

  Lana had always feared live audiences, but she hated being out of the limelight even more. She toured in the play 40 Carats, proving to be amazingly glamorous and charming in person, and made a few more negligible movies. Her last hurrah on the small screen was her appearance as Robert Foxworth’s glamorous mother on the gilt-edged nighttime drama Falcon Crest in its 1982–83 season. Her autobiography (Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth) was published in 1982. One of her last TV appearances was as a guest on The Love Boat in 1985.