CAUSE: Towards the end of his life, he became very vague and absent-minded. He died aged 67 in his sleep, having been hospitalised four months earlier after a series of strokes.
FURTHER READING: Who’s There? The Life And Career Of William Hartnell – Jessica Carney (London: Virgin, 1996).
Laurence Harvey
(LARUSHKA MISCHA SKIKNE)
Born October 1, 1928
Died November 25, 1973
Mixed-up leading man. Born in Joniskis, Lithuania, Jewish Harvey was raised in South Africa and joined the republic’s navy and then army before enrolling in RADA in 1945. He was named Harvey after the London store Harvey Nichols. He made his first film in 1948 playing Francis Merryman in House Of Darkness. He followed that with Man On The Run (1948) as Detective Sergeant Lawson. He also appeared in Cairo Road (1950) as Lieutenant Mourad, There Is Another Sun (1951) as Mag Maguire, I Believe In You (1952) as Jordie, King Richard And The Crusaders (1954) as Sir Kenneth, I Am A Camera (1955) as Christopher Isherwood, Storm Over The Nile (1955) as John Durrance, Three Men In A Boat (1956) as George and Room At The Top (1959) as Joe Lampton, the film that made him a star. Hollywood beckoned and he appeared in Expresso Bongo (1960) as Johnny Jackson, The Alamo (1960) as Colonel William Travis, Butterfield 8 (1960) as Weston Liggett, The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm (1962) as Wilhelm Grimm and his best performance as the brainwashed assassin Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). (Angela Lansbury played his mother. She was just three years his elder.) He also made The Running Man (1963) as Rex Black, Of Human Bondage (1964) as Philip Carey, Life At The Top (1965) as Joe Lampton, Darling (1965) as Miles Brand, The Spy With A Cold Nose (1966) as Dr Francis Trevelyan and A Dandy In Aspic (1968) as Alexander Eberlin. He married three times. His first wife was the actress Margaret Leighton, whom he married in August 1957. They were divorced in 1960. Wife number two (on October 17, 1968 at the Lyford Cay Club, Nassau) was Joan Cohn, widow of mogul Harry Cohn. They divorced in 1972. On New Year’s Eve that year he married model Paulene Stone. Their daughter, Domino, had been born in 1969. During his time with Paulene Stone, Harvey was said to be conducting a homosexual affair with one of his producers. When Harvey died Paulene married American businessman Peter Morton, leaving her daughter in England. She was expelled from four schools and in 1989 5́ 9˝ Domino became a ranch hand in the San Diego mountains. Later she joined the San Diego Fire Brigade. In 1994 she began working as a bounty hunter for the Celes King Bail Bond Agency in South Central Los Angeles. She sold the rights to her life story for £26,000 and then disappeared. She fell prey to heroin addiction and in April 1997 checked herself into the Habilitat rehab clinic on Oahu, Hawaii where she stayed for two years. In March 2005 the film of her story Domino was released starring Keira Knightley in the title role. However, all examples of the real Domino’s bisexuality were erased from the movie. Harvey also had a long affair with Hermione Baddeley. Sir Robert Stephens said of him: “An appalling man and, even more unforgivably, an appalling actor.”
CAUSE: He died of stomach cancer at his home in Kidderpore Avenue, Hampstead, north London, aged 45. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. He left £34, 349.
FURTHER READING: The Prince Laurence Harvey His Public And Private Life – Des Hickey & Gus Smith (London: Star Books, 1976).
Imogen Hassall
Born August 25, 1942
Died November 16, 1980
Countess of Cleavage. Busty, brunette and beautiful Imogen Hassall was born in Woking, Surrey, the daughter of the poet Christopher Vernon Hassall (b. London, March 24, 1912, d. of a heart attack on a train in Chatham, Kent, April 25, 1963) and the actor Evelyn Lynett Chapman who were married in 1938. Christopher Hassall was reported to be the gay lover of Ivor Novello and in 1973 Imogen spoke about the difficulty of being thought of as the offspring of a homosexual or bisexual. Some believe that Imogen’s difficulties in life sprang from her relationship with her father – comparable to Vanessa and Corin Redgrave discovering that their father was bisexual. Imogen’s godfather was the composer Sir William Walton. Her brother Nicholas Edward was born in Chelsea Hospital in April 1941. Their parents split in 1961 and Christopher Hassall moved to Tonford Manor in Canterbury, Kent. Imogen, who was called ‘Jenny’ by her family and ‘Imo’ by her friends, was educated at Dorlands School, Hook Heath, near Woking, Channing School in Highgate, north London (June 1949–May 1951), Elmhurst Ballet School and the Royal Ballet School (from January 10, 1955). In 1959 Princess Margaret visited the school and Imogen managed to spill tea over the royal guest. In the academic year 1959–1960 – her final one – Imogen was head girl. From December 23, 1958 Imogen appeared as Victoria Bowman in a six-week run of The Amazing Adventures Of Miss Brown put on by the Rapier Players. Imogen’s sweet nature made her a hit with the cast who were surprised to learn that at 16 she was already ordering custom-made bras. One of her castmates said that Imogen had “the most amazing figure and the smallest waist I have ever seen”. Imogen made a career out of playing dolly birds although she was talented enough to work with The Royal Shakespeare Company. On October 5, 1960, Imogen enrolled at LAMDA (unlike many of her impoverished contemporaries Imogen had her own car and a flat above her aunt at 88 Kensington Park Road) and on graduation in 1962 spent five months with the RSC. She left to appear in the West End play The Reluctant Peer in 1964. Imogen became an adult in the Swinging Sixties, a time when everyone was supposedly at it (apart from the poet Philip Larkin) and Imogen had more than her fair share of lovers. She could not be without a man but she confessed to a friend, “I don’t really like sex much, but I feel I ought to because what else have I to offer?” Two years before her death Imogen gave an interview in which she fully expounded her views on sex. She said, “I didn’t want the reputation of sleeping around but on the other hand one was, I suppose, doing it … I was known as a jet-set girl and with this jet-set girl you slept around. It was a time when men used to phone me in the middle of the night and say come over [and] I used to go. It was something in me that liked to be wanted. I think I knew I was a good lover … I could move my body into different positions – and I knew what a man wanted instinctively … I loved the fact that people thought my body was super … I enjoyed people looking at my body and showing it off. I started having sex when I was 18 and I first had an orgasm when I was 30. Twelve years of complete frustration – but I was a wonderful faker. I don’t do that any more – I think I’ve actually learned to enjoy sex myself – which I didn’t before. I think I enjoy making love now and that makes me a good lover. Now I want to enjoy my body in bed – that has taken me a long time. I realise that I used to play a ridiculous game because even though I was happy, I cried a lot.” She also had at least one abortion in the early Sixties, an operation that severely restricted her ability to have children. 1963 was a busy year for Imogen on television. On May 5 she appeared in the ‘A Sunday Morning’ episode of the series Moonstrike, in September in the crime drama Scales Of Justice and on December 14 she played Nikki in the ‘Not Quite Fully Covered’ episode of The Sentimental Agent. She also appeared in the film Position Of Trust. 1964 began well as Imogen opened at the Duchess Theatre on January 15 playing Lady Rosalind, the daughter of the title character, in The Reluctant Peer, a play by William Douglas Home, the brother of the prime minister. She made several appearances in The Saint: the title role of Sophia, the daughter of Stavros, a Greek innkeeper, in an episode on February 27, 1964 that was based on the 1948 short story Lucia; on December 23, 1966 (‘Flight Plan’) playing Nadya and Malia Gupta on December 22, 1968 (‘The People Importers’). In August 1965 Imogen opened as the Honourable Muriel Pym in Milestones for a fortnight at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, Surrey. Three months later, she was back at the same theatre appearing in a production of Noël Coward’s play about drugs, The Vortex. In 1965 she also made a brief appearance as Sir Roger’s secretary Miss Cartwright in the Norman Wisdom vehicle The Early Bird. Halliwell describes the film as “overlong and mainly uninventiv
e”. On December 28, 1967 Imogen was Anjali in the ‘Escape In Time’ episode of The Avengers. She was also to appear in The Champions (October 9, 1968), Softly Softly (February 26, 1970), The Persuaders (September 17, 1971), and Jason King (March 17, 1972). In late 1966 she filmed The Long Duel (1967) in Spain, playing Tara who escapes from the British fort in India but then dies in childbirth. On set Imogen befriended her co-star Charlotte Rampling. However, Rampling pulled away from Imogen, put off by the older woman’s obvious instability and she remembers that Imogen also attempted suicide at least once during their brief friendship. The film’s stars were Yul Brynner, Trevor Howard and Harry Andrews. She was also in the film Bedtime (1967). From February 1, 1968, she played Elsa Levkin in The Italian Girl at Wyndham’s Theatre. Imogen’s portrayal of a doomed girl was described as “quite haunting”. Imogen left the play ostensibly to holiday in Italy but in reality because she was unable to cope, much to the disappointment of her co-stars. The following year she played a fur bikini-clad cavegirl Ayak in the Hammer film When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1969). In a film full of scantily clad starlets, Imogen stands out with her long lustrous hair and fine supple body. Publicity stills from the film are sought after by collectors of cult memorabilia to this day. In Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny And Girly (1969), a whimsically ghoulish horror melodrama, she played Michael Bryant’s girlfriend. The next year Imogen made five films. She was in El Condor (1970) as Dolores with a nude scene; Franco Nero’s evil wife in The Virgin And The Gypsy (1970) with a breast-feeding scene; Toomorrow (1970), a bizarre science fiction fantasy that starred Olivia Newton-John and in which Imogen played Amy; Take A Girl Like You (1970) as Samantha and wallflower-turned-model Jenny Grubb in Carry On Loving (filmed April 6– May 15 and released September 1970), a film that made the most of her 35-21-34 assets. In Bloodsuckers, also known as Incense For The Damned (1972), she is Chriseis, a vampire, and appears topless at the start of the film. In 1970, with enough money from her film work, Imogen bought a house in Betteridge Road, Fulham, which she proudly decorated herself. Around this time she became a regular at film premières, usually turning up in skimpy outfits and to at least one with her breasts barely encased in a fishnet top. Nowadays the tabloid press builds people up and then tears them down – it was no different 30 years ago. Although the press filled pages with photographs of Imogen at various events, they thought nothing of labelling her one of the “Top 10 Bores of the Year”. To celebrate Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969, the Sunday Mirror published pictures of their “own heavenly body” Imogen in the waves in the Bahamas. In July 1970, Imogen prepared to marry Christopher Long but nothing came of it. On September 20 she was taken to St Stephen’s Hospital, Fulham Road, after taking a drugs overdose. Her friends believed it was a cry for help and not a serious attempt to end her life. However, at the end of October she told William Hall of the Evening News, “The overdose was an accident. It was certainly not a suicide attempt … I’m not the type. I had been in great pain after paying £300 for an abortion at a Harley Street nursing home. I finally got some painkillers and when I got home I took two pills and lay down to sleep. I woke up in a daze and took two more, then two more, then two more.” By the end of that year Imogen was worried that she was not being taken seriously and she had become nothing more than a sexy joke. In 1971 Imogen played Lady Ursula Itchin in The Jockey Club Stakes, another play by William Douglas Home, at the Duke of York Theatre. The play closed in November and, before its end, pleased with the response, Imogen decided to hire a PR to give herself some much needed positive press coverage. She arranged a Hallowe’en party for the press on a boat in the Thames and the PR told her how to dress and what to say. Satisfied that his job was done, he left Imogen alone. The next day there was his client resplendent in a witch’s hat, topless, holding candles in front of her breasts. In the autumn of that year she met the man who would become her first husband when Kenneth Ives (b. 1933) joined the cast of the play. He was best known as Hawkeye in TV’s The Last Of The Mohicans and later married comedienne Marti Caine. Early the next year Imogen became pregnant but their daughter, Melanie Ives Hassall, died on November 5, 1972 aged just four days. In June and July 1973 she appeared in Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot In The Park and then in October and November she toured in the play The Mating Game, playing Julia Carrington “the short-sighted and censorious secretary”. In 1973 she starred alongside David Jason (playing Albert Toddey) in Ray Selfe’s black comedy White Cargo (originally entitled Albert’s Follies), in which she played Stella, a policewoman working undercover as a stripper to trap white slave traders. The film was made on a budget of £80,000. She married Ives at Bromley Register Office on May 25, 1974. At Christmas 1974 she appeared in the pantomime Puss In Boots at Whitehaven. During the run she had a brief fling with co-star Bill Homewood. On June 22, 1975, at 1.10am while living in Hurlingham Road, Fulham, she was stopped by police in Daisy Lane, Putney, and arrested for being drunk in charge of a bicycle. The next day at West London Magistrates Court she was fined £10 with £11 doctors’ fees. The same day Imogen tried unsuccessfully to get a quickie divorce. Christmas 1975 and she was in panto in Bournemouth as Maid Marian in Babes In The Wood. From 1975 until 1976 she had an affair with Alan Whitehead (b. Oswestry, July 24, 1947), the drummer with the pop group Marmalade. Their first date was at Trader Vic’s and Whitehead remembers that half way through the meal she laid down her fork and said, “All right, you’ve seduced me with your eyes. Let’s go,” and took him back to her Fulham home. In 1976 she took to the road appearing in the mystery play Killer opposite Wilfrid Brambell, and Geoffrey Davies from the medical sitcom Doctor On The Go. Imogen spent 1977 out of work. On February 3, 1978 she and Kenneth Ives were divorced. “I always refused what I didn’t want in bed. I only forced myself to do something I didn’t want sexually in my marriage. It became a nightmare. My husband was physically very handsome – I got married because I thought I ought to – but it was hell – I was on pills – awful.” In September 1978 she landed the role of Valerie in the play Say Who You Are. One of her co-stars was the Cambridge-educated actor Andrew Knox (b. Hollywood, California, 1944), the son of the Oscar nominated actor Alexander Knox (b. Canada Strathroy, Ontario, Canada, January 16, 1907, d. Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland, April 25, 1995 aged 88 of bone cancer). He appeared as the snooty James Gascoigne in the sitcom Doctor On The Go alongside her Killer co-star Geoffrey Davies. Imogen became depressed over her relationship failures and inability to have a child: “Desperately I want to be loved. Desperately I don’t want to be used any more.” On January 15, 1979, she married Knox at the Register Office in Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland. According to Imogen it was all over in a fortnight and Knox moved his belongings out of Imogen’s home in Schubert Road, Putney. Imogen confessed, “We’d only spent about six nights together. The wedding was all a big joke that I didn’t quite see. Andrew and I didn’t have a very exciting sex life. Right from the start he had his own separate bedroom. We’d never lived together as man and wife in the normal sense.” Knox had a different view. “Our sex life was splendid. It was rip-roaring. We were fornicating all the time we were together, which wasn’t just two weeks. It was two months.” Imogen told Geoffrey Davies that the marriage was never consummated. That year Imogen made her last film, a minor role in Licence To Love And Kill known in the States as The Man From S.E.X. From February until August 1980 Imogen toured as Ginnie in the cricket play Outside Edge.
CAUSE: Imogen began talking of suicide when she was just 18. She was given Tuinal, a drug that is now banned, at her mother’s suggestion and thus began a reliance on pills that would last her entire adult life. Touring in 1980 she took pills to sleep and pills to wake up. Her friends would often receive phone calls in the middle of the night because Imogen was lonely and unable to sleep. Friends would patiently babysit her through the long, lonely, night-time hours as Imogen moaned that people, i.e. men, only looked at the surface and only wanted her for one thing. Imogen had a
ttempted to kill herself three times. In June 1980 during the run of Outside Edge Imogen suffered an ectopic pregnancy and was rushed to hospital, according to the doctor who treated her she was “minutes from death”. (According to her actor friend, Suzanna Leigh, Imogen lost eight babies. In August 1977 Imogen told the Sunday People that she had lost a baby the previous month and then split from her restaurateur boyfriend John Granville-Barker.) She left Putney and moved to a semi-detached cottage, 17 Crooked Billet, Wimbledon Village, London, next to The Crooked Billet pub. She began to date a toolmaker called Mick Hayward (b. 1947) but he broke off the relationship a few days before her death. On November 13, Imogen presented her local chemist with a prescription for 20 Dalmane sleeping pills, 20 Daraprim anti-malaria tablets, 50 Tuinal barbiturates and 25 Valium. The pharmacist questioned the large amount but was satisfied by Imogen’s explanation that she was about to go on a month-long holiday to Mombasa, Kenya. She was due to leave with Suzanna Leigh on November 16. She died in the early hours of that Sunday morning. She was just 38. At 2pm Imogen’s naked body was discovered in her four-poster bed by her housesitter. Her right hand was on the telephone dial and an empty bottle of Tuinal barbiturates beside her. Imogen had often taken drugs and then rang her friends to come and save her. On this Saturday night was she dialling her friends but none of them received the message or did she really intend finally to kill herself? Suzanna Leigh went ahead with the planned holiday. Later, Suzanna Leigh was to tell the story that on Friday, November 14 Imogen was beaten and raped by the friend of a man known to her. Leigh claimed that Imogen’s head was badly cut and some hair had been pulled out. However, on November 17, when Imogen was autopsied no sign of sexual assault was discovered. Imogen was buried in the cemetery in Gap Road, Wimbledon, in a ceremony attended by more than 50 mourners. An obituary in The Stage And Television Today published on November 27 said, “Imogen Hassall was better known for attending premières than for her abilities as an actress.” At the inquest held on December 18, the coroner returned a verdict of suicide by barbiturate poisoning. Her will was published on May 11, 1981 and Imogen left £36,145 net (£42,767 gross). In 1987 Andrew Knox took his own life, throwing himself off the Jersey ferry. His body was never found.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 86
