FURTHER READING: Deadly Illusions: Who Killed Jean Harlow’s Husband? – Samuel Marx & Joyce Vanderveen (London: Century, 1991).
Bibi Besch
Born February 1, 1940
Died September 7, 1996
Handy supporter. Born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of Gusti Huber, Bibiana Besch was raised in Westchester County, New York, and worked in television for more than twenty years before finally being nominated for an Emmy. She received one Best Supporting Actress Emmy nomination for Doing Time On Maple Drive (1992) and another in 1993 for Guest Actress on Northern Exposure. She made her film début in Distance (1975) as Joanne and regularly commuted between the big and small screens. She appeared in The Pack (1977) as Marge, Hardcore (1979) as Mary, Meteor (1979) as Helen Bradley, The Lonely Lady (1983) as Veronica Randall, Date With An Angel (1987) as Grace Sanders, Who’s That Girl? (1987) as Mrs Worthington, Kill Me Again (1989) as Jack’s secretary, Steel Magnolias (1989) as Belle Marmillion, Tremors (1990) as Megan, Betsy’s Wedding (1990) as Nancy Lovell, Lonely Hearts (1991) as Maria Wilson and My Family (1995) as Mrs Gillespie. On the small screen she also appeared in Ellery Queen, Police Woman, The Rockford Files, Charlie’s Angels, How The West Was Won, Hart To Hart, Cagney & Lacey, Scarecrow And Mrs King, Remington Steele, Who’s The Boss?, Dynasty, Highway To Heaven, L.A. Law, Family Ties, Murder, She Wrote, The Golden Girls, Coach, Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, ER and Melrose Place. Her daughter is the actress Samantha Mathis (b. Brooklyn, New York May 12, 1970).
CAUSE: Bibi Besch died of metastasised breast cancer in Los Angeles, California aged 56. She died one day before Star Trek’s 30th anniversary, having played Dr Carol Marcus in Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan (1982).
Lyle Bettger
Born February 13, 1915
Died September 24, 2003
Fifties baddie. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of the St Louis Cardinals’ third baseman Franklin Bettger, Lyle S. Bettger was the caricature of the cinematic villain. In 1935 he enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and graduated two years later. After a period on Broadway he was signed by Paramount. In his first film No Man Of Her Own (1949) he played Stephen Morley who menaced Barbara Stanwyck and when he got her pregnant bought her a train ticket to go away. The train crashed and she assumed the identity of a dead passenger but he found her and threatened to blackmail her. In his next outing, Union Station (1950), he was Joe Beacon who kidnapped the blind daughter of a millionaire. In Cecil B. DeMille’s circus epic The Greatest Show On Earth (released January 2, 1952), Bettger played the elephant trainer Klaus who was insanely jealous of his partner in the act, Gloria Grahame. He played Johnny Buff, a baddie, in Denver And Rio Grande (1952) and as Stephen Cook he caused The Great Sioux Uprising (1953) by stealing ponies from the Indians and selling them to the army. He was Audie Murphy’s enemy in Destry (1954) as Phil Decker and Drums Across The River (1954) as Frank Walker. He was behind another Red Indian rebellion in The Lone Ranger (1955) as Reece Kilgore, when he broke a treaty so he could look for silver in a sacred mountain. In John Sturges’ Gunfight At The OK Corral (premièred on May 30, 1957), Bettger played Ike Clanton, the crooked rancher. He was Clay Bell, Alan Ladd’s nemesis, in Guns Of The Timberland (which opened in New York on February 1, 1960). Bettger was not always the villain of the piece. He played Frank Colloni in Carnival Story (1954), “a cheap and unattractive production,” according to Halliwell, which was, in Bettger’s own words, “the first and only time in my recollection that I’m not the bad guy in a feature picture”. As the Sixties progressed the popularity of Westerns in the cinema declined so Bettger moved to the small screen where he plied his villainous trade in shows such as Bonanza, Gunsmoke and Rawhide. He played special investigator Sam Larsen in the NBC crime series The Court Of Last Resort (October 4, 1957–April 1958). In 1969, after playing Joe Fletcher in an episode of Hawaii Five-O, Bettger, his wife, Mary Boyd, and their three children moved to the Aloha State. Bettger appeared in the series several times in differing roles until 1978. In 1979 Bettger retired, commenting on his career, “On the whole, I enjoyed playing the villains, they’re usually a better role in most cases than the leading man.”
CAUSE: He died aged 88 in Atascadero, San Luis Obispo County, California.
Billy Bevan
(WILLIAM BEVAN HARRIS)
Born September 29, 1887
Died November 26, 1957
Moustachioed comic. Born in Orange, New South Wales, Australia, he was educated at the University of Sydney and then joined the Pollard Opera Company. In 1917 he began making films as a supporting player. For nine years from 1920 he appeared in more than 70 two-reel Mack Sennett comedies. He also appeared in the Tired Businessman series of comedies. Bevan predominantly played philanderers alongside pretty girls in the heady days before the Hays Office. He was known for a thick moustache reminiscent of Glenn Hughes (the leather man) of Village People. Towards the end of his Sennett career he did appear clean-shaven. He was virtually unrecognisable without the ’tache. His films included playing a policeman in On Patrol (1922), Wall Street Blues (1924) as an office caretaker, Fight Night (1926), From Rags To Britches (1926) as a department store manager, Circus Today (1926) as a clown, A Sea-Dog’s Tale (1926) as a shipwreck victim and Ice Cold Cocos (1926). This last film saw him cast as an ice delivery man who has to negotiate a long flight of steps à la Laurel & Hardy in The Music Box (1932). In his last films, despite being Australian, he was usually cast as a cockney. He retired in 1952. He was married to the actor Leona Roberts (b. Illinois, July 14, 1881 as Leona Doty, d. Santa Monica, California, January 30, 1954).
CAUSE: He died in Escondido, California. He was 70.
Charles Bickford
Born January 1, 1891
Died November 9, 1967
Red-headed rebel. 6́ 1˝ Charles Ambrose Bickford was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children, and was something of a menace as a small boy. He later described himself as “pure devil” and legend has it that at nine he was tried and acquitted for attempted murder after shooting a man who ran over his dog. Bickford later worked as a lumberjack, investment promoter, wheat harvester, brewery lorry driver, carnival barker and sparring partner for James J. Corbett before he briefly ran his own pest control business. He joined a burlesque in San Francisco and spent the next 12 years touring America. His star rose when Cecil B. DeMille saw Bickford on Broadway in Outside Looking In and offered him the starring role in Dynamite (released on December 13, 1929). He signed a contract with MGM but was blacklisted after he told studio head Louis B. Mayer to “go fuck yourself”. He earned his living working in the docks before he was allowed back in front of the cameras and was offered a contract at 20th Century Fox. Unluckily he was mauled by a lion while filming East Of Java (1935) before he signed. His neck was badly scarred and Fox dropped him. No longer able to be a leading man, he turned to character work and received three Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations for his performance as Peyramale in The Song Of Bernadette (released Christmas Day, 1943), The Farmer’s Daughter (March 25, 1947) as Joseph Clancy and Johnny Belinda (September 14, 1948) as Black McDonald. He became very rich – not through his films but through wise investments. Unlike many stars Charles Bickford kept his own counsel and rarely revealed too much to anyone – friend, fan or press. He married Beatrice Loring in 1919 and had two children by her: a son, Rex, born in 1921 and a daughter, Doris, born in 1920. None are mentioned in his 1965 autobiography Bulls, Balls, Bicycles & Actors.
CAUSE: He died, aged 76, in Los Angeles, California, from a blood infection and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, Santa Monica, California.
John Bindon
Born October 4, 1943
Died October 10, 1993
“Fists for hire”. London-born John Dennis Arthur Bindon, nick-named Biffo, was a thug who found a measure of success as an actor. The son of a London taxi driver, Bindon had what he described as a miserable childhood – his mother kept him under the kit
chen table. He once admitted, “I’ve had this overwhelming urge to smash things up ever since I was a kid.” Aged 11, he was charged with malicious damage and six years later was sent to Borstal for possessing live ammunition. He was functionally illiterate. He began acting after being spotted in a pub by director Ken Loach who cast him as Tom, the wife-beater, in Poor Cow (1967). 6́ 2˝ Bindon once cut the arm off a man who had upset him. In 1968 he met Vicki Hodge (b. 17 October, 1946, the daughter of baronet Sir John Rowland Hodge, MBE), a model and soft-porn actress. Other flings included Profumo scandalite Christine Keeler (b. Staines, Middlesex, February 22, 1942), Bunny girl Serena Williams, the very busty singer Dana Gillespie (b. Woking, Surrey, March 30, 1949) and rock star wife Angie Bowie (b. Cyprus, 25 September, 1949) at whose house he took part in orgies. In 1968 Bindon won an award for bravery from the Royal Humane Society for saving a man drowning in the Thames. What the press didn’t report was that it was Bindon who had thrown him in the river in the first place. The two men had been fighting and Bindon had pushed him in. He only dived in when he saw a policeman approaching. In the early Seventies Bindon earned £2,000 from acting and £10,000 (around £100,000 in 2002) from the protection rackets he ran in and around Chelsea and Fulham, south-west London. Bindon was proud of his apparently huge penis and was known for exposing himself. When Lord Longford was conducting his enquiry into pornography Bindon flashed at him outside the Chelsea Potter public house on the King’s Road. His party piece was to balance five (or was it three or six?) half pint glasses on his erect penis. In 1972 he was introduced to Princess Margaret (1930–2002) on Mustique, and took great delight in showing her his trick. Bindon also claimed that he and the princess had had an affair. “On a scale of one to ten I would give her a nine for technique and a bloody great 15 for enthusiasm. I thought I was a goer but if I’d have let her she’d have had me at it all bloody night.” In 1976 Bindon went bankrupt over unpaid taxes. A year later he was doing security work for Led Zeppelin and was involved in their notorious thuggery incident backstage after a concert in San Francisco. On November 21, 1978 a cocaine deal went disastrously wrong at the Ranelagh Yacht Club, a Fulham drinking den at 74 Station Approach, London, SW6, and a gangster and police informer named Johnny Darke, 32, was killed, stabbed nine times. Bindon was stabbed, his heart was nicked in the fight. Bindon’s friend, Lennie Osborne dragged the semi-conscious Bindon away from the Ranelagh. Bindon’s girlfriend, Hodge and his sister, Geraldine, helped to dispose of his bloodstained clothes and other evidence. Leaning on Hodge, the heavily bleeding Bindon made his way to Heathrow, and he and ‘Hodgey’ flew Aer Lingus to Dublin, Ireland, intending to stay at an IRA safe house to avoid an investigation by the police. After four days Bindon was taken to St Vincent’s hospital where a priest administered the Last Rites. A life on the run wasn’t what Bindon wanted so he gave himself up to Detective Chief Inspector George Mould and was charged with murdering Johnny Darke. On remand in Brixton Vicki Hodge took the drug Mandrax to Bindon. At his trial at the Old Bailey the prosecution alleged that Bindon had been paid £10,000 to kill Darke. The defence claimed that Bindon had gone to help a man who had been stabbed in the face by Darke. The actor Bob Hoskins appeared as a character witness for Bindon and told the court that Bindon’s nick-name came from the comic character Biffo the Bear not as a result of his propensity for hitting people. On November 13, 1979, after twelve hours’ deliberation, Bindon was acquitted on grounds of self-defence. The judge, Mr Justice Mars-Jones, said that he believed the truth of what had happened had not been told in his courtroom. Bindon’s life took a downward turn after the case. He would often use his fists on Vicki Hodge but was careful never to mark her face. In pubs Bindon would often get down on all fours and bang the floor shouting, “What’s it like down there, Darkey?” In 1982, a year after he and Hodge split, he pleaded guilty to using a piece of pavement as an offensive weapon against a “short and weedy” man who had bumped into him while Bindon was celebrating his birthday. Bindon was fined £100. The following year, he was again declared bankrupt. In 1984 he appealed successfully against a conviction on September 18, 1984 for threatening an off-duty detective constable in a Kensington restaurant with a carving knife. In 1985 he was charged with possessing an offensive weapon and then cleared of threatening to firebomb the home of a mother of three. His other films included Performance (1970) as Moody, Sid Fletcher in Get Carter (1971), Coulter in Man In The Wilderness (1971), The Mackintosh Man (1973) as Buster, a groom in Love Thy Neighbour (1973), No Sex Please, We’re British (1973) as Pete, Dead Cert (1974) as Walter, a soldier in Barry Lyndon (1974) and Quadrophenia (1979) where, in a case of life imitating art, he played Harry, a drug dealer. He also often played villains in television cop shows like The Sweeney, Hazell and Softly, Softly Task Force. Bindon was known for deliberately fluffing his lines so that filming would be delayed and he would get paid overtime. He never married but had a daughter, Kelly (b. 1963) by Sheila Davies.
CAUSE: Bindon spent his final years living alone and on the dole in his flat in Chesham Mews, Belgravia. He died of bronchopneumonia caused by AIDS, a week after his 50th birthday.
Amanda Blake
(BEVERLY LOUISE NEILL)
Born February 20, 1927
Died August 16, 1989
TV Queen. Amanda Blake did not appear in as many films as she perhaps could have done. Born in Buffalo, New York, she began acting while still at school. In 1949 she signed with MGM, making four films: Duchess Of Idaho (1950), Lili (1953), A Star Is Born (1954) and High Society (1956). However, for almost twenty years (1955–1974) she reigned supreme as Miss Kitty on the television series Gunsmoke. Blake was married five times, the last time to a bisexual estate agent who effectively sentenced her to death.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 32
