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

by Parish, James Robert

  Capucine was born into an ordinary family in Toulon, France, in 1931 (not 1933 as some sources state). As a teenager, she escaped an unpleasant home life by fleeing to Paris. There, the 19-year-old newcomer soon found work as a model, quickly graduating to modeling jobs with Parisian haute couture houses. (She became a favorite of the important couturier Hubert de Givenchy.) Next, she made her screen debut in Jacques Becker’s Les Rendez-Vous de Juillet (1949), a study of postwar youth. Capucine made a few additional French feature films, and by her mid-20s, was married to French actor Pierre Trabaud. However, when producer Charles K. Feldman “discovered” her, she was single again. The entranced Feldman declared himself her Svengali and imported her to the United States.

  As a fresh face with a powerful benefactor, the self-christened Capucine (pronounced kap-u-SEEN)—which is French for the nasturtium flower—was touted as the latest successor to the legendary Greta Garbo. She learned English and studied acting with director and actor Gregory Ratoff. Capucine was cast as Princess Carolyne in Song Without End (1960), which featured a reserved Dirk Bogarde attempting to be the great composer Franz Liszt. For many, this ponderous costume biography was indeed a “film without end.” The brave Capucine admitted that in the long process of making this cinematic bore she had honed her newfound craft, adding, “As the scenes warmed up, so did I.”

  Thereafter, she jetted back and forth between America and Europe, making movies on both continents. Among her efforts was a role as the love interest of a bordello madam (Barbara Stanwyck) in the bizarre A Walk on the Wild Side (1961). Megastar William Holden became besotted with her and left his wife, Brenda Marshall, to be with his new love. Holden and Capucine made two films together, neither of which was successful. Although eventually their romance ended and he returned to Marshall, Holden left Capucine $50,000 in his will when he died in 1981. Other loyal friends of “Cap” included superstar Audrey Hepburn and fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy.

  By the mid-1960s, Capucine was acting mostly in Europe, turning up in Fellini’s Satyricon (1969). Blake Edwards, who had used her patrician image and her surprising sense of comedic timing to satisfactory advantage in The Pink Panther (1963), brought her back to American screens in Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1984). Occasionally, the international actress returned to the United States for TV work. In 1985, Capucine was among the parade of once-famous names who popped up in a segment of TV’s Murder, She Wrote. Her final work was in 1989’s My First 40 Years.

  A few years before the end, Capucine sighed to a reporter, “I’m weary, always weary, these days. I’d like to work, but the enthusiasm is gone. But then, so are the opportunities.” In the following months she grew even more depressed. On March 17, 1990, broke and despairing, she jumped from the window of her apartment. Her only known survivors were her three cats. The American press took relatively scant notice of Capucine’s sad finale, but the European press was more caring in their media coverage. Capucine’s body was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the woods by her former employer, de Givenchy.

  One year after the actress’s tragic end, her last lover—a younger man with whom she had lived happily in Paris until she forced him to leave her and find a younger amour- committed suicide himself. And reinforcing the alluring power Capucine had over men, her ex-husband, Pierre Trabaud, stated in an American TV documentary in 1999 that he loved her more at that point than when they had been wed.

  Dorothy Dandridge

  November 9, 1922–September 8, 1965

  During the first half of the twentieth century in North America, show business was one of the few areas in which African Americans were allowed to excel. But even in the show-business arena, it was difficult for a black star to find leading roles, especially in mainstream motion pictures. One of the many determined entertainers who fought to break through this bias was the sultry, light-skinned Dorothy Dandridge. The professional heartbreaks she sustained while trying to crash the color line would haunt her to the end of her relatively short existence. (A graphic depiction of Dorothy’s tormented but groundbreaking life would earn an Emmy Award for Halle Berry in the 1999 made-for-cable movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.)

  By the time Dorothy was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, her father had vanished. She was raised by her mother, actress Ruby Dandridge. At a very early age, she and her older sister Vivian—billed as “The Wonderful Children”—performed before local church and school groups; they soon were touring. In the early 1930s, Mrs. Dandridge took her children to Los Angeles. Dorothy dropped out of high school when she began getting screen roles, although they were mostly background parts.

  With Etta Jones added to their act, Dorothy and Vivian performed as the Dandridge Sisters Trio. By now, Ruby Dandridge herself was gaining a foothold in movies (playing domestics) and asked her lover, a talented musician named Geneva “Neva” Williams, to chaperone her girls when they toured. Always idealistic and shy, Dorothy was traumatized one night when she returned home from a date and the hostile, domineering Neva accused her of sexual promiscuity. To determine if the girl was still a virgin, she tore off Dorothy’s dress and probed inside the horrified girl with her finger. The nightmarish situation left Dandridge frigid for years thereafter.

  In the late 1930s, while performing with Jimmy Lunceford’s band at the Cotton Club in New York City’s Harlem, Dorothy met Harold Nicholas, part of the very popular Nicholas Brothers dance act and quite a ladies’ man. Dorothy and Nicholas began to date, and their romance continued when they both were cast in Sun Valley Serenade (1941) back in Hollywood. They married in 1942 and their daughter, Harolyn, was born the next year. (The infant was braindamaged, a malady for which Dandridge felt responsible and never forgave herself.) Meanwhile, Dorothy continued to gain small parts in movies.

  Dandridge and Nicholas divorced in the late 1940s. She took acting lessons, and through the guidance of musician Phil Moore (who became a romantic interest as well), she emerged a confident, sexy chanteuse. Still anxious to make a breakthrough in major studio movies, she accepted the role of an erotic jungle princess in Tarzan’s Peril (1951) and played a sports player’s wife in The Harlem Globetrotters (1951). With singing engagements at increasingly posh East and West Coast nightclubs, Dorothy’s popularity grew; she was soon earning $3,500 a week for her nightclub work. MGM cast her as a dedicated schoolteacher in Bright Road (1953), and she was finally able to reveal dramatic talent. While on a singing engagement in Cleveland, she met her father, Cyril Dandridge, for the first and only time. From this meeting, she learned she was one-quarter white.

  A young Dorothy Dandridge (second from right) with the Dandridge Sisters Trio and John Howard in Easy to Take (1936). Courtesy of JC Archives

  Dorothy campaigned hard to earn the seductive title role in Carmen Jones (1954), opposite her Bright Road costar, Harry Belafonte. But once she had won the battle, she was overwhelmed by self-doubt. A constant perfectionist who always strove to please others, Dorothy still had little faith in herself. Her fears were reinforced when the film’s autocratic director (Otto Preminger) hired a young opera student, Marilyn Horne, to dub Dandridge’s voice for the difficult score. Nevertheless, Dorothy was Oscar-nominated in the Best Actress category (a first for an African-American) for her fiery performance, and Twentieth Century-Fox signed her to a nonexclusive contract. She seemed on the verge of satisfying all her professional ambitions.

  On-screen, Dorothy embarked on an interracial romance in Island in the Sun (1957) and portrayed a mixed-race woman in Tamango (1959). Offscreen, she won a lawsuit against Confidential magazine for an article it published about her “scandalous” sex life. Dorothy returned to screen musicals with Porgy and Bess (1959), directed by her mentor, tormentor, and former lover, Otto Preminger. That year, in another marital error, she wed white restaurateur Jack Denison.

  By the early 1960s Dorothy’s screen career had stalled because of the lack of available roles for a black leading woman. Her miserable,
costly marriage ended in divorce in 1962. Unable to cope with her growing frustrations, she began drinking heavily. When she could no longer afford to keep her mentally disabled daughter in a private hospital, Dorothy had to commit her to the Camarillo State Hospital.

  Dorothy tried to revive her career, but her emotional and physical health had been depleted by her ongoing reliance on liquor and sleeping pills. In April 1963 she declared bankruptcy, making public just how bad her life had become. With the assistance of her one-time manager, Earl Mills, she straightened out and made a few singing engagements. One was as Julie in a summer-stock edition of Show Boat with Kathryn Grayson.

  In mid-September 1965, Dorothy was slated to appear at Manhattan’s Basin Street East. “I’m going to set New York on their ears,” she insisted of her comeback nightclub engagement. Meanwhile, she had been offered two new film projects in Mexico. The day before she went south of the border to discuss the contracts, Dorothy twisted her ankle on the steps of a local gym, causing herself considerable pain. As soon as she returned from Mexico on September 7, she consulted a Los Angeles physician, who found that she had a minor fracture. He arranged for her to return the following day to have a small plaster cast applied to the ankle.

  That evening, Dorothy packed for the flight to the East Coast and chatted with her mother on the phone. The next morning, at 7:15 A.M., she called Earl Mills, asking him to have the hospital appointment postponed for a few hours. “I’ll sleep for a while and I’ll be fine.” With those words, she hung up.

  Later that morning, Mills could not reach Dorothy by phone. He drove to her West Hollywood apartment, but there was no answer when he rang her doorbell. He left, but returned at 2:00 P.M. Now worried, he forced his way into her place, where he found Dorothy lying on the bathroom floor. She was naked except for a scarf wrapped around her head. When the ambulance arrived, the medics confirmed that she had been dead for approximately two hours.

  In searching the apartment, Mills found a note addressed to “whomever discovers me.” The paper read:

  * * *

  In case of my death. Don’t, remove anything I have on—scarf, gown, or underwear. Cremate me right away. If I have anything—money, furniture, get it to my mother Ruby Dandridge. She will know what to do.

  Dorothy Dandridge

  * * *

  The L.A. coroner’s office concluded initially that Dorothy had died of an embolism, which had occurred when fatty bits dislodged from the bone marrow in her fractured right foot had traveled through her bloodstream and cut off the blood flow to her lungs and brain. A few weeks later, a new medical finding was released. Further study of tissue samples revealed that Dorothy had overdosed on Tofranil, an antidepressant that a doctor had prescribed for her. Because of the career upswing Dorothy was enjoying at the time of her death, a psychiatric team refused to conclude definitely that she was a suicide victim. The case remains unresolved.

  A funeral service was held at the Little Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. (Among those in attendance was actor Peter Lawford, a one-time lover.) Dorothy’s cremated body was interred at Forest Lawn in the Freedom Mausoleum’s Heritage Hall, in the Columbarium of Victory.

  Dandridge had died at age 42 with only a few dollars in her bank account. It was a melancholy finale for a beautiful talent who always strove to open doors for herself and others in the entertainment industry. As she once said of the racial discrimination that had so thwarted her career, “It’s such a waste. It makes you half alive. It gives you nothing. It takes away.” Her tragic life certainly attested to that.

  Peter Duel

  [Peter Deuel]

  February 24, 1940–December 31, 1971

  Whenever a star—particularly one in the prime of his or her life and career—commits suicide, everyone becomes a Monday-morning quarterback. People who suddenly announce their friendship with the victim insist that there were telltale signs that should have been heeded; this was certainly true of the handsome, six-foot-tall Peter Duel, who was riding high in a successful TV series.

  Peter was born in Penfield, New York, in 1940, the oldest of three children born to Dr. and Mrs. Ellsworth Deuel. Always creative, Peter had no interest in becoming a doctor himself. Instead, he gravitated toward the arts. He graduated from the American Theatre Wing in New York City in 1961 and toured with the national company of the comedy Take Her, She’s Mine (starring Tom Ewell). By 1964, Peter was in Hollywood, an occasional guest on TV shows. In the fall of 1965, he became a series regular in Sally Field’s sitcom Gidget, cast as her brother-in-law. He did well in the task and was hired for his second sitcom, Love on a Rooftop (1966-67). Although both the TV show and Peter earned solid reviews, it was canceled in the ratings wars.

  With this good professional track record, Peter signed a seven-year contract with Universal Pictures. Peter then appeared in studio-produced TV series, including The Virginian, Ironside, and The Name of the Game. He also began to get good roles in made-for-TV movies, such as Marcus Welby, M.D.: A Matter of Humanity (1969), and feature films like Cannon for Cordoba (1970), all of which were shot on the Universal lot. While making Generation (1969), he had a romance with costar Kim Darby, as well as officially changing his professional name to Peter Duel. Next, he was hired for his third TV series, Alias Smith and Jones, a Western adventure about two affable ex-outlaws (Duel and Ben Murphy) attempting to turn honest in the old West. The comedy/buddy show debuted in January 1971 to good notices. It returned that fall for a second season, with Sally Field now added to give the show additional appeal.

  Everything seemed to be going well. Here was someone who had not “gone Hollywood,” a rising star who remained unaffected by success. But the situation was not as it appeared. When Peter first came to the West Coast, he had set a timetable for himself. He wanted to be making feature films full-time within five years. (It never really happened.) A year before he died, he said, “After two or three interviews, talking about pictures and how they’re made and what I do in them and what I’m going to do next, there’s nothing more to say.” Branching out, Peter became very concerned about ecology and environmental pollution. He traveled around the country in 1968 working for Senator Eugene McCarthy’s unsuccessful presidential bid. Duel was in Chicago during the Democratic Convention that year and witnessed firsthand the nasty riots that occurred. He eventually signed with a celebrity speakers’ bureau to lecture on his convictions.

  As a perfectionist performer, Duel was not particularly happy about making Alias Smith and Jones, but Universal offered him a salary increase and he accepted reluctantly. For the serious-minded Peter, doing a weekly show was “a big fat drag to any actor with interest in his work. It’s the ultimate trap.” He also insisted that—thanks to the series—his private life had fallen apart, and he was trying to “patch it together.”

  In August 1971, the pressures of work finally overcame him. Peter collapsed on the set (partially because of a flu bug) and was sent home by ambulance. In November 1971, the activist actor lost his bid for a seat on the board of the Screen Actors Guild. (Sources reported that he shot a bullet through the telegram that brought him the defeat notice, though other friends said he immediately began planning for the next election.)

  That December, Peter volunteered to work two weekends at out-of-state Toys for Tots telethons. A photo taken of Peter at one of the charity events showed him holding a toy pistol to his head. It was a stunt he pulled occasionally while sitting in the makeup chair at the studio, holding his prop gun to his temple and saying “Click . . . click . . . click.” Also in December 1971, Duel found himself in court regarding an October 1970 traffic accident in which he had injured two people while driving drunk. Since this was his third DWI charge, he lost his driver’s license, was put on probation, and ordered to pay a fine. Duel was very despondent over his drinking problem and other reputed substance abuse.

  On Thursday night, December 30, 1971, Peter planned to join some friends to see the mo
vie A Clockwork Orange after finishing work on the Alias Smith and Jones set. But he was called back to re-record some dialogue. When his friends left, he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Peter and his friend Harold Rizzell returned to his Hollywood Hills home on Glen Green Drive in time to watch the start of his 8:00 P.M. TV series (that night’s episode of Alias Smith and Jones dissatisfied him). Then he switched channels to a Lakers basketball game. During the evening, Peter drank heavily, leading to an argument with his live-in girlfriend, Diana Ray, an unemployed secretary. After their argument, she retired for the night, while Duel stayed up to watch more television.

  About 12:30 A.M., Peter came into the bedroom and removed his revolver from a table drawer. Diana awakened at the sound. He said, “I’ll see you later,” and left the room. A few minutes went by, and then she heard a single shot. When she hurried into the living room, she found Peter dead, nude, beneath the Christmas tree. (Also lying under the tree were wrapped holiday gifts for Duel’s parents, who were due to arrive in Los Angeles that weekend.) The shot had entered Duel’s right temple and exited the left side of his head. It had then traveled through the front window of Duel’s home, leaving a small hole. Police investigation revealed that another spent shot in the gun chamber had been discharged a week or so earlier.

  A memorial service was held for Duel in Los Angeles at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, California. Peter was not a member, but his manager was. The nondenominational service was conducted by Brother Dharmandandra, who eulogized that the late actor’s spirit “is now free from the body and has risen and rests in the bosom of God.” Duel’s remains were flown back to Penfield, New York, where after a service at the Baptist Church on January 5, 1972, Peter was buried in the Penfield Cemetery.