Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: He died aged 91 following a stroke.

  Gene Anderson

  Born March 28, 1931

  Died May 5, 1965

  Tragic actress. Born in London, Anderson studied at the Central School of Dramatic Art. Married to actor Edward Judd (b. Shanghai, October 4, 1932), she died without ever fulfilling her potential. She appeared in less than a dozen films before her untimely death. Her body of work included: Flannelfoot (1952) as Rene Wexford, The Intruder (1954) as June Maple, Double Cross (1956), The Long Haul (1957) as Connie Miller, Yangtse Incident (1957) as Ruth Worth, The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961) as May and The Break (1963) as Jean Tredegar.

  CAUSE: She died in London aged 34 from a cerebral haemorrhage.

  Gilbert M. ‘Bronco Billy’ Anderson

  Born March 21, 1882

  Died January 20, 1971

  The world’s first movie star. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, he began his working life as a travelling salesman before becoming a model in New York then landing a job on the film The Messenger Boy’s Mistake (1902). In 1903 he played several roles in an Edwin S. Porter short film, The Great Train Robbery, which made film history. He was intended to play one of the villains but was so useless on a horse he was demoted to extra work. Nonetheless, in February 1907 he was one of the first film stars to create his own production company, Essanay (named after Anderson and his partner George K. Spoor). That year he starred in and directed the first of over 400 films starring himself in his cowboy guise of Broncho Billy Anderson, The Bandit Makes Good. Oddly, one of the remarkable things about the films was their lack of continuity. He might marry in one picture and be a bachelor in the next, dead in one and fighting fit in the next. It didn’t seem to worry his audiences, as he became the first Western hero and a multi-millionaire in the process, modifying the spelling of his stage name to ‘Bronco’ along the way. Among his many, many movies were Raffles, An American Cracksman (1905) as Raffles, Ten Nights In A Barroom (1909), Shanghaied (1909), A Westerner’s Way (1910), A Western Woman’s Way (1910), A Western Maid (1910), Western Chivalry (1910), The Girl From The Triple X (1910), Broncho Billy’s Redemption (1910) as Broncho Billy, Spike Shannon’s Last Fight (1911), The Outlaw’s Deputy (1911), The Outlaw’s Samaritan (1911), The Outlaw And The Child (1911), Mustang Pete’s Love Affair (1911), Broncho Billy’s Christmas Dinner (1911), Broncho Billy’s Adventure (1911), The Reward For Broncho Billy (1912), Broncho Billy’s Promise (1912), Broncho Billy’s Outwitted (1912), Broncho Billy’s Mexican Wife (1912), Broncho Billy’s Heart (1912), Alkali Ike Beats Broncho Billy (1912), The Making Of Broncho Billy (1913), Broncho Billy’s Way (1913), Broncho Billy’s Ward (1913), Broncho Billy’s Squareness (1913), Broncho Billy’s Sister (1913), Broncho Billy’s Secret (1913), Broncho Billy’s Last Deed (1913), Broncho Billy’s Gun Play (1913), Broncho Billy’s Gratefulness (1913), Broncho Billy’s First Arrest (1913), Broncho Billy’s Christmas Deed (1913), Broncho Billy And The Outlaw’s Mother (1913), Broncho Billy’s Sermon (1914), Broncho Billy’s Bible (1914), Broncho Billy’s Protégé (1915) and hundreds more. Although he retired from acting in 1916, it would be 41 years before he was honoured with a special Oscar. He was Stan Laurel’s first producer and mentor and introduced Laurel & Hardy in the film The Lucky Dog. Made between November 17–29, 1919, it wasn’t released until 1922. Anderson signed Charlie Chaplin to his company and away from Mack Sennett in 1915 but the Little Tramp only stayed a year.

  CAUSE: He died aged 88 in South Pasadena, California, and was cremated at the Chapel of Pines Crematory, 1605, South Catalina, Los Angeles 90006.

  Jean Anderson

  Born December 12, 1907

  Died April 1, 2001

  Versatile matriarch. Born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, of Scottish parentage, Mary Jean Heriot Anderson was the second of five children raised in Guildford, Surrey. Her childhood ambitions were to entertain but as a musician not an actress. She wanted to be a concert violinist and indeed played with the Guildford Orchestra under the conductorship of Claud Powell, whose son she would later marry. Anderson realised that she did not have the temperament for the platform and in 1926 she enrolled at RADA where she studied for two years. Her first professional role was appearing in a 50-week tour of Many Waters alongside her fellow RADA student Robert Morley. A follow-up, Out All Night, a farce, closed in Glasgow leaving the company with their train fares back to London but no wages. Resolute, Anderson landed a job working in Cambridge where she met Peter Powell. They married in 1934 in between the morning rehearsal of The Nelson Touch and the evening performance of The Circle. Their honeymoon was on the Sunday and lasted one day. They had one daughter, Aude, named after a character in The Unknown Warrior played by Anderson and directed by Powell. (The couple was divorced in 1949. Anderson never remarried.) In 1936 she moved to Ireland for three years appearing at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, returning at the outbreak of war to make sandwiches for the Players’ Theatre Club, a music hall venue for soldiers, actors and politicians to meet and chat. Its director was the actor Leonard Sachs and when he was called up, Anderson took over. After the war Anderson began appearing on television and in films, making her début in The Mark Of Cain (1947). From February 6, 1951 and again from March 3, 1957, she played the mother in an eight-part production of The Railway Children. Her film and television career prospered and she appeared in The Romantic Age (1949), The Franchise Affair (1950) as Miss Tuff, White Corridors (1951) as Sister Gater, The Brave Don’t Cry (1952) as Mrs Sloan, Johnny On The Run (1953) as Mrs MacIntyre, Lease Of Life (1954) as Miss Calthorp, A Town Like Alice (1956) as Miss Horsefall, Lucky Jim (1957) as Mrs Welch, The Barretts Of Wimpole Street (1957) as Wilson, Robbery Under Arms (1957) as Ma Marston, Heart Of A Child (1958) as Maria, SOS Pacific (1959) as Miss Shaw, Solomon And Sheba (1959) as Takyan, Spare The Rod (1961) as Mrs Pond, Lisa (1962) as Mrs Jongman, Waltz Of The Toreadors (1962) as Agnes, The Three Lives Of Thomasina (1963) as Mrs MacKenzie, Silent Playground (1964) as Mrs Lacey, Half A Sixpence (1967) as Lady Botting, The Night Digger (1971) as Mrs McMurtrey, The Lady Vanishes (1979) as Baroness Kisling and Screamtime (1983) as Mildred. On March 10, 1972, she became the matriarch Mary Hammond in the trucking soap The Brothers. The show made Anderson a household name in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe but not in America where its portrayal of trade unions was thought likely to offend the powerful Teamsters union. Years later, Anderson would live in the same road as Richard Easton who played Brian in the series. Shopkeepers would tell Anderson that they had just served her son. In the Eighties Anderson played Lady Jocelyn Holbrook in three series of the Second World War Japanese prisoner of war drama Tenko. “Jocelyn’s a scruffy character who wears a tattered grey dress. I was bored with being elegant. Ever since The Brothers, I’ve been cast as a grand lady in the theatre. This time I’m an aristocrat with a Cambridge degree but not a bit nice to hear. I’m a bit of a women’s lib character and I think I can be forgiven a few bloodys.” She also played Ruth, Lady Fermoy in the television movie of Andrew Morton’s best-selling biography Diana: Her True Story (1993). Her real passion was horse racing and she would often sit in the Green room reading the racing pages. When she appeared on This Is Your Life all the invitees turned up, a rare occurrence in a back-biting business.

  CAUSE: Jean Anderson died aged 93 in Edenhall, Cumbria, of natural causes.

  Dame Judith Anderson

  (FRANCES MARGARET ANDERSON)

  Born February 10, 1898

  Died January 3, 1992

  Icily imperious Australian. Born in Adelaide, South Australia, one of four children of James Anderson-Anderson, Anderson took the stage name Judith and became famous on Broadway (arriving in America in 1918, having made her stage début in Australia three years earlier in A Royal Divorce at the Theatre Royal, Sydney) occasionally making a foray to Hollywood. In September 1934 she appeared as Lila in the play Divided By Three with Hedda Hopper, causing one critic to comment, “Judith may never find someone manlier than herself to act with or engage.” She playe
d Gertrude to John Gielgud’s Hamlet on Broadway to great acclaim in October 1936 and the following year (from November 26, 1937) played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic. She made her first feature film in 1933 as Ruby Darling in Blood Money, and went on to appear in Forty Little Mothers (1940) as Madame Madeline Granville, Lady Scarface (1941) as Slade, Kings Row (1942) as Mrs Harriet Gordon, Edge Of Darkness (1942) as Gerd Blarnesen, Laura (1944) as Anne Treadwell, And Then There Were None (1945) as Emily Brent (who comments on the murder of the butler: “Very stupid to kill the only servant in the house. Now we don’t even know where to find the marmalade”), The Ten Commandments (1956) as Memnet, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) as Big Mama, A Man Called Horse (1970) as Buffalo Cow Head and a high priestess in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984). She said of herself, “I have not a very serene temperament,” and confirmed this with her chilly performances. She was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of the malignant Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). After one particularly good performance of Medea (1947) Claire Trevor went backstage to congratulate Anderson. “I simply can’t find the words to tell you how superb you were,” she enthused. Anderson’s response was succinct: “Try.” A (very) closeted lesbian, she nonetheless married twice. Her first husband (they married on May 18, 1937, in Kingman, Arizona) was Benjamin Harrison Lehman. They were divorced on August 23, 1939. Seven years later, on July 11, 1946, she married theatre producer Luther Greene. They divorced on June 26, 1951. Unsurprisingly, there were no children from either match. “I wouldn’t come out in a million years. Why should I ? I owe nothing! I don’t owe anyone any explanations, and I won’t join up with anything. Ever. They never gave me anything, and I certainly don’t need them. I live my own life, and good luck to them, but leave me alone! Everybody, just leave me alone!” In 1984 she began appearing as matriarch Minx Lockridge in the short-lived soap opera Santa Barbara (her adoptive home town from 1950) at a salary of $5,000 per week.

  CAUSE: She died in Santa Barbara, California, aged 93, from pneumonia.

  Lindsay Anderson

  Born April 17, 1923

  Died August 30, 1994

  Self-professed anarchist. Lindsay Gordon Anderson was born in King Lodge, Bangalore, India, the second of the three sons of Major-General Alexander Vass Anderson, CB, CMG, MBE (b. North India, November 17, 1895, d. St Martin, Jersey, Channel Islands, October 17, 1963) and his first wife (in 1918) Estelle Bell, née Gasson (b. Queenstown, South Africa, 1898, d. March 20, 1973) whom he does not mention in his Who’s Who entry. He also omits any mention of his sons. Anderson’s parents separated in 1926 and his mother settled in England with her two eldest sons, Murray and Lindsay. In September 1932 Estelle Anderson returned to India for a brief reconciliation with her husband, resulting in a third son, Alexander Vass, after she returned to England, but in 1935 the couple divorced. A year later she married Major Cuthbert Sleigh (so close to the Andersons that the two elder boys called him ‘Uncle Father’), and moved with her three sons to his house in Camberley, Surrey. Anderson was educated at St Ronan’s preparatory school in West Worthing, Sussex (where he was something of a rebel) and Cheltenham College. In 1941 he won a scholarship in classical studies to Wadham College, Oxford, but he was drafted into the 60th King’s Royal Rifles and thence to the army intelligence corps in 1943. After six months of military training, he worked as a cryptanalyst at the Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi for the rest of the Second World War. In July 1945 he celebrated the Labour Party’s landslide victory in the general election by persuading a couple of colleagues to join him in raising the red flag over the officers’ mess. On January 10, 1947, he saw John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946) and in December of that year he co-founded (with Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson) the film magazine Sequence. When the magazine floundered after 14 issues in 1951 Anderson began to produce documentaries with a social theme. He won an Oscar for his film about the deaf, Thursday’s Children (1954). He was a leading figure in the Free Cinema movement, launched in 1956 to further the beliefs of Sequence. It aimed to push the British film industry into what they saw as a more realistic not to say controversial direction. He made his first feature film This Sporting Life (1963) from David Storey’s first novel. The film gave a break to Irish actor Richard Harris. Anderson’s other films included If… (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973), the satire Britannia Hospital (1982), which starred Malcolm McDowell and The Whales Of August (1987). In 1942 Anderson noted in his diary, “It seems I am homosexual. It really is rather awful and I suppose I shall never get rid of it.” Yet by June 4, 1945, he was questioning whether he was indeed “irredeemably homosexual”. It seemed that Lindsay Anderson, like Frankie Howerd, did not like being gay. If… was filmed at Cheltenham College and won the Palme d’Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival. For many years, film students debated the movie changing from colour to black and white. Anderson later confessed the real reason – he had run out of money and could only afford monochrome film.

  CAUSE: In 1992 5́ 6˝ Anderson developed arrhythmia. He died aged 71 after suffering a fatal heart attack while on holiday near Angoulême in the South of France. He was cremated in Périgord, France, on September 5, 1994. He left £633,397.

  FURTHER READING: Mainly About Lindsay Anderson– Gavin Lambert (London: Faber & Faber, 2000); The Diaries– Paul Sutton (London: Methuen, 2004).

  Dana Andrews

  Born January 1, 1909

  Died December 17, 1992

  Always the hero. Carver Dana Andrews was born in Collins, Mississippi, the son of baptist minister Charles Forrest Andrews, and was educated at Sam Houston State College, Texas. (His brother is the actor Steve Forrest.) Originally an accountant at Gulf Oil by profession, he studied at the Pasadena Playhouse (while working as a petrol pump attendant) at 39 South El Molino Avenue, Pasadena, first appearing on stage there in June 1935 playing the Frenchman in Cymbeline. Signed by Samuel Goldwyn on March 14, 1939, he made his film début in Lucky Cisco Kid (1940) as Sergeant Dunn and went on to appear in over 80 films. His most notable roles were playing Donald Martin in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and detective Mark McPherson in Laura (1944). His other films included Kit Carson (1940) as Captain John C. Fremont, Belle Starr (1941) as Major Thomas Grail, Wing And A Prayer (1944) as Lieutenant Commander Edward Moulton, Fallen Angel (1945) as Eric Stanton, My Foolish Heart (1949) as Walt Dreiser, Elephant Walk (1954) as Dick Carver, Battle Of The Bulge (1965) as Colonel Pritchard, Johnny Reno (1966) as Johnny Reno, Airport 1975 (1974) as Scott Freeman, The Last Tycoon (1976) as Red Ridingwood and Prince Jack (1984) as the Cardinal. Away from the screen he developed a drink problem. On December 29, 1956, he was arrested for drink-driving in North Hollywood when his car went into the back of another; he was fined. On January 4, 1968, he was hospitalised after fracturing his skull after falling in his hotel bathroom. In 1972 he began appearing in television ads for Alcoholics Anonymous, announcing: “I’m Dana Andrews, and I’m an alcoholic. I don’t drink any more, but I used to – all the time.” Combating alcoholism, he fell victim to Alzheimer’s disease towards the end of his life. He was married twice. His first wife (they married on December 31, 1932) was Janet Murray, who died in 1935. Their son, David Murray, was born in 1933 and died in 1964. Andrews married for the second time to actress Mary Todd (on November 17, 1939) and they had three children: Stephen (b. 1944), Catherine (b. 1948), and Susan (b. 1949). Mary Andrews filed for divorce on May 28, 1968, but later withdrew the suit.

  CAUSE: He died in Los Alamitos, California, aged 83, from pneumonia.

  Harry Andrews, CBE

  Born November 10, 1910

  Died March 7, 1989

  Gruff and bluff. Harry Stewart Fleetwood Andrews was born at St Mary’s, Pembury Road, Tonbridge, Kent, the son of Henry Arthur Andrews, a Scottish doctor, and Amy Diana Frances Horner. He was educated at Tonbridge School and at Wrekin College, Shropshire. Before making his stage début at the Liverpool Playhouse in September 1933, playing John in The Long Christmas Dinner, he
contemplated a life in the police force or on the cricket pitch. Eighteen months later, on March 26, 1935, he made his West End début at the St James’s Theatre, again playing a character called John in Worse Things Happen At Sea. Andrews was spotted and sponsored by Sir John Gielgud, appearing as Tybalt in Gielgud’s and Laurence Olivier’s production of Romeo & Juliet in 1935. Andrews appeared in the appropriately named He Was Born Gay in June 1937 at the Lyric Theatre. Enlisting in the Royal Artillery, 15th Scottish Division, during the war (October 1939 until October 1945), he became an acting major. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on being demobbed. In 1952 he moved into films but didn’t achieve stardom, possibly because he refused one studio’s kind offer of plastic surgery on his sticking-out ears. He appeared in more than 80 films, making his début as the Scots sergeant major in The Red Beret (1953). His other works included Hector in Helen Of Troy (1956), Darius in Alexander The Great (1956), Moby Dick (1956) as Stubb, St Joan (1957) as John de Stogumber, Ice Cold In Alex (1958) as MSM Tom Pugh, 633 Squadron (1964) as Air Vice-Marshal Davis, The Hill (1965) as Regimental Sergeant Major Bert Wilson, The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1968) as Lord Lucan, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968) as Jacob Schpitendavel, Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970) as Ed, Wuthering Heights (1970) as Mr Earnshaw, Nicholas And Alexandra (1971) as Grand Duke Nicholas, Death On The Nile (1978) as Barnstable, the second elder in Superman (1978) and SOS Titanic (1979) as Captain Edward John Smith. In 1966 he was appointed a CBE. A homosexual, he never married but lived with long-term boyfriend, the actor Basil Hoskins.