The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols

by Parish, James Robert

  Buck Jones

  [Charles Frederick Gebhardt]

  December 4, 1889–November 30, 1942

  His tragic exit from life read like a Hollywood screenplay. Buck Jones, veteran cowboy star, perished in Boston’s Cocoanut Grove Club fire of 1942, which killed 491 people. He had gone back into the conflagration three times to save trapped victims before he himself succumbed.

  Charles Gebhardt was born in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1889 and was educated in Indianapolis public schools. His first gig after schooling was as a cowhand in Montana. Always seeking new adventures, he joined the U.S. Cavalry and served in the Philippines. Thereafter, he was hired by the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and made his debut film with the outfit in 1913. Two years later, he married show rider Odelle Osborne—in the center ring during a circus performance. They would have a daughter, Maxine. During World War I, Gebhardt served with the U.S. Army’s First Air Squadron in France.

  After the Armistice, Charles remained in Europe performing as a trick rider with various traveling shows. One of his performances brought him to the attention of movie mogul William Fox, who signed Charles to appear in Hollywood films. The new recruit—now known as Buck Jones—became the backup to the studio’s top cowboy star, Tom Mix, for whom he once had doubled. Rivalry between Jones and Mix led to a longtime feud. In his Fox entries, Buck sometimes also appeared in non-Westerns, usually as a good-natured bumpkin.

  When his Fox contract expired in 1928, Buck produced his own feature, The Big Hop, which flopped, as did a personal appearance tour at about the same time. He made no movies in 1929—the year talkies blossomed in Hollywood. By 1930, Jones was working at Columbia Pictures at a reduced salary. Surprising everyone, his new batch of Westerns proved a hit, and by 1934, he was again a major star. He moved over to Universal that year, where he produced and starred in cowboy features as well as serials. He returned to Columbia in late 1937.

  That same year Buck moved into his new Spanish-style estate at Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley. He had spent $110,000 to build the elaborate house with its accompanying stables and corral. At the time, the actor was driving a $21,000 Duesenberg roadster, complete with gold-plated door handles and dashboard.

  By the end of the 1930s, Buck was freelancing again. He played a boxer in Paramount’s quickie Unmarried (1939) and was a dishonest sheriff in Republic’s Wagons Westward (1940). By now, Jones and Tom Mix had buried their professional feud. In fact, Mix was a guest at Jones’s home a day before he was killed in an auto crash on October 12, 1940.

  Peggy Campbell restrains a very determined Buck Jones in When A Man Sees Red (1934).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  In 1941, veteran producer Scott Dunlap teamed Buck with Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton for the Rough Riders cowboy series at Monogram Pictures. When McCoy went on active duty in World War II, Jones and Hatton were teamed with Rex Bell for Dawn on the Great Divide (1942). Buck was proud of the fact that he remained “an old-time cowboy, the sort the kids used to want to grow up to be like.” (He disliked the new breed of movie singing cowboys.)

  Having completed his Rough Rider pictures, Buck embarked on a World War II-bond selling trip to promote navy recruitment. His stopover in Boston was the end of his 10-city tour. On the night of November 28, 1942, he was the guest of honor at a testimonial dinner given by area theater owners at the Cocoanut Grove Club. A fire broke out and due to inflammable decorations, overcrowding, jammed revolving doors at the front exit, and general panic, the scene became a horrible disaster. Jones proved himself a hero with his several return trips into the fire, rescuing several panicked patrons. On his third rush inside, he became trapped. He was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where the doctors concluded that he could not survive because of severe third- and second-degree burns on his face and neck, as well as the medical repercussions from burned lungs and smoke inhalation. Two days later, Buck passed away. At the time of his death, his wife was en route to his bedside.

  Buck Jones died like the cowboy hero he played on-screen: quietly and bravely.

  Grace Kelly

  November 12, 1929–September 14, 1982

  The world still adores fairy-tale stories of a beautiful commoner (even a wealthy one) who weds a sophisticated prince and lives happily ever after. Princess Grace of Monaco—better known as film star Grace Kelly—did marry the prince, but she later made a sudden, tragic exit from her lofty lifestyle as a member of European royalty. Only later on would the world learn through assorted film and book biographies, supermarket tabloids, et cetera, not only that Grace’s regal existence was imperfect, but also that her Hollywood years were anything but mundane. Film director Alfred Hitchcock once described Kelly, his favorite cinema leading lady, as a snow-capped volcano—full of “fire under the ice.”

  Grace Kelly, the coolest of the cool blonds of 1950s Hollywood.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Grace was the third of four children of self-made, wealthy construction contractor John Brendan Kelly (a past Olympic champ) and his wife, Margaret, a former model. Grace’s relatives included the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright George Kelly and Walter C. Kelly, a famous vaudevillian. As a child, Grace was rather shy and was forced to compete with her siblings, Margaret, John Jr., and Lizanne, for their dad’s attention. Seemingly, nothing Grace could do then (or even later in her event-crammed life) ever really impressed him. As for Grace’s mother, Mrs. Kelly was the daughter of German immigrants and was very disciplined and strong-willed. She treated her children according to strict Teutonic guidelines.

  Grace went to a nearby convent school run by the Sisters of Assumption until age 14 and then moved on to Stevens Academy in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. One of her instructors would remember: “She really wasn’t interested in scholastic achievement—she gave priority to drama and boys.”

  Instead of attending college, the self-willed Grace, who had often lived in her own dream world as a child, chose a trip to Europe and then enrollment at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Her judgmental parents agreed to pay only for one year’s tuition. To cover her tuition for the next year, she became a fashion model, sometimes being selected as a cover girl. She also had an affair with a 27-year-old Academy instructor. Her parents disapproved of the relationship more because the man was Jewish than because he was married (although separated from his wife).

  With her patrician good looks and her relatives’ show-business connections, Grace had an edge over her peers. She did summer stock at Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania, made her Broadway debut as Raymond Massey’s daughter in The Father (1949), and became an active player in the blossoming television industry then based in New York City.

  Director Henry Hathaway chose Grace to join the ensemble cast of Fourteen Hours (1951), mostly shot in Manhattan. The studio (Twentieth Century-Fox) was pleased with her work and offered her a contract, but she rejected it. Instead, she played the Quaker wife of ex-marshal Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952). The Western movie, with its popular theme song, became a hit. Off camera, Grace and Cooper (her senior by 28 years) began an affair. While their connection was short-lived, it established the pattern for subsequent liaisons with her older movie costars. She returned to Broadway briefly and then joined Clark Gable and Ava Gardner in John Ford’s Mogambo (1953). During the African location filming, Kelly and Gable relaxed on an offscreen safari together. By now, Grace was an MGM contract star being loaned out profitably to other studios.

  During the shooting of Dial M for Murder (1954), it was not her rotund director (Alfred Hitchcock, who had a penchant for beautiful, icy blonds) with whom she tangled romantically, but her 49-year-old costar, Ray Milland. The actor left his wife to show he meant to marry Grace, but later reconsidered. Hitchcock borrowed Grace again for the thriller Rear Window (1954). Meanwhile, the fast-rising actress had switched her affections from Milland to fashion designer Oleg Cassini and then to French actor Jean-Pierre Aumon
t. Grace’s outspoken father was horrorstruck. During the making of The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), Grace and William Holden became more than good friends. Next, cast in The Country Girl (1954), Kelly’s attention wavered from Holden to their costar, Bing Crosby. But she wasn’t in love with the crooner and refused his marriage offer. For her on-camera dramatics in The Country Girl, Grace won an Academy Award.

  Having teamed with Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (1955) and while waiting to make MGM’s The Swan (1956), Grace attended the Cannes Film Festival in May 1955. Screen star Olivia de Havilland’s husband, Pierre Galante, a Paris-Match magazine editor, engineered the meeting between Kelly and the 31-year-old Prince Rainier III of Monaco. After being introduced to the lustrous movie queen, the royal and very eligible—if pudgy—bachelor informed his palace chaplain, “I’ve met somebody. I think she is the one.” That December, Rainier went to Philadelphia to ask for her hand in marriage. The engagement was announced on January 5, 1956. (Not publicized at the time were conditions to the marriage: Grace had to pass a fertility test to prove she could bear future heirs to the throne and the Kellys were required to pay a $2 million dowry.) Four months later, on April 18, 1956, Grace and Prince Rainier were married in a civil service. The next day, they were united in a Catholic ceremony covered by 1,600 reporters as “the social event of the decade.”

  Grace’s royal marriage marked the official end of her Hollywood years. It also began her motherhood period: Princess Caroline was born in 1957, Prince Albert in 1958, and Princess Stephanie in 1965. During her reign, Grace always missed moviemaking. In 1962 she accepted the lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mamie, but when the picture was made in 1964, it was Tippi Hedren who played the heroine. (The subjects of Monaco had objected vehemently to their Princess Grace making a film.) In 1974, Kelly appeared at a New York City tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, and in 1976, she joined the board of directors of Twentieth Century-Fox. She almost accepted a lead in that studio’s film The Turning Point (1977), but Rainier said no. The same year, she provided the narration for The Children of Theatre Street, a documentary about the Kirov School of Ballet in Russia.

  When not coping with her spirited family—especially Princess Caroline—Grace worried about growing old, gaining weight (which she did—partially from excessive drinking), rumors of Rainier’s affairs, and her aborted film career. She did poetry readings around the world and starred in a documentary called Rearranged (1979). By 1982, she had hopes that she would finally be permitted to make a real feature film once again.

  On the morning of September 13, 1982, Grace was leaving Roc Agcl, the alternate family home located a few miles from the royal palace. She had an appointment with her Monaco couturier before going on to Paris that evening with Stephanie. After loading her Rover 3500 with luggage and dresses to be altered, she informed her chauffeur there was now no room for him in the car, and that she would drive instead.

  With Stephanie in the passenger seat, Grace set out at 9:30 A.M., driving the same route as she had decades earlier while filming scenes for To Catch a Thief. Half an hour later, as the brown car reached a dangerous curve on the snaking Moyenne Corniche, it accelerated, crashed through the barrier, and careened down the 120-foot hillside. When local residents reached the accident scene, a conscious but injured Stephanie had managed to get out of the car already and was screaming, “Help my mother! My mother is in there! Get her out!” The unconscious Princess Grace was removed by smashing the car’s rear window. She and Stephanie were taken by ambulance to Princess Grace Hospital. After immediate surgery to clear Grace’s lungs and halt internal bleeding, a CAT scan revealed that Grace had suffered a stroke prior to the accident. (Her other injuries included multiple fractures of the collarbone, thigh, and ribs.) It was concluded that even if she should recover, she would be a helpless invalid. The royal palace did its best to downplay the seriousness of Grace’s injuries (which later led to speculation that the official explanation for the accident might have been fabricated).

  About 10:30 P.M. on September 14, 1982, Grace was taken off her life-support equipment and died. She lay in state in her open coffin until September 18, when an elaborate funeral service was conducted at the same cathedral where she had married 26 years before. On September 21, the Princess was buried in the Grimaldi family vault in the church. The white marble slab is inscribed: “Grace Patricia, wife of Prince Rainier III, died the year of our Lord, 1982.” Only after her death did everyone realize how much Grace Kelly had been the center of her household and principality. With Grace gone, it was up to Caroline to take over such duties for her father (who has never remarried).

  All in all, it was certainly not the “happily ever after” life that everyone had expected for shrewd, self-sufficient Grace Kelly.

  Ernie Kovacs

  January 23, 1919–January 12, 1962

  Talented, way-out Ernie Kovacs—whose range of comedy characters included lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils—once said, “I like to be onstage because nobody can bother me there. Lawyers, process servers, insurance salesmen—anyone.” While he would make several movies, it was on TV that the burly Kovacs best demonstrated his rich and inventive comedy, most of which he wrote himself. One associate described the star’s cocky TV sketches: “Ernie was the master of the switch. He set up a picture that you felt totally comfortable with, and he took care in setting it up with great authenticity. . . . And then he’d switch it.”

  Ernie Kovacs, in thoughtful conversation with James Stewart, is interrupted by Pyewacket the cat in Bell, Book and Candle (1958). Courtesy of JC Archives

  Kovacs was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1919, the second son of Hungarian immigrants. His father was a tavern-keeper. After high school, when he was 20, Ernie came down with pneumonia. While hospitalized, he was placed in the tuberculosis ward, caught that disease, and almost died. It was during his long recovery period that Kovacs first developed his knack for cracking wise jokes to overcome his unhappiness. He also decided that he was now living on borrowed time and should enjoy each and every day. Kovacs attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City and later organized an acting troupe, the Contemporary Players, in Trenton. When that failed, he moved on to WTTM, a local radio station, where he remained for nine years in various capacities, ranging from disc jockey to sportscaster. He married dancer Bette Wilcox in 1945. They became the parents of Bette Lee in 1947 and Kippie in 1949. The marriage ended in 1949 when Bette left him. During subsequent years, the Kovacs battled over custody of their offspring, and the children finally settled in with Ernie after he kidnapped them back in 1953 from Bette, who was then in Florida.

  In 1950, Kovacs, needing more money, joined WPTZ-TV in Philadelphia for the first in a long chain of madcap television outings that he would host and/or star in. The next year his show Kovacs on the Corner, in which he teamed with Edie Adams and Peter Boyle, was featured on network television. At different points during the next few seasons, the workaholic Ernie was performing on several programs concurrently. He and Adams married in 1954 and moved into a plush 17-room duplex on Manhattan’s Central Park West. In 1959, their daughter Mia Susan was born. Kovacs reached a career peak when he starred in NBC’s Saturday Color Carnival—The Ernie Kovacs Show. The unique program—done all in pantomime—won the cigar-chomping Kovacs an Emmy.

  Columbia Pictures signed Kovacs to a four-year contract at $100,000 a picture. He and his family relocated to California to a stately Los Angeles house in Coldwater Canyon. In his first two pictures, Operation Mad Ball (1957, starring Jack Lemmon) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958, starring Kim Novak and James Stewart), Kovacs had only supporting roles. However, he managed to make an indelible impression in both movies. Not content to be merely a feature-film player, he continued to make guest appearances on TV: sometimes in comedy specials, and on other occasions as a dramatic performer. He often had his own TV series (1958–59, 1961–62) and hosted other shows, including Take a Good Look (1959–60) and Silents Please (1961). As time went on, he
began to have fights with the networks over the expanding budgets and unimpressive ratings for his programs.

  Always wanting more attention and needing more money for his lavish lifestyle and growing back-tax debts, Kovacs performed in Las Vegas, where his addiction to gambling became costly. In 1960 he appeared on-screen in five features, ranging from Our Man in Havana to Strangers When We Meet. In what proved to be his last movie, Sail a Crooked Ship (1961), he was cast as a menacing villain.

  In early 1961, Kovacs was acting in a TV pilot (A Pony for Chris with Buster Keaton) and was discussing a feature-film production deal with Alec Guinness. Then came January 12, 1962, the day that ended everything for Kovacs.

  The Kovacs were invited to director Billy Wilder’s apartment on Wilshire Boulevard to celebrate the christening of Milton and Ruth Berle’s new son, Michael. Edie drove to the party alone in her Corvair station wagon, since Ernie had been busy working on the TV pilot all day and was to meet her there. He drove to Wilder’s place in his white Rolls Royce. At 1:20 A.M., Ernie and Edie left the get-together. He offered French movie star Yves Montand a ride, but Montand decided to go with the Berles. Slightly drunk, Ernie drove off in the station wagon (which Edie hated to drive), asking his wife to drive the Rolls home. As he roared through the wet night, his vehicle smashed into the concrete triangle at the intersection of Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Boulevard. The impact spun the car around and wrapped it around a pole. Kovacs died instantly of a basal skull fracture. He was found dead with a Cuban cigar a few inches from his hand. Had he not been momentarily distracted while trying to light the stogie, he would have been 43 on January 23, 1962.