Peg Entwhistle
(LILLIAN MILLICENT ENTWHISTLE)
Born July 1, 1908
Died September 18, 1932
Tragic Hollywood icon. Like many girls Peg Entwhistle dreamed of acting stardom. Born into a theatrical family in Port Talbot, Wales, she was raised in London but travelled from her home (53 Comeragh Road, Barons Court, London W 14) to America with just one aim – to be a successful actress. In 1925 she made her Broadway début in Hamlet as part of the prestigious New York Theater Guild. Two years later, aged 19, she became one of the youngest ever actresses to star on the Great White Way. It seemed she could do no wrong. She received excellent notices for her role in Tommy, which opened at the Gaiety Theater on January 10, 1927, and ran for 232 performances. Her co-star was Sidney Toler, best known to cinema audiences as the masterful Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan. She married actor Robert Keith in 1927 but they divorced two years later. His son was the actor Brian Keith (b. New Jersey, November 14, 1921, d. 91a Malibu Colony Road, Malibu, Los Angeles 90265, June 24, 1997, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head). Then Peg’s luck really began to change, and not for the better. The 1931–2 season was an unmitigated disaster. Eight consecutive failures haunted her. In April 1932 she moved to Hollywood, hoping the West Coast would herald a change of fortune. She appeared with Billie Burke in The Mad Hopes but the play closed after just a fortnight of playing to half-empty theatres. To Peg it was another defeat. After some months of looking for movie work, she was signed to RKO. Her first film was called Thirteen Women (1932) and starred Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne; Peg only had a bit part. When filming wrapped in August, the studio declined to pick up her contract. Peg was desolate. She began to think she was jinxed. She tried to raise the money to go back to New York and Broadway, her first love, but was unable to. Distraught, she resorted to what many actresses have done to pay the rent – she posed for pin-ups and nude photographs.
CAUSE: On September 18, 1932, Entwhistle left 2428 Beachwood Canyon Drive, the home she shared with her Uncle Harold, her only living relative, telling him she was going to buy a book and perhaps see a friend. Instead, she walked in the opposite direction to the foot of Mount Lee, where she struggled through the dense terrain up to the famous HOLLYWOODLAND sign, built in 1923 at a cost of $21,000 and illuminated by 4,000 bulbs. She took off her jacket and folded it neatly. She placed her handbag on top of it and, using the electrician’s ladder, she climbed to the top of the 50-foot ‘H ’ and looked down at the city that had rejected her. No one knows for how long she stood there before she flung herself off and plunged to her death in the dark void below. She was just 24 years old. Her mangled body lay unidentified for several days. The next morning a woman called the Central Los Angeles Police Department to report, “I was hiking near the Hollywoodland sign today and near the bottom I found a woman’s shoe and jacket. A little further on I noticed a purse. In it was a suicide note. I looked down the mountain and saw a body. I don’t want any publicity in this matter, so I wrapped up the jacket, shoes and purse in a bundle and laid them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station.” The note read: “I am afraid I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.” The note was published in the Los Angeles Times and Uncle Harold officially identified Peg’s body. Ironically, in the post was a contract from the Beverly Hills Community Players offering her a juicy part in their next production – that of a girl who commits suicide at the end of the third act. Peg had died from multiple fractures of the pelvis and following her funeral at W.M. Strothers Mortuary, 6240 Hollywood Boulevard, was cremated at Hollywood Memorial Park and her ashes interred next to her father at Oak Hill Cemetery, Glendale, Ohio, on January 5, 1933. Although Peg didn’t achieve lasting fame as an actress, she does have an epitaph of a kind. It was Entwhistle’s performance in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck in Boston that inspired Bette Davis to become an actress.
Barry Evans
Born June 18, 1943
Died February 10, 1997
Poor man’s Robin Askwith. Barry Joseph Evans was born in Guildford, Surrey, and grew up in an orphanage in Twickenham. Aged 18 he won a John Gielgud scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama. Following graduation, he found work with regional repertory companies and some “spear-carrying parts” at the National Theatre before Clive Donner’s Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1967) launched him as Jamie McGregor, a teenage boy (he was in his mid-twenties at the time) farcically intent on losing his virginity. Critics praised his performance as “a definitive portrait of a boy on the threshold of manhood”. He landed a role as the naïve and nervous medical student Michael A. Upton in the popular TV series Doctor In The House (July 12, 1969–July 3, 1970) and its successor Doctor At Large (February 28–September 12, 1971). His youthful good looks drew an enthusiastic response from female viewers. Ironically, Evans was bisexual with a strong homosexual streak. He left the series and his place was taken by Robin Nedwell who was also to die prematurely and whose death is noticed elsewhere in this book. Evans’ films included Alfred The Great (1969) as Ingild, Die Screaming, Marianne (1971) as Eli Frome and the sex comedy Adventures Of A Taxi Driver (1976) as Joe North. Finding work difficult to come by, he returned to television sitcomland and the role of English teacher Jeremy Brown in the comedy series Mind Your Language (December 30, 1977–December 15, 1979 and again later January 4–April 12, 1986). As he aged, Evans found work less easy to come by and in 1993 left London and began working as a taxi driver in Melton Mowbray. He never married.
CAUSE: Evans was discovered dead with four and a half times the legal drink-drive limit in his blood at his rundown home, in Claybrooke Magna, Leicestershire. On a nearby table was an empty bottle of whisky and a spilled bottle of aspirins priced before decimalisation plus a will he had made out three days earlier. The cause of death was given as “acute alcohol poisoning”. His body was discovered by police when they went to his house to tell him that they had recovered his stolen car. The police said there were unusual circumstances surrounding the death. His telephone lines had been cut, his credit cards were missing and his car had been found driven by other people on the day of his death. James Leadbitter, 18, of Hinckley, Leicestershire, was arrested over the theft and later accused of attempted murder. He told police that he was a friend of Evans and had visited him on the day he died to say he would not be calling round again. Leadbitter said the actor became upset and drank half a bottle of whisky. On January 26, 1998, Leadbitter was found not guilty at Nottingham Crown Court of the attempted murder of Evans. The Crown Prosecution Service admitted it had “no real prospect” of a conviction against Leadbitter, who denied the charge. On October 14, 1998 Martin Symington, the coroner for Leicester and South Leicestershire, recorded an open verdict on Evans’ death. Mr Symington said there was insufficient evidence to prove Evans had intended to kill himself. He added, “Was he perhaps contemplating taking the tablets and the alcohol together, but passed out before he could use the tablets?” A friend, Lawrence Brown, told the inquest, “I got the impression he was missing the publicity of being an actor and that he’d like to get back into acting, but never really did anything about it. He used to discuss what he had done and showed me videos of his work.”
Dale Evans
(FRANCES OCTAVIA LUCILLE WOOD SMITH)
Born October 31, 1912
Died February 7, 2001
‘The Queen of the Cowgirls’. Frances Smith became famous as Dale Evans, the beloved wife of cowboy hero Roy Rogers who took second place to his horse, Trigger. It was even reported that Dale Evans had dyed her hair yellow to match Trigger’s tail. Dale Evans added, “You’ve got to remember that the bit where Roy said ‘Goodbye’ to me, reared up on Trigger, and rode off, was the bit where the kids were getting out their bags of popcorn. Even if he kissed me on the nose, we got a ton of letters saying: ‘We can’t stand the mushy stuff – cut it out next week.’” Between 1951 and 1956 the two of them made 194 h
alf-hour episodes of The Roy Rogers Show. When Trigger finally died in 1966, “it was like losing one of the family”. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans created a special museum in Victorville, California, where Trigger’s stuffed carcass was exhibited. Dale Evans’ buckskin mount Buttermilk is also on display there, as is Bullet, the German shepherd dog. In real life the couple were devoted. Rogers revealed their secret was “to give 90 and take 10, both sides, and don’t fester. Keep everything you feel right out in front, so’s you’ve only got to look at your wife once to ask, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’” Their life was also beset with tragedy. After their first child, a daughter, died in infancy, they adopted nine children. But Debbie, a Korean-born daughter, was killed in a bus crash near San Clemente, California, on August 17, 1964, and a son, Sandy, choked to death in Germany on October 31, 1965 while serving with the army. Born in Uvalde, Texas, Frances Smith was not a popular child. To compensate she eloped in January 1927, aged 14, with an older classmate, Thomas Frederick Fox. A son, Frederick, was born on November 28, 1927 but by October 1929 the relationship was over. Standing on her own two feet, she found work at three separate radio stations in Louisville, Kentucky, where she was renamed Dale Evans, a name she originally disliked. In late 1929 she married August Wayne-Johns but he objected to his wife working in show business, and they divorced in 1935. That year she met pianist Robert Dale Butts in Dallas and married him. In Chicago she sang with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra and with Fats Waller. Spotted on tour in Hollywood Darryl Zanuck gave her a contract at $400 a week. She was dumped after six months but had the taste for Tinseltown and signed a one-year contract with Republic Studios, appearing in such films as Swing Your Partner (1941) and Casanova In Burlesque (1943). She met Roy Rogers while touring the country with the Hollywood Victory Committee. She later said, “I was impressed by Roy because he was very clean-cut looking and no Hollywood act, a very real person. A very real person. He reminded me of my brother.” Herbert Yates, head of Republic Studios, decided that her riding skill made her the perfect screen partner for Rogers. She recalled: “I was friends with the Pioneers in Chicago, when I was on CBS there, and I made seven pictures at Republic Studios before I worked with Roy. Mr Yates saw the musical Oklahoma! in New York and he decided that Roy’s pictures should be like Oklahoma! with the girl’s part built up, and that there would be more music, more horses. The chemistry was right between us, apparently, because after I made one picture, the exhibitors said, ‘Don’t break the team up.’” The Cowboy And The Senorita (1944) was the first of 28 pictures they made together. Her marriage with Robert Butts did not long survive and they divorced in 1946. That year on November 5 Arlene Wilkins Rogers died, a week after childbirth and on December 31, 1947 Rogers and Evans were married at the Flying L Ranch near Davis, Oklahoma. The couple recorded more than 400 songs together, and at the peak of their popularity in the early Fifties they had more than 2,000 fan clubs around the world. Both were Right-wing Christians who saw Reds under the bed and both were staunch supporters of President Ronald Reagan. Dale Evans was named California Mother of the Year in 1967 and Texan of the Year in 1970. She had three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She also wrote more than 20 books, including Angel Unaware (1991), the story of the couple’s daughter Robin, who had had Down’s syndrome and heart problems and died from mumps on August 24, 1952, two days before her second birthday.
CAUSE: She suffered a stroke in 1996, after which she was confined to a wheelchair. Dale Evans died aged 88 in Los Angeles, California, of congestive heart failure. She was buried in Sunset Hills Memorial Park, Apple Valley, San Bernardino County, California, along with Roy Rogers.
Dame Edith Evans
Born February 8, 1888
Died October 14, 1976
Imperiousness personified. Born in Ebury Square, London, Edith Mary Evans was a milliner before becoming an actress and making her professional stage début on August 1, 1912. It was to be the start of a long (66-year) and distinguished theatrical career, including appearances in Troilus & Cressida as Cressida, Hamlet as the Queen, The Merchant Of Venice as Portia, The Merry Wives Of Windsor as Mistress Page, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra, The Taming Of The Shrew as Katherine, the nurse in Romeo & Juliet and the definitive Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest. She made her film début in 1915 in A Welsh Singer and went on to appear in The Last Days Of Dolwyn (1948) as Merri, Look Back In Anger (1959) as Ma Tanner, The Nun’s Story (1959) as Mother Superior, Tom Jones (1962), Young Cassidy (1965), The Whisperers (1966) as Mrs Ross, The Mad Woman Of Chaillot (1968), Crooks And Coronets (1969), Scrooge (1970) as the Spirit of Christmas Past and The Slipper And The Rose (1975) as the Dowager Queen. She also recreated her Lady Bracknell to excellent effect in The Importance Of Being Earnest (1951). Playwright Robert Bolt’s Gentle Jack opened at the Queen’s Theatre in London on November 28, 1963. It starred the venerable Dame Edith and waspish Kenneth Williams in the title role as Jack of the Green. Williams had appeared in a number of Carry On films and on Tony Hancock’s radio show, whereas Evans’ experience was mostly in the theatre. She was not overly ecstatic about the casting and made her feelings known to producer Hugh ‘Binkie’ Beaumont. “Why on earth have you cast that Kenneth Williams?” “I think he’ll be rather good,” replied Beaumont. “Why?” “Well,” the Dame said slowly. “He’s got such a peculiar voice!” Like the old trooper that she was, Dame Edith had no thoughts of retirement. However, as she got older her faculties began to desert her. After one performance the audience turned on her. As she left the stage she turned to Kenneth Williams and said, “I distinctly heard one ‘Bravo!’” “No,” said Williams, “he shouted ‘Go ’ome!’” Towards the end of her life Dame Edith was appearing at the Riverside Studios. When a helpful stage-hand said to her, “This way, dear,” she was not impressed: “‘Dear!’ They’ll be calling me ‘Edie’ next!” A devout Christian Scientist, Dame Edith married George ‘Guy’ Booth on September 9, 1925, at St Saviour’s Church, near Claverton Street, London. He died from a brain tumour ten years later at 9.30am on January 9, 1935. There were no children. Away from work, she relaxed by gardening, reading and watching football on television.
CAUSE: In July 1971 she suffered a massive heart attack, from which she recovered to work again. She died of natural causes five years later at 12.20pm in her bed at home, Gatehouse in Kilndown, Kent, aged 88. She left £130,545.
FURTHER READING: Dame Edith Evans: Ned’s Girl – Bryan Forbes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).
F
Douglas Fairbanks
(DOUGLAS ELTONULMAN)
Born May 23, 1883
Died December 12, 1939
Swashbuckler. Born in Denver, Colorado, Fairbanks’ father, (Hezekiah) Charles Ulman (b. Berrysburg, Pennsylvania, September 15, 1833), founded and was President of the US Law Association. (In 1917 a mountain peak in Yosemite National Park was named in his honour.) Fairbanks’ parents divorced after his father’s unwise investments in a Denver silver mine. Douglas was educated at the Jervis Military Academy, East Denver High School (he was expelled in April 1899) and the Colorado School of Mines. In 1900 Douglas and his elder brother, Robert Payne (b. March 13, 1882, d. 1948) legally took the surname Fairbanks, which was the surname of their mother’s second husband. In 1901 Douglas began acting and in 1903 made his Broadway début, but he then lost interest in the theatre and went to work for a firm of New York stockbrokers as a clerk. He was a keep fit fanatic and had signed the pledge aged 12 at the insistence of his mother. He was, however, a chain-smoker. On July 11, 1907, Fairbanks married Anna Beth Sully (b. Providence, Rhode Island, June 20, 1888, at 4pm, d. 1967). Their son, Douglas Jr, arrived in New York at 4.15am on December 9, 1909. (Some sources list 1907 as his birthday.) Douglas Sr, soon returned to the acting world and, before the outbreak of World War I, was reasonably established as a leading man and an adequate comedian. He began making films in 1915 with The Lamb, Martyrs Of The Alamo and Double Trouble. He was signed by Trian
gle at a salary of $2,000 a week and made eleven films for the company. Triangle was owned and run by D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennett and Thomas Ince. Fairbanks appeared in His Picture In The Papers (1916) as Pete Prindle, The Habit Of Happiness (1916) as Sunny Wiggins, Reggie Mixes In (1916) as Reggie Van Deuzen, The Half-Breed (1916) as Lo Dorman, Flirting With Fate (1916) as Augy Holliday, Intolerance (1916) and Manhattan Madness (1916) as Steve O’Dare among other roles. D.W. Griffith did not appreciate either Fairbanks’ sense of humour or his practical joking and there was a parting of the ways between the two of them. In 1916, the 5́ 10˝ Fairbanks formed the Douglas Fairbanks Film Corporation and took control of every aspect of his films. He performed all his own stunts, keeping himself fit by exercising every day. He starred in American Aristocracy (1916) as Cassius Lee, The Matrimaniac (1916) as Jimmie Conroy, The Americano (1916) as Blaze Derringer, Wild And Woolly (1917) as Jeff Hillington, Down To Earth (1917) as Billy Gaynor, Reaching For The Moon (1917) as Alexis Caesar Napoleon Brown, He Comes Up Smiling (1918) as Jerry Martin and Arizona (1918) as Lieutenant Denton. On February 5, 1919, Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Mary Pickford formed United Artists to produce and sell their own films and those of other independents. Having divorced his wife the same year, Fairbanks married Mary Pickford, ‘America’s Sweetheart’, on March 28, 1920. They lived in Pickfair, their 42-room Hollywood mansion situated at 1143 Summit Drive, Beverly Hills. Pickfair became the mecca for Hollywood social life and everyone who was anyone was invited there. Almost. Douglas Jr said he was never invited to spend a night at the house during his father’s lifetime. Gloria Swanson was later to claim that parties there were not exactly the most exciting events in the world. It was during his marriage to Pickford that Fairbanks made some of his best and most memorable films, such as The Mark Of Zorro (1920) as Don Diego Vega/Zorro, The Three Musketeers as D’Artagnan, Robin Hood as the Earl Of Huntingdon/ Robin Hood, the title role in The Thief Of Bagdad (1924), Don Q Son Of Zorro (1925) as Don Cesar de Vega/Zorro, the leads in The Black Pirate (1926) and The Gaucho (1928) and The Iron Mask (1929) reprising his role as D’Artagnan. He wrote the screenplays for many of them under the pseudonym Elton Thomas. In 1922 Fairbanks was promoting his film Robin Hood. One stunt called for him to pose on a New York rooftop with a bow and arrow. Unfortunately, Fairbanks carelessly fired the arrow and saw it fly through the air before landing in the backside of a tailor. The man ran into the street shouting something about Red Indians; it cost Fairbanks $5,000 to settle out of court. Following his divorce from Mary Pickford in January 1936 Fairbanks stopped acting. In Paris on March 7, 1936, he married for the third and final time, to Sylvia, Lady Ashley (b. London, 1904, as Edith Louise Sylvia Hawkes, d. Los Angeles, June 30, 1977, of cancer). Fairbanks’ feet were among the first to be enshrined in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. He was the first president (1927–1932) of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the body that hands out the Oscars. He was awarded a posthumous statuette in 1940. In 1930 he set a record for the world’s longest ship-to-shore telephone call – 7,400 miles. Fairbanks nicknamed his pets after fictional or historical characters. He had a mastiff called Marco Polo and a terrier called Zorro. Mary Pickford said of him: “In his private life, Douglas always faced a situation in the only way he knew, by running away from it.”
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 67
