CAUSE: Dexter died aged 85 in Rancho Mirage, California, from emphysema.
Khigh Dhiegh
(KENNETH DICKERSON)
Born 1910
Died October 25, 1991
Actor-philosopher. Born in Spring Lake, New Jersey, Khigh Dhiegh (pronounced Ki Dee) was of Anglo-Egyptian-Sudanese extraction. His best known role was as the villainous Wo-Fat in Hawaii Five-O. The original plan was for Wo-Fat, Steve McGarret’s nemesis, to be killed at the end of the pilot Cocoon but Jack Lord was so taken with the character that he was reprieved and lived to annoy and irritate McGarrett for a further 12 years. Dhiegh was a leading proponent of the ancient Chinese philosophy I Ching. He owned a Taoist shrine in Tempe, Arizona. Prior to becoming an actor he owned a bookshop in New York or possibly he worked in his mother’s bookshop (sources vary). He then studied theatre under David Belasco. He wrote eleven books, crafted jewellery and taught philosophy at the University of California in Los Angeles. His films included Time Limit (1957) as Colonel Kim, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as Dr Yen Lo, 13 Frightened Girls (1963) as Kang, Seconds (1966) as Davalo, The Destructors (1968) as King Chou Lai, The Hawaiians (1970) as Kai Chung, The Mephisto Waltz (1971) as Zanc Theun and Goin’ Coconuts (1978) as Wong. Khigh Dhiegh had his own series called Khan in which he played a private detective in San Francisco’s Chinatown who solved crimes with the help of his two children, Anna and Kim. Khan’s daughter Anna was played by Irene Yah-Ling Sun who appeared in many Hawaii Five-O episodes. However, the show was not well received by the public and was cancelled after just four episodes, running from February 7 until February 28, 1975. He was married to Mary and had two children: Kenneth Dickerson, Jr, and Kathleen Dickerson.
CAUSE: He died in Mesa, Arizona, of kidney and heart failure. He was 81.
Gloria Dickson
(THAIS DICKERSON)
Born August 13, 1916
Died April 10, 1945
Party girl. Born in Pocatello, Idaho, the daughter of a banker who died when she was 12, she began acting in local repertory companies before making her movie début in Mervyn LeRoy’s They Won’t Forget (1937) as Sybil Hale. (Another beauty, Lana Turner, also appeared in the film in a minor role.) She worked steadily, if not spectacularly, in films such as Racket Busters (1938) as Nora Jordan, Heart Of The North (1938) as Joyce MacMillan, Gold Diggers In Paris as Mona, Private Detective as Mona Lannon, Cowboy Quarterback (1939) as Evelyn Corey, They Made Me A Criminal (1939) as Peggy, No Place To Go (1939) as Gertrude Plummer, On Your Toes (1939) as Peggy Porterfield, This Thing Called Love (1940) as Florence Bertrand, I Want A Divorce (1940) as Wanda Holland, The Affairs Of Jimmy Valentine (1942), Lady Of Burlesque as Dolly Baxter and Rationing as Miss McCue.
CAUSE: Like many in Hollywood Gloria enjoyed the socialising almost as much as, if not more than, acting and began to overindulge in drink and drugs. She burned to death in the bathroom of her Hollywood home in a fire probably caused by a carelessly dropped cigarette. She was 28.
Marlene Dietrich
(MARIE MAGDALENE DIETRICH)
Born December 27, 1901
Died May 6, 1992
‘The world’s most glamorous grandmother’. Born in Schöneberg, Germany, at 53 Sedanstrasse, her father, Louis Erich Otto Dietrich, won the Iron Cross during the Franco-Prussian War and died in 1911. Dietrich lost her virginity aged 15 to her violin teacher, Professor Robert Reitz, a violinist in Weimar. Being married with children, a music teacher and the man who took her virginity, Reitz might have had a profound influence on Dietrich’s later life, because she was adept at sticking a musical saw between her legs and playing it. The early life of 5́ 5˝ Marlene (the name came from combining her first two Christian names) is shrouded in mystery due to her own obfuscation and that of press agents when she first arrived in America in 1930. She began acting on the stage and made her first film in 1919, Im Schatten Des Glücks. As she appeared in more films (So Sind Die Männer [1922] as Kathrin, Tragödie Der Liebe [1923] as Lucy, Der Sprung Ins Leben [1923] as Mädchen am Strand, Der Mensch Am Wege [1923] as Krämerstochter, Manon Lescaut [1926] as Micheline, Sein Größter Bluff [1927] as Yvette and Cafe Elektrik [1927] as Erni Göttlinger) and plays her reputation began to grow. On May 17, 1923, she married Rudolf Sieber (b. 1896) and on December 13, 1924, their daughter, Maria Elisabeth, was born. Although they lived separate lives, Herr und Fräu Sieber remained good friends until his death in San Fernando on June 24, 1975. In 1930 she was ‘discovered’ by Josef Von Sternberg when he directed her in Der Blaue Engel (1930) in which she played the sensuous cabaret entertainer Lola Lola. On the strength of that film she was offered a contract by Paramount, where she shone brightly from 1931 until 1937. She was promoted as the studio’s answer to MGM’s Greta Garbo. Six of her first seven films Stateside were directed by von Sternberg. They were: Morocco (1930) as Amy Jolly, Dishonored (1931) as Marie Kolverer/X27, Shanghai Express (1932) as Shanghai Lily, Blonde Venus (1932) as Helen Faraday, The Scarlet Empress (1934) as Catherine II/Sophia Frederica and The Devil Is A Woman (1935) as Concha Perez. Von Sternberg worked hard on Marlene’s image, transforming her into a world-famous sex symbol and, for a time, Hollywood’s highest paid actress. Bisexual, she shared a lesbian lover with Greta Garbo (Mercedes De Acosta, whom Marlene first bedded on September 16, 1932). Mae West revealed: “She wanted to wash my hair. She came into my dressing room – we were both at Paramount – and made the offer. I had to turn her down – I was afraid she didn’t mean the hair on my head …” Among her other lovers were Yul Brynner, Maurice Chevalier, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, Jean Gabin, John Wayne, Orson Welles, Brian Aherne and General George S. Patton. She denied sleeping with Ernest Hemingway, whom she nicknamed ‘Papa’, saying, “It was too special for that …” When she met a man she admired Dietrich would drop to her knees and undo his flies because it gave her power over him. For bed, she preferred women. She used ice water and vinegar douches to avoid pregnancy. It seemed to work. Despite numerous lovers she only had one child. However, she would insist that her lovers were out of the house before her daughter awoke and then return after breakfast as if nothing had happened. Dietrich once said the diaphragm was the greatest invention since pancake make-up. Richard Burton said of her, “She’s like a skeleton risen from the grave. Beautiful and extraordinary.” Like many Hollywood stars she had a facelift and like many women she was a firm believer in astrology (as was Hitler). In 1937 she made a film in England and was approached by Nazi agents. Hitler wanted to have an affair with her, but she turned the Führer down. (Later, she worried that had she agreed, she might have been able to stop him persecuting Jews.) As a consequence her films were banned in Germany. She became an American citizen in 1938 and was awarded medals by the French, Russians and Americans for her morale-boosting work in World War II. Her movie career waned and she was labelled “box office poison” by The Independent Film Journal in 1938, along with other established Hollywood greats including Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Fred Astaire. In the Fifties she reinvented herself as a nightclub entertainer with smoky renditions of songs such as ‘Falling In Love Again’ and ‘Lili Marlene’. As she grew older, Dietrich became more reclusive. In 1978 she moved into a two-room flat at 12 avenue Montaigne in Paris. She left only on very rare occasions, preferring to contact the outside world by telephone – her phone bills could be as much as $7,500 a month. In 1987 she auctioned some knick-knacks and raised $81,500. Her other films included: I Loved A Soldier (1936) as Anna Sedlak, Desire (1936) as Madeleine de Beaupre, Angel (1937) as Maria Barker, Destry Rides Again (1939) as Frenchy, Seven Sinners (1940) as Bijou Blanche, Manpower (1941) as Fay Duval, Pittsburgh (1942) as Josie Winters, Golden Earrings (1947) as Lydia, Stage Fright (1950) as Charlotte Inwood, Rancho Notorious (1952) as Altar Keane, Around The World In 80 Days (1956), Touch Of Evil (1958) as Tanya and Judgment At Nuremberg (1961) as Madame Bertholt.
CAUSE: Marlene was bedridden for the last five years of her life. She died aged 90 of natural causes at her Parisian flat. A funeral s
ervice attended by over 1,500 people was held at the Madeleine Church in Paris. Her daughter put a St Christopher’s medal, a wooden crucifix and a locket containing photos of Dietrich’s grandsons in the coffin. On May 16 her body was flown to Berlin where she was buried in the city’s Friedenau Cemetery. Her funeral service was disrupted by neo-Nazis handing out anti-Dietrich pamphlets. She suffered the same fate as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in having her daughter write a less than complimentary biography of her.
FURTHER READING: Dietrich: The Story Of A Star – Leslie Frewin (London: Coronet, 1974); Marlene: The Life Of Marlene Dietrich – Charles Higham (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977); Dietrich – Donald Spoto (London: Bantam Press, 1992); Marlene Dietrich: Life And Legend – Steven Bach (London: HarperCollins, 1992).
Walt Disney
Born December 5, 1901
Died December 15, 1966
The man who made magic. Walter Elias Disney was born at 1249 Tripp Avenue, Chicago, and discovered he could make money out of his drawing talent aged 10 when he swapped cartoons for free haircuts. During World War I he worked as an ambulance driver. At his first job interview he was told he had no talent; on the train journey home he created Mickey Mouse. He was supposedly inspired by the mice playing in the waste paper basket in his studio. Originally due to be called Mortimer, until Mrs Disney intervened, the rodent has made more money for Disney and the Disney Organisation from off-screen merchandising than he ever has from film revenues. The first film that the mouse appeared in was Steamboat Willie (1928) and since then he’s won an Oscar, been honoured by the League of Nations and has been sent more fan mail than any other film star. On his 50th birthday in 1978 he travelled across America and even performed for President Carter at the White House. Disney produced over 600 films, beginning with Tommy Tucker’s Tooth (1922), moving on to produce feature-length cartoons. When the first, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937), won an Academy Award, Disney was presented with one full-size Oscar and seven miniature ones. The nephew of the creator of Pinocchio, the star of Disney’s 1940 film of the same name, wanted the Italian government to sue Disney for making the wooden boy too American. It took 14 years for Peter Pan (1953) to hit the screen from the time Disney bought the rights to make a film of the story. Disney was something of a perfectionist and demanded such high standards that in 1941 his technicians went on strike. In 1950 the company began making live action films, beginning with Treasure Island starring Robert Newton as Long John Silver, Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins and Dad’s Army’s John Laurie as Blind Pew. Disney had an almost anti-Semitic point of view and also had strange beliefs when it came to women. He had virtually no sexual interest in them, seeing them only as friends. He married Lillian Bound only because his brother, with whom he shared a home, had married and Walt was not cut out for bachelor life. They wed on July 13, 1925, and had one daughter, Diane Marie (b. December 18, 1933), and one adopted daughter, Sharon Mae (b. 1931). Said Alfred Hitchcock, “Disney, of course, has the best casting. If he doesn’t like an actor, he just tears him up.”
CAUSE: On November 7, 1966, in St Joseph’s Hospital, Burbank, which was just across the road from the Walt Disney Studios Disney’s left lung was removed because it was cancerous (due to his chain smoking). Another operation was performed a fortnight later and then he was released. On December 5, he was readmitted to the hospital and died there ten days after his 65th birthday. He was cremated two days later and his ashes interred in the Court of Freedom at Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks, 1712 South Glendale Avenue, Glendale, California 91209. Despite the rumours, he is not frozen waiting to be thawed out and rejuvenated.
FURTHER READING: Walt Disney: A Biography – Bob Thomas (London: Star, 1981); The Real Walt Disney: A Biography – Leonard Mosley (London: Grafton, 1986); The Disney Films – Leonard Maltin (New York: Hyperion, 1995).
Divine
(HARRIS GLENN MILSTEAD)
Born October 19, 1945
Died March 7, 1988
Disco diva. Larger than life (27st) transvestite who achieved a certain fame in underground films. Born in the Women’s Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, Glenn Milstead (so called to avoid confusion with his father, also called Harris) he weighed only 5lb 4oz at birth. However, he soon began to put on weight at an alarmingly fast rate. At 15 he weighed over 16st. It seemed as if he was destined to be yet another gay hairdresser when he was discovered in 1965 by John Waters who cast him in his first movie, Roman Candles (1966). It was at this time that Waters renamed Glenn Milstead. Waters unashamedly set out “to make the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history”. Some would say he succeeded. In 1968 he cast Divine as Jackie Kennedy in Eat Your Make-Up. The next film was The Diane Linkletter Story (1969). The 20-year-old daughter of American TV personality Art Linkletter, she committed suicide on October 5, 1969, by throwing herself out of a sixth-floor window. Waters made the film with Divine as Diane the day after her death. That same year Waters cast Divine in Mondo Trasho, a 90-minute film that cost $2,000 to make. The actor playing a naked hitchhiker; Waters and three others were arrested during filming and charged with public indecency. The next year he appeared as Lady Divine in Waters’ paean to gore king Herschell Gordon Lewis, Multiple Maniacs (1970), his first talkie. The budget for that was $5,000. Two years later came Waters’ most shocking and notorious film. Pink Flamingoes (1972) starred Divine as Babs Johnson, ‘the filthiest person alive’. At the end of the film Divine ate poodle excrement. In 1974 Divine appeared as Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble, a film that cost $25,000. It was the story of a teenage delinquent from her earliest days to her execution in the electric chair as a convicted murderer, and was Divine’s favourite film. Divine then appeared in various stage plays and made records before returning to the big screen in the Eighties. A promised cameo role in Village People’s Can’t Stop The Music (1980) never materialised. Divine and gay icon Tab Hunter played lovers, Francine and Elmer Fishpaw, in John Waters’ Polyester (1981); Elmer was a pornographer by trade. Filming began on September 1, 1980, and when the film was released in May 1981, cinema audiences received a scratch-and-sniff card so they could ‘enjoy’ the smells of the various scenes. In 1985 Divine was again cast opposite Hunter in Paul Bartel’s Western spoof Lust In The Dust. The following year he appeared in Trouble In Mind (1986), a film described by one critic as “an unusual screen experience that almost defies description”. In February 1988, as Hairspray (1988) was on general release, in which Divine co-starred with Ricki Lake (he played her mother), Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry, he was offered the role of Uncle Otto on the hit TV sitcom Married … With Children. It was a part he was never destined to play. Divine’s last film was the posthumously released Out Of The Dark (1989) about a killer murdering phone sex girls. John Waters released his tribute to Divine, entitled simply Divine, two years after the actor-singer’s death.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 62
