Hollywood's Unhappiest Endings: Legends Never Die Updated

by Les MacDonald

  Susan Atkins married and divorced while in prison. She also received an Associate of Arts degree. In later years she denounced Manson and became a born again Christian. She has applied for parole seventeen times and always been denied. In 2009, suffering from cancer she applied again on compassionate grounds and once again was denied.

  Update: Susan Atkins died on September 24, 2009 shortly after having been denied parole on compassionate grounds.

  Patricia Krenwinkel received a Bachelor of Science degree through correspondence. She has applied for parole eleven times and been turned down each time.

  Update: Patricia Krenwinkel was once again turned down for parole in January 2011.

  Leslie Van Houten was also married and divorced while in prison. She has received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature through correspondence while in prison. She has become very critical of Manson and appears to show genuine remorse. Many feel that she will be the first one to be released because she only participated in the LaBianca killings and was not present at 10050 Cielo Drive.

  Update: Leslie Van Houten was turned down at her latest parole hearing on July 6, 2010.

  Charles "Tex" Watson, who was tried and convicted separately, married and fathered three children through conjugal visits. When Doris Tate objected, the conjugal visits ceased. Watson founded the Love Abounding Ministries in 1980 from his cell.

  Update: Charles Watson was turned down at his latest parole hearing on November 17, 2011.

  Bobby Beausoleil continues to serve his life sentence for the murder of Gary Hinman.

  Update: Bobby Beausoleil was denied parole at his last hearing in 2010. He cannot reapply for parole again until the year 2015.

  Doris Tate was the first person to ever read a victim impact statement at a hearing. She would consistently show up at as many of the parole hearings as possible to help ensure that her daughter's killers would not go free. Mrs. Tate died in 1992 and Sharon's two sisters continued to fight for the victims.

  Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who became the family's leader after the trial was found guilty of the 1975 attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. She was released in 2009 after serving thirty-four years in prison.

  Roman Polanski would go on to have legal problems of his own. He left the United States in 1977 when he was charged with having sex with a thirteen year old and risks arrest if he returns. He continues to have major success with films such as Frantic, Tess, Chinatown and he won a Best Director Oscar for The Pianist. He currently lives in Gstaad, Switzerland.

  Update: Roman Polanski was arrested at his home by Swiss authorities at the request of the US relating to his 1977 charge of sex with a thirteen year old. He was incarcerated for two months and then placed under house arrest as he fought extradition to the US. On July 12, 2010 the Swiss courts rejected the US request and Polanski went free.

  Vincent Bugliosi went on to write the book Helter Skelter which is certainly the definitive book on the subject. It still ranks today as the number one selling true crime book of all time.

  Prisoner #B33920 Charles Milles Manson is now seventy-five years old and has spent fifty-five of those years in prison. His last parole hearing was in 2007 at which he predictably ranted and raved. He can next apply for parole in 2012 when he will be seventy-seven years old.

  We have dealt with the seven most sensational murders committed by the Manson family. It is estimated that the family was responsible for anywhere between thirty-five and fifty murders.

  Sharon Tate is buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles.

  Jean Harlow (1911-1937)

  The Original Blonde Bombshell

  Long before screen legend Marilyn Monroe arrived in Hollywood there was Jean Harlow - the original blonde bombshell.

  Harlean Carpenter was born in Kansas City on March 3, 1911. At the age of sixteen she ran away and eloped with a young businessman named Charles McGrew. McGrew had received a healthy inheritance and the young couple relocated to California. The marriage, as so many often do, ended in divorce two years later in 1929.

  Harlean was only eighteen years old when one day she drove a friend to a studio and was noticed by a studio executive. The chance meeting led to some early work as an extra in movies such as Moran of the Marines in 1928 and Liberty in 1929. More notably she also appeared in a few Laurel and Hardy shorts. The studio added an i to her last name in an effort to make it sound more romantic but she soon took her mother's maiden name and Harlean Carpentier became Jean Harlow.

  Jean continued to work as an extra and also received a few small walk-on parts. Her big break came when multi-millionaire Howard Hughes decided to remake his silent film Hell's Angels into a talkie. Hughes had originally cast Swedish actress Greta Nissen in the role but it was soon decided that her Swedish accent was not suited to the role and Jean won the part. Hell's Angels was released in 1930 and turned a virtual unknown into a star overnight. Women everywhere began dying their hair platinum blonde and tried to imitate Harlow's trademark suggestive look which played well in the Hollywood of the 1930's. She would follow up Hell's Angels with two more movies made by MGM in 1931. In Public Enemy she was cast with James Cagney and the movie went on to become a big hit. This was followed up by the aptly titled Platinum Blonde.

  At around this time Paul Bern had been promoted to an executive position at MGM. He had started near the bottom as a film cutter. He eventually did some screenwriting and then moved on to producing and directing and was well respected in Hollywood. Paul had been living with struggling actress Dorothy Millette who very certainly had more than a few mental problems. Eventually she had to be institutionalized. Paul Bern paid for everything while she was ill and supported her when she was released even though they no longer lived together.

  In 1932 Paul would have one of his biggest successes when he co-produced Grand Hotel. Jean also did well with her next film, Red Dust, which also starred Clark Gable. With Paul being a respected executive at MGM, and Jean being one of their biggest stars, it was just a matter of time before they would meet but no one could have predicted what would happen when they finally did. The two did meet and very quickly took to each other. In fact the pair were married within weeks. Hollywood was in a state of shock. How do we put this delicately? While Jean Harlow was undeniably the reigning glamour queen in Hollywood, Paul Bern was not exactly leading man material. If the inhabitants of Tinsel Town were shocked at the marriage they would simply be aghast at what would take place in just two short months.

  At the beginning everything seemed fine. Paul bought his bride a beautiful new home in Beverly Hills but there were storm clouds forming on the horizon. Soon, friends and coworkers began noticing a change in his behavior. He appeared detached and more than a little depressed. His friends were right to be concerned but it was already too late. Sixty-five days after marrying the world's most desirable woman Paul Bern put a bullet in his head. At least that is how the official version goes. Paul was found in the couples bedroom nude and drenched in Jean's favorite perfume with the gun at his side. He left Jean a note. "Dearest Dear, unfortunately, this is the only way to make good the frightening wrong I have done you and wipe out my abject humility. I love you, Paul. PS: you understand that last night was only a comedy." The Hollywood rumor mill worked overtime on this one. It appears that Paul was unable to perform in the bedroom due to a physical deformity of some kind. If this is true it certainly begs the question...why marry Jean Harlow? "Last night was just a comedy" was taken to mean that he had tried and failed or had attempted to satisfy Jean through artificial means. Several weeks later the body of Dorothy Millette was recovered from the Sacramento River. The theory is that she committed suicide when she learned of Paul's death. Jean Harlow paid for her funeral. To this day some people still suggest that Paul may have been murdered possibly by either Dorothy or Jean or both.

  After Paul's death Jean became ill and, while under a doctor's care, turned down the lead role in Hollywood's first version of King Kon
g. That role ended up being played by Fay Wray. Jean did bounce back appearing in three movies in 1933. She starred in Hold Your Man, Dinner at Eight and Bombshell aka Blonde Bombshell. She also found the time to get married again to Harold Rossen, a cameraman. Unfortunately this marriage also ended in divorce after only six months. Domestic woes aside, the public's love affair with Jean continued on unabated. Fans continued to lock to her movies such as Libeled and Personal Property which paired her with Robert Taylor. In 1937 she was signed to once again star with Clark Gable in Saratoga.

  During the filming Jean became seriously ill with influenza. Within days she was dead. The official cause of death was uremic poisoning and cerebral edema. Many insisted that Jean had been murdered but there has never been any serious evidence to support this. Hollywood's glamour queen was gone and she was only twenty-six years old. Her final film Saratoga was released on July 23 just a month and a half after Jean's death. The film was completed using a double. In many scenes the double is seen hiding behind binoculars or turning away from the camera. There is an eight minute two color Technicolor sequence which lives on as the only color footage in existence of Jean Harlow. Saratoga went on to become the top grossing film of 1937.

  Marilyn Monroe was in negotiations to play Jean in a movie of her life when she herself died mysteriously in 1962. In 1965 two biopics were released, both simply named Harlow. Carroll Baker and Carol Lynley played the part of Jean. In 2004 The Aviator was released with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the part of Howard Hughes and Gwen Stefani playing Jean Harlow. The Paul Bern case was reopened by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office in 1960 and reached the same conclusion as the original investigators had back in 1932. Paul Bern had committed suicide.

  Although her career was so tragically cut short Jean Harlow will always be remembered as the original blonde bombshell. She is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles.

  Dorothy Stratten (1960-1980)

  The Reluctant Centerfold

  Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 28, 1960 to parents Simon and Nelly. A year and a half later Dorothy's brother John was born. Before Dorothy was three years old Simon deserted his young family and Nelly began a series of failed relationships and marriages. In 1968 Dorothy's sister Louise was born and that was soon followed by another divorce.

  By 1974 Dorothy was working part time at a Vancouver Dairy Queen while attending high school. In October 1976 she began a relationship with her first boyfriend Steven. Like many teenage boys Steve took what he wanted sexually from Dorothy without too much concern for her feelings. Late in 1977 she spotted a ring in a storefront window that she thought he would love. She saved as much money as she could and made fifteen weekly payments to pay it off. She proudly gave the ring to Steve for Christmas but a week later in a fit of anger he took the ring off and smashed the stone. Young love - go figure. The relationship was over. In her young life Dorothy had only seen cruelty from the men in her life. Her father had abandoned her. Subsequent stepfathers treated her and her mother badly. Now the same with her first lover. Unfortunately all of this was just a foreboding of things to come.

  Paul Snider

  By October 1977 twenty-six year old Paul Snider had been around the block and then some. He had grown up on the mean streets of Vancouver and had been dealing in drugs and prostitution since he was fourteen. He had also plied his trade in Seattle, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. On the streets of his hometown he was known as the Jewish Pimp.

  Hugh Hefner

  Also at around the same time Playboy Magazine and it's creator/chief Hugh Hefner were launching their twenty-fifth Anniversary Playboy Contest.

  Peter Bogdanovich

  It was also in the same time frame that well known Hollywood director Peter Bogdanovich's eight year relationship with actress Cybil Shepherd hit the skids. The two had met and fallen in love during the making of The Last Picture Show in 1971. Bogdanovich had been nominated for Best Director and the film was nominated for Best Picture. Similar success in the future would prove to be elusive. It would take more than two years to play out but the coming together of Dorothy Stratten, Hugh Hefner/Playboy, Paul Snider and Peter Bogdanovich would explode in August of 1980 with the most tragic of consequences.

  Dorothy

  In October 1977 Paul Snider walked into a Vancouver Dairy Queen and immediately noticed the blonde teenager with pigtails. At seventeen Dorothy was already a beauty. Fancying himself as something of a promoter Snider's first thought was that this girl had Playboy type potential. In January 1978 Dorothy had broken up with Steve and it would be Paul Snider that would pick up the pieces. Right from the beginning Snider had one thing on his mind and that was to somehow convince Dorothy to pose nude for Playboy's twenty-fifth anniversary contest. Dorothy wanted nothing at all to do with it. Snider, who was much more experienced and worldly than Dorothy's previous boyfriend, stepped up the pressure. He took Dorothy to the best restaurants and bought her extravagant gifts. Didn't he treat her nice? Didn't he buy her nice things? Friends of Dorothy's and even her mother were warning her about Snider but to no avail. She figured that Snider was treating her a lot better than Steve had and certainly much better than her father and stepfathers had treated her mother.

  Snider continued to beg and plead with Dorothy to pose for him. Eventually she relented and in August 1979 her nude photos were sent to Playboy. When the pictures arrived in LA they were taken straight to Hefner. Within two days Dorothy was on her first airplane and her first limousine was waiting at the airport to take her straight to the Playboy Club on Sunset Strip. Almost immediately she was given a couple of glasses of white wine to help her relax. She was then photographed by veteran Playboy photographer Mario Casilli.

  Dorothy had hated posing nude for Snider in Vancouver and now hated it even more in LA. She shook and she cried during photo shoots. Hefner put pressure on his staff to get more explicit photos of Dorothy but she always refused. She finished second in the contest losing out to Candy Loving. How's that for a stage name? The reason given for her second place finish was that she needed more experience in dealing with the media and representing Playboy. The more likely reason was her reluctance during the photo shoots and her lack of interest in Hefner personally as well as the orgy filled lifestyle at the Playboy mansion. Despite all of this Dorothy was being groomed for the August 1979 centerfold. In October 1978 Paul Snider decided to take up permanent residence in LA to better manage Dorothy's career...not to mention to keep a closer eye on his meal ticket. He took Dorothy to Playboy's Halloween Bash where most (including Hefner) took an immediate dislike to him. Hefner told Dorothy that Snider looked like a pimp and a hustler. Dorothy defended Snider but the Playboy chief had pretty much hit the mark. This was also the night that Dorothy would meet Peter Bogdanovich for the first time.

  When Snider learned that Dorothy was going to be a centerfold and had a good shot at being the Playmate of the Year, he began pressuring Dorothy into marriage. He envisioned all that would be his as the husband of a centerfold, her business manager and the man who discovered her. By now Dorothy had fallen out of love with Snider. His brash and often obnoxious ways were diametrically opposite to that of the laid back beauty. However, as she had done once before when posing for him, she gave in and on June 1, 1979 the pair were married in Las Vegas. The truth is that in the summer of 79 Dorothy must have felt lost. She hated Playboy (Hef had seduced her in the jacuzzi at the mansion) and all that went with being a centerfold. She was a naive Canadian girl adrift in Los Angeles. Snider may have seemed like a life preserver at the time. She couldn't have been more wrong.

  Two months after her wedding Dorothy flew to Winnipeg, Manitoba to star in her first movie, Autumn Born. It was a small Canadian production with a total budget of $250,000. In the film she is brainwashed, beaten, raped and tortured. Less than a year later the truth would be stranger than the fiction. After the movie wrapped Dorothy flew back to LA and once again ran into
Peter Bogdanovich who told her he was casting for a new picture...a very familiar line in LA but in this case it happened to be true. The pair agreed to meet again. Bogdanovich, who had a habit of falling for his leading ladies, was smitten while Dorothy was simply looking for a way out. She had grown tired of her mercurial, controlling husband and equally tired of Playboy. A month later Dorothy posed for her Playmate of the Year pictorial which would appear in the June, 1980 issue.

  In January 1980 Dorothy began filming Galaxina. Snider appeared on the set constantly while letting everyone within earshot know that he was the man who had discovered Dorothy. By now he was making financial demands of his wife. He wanted her to sign papers that would essentially give him 50% of everything that she would earn in her lifetime. Bogdanovich, Hefner and the Playboy lawyers all advised Dorothy that this was way out of line. Legally Snider would be entitled to 50% of her earnings from the date that they were married to the date that Dorothy filed separation papers. In March Dorothy flew to New York to begin the movie They All Laughed. This was to be the film that Bogdanovich had pitched to her when they had run into each other the previous October. Bogdanovich would direct and the cast would include Audrey Hepburn, John Ritter and Ben Gazzara. Dorothy was still contractually obligated to Playboy for a three week tour of Canada and the US and had to leave the set in April. When she returned to New York City she stayed at the Plaza with Bogdanovich. While the director and his star attempted discretion everyone connected with the movie could see what was going on. It did not take long for word to reach Hefner in LA and then ultimately Snider. While filming continued in New York the June 1980 issue of Playboy featuring Dorothy's pictorial hit the newsstands. She had hated the posing and now she had hated the results. All she wanted was to be done with Playboy (Hefner had stepped up his demands for more explicit photos) and also be done with Snider so that she could resume her career and her relationship with Bogdanovich on her own terms. Sadly, it was not to be.