Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries
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CAUSE: Bob Hope died aged 100 at his home in Toluca Lake, California, of pneumonia.
FURTHER READING: I Never Left Home– Bob Hope with Carroll Carroll (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944); Have Tux, Will Travel– Bob Hope as told to Pete Martin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953); Bob Hope– Joe Morella, Edward Z. Epstein & Eleanor Clark (New York: Arlington House, 1973); Bob Hope: Portrait Of A Superstar– Charles Thompson (London: Fontana, 1981); Bob Hope A Life In Comedy– William Faith (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1982); Bob Hope: A Comic Life– Pamela Trescott (New York: Acropolis, 1985); Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me– Bob Hope with Melville Shavelson (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1990); The Secret Life Of Bob Hope– Arthur Marx (1993).
Miriam Hopkins
Born October 18, 1902
Died October 9, 1972
Diminutive beauty. Born in Bainbridge, Georgia, 5́2˝ Ellen Miriam Hopkins was educated at Syracuse University and wanted to become a ballerina, but a broken ankle forced her to reconsider and she joined a revue as a chorine in 1921. Two years later, she became a successful Broadway actress and signed a contract with Paramount on June 25, 1930, making her film début in Fast And Loose (1930) as Marion Lenox. In 1935 she signed for Goldwyn and, four years later to Warner, where she feuded with Bette Davis who said, “Miriam is a perfectly charming woman socially. Working with her is another story.” Her star fell in the Forties and she returned to Broadway, making the occasional film. Her movies included Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1931) as Ivy Pearson, 24 Hours (1931) as Rosie Duggan, World And The Flesh (1932) as Maria Yaskaya, Trouble In Paradise (1932) as Lily Vautier, Design For Living (1933) as Gilda Farrell, She Loves Me Not (1934) as Curly Flagg, The Richest Girl In The World (1934) as Dorothy Hunter, Splendor (1935) as Phyllis Manning Lorrimore, Barbary Coast (1935) as Mary ‘Swan’ Rutledge, the lead in Becky Sharp for which she was nominated for an Oscar, These Three (1936) as Martha Dobie, Men Are Not Gods as Ann Williams, The Old Maid (1939) as Delia Lovell Ralston, Old Acquaintance (1943) as Mildred Drake, The Mating Season (1951) as Fran Carleton, Carrie (1952) as Julie Hurstwood, Fanny Hill (1964) as Mrs Maude Brown and Savage Intruder (1968). She married four times. On May 11, 1926, she married actor Brandon Peters. On June 2, 1928, she married Austin ‘Billy’ Parker before her divorce from Peters had come through. They divorced in 1931. On September 4, 1937, she eloped to Yuma, Arizona, with Anatole Litvak. They divorced on October 11, 1939. In 1945 she married journalist Ray Brock but that marriage only lasted six years. Her lovers included Maurice Chevalier, Bing Crosby, John Gilbert, William Randolph Hearst, Frederic March, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone and King Vidor. She once said, “When I can’t sleep, I don’t count sheep. I count lovers and by the time I reach 38 or 39 I’m asleep.”
CAUSE: She died aged 69 in New York of a heart attack. She was buried in Bainbridge, Georgia.
Hedda Hopper
(ELDA FURRY)
Born May 2, 1885
Died February 1, 1966
Bitchy old-time gossip. With her rival Louella O. Parsons, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper was one of the most hated and feared people in Hollywood. If the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, then Hedda wielded hers with great ferocity. It was believed by many the reason for her vitriol was to ‘punish’ successful actors, Hedda having failed to make the grade herself as a star, although she appeared in nearly 150 films. Born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a butcher, 5́ 7˝ Hedda Hopper used a number of names, calling herself Elda Curry, Ella Furry and Elda Millar before marrying DeWolf Hopper on May 8, 1913, in New York. Her ambition was to be a theatre actress and she travelled to New York to further her dreams. She appeared in a number of plays, but usually before they hit Broadway or she joined the cast for the touring production. Her acting career was temporarily halted by the birth of her son, Bill, on January 26, 1915. (He went on to play Detective Paul Drake in the TV series Perry Mason). That year DeWolf tried his hand at films for the newly formed Triangle Company but his stage technique let him down somewhat. It was his wife’s turn and Hedda made her début in The Battle Of Hearts (1916) earning a $100 a week contract in the process. She appeared in many ‘vampy’ roles in films including Nearly Married (1917), The Beloved Traitor (1918), Isle Of Conquest (1919) and Women Men Marry (1922) before being downgraded to supporting parts. In 1922 she and her husband divorced and Hedda became a regular on the Hollywood social scene. Her brief appearances in innumerable films earned her the nickname ‘The Queen of Quickies’. In 1936 she began a radio show detailing snippets of Hollywood gossip. A recent trip to England had left her speaking with a pronounced English accent. The station was not impressed and she was fired. Tenacious to the end, Hedda persevered and landed another show. She remarked: “I wasn’t allowed to speak while my husband was alive, and since he’s gone, no one’s been able to shut me up.” In 1937 Esquire Feature Syndicate signed her up to write a newspaper gossip column. Her first attempts appeared in 13 newspapers. One of the first newspapers to carry her work, from February 14, 1938, was the Los Angeles Times owned by the powerful press baron William Randolph Hearst. For almost the next 30 years she wrote for dozens of newspapers, detailing the lives, affairs and careers of Hollywood stars. Her columns were so successful she was able to afford a splendid home, which she called “The House That Fear Built”. She became notorious for her rivalry with Louella O. Parsons, her feuds with, among others, the actress Constance Bennett and society queen Elsa Maxwell, and her enormous collection of hats. Hopper took a dislike to people for the pettiest reasons, but for the most part Hollywood was too scared to protest too vociferously. Occasionally, one star hit back. Hedda disliked Elizabeth Taylor for falling in love with Eddie Fisher and thus bringing about his divorce from Debbie Reynolds. When Michael Wilding married Taylor he came into the firing line as well. Hedda ordered Taylor and Wilding to visit her at home and tried to stop their wedding by saying he was too old for her (he was almost 20 years her senior) and that he was a homosexual. Taylor and Wilding repaired to the home of Wilding’s friend Stewart Granger and related what had happened. Granger was furious, rang Hopper and let her have it with both barrels. “I think you’re a monumental bitch. How bloody dare you accuse a friend of mine of being a queer? You raddled, dried up, frustrated old cunt.” Although Hedda became friends again with Taylor and Wilding, she used every opportunity to castigate Granger. Fellow British actor Ray Milland was also not a fan. He opined: “She was a venomous, vicious and pathological liar and quite stupid.” After the Forties she rarely appeared on screen and when she did she usually played herself, as she did in Breakfast In Hollywood (1946), Sunset Blvd. (1950), The Patsy (1964) and The Oscar (1966).
CAUSE: Aged 80, she died of double pneumonia in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles, California.
FURTHER READING: Hedda And Louella– George Eells (London: W.H. Allen, 1972).
Leslie Howard
(LESLIE HOWARD STAINER)
Born April 3, 1893
Died June 1, 1943
Quintessentially English. Born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants, he was educated at Dulwich College. He became a bank clerk until the outbreak of war. Serving in World War I he suffered from shell shock and was invalided home. He began acting as a form of therapy and made his film début in The Heroine Of Mons (1914). He moved to America and there his career really took off, reaching its apogee playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939) alongside Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. Actually, Howard rarely met Gable since their scenes did not coincide and each man was on set at different times. The (6)߰Howard’s other films included Secrets (1933) as John Carlton, Captured (1933) as Captain Fred Allison, Of Human Bondage (1934) as Philip Carey, British Agent (1934) as Stephen Locke, Sir Alexander Korda’s The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935) as Sir Percy Blakeney, Romeo in Romeo & Juliet (1936), Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938), Pimpernel Smith (1941) as Professor Horatio Smith and Spitfire inventor R.J. Mitchell in The First Of The Few (1942). Pipe-smoking Howard, a hypochondriac who coul
d be surly and self-obsessed, married Ruth Evelyn Martin in 1916. They had one son, actor Ronald (b. London, April 7, 1918, d. February 16, 1997) and one daughter, Leslie Ruth (b. October 1924). Both have written books about their father. Howard had a five-year long affair with Violette Cunnington (b. 1913, d. May 1943 of blood poisoning) whom he met on the set of Pygmalion.
CAUSE: At the outbreak of World War II he returned to the UK to do his bit. In May 1943 he set out on a propaganda mission to Spain and Portugal. He never made it back. His unarmed plane, a DC-3 Dakota on commercial flight 777A, was shot down by eight German Junkers. Mystery surrounds the trip. It was delayed supposedly because Howard had forgotten some silk stockings for one of his lady friends and finally took off at 7.35am. The flight should have taken seven hours and landed at Whitchurch, near Bristol, but disappeared at 10.54am when the Dutch pilot radioed that he was being attacked. No one on board stood a chance. The 13 passengers included a Winston Churchill lookalike, Alfred Chenhalls, who was Howard’s accountant, plus three men the Nazis knew were helping the British war effort. Over 50 years after the crash, a young RAF squadron leader tracked down the Luftwaffe pilots and their leader, Oberleutnant Herbert Hintze, claimed the plane was shot down by accident. Another theory holds that Howard was on a secret mission and that was why the plane was downed. The greatest, and saddest, irony of it was that the British knew that the Germans were aware of the mission. They could not intervene because that would have alerted the Nazis to the fact their code had been deciphered.
FURTHER READING: In Search Of My Father – Ronald Howard (London: William Kimber, 1981).
Trevor Howard
(TREVOR WALLACE HOWARD -SMITH)
Born September 29, 1913
Died January 7, 1988
Authoritarian figure. Born in Cliftonville and trained at RADA, Howard appeared on stage for a decade before making his film début. He went on to appear in over 70 films including romances, war films and spy movies. Robert Mitchum once opined, “You’ll never catch Trevor Howard acting,” but it wasn’t an insult. Howard was not a luvvie in any sense of the word. In fact, he regarded acting as a game, but one that he was rather good at. He first made his name in David Lean’s romantic weepie Brief Encounter (1945) as Alec Harvey, for which he was paid just £500. To add insult to injury, Howard was not invited to the press screening and the film’s writer, Noël Coward, ignored him at the première because he didn’t recognise him. Nonetheless, other members of the industry did recognise Howard and he starred in some riveting films. He was in The Passionate Friends (1949), The Third Man (1949) as Major Calloway, The Heart Of The Matter (1953), Sons And Lovers (1960) which earned him an Oscar nomination and was Captain Bligh to Marlon Brando’s bizarre Fletcher Christian in Mutiny On The Bounty (1962). A heavy drinker, he preferred the description ‘eccentric’ to ‘hell-raiser’. He was once arrested in Vienna for conducting the band in a restaurant while dressed in his army uniform from The Third Man. He married Helen Cherry in 1944. There were no children.