CAUSE: Ill with liver disease, she died at the University of California Medical Center, Los Angeles from heart failure. Her son was by her side when she died. She was 57.
Sam Spiegel
Born November 11, 1903
Died December 31, 1985
Epic producer. Born in Jaroslau, Austria, and educated at the University of Vienna where he earned a degree in economics, Spiegel made his first foray into Hollywood in 1927 when he translated foreign films. He returned to Europe where he became a director of French and German versions of Universal films before fleeing Hitler in 1933. He settled permanently in the States in 1935 where he worked under the pseudonym S.P. Eagle before reverting to his real name in 1954. His most successful films were The African Queen (1952), On The Waterfront (1954), for which he won a Best Film Oscar, The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957), which cost $2.5 million and in three years took $30 million at the box office and for which he won a Best Film Oscar, Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), which took four years to make and for which he won a Best Film Oscar, The Night Of The Generals (1967), Nicholas And Alexandra (1971) and The Last Tycoon (1976). At the 1963 Oscars he was given the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award.
CAUSE: Spiegel died of natural causes while on holiday in the Caribbean aged 82.
Lili St Cyr
(WILLIS MARIE VAN SHAAK)
Born June 3, 1918
Died January 29, 1999
Queen of burlesque. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she became a model while still a teenager. She became a dancer in the Florentine Gardens nightclub in Hollywood after accompanying her sister (who also became a stripper) to an audition. Her fellow hoofers included Yvonne De Carlo and Marie McDonald. She moved to a San Franciso club, where she earnt $27.50 a week; the nude dancers in the club pocketed around $500 a week. Becoming a stripper in 1940, she was fired from her first job for being so awful but the producer relented and sent her on an intensive training course. The 5˝ 9˝ 36-24-35 Lili began touring America with her act and, on occasion, would come on stage naked apart from a G-string and proceed to get dressed! She began appearing at El Rancho Vegas, where her act included taking a bath in a see-through tub. On October 18, 1951, she was arrested at Ciro’s nightclub in Los Angeles for “lewd and lascivious behaviour”. Lawyer Jerry Giesler defended Lili, who offered to take a bath in the courtroom to show how clean her act was. She was acquitted after an hour’s deliberation. Although she appeared in three films that showcased her act – Love Moods (1952), Strip-O-Rama (1953) and Bedroom Fantasy (1954), she made her film début in Carmenesque (1954), the 3-D story of the match girl but without any music. Her other films included The Miami Story (1954), Varietease (1954), Son Of Sinbad (1955) as Nerissa, Boudoir Secrets (1955), Josette Of New Orleans (1958), The Naked And The Dead (1958), I, Mobster (1959) and Runaway Girl (1966) a film she described as “a lousy movie”. She married six times. Her first husband was motorcyclist Cordy Milne. Number two was Richard Hubert, the head waiter at the Florentine Gardens nightclub. Then came ballet dancer Paul Valentine (1946–August 1949) and New York restaurateur Armando Orsini (1950–1953). Husband number five was actor Ted Jordan (1954–1958) and her final trip up the aisle was in 1959 to wed special effects wizard Joe Albert Zomar. They divorced in 1964. She never received nor asked for alimony from any of her husbands. On November 1, 1958, she attempted to kill herself in Las Vegas following her separation from Ted Jordan. It was one of several attempts she made, usually following a failed romance.
CAUSE: She died in Los Angeles, California, aged 80 from a heart attack.
Robert Stack
Born January 13, 1919
Died May 14, 2003
Square-jawed crime solver. Robert Langford Modini Stack was born at 4.40pm on a winter’s day in 1919 in Los Angeles, the son of James Langford Stack and his wife Elizabeth, an aspiring opera singer. Stack’s great-grandfather had arrived in what was then the village of Los Angeles in 1849, and set up the community’s first theatre. Both his grandparents had been Italian opera singers. Elizabeth Stack wanted to study opera so her son grew up in Paris and Rome. Learning to speak both French and Italian fluently, when, aged seven, the family returned to America, he was unable to speak English. As a teen, Stack showed considerable ability as a sportsman. He and his brother won the International Outboard Motor Championships in Venice, and held a title as speedboat racing champions in America for three years. When he was 16 Stack became a member of the All-American Skeet Rifle Team, setting two world records and becoming National Skeet Champion. In 1937 he briefly attended the University of Southern California (distinguishing himself on the polo team) before abandoning his formal education to study acting and singing. Stack attended the Henry Duffy School of Theater in California for six months, until he was offered his first film role. “My singing classes had been going badly,” he recalled, “and my tutor told me to go down to Universal and listen to Deanna Durbin. I did, and while I was standing off to one side of the set, Joe Pasternak came over and offered me a role in the film.” This was First Love (1939), a romantic musical starring Deanna Durbin. There was frenzied press interest at the time because Durbin, then aged 17, received her first screen kiss. As Stack was the one who delivered the kiss, he gained considerable publicity. Later in 1939 he joined the navy, serving as a gunnery instructor throughout the Second World War. In 1940 he signed a contract with MGM and continued to make films while serving. These included: The Mortal Storm (1940) as Otto von Rohn, Badlands Of Dakota (1941) as Jim Holliday, To Be Or Not To Be (1942) as Lieutenant Stanislav Sobinski and Eagle Squadron (1942) as Chuck Brewer. After the cessation of hostilities, (6)߰Stack remained at MGM and appeared in Fighter Squadron (1948) as Captain Stu Hamilton, and A Date With Judy (1948) as Stephen Andrews, which starred Wallace Beery and Elizabeth Taylor. Throughout the Fifties Stack appeared in numerous B films, including The Bullfighter And The Lady (1951) which was not a biopic of Ava Gardner but in which he starred as Johnny Regan. He was also in the world’s first 3-D movie Bwana Devil as Bob Hayward; War Paint as Lieutenant Billings and Conquest Of Cochise (1953) as Major Tom Burke. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance as the alcoholic playboy Kyle Hadley in Written On The Wind (1956) opposite Lauren Bacall and Rock Hudson. He did not win the Oscar, losing out to Anthony Quinn for Lust For Life. In 1959 Desi Arnaz approached Stack with the idea of making a television series about Eliot Ness, the Internal Revenue Service agent. Stack was originally not enthusiastic about the idea because he believed that television was the cinema’s poor relation. However, having read some of the scripts for The Untouchables he accepted the role of Ness. “I knew it would be a success,” he later recalled. “The scripts were grim and based on real events, the gangsters were tough and Ness was an ordinary man in a cheap suit who was impassioned by his need to stamp out crime.” Desilu Productions, Arnaz’s company, was different from other television organisations in that it spent money on scripts as well as on stars. A determined attempt was made not to glamorise the gangsters, and Stack, as the central grey presence of Ness, proved totally credible. “I felt I had to play him dull, almost a nonentity,” he remembered. “Because the thugs were so colourful, so flashy, we needed a balance.” The show débuted on ABC on October 15, 1959, and after the first season was rated 43 in the charts. Word of mouth spread and in season two it was the number eight rated show. The show ran for four years until September 10, 1963 but was criticised for its violence and historical inaccuracy. However, Stack’s performance won the approval of Ness’ widow, who endorsed the series and claimed that Stack captured her husband’s “total commitment and anger”. It did not impress the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover was infuriated that Ness was occasionally portrayed as solving crimes that the FBI had cleared up, such as the arrest of Ma Baker. Hoover also initiated an investigation of the show’s scriptwriters to discover whether any of them were ex-FBI agents. In documents made available under the Freedom of Information Act, federal agents were describ
ed as “pressuring” Arnaz to change the scripts to show the FBI solving the crimes. The show also came in for criticism from the Italian American Organisation who objected to the “continued portrayal of Italian-Americans as hoodlums and members of the Mafia”. (A similar criticism came from Arab groups in 2004 when they claimed that all the villains in the hit show 24 were Arabic.) When The Untouchables ended, Robert Stack returned to his film career. By this stage, however, the public so identified him with Eliot Ness that they found him unacceptable in non-police roles. He made two less than successful films – The Caretakers (1963) as Dr Donovan MacLeod and Die Hölle Von Macao (1967) as Cliff Wilder – before returning to television in The Name Of The Game. In this, Stack played Dan Farrell, a former FBI agent turned investigative journalist. Stack continued in the series for three years. He then made two more attempts at returning to the cinema, with roles in the French film Day Of The Delinquent (1970) and in the ill-fated melodrama Storia Du Ina Donna (1970) as David Frasier. Neither film proved popular. Stack accepted the role of Linc Evers in the unsuccessful police series Most Wanted, which was axed after only 20 episodes, running from October 16, 1976 until April 25, 1977. He took two years off before appearing in Steven Spielberg’s wartime farce 1941. The film was a box office flop, but gave Stack his first chance at playing a comedy role. He next appeared in the spoof disaster film Airplane! (1980) as Captain Rex Kramer, the humourless air traffic controller. Despite an excellent performance and a successful film, Stack was not offered any more comedy parts. Stack returned to playing policemen in the television series Strike Force (November 13, 1981–September 24, 1982) as Captain Frank Murphy. During the remainder of the decade, Stack accepted less and less work. He made two films – Uncommon Valour (1983) as MacGregor, and the forgettable comedy Big Trouble (1986), in which he starred as Winslow with his wife Rosemarie. He appeared as George Lancaster in the television mini-series Hollywood Wives in 1985, and made his theatrical début in a limited season of La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway. In 1989 Stack was approached about the possibility of recreating the role of Eliot Ness for television, but was doubtful about a second series. He had not rated Kevin Costner’s portrayal of Ness in the 1987 film version, claiming that “too much was factually wrong. Ness was no wimp; he was a tough street kid.” Stack was persuaded to make the TV film The Return Of The Untouchables (1991), which was set in the Forties. “Obviously we couldn’t do it in modern times because Ness would have been too old,” Stack recalled, “so we set it in the Forties, with Ness coming out of retirement to fight crime for the second time.” Later the same year Stack appeared as the host on the TV series Unsolved Mysteries. He married 5˝ 5˝ 36-23-36 Rosemarie Bowe (b. Butte, Montana, September 17, 1932) in 1956, and had a son, Charles, and a daughter, Elizabeth.
CAUSE: In November 2002, Robert Stack underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills, California, aged 84.
Barbara Stanwyck
(RUBY KATHERINE STEVENS)
Born July 16, 1907
Died January 20, 1990
‘Missy’. Born at 246 Clauson Street in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children, 5́ 3˝ Stanwyck was a tomboy. Her mother, the devoutly Catholic Catherine McGee, died in 1910, a week after falling from a tram. A few weeks later, Byron Stevens, her father, did a bunk. Ruby and her brother Byron (b. 1904, d. 1964 of a coronary thrombosis), were placed in foster homes but Ruby ran away every afternoon to the family home at 246 Clauson Street. The siblings lived in several different homes. In 1912 they learned their father had died at sea. In 1920 Ruby left school and began a series of menial jobs, spending her spare time perfecting her dancing. When she was 15 she made her professional début in the chorus of the Ziegfeld Follies. On October 20, 1926, she played the lead at the Hudson Theater in the Broadway play The Noose directed by Willard Mack. The play ran until June 1927 but it had a far-reaching effect on her life. Mack renamed her Barbara Stanwyck after a character called Jane Stanwyck in the play Barbara Frietchi. She always spelled her name BarBara. Her film début came in Broadway Nights (1927). In St Louis on August 26, 1928, she married red-haired, twice-divorced, egotistical vaudevillian Frank Fay (b. San Francisco, November 17, 1894, as Francis Anthony Donner, d. St John’s Hospital, Santa Monica, California, September 25, 1961) known as ‘Broadway’s Favourite Son’. The newlyweds travelled to Hollywood, where he signed for Warner Bros and later she took non-exclusive contracts with Warner Bros and Columbia. Stanwyck was a journeyman actress but she worked very hard and was known for her dedication and professionalism. In fact, she sacrificed everything to her career. In 1944 the Internal Revenue Service announced that she was the highest female wage earner in the USA – to the tune of $323,333. Her films included: the lead in Mexicali Rose (1929), Ladies Of Leisure (1930) as party girl Kay Arnold, Ten Cents A Dance (1931) as taxi dancer Barbara O’Neill (the film was directed by Lionel Barrymore who was suffering from arthritis throughout filming and took medicine that sent him to sleep during much of the day), Illicit (1931) as Anne Vincent and Night Nurse (1931) as Lora Hart. On July 17, 1931, the day after her 24th birthday, she called Harry Cohn and told him she was unable to work because of her husband’s professional commitments in New York but that if he wanted to raise her salary to $50,000 a film from the $30,000 she was receiving, she would reconsider her position. In September Columbia injuncted Stanwyck from working for any other studio. She returned to Tinseltown with her tail between her legs but Cohn was magnanimous and gave her the $50,000 she wanted. Her subsequent films included: Forbidden (1932) as murderess and adulteress Lulu Smith (during which she was injured falling from a horse), Shopworn (1932) as Kitty Lane, So Big (1932) as widowed teacher Selina Peake, The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (1933) as Megan Davis who falls for a Chinese warlord, Ladies They Talk About (1933) as gangster’s moll Nan Taylor, Baby Face (1933) as gold digger Lily Powers, The Secret Bride (1934) as governor’s daughter Ruth Vincent, The Woman In Red as wealthy Shelby Barrett, Red Salute (1935) as Drue Van Allen (her first comedy), the title role in Annie Oakley (1935), The Bride Walks Out as spendthrift Carolyn Martin, His Brother’s Wife (1936) as Rita Wilson in her first film opposite Robert Taylor, Banjo On My Knee (1936) as entertainer Pearl Holley, Internes Can’t Take Money (1937) as Janet Haley, This Is My Affair (1937) as undercover agent Lil Duryea, the title role in Stella Dallas (1937), for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, Always Goodbye (1938) as fashion designer Margot Weston, Union Pacific (1939) as postmistress Mollie Monahan, Golden Boy (1939) as Lorna Moon, Remember The Night (1940) as convicted thief Lea Leander, Meet John Doe (1941) as reporter Ann Mitchell, You Belong To Me (1941) as Dr Helen Hunt, Ball Of Fire (1941) as Sugarpuss O’Shea, for which she was nominated for a second Best Actress Oscar, The Great Man’s Lady (1942) as pioneer bride Hannah Sempler in one of Stanwyck’s favourite films, The Gay Sisters (1942) as Fiona Gaylord, Lady Of Burlesque (1943) as stripper Dixie Daisy, Flesh And Fantasy (1943) as fugitive Joan Stanley, Double Indemnity (1944) as femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson, for which she was nominated for her third Best Actress Oscar, Christmas In Connecticut (1945) as magazine journalist Elizabeth Lane, My Reputation (1946) as wartime widow Jessica Drummond, The Bride Wore Boots (1946) as horsewoman Sally Warren, The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers (1946) as wealthy, scheming Martha Ivers, California (1946) as Lily Bishop in her first colour film, The Two Mrs Carrolls (1947) as Sally Morton Carroll, Cry Wolf (1947) as Sandra Marshall, Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) as the bedridden, neurotic Leona Stevenson, for which she was nominated for her fourth and final Best Actress Oscar, The Lady Gambles (1949) as gambler Joan Boothe, East Side, West Side (1949) as society hostess Jessie Bourne, The File On Thelma Jordon (1949) as murder suspect Thelma Jordon, No Man Of Her Own (1949) as Helen Ferguson, The Furies (1950) as Vance Jeffords, To Please A Lady (1950) as journalist Regina Forbes, Clash By Night (1952) as Mae Doyle D’Amato, Jeopardy (1953) as Helen Stilwin, Titanic (1953) as Julia Sturges, Executive Suite (1954) as Julia O. Treadway, Wit
ness To Murder (1954) as Beverly Hills fashion designer Cheryl Draper, Cattle Queen Of Montana (1954) as Sierra Nevada Jones, Escape To Burma (1955) as plantation owner Gwen Moore, There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) as Norma Miller Vale, The Maverick Queen (1956) as bandit Kit Banion and Crime Of Passion (1957) as Kathy Doyle, by which time her film career was grinding inexorably to an end. She moved to the small screen with the anthology The Barbara Stanwyck Show (September 19, 1960–September 11, 1961) for which she won an Emmy at the 1960–1 Emmys Award ceremony held at the Moulin Rouge in Hollywood and the Ziegfeld Theater in New York on May 16, 1961. Stanwyck was so eager to get onto the stage to accept her prize that she ripped her evening dress. Everyone ummed and ahhed as an associate helped her on with her coat. New York host Joey Bishop saved the situation by quipping, “The guy who helped Barbara Stanwyck on with her coat was on camera longer than I was.” She was also a hit as Miss Barbara Stanwyck (billed as she had been in her films) in the ABC Western The Big Valley (September 15, 1965–May 19, 1969) in which she played Victoria Barkley. She appeared in a few TV movies in the Seventies but came back to the fore in the mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983) as Mary Carson, for which she won an Outstanding Lead Actress In A Limited Series Or Special Emmy on September 25, 1983, and camping it up as Constance Colby Patterson in The Colbys (1985–1986). On December 6, 1932, she and Fay adopted a son they named Anthony Dion Fay (b. February 5, 1932, as John Charles Greene). It was a strange occurrence, since neither had expressed the idea of wanting children and if social services had investigated their home life, they would almost certainly have been refused permission to adopt. The Fays spent little time with their son. She was at the studio during the day and the couple were out clubbing at night. They were also fighting physically on a regular basis. They had few friends and when someone was invited to their home they never saw Dion; he was locked in his room with his nanny, principally for his own safety. Once in a drunken rage, Fay threw him into the family swimming pool. Dion was estranged from his mother from 1952. In 1962 he was arrested for selling pornography. The Fays fought regularly in public. He would hit her when he thought she had drunk too much or for other reasons best known to himself. In early 1935 she told reporters: “I’ll never divorce Frank Fay! Never! You can gossip all you want, but if I can’t stay married, I’ll get out of pictures.” On December 31, 1935, she divorced Frank Fay. He sued for access to their son on December 27, 1937, claiming that Stanwyck prevented him from seeing the boy so he could become accustomed to the handsome matinée idol Robert Taylor, whom she had been discreetly seeing. Fay won his case in January 1938 and was allowed access. Barbara was not a doting mother. Young Dion was not the image of Hollywood perfection. He was tubby, freckled, bespectacled and very insular. Barbara dated George Brent and, for a time, was escorted by Byron Stevens, causing the press to comment on her new beau, until his identity became known. Three and a half years later, on May 14, 1939, she married Taylor. It did not get off to a happy start. Taylor’s mother went on hunger strike to protest at the match and the groom spent his wedding night with her, not his wife. The couple had little in common and on the rare occasions they had the same day off, Stanwyck wanted to spend it with her husband but he wasn’t interested. He was bored by her life and wanted to escape the city and go to the country where he could go shooting. A brief separation ensued in 1941. The final straw came in August 1950 when Taylor had flown to Rome for six months to film Quo Vadis (1951) and began an affair with bit player Lia De Leo. When Stanwyck asked what her husband was doing with De Leo, he screamed: “At least I can get it up with her.” Stanwyck flew (something she feared doing) back to the States and filed for divorce on December 16, 1950. They divorced in 1951. Both parties were subjected to rumours about their respective sexualities. Stanwyck’s supposed lovers included Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and her publicist Helen Ferguson (who charged her $400 a month for 27 years, never varying her price). On October 27, 1981, she was robbed when a masked intruder burst into her home, bashed her over the head with a gun, locked her in the closet (no comment) and stole $5,000 worth of jewellery. On March 29, 1982, she was awarded an honorary Oscar. In May 1984 cataracts were discovered in both eyes for which she underwent surgery in December of that year. On June 22, 1985, her Beverly Hills home, 1055 Loma Vista Drive, was gutted by fire.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 162
