Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: Brooke committed suicide in his car by carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 56.

  Louise Brooks

  Born November 14, 1906

  Died August 8, 1985

  Lulu. Born in Cherryvale, Kansas, 5́ 2˝ Mary Louise Brooks, the daughter of a lawyer, began her entertainment career as a dancer with Ziegfeld Follies before making the transition to films as a bit part player. She appeared in The American Venus (1926) as Miss Bayport, A Social Celebrity (1926) as Kitty Laverne, It’s The Old Army Game (1926) as Mildred Marshall, Love ’Em And Leave ’Em (1926) as Janie Walsh, Just Another Blonde (1926) as Diana O’Sullivan, Rolled Stockings (1927) as Carol Fleming, and The City Gone Wild as Snuggles Joy before really making her mark in A Girl In Every Port as Marie. Her reputation as a sex symbol was further enhanced by Beggars Of Life (1928) in which she played Nancy, a girl who disguised herself as a boy. The pinnacle of her career came playing the amoral Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s Die Büchse Der Pandora (1929). Millions of women rushed to their hairdresser to copy her famously bobbed style. Then things steadily began to go wrong. Her next two films were The Canary Murder Case (1929) as Margaret Odell and Das Tagebuch Einer Verlorenen (1929) as Thymiane. Brooks was a strong-willed woman, much ahead of her time. She was bright, beautiful, sexy and promiscuous (“Love is a publicity stunt, and making love – after the first curious raptures – is only another petulant way to pass the time waiting for the studio to call;” “I don’t think I ever loved the men I knew. It’s a very strange thing. I’ve noticed that very often the men who were the best in bed were the men I cared least about. The men who were the worst in bed were the men I liked the most”) none of which went down too well in Thirties Hollywood. Writer Anita Loos said, “Her favourite form of exercise was walking off a movie set, which she did with the insouciance of a little girl playing hopscotch.” A battle with Harry Cohn ensued which the mogul won and he took great pleasure in humiliating the actress. He made her work as an uncredited ballet dancer in the Grace Moore musical When You’re In Love (1937). The following year Brooks made her last film, Overland Stage Raiders (1938), and promptly retired from the screen. She worked as a nightclub entertainer for a while then became a $40 a week shop assistant at Saks Fifth Avenue before slipping into a reclusive lifestyle. She was twice married. From July 21, 1926, to June 20, 1928, she was the wife of director Edward Sutherland (b. London, January 5, 1895, d. 1974) and from October 10, 1933, she was married to Deering Davis, who made farming equipment. They separated six months after the wedding but didn’t get around to getting a divorce until February 10, 1938.

  CAUSE: Brooks suffered from emphysema and arthritis but died of a heart attack in Rochester, New York. She was 78 years old. She is buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Rochester, New York.

  Joe E. Brown

  Born July 28, 1892

  Died July 6, 1973

  Big-mouthed comedian. Joseph Evan Brown was born in Holgate, Ohio, and ran away from home aged nine to join the circus. He was the youngest of the Marvellous Ashtons, an aerial acrobatic troupe. When the Ashtons went their separate ways in 1906, 5́ 7˝ Brown became a semi-pro baseball player, almost making the first team of the Pittsburgh Pirates. (When he signed a contract with Warner he insisted that the company maintained a team for him among its employees.) Back in showbiz, he joined the Bell-Prevost Trio but that ended when he broke a leg. He became a straight actor for a while but returned to his comic roots in the Twenties. His first hit film was controversial. Hold Everything (1930) was based on a Broadway play starring Bert Lahr who paid for an ad in Variety claiming that Brown had stolen his mannerisms. Brown was very popular during the Depression and was among the Top 10 Moneymakers in 1932, 1935 and 1936. In 1915 he married Kathryn McGraw (1892–1977) and had two sons and two daughters. On October 8, 1936, his oldest son, Don Evan, was killed in a plane crash. That night, unsurprisingly, the show did not go on. His other son Joe L. became general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. During the Second World War and the Korean War Brown worked tirelessly to raise money and entertain the troops. He is now mostly forgotten except for one role – that of Osgood Fielding III in the hilarious Some Like It Hot (released March 29, 1959). Osgood is wooing Daphne, little realising that “she” is really Jerry. Daphne explains the reasons why they cannot be married: “For years I’ve lived with a saxophone player.” “I forgive you.” “We can never have children.” “We can adopt some.” “You don’t understand – I’m a man!” and the final deadpan response, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

  CAUSE: Joe E. Brown died, aged 80, after a long illness in Brentwood, California. He was buried in the Sunrise Slope, south of the Great Mausoleum, Forest Lawn, Glendale, California.

  Johnny Mack Brown

  Born September 1, 1904

  Died November 14, 1974

  ‘Dothan Antelope’. Born in Dothan, Alabama, the great-great-grandson of a Red Indian princess, 6́ 1˝ Johnny Mack Brown was the second of six sons of John Henry Brown and Hattie McGillivray who owned the local clothes shop. His siblings were Harry, Tolbert, William Wallace, Fred, Louise, Elsa, Doris and David. He graduated from Dothan High School in 1922 and after a gap year enrolled at the University of Alabama in 1924 and, two years later, was discovered by Erich von Stroheim when Brown led his team to glory in the Rose Bowl American football competition. They beat the Washington Huskies 20–19, despite losing 12–0 at half time. Signed to MGM, he made his début in the film Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927) – a film about baseball which starred William Haines. His next film was The Bugle Call (1927) which starred Jackie Coogan. Brown appeared with some of Hollywood’s most glamorous ladies. He worked with Marian Davies in The Fair Co-Ed (1927) in which he played Bob, and worked with Greta Garbo three times. The first film The Divine Woman, in which Brown played Jean Lery, was made on a budget of $267,000, and released on January 14, 1928. On July 28, 1928, he began filming as David Furness in A Woman Of Affairs based on Michael Arlen’s novel The Green Hat. Allocated a budget of $383,000, the film co-starred John Gilbert, Lewis Stone, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr and Dorothy Sebastian. The film wrapped on September 11 and was released on December 29, On April 15, 1929, filming began on The Single Standard (1929) in which Brown played Tommy Hewlett, Garbo’s on-screen husband. Based on the novel by Adela Rogers St John, the romantic drama starred Nils Asther, Dorothy Sebastian and a bit part for Joel McCrea. The Single Standard cost $336,000 and was premièred at New York’s Capitol Theater on July 27, Brown starred with Joan Crawford in the silent Our Dancing Daughters (released October 8, 1928) playing Ben Blaine. The film also featured Dorothy Sebastian and Nils Asther. Leonard Maltin, the critic, described the film as “one of the best Jazz Age silents, with [an] absurdly melodramatic story”. Brown played Steve Crandall in Norma Shearer’s last silent film A Lady Of Chance (1928). The ‘Flapper Age’ melodrama Coquette (released March 30, 1929) was Mary Pickford’s first talkie and it won her an Oscar. Brown played Michael Jeffery. It soon became apparent that his dashing good looks could only get him so far and he was fast becoming just another pretty face. His slow drawl did not help his box office appeal. A Stetson and a horse would save his career. In 1930 he made his first Western, Montana Moon (released April 14, 1930) playing Larry Kerrigan, which coincidentally starred Joan Crawford. He would go on to appear in almost 200 Westerns. Between 1930 and 1936 he alternated between Westerns and straight films before plumping to stay in the saddle. His early films included: Mockery (1927), After Midnight (1927), Soft Living (1928) as Stockney Webb, Square Crooks (1928) as Larry Scott, The Play Girl (1928) as Bradley Lane, Annapolis (1928) as Bill, The Valiant (1929) as Robert Ward, Jazz Heaven (1929) as Barry Holmes, Great Day (1930), Undertow (1930) as Paul Whalen and Hurricane (1930) as Dan. His next film would be the one that would make him a Western star. King Vidor was due to make a film of the life of the outlaw William H. Bonney, better known to history as Billy the Kid. Vidor did not want to hire Brown but in the end he acquiesced and Billy The Kid (released October 1930) was a hit. If
Brown thought his stardom was assured at MGM he was soon to be disabused of the notion. He left MGM and although he worked regularly it was to be for smaller studios like Mascot, Monogram, Supreme and Republic. In 1943 he began filming as US Marshal ‘Nevada Jack’ McKenzie in the Rough Riders series for Monogram. The films were The Stranger From Pecos (1943), Six Gun Gospel (1943), Outlaws Of Stampede Pass (1943), The Texas Kid (1943), The Ghost Rider (1943), Raiders Of The Border (1944), Partners Of The Trail (1944), Law Men (1944), Range Law (1944), West Of The Rio Grande (1944), Land Of The Outlaws (1944), Law Of The Valley (1944), Ghost Guns (1944), The Navajo Trail (1945), Gun Smoke (1945), Stranger From Santa Fe (1945), The Lost Trail (1945), Frontier Feud (1945), Border Bandits (1946) and The Haunted Mine (1946). From 1946 he played characters whose names were a variation of his own – Johnny Macklin, Johnny Mackey, Johnny Mack, and just plain Johnny: Gentleman From Texas (1946), Trailing Danger (1947), Land Of The Lawless (1947), The Law Comes To Gunsight (1947), Code Of The Saddle (1947), Flashing Guns (1947), Crossed Trails (1948), Frontier Agent (1948), Triggerman (1948), Gunning For Justice (1948), Hidden Danger (1948), Law Of The West (1949), Trail’s End (1949), West Of El Dorado (1949), Western Renegades (1949), Over The Border (1950), Six Gun Mesa (1950), Law Of The Panhandle (1950), Colorado Ambush (1951), Man From The Black Hills (1952) and Dead Man’s Trail (1952). He was Johnny Mack Brown in Back Trail (1948), The Fighting Ranger (1948), Sheriff Of Medicine Bow (1948), Range Justice (1949), West Of Wyoming (1950), Man From Sonora (1951), Blazing Bullets (1951), Oklahoma Justice (1951), Whistling Hills (1951), Texas Lawmen (1951), Texas City (1952) and Canyon Ambush (1952). Between 1940 and 1950 he was never out of the Top 10 in Motion Picture Herald’s annual ranking. His highest position was fifth in 1943, sixth in 1940, 1942, 1944 and 1945, seventh in 1941 and 1946 and eighth in 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1950. His other films included The Great Meadow (1931) as Berk Jarvis, The Secret Six (released April 18, 1931) as Hank Rogers, The Last Flight (1931) as William ‘Bill’ Talbot, Lasca Of The Rio Grande as Miles Kincaid, Hollywood Halfbacks (1931), Flames (1932) as Charlie, The Vanishing Frontier (1932) as Kirby Tornell, 70,000 Witnesses as Wally Clark, Malay Nights (1932), Fighting With Kit Carson as Kit Carson, Saturday’s Millions (1933) as Alan Barry, Female (released November 11, 1933) as George P. Cooper, Son Of A Sailor as Duke, Three On A Honeymoon (1934) as Chuck Wells, Missouri Nightingale (1934) as Jim Warren, Marrying Widows (1934) as The Husband, Cross Streets (1934) as Adam Blythe, Belle Of The Nineties (released September 21, 1934) as Brooks Claybourne, Against The Law as Steve Wayne, Rustlers Of Red Dog (1935) as Jack Wood, Branded A Coward (1935) as Johnny Hume/Billy Hume, Between Men (1935) as Johnny Wellington, Jr, Courageous Avenger as Kirk Baxter, Valley Of The Lawless (1936) as Bruce Reynolds, Desert Phantom (1936) as Billy Donovan, Rogue Of The Range (1936) as Dan Doran, Everyman’s Law (1936) as Dog Town Kid, The Crooked Trail as Jim Blake, Under Cover Man as Steve McLain, The Gambling Terror (1937) as Jeff Hayes, Trail Of Vengeance (1937) as Kenneth Dude Ramsey, Lawless Land (1937) as Ranger Jeff Hayden, Bar-Z Bad Men as Jim Waters, Guns In The Dark (1937) as Johnny Darrell, A Lawman Is Born (1937) as Tom Mitchell, Wild West Days (1937) as Kentucky Wade, Boothill Brigade (1937) as Lon Cardigan, Born To The West (1937) as Tom Fillmore, Wells Fargo (1937) as Talbot Carter, Flaming Frontiers (1938) as Tex Houston, The Oregon Trail (1939) as Jeff Scott, Desperate Trails (1939) as Steve Hayden, Oklahoma Frontier (1939) as Jeff McLeod, Chip Of The Flying U as ‘Chip’ Bennett, West Of Carson City (1940) as Jim Bannister, Boss Of Bullion City (1940) as Tom Bryant, Riders Of Pasco Basin (1940) as Lee Jamison, Bad Man From Red Butte as Gil Brady/Buck Halliday, Son Of Roaring Dan (1940) as Jim Reardon, Ragtime Cowboy Joe (1940) as Steve Logan, Law And Order (1940) as Bill Ralston, Pony Post (1940) as Cal Sheridan, Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie (1941) as Joe Henderson, Law Of The Range (1941) as Steve Howard, Rawhide Rangers (1941) as Brand Calhoun, Man From Montana (1941) as Sheriff Bob Dawson, The Masked Rider (1941) as Larry Prescott, Arizona Cyclone (1941) as Tom Baxter, Fighting Bill Fargo (1941) as Bill Fargo, Stagecoach Buckaroo (1942) as Steve, Ride ’Em Cowboy (1942) as Alabam Brewster, The Silver Bullet (1942) as Silver Jim Donovan, Boss Of Hangtown Mesa (1942) as Steve Collins, Deep In The Heart Of Texas (1942) as Jim Mallory, Little Joe, The Wrangler (1942) as Neal Wallace, The Old Chisholm Trail (1942) as Dusty Gardner, Tenting Tonight On The Old Camp Ground (1943) as Wade Benson, Cheyenne Roundup (1943) as Buck Brandon/Gils Brandon, Raiders Of San Joaquin (1943) as Rocky Morgan, Forever Yours (1945) as Major Tex O’Connor, Flame Of The West (1945) as Dr John Poole, Drifting Along (1946) as Steve Garner, Under Arizona Skies (1946) as Dusty Smith, Trigger Fingers (1946) as Sam ‘Hurricane’ Benton, Shadows On The Range (1946) as Steve Mason, Silver Range (1946) as Johnny Bronton, Raiders Of The South (1947) as Captain Johnny Brownell, Valley Of Fear (1947) as Johnny Williams, Prairie Express (1947) as Johnny Hudson, Gun Talk (1947) as Johnny McVey, Overland Trails (1948) as Johnny Murdock, Western Feud! (1949) as Jim McPhail, Stampede (1949) as Sheriff Aaron Ball, Outlaw Gold (1950) as Dave Willis, Short Grass (1950) as Sheriff Keown and Montana Desperado (1951) as Dave Borden. Brown retired in 1953. He made a brief comeback in the mid-Sixties playing Enkoff in Requiem For A Gunfighter (1965), The Bounty Killer (1965) as Sheriff Green and Apache Uprising (released New Year’s Day, 1966) as Sheriff Ben Hall. He was married to Connie Foster by whom he had a son, Lachlan (known as Locky) and three daughters, Cynthia, Jane Harriet (b. 1929) and Sally. In 1957 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and on New Year’s Day, 2001 into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.

  CAUSE: Johnny Mack Brown suffered financial hardship in his later years and was forced to sell his Beverly Hills home. He died from heart failure, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, California. He was buried in the Court of Freedom, Columbarium of Heavenly Peace, at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California. His daughter, Jane Harriet Brown was interred with him in 1997.

  Coral Browne

  (CORAL EDITH BROWN)

  Born July 23, 1913

  Died May 29, 1991

  Wicked wit. Coral Browne (she added the e for dramatic purposes) was born in Melbourne, Australia, the only child of Leslie Clarence Brown, a restaurateur, and Victoria Elizabeth Bennett. She was educated at the Claremont Ladies’ College and then went to an art school where she studied costume design. In 1931 she made her stage début in Loyalties when an actress fell ill. Despite her parents’ reservations about her stage career, her father gave her £50 for her 21st birthday to travel to London. His only proviso was that she returned home if she had not made a success of herself when the money ran out. The £50 went long before she made her name but she began a number of liaisons with men who kept her. She made her film début in Line Engaged (1935) playing Doreen and made eight films in five years including the George Formby vehicle Let George Do It (1940) in which she portrayed Iris. In 1941 she played Maggie Cutler in The Man Who Came To Dinner opposite Robert Morley. At the time she had an affair with Jack Buchanan. She didn’t make another film until 1946 but after one more film in 1947 she disappeared from the screen until 1954 when she appeared in Beautiful Stranger. On June 26, 1950 she married the bisexual actor and agent Philip Westrope Pearman (b. 1910, d. 1964). In 1951, she joined the Old Vic company to play first Emilia to Douglas Campbell’s Othello, and then Regan to Donald Wolfit’s King Lear. In 1956 she was Lady Macbeth, and Gertrude to Michael Redgrave’s Hamlet, both at the Old Vic. She toured Moscow with the play and met the spy Guy Burgess, who had been Redgrave’s lover at Cambridge. The meeting became the subject of Alan Bennett’s television play An Englishman Abroad (1983). In 1958 she was bitchy Vera Charles in Auntie Mame and the cynical Meg in The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone, three years later. She made half a dozen more films in the Sixties including The Night Of The Generals (1967) as Eleanore von Seidlitz-Gabler and The Killing Of Sister George as Mercy Croft, the lesbian BBC administrator. In 1964 Philip Pearman died and Browne began a long affair with the actor Michael Hordern. In 1973 she met Vincent Price while making Thea
tre Of Blood and they married on October 24, 1974. They decided to live in London and went to buy a bed. They were told that there would be a five-week delay. Browne pointed to her corpse-like husband and quipped, “Five weeks? Have you seen Mr Price?” The couple decamped to California but she was not happy there. Her last film was Dreamchild (1985), a version of the Lewis Carroll book.

  CAUSE: She died of breast cancer in Los Angeles. She was 77. A Thanksgiving Mass was held in London’s Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street on September 5, 1991.

  Tod Browning

  Born July 12, 1880

  Died October 6, 1962

  ‘The Edgar Allan Poe of the cinema’. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Lydia J. and Charles Avery Browning, Charles Albert Browning was educated at Louisville Male High School but at 16 joined a travelling circus, the Manhattan Fair and Carnival Company. He served as an emcee introducing the sideshow freaks, a job he would never forget and later introduce into his films. At 18 he became a jockey but yearned for show business and became a singer-dancer in shows on the Ohio and Missouri rivers. In 1905 he formed a comedy contortion act – Lizard & Coon – with Roy C. Jones. Five years later, he joined a vaudeville-burlesque troupe, World of Mirth, where he became the principal comedian. In 1913 he arrived in Los Angeles and met the vaudevillian Charlie Murray who was working for Mack Sennett. With Murray’s encouragement, Browning appeared in his first film, Scenting A Terrible Crime (released October, 1913 by Biograph). The same month that his début film was released, Browning moved with D.W. Griffith to Mutual where he starred in a series of short comedies for Komic (1914–1915). He also directed 25 comedies for Reliance-Majestic and was a set changer for Atta Boy’s Last Race (1916) which starred Dorothy Gish. He worked as an assistant for D.W. Griffith and appeared in several roles in Intolerance (1916). In 1917 he made his first feature film, Jim Bludso, starring Wilfred Lucas and Kate Taggart for Fine Arts and in 1917 moved to Metro Pictures where he directed five suspense melodramas. After the First World War Browning signed for Universal Pictures where he emerged as a first-rate director with a taste for low-life characters. However, by 1923, his alcoholism severely impacted on his work. It was two years before he recovered and he went to see his old boss Irving Thalberg about work. Browning directed Lon Chaney in The Unholy Three (made in 1925 on a budget of $103,000, it made $704,000), the first of eight grotesque fantasies by the two men for MGM: The Black Bird (1926), The Road To Mandalay (1926), London After Midnight (1927), The Unknown (1927), The Big City (1928), West Of Zanzibar (1928) and Where East Is East (1929). Browning directed Dracula (released February 14, 1931) for Universal, intending Lon Chaney to play the title role. When Chaney died, Browning cast Bela Lugosi in the film which cost $355,000 to make. The following year, for $311,000, Browning made the film for MGM for which he is best remembered. Freaks (released July 9, 1932) was the story of a circus in which the “normal” characters are cruel, greedy and venal while the “freaks” are loyal and selfless. The film was a financial flop and banned for many years. It also irritated Louis B. Mayer and caused a rift between the two. In the last seven years before his retirement in 1939, Browning made just four films – his last film being Miracles For Sale (1939). In 1906 he married Amy Louise Stevens but they divorced in 1910. On June 9, 1911, he married Alice L. Houghton Wilson (d. May 12, 1944) whom he had met when they were both in World of Mirth. There were no children.