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

by Parish, James Robert

  One of her frequent distractions was making her famous calls to friends (and strangers) around the globe, often tallying up a $5,000-monthly phone bill as she chatted about world events or discussed (usually in the third person) remarks she had read about herself in the media.

  Her self-indulgent autobiography, Marlene, was published in 1987, the same year that she became completely bedridden. Dietrich would remain so for her last five years. She kept to her rigid daily schedule, allowing only a few chosen souls to visit and do her bidding. (Even her daughter Maria was supposed to make an appointment before arriving at Chez Dietrich.) Although Marlene still received royalties from her recordings, finances proved pressing. When almost all of her jewelry had been auctioned off, she began to sell pieces of art—a Picasso painting went for $750,000 in 1988.

  In December 1991, the world-class hermit celebrated her 90th birthday. Long since alerted that the star was in failing health, the media waited for the inevitable to happen. But Marlene remained in control until the last. Nevertheless, when she suffered a stroke in March 1992, she completely lost her appetite and soon weighed only 70 pounds.

  In May 1992, her grandson Peter flew to Paris to be at Marlene’s bedside. On May 6, when he arrived, she was dressed in a white nightgown and pink bedjacket. He asked if she would like to go into the living room of her three-room apartment (it would be her first time there in five years). She nodded yes. He carried her to the sofa, where she gazed at the many celebrity photos on the walls. Later, Marlene spoke briefly to her daughter by phone, even swallowing a scant spoonful of soup. According to Peter, after saying “Maria,” she closed her eyes “as if she wanted to have her afternoon nap. And she was gone.” The following day, May 7, the Cannes International Film Festival opened with the year’s events dedicated to Marlene Dietrich.

  In her final years, Dietrich had been obsessed with her own death. She once told her daughter that when she died, Maria was to remove her body in a garbage bag so the press would not see it. Instead, Dietrich’s body was taken from her fashionable apartment draped in the French Tricolor. On May 14, 1992, a simple memorial service was held at the Church of Madeleine in Paris. Among the attendants were Maria, her husband, and their four sons, as well as two of Marlene’s great-grandsons. In eulogizing her, Reverend Philippe Brizzard commented, “She was a woman of unflinching moral principle who lived like a soldier and would have liked to die like a soldier. Marlene was highly discreet, secretive. Her secret belongs to her alone. She will share it with God.”

  Maria placed a wooden crucifix, a St. Christopher’s medal, a star of David, and a locket enclosing photos of Dietrich’s grandsons in the casket beside her mother. The lid was then sealed and the French flag draped across its mahogany surface. Marlene was sent home to Germany to be buried, with an American flag draped on her coffin. In Berlin, the city’s flag was placed on the casket. On May 16, 1992, she was buried in the Friedenau cemetery in Schoneberg, next to her mother’s grave. Among the mourners attending was Maximilian Schell. As she was laid to rest he said, “Dear Marlene, welcome home.” Among the floral tributes was a wreath from German movie director Wim Wenders, inscribed with the words “Angels Don’t Die.”

  Typically, Marlene had the final word on this occasion. Back in September 1984 she had written, “When they finally close the coffin on me the world will be crying and sighing for me. Forget the sighing and crying. It’s only one sighing that matters to me. Of someone who’s watching over me.”

  Marlene’s will, among other bequests, left her jewelry (worth about $350,000) to her daughter, and proceeds from any dramatization of her life were willed to her grandson John Paul “in recognition of his continuing to correspond with me.” The contents of Dietrich’s New York apartment would be auctioned off in late 1997, bringing into the estate an amazing $659,023.

  In the months following Marlene’s death, several biographies of the screen legend were published, including Maria’s 790-page memoir, Marlene Dietrich by Her Daughter. Attempting to explain her enigmatic parent, Riva wrote in her tome, “I don’t use the word ‘mother’ for Dietrich. That is a special word that implies love shown to one person, and that is not what I remember.” In the course of her gossipy, very detailed book, Riva recalls her mother urging her on one occasion to have an abortion, reasoning that “Children are nothing but trouble.” In analyzing the subservient roles both she and her father (who died in 1976 at his California chicken farm) endured, Maria summarized, “If you adored her, you took whatever she had to give you.”

  Nelson Eddy

  June 29, 1901–March 6, 1967

  Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. They belonged together like strawberries and cream. After eight screen musicals together, the world expected them to be forever joined at the hip, whether in movie operettas or in off-camera life. In reality, Eddy had a professional career long before he paired with Jeanette, and he continued to perform long afterward. Eddy even departed this earth doing what he did best—singing.

  The blond baritone Nelson Eddy was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His parents were choir singers in their spare time and his maternal grandmother, Caroline Kendrick, had been an opera singer. His parents separated when he was 14 and Nelson moved to Philadelphia with his mother. He soon quit school to find work, usually taking jobs with local newspapers. By the early 1920s, however, he had concluded that he wanted to sing for his living. He made his debut on the Philadelphia stage in 1922 and took voice lessons abroad in the mid-1920s. Nelson moved to New York City to perform opera, frequently going on the concert circuit to make extra money. While performing in San Diego in 1933, he was spotted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; they placed him under contract.

  He made three feature films before his first pairing with Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta (1935). The lavishly staged operetta, despite its cloying innocence, was a resounding hit and established the mold for several follow-ups, including Maytime (1937), New Moon (1940), and the couple’s final joint picture, I Married an Angel (1942). Away from MacDonald, and with less success, he had been a solo star in Let Freedom Ring (1939) and other films. After 1942, he made other movies without her, such as The Phantom of the Opera (1943) and his last, Northwest Outpost (1947). Despite their now-divergent careers, their adoring public continued to think of Eddy and MacDonald as a love team. It didn’t seem to matter that in 1937 Jeanette had married actor Gene Raymond, and in 1939, Nelson had wed Ann Denitz Franklin, the divorced wife of producer Sidney Franklin.

  Nelson Eddy in the 1950s, during his postfilmmaking career as a nightclub singer and recording artist.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Now past his movie leading-man period, Eddy focused on radio, TV, and recordings, as well as the lucrative nightclub circuit. He was matched frequently with Gale Sherwood, both in the United States and on tour abroad. When Jeanette MacDonald died of a heart attack on July 15, 1965, Nelson sang their trademark song, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” at her funeral, which was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

  On March 5, 1967, Eddy and Sherwood were headlining at the Blue Sails Room of the Sans Souci Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. He had just concluded a song and was launching into another. Abruptly, his voice failed him. He asked the audience of four hundred, “Will you bear with me a minute? I can’t seem to get the words out.” He turned to his accompanist and said, “Would you play ‘Dardanelle?’ Maybe I’ll get the words back.” After a few moments of pained silence, he blurted out, “I can’t see. I can’t hear,” and then collapsed. He was carried offstage while hotel employees phoned for emergency medical assistance. By the time the city fire-and-rescue squad arrived, Eddy was unable to talk and his right side was paralyzed. The stroke victim was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital. There, early on the morning of March 6, he died. His wife was notified at their Los Angeles home of his passing. Eddy was buried in a grave adjacent to his mother’s at Hollywood Memorial Park (a cemetery later renamed Hollywood Forever).

  Iron
ically, the day before his fatal stroke, Nelson—always the consummate professional—informed the press, “I’m working harder than I ever have in my life. I love it. I hope to keep going till I drop.”

  Redd Foxx

  [John Elroy Sanford]

  December 9, 1922–October 11, 1991

  On his hit TV series Sanford and Son (1972–77), one of Redd Foxx’s recurring bits of shtick was to pretend to be having a heart attack. Clutching his chest and staggering bowlegged, he would shout to his dead wife, “I’m comin’ Elizabeth! I’m comin’!” When he collapsed on a soundstage during rehearsals of his new TV series, The Royal Family, in October 1991, cast and crew thought he was just clowning around. He wasn’t. Within a few hours, the famed comedian was dead.

  Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1922. When he was four, his dad disappeared, leaving John, his older brother Fred Jr., and his mother, Mary, to fend for themselves. After a few years, his mother went off to Chicago to live with her new boyfriend—one of Al Capone’s bodyguards. Young John and his trouble-prone older brother were sent to live with their grandmother, a full-blooded Native American, who lived in a wooden shack in the black ghetto of St. Louis. At school, John was made fun of by his classmates for being so light-skinned. Eventually, in 1933, his mother sent for him to come live with her in Chicago.

  By the age of 12, Sanford, who hated school and loved the world of entertainment, had created a washtub band with two pals. They headed for New York in 1939, where—known as “The Bon-Bons”—they performed on subways and street corners. Along the way, Sanford acquired the nickname “Chicago Red,” because of his light-colored skin and hair (and also to separate him from his pal “Detroit Red,” the very young Malcolm X). When things got really tough financially, Sanford worked as a dishwasher or busboy and pushed carts in the garment district.

  Sanford soon adopted the stage name of Redd Foxx, using the surname of baseball player Jimmy Foxx (the insinuation that he himself was a “foxy” dresser didn’t hurt, either). He began his career years on the Chitlin’ circuit (African-American nightclubs and vaudeville houses), making appearances at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. In the early 1940s, he was a master of ceremonies at Gamby’s, a Baltimore club, where he perfected stand-up comic routines that dealt in the humor of the ghettos. Later in the 1940s, he teamed in a vaudeville act with Slappy White.

  In 1951, Foxx relocated to Los Angeles, leaving behind his wife, Evelyn Killibrew, whom he had married in the mid-1940s. On the West Coast, as before, he often could not find jobs because of racial discrimination in the entertainment industry. When he was broke, he worked as a sign painter. In 1955, Redd married singer Betty Jean Harris and adopted Debraca, her daughter by a previous marriage. That same year, looking for outlets for his raucous “blue” routines, he made a comedy album, Laff of the Party, which quickly earned him an underground reputation for salty, wicked humor. This was the first of many hip records he was heard on. Redd’s routines would make him a role model for many other comedians, including Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, who would work in Foxx’s L.A. nightclub in the 1970s.

  It was host and celebrity commentator Hugh Downs who gave Foxx his break by having him as a guest star on the Today TV show in 1964. The groundbreaking network appearance proved that this raunchy African-American comedian could appeal to audiences of any race or social level. Foxx was now on his way to success. In 1970, he signed a three-year Las Vegas nightclub contract worth almost $1 million. When he played a cantankerous junk dealer in the movie Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), producer Bud Yorkin noticed him and signed the raspy-voiced Foxx to play a similar (but more endearing) character in the upcoming TV sitcom Sanford and Son. During this period he and Betty Jean divorced.

  After his show ended in 1977, Redd hosted a TV variety show in 1977–78 and then returned to playing his irascible junk dealer in Sanford (1980–81). He continued to do his lucrative stand-up act in Las Vegas. Then, in the 1980s, Redd had highly publicized battles with the Internal Revenue Service, which seized much of his assets to collect nearly $3 million in back taxes. Eddie Murphy, a longtime admirer of Foxx, cast him in Harlem Nights (1989), and later, as executive producer, cast Foxx (opposite Della Reese) to play a retired Atlanta mail carrier in a new TV sitcom, The Royal Family, which premiered in September 1991. The ratings weren’t great, but Foxx’s return to prime-time TV was welcomed. Part of his new salary was earmarked to pay off his IRS debts.

  On Friday, October 11, 1991, when he arrived at Paramount Studios’ stage 31, Foxx told crew members that he felt funny, that he “might have a touch of something.” Then he went about his business and seemed to forget about it. At 4:10 P.M., during a rehearsal break, Redd shot off one of his wisecracks, did what seemed a pratfall, and then lay on the floor—not moving. Everyone assumed it was a gag. After a few moments, Della Reese shouted, “Get up, Redd . . . Get up!” The unconscious star, now in cardiac arrest, was taken to Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died at 7:45 P.M., never having regained consciousness. At his bedside when he passed away were his fourth wife, Ka Ha Cho, and his longtime stage partner, Slappy White. Most of the cast and crew were gathered in the waiting room.

  Foxx’s body was flown to Las Vegas for burial. At the open-casket memorial service held on October 15, 1991, his longtime pal and coworker Della Reese said that at the time of his death, Foxx “was very happy . . . He was doing what he wanted to do.” Among the other celebrities attending the tribute were Slappy White, boxer Mike Tyson, singer Joe Williams, and Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. One of those who spoke in fond memory of Redd was comedian Flip Wilson—or was it? He proved to be an impersonator. “I knew it wasn’t Flip,” Della Reese said later, “but there were a lot of people there who loved Redd, and it would have been a mess if I had stopped the service.... I have nothing against impersonators, but this was not the time or the place. . . . [The impersonator exhibited] absolutely no respect. And Redd Foxx deserved respect.”

  Clark Gable and Myrna Loy on the set of Parnell (1937).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Clark Gable

  [William Clark Gable]

  February 1, 1901–November 16, 1960

  For many—except for Elvis Presley—Clark Gable was and always will be The King. His appealing, swaggering masculinity was a trademark that many movie actors have mimicked, but few have equaled. Gable reached his peak as the charming scoundrel Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939). He made his mark as a lady-killer on the big screen. Offscreen, he lived up to his reputation in aces. In 1960, he had just completed a difficult movie project on location, The Misfits (1961), opposite a very trying Marilyn Monroe. He returned home to his pregnant fifth wife, Kay Spreckels, and was looking forward to a peaceful future as a first-time dad. Unexpectedly, however, he was felled by a heart attack and soon died. The Hollywood legend himself had gone with the wind.

  Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, and began his show-business career in his teens as a theater handyman. He labored as a tool handler in the Oklahoma oil fields but quit to join a Kansas City theater stock company. In time, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he worked as a telephone repairman. One day Gable fixed the phone of drama coach Josephine Dillon, who took an interest in him. He married Dillon—who was 14 years his senior—in late 1924. Meanwhile, he obtained bit parts in silent pictures.

  By 1930—the year he and Dillon divorced—Gable was making a name for himself playing Killer Mears in the stage hit The Last Mile. By all accounts, the role had been engineered by his wife-to-be, Houston socialite Maria (Ria) Franklin Prentiss, whom he married in mid-1931. She was 11 years older than Clark.

  Several film studios tested Gable, but concluded that he lacked the necessary charisma, especially because of his floppy ears. But MGM had a change of heart and signed him in 1931. That year, in Dance, Fools, Dance, he teamed with established star Joan Crawford for the first of eight pictures together. (In real life, th
ey had an on-and-off love affair for years.) Clark won his first and only Oscar, for the screwball comedy It Happened One Night, on loan to Columbia Pictures in 1934.

  Gable and Carole Lombard first worked together on-screen in 1932, in No Man of Her Own, but it was not until 1936 that they “found” each other. By then he was separated from his second wife, and when their divorce became final in early 1939, he and blond beauty Lombard were married. This was the same year that Clark starred in Gone with the Wind, the epic of the old South that many authorities still consider Hollywood’s most “perfect” motion picture. The role did much to ensure Gable’s immortality.

  Although Gable and Lombard were frequently described as the ideal married couple, there were rumors that Clark continued to play around after their marriage. Certainly both personalities were very strong-willed and used to being the center of attention. It was Gable who reneged on a bond-selling tour to the Midwest after the United States entered World War II in 1941. Ever the good sport, Carole went instead. Flying back to Los Angeles, her plane crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing all aboard. Gable never forgave himself for indirectly causing her demise.

  Mrs. Kay Gable holds her two-week-old son, John Clark, in April 1961. The father, movie star Clark Gable, had died the previous November of a heart attack.

  Courtesy of Photofest

  During World War II, the aging Gable, who had been drinking heavily to drown his grief over Carole’s death, enlisted in the air force as a buck private and served as an aerial gunner in fighter planes. After the war, he returned to picture-making with Adventure (1946), a bomb, and then The Hucksters (1947), a hit. He married a Lombard look-alike, Lady Sylvia Ashley (Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s widow), in late 1949. But she soon grew tired of living “under a shadow,” and they divorced in 1952. In 1955, when Gable left MGM, he returned to the top 10 box-office list with such action pictures as Soldier of Fortune at Twentieth Century-Fox. He also married that year for the fifth and final time, to Kay Williams Spreckels, the divorcée of a sugar-fortune heir.