The young River (who would always have gaps in his education due to his family’s unorthodox lifestyle) was increasingly drawn to the world of music. He dreamed of perfecting his craft. By 1978 he and seven-year-old Rain were performing publicly and winning local talent contests. The following year, the Phoenix family relocated to Los Angeles; the parents had hopes that all their offspring might get into show business and could proselytize on behalf of the family’s “beliefs” if they became famous. Before long, River and Rain were hired as pre-show warm-up entertainers for a children’s TV program. Next, River played his guitar on a Los Angeles-based game show. Then the 11-year-old was hired to enact one of the younger brothers on a new TV series, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but the show lasted only one season (1982–83). For a time he tried doing commercials, but felt unsuited to the phoniness of the process.
Having broken into the entertainment industry with Seven Brides, River made his feature-film debut as a nerdy smart kid in Explorers (1985). But it was the box-office success Stand By Me (1986), based on a Stephen King novella, that brought young River to national prominence. The Mosquito Coast (1986), starring Harrison Ford as a man anxious to take his family back to a primitive and elemental life, was set in a Caribbean jungle. Its plot premise bore remarkable parallels to Phoenix’s unusual upbringing. It was on this movie that Phoenix first met and worked with actress Martha Plimpton, then age 15. River accepted his escalating success reluctantly, glad that at least it provided a way for him to help his family by being their breadwinner.
Unlike many rising actors, River was very shy and hated publicity. He disliked being involved in media hype. He said once, “I’ve kept my ego and my happiness completely separate from my work. In fact, if I see my face on the cover of a magazine I go into remission. I shut myself out and freak.”
River’s first starring screen vehicle was the unsuccessful A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988), which miscast him as a girl-chasing teen. Another misfire was Little Nikita (1989), costarring Sidney Poitier. Far better was Running on Empty (1988). The well-received drama had Phoenix playing the son of 1960s radicals and featured Martha Plimpton as River’s love interest. By now Plimpton had become River’s constant offscreen companion as well. Phoenix was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor with Running on Empty, but lost to Kevin Kline (for A Fish Called Wanda).
River was hired next to play the young version of Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). The adventure saga was a big box-office hit. After a few misfires, River continued his career roll with My Own Private Idaho, directed by Gus Van Sant. It showcased Phoenix as a narcoleptic gay street hustler with strong feelings for his upper-class hustler pal (Keanu Reeves). Much in demand now, River had his pick of parts. He turned down A Kiss Before Dying (1991), but joined the ensemble cast (Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd) of Sneakers (1992), a high-tech heist comedy.
River Phoenix in 1987.
© Steve Schapiro/Gamma Liason—courtesy of Archive Photos
By now, many people had noticed major personality changes in Phoenix, who was once so appreciated for his innocence and wholesomeness. He had been a strict vegetarian who wore no leather, and who cared so much about the diminished rain forest that he bought up many acres of it in Costa Rica to save it from development. He was the celebrity who had said, “I don’t see any point or any good in drugs that are as disruptive as cocaine. I never tried heroin. I tried alcohol and most of the others when I was 15, and got it out of the way—finished with the stuff.” Now all that had radically changed, and people wondered why.
Some thought River’s complete turnaround was nothing more than cynicism, the price he paid for competing in the rough filmmaking world. Others felt it was his ongoing rebellion against his bizarre childhood, or that he was hell-bent to test all his limits. Still others judged him a lost soul who had caved in to his demons and would not deal with recovery.
At any rate, in the early 1990s Phoenix abandoned acting and returned to Florida to live in Gainesville with his family (and later on his own). For a time he called himself Rio. He formed a band called Aleka’s Attic with his sister Rain, in which he sang, played guitar, and wrote songs. He remained a firm environmentalist and a dedicated animal rights activist. He now belonged to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). He and his band were part of the PETA Rock Against Fur Concert, and Aleka’s Attic had a song called “Across the Way” on PETA’s Tame Yourself album.
For all his growing clout within the film industry, River made unusual professional choices. He appeared as Richard Harris’s odd son haunted by the ghost of his own wife in the strange Western Silent Tongue (1993), directed by Sam Shepard. The attraction for doing Peter Bogdanovich’s poor The Thing Called Love (1993), set in the world of Nashville country music, must have been that River’s role allowed him to play guitar on camera. Phoenix performed opposite Samantha Mathis, who would become his new girlfriend offscreen as well. The Thing Called Love was coolly received by the public. Rumors surfaced that Phoenix had been drugged out during much of the filming, and that this had interfered badly with his performance (not to mention the way he looked on camera). River finally attended a few 12-step meetings back in Los Angeles, but remained in denial about his growing problems.
In mid-1993 River started production on Dark Blood, under the direction of Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer. The picture was mostly shot in a remote area of the Utah desert. River played Boy, an isolated desert-dweller waiting for the end of the world. By late October, cast and crew were back in Los Angeles to film interior shots. One of the last scenes Phoenix did was his character’s death sequence.
On Saturday, October 30, after working on the picture, River took a limousine back to his room (#328) at the Hotel Nikko in Los Angeles. There he met his siblings Rain and Joaquin and his girlfriend Samantha Mathis. After a few hours of partying at the hotel, they left for a get-together in the Hollywood Hills. After the party, they were driven to the Viper Room at 8860 Sunset Boulevard, a hip rock club favored by the younger Hollywood set. Onstage, an all-star band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was playing. The movie star Johnny Depp, who was part-owner of the Viper Room, was performing along with them. By now River was quite intoxicated and under the influence of assorted drugs. Some on the scene recall that the actor looked pale, thin, and enervated. He was slurring his words.
In the men’s bathroom just after they arrived, River reportedly took an exotic form of heroin and had a severe reaction to the drug. He was offered Valium to calm down. But thereafter, he began vomiting over his shirt. He passed out briefly and told his friends that he was having trouble breathing and needed fresh air. With the help of Joaquin and others, River was taken out of the club. While being carted outside, the still-aware Phoenix supposedly told a doorman, “I’m gonna die, dude.” Out on the street, River soon collapsed and went into convulsions, his legs and arms flailing while the back of his head thumped on the sidewalk. While Rain cradled her brother’s head in her lap, the hysterical Joaquin called 911 for help. It was 1:10 A.M. when Joaquin yelled into the phone, “You must get here, please, because he’s dying.”
About four minutes later the paramedics arrived. By now Phoenix was in respiratory and cardiac arrest. During the rush to the hospital, every appropriate technique (including CPR chest compression) was tried to get his heart working again. At 1:34 A.M., the ambulance arrived at the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. There, the medical team inserted a pacemaker, hoping to stimulate the dying actor’s heart. All to no avail. At 1:51 A.M. on Halloween morning, 23-year-old River was pronounced dead. The autopsy performed on Phoenix showed that he had died of acute multiple drug intoxication, including marijuana, Valium, cocaine, and heroin.
News spread fast about River’s death. Impromptu graffiti sayings and flower bouquets appeared on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room. The actor’s parents, from their home in Gainesville, Florida, made the statement, “His beauty, gentleness
, compassion, vulnerability, and love are gifts for all eternity.” They asked that instead of flowers, contributions be made to Phoenix’s favorite charities, EarthSave and Earth Trust.
Memorial tributes were held for Phoenix in Los Angeles and at the family’s Florida ranch (where River’s ashes were eventually scattered). The Viper Room remained closed for one-and-a-half weeks.
Before his death, River had signed a contract to play the young journalist in Interview with the Vampire (1994), costarring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Christian Slater was substituted; he donated his $250,000 salary to River’s favorite charities. Sean Astin took over River’s intended part in Safe Passage (1994). Phoenix was also to star in Total Eclipse (1995), the narrative of a young gay poet in nineteenth-century France. The part was inherited by Leonardo DiCaprio.
As for the uncompleted Dark Blood, it was decided that too many sequences remained unfinished, and the film was shelved. Phoenix’s estate was sued for more than $6 million by the insurance company that had to pay off the backers of the unfinished film. The insurance company’s case was based on the allegation that River had not told the truth about his drug usage on the precontract medical questionnaire. But since he had never signed the form, the case fell apart.
With so much accomplished and so much still to do in the future, how ironic that a few years earlier, River Phoenix had said, “I’d rather quit while ahead. There’s no need to overstay your welcome.”
Wallace Reid
[William Wallace Reid]
April 15, 1891–January 18, 1923
Handsome, young, world-famous, and good-natured, screen star Wally Reid really had everything going for him—except power over his uncontrolled drug and alcohol habits. When these addictions began to affect his health, his escalating vices could no longer be hidden from the shocked public. His rapid physical decline in 1922 made sensational news copy; his death vigil in early 1923 was recorded in minute detail for the masses. When he passed away, fans mourned—at least for a few days. Later, Hollywood moralists—including Reid’s wife Dorothy Davenport—used his brief, wasted existence as a stark illustration of what substance abuse could do to a mighty star. Considering the number of entertainers (including John Belushi and Chris Farley) who have traveled the same deadly road over subsequent years, Reid’s sad finale obviously had little impact.
Reid was born in St. Louis in 1891 to a theatrical family who trouped throughout the United States. Wallace inherited his clan’s love for the stage and was performing by the age of four. When he was 10, the Reids moved to New York City. In 1909, at the invitation of Buffalo Bill Cody, a friend of his father’s, Wallace worked at a Wyoming hotel operated by Cody’s sister. In his free time, he roamed that state’s still untamed plains seeking adventure. Then Wally’s dad, now writing and directing motion pictures for Selig Studios in Chicago, suggested his son join him there. With his athletic abilities and Greek-god looks, Reid was an immediate asset. He was soon performing movie stunts and learning the business through character roles. Back in New York City, he labored for various film companies—directing, writing, acting, and photographing. Off camera, he was a poet, a musician, and a composer.
By 1912, Wally had settled in Los Angeles, where he was directing one- and two-reelers, happy to be behind the cameras rather than trading on his pleasing looks as an actor. He fell in love with a coworker, 17-year-old actress Dorothy Davenport, and much against his mother’s wishes, married her at Christ Episcopal Church in Los Angeles on October 13, 1913. (They would have a son, William Wally Jr., and adopt a daughter, Betty Ann.) In D. W. Griffith’s Civil War epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915), Reid played a blacksmith as well as the Christ figure in a closing tableau.
Paramount soon signed Wally to an exclusive studio contract. Before long, Reid was earning more than $156,000 a year, a tremendous sum in those times. He and Dorothy built a huge mansion just below Sunset Boulevard in what is now West Hollywood. It was the first Hollywood house to have a swimming pool. Their neighbor was cowboy star William S. Hart.
Capitalizing on the fact that Wally was a compulsively hard worker, the studio used him in a steady stream of movies, teaming him with a variety of popular leading ladies like Geraldine Farrar, Mae Murray, Bebe Daniels, and Gloria Swanson. When the United States entered World War I, the movie star was anxious to enlist. But the nervous studio coaxed him out of the notion (just as they had done when he had wanted to race cars at the Indianapolis Speedway). The thought that he wasn’t doing his patriotic duty preyed on Wally’s mind and eroded his self-confidence.
While on location in the High Sierras to film The Valley of the Giants (1919), the cast/crew train derailed. Although he was injured, Reid rushed to help ensure that the women aboard reached safety. In the accident, Reid had damaged the base of his spine and suffered a gash on his head that led to recurrent severe headaches later. The on-set physician prescribed daily dosages of morphine to relieve Wally’s pain so that he could continue filming.
When the star returned to Hollywood, he was bedridden for three months and was given further dosages of morphine. Eventually, Reid tried to kick his habit. When he discovered he couldn’t, he began drinking heavily to ease his mounting guilt. Soon it was rumored in the industry that Reid was a “dope fiend,” but Paramount continued to overwork their good-looking property, and in 1921 an industry poll listed him as the number-one male star at the box office.
By the time of Reid’s starring role in Thirty Days, in the fall of 1922, he was weak, noticeably emaciated, and nearly delirious. He could scarcely sleepwalk through his part. The studio kept pushing him to finish the current project, until one day he collapsed on the floor in tears and left the set in an ambulance. When he entered the Bansia Place Sanatorium at 5227 Santa Monica Boulevard, he told his studio director and friend, Cecil B. DeMille: “I’ll either come out cured—or I won’t come out.” His loving wife staunchly informed the press of her husband’s drug addiction. News that his admirers were well aware of his plight was kept from the patient, who at times had to be placed in a padded cell.
In January 1923, the desperately ill Reid contracted a virulent strain of influenza. By now he had shrunk down to 120 pounds and was falling in and out of a coma. On January 18, 1923, at a little after 1:00 P.M., he cried out his last words: “God . . . I . . . Please!” Then the king of Paramount Pictures was dead. Screen star Mary Pickford said, “His death is a very great tragedy. I know he would have lived down every mistake he made.”
An estimated ten thousand people converged on Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, for his funeral. Having always been a free spender, Reid left only a $40,000 estate. Later in the decade, his widow appeared in two antidrug movies that she had helped to finance. She also produced other films, each with an educational message (against prostitution, venereal disease, drugs, etcetera). Many years later, Mrs. Reid, who never remarried, said of her late husband: “He was much loved. He had so many talents—the gods were overly kind, but they also made him vulnerable, his own worst enemy, to compensate for their lavishness.”
Gail Russell
September 23, 1925–August 26, 1961
Many people believe they would “die” to become a movie star. But beautiful Gail Russell killed herself with alcoholism because she couldn’t cope with the invasive cameras and the other trappings of celebrity.
There was always something hauntingly sad about the brunette, blue-eyed Russell, even in her early movie successes The Uninvited (1944) and The Angel and the Badman (1947). After Gail’s death, the former head of Paramount’s talent department said of her, “A lovely girl who didn’t belong in the movie industry. I believe she would have had a happy life had she become a commercial artist instead of a movie actress.” But she did become a film star, which led this beautiful, introverted woman down a path of self-destruction. As she herself analyzed, “Everything happened so fast. I was a sad character. . . . I was afraid. I don’t exactly know of what—of life, I guess.”
Movie star Gail Russell making a court appearance in July 1957 in Los Angeles for an arraignment on a felony drunk-driving charge.
Courtesy of JC Archives
Gail was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1925 (some sources list 1924). Her older brother, George, would become a musician like their father (who later turned to selling cars). As a child, the very shy Gail was happiest when alone in her room drawing or painting. When she was 12, the family moved to Glendale, California. In 1942, Gail was at Santa Monica High School studying to be a graphic artist when her classmates suggested her name to a Paramount Pictures executive. The insecure Gail was reluctant to show up for the interview, but her movie-struck mother—a frustrated actress—made sure her daughter kept the important appointment. Gail was signed to a seven-year contract in July 1942, starting at $50 a week. From Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour (1943), she jumped into a major picture, Ginger Rogers’s Lady in the Dark (1944). Her breakthrough role was as the haunted, troubled heroine of The Uninvited (1944). But she was so traumatized by the pressures of her starring vehicle that she had a nervous breakdown after completing the ghost tale. Upon recovering, Gail was back on camera, teamed with her good friend Diana Lynn in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944).
By the mid-1940s, Gail had discovered that alcohol could be an escape from her inferiority complex and the stress of performing. Her drinking would gradually increase over the years. Meanwhile, she developed a relationship with the handsome film newcomer Guy Madison. On-screen, she was a Quaker girl who falls in love with John Wayne in The Angel and the Badman (1947). While making Calcutta (1947), she became attracted to married director John Farrow, who had a reputation for being a sadistic womanizer.
The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More than 125 American Movie and TV Idols Page 13