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

by Parish, James Robert

  But the most famous member of the dead trio was French-born Hervé Villechaize, who played the beloved Tattoo on TV’s Fantasy Island from 1978 to 1983. He was oversized in talent and died in a big way.

  Hervé Jean Pierre Villechaize was born in southern France in 1943, at the height of World War II and the Nazi occupation of much of his country. His father, Andre, was a surgeon and a member of the Resistance. Unlike his older brother, Patrick, Hervé was a sickly child; he had been born with an acute thyroid condition. By the time he was three, it was clear that his growth was stunted. After the war ended, the Villechaizes moved to Toulon, in southern France on the Mediterranean coast. Hervé’s father did all he could to help Hervé accept his dwarfism, which would be a foregone conclusion if none of the very painful treatments the boy was undergoing proved successful.

  In 1955, Dr. Villechaize learned of a new treatment that might help his afflicted boy; it was being used at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Because of the expense of the trip to the United States, 12-year-old Hervé sailed to America by himself. He underwent the grueling surgery and subsequent treatment procedures alone. When they failed to produce results, the teenager vowed never to undergo such painful treatment again. In many ways, this decision sealed the fate of the young Frenchman.

  Upon returning to France, the extremely intelligent Hervé tried to live a “normal” life. (Even at an early age, however, the boy had an obsession with death.) His strong passion for the arts led him to try his hand at painting. More than a hobby, Hervé’s work soon earned him national attention in France, especially when he had his own exhibition in Paris.

  In 1960, Hervé moved to Paris with his brother Patrick, who was studying at a prestigious academy for painters and sculptors. To pay his way, Hervé began doing illustrations for book jackets and café menus. Some referred to him as the modern-day Toulouse-Lautrec. When Hervé was 18, he became the youngest artist ever to have a painting hung in the prestigious Museum of Paris. Despite this stunning success, there was still a dark side to Villechaize. One night, after drinking a lot of wine and then ingesting turpentine, Villechaize became enraged and attacked—with a knife—a self-portrait he had just painted.

  Finding life very difficult in Paris, Hervé moved to the United States in 1964, when he was 21. Soon he met Anne Sadowsky, a five-foot, four-inch costume designer and artist. In May 1968, Anne and Hervé were married. She was involved with a famed off-off-Broadway acting group, the Café La Mama Experimental Theater Club, and introduced Villechaize to one of its focal figures, Julie Bovasso. Hervé became a member of the cast of Gloria and Esperanza, a show that was so popular it moved up to Broadway in February 1970. Thereafter, Hervé alternated between acting and painting.

  Late in 1970, after a short trip to France with Anne, the couple separated and Hervé returned to the United States alone. He relocated to Los Angeles, hoping to break into motion pictures and television. Hervé won a role in the gangster comedy The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), and had parts in Crazy Joe (1974) and Oliver Stone’s Seizure (1974). In the James Bond spy thriller, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Villechaize was cast as Nick Nack, the tiny villain of the piece.

  But then, Hervé’s career went into a sudden slump. He was living hand-to-mouth when—at the perfect moment—he was cast as Tattoo, Ricardo Montalbán’s sidekick on Fantasy Island. The weekly show quickly became a hit, and Villechaize found himself a national phenomenon. His character’s weekly announcement, “De plane! De plane!” became an American catchphrase. When he was out in public (he loved to party), fans were so eager to talk to him that he had to hire a bodyguard. (In typical Hervé fashion, she was a woman.)

  Hervé’s newfound fame soon led him to demand a big salary hike, to $25,000 per episode. He wanted every perk that his stardom could possibly entitle him to. On the set, he met 23-year-old Donna Camille Kagan, a stand-in. On September 5, 1980, the couple wed; they settled down at his recently acquired ranch in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley. In his spare time, Hervé worked with troubled teenagers. He said he felt good when helping others.

  Hervé’s marriage soured quickly, and in late December 1981, Donna filed for divorce. Friends said this split-up devastated the mercurial Hervé. By the next year, the restless and dissatisfied Villechaize was complaining to the press that he was not getting equal treatment on Fantasy Island—he wanted the same huge salary that costar Montalbán was receiving. The producers responded by dropping him from the show in April 1983. (During Fantasy Island’s final season, 1983-84, the tall, bulky Christopher Hewitt was brought aboard as Montalbán’s new assistant.)

  In many ways, leaving Fantasy Island was the beginning of the end for Hervé. He had always been a big spender, and now, short of funds, he had to sell his two-and-a-half-acre ranch and move to a modest North Hollywood rental. His health, always precarious, deteriorated further. With his declining career preying on his mind, Hervé began drinking heavily, often consuming two bottles of wine a night. This was a lot for a man who weighed less than 90 pounds. In the spring of 1984, when he began receiving sinister phone calls that he assumed were from a rival for the affections of his girlfriend, Villechaize started carrying a pistol. One night, in a drunken moment, he pulled his gun and threatened to shoot it. It took several minutes of coaxing to calm him down. By 1986, the former star was earning less than $500 a week. (He once said that bad business and attractive women cost him most of the $3.6 million he earned on Fantasy Island.)

  By 1990, the diminutive actor was taking two dozen pills a day. His body (his organs were all normal-sized but squeezed into his small ribcage) began hurting so much that he couldn’t sleep on his back. Trying to get rest, he’d crouch on the floor and lean back against the bed. Hervé’s physical condition declined even further (he was constantly spitting up blood and one of his lungs had ceased to function), and he became very depressed at the loss of independence this caused him. In 1992, he almost died from pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for six weeks.

  On April 23, 1993, Villechaize celebrated his 50th birthday. Around this time, he found brief work doing donut and beer commercials and was a guest on a few TV programs, including an episode of The Ben Stiller Show. But his physical condition continued to spiral downward and he lost more weight. On September 3, he attended a screening of The Fugitive at the Directors Guild Theatre in Hollywood with his then companion, five-foot, eight-inch brunette Kathy Self. Afterward, the couple went out to dinner and returned home to 11537 Killion Drive.

  Later that night, around 3:00 A.M., Kathy was in bed when she was awakened by a strange, loud cracking sound. When she investigated she found Hervé lying on the back patio. He had shot himself in the heart, using two pillows to muffle the sound of the .38 revolver. Two other shots had shattered a sliding glass door that led to the kitchen. By the time the paramedics arrived, the actor had already expired. He was pronounced dead in the emergency room at the Medical Center of North Hollywood.

  Shortly before he committed suicide, Hervé had turned on a tape recorder. In his final moments he said, “Kathy, I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve always been a proud man and always wanted to make you proud of me. You know you made me feel like a giant and that’s how I want you to remember me.” Later in the message, he stated, “I’m doing what I have to do.... I want everything to go to Kathy.... I want everyone to know that I love them.” The recorder also caught Villechaize’s last few words as he nervously cocked the pistol, and then the sound of the shots. As he lay there mortally wounded, he said, “It hurts, it hurts . . . I’m dying, I’m dying.”

  Hervé also left a note for Kathy that focused on his despondency over his accelerating medical problems. He asked that physicians specializing in dwarfism at UCLA Medical Center be allowed to study his body; then he wished to be cremated. His ashes were scattered off Point Fermin on the Palos Verdes peninsula opposite Long Beach, California.

  Gig Young

  [Byron Elsworth Barr]
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br />   November 4, 1913–October 19, 1978

  In his prime he was handsome, suave, and very charming—at least on camera. Away from the public eye, however, Gig Young suffered from tremendous insecurities and a persistent feeling of being second-rate. (This lifelong situation first developed in childhood, when his father consistently favored his older brother.) Craving escape and finding it through alcohol, drugs, and romances, Gig hid behind a well-practiced smile that masked his real feelings. One friend observed after Young’s death, “I think he probably had his own private hell going on inside him.” Costar Red Buttons observed, “Beneath that lighthearted sophistication, Gig was a big baby needing an arm around him.” And a cynical Young once summed up his professional life with: “30 years and 55 pictures—not more than five that were any good, or any good for me.”

  Byron Barr was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1913, the youngest child of Emma, a former schoolteacher, and J. E. Barr, a stern Scotsman who founded a canning company that bore his name. During the Great Depression, the teenaged Byron and his parents relocated to Washington, D.C. When the Barrs moved again to North Carolina, Byron remained in Washington. With the encouragement of his landlady, he fulfilled his childhood desire for attention by acting with the Phil Hayden Players. His efforts to please his dour father by working at a local car dealership ended in failure, and he chose to try Hollywood.

  The handsome young man hitchhiked to California, where he worked at a gas station and took other odd jobs while studying at the Pasadena Playhouse. He also auditioned at the movie studios. At the Playhouse, Byron met actress Sheila Stapler; they were married in Las Vegas on August 2, 1940. That same year, he was signed by Warner Bros., where his specialties, according to the actor, were “corpses, unconscious bodies, and people snoring in spectacular epics.” Byron received good notices as the dashing young artist in The Gay Sisters (1942, starring Barbara Stanwyck). He took the name of his character in that movie, Gig Young, as his new professional name.

  Gig costarred with Bette Davis in Old Acquaintances (1943). Off camera, Davis and Young—who were both married to other people—had a brief affair. Bette was one of several older women that the mother-fixated Gig romanced over the years. In Air Force (1943), he was a copilot; in real life, he was drafted into the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. By the fall of 1945, Young was back at Warner Bros., where he continued in supporting roles, earning up to $500 weekly. Frustrated by the studio’s failure to push his career, Gig sought comfort from the studio’s drama teacher, Sophie Rosenstein, another married woman. She bolstered him when the studio dropped his contract in 1947. This relationship added to the growing rift between Gig and Sheila, and they divorced in 1949. The next year he and the now-single Rosenstein, six years his senior, were married.

  Young’s screen career was stagnating until he landed a breakthrough dramatic role as a drunken composer in Come Fill the Cup (1951, starring James Cagney). This part earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Meanwhile, however, Sophie developed cancer; she died in November 1952. To mask his grief and the boredom from his generally dull movie roles, Gig turned increasingly to drink. He branched out into other mediums, including TV and sophisticated Broadway comedy. He dated busty stripper Sherry Britton, but their masochistic relationship ended with her refusal to marry him. He had a brief fling with actress Elaine Stritch, but the romantic relationship fizzled (although they remained lifelong pals).

  While hosting the TV series Warner Bros. Presents (1955-56), Gig met actress Elizabeth Montgomery, the daughter of veteran movie star Robert Montgomery. Much against her father’s wishes, she and the two-decades-older Gig wed in late 1956. By now, Young was stuck in a decent-paying rut as the screen’s busiest supporting actor—never the lead. For one such chore—1958’s Teacher’s Pet with Doris Day—he was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but again lost the award. Back on Broadway, he headlined the sex comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree (1960). In 1963, Elizabeth divorced Gig, who was now a very heavy drinker. Middle-aged and alone again, Young expanded his substance abuse to drugs and turned to various young women.

  In September 1963, Gig married Elaine Whitman, a real-estate agent. Their daughter, Jennifer, was born the next April. To pay for his new family, Gig accepted a leading role in The Rogues (1964-65), a TV series which flopped after one season. He and Elaine divorced in November 1966.

  By now, Gig was in his 50s, puffy-faced and flabby. He played the lead in the sex farce There’s a Girl in My Soup (1967) and dated actress Skye Aubrey, 31 years his junior. She wanted to marry him, but he refused. A fortuitous career break occurred when his former agent, Martin Baum (now a film executive), won him the role of the dissolute master of ceremonies in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). This time Gig won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

  After this recognition, though, he had only lesser TV and film assignments. When not battling his ex-wife Elaine in court over a property dispute, he was bickering with other cast members during a stage revival of Harvey (1971). For undisciplined behavior, Gig was dropped from Mel Brooks’s Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974); he now had a reputation within the industry for being unreliable.

  Bruce Lee had been in the midst of shooting a new film, Game of Death, when he died suddenly in 1973. Wanting to exploit his completed footage, the studio restructured the story line and hired Gig Young, among others, to pad out the new scenario of Game of Death. On the set of this Hong Kong project, Gig met Kim Schmidt, a young German actress. It was the start of an on-and-off romantic relationship that eventually led to their September 27, 1978, nuptials in New York City.

  Just a few days later, neighbors at Manhattan’s fashionable Osborne Apartments on West 57th Street (across the street from Carnegie Hall) were reporting that they overheard daily arguments from the newlyweds’ apartment, #1BB. The actor’s friends noticed that he had become increasingly withdrawn. Despite their advice, Young still refused to attend AA meetings.

  On Wednesday evening, October 18, 1978, Gig called his longtime friend Harriette Vine Douglas in Los Angeles. (She was a 58-year-old married woman he had known for a decade.) He asked her to fly to New York and accompany him back to Hollywood, explaining that his self-esteem was at a low ebb because of his constant battles with Kim. Harriette tried to show her friend “tough love” by refusing, perhaps hoping this would motivate him to face his problems instead of running away from them.

  The next morning, Young called down to the doorman to check on the weather; Kim telephoned a local grocery store with a small order. Sometime around 2:30 P.M., in their bedroom, Gig took a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson gun that he had hidden in the apartment and put a bullet through the base of Kim’s skull. It will never be known whether the act was spontaneous or premeditated. After his spouse was dead, Gig placed the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The fully clothed bodies were discovered five hours later by the building manager, who had wondered why the Youngs’ grocery order was never collected from the lobby. At the death site, a blood-soaked diary was opened to September 27, 1978, the day the couple had married. The police found three additional revolvers in the posh duplex apartment, as well as 350 rounds of ammunition.

  At the request of Gig’s sister, Genevieve, Harriette Vine Douglas flew to New York to claim Gig’s corpse. A service was conducted at Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Beverly Hills on October 26, 1978. As he had requested, Young’s body was cremated. Gig’s estate was valued at approximately $200,000.

  Gig Young’s death revealed the Jekyll-and-Hyde existence he had suffered for years. Shocked that an apparently amiable, content man could commit such horrific acts, longtime friend and mentor Martin Baum said, “He seemed like a man who had everything going for him. How little we know.” It appeared that Gig had engineered his life to conceal his overwhelming fears from even his closest associates; his greatest role had been playing the part of himself.

  Appendix A

  Necrology of Notable Hollywood A
ctors and Directors (Through January 23, 2001)

  An asterisk (*) indicates that the person has a biography in the main text.

  A

  Abbott, Bud: Oct. 2, 1895–Apr. 24, 1974*

  Abbott, Bud, Jr.: 1939–Jan. 19, 1997

  Abbott, Dawn: Sept. 21, 1930–May 7, 1985

  Abbott, John: June 5, 1905–May 24, 1996

  Abbott, Olive Victoria: 1896–Aug. 8, 1997

  Abbott, Philip: Mar. 21, 1923–Feb. 23, 1998

  Abel, Walter: June 6, 1898–Mar. 26, 1987

  Acker, Jean: Oct. 23, 1893–Aug. 16, 1978

  Ackles, David: Feb. 20, 1937–Mar. 2, 1999

  Ackles, Kenneth: 1916–Nov. 5, 1986

  Acord, Art: Apr. 17, 1890–Jan. 4, 1931

  Acosta, Rodolfo: 1920–Nov. 7, 1974

  Acuff, Eddie: June 3, 1908–Dec. 17, 1956

  Acuff, Roy: Sept. 15, 1903–Nov. 23, 1992

  Adams, Claire: c. 1900–Sept. 25, 1978

  Adams, Dorothy: June 4, 1899–Mar. 16, 1988

  Adams, Ernest S.: June 18, 1885–Nov. 26, 1947

  Adams, Joey: Jan. 6, 1911–Dec. 3, 1999

  Adams, Kathryn: 1894–Feb. 17, 1959

  Adams, Nick: July 10, 1931–Feb. 7, 1968*

  Adams, Peter: Sept. 22, 1917–Jan. 8, 1987

  Adams, Stanley: 1915–Apr. 27, 1977

  Adamson, Al: July 25, 1929–Aug. 2, 1995

  Adamson, Victor: 1890–Nov. 9, 1972

  Addams, Dawn: Sept. 9, 1930–May 7, 1985

  Addington, John: 1952–Jan. 9, 1997

  Addy, Wesley: Aug. 4, 1913–Dec. 31, 1996