Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  Irving Thalberg

  Born May 30, 1899

  Died September 14, 1936

  ‘The Boy Wonder’. Born in Brooklyn, the son of German Jews, 5́ 6˝ Irving Grant Thalberg was an exceptionally precocious movie executive but also a very sick one. He was born with cyanosis and a weak heart and doctors told his parents he was unlikely to live beyond 30. He packed a lot into his short life, becoming secretary to movie mogul Carl Laemmle at a salary of $25 a week. In 1920 he appointed him an executive at Universal City, raising his salary to $60 a week, then General Manager at $90 a week, a job suggested by Thalberg himself. His reputation was made by the way he handled temperamental director Erich von Stroheim, then filming Foolish Wives (1922). Laemmle and Thalberg had a father and son relationship but it ended on February 1923 when Laemmle refused to increase Thalberg’s salary from the $450 a week he was paid by the end of 1922. He joined the Mayer Company at $600 a week, raised by $50 when the company became MGM (in April 1924) although he was also guaranteed 4% of the annual profits. For the next nine years the studio flourished, boasting of “more stars than there are in the heavens” and put out films such as The Merry Widow (1925), Ben-Hur (1926), Flesh And The Devil (1927), Anna Christie (1930), Freaks (1932), The Barratts Of Wimpole Street (1934), Mutiny On The Bounty (1935), A Night At The Opera (1935), Romeo And Juliet (1936) and the only film in which he received an on-screen credit, The Good Earth (1937). He married Norma Shearer on September 29, 1927, at 9401 Sunset Boulevard. Despite his almost total absence of interest in sex, they had two children: Irving Jr (b. Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles, August 25, 1930, d. 1987 of cancer) and Katharine (b. Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles June 13, 1935). In December 1932 he suffered a heart attack and travelled to Europe to recuperate. When he returned he found that his power base had diminished, although he retained his title and salary. He was the subject of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. Although he is regarded as having been astute when it comes to movies, not all of his judgments were sound. He once opined: “Novelty is always welcome, but talking pictures are just a fad.”

  CAUSE: He died of pneumonia at 10.15am on September 14, 1936, aged 37, in Santa Monica. He was buried on September 17 and MGM closed for the day in his honour. His body was interred in the Sanctuary of Benediction at Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks, 1712 Glendale Avenue, Glendale, California 91209.

  John Thaw, CBE

  Born January 2, 1942

  Died February 21, 2002

  Telly’s decent tec. John Edward Thaw was born at 48 Stowell Street, West Gorton in Manchester, the son of John Edward Thaw (d. 1997), a miner who became a lorry driver, and Dorothy, known as ‘Dolly’, Ablott (b. 1921, d. St Anne’s Hospice, Hill Green, Stockport, February 2, 1974 of stomach cancer). Two years later, brother Raymond was born. After a man dropped dead in the street, Dolly insisted that they move and the family uprooted to 4 Daneholme Road, Burnage. Then when young Thaw was seven Dolly left home and he was not to see his mother again for 12 years. “My mother went off with another man. It wasn’t very nice,” he remembered. When he was 12 Thaw won a talent contest singing ‘I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts’. Thaw’s father became an ambulance driver in order to spend more time with his children, and Thaw was always grateful for the support he gave the two boys and his encouragement when Thaw said that he wanted to be an actor. “A lot of 15-year-old lads would have been laughed at if they had said they wanted to act. Dad just said, ‘If it doesn’t work, come back. We’re here.’” After school in which he obtained a single O level, in English, 5́ 9˝ Thaw became a devout socialist. Even when he became one of the highest paid actors in Britain, he never lost his principles. He always refused to do adverts. After school he briefly worked as a market porter and apprentice baker where he made doughnuts before moving to London hoping to become an actor. Although under age, he was accepted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art after auditioning by reading from Othello. He entered RADA on September 29, 1958 “dressed like a typical Teddy boy”. His fellow students included Tom Courtenay (with whom he and Nicol Williamson were later to share a London flat) and Sarah Miles. He left on July 23, 1960 and landed a bit part in the television cop series Z Cars and made his film début playing Bosworth in The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962). He was Alan Roper in Five To One (1964) before landing his first telly lead Sergeant John Mann in Redcap (October 17, 1964–June 25, 1966), about the military police. His other films included Dead Man’s Chest (1965) as David Jones, The Bofors Gun (1968) as Featherstone, Praise Marx And Pass The Ammunition (1970) as Dom, The Last Grenade (1970) as Terry Mitchell and Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972) as Shavers. It was his casting as Detective Inspector Jack Regan in the film Regan (1974) that made Thaw famous. The film was the forerunner of the television series (and two films) about the Flying Squad, The Sweeney (Sweeney was cockney rhyming slang: Sweeney Todd = Flying Squad). The show, created by Ian Kennedy-Martin, whose brother Troy had conceived Z Cars, began the day before Thaw’s 33rd birthday and ran for 54 episodes, ending on December 28, 1978. With the connivance of his sergeant George Carter (Dennis Waterman), the tough policeman used whatever means possible to bring crooks to justice, much to the despair of his boss Chief Inspector Frank Haskins (Garfield Morgan). When the series ended Thaw managed to avoid the typecasting problem that befalls so many actors associated with one role. In 1981 he went to Zambia to star in a film version of Doris Lessing’s novel The Grass Is Singing. Directed by Michael Raeburn, it co-starred Karen Black, who played a lonely woman who marries a stolid, inarticulate farmer (Thaw) but cannot adjust to life with him in the African woodland. Though he won praise for his performance, Thaw would later describe the film as one of his most miserable experiences. He described conditions in the Zambian bush as “pure hell,” and did not get along with Black, who had an affair with the director. Thaw joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for the 1983 season at Stratford, where he played Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Cardinal Wolsey in King Henry VIII. On April 19, 1985 until January 19, 1990, he played the grumpy Henry Willows whose peace and quiet is ruined by his son’s unexpected return to the family nest in the sitcom Home To Roost. From January 6, 1987 and The Dead Of Jericho, Thaw was also the equally miserable Inspector Morse in the detective series based on Colin Dexter’s books. The series ran for 14 years and one of the biggest mysteries amid all the murders was what was Morse’s first name. The revelation in Death Is Now My Neighbour (1997) that it was the unlikely Endeavour made national news. Morse was once described by Thaw as “the nearest character to myself I have ever played,” adding, “I’m very fond of the old bugger. He’s not a cliché copper any more than Regan was. The guy’s brain is working all the time. He has a mind like an intellectual grasshopper, which made him challenging to play.” However, Thaw insisted on some changes before he agreed to play the role. “I didn’t like the seedy side of Morse in the early books,” he said. “He was a bit of a dirty old man. I didn’t like that and I wouldn’t play it. I hated the fact that he was sometimes rude to women and I told the writers I wanted that changed. I wanted him to be more sensitive.” His portrayal of Morse won Thaw two BAFTA awards as Best Actor in a Television Series, in 1989 and 1992. Not everything Thaw touched was a success – the BBC series, A Year In Provence (1993), was a critical and ratings disaster, but it did him no harm. “I had a disaster with that, but we’re all allowed one. I was saddened, because we all worked hard and hoped it would be enjoyed, and I won’t accept that it was bad.” Thaw then played Kavanagh QC, a bluff northern barrister, based in London, whose cases tended to have an unexpected twist at the end. The series, for which he was able to command a fee of £250,000 an episode, ran until 1999 and the following year on November 15 Thaw played Morse for the last time, in an episode where the character dies of a heart attack. It was watched by 13 million people. His last major television project saw him portraying the boss of a double-glazing firm in The Glass. He was teamed with Sarah Lancashire but they failed to lift a trite series.
Thaw had cameos in Richard Attenborough’s films Cry Freedom (1987), for which he won a BAFTA nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his chilling portrayal of a member of the South African secret service and Chaplin (1992) in which he played Fred Karno. In 2001 Thaw was awarded a fellowship by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, having previously won two BAFTAs for his portrayal of Morse. John Thaw was twice married. In 1964 he married Sally Alexander, later a history professor at University College London, but they separated in 1966 and were divorced after four years. In Cirencester on Christmas Eve, 1973, he married the actress Sheila Hancock, a union which survived well-publicised difficulties including a six-month separation in 1988 after she had breast cancer diagnosed. He had daughters, Abigail (b. 1965) and Joanna (b. 1974), from each marriage and adopted Hancock’s daughter, Melanie known as ‘Elly Jane’ (b. 1964), from her first marriage.

  CAUSE: Thaw died of cancer of the oesophagus aged 60 in Luckington, Wiltshire. His agent had made the announcement that Thaw was ill a few weeks after the actor received the BAFTA fellowship. Thaw was buried on February 25, 2002 near his family home in Wiltshire. Only his wife, Sheila Hancock, and their daughters, Melanie, Abigail and Joanna, were at the private funeral.

  Ernest Thesiger, CBE

  Born January 15, 1879

  Died January 14, 1961

  Camp old queen. Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger was born in London, the third of the four children (three sons and one daughter) of the Honourable Sir Edward Peirson Thesiger, KCB (b. London, December 19, 1842, d. November 11, 1928) and Georgina Mary Stopford (d. 1906). He was the grandson of Frederick Thesiger, the 1st Baron Chelmsford, KC, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (b. 1 Fowkes Buildings, Tower Street, London, April 15, 1794, d. 7 Eaton Square, south-west London, October 5, 1878). Educated at a private school at Weybridge, Surrey, and then Marlborough, he persuaded his father to let him enrol as a painter at the Slade School of Art. He spent four years at Slade and, in 1909, made his stage début in Colonel Smith at the St James’s Theatre. Five years later he joined the army hoping to be sent to a Scottish regiment because he fancied himself in a kilt but joined the Queen Victoria Rifles. On New Year’s Day, 1915 he was wounded in action and invalided out four months later. Asked what it was like in the trenches, he put his hand to his forehead and declaimed, “My dear, the noise! And the people!” Back in Blighty he appeared from October 27, 1915 as Bertram Tully more than 1,300 times in Walter W. Ellis’ farce A Little Bit Of Fluff at the Criterion Theatre. In 1916 he made his first film playing a witch in The Real Thing At Last but he did not take film acting too seriously, commenting, “Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and the right kind of physique ought to make a film actor, if they are lucky enough to be told exactly what to do, and I cannot see that the actor for the screen deserves any more credit than a schoolboy who is good at dictation should have for writing admirable prose.” In 1918 he played William Pitt in Nelson and was Joseph Chamberlain in The Life Story Of David Lloyd George. He created the role of the Dauphin in St Joan (1924). He once moaned to Somerset Maugham that he never wrote any parts for him. “But I am always writing parts for you, Ernest,” protested Maugham. “The trouble is that somebody called Gladys Cooper will insist on playing them.” In 1930 he was summoned to Hollywood by his old friend James Whale and given the part of the skeletal Horace Femm in The Old Dark House (1932). He stole the show with his campness and sinister quips. At one point he tells his guests, “We make our own electric light here” – the lights go out – “but we’re not very good at it.” He returned to England to appear in The Ghoul (1933) with Boris Karloff. He was again summoned to Hollywood by Whale and cast as Dr Septimus Pretorius in Bride Of Frankenstein (1935). His performance was a tour de force “camp, shrill, frightening and oozing malevolent bitterness from every pore”. Like Rock Hudson, he would sit on the set doing embroidery when not needed. His other films included the movie version of A Little Bit Of Fluff (1919), The Bachelor’s Club (1921) as Israfel Mondego, The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936) as Mr Maydig, Henry V (1944) as Duke of Bern, Caesar And Cleopatra (1945) as Theodotus, The Winslow Boy (1948) as Ridgeley Pierce, The Robe (1953) as the Emperor Tiberius, Quentin Durward (1955) as Lord Crawford, Doctor At Large (1957), Sons And Lovers (1960) as Henry Hadlock and The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone (1961) as Stefano. On May 29, 1917 (the day President Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts) he married Janette Mary Fernie Ranken (d. 1970). There were no children, mainly because the marriage was never consummated. She was the sister of Willie Ranken, his lifelong friend who he had met at Slade and who shaved off all his hair when he heard of the wedding. It was a lavender marriage to hide his flamboyant homosexuality and her lesbianism. Mrs Thesiger was in love with the poet Margaret Jourdain. He once stopped a party dead by loudly announcing, “Anyone fancy a spot of buggery?” At dinner parties he would take off his shoes and socks to display his green painted toenails. He would lay lilies at the feet of a handsome Ritz doorman with whom he had fallen in love. In later life he became a friend of Queen Mary and modelled himself on her appearance. They would sit together doing embroidery and Thesiger published Adventures In Embroidery in 1941.

  CAUSE: Ernest Thesiger died in his sleep the day before his 82nd birthday at his home, 8 St George’s Court, Gloucester Road, south-west London where he had lived since 1939. From 1917 until 1939 he resided at 6 Montpelier Terrace, south-west London. He was buried in the Brompton Cemetery alongside his father, mother and sister. He left £46,525 1s.

  Gerald Thomas

  Born December 10, 1920

  Died November 9, 1993

  Comedic director. With his partner, Peter Rogers, Gerald Thomas was responsible for some of the best-loved films in English cinematic history – the Carry On series. Born at 139 Coltman Street, Hull, the younger son (his brother was the director Ralph) of Samuel Thomas, a petrol company inspector, and Freda Cohen, Gerald Thomas intended to join the medical profession but the war put paid to that and after being demobbed he landed a job as a film cutter at Denham Studios. That led to work as an assistant editor and then editor before teaming up with Rogers. Their first film, Circus Friends (1956), was not a great success but the second, Time Lock (1957), starring Robert Beatty, was. It is the low budget, high farce Carry On series for which Thomas is remembered. His films included: Chain Of Events (1957), Carry On Sergeant (1958), Carry On Nurse (1959), Please Turn Over (1959), Carry On Teacher (1959), Watch Your Stern (1960), No Kidding (1960), Carry On Constable (1960), Raising The Wind (1961), Carry On Regardless (1961), Twice Round The Daffodils (1962), Carry On Cruising (1962), Nurse On Wheels (1963), Carry On Cabby (1963), Carry On Spying (1964), Carry On Jack (1964), Carry On Cleo (1964), Carry On Cowboy (1965), The Big Job (1965), Carry On Screaming (1966), Carry On Follow That Camel (1967), Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head (1967), Carry On Up The Khyber (1968), Carry On Doctor (1968), Carry On Camping (1969), Carry On Again, Doctor (1969), Carry On Up The Jungle (1970), Carry On Loving (1970), Carry On Henry (1971), Carry On At Your Convenience (1971), Carry On Matron (1972), Carry On Abroad (1972), Bless This House (1972), Carry On Girls (1973), Carry On Dick (1974), Carry On Behind (1975), Carry On England (1976), Carry On Emmannuelle (1978), The Second Victory (1986) and Carry On Columbus (1992).

  CAUSE: He died, aged 72, of coronary thrombosis at his home, 16 Burnham Avenue in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. He left £280,091.

  Olive Thomas

  (OLIVERETTA ELAINE DUFFY)

  Born October 29, 1884

  Died September 10, 1920

  ‘The world’s most beautiful girl’. The name of Olive Thomas has been enshrined in Hollywood myth because of the manner of her death (Hollywood’s first scandal) and because of her supposed youthfulness. In fact she was born, 14 years earlier than is usually reported, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and married Bernard Krug Thomas while still in her teens. She ran away to escape the poverty and her husband landing in New York where she found herself a job working in a shop in Harlem. She entered a bea
uty contest run by a newspaper and, to her surprise, won. That led to a career as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies and as a nude model for Peruvian artist Alberto Vargas. Films were next and she appeared in Beatrice Fairfax (1916) as Rita Malone after being signed by Triangle Pictures. That year, on October 20, she married Mary Pickford’s brother, Jack, but the marriage was punctuated by fighting. She went on to appear in A Girl Like That (1917) as Fannie Brooks, Madcap Madge (1917) as Betty, Broadway Arizona (1917) as Fritzi Carlyle, Indiscreet Corinne (1917) as Corinne Chilvers, Betty Takes A Hand (1918) as Betty Marshll, Limousine Life as Minnie Wills, Heiress For A Day (1918) as Helen Thurston, Toton as Toton/Yvonne, Upstairs And Down (1919) as Prudence, Love’s Prisoner (1919) as Nancy, Prudence On Broadway (1919) as Prudence, Out Yonder (1919) as Flotsam, Footlights And Shadows (1920) as Gloria Dawn, Darling Mine (1920) as Kitty McCarthy and Everybody’s Sweetheart (1920) as Mary.

  CAUSE: In a bid to save their marriage the Pickfords travelled to France for a second honeymoon. Versions of Olive’s death are varied. According to one on September 5, 1920 (a year to the day before the Fatty Arbuckle affair), she was discovered nude in her room at the Hotel Crillon on the Place de la Concorde, Paris, having taken an overdose of mercury bichloride tablets washed down with booze. She was taken to the American Hospital in Neuilly where she died, aged 35. Another has her in the Ritz Hotel on September 6, after a night of clubbing in Montmartre and screaming in the bathroom, whereupon her husband rushed in and caught her before she hit the ground. She lingered for four days before succumbing. The most likely version is that she committed suicide after learning that Pickford had given her syphilis. She left $36,875.