CAUSE: He died in Hollywood aged 70 of natural causes.
Leslie Graves
Born September 29, 1959
Died August 23, 1995
Tragic beauty. Born in Silver City, New Mexico, Leslie Graves became an actress at an early age, appearing on Sesame Street when she was nine years old and then starring in the short-lived television series Here We Go Again in 1972 where she played Cindy Standish, Larry Hagman’s stepdaughter. In 1975 she retired from acting. In 1980 she posed nude for some raunchy pictures, telling the world, “It’s a sort of coming into adulthood present for myself. It’s like saying, ‘Hey world – look! I’m a woman and proud of it.’” In 1981 she played Alison Dumont in Piranha II: The Spawning. The fish must have had an effect on her because she retired from acting to work on a shrimp boat in Texas. However, her retirement was brief and she returned to play the spoiled 15-year-old debutante Brenda Clegg in the soap opera Capitol from March 26, 1982, a part she held for two years. That same year she appeared in Death Wish II. She once opined, “I’m easily waylaid. I love men who are tender, men who know how to touch me softly. Lord knows I’ve been pawed by enough creeps in my life.” They were attracted to her tiny but voluptuous shape. She stood just 4́ 11˝ but measured 36D-22-31.
CAUSE: When not acting Leslie Graves liked to keep herself to herself. In death as in life, she died, aged 35, of an AIDS-related illness in Los Angeles, California. Despite lengthy research by this author no details of how she came to be infected could be found.
Charles Gray
(DONALD MARSHALL GRAY)
Born August 29, 1928
Died March 7, 2000
Supercilious villain. Born in Bournemouth, Dorset, the son of a surveyor, Donald Gray began his working life as an estate agent before becoming a thespian with the Regents Park Open Air Players in 1952. His first paid job was as the wrestler Charles in As You Like It, a role that inspired him to change his own Christian name. He appeared on the stage regularly on both sides of the Atlantic before making the transition to movies in 1958. He usually played villains and his most memorable portrayal was probably Ernst Blofeld (the third actor in the role after Donald Pleasence and Telly Savalas), the villain with the white cat in his arms, in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) closely followed by the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). He dubbed the voice of Jack Hawkins in many films when the latter suffered from cancer. Gray’s films included: The Unknown Terror (1957) as Jim Wheatley, Ride A Violent Mile (1957), I Accuse! (1958) as Captain Brossard, Tommy The Toreador (1959) as Gomez, The Entertainer (1960), Masquerade (1965) as Benson, The Night Of The Generals (1967) as General von Seidlitz-Gabler, You Only Live Twice (1967) as Henderson, The Devil Rides Out (1968) as Mocata, Mosquito Squadron (1969) as Hufford, Cromwell (1970) as The Earl of Essex and The Tichborne Claimant (1998) as Arundell. A homosexual bachelor, 6́ 2˝ Gray was a close friend of Ava Gardner when she lived in London during her final years.
CAUSE: He died in Brompton Hospital, London, having smoked heavily and drunk a bottle and a half of pink gin a day for more years than he could probably remember. His funeral took place on March 17, 2000.
Spalding Gray
Born June 5, 1941 Found dead March 8, 2004
Monologist. Spalding Gray was born at Barrington, Rhode Island, and he and his two brothers were raised as Christian Scientists. An unruly schoolboy, he set off cherry bombs in the school lavatory and threw rotten eggs in the halls. Worried about his poor academic performance – he was dyslexic – his parents enrolled him at Fryeburg Academy, Maine, where his grades improved. His interest in acting was born at Emerson College, Boston and he landed work in rep on Cape Cod after graduating in 1965. He then worked at a small theatre in Saratoga, New York, before moving to New York City in 1967 to live with his girlfriend, Elizabeth LeCompte. The suicide of his mother the same year led him into a depression that lasted for nine yearsand ended in his own nervous breakdown. In 1979 Gray and LeCompte formed the Wooster Group and put on the autobiographical Sakonnet Point, named after the Rhode Island resort where Gray had enjoyed school summer holidays. Gray wrote his first monologue, Sex And Death To The Age 14, using his childhood experiences against the major events of the day, including the polio epidemic, which Gray survived by “washing my hands with rubbing alcohol and staying out of crowded movie theatres”. Gray’s monologues were always performed at a bare desk with a glass of water his only prop. Gray’s most famous monologue was Swimming To Cambodia, loosely based on his experiences while acting in The Killing Fields, filmed on location in Thailand in 1983. Three years later, Swimming To Cambodia was turned into a film, directed by Jonathan Demme. His next monologue was the 1986 Terrors Of Pleasure. Although the talks became successful Gray found it difficult to handle the fame and in 1992 suffered a midlife crisis as he approached the age at which his mother took her own life. His films included: Cowards (1970), The Farmer’s Daughter (1973) as George, the United States consul in The Killing Fields (1984), a travel agent in Almost You (1985), Seven Minutes In Heaven (1985) as Dr Rodney, Hard Choices (1985) as Terry Norfolk, Stars And Bars (1988) as Reverend Cardew, Clara’s Heart (1988) as Dr Peter Epstein, Beaches (1988) as Dr Richard Milstein, Straight Talk (1992) as Dr Erdman, Bliss (1997) as Alfred, How High (2001) as Professor Jackson, Kate & Leopold (2001) as Dr Geisler and The Paper Mâché Chase (2003) as Dr Calhoun. He married twice: firstly to Renée Shafransky from whom he was divorced, and secondly to Kathleen Russo by whom he had two sons and a stepdaughter.
CAUSE: In 2001 Gray suffered a broken hip, fractured skull and sciatic nerve damage in his foot after a van crashed into his hire car in Ireland. Unimpressed by Irish hospitals, he wrote and performed a monologue about his experiences, then began a book, Black Spot. He became more angry and depressed about his injuries as time went on. “I can’t take long walks,” he complained. “I don’t feel whole any more. I’ve been maimed and there’s been no acknowledgement of it.” In October 2002 he tried to jump from a bridge near his Long Island home, but was talked down by a passer-by. On Sunday, January 10, 2004 he went missing and was later seen on the Staten Island ferry. His body was recovered from the East River two months later.
Hughie Green
Born February 2, 1920
Died May 3, 1997
Sincere showman. Readers may be surprised by the inclusion of Hughie Green in a book of film actors, nevertheless he did appear in ten films between 1935 and 1978, with a television movie in 1993. He was also for a time the biggest child star in Britain. Hugh Hughes Green was born at his parents’ central London flat, 8 Weymouth Court, 1 Weymouth Street, in Marylebone. His father was 6́ 3˝ Major Hugh Aitchison Green (b. Hanging Shaw, Glasgow, July 30, 1886, d. Mezzanine Floor, Chiltern Court, Baker Street, London, October 23, 1959 of a myocardial fibrosis and coronary thrombosis) and his mother Violet Eleanor Price (b. 1894, d. Wellington Hospital, London, February 13, 1975 of stomach and liver cancer). His parents were not a loving couple. While some described them as unconventional, their grandson was blunter calling them “satanic”. Violet Green didn’t want her son at all. As a result, they travelled frequently without him. His education was peripatetic. While his parents lived beyond their means, he was shunted from school to school. He went to Francis Holland School, Clarence Gate, Regent’s Park, London; Egerton House School, Dorset Square, Marylebone; St Margaret’s, Bromley, Kent; and Arnold House School, Loudoun Road, St John’s Wood, London. He finished his full-time education in December 1933, two months before the then school leaving age of 14. Within a year Hughie Green was the highest-paid child entertainer in Britain and a film star. In September 1932 his father had arranged for Hughie to sign a deal with the Fox Film Corporation worth £10,000 a year. But the 1913 Children (Employment Abroad) Act expressly forbade any child under 14 to leave the UK for the purposes of entertaining. The penalty for the parents was two years’ hard labour. Hughie produced a revue starring children that led to an audition at the BBC. He passed and was cast as Emil in a wireless p
roduction of Emil And The Detectives in 1934. He became in great demand for his revue Hughie Green’s Gang Show. For the next five years he toured with the show constantly. One of the other boys in the Gang Show was named Toney Entwhistle. He stayed in touch with Hughie and later changed his name to Antony Beauchamp. He became a society photographer and war artist. On October 18, 1949 in America he married Sarah, the actress daughter of Sir Winston Churchill. They separated in 1955 and on August 18, 1957 he committed suicide with an overdose of barbiturates. Beauchamp was not really a friend of Hughie – he was so imperious, so convinced that he was always right that Hughie had virtually no friends as a child. By the time he was 14 Hughie was drinking alcohol and taking Benzedrine, or speed. He began to appear in films, including Carol Reed’s Midshipman Easy (1935) in the title role alongside Margaret Lockwood and Harry Tate. The film was a critical and financial success but never became a classic. He failed the audition for MGM’s David Copperfield, a part that went to Freddie Bartholomew. In 1937 he got Vera May Hands, a 17-year-old theatre usherette, pregnant and she gave birth to his first illegitimate child, Barry, on March 17, 1938 at Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham. (He would go on to have four illegitimate daughters, all but one will not be identified in this book.) That same year he made Melody And Romance (1937) playing Hughie Hawkins. His later films included: Music Hall Parade (1939) as Eve Becke, Down Our Alley (1939) as Hughie Dunstable and Tom Brown’s School Days (1940) as Walker. In October 1939 the Gang Show came to an end because many of the personnel had signed up for the forces. On February 2, 1941 Green volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force. On May 24, 1941 he enrolled in Regina, Saskatchewan. However his parents were not happy about this interruption of his showbiz career and desperately tried to pull strings to stop him serving. Major Green even managed to land Hughie a part in a show called Golden Wings in America, so Hughie had to swap his uniform for a costume. In 1935 he had met (Audrey) Claire Wilson (b. February 20, 1922, d. St George’s Nursing Home, St George’s Square, Westminster, London, March 9, 1995 of brain cancer), the woman who was in September 1942 to become his wife and the mother of his legitimate children. The Greens’ daughter Linda was born in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal on April 20, 1944, and their son Christopher Hugh Whitney was born in Montreal on July 24, 1947. His parents were horrified at the marriage and became the in-laws from hell, sending anonymous hate mail to their daughter-in-law. Hughie called in the police who identified the sender as Hughie’s father. Hughie hired the 6́ 2˝ flamboyantly homosexual lawyer David Jacobs (b. 1922, committed suicide 2 Princes Crescent, Hove, Sussex, December 15, 1968), who also represented The Beatles, Judy Garland, Diana Dors and Laurence Harvey to “scare the living shit out of my father and secure … a pledge that … he … will … cease and desist from ever doing anything of this nature again”. At 10.30am on October 23, 1959 Jacobs arrived at the mezzanine floor, five floors below where Hughie and his family lived at Chiltern Court, Baker Street, London with the appropriate legal paperwork and the hate mail. Major Green aimed a kick at the made-up solicitor, breaking his wrist before falling back onto the marble floor dead from a myocardial fibrosis and coronary thrombosis. In July 1945 Hughie appeared in The Hughie Green Comedy Show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, produced by Jackie Rae (who would become the first host of The Golden Shot). The show flopped and it seemed as if Green’s career could be over. Ben Lyon came to the rescue and helped Hughie get the role of Freddie Perch in If Winter Comes (1947) which starred Walter Pidgeon and Deborah Kerr. His last New York stage appearance came in December 1948 in Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. He also appeared in Hills Of Home (1948) as Geordie Howe, Paper Orchid (1949) as Harold Croup and Men Of The Sea (1951) as Jack Easy. In 1949 the call came from the BBC to sit in for the radio presenter Carroll Levis who had suffered a nervous breakdown. The talent show Opportunity Knocks was the programme that Green devised to replace Levis and it ran from February until the autumn of 1949. After that one series Green was informed that the BBC did not intend to renew his contract despite the show attracting more than 13 million listeners. A new show produced by the Carroll Levis Organisation took to the air instead. Two of Levis’ staff rang Green and told him that BBC officials had been bribed to let the Levis show back on air. In 1950 Green called in Scotland Yard and sued the BBC claiming they were “conspiring to prevent [Opportunity Knocks] being screened”. The case rumbled on for five years and the strain turned Hughie’s hair white. On May 27, 1955 he lost and went bankrupt owing £30,000. Billy Butlin offered him work at his holiday camp in Skegness. Although the BBC did not want the show others did. Opportunity Knocks appeared in a 95-week run on Radio Luxembourg and one of the early discoveries was the singer David Whitfield. In 1957 thanks to a loan from his wife’s grandmother Hughie was discharged from bankruptcy. On September 22, 1955 Associated Rediffusion launched Channel Nine, the first independent television channel in Britain, and Hughie was to find his fame restored there in various game shows. His show Double Your Money ran on Monday nights from September 26, 1955 until 1968. 6́ 2˝ Green realised that the people were the stars and he made sure never to outshine them. Among the hostesses were Monica Rose and Amanda Barrie (although she only lasted a few months in 1959). In 1956 Opportunity Knocks arrived on television and ran until 1978. Among its discoveries were Pam Ayres, Bobby Crush, Frank Carson, Freddie ‘Parrot Face’ Davies, Les Dawson, Mary Hopkin, Bonnie Langford, Little & Large, Tom O’Connor, Peters & Lee, Freddie Starr and Lena Zavaroni. Before his divorce from Claire, Green was an unfaithful husband who often bedded the wives of men that he worked with or knew. He had affairs with two sisters Pat Hughes and her sister Gwendoline Helen Claremont (b. Acton, west London, April 8, 1916). Claire, too, was unfaithful taking a couple of lovers. They separated in 1960. On April 3, 1965 a drunk and drugged Hughie crashed his car into a 17-ton lorry while driving to Reading. It took 40 minutes for fire crews to cut him out of the wreckage, which gave him some time to sober up before he got to the hospital. He had concussion, six broken ribs, leg and spinal injuries and a blood clot between the liver and lungs. In 1971 he began to present The Sky’s The Limit for Yorkshire TV. In 1974 the show had a new producer Jess Yates, the host of the religious show Stars On Sunday. Yates dispensed with the homely hostesses and introduced dolly birds and jazzed up the set, much to Hughie’s annoyance. Ratings fell. Yates did not know that his wife had been sleeping with Green for two decades. Green also bedded and photographed Yates’ girlfriend, Anita Kay, a busty brunette who had appeared nude in the revue Pyjama Tops. On July 7, 1974 the News Of The World ran the story of Yates and Anita Kay which wrecked his career. Both men suffered although Yates more so. The show was dropped after that series. That year Hughie and Claire had a brief reconciliation. It was not to last and on May 3, 1975 at Caxton Hall, Westminster, she married the actor David Langton (b. Motherwell, Scotland, April 16, 1912 as Basil Langton-Dodds, d. 17 Avonbank Paddocks, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, April 25, 1994 of a heart attack) who played Lord Bellamy in Upstairs Downstairs. Three years later, he made his last film, What’s Up Superdoc! (1978) as Bob Scratchitt. That year Opportunity Knocks was dropped by ITV. Hughie offered it to the BBC who accepted it but not him. On June 17, 1981 65-year-old Gwen Claremont, Hughie’s former girlfriend, committed suicide in Holland Park by dousing herself in petrol and setting it alight. She died of 100 per cent burns in Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton. She left a note claiming that she had cancer but when an autopsy was performed no sign of the disease could be found. In 1989 he unsuccessfully sued the New Zealand Broadcasting Company for running what he saw as a plagiarised Opportunity Knocks. In 1996 he took the BBC to task for a line in the sitcom The Vicar Of Dibley: “There hasn’t been a bus through the village since Hughie Green died.” His unctuous catchphrase “I mean that most sincerely, folks” was a gift for impressionists of the day. He held very right-wing views, was homophobic, wanted to hang drug dealers (even though he was a lifelong drug abuser), a snob and d
id not suffer fools at all, never mind gladly. He also did not like children, including his own, and the feelings were reciprocated. His daughter publicly called him “a monster” while his son in perhaps a touch of understatement said that “he wasn’t a very nice man”.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 81
