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

by Parish, James Robert

December 18, 1916–July 2, 1973

  She was the alluring blond with dazzling blue eyes, million-dollar legs, and a luscious figure (34-23-35). She was America’s most famous pinup girl during World War II, and one of the top money-making stars of the decade. She was spunky, the salt of the earth, and had no illusions about her acting talents: “I am what I wanted to be. Just give me the lines that lead into a song-and-dance routine. I’m the girl the truck drivers love.”

  Betty was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1916, the younger of two girls born to truck driver and bookkeeper Conn Grable and his overly ambitious wife, Lillian Rose (Hoffman) Grable. One of show business’s most relentless stage mothers, Lillian Grable had moved her younger daughter to Hollywood by the time she was 12. Pretending to be older, the girl made her screen debut as a chorus girl in Happy Days (1929) at Fox. Two years later, Betty was a Goldwyn Girl, decorating the background of Eddie Cantor musicals. During the making of Palmy Days (1931), she met the underworld-figure-turned-hoofer George Raft. The two developed an attraction, but the married, 36-year-old Raft wanted no problems. He snapped, “I’m giving her back till she grows up.”

  In the early 1930s, Grable was featured in several short subjects under the name Frances Dean and wandered from studio to studio making minor pictures. She settled in at RKO, but it led nowhere. She moved on to Fox (again) where she was in Judy Garland’s first feature, Pigskin Parade (1936). She toured in vaudeville with the former child star Jackie Coogan. They would soon discover they had a great deal in common; in particular, both had been exploited by greedy relatives. On her 21st birthday, Betty married Jackie. By then, she was making the rounds of campus coed roles in Paramount musicals.

  Betty Grable, the Allies’ favorite pinup girl during World War II.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  In 1939, Paramount dropped Betty’s screen contract option, and she divorced the out-of-work Coogan. She soon rebounded by winning the second lead (under Ethel Merman) in the Broadway musical DuBarry Was a Lady (1939). Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of Twentieth Century-Fox, signed Betty as a backup to his top attraction, Alice Faye.

  Once back in Hollywood, Grable began her 15-year tenure at Fox with Down Argentine Way (1940), which established the profitable tone for all her cheery pictures. Her romance with bandleader Artie Shaw ended when he wed another movie bombshell, Lana Turner. Betty renewed her friendship with George Raft and turned romantically to her costars Tyrone Power (A Yank in the R.A.F., 1941) and Victor Mature (I Wake Up Screaming, 1941, and Song of the Islands, 1942). When she met handsome, trumpet-playing bandleader Harry James on the soundstage of Springtime in the Rockies (1942), there was no immediate chemistry. That quickly changed, however, and they wed the following year. They would have two daughters, Victoria (1944) and Jessica (1947).

  Betty soon found her perfect on-screen leading man in Dan Dailey. As a team, they made Mother Wore Tights (1947) and several other entries. But by the early 1950s, film-goers’ tastes were shifting, and the no-longer-young Grable found herself playing second fiddle to Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). After two additional features, Betty’s movie career was over, so she switched to TV guest spots, occasional stage work, and touring with Harry James and his band. But long before their 1965 divorce, her marriage to Harry had disintegrated.

  Resilient as usual, Betty regained the limelight in a tour of Hello, Dolly!, which climaxed with her return to Broadway in the long-running show in the late 1960s. In London, she attempted a musical Western, Belle Starr (1969), but it flopped. She teamed with pal Dorothy Lamour for a 1971 summer revue in St. Louis. Next, she turned up at the 1972 Oscar telecast, escorted to the podium by her one-time costar Dick Haymes.

  Back at her modest Las Vegas home in the spring of 1972, Betty began experiencing stomach pains. When she had a physical checkup before starting an Australian tour of No, No Nanette, it was discovered that Grable—a heavy smoker—was suffering from lung cancer. Exploratory surgery revealed that the disease had spread to Betty’s lymph glands; she should have retired immediately. Her industry insurance, however, wouldn’t cover her growing medical expenses because she had earned less than $4,000 the previous year.

  Therefore, Betty had to go back to work. As the result of the debilitating cobalt and radium treatment, her features became bloated. She lost much of her hair and had to wear a wig. In September 1972, she was readmitted to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California, for additional surgery. Although the cancer’s growth had been halted in her lungs, it had begun to spread in her intestines. January of 1973 found the ailing trouper in Jacksonville, Florida, for a stock engagement of Born Yesterday. She suffered through the run, buoyed by prescribed narcotics.

  By late April 1973, Betty was again at St. John’s. The hospital announced that the 56-year-old star was suffering from a duodenal ulcer problem, but gossip columnists spilled the beans to the public. Friends, like Alice Faye, visited frequently, but it was a heartbreaking experience. (Whenever Alice left, Betty would say, “I’ll never see you again.”) Finally, the hospital could do no more and Betty returned to her Las Vegas home. Her condition deteriorated even further and she again was admitted to the Santa Monica medical center. On July 2, 1973, just before 5:00 P.M., Betty suddenly began to struggle for breath. By the time the emergency nurses rushed into her room, she was dead.

  Betty’s funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. Among the six hundred celebrity mourners were Harry James, Alice Faye, Dan Dailey, Dorothy Lamour, Cesar Romero, Patsy Kelly, and Mitzi Gaynor. Betty’s favorite song, “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” was sung at the service.

  Betty’s remains were cremated and her ashes interred at the nearby Inglewood Memorial Park. Her crypt is inscribed: “Betty Grable James. 1916-1973.” Her father’s crypt drawer is beneath hers, while Betty’s mother’s is above. Even in death, Mrs. Grable was able to dominate her daughter.

  During her heyday, Betty had earned more than $5 million. When she died, however, she had outstanding debts and taxes. (When her bank safety-deposit box was examined, a note was found at the bottom in Betty’s handwriting that read, “Sorry, there’s nothing more.”) Her Nevada home was sold at auction to the nearby Tropicana Hotel Corporation.

  Harry James died on June 5, 1983, of lymphatic cancer. He was nearly broke at the time and worked until two weeks before his death—which occurred on the 40th anniversary of his marriage to Grable.

  Edmund Gwenn

  September 26, 1875–September 6, 1959

  Edmund Gwenn, a splendid character actor with sparkling eyes and a soft-spoken manner, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor with his performance as Kris Kringle in the Yuletide favorite Miracle on 34th Street (1947). It was but one of many excellent, varied characterizations he gave over a very lengthy acting career. But his professional reputation in Hollywood lore rests with the witty exit line he made on his deathbed.

  Gwenn was born in Glamorgan, Wales, in 1875, the oldest son of a staid government civil servant. His first career choice was to ship out to sea, but his parents vetoed that bizarre notion. His next alternative was to go on the stage. “You’ll die in the gutter, a rogue and a vagabond!” his father thundered. When he refused to reconsider, Edmund was ordered to leave the house. He went to England where, at the age of 20, he made his stage debut in Rogue and Vagabond (1895). Edmund married Minnie Terry in 1901; they would divorce in 1918. He made his first British movie short in 1916 and served with the British army in France during World War I. Thereafter, he returned to the London stage and made many more films, usually cast in unsympathetic parts.

  Edmund Gwenn (left) with Lon McCallister in Thunder in the Valley (1947).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Gwenn was nearing 60 when he came to Hollywood for better paying screen work. His first movie role was that of Katharine Hepburn’s father in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Occasionally, he was hired to play a villain, such as the mad doctor in The Walking Dead (19
36) or the assassin in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940). By now, Edmund had settled permanently in Los Angeles, planning to retire. Instead, he became one of the industry’s busiest character actors. For his interpretation of the twinkly-eyed, elderly counterfeiter in Mister 880 (1950), he was again Oscar-nominated. After Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955) and the pointless Rocket from Calabuch (1956), he ended his movie career.

  Already in his mid-80s, ailing and financially strapped, Edmund was assisted by director George Seaton, his longtime friend, in getting into the Motion Picture Country (retirement) House in Woodland Hills, California. Seaton visited his friend almost every Wednesday. On September 6, 1959, the director received an urgent message from the Country House staff. He was told that Gwenn was failing fast, drifting in and out of a terminal coma. When Seaton arrived to see Gwenn for the last time, Edmund inquired if he was indeed dying. Seaton acknowledged the fact. Then Seaton added sadly, “Oh Teddy. It’s awfully tough, isn’t it?” The dying man replied, “Yes, it’s tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.” Seconds later, Edmund Gwenn passed away. His body was cremated, and his ashes are interred in a mausoleum vault at the Chapel of the Pines, Los Angeles’s oldest crematorium.

  Susan Hayward

  [Edythe Marrenner]

  June 30, 1917–March 14, 1975

  Like another celebrated Brooklyn-born actress, Barbara Stanwyck, the five-foot, three-inch Susan Hayward was one tough and durable individual. With flashing eyes and flared nostrils, this high-voltage redhead charged through scores of feature films, always leaving a vivid impression on audiences. (Once you have seen Hayward in any of her mature performances, with her trademark swagger, tensed shoulders, and head held high, you cannot forget her.)

  Susan began her lengthy picture career as a docile screen heroine, but playing spitfires soon became her celluloid specialty. After being Oscar-nominated several times, she finally won one for I Want to Live! (1958). The forthright, gutsy Miss Hayward made no bones about her personal credo: “My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy, penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug my way up in a town called Hollywood where people love to trample you to death. I don’t relax because I don’t know how. I don’t want to know how. Life is too short to relax.” Even so, cancer proved to be the one opponent that the scrappy Susan couldn’t outmaneuver.

  Susan was born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York, the third child of a transit company employee and his wife. When Edythe was seven, she was run over by a speeding vehicle. She spent many months in a full-body cast, and after that, still more time in braces. But through innate fortitude, the youngster put down her crutches a few years later and triumphantly learned to walk all over again. Much of her time was spent at the movies, where she fantasized about becoming a movie star.

  After high school, Edythe worked as a fashion model. One of her photo layouts in the Saturday Evening Post came to the attention of Katharine Brown, the story editor of independent film producer David O. Selznick. Edythe was invited to come to California and try out for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Selznick’s upcoming epic, Gone with the Wind (1939). She didn’t get the job, though.

  Determined to break into films, Edythe remained in Los Angeles. One day while bicycling—so the tale goes—she toppled fortuitously onto the front lawn of a Hollywood talent agent. He was sufficiently impressed by the “accident” to accept her as a client, change her screen name to Susan Hayward, and shop her Gone with the Wind screen test to Warner Bros., who placed her under a six-month contract.

  Susan had several small roles at Warner Bros., but the studio let her go, deciding that she was not a conventional ingenue type. How right they were! Next, Paramount Pictures signed her for their starlet training program. She made no movies in 1940, but gave the performance of her young career midyear when, at a big exhibitors’ convention, she demanded to know from the attendees why she was not being cast in more pictures. Susan played her first screen bitch in Adam Had Four Sons (1941). She maneuvered herself into the second female lead in Cecil B. DeMille’s Technicolor saga Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and her moviemaking career was truly launched. Never shy on or off camera, Susan had her share of romances. One of them, with actor Jess Barker, led to marriage in 1944. The next year she gave birth to twin sons, Timothy and Gregory.

  Susan Hayward (right) poses with singer and actress Lillian Roth, whose troubled life was translated into the movie I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), starring Hayward.

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Hayward received her first Academy Award nomination for her performance as an alcoholic singer in Smashup: The Story of a Woman (1947). In 1949 she was Oscar-nominated again for My Foolish Heart. Susan also became a Twentieth Century-Fox contract star; she would remain with the studio throughout much of the 1950s. At one point in 1954, Susan was earning $17,000 a month. More Academy Award bids followed for her portrayal of courageous singer Jane Froman in With a Song in My Heart (1952) and entertainer/alcoholic Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955). At last, for playing condemned convict Barbara Graham in 1958’s I Want to Live!, she received an Academy Award. (Her producer, Walter Wanger, said of the victory, “Thank God, now we can all relax. Susie finally got what she’s been chasing for 20 years.”)

  The hardworking Susan ended her stormy marriage to Jess Barker in 1954. A few months later she made headlines when she overdosed on sleeping pills. In 1957, deciding to settle down again, Hayward married Floyd Eaton Chalkley, a former FBI agent turned lawyer and auto dealer. She agreed to make her home with her new spouse in Georgia.

  Hayward’s roles during the 1960s were infrequent, and usually in such low-quality misfires as Valley of the Dolls (1967). When her husband died in 1966, Susan moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She worked occasionally, starring in Mame on the Las Vegas stage in 1968 and doing two made-for-TV movies in 1972.

  Late that year, Susan began experiencing severe headaches; doctors diagnosed a brain tumor. In April 1973, she entered Century City Hospital in Los Angeles to undergo cancer treatment. When she was released that May, she wore a wig (she had lost most of her hair and eyebrows) and weighed a scant 85 pounds. By year’s end, she was mostly paralyzed on her right side. Refusing to abandon hope, Susan willed herself to make a well-received appearance at the April 1974 Academy Awards, her makeup artist Frank Westmore creating a miracle of illusion.

  Thereafter, the brain seizures accelerated. Susan underwent exploratory surgery at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The malignant tumors were found to be spreading, and doctors predicted that in the near future she would lose both her memory and her speech. She drifted in and out of comas, but always rallied.

  Later in 1974, Hayward flew back to California, where she remained bedridden in her Culver City home. She had only a few visitors: Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and even the elusive Greta Garbo (who had learned that Hayward admired her greatly). In her last days, Susan was unable to swallow food. After suffering a seizure at her home on March 14, 1975, Susan died about 2:00 P.M., her hand clutching a crucifix once given her by Pope John XXIII.

  Her body was flown to Carrollton, Georgia, where she was buried next to her husband. A pink marble tombstone designates her burial plot. The inscription reads, “Mrs. F. E. Chalkley. 1917–1975.” The bulk of Hayward’s $950,000 estate was bequeathed to her twin sons and to her brother. (She had a sister as well, but they had been estranged for years.) In the summer of 1976, Susan’s effects were sold at auction in Los Angeles.

  Years later, reporters would link together the deaths of many members of the cast and crew of The Conqueror (1955), including Susan, John Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, Pedro Armendariz, and director Dick Powell. All of them eventually developed cancer; the cause seems to have been the radiation that hovered over the Utah filming site in 1955 after government A-bomb tests.

  Late in life, Susan, always the pragmatist, told Hollywood reporter Robert Osborne: “When you’re dead, you’re dead. Nobody is
going to remember me when I’m dead. Oh, maybe a few friends will remember me affectionately. Being remembered isn’t the most important thing anyhow. It’s what you do when you are here that’s important.”

  Rita Hayworth

  [Margarita Carmen Cansino]

  October 17, 1918–May 14, 1987

  It is indeed a bizarre twist of fate that two of Hollywood’s most gorgeous actresses, Rita Hayworth and Grace Kelly—both of whom deserted filmmaking to become a royal princess—each met with a dreadful end. At least Kelly’s finale was swift. For Hayworth, it was a long descent into the confusion, degradation, and oblivion of Alzheimer’s disease.

  Rita was born Margarita Carmen Cansino in 1918 in New York City. Her father, Eduardo, had come to the United States from Spain five years earlier, teaming with his sister in a dance act. In America he met a Ziegfeld Follies beauty, Volga Haworth, and they wed. Besides Margarita, they would have two other children, Vernon and Eduardo Jr.

  From an early age, Margarita was pushed by her demanding father into a dancing career, something she undertook only to please the temperamental Eduardo. She made her motion picture debut as part of the family act in a 1926 short subject.

  In 1932, Cansino determined that vaudeville was dying, so he moved his family to Los Angeles. By now Margarita was 14 and had matured into a voluptuous young woman who attracted many admirers, including her father. A victim of incest, Margarita would spend her entire adult life trying to please men who dominated her, always being their abused pawn. (In a moment of self-analysis, Rita would observe of herself, “Basically, I am a good, gentle person, but I am attracted to mean personalities.”)

  Spotted by filmmakers while on the exhibition dance circuit, the dark-haired, five-foot, four-inch Rita Cansino made her feature debut with Fox Films as a Spanish dancer in Dante’s Inferno (1935). Her studio contract gave her a measure of independence, but she abandoned that when she met the 41-year-old promoter Edward Charles Judson. She married him in 1937, at about the same time that he negotiated a Columbia Pictures contract for her. Under orders from studio chieftain Harry Cohn, Rita went through a physical transformation (electrolysis, dying her hair auburn, and dieting) and gained a new name, Rita Hayworth.