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

by Parish, James Robert

  By 1971 the near-manic Angeli, who had already attempted suicide four times, was reportedly broke. Her sister Marisa (and Marisa’s French movie-star husband Jean-Pierre Aumont) came to her rescue. Pier confessed, “It would be better if I was already dead. I can’t go on anymore.” In midyear, she returned to Hollywood, where Debbie Reynolds—her pal from their MGM studio years—tried to help her find work.

  On September 10, 1971, the 39-year-old Pier died from an overdose of barbiturates in the Beverly Hills apartment that she was sharing with drama coach Helena Correll. Unbeknownst to the actress, she had just been approved for a guest role on the Western TV series Bonanza. Debbie Reynolds offered to adopt Angeli’s younger son, who was then attending private school in London. Pier’s mother, however, announced angrily, “The boy is mine.”

  In the end, the volatile Pier had two great regrets. One was not being given the major screen roles she most coveted: the carnival girl’s role in Lili (made in 1953 and starring Leslie Caron) and that of Rima, the “Bird Girl,” in Green Mansions (made in 1959 with Audrey Hepburn). Her other regret was the loss of her beloved, James Dean.

  Pedro Armendariz

  May 9, 1912–June 18, 1963

  Eccentric producer Howard Hughes’s movie The Conqueror (1956) proved to be a bomb, in so many senses of that word. The costume epic—featuring John Wayne as the twelfth-century Mongol emperor Genghis Khan—was a ludicrous historical saga filled with atrocious dialogue; it was severely panned by critics. But the movie wreaked much more lasting devastation on nearly half of its cast and crew. It had been shot in St. George, Utah, close to the Nevada border and even closer to the location where the U.S. government was then conducting A-bomb testing. One blast (nicknamed “Dirty Harry”) that registered 32.4 kilotons exploded directly over St. George, contaminating the entire locale. Since then, nearly half of the 220 people who worked on The Conqueror have developed some form of cancer; among the ones who died are John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Dick Powell.

  Their Conqueror costar Pedro Armendariz had become a major stage and film celebrity in his native Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s, appreciated for his strong presence on camera. The swarthy, versatile actor came to Hollywood in the mid-1940s, where he appeared in pictures such as John Ford’s The Fugitive (1947). Failing to break out of his ethnic stereotype, the mustachioed Armendariz returned to his homeland, occasionally traveling to Europe or back to Hollywood for screen assignments. He made several movies with his pal John Wayne: Fort Apache (1948), Three Godfathers (1948), and lastly, The Conqueror.

  In early 1963 Armendariz was diagnosed as having lymph cancer. His scenes as Karim Bey in the new James Bond thriller, From Russia with Love (1964), were rushed to completion. That June, he was admitted to UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles with an advanced case of neck cancer. On June 18, 1963, Armendariz shot himself with a gun he had snuck into his hospital room. He was survived by his wife, two daughters, and son, Pedro Armendariz Jr., who would also become an actor.

  Don “Red” Barry

  [Donald Barry de Acosta]

  January 11, 1911–July 17, 1980

  Don Barry may have been a compact actor, but he packed a lot of living into his tumultuous 69 years. Born in Houston, Texas, he was a high school athlete and was selected for the Texas All-Stars in 1929, having already attended the Texas School of Mines. He migrated to Los Angeles, where he worked briefly for an ad agency until a fling at summer stock led him into an acting career. Barry played a high school student in Cecil B. DeMille’s drama This Day and Age (1933). After touring the hinterlands in Tobacco Road, Barry made his official movie debut in Night Waitress (1936). His breakthrough performances occurred in 1939—he appeared in Only Angels Have Wings and played a fugitive in Wyoming Outlaw, a part of The Three Mesquiteers series.

  In 1940, the feisty Don—who bore a striking facial resemblance to James Cagney—nabbed the title role in The Adventures of Red Ryder. (Although Barry did not have red hair, his gig as the comic-strip hero earned him the professional nickname of “Red.”) The 12-chapter Western serial was so popular that he starred in several more entries. By 1942 Barry had his own Western series at Republic Pictures, often appearing as the “Tulsa Kid” or the “Cyclone Kid.” For the next three years, he was voted one of the top 10 Western stars in the Motion Picture Herald’s annual poll.

  Don “Red” Barry pondering trinkets in Red Desert (1949).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Wanting more demanding assignments, Barry joined Robert L. Lippert’s budget moviemaking company in 1949; he frequently produced and occasionally scripted his own pictures. In 1951 he moved over to TV work. It was not until three years later that Barry returned to filmmaking, with the privately financed but unsuccessful Jesse James’ Women. Don continued to play supporting roles in pictures and joined the cast of the TV series Sugarfoot in the late 1950s. He played a police detective on television’s Surfside Six (1960–61) and was Mr. Gallo on the series Mr. Novak (1963–64). He made three Westerns for Twentieth Century-Fox in 1965, one of which—Convict Stage—he also scripted. Thereafter, Barry continued in supporting roles in film and on TV. He made guest appearances, too, at Western-movie-buff conventions.

  The feisty, short-statured Barry was notorious for being one of Hollywood’s principal ladies’ men. Despite being married three times (once to actress Peggy Stewart), he dated some of Hollywood’s reigning beauties, including Joan Crawford, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sheridan. In 1956, Barry made headlines when he and his I’ll Cry Tomorrow costar, Susan Hayward, were caught together one early morning at his home by his then-girlfriend, starlet Jill Jarmyn.

  By 1980 Barry was separated from his latest wife, Peggy Stewart, the mother of his two children. Late on the evening of July 17, 1980, the police were summoned to his modest North Hollywood, California, home, where he and Peggy were having a domestic scuffle. Once they thought the situation was under control, the police started to return to their squad car, when Barry rushed out of the house wielding a .38-caliber revolver. He shot himself in the head before the officers could stop him. He was declared dead at 10:00 P.M. that night at nearby Riverside Hospital. His final film, Back Roads (starring Sally Field), was released in March 1981.

  Scotty Beckett

  October 4, 1929–May 10, 1968

  Professional success can be difficult at any age; but it is really rough on child actors—especially when they cannot duplicate their former popularity as adults. Becoming a has-been at age 50 is bad enough; to do so in one’s 20s is a far worse fate.

  Scotty was born in Oakland, California, and moved to Los Angeles with his parents when he was three. He made his screen debut at age four in Gallant Lady (1933), and the next year, producer Hal Roach signed him to costar in the ongoing Our Gang series of movie shorts. Undeniably cute, Beckett projected a wistful look in his trademark oversized turtleneck sweater and askew baseball cap. He left the Our Gang frolics in late 1935 when his parents and manager decided he should pursue more dramatic movie roles. In his film assignments, Scotty often played the movie’s hero as a youth or the leading man’s son. He eventually attended Los Angeles High School and then did some stage work, was heard on radio in The Life of Riley, and had an on-screen role in The Jolson Story (1946). Scotty also costarred in A Date with Judy (1948)—in tandem with Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Powell—and the stark World War II drama Battleground (1949).

  Although he appeared on-screen in The Happy Years (1950), his off-camera life had become anything but happy. In 1948, Scotty was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. The next year he married tennis star Beverly Baker, but their marriage fell apart within months. (A longer-lasting second marriage resulted in a son, Scott Jr.) In 1954 Beckett was in the news again, first for carrying a concealed weapon and then for passing a bad check. That same year he was cast as the sidekick in the syndicated sci-fi TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, although he was out of the cast before the series wrapped in 1955.


  Piper Laurie and Scotty Beckett embrace for the cameras in a publicity pose for Louisa (1950).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  The final decade of Scotty’s life was the chronicle of an increasingly desperate man involved with drugs, divorces, violence, and arrests. In 1962 he slit his wrists, but recovered. He failed in his efforts to start up a new career selling cars or real estate, or to complete his school studies and become a physician. On May 10, 1968, Scotty admitted himself to a Hollywood rest home to receive treatment for a severe beating he had endured. Just two days later he was dead. Although a bottle of barbiturates and a farewell note were found nearby, the coroner refused to state a specific cause of death.

  Oddly enough, Scotty’s last TV work had been on an episode of The George Sanders Mystery Theatre entitled “The Night I Died.”

  Clara Blandick

  June 4, 1880–April 15, 1962

  To movie-lovers everywhere, she will always remain the wise, kindly Auntie Em of The Wizard of Oz (1939). In film history, however, Clara Blandick has earned another special footnote—for committing suicide.

  Born aboard a U.S. ship harbored in Hong Kong, Clara grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She made her acting debut there with E. H. Sothern in a stage production of Richard Lovelace. On Broadway, she appeared in the 1903 production of The Christian. Beginning in 1908, Clara made a few forays into silent feature films, but on the whole, the petite, dainty performer much preferred playing ingenues on the stage.

  When talkies came into vogue, Clara returned to moviemaking. She proved to be a very reliable character performer, useful for her sturdy, Midwestern looks. She played Aunt Polly in both Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931), and a score of other no-nonsense women throughout the 1930s. Clara won out over several others for the plum assignment of Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz and continued her profitable career into the next decade with roles in One Foot in Heaven (1941), A Stolen Life (1946), and Life with Father (1947). Her final films were Love That Brute (1950), with Paul Douglas, and Keys to the City (1950), with Clark Gable and Loretta Young. Clara retired from the acting profession in 1952.

  Robert Homans, Broderick O’Farrell, and Hale Hamilton try to restore order for Clara Blandick in The Drums of Jeopardy (1931).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  By 1962, the 81-year-old Clara was suffering from failing eyesight and increasingly crippling, painful arthritis. To avoid further agony, she decided to terminate her life. On April 15, 1962, she went to the beauty parlor to have her hair done and then returned to her modest Hollywood hotel apartment. She wrote the following note:

  * * *

  I am now about to make the great adventure. I cannot endure this agonizing pain any longer. It is all over my body. Neither can I face the impending blindness. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.

  * * *

  Dressed in a royal blue bathrobe for the “occasion,” and surrounded by memorabilia from her lengthy career, Clara swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. To ensure that she would expire, she fastened a plastic bag over her head, and then lay down to wait for death.

  What a pathetic end for the sturdy, no-nonsense Auntie Em.

  John Bowers

  December 25, 1899–November 17, 1936

  Although it was never officially conceded, it has long been accepted in Hollywood lore that the drowning death of the character Norman Maine in the classic movie A Star Is Born (1937) was based on the heartbreaking end of handsome actor John Bowers.

  John was born in Garrett, Indiana, and began in films in 1914 as a teenager. By the early 1920s he was an established (if not famous) leading man, playing opposite some of Hollywood’s loveliest actresses in silent pictures such as Roads of Destiny (1921), Lorna Doone (1922), and Divorce (1923). He costarred with the gorgeous brunette Marguerite de la Motte in Richard, the Lion-Hearted (1923) and What a Wife Learned (1923)—they got married in real life.

  Although Bowers made seven features in 1927, Hollywood’s transition to talkies nearly halted his career. In 1929, John had supporting roles in Skin Deep and Say It with Songs, then nothing for two years. In 1931, he reemerged on-screen for the budget Western Mounted Fury.

  By 1932, Bowers was a has-been who was quickly slipping into alcoholism. Now divorced, he ended his troubled life after attending a party one evening in November 1936 by walking into the Pacific Ocean and deliberately letting himself drown. His finish was said to have been witnessed by the famed journalist and scriptwriter Adela Rogers St. John, paving the way for its use in the plotline of A Star Is Born.

  Charles Boyer

  August 28, 1897–August 26, 1978

  Despite film lore, as Pepe Le Moko in Algiers (1938), he never said in the movie, “Come with me to ze Casbah.” But for years thereafter, female filmgoers would have followed the polished, gentlemanly Charles Boyer anywhere. But his sizzling, sophisticated screen personification of the “great lover” was based more on illusion than reality: he was not tall (five feet, six inches), he was somewhat bald (he always wore a toupee in his movies), and his stomach generally protruded. Despite his physical limitations, Boyer was indelible on camera as the Gallic lover with deep-set, brooding eyes and an engaging French accent.

  Boyer was born in Figeac in southwest France, the son of a farm machinery dealer. He began his acting career in school productions. Charles also used his dad’s granary as a theater to perform his own plays. Later, he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and drama at the Paris Conservatory. Charles made his stage debut in Paris in Les Jardins des Marcie (1920); his motion picture debut, L’Homme du Large, was released the same year. Not considered especially photogenic by French moviemakers, he accepted a bid from MGM to relocate to Hollywood and make French versions of English-language screen hits to be shown in Europe. (This was the era before dubbing was used.) In 1932, Boyer made his first major film in English, playing opposite Claudette Colbert in The Man from Yesterday. After a disappointingly small role in Jean Harlow’s Red-Headed Woman (1932), he returned to France, convinced he had no Hollywood future.

  After doing more plays and pictures in his homeland, Boyer was brought back to the States by Fox Films to be the “new Valentino.” He soon gravitated to other studios, and eventually signed a new contract with producer Walter Wanger. Charles made a name for himself opposite Claudette Colbert as the intense physician in Private Worlds (1935). Thereafter, he alternated between making movies in Europe and in America. In Hollywood, he gained acclaim—and Oscar nominations—for Conquest (1937, with Greta Garbo), Algiers (1938, with Hedy Lamarr), and Gaslight (1944, with Ingrid Bergman). Charles won a special Oscar in 1942 for his “progressive cultural achievement in establishing the French Research Foundation in Los Angeles as a source of reference for the Hollywood motion picture industry.”

  In the late 1940s, the freelancing Boyer reteamed with Ingrid Bergman for Arch of Triumph (1948). After it flopped, he abandoned Hollywood. When he returned again to the screen a few years later, it was as a character star (after all, he was now in his 50s), playing people of various nationalities and professions. Boyer united with Dick Powell, David Niven, and Ida Lupino to form TV’s Four Star Playhouse in the early 1950s. He received his fourth and final Oscar nomination for Fanny (1961). During this period, Charles appeared on Broadway in Kind Sir (1953, with Mary Martin), The Marriage-Go-Round (1958, with Claudette Colbert), and Lord Pengo (1963).

  Boyer made his London stage debut in Man and Boy (1964), and continued to accept character leads—often as the roué—in movie productions everywhere. He revisited Hollywood for the gloomy musical version of Lost Horizon (1973), playing a religious leader—the high lama—with great dignity. Back in Europe, he appeared in Stavisky (1974), and costarred with Liza Minnelli in A Matter of Time (1976), his final picture.

  Charles Boyer, the veteran continental charmer, in the 1950s.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Charles had married the British-born actress Patricia Paterson on February 14, 19
34. They had an extremely happy marriage, and their son Michael Charles was born on December 10, 1943. Unfortunately, in September 1965 at the age of 21, Michael committed suicide by shooting himself. His death was a grief the parents could never overcome.

  In the late 1970s, the Boyers were living mostly in Europe. When Pat developed cancer, the couple relocated to a ranch in Paradise Valley (a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona), where she could undergo special medical treatment. She died on August 24, 1978, at the age of 67. Boyer was highly distraught at her death; two days later, he was found unconscious in his home, having taken an overdose of Seconal. He died at a Phoenix hospital that day. On what would have been his 81st birthday, Boyer was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. His grave (in the St. Ann section) is next to his wife’s and that of their son.

  Capucine

  [Germaine Lefebvre]

  January 6, 1931–March 17, 1990

  For the longest time there were two intriguing questions about this chic, enigmatic French model turned actress. First, was she really a transsexual, as the international rumor mill long insisted? (The answer appears to be no, although she was probably bisexual.) And second, how could her professional connections be strong enough to overcome her wooden performances and keep getting her cast in films? (There would seem to be no accounting for the power of physical attraction.) Then, at age 59, the five-foot, seven-inch, long-limbed Capucine added a brand-new wrinkle to her strange career. She plunged to her death from her eighth-floor apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, leaving her admirers with a third question: Why?