Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: He died of pneumonia in London’s Cromwell Hospital. He was 68 and had been ill for some time.

  FURTHER READING: Six Of The Best – Jimmy Edwards (London: Robson Books, 1984).

  Sergei Eisenstein

  Born January 23, 1898

  Died February 11, 1948

  Leading Soviet film-maker. Sergei Mikhalovich Eisenstein was born in Riga, Latvia, and could speak English, French, German and Russian by the time he was ten. In 1917 he began studying at the St Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineering but forsook the fascinating world of engineering for the more precarious one of the theatre. At the outbreak of civil war in Russia he joined the Bolsheviks while his father sided with the Mensheviks. In 1920 he began directing an amateur troupe. He joined a theatre as a scenic designer and two years later was appointed artistic head of an offshoot. He greatly admired D.W. Griffith. Eisenstein’s first directorial film was Stachka (1925) about the conflict following the Great October Socialist Revolution. Pravda praised the film; the public didn’t. It was his next film that cemented Eisenstein’s reputation. Bronenosets Potemkin (1925) was undoubtedly one of the greatest, most moving films ever made. The movie premièred at the Bolshoi Theatre in December 1925 but again, public reaction was lukewarm. His film Oktyabr (1927) commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik rise to power. The Soviet authorities put the entire city of Leningrad at his disposal but not everyone enthused over the director and he was subject to harassment by unfriendly police. The admiration of his peers more than made up for this, however. In 1930 he arrived in America and was greeted as a conquering hero by some and as evil personified by others. The publicity machine went into overdrive and Eisenstein was photographed with Mickey Mouse and Rin Tin Tin, much to his discomfort. He began work on Que Viva Mexico (1932) but abandoned the film without completing it when his finance ran out. Disappointment, jealousy from his fellow workers and the failure to complete Bezhin Meadow all contributed to Eisenstein’s nervous breakdown in 1937. His next film Aleksandr Nevsky (1938) was a success at home and abroad although some of his early fans expressed disappointment with it. His final work, Ivan Groznyi (1942–1946), was envisaged as a monumental triptych. However, only two parts were completed and the second of those was banned by Stalin because of its unflattering portrayal of the secret police. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1958.

  CAUSE: He died of a heart attack aged 50 in Moscow.

  Jack Elam

  Born November 13, 1918

  Died October 20, 2003

  Wild-eyed film cowboy. Born in Miami, Arizona, Jack Elam lost his left eye aged 12 when a fellow Boy Scout stabbed a pencil into it. The 6́ 2˝ Elam began his professional life as an accountant and hotel manager. He got his start in show business by offering his accounting services free of charge in exchange for a role in a film. He appeared as a baddie in more than 130 films in a career spanning more than 50 years. His films included Trailin’ West (1944) as the killer, Mystery Range (1947) as Burvil Lambert, One Way Street (1950) as Artie, A Ticket To Tomahawk (1950) as Fargo, High Lonesome (1950) as Bob Jessup, the 1951 classic Rawhide as Tevis, Rancho Notorious (1952) as Mort Geary, High Noon (1952) as Charlie, Ride, Vaquero! (1953) as Barton, Cattle Queen Of Montana (1954) as Yost, The Man From Laramie (1954) as Chris Bouldt, Kismet (1955) as Hassan-Ben, Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle (1955) as Burger, Gunfight At The OK Corral (1957) as Tom McLowery, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (1973) as Alamosa Bill, Cannonball Run II (1984) as Dr Nikolas von Helsing, and Shadow Force (1993) as Tommy. Twice married: to Jean (1937 until her death in 1961) and to Margaret Jennison (from 1961 until his death). He fathered a son, Scott, and two daughters, Jeri and Jacqueline. He disliked critics ascribing psychological characteristics to his roles. “I robbed the bank because I wanted the money. Nobody cared what my problem was and I didn’t either.”

  CAUSE: Elam died aged 84 in Ashland, Oregon, having been ill for some time.

  Denholm Elliott, CBE

  Born May 31, 1922

  Died October 6, 1992

  Smoothy with a secret. Born at 48 Lexham Gardens, Kensington, London (the street where Kenny Everett would die of the same illness that killed Elliott) Denholm Mitchell Elliott was the second son of Myles Layman Farr Elliott (d. 1933), a barrister, and Nina Mitchell (d. 1966). Elliott, who had lost the tip of his right thumb in a lawnmower accident, began his acting career at Ripley Court, his prep school, in Surrey. In 1933 his father was killed by terrorists while he was serving as a crown prosecutor in Palestine, and Elliott was sent off to Malvern College, hating every second of public school life. In an unusual turn, he began to steal anything that was not nailed down and was sent to a psychiatrist who recommended that he be sent to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His studies were interrupted after two terms when he joined the RAF as a gunner in 1940. Two years later, he was shot down off Denmark and sent as a prisoner of war to Stalag 8B at Lansdorf, Silesia. He began acting again while being held prisoner. Released in 1945 he quickly made up for lost time, making his stage début in July of that year at the Amersham Playhouse. He made his first film, Dear Mr Prohack, in 1949 and went on to appear in David Lean’s The Sound Barrier (1952) (impressing Sir Alexander Korda so much that he was offered a five-figure contract and the lead in a mooted Lawrence of Arabia biopic), The Cruel Sea (1953), The Heart Of The Matter (1953), Alfie (1966), The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), Percy (1970), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Boys From Brazil (1978), Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), Brimstone And Treacle (1982), Trading Places (1983), Maurice (1987) (E.M. Forster’s posthumously published novel about homosexuality), Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989) and the disappointing movie version of hit sitcom Rising Damp (1980). On television he appeared in Clayhanger, Blade On The Feather (1980) for which he won a BAFTA award, Bleak House, Hotel Du Lac and many others. He won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as Mr Emerson in Merchant-Ivory’s A Room With A View (1985). In 1984 and 1985 he won BAFTA awards for A Private Function and Defence Of The Realm (1985). Gabriel Byrne, his co-star, said, “Never act with children, animals or Denholm Elliott.” Elliott often accepted roles purely for their financial reward. On March 1, 1954, he married the actress Virginia Anne McKenna but they divorced in 1957. On June 15, 1962 he married the American model Susan Robinson (b. 1942). They had two children: Jennifer Sarah Elliott (b. New York, June 8, 1964) and Mark (b. January 23, 1967).

  CAUSE: Through two marriages, Elliott carried on gay affairs that were to result in his death at the age of 70 from AIDS-related tuberculosis at his long-time home of Santa Eulalia, Ibiza, Spain. He was already HIV positive when he was appointed CBE in 1988. He left less than £125,000. His ashes were scattered in the garden of Santa Eulalia. His daughter was shocked to learn of her father’s bisexuality and it sent her on a downward spiral of heroin addiction and despair. She found out in a most hurtful way. The teenaged Jennifer was confronted by a stranger on the King’s Road in London who said, “Your dad is Denholm Elliott. Did you know he is gay? Well, he can kiss my arse any time he wants.” Jennifer was regularly smoking cannabis by the age of 13, and by 15 was taking heroin. She managed to conceal her addiction from her parents, but shortly before her 18th birthday confessed that she was an addict. By the time she was 20, Jennifer had left home and was begging on the streets of London. By 24, she had fled to America, where she resorted to prostitution to fund her next heroin fix, selling her body for £30 a time. Her father hired a private detective to track her down and paid for endless stints in expensive rehabilitation clinics, all to no avail. Following her father’s death, her mother set up a charitable project to help AIDS patients and Jennifer worked there. She told one newspaper of her battle with heroin, “It’s total despair and you begin to think, ‘I really can’t handle this.’ I’ll never be clear of drugs. I hate it. I would love more than anything in the world to be free. I get so angry with myself the minute I start to go back. I feel so despairingly low.” When the Denholm Elliott Project closed through lack of m
oney, Jennifer divided her time between London and America, drifting between working in a bar and not working at all. In 1999 she moved to the family villa in Ibiza. It seemed her life was on the up. She put on weight as she ate a healthy diet and got a suntan as she motored around the island on her scooter. However, the drug use had left its mark. She suffered insomnia and her short-term memory was affected. She had to write things down on paper to remember them but would forget where she had left the bits of paper. As a result she couldn’t keep a job and thus had money worries. Added to this, a close friend on the island died and her mother fell ill. Then her long-term boyfriend ended their relationship. Jennifer had to leave her home in the summer because her mother rented it out to make some money. In June 2003 Jennifer Elliott hanged herself from the branch of a tree in the garden at Santa Eulalia. In the house, she left a heartbreakingly simple handwritten note saying that she couldn’t go on. Almost ten years earlier, she had written, “There’s a point you reach when you are ready to kill yourself. You can’t stand any more pain.”

  Michael Elphick

  Born September 19, 1946

  Died September 7, 2002

  Rough diamond. Despite his London accent, Michael John Elphick was born in Chichester, West Sussex, the son of a librarian, but left at 15 to work as an electrician for Laurence Olivier’s company. It was Olivier who suggested that Elphick go to the Central School of Speech and Drama and soon Elphick was a regular on stage and screen. Despite his later years when he was a familiar face on television, Elphick also made several films. He made his début in Stanley Baker’s Where’s Jack? (1969) about highwayman Jack Sheppard in which Elphick played Hogarth. He went on to appear in Hamlet (1969) as Captain, Fräulein Doktor (1969) as Tom, Cry Of The Banshee (1970) as Burke, See No Evil (1971) as Gypsy Tom, O Lucky Man! (1973), Stardust (1974) and The Odd Job (1978) as Raymonde. In the Seventies he began to appear on television on a regular basis. He was the second porter in Three Men In A Boat (1975), The One And Only Phyllis Dixey (1978) and Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills (1979) as Peter, in which a group of adults played children. Back on the big screen he was Jimmy’s father in Quadrophenia (1979), Burgess in The First Great Train Robbery (1979) and the night porter in The Elephant Man (1980). Then he took the lead role of Private Gerhard Schultz in the comedy Private Schultz. The following year he was the Detective Chief Superintendent in Smiley’s People. In 1983 he signed to play troublemaking Irish brickie Magowan in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. His other films included Privates On Parade (1982) as Sergeant-Major Red Drummond, Gorky Park (1983) as Pasha, Curse Of The Pink Panther (1983) as Valencia Police Chief, Ordeal By Innocence (1984) as Inspector Huish, Memed My Hawk (1984) as Jabbar, The Supergrass (1985) as Constable Collins, a sentry in Pirates (1986), Withnail And I (1987) as Jake, Little Dorrit (1988) as Mr Merdle, I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle (1990) as Inspector Cleaver, Buddy’s Song (1990) as Des, The Krays (1990), Let Him Have It (1991) as Prison Officer Jack and Dead In The Water (2001) as Lionel Stubbs. In the mid-Eighties he signed to appear in two long-running series that made him a popular face on television. From April 15, 1985 until June 18, 1989, he played the working-class Sam Tyler in Three Up, Two Down opposite Angela Thorne’s snobbish Daphne Trenchard. In 1986 he also began appearing as Ken Boon, a biker, a private detective and a loser. In 1993 he played Harry Salter, a former Fleet Street journalist, in Harry but the public did not warm to the show. He played another journalist, Peter Campling, in The Fix (1997), a story about the bribing of Sheffield Wednesday footballers in 1963. In the spring of 2001 he joined the soap opera EastEnders as Harry Slater, a paedophile who had raped his 13-year-old niece and fathered her daughter. Aged 19, Elphick suffered an ulcer due to his heavy drinking and in 1988 was given a year to live. He remained teetotal for four years afterwards but then started drinking again. He drank heavily to cope with the death of his girlfriend of 34 years Julia Alexander (b. 1945, d. London, March 1996 of breast cancer), a teacher of dyslexic children, and the mother of his daughter, Kate (b. March 1975). He contemplated suicide after her death. In 1979 as Julia Alexander was beginning her long and unsuccessful battle with the cancer that was to kill her Elphick began a five-year affair with blonde actress Hetty Baynes (b. 1961). “Michael did tell me there was someone in his life, but because they weren’t married, I persuaded myself that it wasn’t serious,” said Baynes who later went on to marry and divorce the much older film director Ken Russell. “By the time I realised that he might as well have been married, it was too late. I was madly in love with him.” Elphick was sacked from EastEnders due to his alcoholism. He had turned up drunk to the British Soap Awards, much to the dismay of the show’s executives.

  CAUSE: On Thursday, September 5, 2002 Elphick collapsed outside his local, Isobar at 61 Walm Lane, Willesden, in north London. The next day he went into the pub to tell regulars that he was OK. Twenty-four hours later, Elphick collapsed at his home, 31 Cranhurst Road, in Willesden, with a heart attack. He died in hospital the same day aged 55. His funeral was held in Chichester, West Sussex, and one of the songs played was ‘The Great Pretender’.

  Dick Emery

  Born February 19, 1915

  Died January 2, 1983

  Character comedian. Born in University College Hospital, St Pancras, London, Richard Gilbert Emery was not a matinée idol to look at but he seemed to have no trouble attracting gorgeous women. His parents were the music hall act Callan & Emery. During the Second World War he joined the RAF and then Ralph Reader’s Gang Show in 1942. After demob he worked with Tony Hancock at the Windmill Theatre in 1948 before finding a measure of fame on the radio show Educating Archie. It was his appearances in The Army Game (from September 27, 1960) as Private ‘Chubby’ Catchpole that finally propelled him to stardom. The Dick Emery Show began on BBC1 on July 13, 1963, and ran for eighteen years and 166 episodes. His characters, such as old man Lampwick, the tramp College, camp Clarence (“Hello, honky-tonks”), sex starved Hettie and randy Mandy (“Oooh, you are awful … but I like you”), became national institutions. In 1960 he appeared in Light Up The Sky and followed that with A Taste Of Money (1962), The Wrong Arm Of The Law (1963), Baby Love (1968), played Bateman in Loot (1970) and brought many of his characters to the big screen in 1972 for Oooh, You Are Awful. Dick who suffered badly from nerves and was usually physically sick before a performance was married five times. He had a son by his first wife, Zelda, but she left him after five years. He married secondly on August 13, 1946, to Irene Dorothy Ansell but the marriage lasted only a few months. Wife number three was Iris Tully by whom he had a son. She died of a brain tumour. In 1958 he married 18-year-old Victoria Chambers. They had two children. His fifth wife was the singer and actress, Josephine Sheila Blake whom he married on November 1, 1969. There were no children. When Emery died he was living with a dancer, Fay Hillier.

  CAUSE: He died aged 67 in the intensive care unit of King’s College Hospital, London. He had fallen ill in December 1982 after taking pills for gout. He moved to King’s College from a private clinic after contracting a respiratory infection. He seemed to be recovering but died suddenly after a relapse. He left £311,437 in his will. Before his body was taken to a chapel of rest, it was left overnight in a garage in Patcham Terrace, Battersea. He was cremated at Mortlake, London, on January 13, 1983.

  René Enriquez

  Born November 24, 1933

  Died March 23, 1990

  Gay caballero. Enriquez, who attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, played the perpetually worried Lieutenant Ray Calletano on the hit cop show Hill Street Blues. He appeared in a few films including Bananas (1971) as Dias, Serpico (1973), Harry And Tonto (1974), Under Fire (1983) as President Anastasio Somoza, The Evil That Men Do (1984) as Max Ortiz and Bullet Proof (1988) as General Brogado. He also appeared in a number of TV movies on television and in episodes of Charlie’s Angels, Benson, WKRP In Cincinnati and Quincy, M.E.

  CAUSE: In biographies and interviews Enriquez told of a wife who had tragically died. I
t was a lie. He was a homosexual bachelor who contracted AIDS in 1987. As he became more and more ill he told his family, friends and fans he was suffering from cancer. His publicist and long-time friend Henry Bollinger revealed, “René told me he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He never told me anything about a gay lifestyle. He made clear to me before his death that he wanted no autopsy performed on his body and wanted no funeral. He did not want his friends to come together after he had passed.” The true cause of death, AIDS, only became known when his death certificate was published. Cause of death was given as “cytomegalovirus enteritis due to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)”. The only people privy to Enriquez’s terrible secret were his two sisters and his 25-year-old Hispanic lover.