Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries
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CAUSE: Joan believed her Christian Science faith would cure her of the cancer that spread through her body. Her weight dropped alarmingly (shortly before her death from pancreatic cancer and acute coronary occlusion she weighed just five stone) but still she kept the faith. On the morning of her death she insisted on making breakfast for her housekeeper and a fan who had stayed over at her New York home. (Joan was an inveterate letter writer sending out between 5,000 and 10,000 items each month and 6,000 at Christmas.) The meal prepared, she returned to her bed and died. Rumours persist that Joan Crawford committed suicide. Debbie Reynolds was certainly convinced that she did. “There were too many coincidental events leading up to [her death]. I just feel Joan found some way to end this life before she looked too bad, before she had to suffer the ravages of decay any more.” Joan Crawford’s reputation was ruined posthumously in November 1978 when her adopted daughter, Christina, penned a vitriolic memoir entitled Mommie Dearest in which she portrayed Crawford as a vicious woman who regularly beat her children with wire coat-hangers. Both Christina and Christopher were excluded from Joan’s will “for reasons which are well known to them”. The book was made into a film in 1981 starring Faye Dunaway in the title role. However, that film has become an unintended camp classic.
FURTHER READING: Joan Crawford: A Biography– Bob Thomas (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979); Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud– Shaun Considine (London: Sphere, 1990); Joan Crawford: The Last Word– Fred Lawrence Guiles (London: Pavilion, 1995).
Laird Cregar
Born July 28, 1916
Died December 9, 1944
Screen heavy. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of six sons, Samuel Laird Cregar was a strapping 6́ 3˝ hulk of a man who used his bulk to good effect as a nightclub bouncer. In 1940 he turned to acting and appeared in Granny Get Your Gun (1940) and then as a fur trapper in Paul Muni’s Hudson’s Bay (1940) as Gooseberry. Over the next four years he made some memorable appearances as unpleasant characters, in Oh Johnny, How You Can Love (1940), I Wake Up Screaming (1941) as Ed Cornell, Charley’s Aunt (1941) as Sir Francis Chesney, Ten Gentlemen From West Point (1942) as Major Sam Carter, This Gun For Hire (1942) as nightclub owner Willard Gates, The Lodger (1944) as Slade and Hangover Square (1945) as George Harvey Bone. He was unmarried.
CAUSE: He died in Los Angeles, California, of a heart attack brought on by a crash diet. He weighed over 21st but wanted to be a leading man and thought he could achieve that ambition if he was slim. He lost 7st but the sudden weight loss proved too much for his system to cope with. He was just 28. He was buried in the Court of Freedom at Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks, 1712 South Glendale Avenue, Glendale, California 91209.
Hume Cronyn
Born July 18, 1911
Died June 15, 2003
Versatile old-timer. Hume Cronyn, once rather unkindly described by a critic as “jaunty and jug-eared,” was probably best known for his long-running on-screen and off-screen partnership with Jessica Tandy. Hume Blake Cronyn was born in London, Ontario, Canada, the youngest child of Sir Hume Blake Cronyn, a financier and Unionist MP, and his wife Frances Amelia Labatt, heiress to the brewing empire. His great-grandfather was the first Bishop of Huron, and his grandfather the first white child born in what is now London, Ontario. A trip to the West End during a holiday in England led to the seven-year-old Cronyn wanting to become an actor. Hume was educated at Ridley College, Ontario, where he was bullied because he was short (he grew to be just 5˝6˝), so he took up boxing in self-defence and became one of the school’s most successful featherweights. Something of a rebel, he did not take kindly to the rigid discipline at school or home, later remembering that “everything seemed to be frowned on by my family as being socially unacceptable”. This applied especially to acting. Cronyn was “encouraged” to study law at McGill University, where he became involved in amateur dramatics and won a place on the Canadian Olympic boxing team. Just a year into his law degree he decided to become an actor and made his professional début in 1931 on a visit to Washington, DC with the National Stock Company, where he played the paper boy in Up Pops The Devil. He then became a student of Max Reinhardt at Salzburg, before going to New York where he attended a course at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, where he impressed classmates by arriving in an air-cooled Buick roadster. In reaction to his early life he soon became “the dandy of the speakeasies,” and was regularly “flat broke” despite his then enormous allowance of $173 a week. Cronyn first appeared on Broadway in 1934, playing the janitor in Hipper’s Holiday at the Maxine Elliott Theater, and then taught at the academy until 1938. He also directed numerous productions at the Barter Theater in Virginia and added to his growing reputation for comedy in Three Men On A Horse (1935) playing Erwin Trowbridge. After appearing on stage as Leo Davis in Room Service (1937), Cronyn was exasperated when he met the film mogul Harry Cohn, who suggested that he might do a screen test for “some part” in the film version. An angry Cronyn replied that it should not be necessary to test someone who had been playing the part for months, and walked out. Later when interviewed by Paramount, he would agree to a test only if they gave him no fewer than four scenes. For good measure, he recalled, “I also pointed out that because I was principally a stage actor I would only be available for film-making at certain times.” Surprisingly, Paramount accepted the terms and offered him a contract for seven years; but Cronyn turned down the offer feeling the salary of $250 was not enough. Two years later when Alfred Hitchcock saw Cronyn’s Paramount test, he immediately offered him the part of Herbie Hawkins in Shadow Of A Doubt (1943). When the film, which dealt with teenager Charlie’s realisation that her beloved uncle may be a serial killer, came out, Cronyn stole the show from Joseph Cotten with his portrayal of a nosy neighbour who is obsessed with pulp murder stories. He was also a notable Arthur Keats, the lawyer in the original version of The Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner (1946). Cronyn played Gerard, a policeman, in The Phantom Of The Opera (1943) and the traitor Andre Duval in The Cross Of Lorraine (1943), then worked with Hitchcock again in Lifeboat (1944). He was Stanley ‘Sparks’ Garrett, the shy radio operator alongside Tallulah Bankhead in a boat floating in the Atlantic, as a Daily Express with a headline declaring that there would be no Second World War drifted past. (Based on a John Steinbeck novelette, the character of the radio operator was the only one who did not feature in the original work.) Such was the hardship in filming that Cronyn cracked two ribs. Cronyn’s reputation was firmly established when he signed a contract with MGM and appeared as Paul Roeder opposite Spencer Tracy in The Seventh Cross (1944). This was the first time on screen that he played opposite Jessica Tandy, whom he had married on September 27, 1942 after a brief marriage to Emily Woodruff, a drama student. His performance in the picture won him an Oscar nomination for what was only his third major role; and for the next 13 months he turned down every script he was offered. Cronyn appeared as Papa Lecklie with Jessica Tandy again in MGM’s The Green Years, in which she played his daughter. She was largely shown standing behind chairs or carrying trays to conceal the fact that she was heavily pregnant. Among Cronyn’s immediate postwar films were Brute Force (1947) in which he played Captain Munsey, The Bridge Goes Wild (1948) as John McGrath and Top O’ The Morning (1949) as Hughie Devine. While filling in his time between roles he was also busy writing screenplays, directing his wife in such productions as Portrait Of A Madonna, and producing television shows. In 1948 he collaborated with Hitchcock again on Rope, which Cronyn had adapted for screen from the stage play. The film was notable for Hitchcock’s 10-minute-long single takes, a technique he also employed in Under Capricorn, which starred Ingrid Bergman as the wife of a hardened Australian farmer; but neither film proved successful at the box office, and Hitchcock then abandoned the idea. Cronyn remained one of Hitchcock’s closest friends. When an unflattering biography written by Donald Spoto (Alfred Hitchcock The Dark Side Of Genius) appeared after the director’s death in April 1980, Cronyn wrote to the N
ew York Times to complain about some of the claims in the book, such as the suggestion that Hitchcock had filmed The Birds as a symbolic rape of Tippi Hedren. Cronyn accepted the part of Professor Rodney Elwell in the Cary Grant film People Will Talk (1951) in order to work with another friend, the director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Cronyn returned to the theatre after this film and starred for two years opposite Jessica Tandy in the Broadway hit The Fourposter. The couple toured with the production until 1953, and Cronyn remained in the theatre for the rest of the decade. In 1963 he worked again with Mankiewicz in the epic flop Cleopatra. Cronyn was the Egyptian queen’s adviser, Sosigenes. The following year he was Polonius opposite Richard Burton in John Gielgud’s production of Hamlet. In 1969 Cronyn was diagnosed as suffering from optic cancer and had his left eye removed. He continued working, appearing in Mankiewicz’s There Was A Crooked Man in which he played Dudley Whinner, The Arrangement as Arthur, and Gaily Gaily as ‘Honest’ Tim Grogan. Cronyn surprised his theatrical fans by appearing in the disastrous comedy Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) playing Sherm. Afterwards, he explained that he took the part “to work with John Schlesinger, and for no other reason”. In 1978 Cronyn appeared again with Jessica Tandy in one of his most successful stage roles, Weller Martin in The Gin Game. The show was extremely well received on Broadway and toured Britain, Canada and the Soviet Union. He then returned to writing, collaborating with the English writer Susan Cooper (b. Burnham, Buckinghamshire, May 1935) on a play called Foxfire. This was based on a series of recollections of country life, and starred Cronyn and Jessica Tandy as an old hillbilly couple. He collaborated again with Susan Cooper in 1985 on the television film The Dollmaker, which starred Jane Fonda and won him a Best Screenplay award. Cronyn and Jessica Tandy starred together as an elderly couple rejuvenated by aliens in Cocoon (1985) and as the owners of a decrepit diner in Batteries Not Included (1987). In 1988 they again worked together, in the sequel Cocoon: The Return, in which they decided to emigrate to outer space for their retirement. Cronyn was the business brains of the partnership, finding the scripts, drawing up the contracts and scheduling their engagements. When not acting he enjoyed fishing and hiking. He and Jessica Tandy had a house in Connecticut and a large apartment in Manhattan, which housed their collection of modern painting and pre-Columbian art. They rarely watched television. Jessica Tandy died in 1994. The Cronyns had two children, a son (Christopher, b. Los Angeles, California, July 22, 1943) and daughter (Tandy, b. Los Angeles, California, November 26, 1945). Two years later in July 1996 Cronyn married Susan Cooper, who survived him.
CAUSE: He died of prostate cancer in Fairfield, Connecticut. He was 91.
Bing Crosby
(HARRY LILLIS CROSBY)
Born May 2, 1903
Died October 14, 1977
The heartless groaner. Crosby’s great-grandfather was one of the founders of Portland, Oregon, and Olympia, Washington. Crosby was born at 1112 North J Street, Tacoma, Washington, one of six children, and was baptised on May 31 in St Patrick’s Church, 1122 North J Street, Tacoma, just along from his birthplace. His nickname, originally Bingo, came from a cartoon strip The Bingsville Bugle. By the age of 12 he had won seven medals for swimming. At school he played football, basketball and baseball. He suffered from colour blindness. He began singing professionally with the Paul Whiteman Band in 1926 and, four years later, he made his film début with them. In 1931 he left Whiteman to go solo and quickly signed a recording contract, landing himself a regular spot in a nightclub. Soon his records would sell in their millions. Following the tragic death of Russ Columbo, his only real rival, on September 2, 1934, Crosby became the most popular singer of the Thirties. In the Thirties he appeared in films in which he could croon his romantic songs while in the Forties he began appearing in the celebrated Road pictures with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. The first was Road To Singapore (1940). Four years later, he won his first Oscar for playing Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944). The following year he was nominated for The Bells Of St Mary’s (1945) reprising his role as Father O’Malley. His third and final Oscar nod came with The Country Girl (1954) in which he played Frank Elgin, an alcoholic actor. His large ears were often taped back for films. It was in the film Holiday Inn (1942) that he introduced the song that until relatively recently was the best-selling single of all time. Songwriter Irving Berlin was insecure about many of his songs. When he heard White Christmas Crosby said, “I think you’ll be okay with this one, Irving.” Over the course of his career Crosby appeared in countless television and radio programmes, 70 films and sold over 500 million records. He became an immensely wealthy man – second only to his chum Bob Hope – and his fortune was estimated at between $200 million and $400 million. However, money didn’t seem to make Crosby happy. He married singer Dixie Lee (b. Harriman, Tennessee, November 4, 1911, as Wilma Winifred Wyatt, d. November 1, 1952) on September 29, 1930, at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunset Boulevard. At the end of her life, as she lay dying of cancer, Crosby went off to Europe to play golf. He was also on the golf course when his twin sons were born – ironically, he was himself to die after suffering a heart attack on a golf course. They had four sons: Gary Evan (b. Los Angeles, California, June 27, 1933 – he was named for Gary Cooper; Crosby was playing golf as Dixie went into labour), who later became an alcoholic and drug addict; Philip Lang (b. California, July 13, 1934); Dennis Michael (b. California, July 13, 1934, d. May 7, 1991, by his own hand, using a 12 bore shotgun) and Lindsay Harry (b. California, January 5, 1938, d. Las Vegas, Nevada, December 11, 1989, by his own hand, using a rifle). Crosby became an alcoholic and when he died his family asked for donations to be sent to an organisation for abused children. He eloped to Las Vegas with Olive Kathryn Grandstaff (b. West Columbia, Texas, November 25, 1933) on October 24, 1957. They had three children: Harry Lillis, Jr (b. Queen of Angels Hospital, Hollywood, August 8, 1958, at 11.32am), Mary Frances (b. Queen of Angels Hospital, Hollywood, September 14, 1959) and Nathaniel (b. Queen of Angels Hospital, Hollywood, October 29, 1961, at 11.20pm). Mary was to gain notoriety as the woman who shot J.R. in the TV soap Dallas. Of all the Crosby children, she has achieved the most in show business. Nathaniel won the US Amateur Golf Championship in 1981. Crosby was estranged from most of his family. Despite his image as a good guy, it seems he would do almost anything to fulfil his ambitions – but at what cost to his personal happiness?