CAUSE: He died of kidney cancer at his home at 8.40pm on September 12, 1993. He was 76. The actor left his entire $32-million fortune to the Portuguese-born Robert Benevides.
Richard Burton
(RICHARD WALTER JENKINS)
Born November 10, 1925
Died August 5, 1984
The Voice of the Valleys. Richard Walter Jenkins was born at 2 Dan-y-Bont, Pontrhydyen, Wales, weighing a remarkable 12lb. His father, who bore the same name, was 49 and just 5́ 3;˝ his mother, Edith Thomas, was 42 when Richard was born, the twelfth out of thirteen children. His mother died following the birth of her final child, Graham, in 1927 “of puerperal fever”. His sister Cissie raised Richard until he was 17, when he moved in (on March 1, 1943, at 6 Connaught Street, Port Talbot) with a gay schoolteacher by the name of Philip Burton (b. November 30, 1904). The latter took an interest in young Jenkins, who later took his mentor’s name. Thanks to Burton’s tutelage the boy won a scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford, in April 1944. The previous year, in November 1943, he had made his tentative first stage appearance at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool playing Glan in Druid’s Rest. The war burst into his studies and from 1944 until 1947 he served with the RAF. In 1948 he made his film début playing Gareth in The Last Days Of Dolwyn (1948). On the set he met an actress by the name of Sybil Williams (b. 1929) and they were married at 8.45am at Kensington Registry Office on February 5, 1949. They had two daughters, the actress Kate (b. Switzerland, September 11, 1957) and Jessica (b. Switzerland, 1959) who was autistic. In 1949 in London and in 1950 on Broadway, the 5́ 11˝ Burton appeared in The Lady’s Not For Burning to critical acclaim. In 1952 he made his first film in America, My Cousin Rachel, playing Philip Ashley, a role that won him the first of his seven Academy Award nominations. The following year he was nominated in the Best Actor category for his portrayal of Marcellus Gallio in The Robe (1953). It would be ten years later on the set of Cleopatra (1963), where he played Mark Antony, that Richard Burton’s stature changed from that of a respected actor to gossip column fodder. He fell in love with the star of the film, Elizabeth Taylor, thus launching an avalanche of newspaper stories that would not abate for over 20 years. Acting legend Laurence Olivier told him, “Make up your mind, Richard Burton. A household word or a great actor.” It seems he chose the former by embarking on his reckless affair with Taylor. Some have said that Burton would have eclipsed Olivier as the greatest actor of the Twentieth Century had he not met Taylor. He initiated divorce proceedings against Sybil so he could be free to marry Taylor. However, there was a problem. At the time Taylor was married to singer Eddie Fisher who had commented, “Who could take that scruffy, arrogant buffoon seriously?” It was a serious mistake. Burton was divorced on December 16, 1963, and he and Taylor were married on March 15, 1964, on the eighth floor of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal, Canada. Prior to the wedding Fisher’s godfather, mobster Frank Costello, asked him if he wanted Burton taken care of. Fisher didn’t because he, too, had been having an affair with Burton. On the wedding night Burton and Taylor “sat and talked and giggled and cried until seven in the morning.” Taylor said at the time, “I’m so happy you can’t believe it … I love him enough to stand by him, no matter what he might do and I would want.” Burton opined, “I did not tame Elizabeth; she came, she saw and then I conquered.” Professionally, Burton provided the voice-over for Stanley Baker and Cy Enfield’s Zulu (1964) but following his marriage producers queued to hire him and Taylor as a pair, offering telephone number salaries as inducements. They appeared together in The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Doctor Faustus (1967), The Comedians (1967) and Boom (1968). His other films included The Longest Day (1962) as Flight Officer David Campbell, Becket (1964) as Thomas à Becket (which saw him nominated for another Best Actor Oscar; appearing with Peter O’Toole the two serious drinkers made a pact not to drink for ten days: each man lasted just five), The Night Of The Iguana (1964) as The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, the lead in Hamlet (1964), What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) (an uncredited cameo role in which he played a man in the bar, something of an in-joke reference to O’Toole’s and his own fondness for drink), The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965) as Alec Leamas (winning yet another Best Actor Oscar nomination), Anne Of The Thousand Days (1969) as King Henry VIII (and his sixth nomination), The Assassination Of Trotsky (1972) as Leon Trotsky, Under Milk Wood (1973), Equus (1977) as Dr Martin Dysart (his seventh and last Oscar nomination), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) as Father Lamont, The Wild Geese (1978) as Colonel Allen Faulkner, Absolution (1981) as Father Goddard, which saw him playing opposite a naked Tatum O’Neal, and his last film, released posthumously, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) as O’Brien. But Burton’s private life fascinated as much if not more than his professional one. As a token of his love for Taylor, Burton bought her the 69.42 carat Cartier-Burton diamond which cost him a cool $1,050,000. He also splashed out on the most expensive mink coat in the world (a snip at $125,000), the 33.9 carat Krupp diamond (a bargain at $350,000), the Ping-Pong diamond ($38,000), La Peregrina pearl ($37,000), a $93,000 emerald and a sapphire brooch valued at $65,000. They had no children together, but adopted a daughter, Maria. In 1974, talking about a possible marriage split between them, Burton said, “Elizabeth and I have been through too much to watch our marriage go up in flames. There is too much love going for us ever to divorce.” Soon after (June 26, 1974) they divorced but on October 10, 1975, they remarried in a mud hut in Botswana. However, the passion was spent and nine months later, on July 30, 1976, they divorced for the second and last time. Taylor did not see Burton through rose-tinted spectacles. She once said, “Richard Burton is so discriminating that he won’t go to see a play with anybody in it but himself.” Just over three weeks after his divorce from Taylor, Burton married Suzy Hunt, the ex-wife of Formula 1 champion James Hunt, in Arlington, Virginia. Seven years later, they too divorced. On July 3, 1983, he married freelance secretary Sally Hay (b. January 18, 1948) in a Las Vegas hotel, during a run of Private Lives in which he starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor. Despite his lady-killing reputation, Burton admitted he had homosexual tendencies and that he drowned them out by drinking excessively. Third wife Suzy Hunt believed she was marrying “a drunk and a roaring madman” but commented that she finished with “a little goody two-shoes”. He was also, on occasion, prone to engaging mouth before brain, as at a benefit for haemophilia in which Burton told the audience that he had been a “bleeder” all his life. He had no illusions about himself, admitting he had made some dire films because of the money. He was paid $327,600 for Cleopatra, $462,000 for The Night Of The Iguana and $1 million for The Sandpiper. He summed up his life thus: “I rather like my reputation: that of a spoiled genius from the Welsh gutter, a drunk, a womaniser. It’s rather an attractive image.”
CAUSE: Touring America in the musical Camelot in 1981, Burton was left partially paralysed by a trapped nerve in his spine. In his final year he suffered from arthritis, back pains and the slight epilepsy which had factored in much of his life became worse. In his last week he worked on scripts for Wild Geese II and The Quiet American at his home in Céligny, on a lake north of Geneva, Switzerland. On August 3, 1984, he got drunk in a local café and suffered a hangover and headache the next day. The following morning his wife was unable to wake him and he was taken to a hospital in Nyon then to Geneva where he died that afternoon of a cerebral haemorrhage aged 58. His wife and daughter, Kate, were by his side. He was buried in Céligny. Elizabeth Taylor did not attend his funeral. Burton left £692,456 in England and £3,500,000 overseas.
FURTHER READING: Richard Burton: His Intimate Story – Ruth Waterbury (London: Mayflower-Dell, 1965); Rich: The Life Of Richard Burton – Melvyn Bragg (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988).
Mae Busch
Born January 20, 1891
Died April 19, 1946
Comedy foil. Born in Melbourne, Australia, Mae Busch appeared on stage and in vaudeville before she began
making films with her début coming in The Agitator (1912). She went on to become a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty and took many major roles in silent pictures. Busch got work through the good offices of Mabel Normand but she repaid her by ending Normand’s romance with Sennett. They were caught together although Sennett insisted that it was a joke that misfired. An on-set injury ended her career at Keystone so she signed to Fox. After meeting Erich von Stroheim she was cast in The Devil’s Passkey (1919) and then appeared in The Christian (1923) as Glory Quayle and The Unholy Three (1925). Her career was virtually wrecked following an argument with MGM after which she suffered a nervous breakdown. She was rescued by Hal Roach who cast her in Love ’Em And Weep (filmed in January 1927, released June 12, 1927). She received top billing over Stan Laurel, James Finlayson and Oliver Hardy who played Judge Chigger. Roach had recognised her comedic talents and cast her in 14 Laurel & Hardy films, most notably playing Ollie’s wife in Sons Of The Desert (shot between October 2–October 23, 1933, released December 29, 1933) and Charlie Hall’s wife in Them Thar Hills (filmed June 11–20, 1934, released July 21, 1934) and Tit For Tat (filmed December 10–20, 1934, released January 5, 1935).
CAUSE: She died in Woodland Hills, California, after a long illness.
Frank Butler
Born December 28, 1890
Died June 10, 1967
Multi-talent. Born in Oxford, 6́0½˝ Butler made his home and career in America where he starred in his own film series. He appeared in Hal Roach’s Tol’able Romeo (released December 1925), No Man’s Law (1927), and Seeing The World (1927) with Stan Laurel and he directed Laurel & Hardy in Flying Elephants (filmed May 1927, released February 12, 1928) which also starred James Finlayson. In the mid-Thirties Butler became the head of Hal Roach’s scenario department and later wrote the Crosby-Hope-Lamour comedies Road To Singapore (1940), Road To Zanzibar (1941) and Road To Morocco (1942) for which he was nominated for an Oscar. That same year he was also nominated for Wake Island (1942). He finally won an Academy Award on March 15, 1945, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater for Leo McCarey’s multi-award winning Going My Way (1944) starring Bing Crosby. His competitors that year were Double Indemnity, Gaslight, Laura and Meet Me In St Louis. He was married to Ethel Virginia Chapman.
CAUSE: He died in Oceanside, Long Island, New York, aged 76 on the same day as Spencer Tracy. Ironically, it had been Tracy’s film Woman Of The Year that prevented Butler winning an Oscar for Wake Island and Road To Morocco on March 4, 1943.
Merritt Butrick
Born September 3, 1959
Died March 17, 1989
Young blood. Born in Gainesville, Florida, Butrick appeared in the second Star Trek spin-off Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan (1982) playing Dr David Marcus, a role he reprised in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984). His other films included Zapped! (1982) as Gary Cooter, Head Office (1985) as John Hudson, Shy People (1988) as Mike, Death Spa (1988) as David Avery and was Richie in Fright Night Part II (1989).
CAUSE: He died of AIDS in New York, aged 29.
Marion Byron
(MIRIAM BILENKIN)
Born March 16, 1911
Died July 5, 1985
‘Peanuts’. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Marion Byron followed her elder sister, Betty Byron, into show business after leaving school. She appeared in numerous stage shows before turning to film in 1926, starring with Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928). Hal Roach decided that he wanted a female Laurel & Hardy so he teamed Byron with Anita Garvin. They made three films together – A Pair Of Tights (1928), Feed ’Em And Weep (1928) and Going Ga-Ga (1929) – before she left Roach. She went on to appear in Broadway Babies (1929) as Florine Chanler, So Long, Letty (1929) as Ruth Davis, His Captive Woman (1929) as Baby Myers, The Forward Pass (1929) as Mazie and Golden Dawn (1930) as Joanna. In 1932 she married the screenwriter Lou Breslow and six years later, in 1938, she retired.
CAUSE: She died in Santa Monica, California, aged 74.
C
Sebastian Cabot
Born July 6, 1918
Died August 22, 1977
Heavy. Born in London, Charles Sebastian Thomas Cabot left school aged 14 and worked in a number of jobs before turning his hand to acting. He played heavies (in more ways than one), buffoons and likeable characters, usually with a beard. Among his films were Othello (1946), Dual Alibi (1947), Old Mother Riley’s New Adventure (1949), Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949), Old Mother Riley, Headmistress (1950), Old Mother Riley’s Jungle Treasure (1951), Ivanhoe (1952) and the voice of Bagheera the panther in The Jungle Book (1967).
CAUSE: Cabot died from a stroke aged 59 at his home 10891 Deep Cove Road, North Saanich, British Columbia. He was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park, 1218 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles 90024.
Susan Cabot
Born July 9, 1927
Died December 10, 1986
Tragic beauty. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, brunette Susan Cabot was one of those beautiful women who were there simply to adorn movies rather than being in any real way central to the plot. She was often placed in clothes more usually found in a harem, which showed off her petite but glorious figure. She appeared in films such as On The Isle Of Samoa (1950) as Moana, Tomahawk (1951) as Monahseetah, Flame Of Araby (1951) as Clio, Son Of Ali Baba (1952) as Tala, The Battle At Apache Pass (1952) as Nono, Ride Clear Of Diablo (1954) as Laurie Kenyon, Sorority Girl (1957) as Sabra Tanner, The Saga Of The Viking Women And Their Voyage To The Waters Of The Great Sea Serpent (1958) as Enger, Fort Massacre (1958) as Piute Girl and her final film The Wasp Woman (1960) as Janice Starlin. In 1959 the press began writing of her love affair with King Hussein of Jordan. The romance lasted over a year but ultimately came to nought. Having retired from films to marry and raise a family she began to work with various charities. Towards the end of her life she began to suffer from mental problems and became somewhat reclusive, letting her once glorious home go to rack and ruin.
CAUSE: She was bludgeoned to death aged 59 by her dwarf student son, 22-year-old Timothy Scott Roman, in her Encino, California, home.
James Cagney
Born July 17, 1899
Died Easter Sunday (March 30) 1986
Little tough guy. Born in New York City, the son of an Irish barman and a half-Norwegian, half-Irish mother, James Francis Cagney, Jr began as a waiter, worked in a pool room and as a drag queen before becoming a thespian. In November 1918 his father died aged 41, officially of flu though he had been drinking himself steadily into the grave for years. On March 25, 1919, James’ actress sister Jeanne Carolyn Cagney was born. (She would appear in several plays, films and TV shows before her death on December 7, 1984.) In 1920 Jimmy joined the chorus of a Broadway show and earned his spurs touring for five years before returning to the Great White Way to play leading roles. On March 28, 1922, he married Frances Willard Vernon (b. Fairfield, Iowa 1904) whom he nicknamed Bill. (They adopted two children: James, III [d. 1984] and Cathleen, known as Casey.) Cagney’s first film was the 55-minute Sinner’s Holiday (1930) for Warner Bros. He was so nervous during shooting that he almost threw up every time he had to film a scene, but he made himself perform. The New York Times paid tribute to the performance: “The most impressive acting is done by James Cagney in the role of Harry Delano. His fretful tenseness during the closing scenes is conveyed with sincerity.” The film was a competent feature in which Cagney played a cry-baby mother’s boy who was a killer on the sideline but the bosses liked what they saw and offered him an extension on his three-week contract (for another three weeks) and then a seven-year contract at $400 a week. To capitalise on his baby-faced appearance, Warner Bros knocked five years off 5́8½˝ Cagney’s age, claiming he was born in 1904. Director Lewis Milestone wanted him to appear in The Front Page (1931) but Howard Hughes nixed the idea, describing Cagney as “a little runt”. Despite Hughes’ animus, Cagney was a star by his fifth film. He played Tom Powers in The Public Enemy (1931). Shot in just 26 days in February and March 1931 for just $150,000, The Public Enemy and Little Caes
ar (1931) were the two films that really kick-started the popularity of gangster films. The former tells the story of two guttersnipes who become hoodlums and then return to their roots. Until two days before shooting Cagney was slated to play the part of the good guy, probably because up till then he was regarded as primarily a song and dance man. Warner Bros’ head of production, Darryl F. Zanuck, claimed that gangster movies were dead but director William Wellman promised him “the toughest, the most violent, realistic picture you ever did see.” In fact, only eight people are killed and none on screen. The most memorable scene in the film is one in which Powers (Cagney) pushes half a grapefruit into the face of Kitty (Mae Clarke). There are various explanations concerning how the scene came to be. Both Cagney and Clarke claim it was a practical joke on the crew to see how they would react. Neither expected it to remain in the final cut. Forever after, Cagney was always offered half a grapefruit when he went to a restaurant – and usually ate them. Despite appearing in 90 films, Clarke was henceforth known as ‘The Grapefruit Girl’ and claimed the advertising industry missed a trick by not hiring her to promote the fruit. In a fight scene Donald Cook smacked Cagney full in the mouth instead of pulling his punch, breaking one of Cagney’s teeth. When the ground crumbles around Cagney’s feet, you are seeing real bullets disintegrate the pavement; the practice of using blanks didn’t originate for some years. The character of Tom Powers was supposedly based on the gangster Dion ‘Deanie’ O’Bannion (b. Aurora, Illinois, 1892, k. 738 North State Street, Chicago, Illinois, November 10, 1924, one of the most vicious killers of the Prohibition Era; he was murdered in the flower shop he owned by three of Al Capone’s henchmen) and two thugs Cagney had known on the Lower East Side. Cagney was worried that he might be typecast as a villain and even wrote to his mother, reminding her it was all play-acting. It was too late, but Cagney managed to show his versatility playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) and George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), which won him a Best Actor Oscar. Rosemary de Camp played Cagney’s mother in the latter; in fact, she was eleven years younger than him. It’s ironic that Cagney plays Cohan because although Cohan may have been a great songwriter, like many he was less than brilliant at spotting talent. He once turned down the young Cagney, who auditioned for him, and later had Clark Gable sacked from his 1929 play Gambling. Cagney would reprise his performance as Cohan in The Seven Little Foys (1955). In 1942 Cagney formed Cagney Productions with his younger brother, William (b. New York City, March 26, 1904, d. January 3, 1988) a former actor who went on to produce some of Jimmy’s films. Among his other films were Footlight Parade (1933) as Chester Kent, Jimmy The Gent (1934) as Jimmy Corrigan, Here Comes The Navy (1934) as Chester J. O’Conner, Devil Dogs Of The Air (1935) as Timmy O’Toole, ‘G’ Men (1935) as James ‘Brick’ Davis, The Irish In Us (1935) as Danny O’Hara, Mutiny On The Bounty (1935), The Roaring Twenties (1939) as Eddie Bartlett, Each Dawn I Die (1939) as Frank Ross, The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941) as Steve Collins and Blood On The Sun (1945) as Nick Condon. His performance as William ‘Rocky’ Sullivan in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) earned him a nomination for Best Actor Oscar but it was also criticised for not being realistic enough. Once again the bullets used were lived ammunition and for one scene where the police shot at him while he was holed up in a building Cagney had sensibly refused to stand in the window. Lucky for him that he did because one bullet passed through the place where his head would have been! Critics also moaned that he had been able to hold off the entire New York Police Department without once reloading his gun. Cagney took note and in his next film, The Oklahoma Kid (1939), made sure he never fired more than six bullets in any one scene. He won another Best Actor nomination for playing racketeer Martin ‘The Gimp’ Snyder in Love Me Or Leave Me (1955). Cagney retired from film-making in the Sixties because he said the fun had gone out of it. However, in 1981 he returned to the cameras to play police commissioner Rheinlander Waldo in Ragtime, despite diabetes, poor circulation, the after-effects of several strokes and sundry other health problems.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 43
