Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: Shortly before she was due to begin work on what would be her penultimate film, The Reluctant Debutante (1958) in which she played Sheila Broadbent, the Harrisons flew to Switzerland on holiday, their first together as man and wife, but Kay fell ill. After the film they moved to a rented home in Cheyne Walk, London. While he worked she became more ill. She was approached to appear in Once More With Feeling (1960) as Dolly Fabian and her doctors agreed it would be better for her to work. Filming began in Paris in April 1959 but Rex had refused to allow the Columbia Studio doctors to examine Kay lest they discover the seriousness of her condition. It was a risky business and he laid himself open to all sorts of financial penalties if Kay became too ill to work. That did happen and Rex claimed he had passed on a cold to his wife which had turned into bronchial pneumonia. She was taken to London by train and booked into the London Clinic but rallied enough to be discharged after four days and returned to the French capital. When the film was completed the Harrisons went on holiday to Portofino and then on to Switzerland. In August 1959 they returned to Portofino but her condition deteriorated and she was taken again by train to the London Clinic. She lapsed into a coma on September 6, 1959 as the hospital was issuing a bulletin saying she was “gravely ill”. She died without regaining consciousness at 12.30pm. Her last words were to her husband: “I love you with all my heart.” She left £2,313 16s 7d.

  Joseph P. Kennedy

  Born September 6, 1888

  Died November 18, 1969

  The Ambassador. Although best-known now for being the progenitor of the Kennedy political dynasty, Joseph Patrick Kennedy was one of the first to become involved in the movie industry and had a long-running affair with Gloria Swanson. Born at 151 Meridian Street, East Boston, Massachusetts, Kennedy’s father, Patrick John, known as PJ, served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Joe was educated at Harvard, graduating in 1912. One story from Harvard shows the man that Joe Kennedy would become. His father’s people bribed one of Joe’s college mates to allow Joe to win a coveted baseball blue. By the age of 25 Kennedy was Boston’s youngest bank president. On October 7, 1914 at Boston, he married Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald (b. 4 Garden Court Street, North End, Boston, July 21, 1890, d. Hyannis Port, January 20, 1995) and they started a family almost immediately. Eldest son Joseph Patrick, Jr was born on July 25, 1915 in Villa Napoli, 201 Atlantic Avenue, Hull, Massachusetts. Handsome, personable, intelligent, argumentative and with a hair-trigger temper, Joe who was educated at the London School of Economics and Harvard was destined by Joe, Sr to become the first Catholic American president. Those hopes and dreams died on August 12, 1944 when he was killed in action over Suffolk. The dream was transferred to the next son, John Fitzgerald (b. 83 Beals Street, Brookline, Massachusetts, May 29, 1917, k. Deeley Plaza, Dallas, Texas, 22 November 1963 at 12.30pm), who did become the American President on November 8, 1960 beating off Richard Nixon. Reports have long persisted that Joe Kennedy bought the presidency for his son. However, that story is outside the scope of this book. Joe’s other children were Rosemary (b. Brookline September 13, 1918, d. Fort Atkinson Memorial Health Hospital, Wisconsin, January 7, 2005) who was mentally deficient; Kathleen known as ‘Kick’ (b. Brookline February 20, 1920, k. Crevenne Mountains, Ardeche, France May 13, 1948, in an aeroplane crash); Eunice Mary (b. Brookline, July 10, 1921); Patricia (b. Brookline, May 6, 1924) who married the actor Peter Lawford; Robert Francis (b. Brookline, Massachusetts, November 20, 1925, k. Ambassador’s Hotel, Los Angeles, California, June 6, 1968, by assassination) who became Attorney-General under his brother and was, like his brother, Marilyn Monroe’s lover; Jean Ann (b. Boston, February 20, 1928) and Edward Moore (b. St Margaret’s Hospital, Dorchester, Brookline, Massachusetts, February 22, 1932). Joe made his not inconsiderable wealth from insider dealing and bootlegging when Prohibition was introduced in America. By the mid-Twenties his fortune was estimated at $2 million. On February 7, 1926, he bought the Film Booking Offices of America sight unseen from its English owners for $1 million. The company specialised in low-budget Westerns and melodramas. On November 11, 1927, he met Gloria Swanson for the first time in the Renaissance Room of the Savoy Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue and 59th Street. They began an affair that was to wreck her third marriage, to Henri, Marquis de la Falaise. Swanson had joined United Artists in a bid to manage her own affairs. However, the deal had been disastrous and she was virtually broke when she met Kennedy. In early January 1928 their affair was consummated at the Royal Poinciana Hotel. Swanson remembered, “He was like a roped horse, rough, arduous, racing to be free. After a hasty climax, he lay beside me stroking my hair. Apart from his guilty, passionate moanings, he had said nothing cogent.” In March 1928, Kennedy and Swanson met with the egotistical Erich von Stroheim and, two months later, contracts were signed to make Queen Kelly, an expensive epic that would showcase Swanson. Filming began at the FBO studios in Hollywood in November 1928. In 1929 Joe bought the 15-room, nine-bathroom house at Hyannis Port that would become the Kennedy compound. In spring of that year production on Queen Kelly shut down and Kennedy sacked von Stroheim. Kennedy had lost interest in the film but his passion for Swanson was as strong as ever. He hired Edmund Goulding to direct The Trespasser, Swanson’s first talkie. Their affair fizzled out in 1929 and Swanson was shocked to discover that a fur coat he had given her had actually been paid for out of her money. Kennedy was not finished with Hollywood stars. He had affairs with actresses Betty Compson, Nancy Carroll, Constance Bennett and Marlene Dietrich who supposedly also bedded Joe, Jr and Jack. On August 9, 1929, a teenager called Eunice Pringle alleged that she had been raped in a broom cupboard by Alexander Pantages, who owned the Hollywood Pantages cinema on Hollywood and Vine and sixty other picture palaces. His only rival was the Orpheum Circuit, later owned by RKO, an offspring of Joe Kennedy’s FBO. At his trial Pantages was defended by Jerry Giesler but despite his eloquence the jury found Pantages guilty and he was sentenced to fifty years in jail. In 1931 Giesler managed to get the appeal heard and the charges against Pantages were dismissed. On her deathbed Eunice Pringle confessed that the whole thing had been a set-up engineered by Joe Kennedy who wanted to own Pantages’ cinema circuit. On December 9, 1937 Kennedy was appointed as American Ambassador to the Court of St James’s. On February 23, 1938 he sailed for England. In March 1938, Kennedy arrived in London to take up the seals of office, a post he would hold until November 1940 when he resigned after giving an interview critical of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The rest of Kennedy’s life was devoted to ensuring that the name of Kennedy was a formidable one in American political life.

  CAUSE: On a Palm Beach golf course on December 19, 1961, Joe Kennedy collapsed and was taken home by his niece, Ann Gargan. Rose Kennedy insisted that her husband was fine and she went out to play her own game of golf. A few hours later, Joe Kennedy’s condition had worsened and he was taken to hospital where doctors found that he had suffered a massive stroke. He had a blood clot in a brain artery, was paralysed down his right side and unable to speak. Despite being incapacitated he lived for eight more years, outliving President John F. Kennedy and Senator Bobby Kennedy and through Senator Teddy Kennedy’s scandal at Chappaquiddick. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy died at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, at 11.05am, aged 81. He was buried in the Kennedy family plot in Brookline.

  FURTHER READING: Gloria And Joe– Axel Madsen (New York: Berkley Books, 1989).

  Richard Kiley

  Born March 31, 1922

  Died March 5, 1999

  Ubiquitous performer. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Richard Paul Kiley found success in films, television and on stage. Like many he began his career on radio making his film début in The Mob (1951). Among his films are The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Looking For Mr Goodbar (1977) as Theresa’s policeman father, Endless Love (1981), Howard The Duck (1986) and the voice of the tour guide in Jurassic Park (1993). In 1966 he won a Tony Award as Don Quixote in Man Of La Mancha. He also won three Emmys for his work on The Thorn Birds (
1983), A Year In The Life (1988) and Picket Fences (1994).

  CAUSE: He died of bone marrow disease in Warwick, New York, at the age of 76.

  Ward Kimball

  Born March 4, 1914

  Died July 8, 2002

  Disney’s right-hand man. Ward Walrath Kimball was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of a travelling salesman. After studying art at Santa Barbara, California, Kimball joined the Walt Disney Studio in 1934 aged 20. It was while working there that he met his wife Betty Lawyer, by whom he had a son (animator John) and two daughters. Kimball began as an apprentice animator and worked his way up the company becoming a director and producer on many Disney feature films and television shows. Disney referred to him as one of the ‘Nine Old Men’, meaning an experienced animator who stayed with the studio and whose opinions were respected. He worked on the Silly Symphonies series, Mickey Mouse shorts and many of the sequences in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney’s first full-length feature film. His crowning achievement came in 1940 when Disney called upon Kimball to help with a character in Pinocchio. Kimball created Jiminy Cricket and Disney was so impressed the film was rewritten to accommodate Jiminy Cricket as the film’s co-star. Kimball also worked on the five crows for Dumbo (1941), Panchito in The Three Caballeros (1945), the Peter and the Wolf segment of Make Mine Music (1946), the two mice and their arch-foe Lucifer the Cat, for Cinderella (1950), the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and the Cheshire Cat for Alice In Wonderland (1951). However, he was not responsible for the appearance of Captain Hook in Peter Pan (1953) despite the usual credits. In 1953 he made Toot, Whistle, Plunk And Boom, the first Cinemascope cartoon, for which Kimball received an Oscar. He moved away from animation to television in the Fifties and worked with the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun on Man In Space (1955), Man On The Moon (1955) and Mars And Beyond (1957). He and von Braun also worked on the Tomorrowland exhibition at California’s newly opened Disneyland. Kimball also conducted a Dixieland band at the park. In 1969 he created a 30-minute feature called It’s Tough To Be A Bird, which won him a second Academy Award. He retired from Disney on August 31, 1973, his contributions unrecognised by the public at large. Disney aggressively refused to allow his animators to take credit for their own work.

  CAUSE: Kimball died in Arcadia, California, aged 88 of natural causes.

  Klaus Kinski

  (NIKOLAUS GüNTHER NAKSZYNSKI)

  Born October 8, 1926

  Died November 23, 1991

  Eccentric thespian. Born in Sopot, in the free state of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), Kinski’s behaviour off screen was often as outrageous as that on. He worked as an undertaker’s assistant and delivered milk and newspapers to earn some money as a child. He also had an early interest in sex and the reciprocal object of his interest was his sister Inge. He was expelled from school aged 15 for playing truant and decorating his textbooks with drawings of genitalia. At 16 he was conscripted but soon deserted. Kinski ended up being shot four times by the Allies and was sent to a prisoner of war camp in Colchester. After the war he took an interest in acting and auditioned for the Berlin Schlosspark Theatre. It was then he carried on with his interest in very young girls, subsequently admitting to sex with numerous teenagers, some as young as 13. However, Kinski didn’t limit himself to young girls, and confessed to sex with fiftysomething virgin lesbians as well. Kinski became famous with the German New Wave. He worked often with Werner Herzog, even though he professed to hate him: “I absolutely despise this murderer Herzog … Big red ants should piss in his eyes, eat his balls, penetrate his arsehole, and eat his guts,” he once stated. Kinski appeared in around 150 films including Morituri (1948), Das Kalte Herz (1950), Decision Before Dawn (1951), Um Thron Und Liebe (1955), Kinder, Mütter Und Ein General (1955), Hanussen (1955), Geliebte Corinna (1956), A Time To Love And A Time To Die (1958) as a Gestapo lieutenant, Die Seltsame Gräfin (1961) as Stuart Bresset, Der Rote Rausch (1962), Die Tür Mit Den Sieben Schlössern (1962) as Pheeny, The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) as Kindler, Piccadilly Null Uhr Zwölf (1963) as Whitey, Der Zinker (1963) as Krishna, Der Schwarze Abt (1963) as Thomas, Scotland Yard Jagt Dr Mabuse (1963) as Joe Rank, Die Gruft Mit Dem Rätselschloß (1964) as George, Neues Vom Hexer (1965) as Edwards, Doctor Zhivago (1965) as Kostoyed, Das Geheimnis Der Gelben Mönche (1966) as Caporetti, Le Carnaval Des Barbouzes (1966) as Gomez, Psycho-Circus (1966) as Manfred, Our Man In Marrakesh (1966) as Jonquil, ¿Quien Sabe? (1967) as El Santo, Se Incontri Sartana Prega Per La Tua Morte (1968) as Morgan, Deadly Sanctuary (1968) as the Marquis De Sade, Il Dito Nella Piaga (1969) as Haskins, Nella Stretta Morsa Del Ragno (1970) as Edgar Allan Poe, El Conde Drácula (1970) as Renfield, Il Venditore Di Morte (1971) as Chester Conway, Lo Chiamavano King (1971) as Brian Foster, La Bestia Uccide A Sangue Freddo (1971) as Dr Bernhard Keller, Aguirre, Der Zorn Gottes (1972) as Don Lope de Aguirre, Il Ritorno Di Shanghai Joe (1974), Mivtza Yonatan (1977) as Boese, Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht (1979) as Count Dracula, Buddy Buddy (1981) as Dr Hugo Zuckerbrot, Android (1982) as Dr Daniel, Venom (1982) as Jaemel, The Secret Diary Of Sigmund Freud (1984) as Dr Max Bauer, The Little Drummer Girl (1984) as Kurtz, Code Name: Wild Geese (1984) as Charleton, Nosferatu A Venezia (1986) as Nosferatu, Cobra Verde (1988) as Francisco Manoel da Silva and Paganini (1989) as Niccolo Paganini. Kinski was once committed to a lunatic asylum for 90 days. His daughters, Nastassja and Pola, are both actresses.

  CAUSE: He was discovered dead aged 65 in Lagunitas, California, apparently from natural causes.

  FURTHER READING: All I Need Is Love: A Memoir – Klaus Kinski (New York: Random House, 1988).

  Hildegard Knef

  Born December 28, 1925

  Died February 1, 2002

  Teutonic scandalite. Born in Ulm, Germany, Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef grew up in Berlin and trained as a draughtswoman for trick photography at the UFA film studios, and at the film academy at Babelsberg. Following her father’s premature death, she was raised by her grandfather and mother. At the end of the Second World War her grandfather, who had lost everything in a bombing raid, committed suicide and Knef, who had briefly been in love with a fanatical Nazi officer, was imprisoned by the Russians as a spy. To break her spirit, she was kept in solitary confinement and woken up at odd hours. Once a corpse was put in her cell for “company”. She appeared in Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Morder Sind Unter Uns (1946), the first German film to deal with the horrors of the war. Five years later, in 1951, she appeared naked on screen for a few seconds in Die Sunderin, in which she played a prostitute. The film was banned in some towns and in restaurants people would get up in order not to sit next to her. Her career was unharmed by the scandal. Following the success of Entscheidung Im Morgengrauen (1951), she went to seek her fortune Stateside with her American husband Kurt. Marlene Dietrich became a mentor and her name was changed to Hildegard Neff. She starred with Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in The Snows Of Kilimanjaro (1952). Legend has it that she refused to accept a studio contract because Hollywood insisted she change her name legally and pretend that she was Austrian. 5́ 6˝ Knef appeared on Broadway in 1954 playing the lead in Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings, a musical version of Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka. Ella Fitzgerald called her “the world’s greatest singer without a voice”. The musical ran for 675 performances. Then she returned to Germany where some of the media accused her of selling out. A botched plastic surgery kept her in the news but her greatest days were behind her. She was married three times. Firstly to Kurt Hirsch in 1950. They divorced after four years. In 1961 she married the British actor and director David Cameron and had one daughter, Christina, the subject of a bitter custody battle. They divorced in 1975. Husband number three was Paul von Schell. “Success and failure are both greatly overrated,” she once observed, “but failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about.”

  CAUSE: The last years of her life were spent in a wheelchair thanks to emphysema. She lapsed into a coma for three weeks in 2001 after a flight not equipped with oxygen. She died a f
ew months later in Berlin from a lung infection. She was 75.

  John Kobal

  (IVAN KOBALY)

  Born May 30, 1940

  Died October 28, 1991

  Film archivist. Born in Linz, Austria to a Ruthenian father and an Austrian mother, he claimed that one of his earliest memories was creeping into a Rita Hayworth film being shown to the occupation forces in a hall next to his grandmother’s house in Salzburg. The family emigrated to Ottawa, Canada when he was ten. In Canada he became an inveterate cinemagoer and began to collect old film stills. He often skipped school to attend the cinema. His favourites were films pertaining to Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and his mistress Marie Walewska. On one rare visit to the classroom he embarrassed himself by insisting that Napoleon had an affair with Greta Garbo. Aged 18, he travelled to New York to become an actor but in 1960 moved to London where he lived for the rest of his life. Failing to land a place in a drama school, he instead trod the boards in provincial theatres for four years. As he travelled he scoured secondhand bookshops for pictures and cinema magazines. Wherever he lived, he carried the picture collection with him, always adding to it whenever the opportunity arose. Often that opportunity arose in the dustbins of film studios and 6́ 4˝ Kobal, an insomniac, spent many hours searching for hidden treasures. As news of his collection grew, many people began to borrow stills. Finally, he started to ask for a deposit just to make sure of their return. Gradually the Kobal Collection evolved as a commercial archive. The collection began in a room in his flat, then three rooms, then an office with a staff of 12 with five phones in Covent Garden. He also began writing books utilising his library but his work needed heavy editing. He wrote a biography of Rita Hayworth, Film-Star Portraits Of The Fifties: 163 Glamour Photos, Great Film Stills Of The German Silent Era and a collection of conversations with old movie stars, People Will Talk. At the time of his death he had written the first volume of a gigantic two-volume biography of Cecil B. DeMille, appropriately entitled Mammoth.