Peggy Mount, OBE
Born May 2, 1916
Died November 13, 2001
Battleaxe. Peggy Mount’s foghorn voice made her instantly recognisable. Producers used it to good effect – they even starred her in a sitcom called George And The Dragon. Margaret Rose Mount was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex and educated at Leigh North Street School, Southend. Her grandfather had started the first minstrel show on the end of Yarmouth pier. Her father died when she was nine. Years later she described her mother as “not a nice woman. She never put her arms round me or gave me a kiss. She was always telling me that I was overweight and ugly. If you’re told that often enough, you become ugly, and no matter what other people say you believe it.” She severed connections with her family and, though she had a sister, they did not speak for more than 50 years. Determined to become an actress, she took lessons under Phyllis Reader at weekends. In the Forties and Fifties she was a stage regular touring the country going wherever there was work. She made her film début in The Embezzler (1954) playing Mrs Larkin. Sailor Beware! (1956) in which she played Emma Hornett launched Peggy Mount’s career as Britain’s favourite dragon. She was Ada in the television series The Larkins (from September 19, 1958) with David Kossoff portraying her mild husband. The two played a warring couple of country publicans, and a similar theme was developed in a later series, George And The Dragon (November 19, 1966–October 31, 1968) which saw her teamed with Sid James. She was in films such as Ladies Who Do (1963), One Way Pendulum (1964), Hotel Paradiso (1966) and was a formidable Mrs Bumble, the beadle’s wife, in Lionel Bart’s joyous Oliver! (1968) opposite Harry Secombe. Rarely off the television screen she worked twice with her friend Pat Coombs, firstly in Lollipop Loves Mr Mole (October 25–November 29, 1971) and later in the old people’s home comedy You’re Only Young Twice (September 6, 1977–August 11, 1981). “I’ve never married,” Peggy Mount said, “but I worked with a lot of very eligible men and I’ve had my chances.” In later years, she revealed that in the early Seventies she had unofficially “adopted” a teenage boy, whose own mother had died and whom she regarded as her son. Throughout her life, Peggy Mount suffered from detached retinas, causing her to have no vision in the centre of her eyes. In 1998, she lost her sight completely while on stage in Uncle Vanya at the Chichester Festival Theatre. She said, “The audience had no idea. But soon the word got out and I lost my nerve. Not working is my greatest regret. It was always my wish to die working.”
CAUSE: Peggy Mount died aged 85 in Northwood, London, following a stroke.
Arthur Mullard
(ARTHUR MULLORD)
Born September 19, 1910
Died December 11, 1995
Cockney heavy. For generations Arthur Mullard was the typical television and movie cockney. His battered face (the result of an early career as a boxer), gruff voice and performances in shows such as The Arthur Askey Show, Romany Jones, On The Rocks, Hancock’s Half Hour, Celebrity Squares, Bootsie & Snudge, Vacant Lot and Yus My Dear endeared him to millions. Born in Peabody Buildings, Essex Road, Islington, London, N 1, the son of a labourer, Mullard was a typical Englishman with an attitude that saw him rarely travel further than Southend except when he was working. He lived at 2 Manning House, Fielding Crescent, London, N5, a council maisonette, despite appearing in over 100 films, including Oliver Twist (1948), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Pickwick Papers (1952), The Belles Of St Trinian’s (1954), The Ladykillers (1955), The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962), The Wrong Arm Of The Law (1962), Ladies Who Do (1963), Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966), The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966), Casino Royale (1967), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Lock Up Your Daughters! (1969) and On The Buses (1971). Following his retirement he spent most of his time in local pubs boozing, which he said was his main pleasure in life. Arthur Mullard left school at 14 and despite the recommendation of his teachers (“This boy is a born actor”) became a butcher’s boy. Joining the army before the legal age of 18 he boxed regularly in the Royal Army Medical Corps, becoming champion and earning a gold medal and a flat nose for his trouble. After three years he left the army and returned to Civvy Street and unemployment. That was when Arthur returned to boxing. For a time he worked as a ‘totter’ (rag and bone man) with his uncle and also tried his hand and other bits at life modelling for art students. In 1940 he was called up and joined the Royal Artillery Light Anti-Aircraft training camp at Aberystwyth, where he was quickly promoted to sergeant. Following his demobilisation Mullard went back to totting before deciding to take his teachers’ advice and have at a go at “the acting lark”. One of his first jobs was appearing as a heavy in the Mae West play Diamond Lil at the Prince of Wales Theatre. It would be the start of a highly successful career in show business. TV Times described Arthur as “quite simply the best heavy the British cinema and television have ever produced.” However, five months after his death, his daughter Barbara spoke at length about how her father wasn’t the lovable cockney with a heart of gold that the public took him for, but a child molester whose behaviour forced his wife to commit suicide. Over the years many offspring of stars have written memoirs that reveal their parents had more in common with Cruella de Ville than the loving family-oriented image they presented to the press. According to Barbara, who admits she has had mental breakdowns and received psychiatric help, “The real [Arthur Mullard] was a domineering pervert” … “I loved going on long walks with him across Hampstead Heath. It was only after my 13th birthday that things began to change … My mum Flo had gone into hospital with polio. He needed someone to take her place. First I became his domestic slave, then I became his sex slave. According to him, satisfying his carnal needs was part of my womanly duties.” Barbara recalled the first time Mullard allegedly abused her. They were in the kitchen and he reportedly put his penis on the table. In her naïveté Barbara thought it was “a long-stemmed mushroom”. She reported that her father told her, “You’re the fruit that I’ve grown. I’m entitled to have the first taste. I’m your father. I have to instruct you about life. This is my job.” “That’s how he rationalised what he was doing,” she commented. “He was doing his duty as a good father […] I didn’t think, ‘I’m being sexually abused, this shouldn’t be happening.’ I just thought that if your father does something, you accept it and that it is a new experience you are having.” Barbara said whenever she washed she would place a lump of wood against the door to wedge it shut. “As I got older he thought having his way with me was part of his conjugal rights. I ceased to be his daughter … I was his partner and I had to provide sex for him. Afterwards, he’d wash himself and say, ‘Better not let your mother know … she’ll go potty if she finds out, she’ll have a right go at you.’” Again according to their daughter, Mullard beat his wife Flo, regularly punching out her teeth and verbally abusing her. Flo suffered from mental problems brought on, her daughter believes, by Mullard’s cruelty and was often institutionalised. Mullard kept Barbara off school to minister to all his needs. When she was 18 Barbara suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1961 Flo Mullard committed suicide aged 49 with a massive drugs overdose. In his autobiography, Mullard recalled his wife’s death and said her suicide did not sink in for two days. “Then I went round to the pub, got pissed and cried my eyes out. It was a tragedy that took me a long time to get over because I was shattered. If she had died in hospital, the shock would have not been so great, but a suicide leaves a feeling that something should have been done to prevent it … Memories came flooding back of the good times and bad times we shared; things she said and did which made no sense at the time were now crystal clear. She had no fear of death. She was a good mother.” Not surprisingly, Barbara blamed her father for the death of her mother. “The quality of my mother’s life was zero. On top of everything else she knew that her husband was having sex with her daughter. I knew she knew. One day she did actually come in when something was going on. But she blamed me. She attacked me as if I’d seduced her husband … She sho
uld have saved me from him but she attacked me. Mum must have known I was being abused, but she was impotent to do anything about it. Suicide was her way of dealing with the problem.” Barbara said that Flo had left a note blaming her suicide on what Arthur was doing to her, but claimed he had ripped up the note in front of her. Barbara quickly left home and married but her marriage failed due, she believes, to her father’s abuse. She had one son, David. Her second marriage produced three children before her husband died in 1990. Barbara claimed that even when married her father insisted on a “little cuddle” and that the only time that he made no advances was when she was pregnant. Towards the end of her life when Arthur Mullard was ill his daughter nursed her father at her Essex home. When he died he left her just £5,000. The remainder of his estate, estimated at £245,000, went to the National Children’s Home. How many of the allegations about Arthur Mullard et al are true? The only people who can refute the charges are dead and obviously in no position to answer back. It is interesting that Mullard’s younger son, comedian Johnny, said that Arthur had been “a very good father to me and brought me up very well. He taught me about art and poetry and literature. [Arthur admits in his autobiography that he had never read a book from cover to cover.] Arthur was a very clever man. He played the fool, but he went much deeper than the dumb image on television. He was always giving me lots of money. He was very generous to my wife and our children. I certainly was never abused by my father, either mentally or physically.” Joan Crawford adopted four children. In her will she wrote, “It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons that are well known to them.” Arthur Mullard did the same to his kids. Could either of them have known how bitter their children’s revenge would be? CAUSE: He died aged 85 in London after a long illness.
FURTHER READING: Oh, Yus, It’s Arthur Mullard – Arthur Mullard (Everest Books, 1977).
Richard Mulligan
Born November 13, 1932
Died September 26, 2000
Hang-dog actor. Born in New York, New York, Mulligan’s face was his fortune and caused perhaps his acting skills to be overlooked. Originally intending to be a playwright, Mulligan found fame on the stage in local theatre rather than behind a typewriter. He was given a big break with his own television show The Hero (1966) in which he played Sam Garret, a TV cowboy star. The show flopped. His films included: Love With The Proper Stranger (1963) as Louie, a bellboy in 40 Pounds Of Trouble (1963), One Potato, Two Potato (1964) as Joe Cullen, The Group (1966) as Dick Brown, The Undefeated (1969) as Dan Morse, Little Big Man (1970) as General George Armstrong Custer, Irish Whiskey Rebellion (1972), From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler (1973) as Mr Kincaid, Visit To A Chief’s Son (1974) as Robert, The Big Bus (1976) as Claude Crane, Scavenger Hunt (1979) as Marvin Dummitz, S.O.B. (1981) as Felix Farmer, Trail Of The Pink Panther (1982) as Clouseau, Sr., Meatballs Part II (1984) as Coach Giddy, Teachers (1984) as Herbert Gower, Micki + Maude (1984) as Leo Brody, The Heavenly Kid (1985) as Rafferty, Doin’ Time (1985) as Mongo Mitchell, A Fine Mess (1986) as Wayne ‘Turnip’ Parragella and provided the voice of Einstein in Oliver & Company (1988). On the small screen he played Burt Campbell in Soap from September 13, 1977 until the show’s demise on April 20, 1981. He returned to play Reggie Potter in Reggie (August 2– September 1, 1983), the American version of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin but American audiences did not take to the show and it was cancelled after five episodes. More successful was his sitcom Empty Nest which ran from October 8, 1988 until July 8, 1995. Mulligan played Dr Harry Weston, a paediatrician whose grown-up daughters returned to the family home. His daughters were played by Dinah Manoff (who was Elaine Lefkowitz on Soap) and the lesbian Kristy McNichol who had an affair with Ina Liberace, the pianist’s niece.
CAUSE: Mulligan died aged 67 in Los Angeles, California, from cancer.
Paul Muni
(FRIEDRICH MUNI MEYER WEISENFREUND)
Born September 22, 1895
Died August 25, 1967
Perfectionist. Born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary, the son of an acting family, Muni arrived in the land of opportunity in 1902 and became a staple of Yiddish theatre. In 1926 he made his Broadway début and three years later was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film The Valiant. It was Scarface (1932) that made Muni a star and I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932) that garnered his second Oscar nomination. His reward for years of sterling cinematic excellence came when he won an Oscar for The Story Of Louis Pasteur (1936). In 1955 he won a Tony for his Clarence Darrow-inspired role in the Broadway smash Inherit The Wind (Spencer Tracy took the part when the film version was made.) His fifth and final Oscar nomination came in 1959 with The Last Angry Man. Bette Davis recalled: “Paul Muni was a fascinating, exciting, attractive man – Jesus, was he attractive! – and it was sad to see him slowly disappear behind his elaborate make-up, his putty noses, his false lips, his beards. One of the few funny things Jack Warner ever said was, ‘Why are we paying him so much money when we can’t find him?’”
CAUSE: He died in Montecito, California, from heart problems, aged 71.
Janet Munro
Born September 28, 1934
Died December 6, 1972
Born in Blackpool, Lancashire, she looked set for stardom but her career was beset by her tendency to tipple. Her films included Small Hotel (1957) as Effie, The Young And The Guilty as Sue, Tommy The Toreador as Amanda, Third Man On The Mountain (1959) as Lizbeth Hempel, Darby O’Gill And The Little People as Katie, Swiss Family Robinson as Roberta, The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961) as Jeannie, Life For Ruth (1962) as Pat Harris, Bitter Harvest (1963) as Jennie Jones and Sebastian (1968) as Carol Fancy. She was married to actors Tony Wright (1956–1961) and Ian Hendry (1963–1971).
CAUSE: She choked to death while drinking a cup of tea in London, aged 38.
Ona Munson
(OWENA WOLCOTT)
Born June 16, 1903
Died February 11, 1955
Unfulfilled talent. Born in Portland, Oregon, 5́ 2˝ Munson began her career in vaudeville before moving to Broadway where she introduced the song ‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee’ in the musical Hold Everything. Her movie career was limited and she reached her high point playing Rhett Butler’s mistress Belle Watling, the whorehouse madam, in Gone With The Wind (1939). Thereafter her career began to go downhill and she became depressed and began comfort eating. In the Forties she became the first female producer at CBS but underwent a major operation in 1952. She was married three times: to actor Edward Buzzell (1926–1930), Stewart McDonald (1941–1947) and designer Eugene Berman (1950–1955), who discovered her corpse. She also took several lovers including Ernst Lubitsch and writer Mercedes de Acosta who also bedded Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.
CAUSE: She died by her own hand in New York with an overdose of sleeping pills. She was 51. Her suicide note read: “This is the only way I know to be free again … Please don’t follow me.” She was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery & Mausoleum, Secor Road, Hartsdale, New York 10530.
Audie Murphy
Born June 20, 1924
Died May 28, 1971
Real-life hero. Many actors appear heroic by their cinematic deeds. Boles Farm Kingston, Texas-born Audie Leon Murphy was a true hero. He lied about his age to join the army, was wounded three times and credited with killing 240 Germans. He won 27 medals before he turned 21, including three from the French and one from the Belgians. Still a young man when the war ended, he turned to Hollywood and became a highly successful cowboy star. He arrived in Hollywood still wearing his uniform and carrying his demob suit. He made his film début in Beyond Glory (1948) as Thomas and took his first lead the following year in Bad Boy (1949) as Danny Lester. After his affair with Jean Peters ended, on February 8, 1949, he married actress Wanda Hendrix (b. Jacksonville, Florida, November 3, 1928, d. Burbank, California, February 1, 1981, of pneumonia) who divorced him in Los Angeles on April 14, 1950, alleging mental c
ruelty. As a result of post-traumatic stress disorder Murphy suffered nightmares and slept with a loaded gun under his pillow; on one occasion during an argument he put the barrel of the gun in his wife’s mouth. In 1950 he signed to Universal-International Pictures at a salary of $100,000 a year. His films included: The Kid From Texas (1950) as Billy the Kid, Kansas Raiders (1950) as Jesse James, The Red Badge Of Courage (1951) as Henry Fleming, The Cimarron Kid (1951) as Bill Doolin, The Duel At Silver Creek (1952) as Luke Cromwell, The Silver Kid, Tumbleweed (1953) as Jim Harvey, Gunsmoke (1953) as Reb Kittridge, Column South (1953) as Lieutenant Jed Sayre, Ride Clear Of Diablo (1954) as Clay O’Mara, Drums Across The River (1954) as Gary Brannon, Destry (1954) as Tom Destry, To Hell And Back (1955) his biopic, Joe Butterfly (1957) as Private John Woodley, Ride A Crooked Trail (1958) as Joe Maybe, No Name On The Bullet (1959) as John Gant, Cast A Long Shadow (1959) as Matt Brown, Posse From Hell (1961) as Banner Cole, Battle At Bloody Beach (1961) as Craig Benson, Six Black Horses (1962) as Ben Lane, Apache Rifles (1964) as Jeff Stanton, Gunfight At Comanche Creek (1964) as Bob Gifford, Bullet For A Badman (1964) as Logan Keliher and A Time for Dying (1971) as Jesse James. On April 23, 1951, in Highland Park Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas, he married Pamela Archer (b. 1922) by whom he had two sons: Terry Michael (b. 1952) and James Shannon (b. 1954). They separated in 1965 but never divorced. As the fashion for cowboy films decreased Murphy found himself looking for work. A television series, Whispering Smith, was not a success. He suffered from drink and drug problems and was often violent but the police always dropped charges against him. Murphy also had a serious gambling problem and to raise money took a job as a front man with a company that made prefabs. He owed money to the IRS. He once admitted: “I am working with a handicap. I have no talent.”
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 130
