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

by Parish, James Robert

  After a well-attended requiem mass at Hollywood’s Blessed Sacrament Church on September 6, 1934, his casket was taken to a temporary vault at Hollywood Cemetery. Finally, on October 18, Columbo was buried in the Sanctuary of the Vespers, near his brother Fiore, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Among the pallbearers at Russ’s funeral were actors Bing Crosby and Gilbert Roland, agent Zeppo Marx, and Carole Lombard’s brother Stuart. Carole had not intended to attend the funeral, but she did, and broke down during the services. Bing Crosby consoled her. Later, Carole tried to comfort Lansing Brown, who was suffering tremendous guilt over causing his pal’s death.

  Bizarre as Columbo’s death was, the aftermath proved even stranger; Russ’s mother never learned of his demise. A few days before he died, the nearly blind woman had suffered a severe heart attack. The family feared that the news of Russ’s tragedy would finish her. They concocted a story—supposedly at Carole Lombard’s suggestion—that he had married Carole, and sailed on a lengthy tour abroad with his new bride. The family made up letters to read to her weekly, supposedly sent by her loving son and Carole. Monthly checks were given to her from his insurance policies. This deception went on for a decade, until she died in August 1944. (Her final words were, “Tell Russ how happy and proud he has made me.”) In her will, Russ’s mother left part of her estate to him.

  Over the years, rumors persisted as to the “real story” behind Columbo’s bizarre ending. Nothing, however, was proven one way or the other. When Russ’s cousin Alberto, a music director at RKO Radio Pictures, was found murdered—gangland style—in March 1954, there was fresh speculation that perhaps Russ’s strange end had not been as accidental as it had seemed back in 1934. If anyone who knows the “real” story is still alive, he or she is definitely not talking.

  Bob Crane

  July 13, 1928–June 29, 1978

  If it weren’t for the constant, worldwide reruns of his hit television sitcom, Hogan’s Heroes, and the appalling way in which he died, Bob Crane would be much less famous today. But his brutal, still-unsolved murder and the 168 episodes that detail the zany times of Colonel Robert Hogan in a Nazi POW camp combine to keep Crane’s memory very much alive.

  Bob was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the younger son of Alfred and Rosemary Crane. When Mr. Crane prospered as a floor-covering and furniture salesman, he moved his family to nearby, more upscale Stamford. Early on, Bob developed a love of playing the drums. His musical talent eventually led him to become a percussionist with the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra from 1944 to 1946, and he later toured the northeast with various bands. In 1950, Crane became a disc jockey and radio host on local radio stations—first in Hornell, New York, then in Bristol, Connecticut, and for six years, at WICC in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Meanwhile, he married his childhood sweetheart, Anne Terzian, in 1949. Before they divorced in 1970, they would have three children: Robert David, Deborah Ann, and Karen Leslie.

  Crane eventually took his ingratiating radio personality and easygoing, clowning manner to Los Angeles. There, on KNX radio, he hosted a celebrity-interview show, displaying a sharp wit and an entertaining brashness. Before long, he was earning well over $100,000 yearly. But he was not satisfied; his ambition was to be an actor. “I want to be the next Jack Lemmon,” Bob told a friend. His radio duties, however, stood in the way. Contacts in the industry found him occasional TV guest spots, movie roles in Mantrap (1961) and Return to Peyton Place (1961), and an occasional gig as substitute host for Johnny Carson on the daytime quiz show Who Do You Trust? Crane also turned to stage work, performed in stock shows, and volunteered for benefit telethons.

  After a successful appearance on The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1963, Bob was offered the role of Dr. Dave Kelsey, the married next-door neighbor on The Donna Reed Show from 1963 to 1965. This role, in turn, prompted producers to cast him as the resourceful American colonel in Hogan’s Heroes (1965–71). In that sitcom, Colonel Hogan and his fellow Allied prisoners make monkeys out of their German captors, especially Colonel Wilhelm Klink (played by Werner Klemperer). The hit series lasted for six profitable seasons.

  In October 1970, four months after his divorce from his first wife became final, Bob married actress Patricia Olsen on the set of Hogan’s Heroes. Under her stage name of Sigrid Valdis, Patricia had a recurring role on the show as Hilda, the fetching German fraulein. The next year, the couple had a son, Robert Scott. When Crane’s series left the air in 1971, Bob was confident that his successful track record would lead to a prompt follow-up vehicle. He was a guest star on many other TV series and made-for-TV movies, and felt able to reject several sitcom pilots he didn’t care for.

  In 1974, Crane vetoed a $300,000-a-year offer to host a Los Angeles radio show for four hours per weekday. Finally, he settled on doing The Bob Crane Show, a sitcom that lasted two months on the air in 1975. Its failure left him extremely bitter, and by the late 1970s, he was reduced to guest appearances on TV’s Love Boat (a sure sign of career problems), and one supporting role, in the Disney comedy Gus (1976).

  By 1978, Crane’s second wife had filed for divorce. Bob was still hoping for a TV series comeback; meanwhile, he was earning a lucrative salary performing in light comedies at dinner theaters throughout the United States. In June of that year, the glib actor was starring in a sex farce called Beginner’s Luck at the Windmill Dinner Theatre in Scottsdale, Arizona. Bob was lodged at the Winfield Apartment-Hotel in ground-floor rooms leased by the stage company for visiting stars. A few weeks after the engagement began, Bob’s ex-wife Patricia and their son made a surprise visit to Scottsdale. It ended in a noisy argument, and she and the boy flew back to the West Coast.

  On Wednesday, June 28, 1978, after completing the evening performance and signing autographs for fans in the lobby, Crane returned briefly to his apartment with a longtime friend, Los Angeles video-equipment salesclerk John Carpenter. Before they left again, Patricia called Bob, and according to Carpenter, the estranged couple argued loudly on the phone. Thereafter, Crane and Carpenter adjourned to a local bar, where they had drinks with two women whom they had arranged to meet. At about 2:00 A.M., the quartet went to the Safari coffee shop on Scottsdale Road. About half an hour later, John Carpenter left to pack for his return trip to Los Angeles the next morning. Back at his hotel room, he called Crane one final time. Crane was allegedly considering ending his lifestyle of heavy partying, and was therefore tired of hangers-on like Carpenter. During this last phone call, Bob reportedly told Carpenter that their friendship was over.

  At around 2:20 P.M. on June 29, 1978, Victoria Berry, a shapely blond Australian actress who was in the touring cast of Beginner’s Luck, and who had become very friendly with the star, arrived at the Winfield Apartments. Bob had failed to appear for a cast lunch that noon, and he hadn’t kept a later appointment to advise Victoria on her audition tapes. She found the front door of his two-bedroom apartment unlocked. (Crane always double-locked the door.) When she entered, the curtains were drawn and there were two bottles, one half-empty, on a table. (Crane, however, was not that heavy a drinker.) When Berry went into the master bedroom she found Crane dead, hunched up in a blood-soaked bed, wearing only underwear. His face was so battered that at first she didn’t recognize him. But when she saw his wristwatch, she knew the corpse was that of Bob Crane. Her scream brought others running, and someone called the police.

  The investigators’ working theory was that the killer was someone that Crane knew, a person who before the homicide had left the apartment, but then returned through the front door or a window that he or she had left unlocked earlier. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner was able to provide a partial chronology. Somewhere in the early hours of Thursday, June 29, while Bob slept on his right side, his assailant struck a heavy blow on the left side of his head with a blunt object. A second, lighter blow crushed Crane’s skull. The killer tied a video-camera electrical cord tightly around the actor’s neck, but by that time, Crane was already dead. Before fleeing, the k
iller wiped the blood off the murder weapon onto the bed-sheets and then pulled the sheet up around the victim’s head. Cash was found in Crane’s wallet, which eliminated any robbery motive.

  Investigation of the crime brought to light Bob Crane’s secret sex life, which he pursued in Scottsdale, just as he had for several years earlier. He had a longstanding compulsion to videotape himself and his female sex partner (of which there were many over the years) in various sexual acts. (It was rumors of this activity, as well as other penchants like playing drums at various topless bars in Los Angeles, that purportedly cost Crane many TV and movie acting jobs; the producers were fearful of having their screen product associated with this two-sided man.)

  Approximately 50 pornographic videotapes were found at the Winfield apartment, as well as professional photography equipment in the bathroom for developing and enlarging still shots. A negative strip was found in the enlarger, revealing a woman in both clothed and nude poses. A hefty album of similar pornographic pictures was missing from the death scene. Several items that the police declined to identify were missing from Crane’s “Little Black Bag,” a small, multi-zippered carrier that he always carted around with him. (Victoria Berry had seen it when she first discovered the body, but it later disappeared and was never accounted for.) Because of Crane’s unusual tastes, the police insisted, there could be a lot of potential suspects, including disgruntled husbands or jealous female partners. At one point, John Carpenter was considered a prime suspect in the case, but no official charges were filed because of a lack of sufficient evidence.

  On July 5, 1978, eight days before his 50th birthday, a funeral service was held for Bob Crane at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood, California. Both of his ex-wives, their children, and two hundred mourners (including celebrity attendees Carroll O’Connor, John Astin, and Patty Duke Astin) attended the services. The pallbearers were several Hogan’s Heroes alumni: Leon Askin, Eric Braeden, Robert Clary, and Larry Hovis. Crane was buried at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California.

  Because of Bob Crane’s fame, his murder was news everywhere for a long time. When the local police could not conclusively name or arrest a suspect in the case, many professionals and amateurs from around the country tried their hand at solving the complex, mysterious case. A lot of theories have been put forth, and a great deal of discussion has focused on the quality of the police investigation and the jurisdictional and political controversy the case caused. A few years later, when a new state’s attorney took office in Arizona, he reopened the investigation, citing new evidence in the case. However, it took until May 1992 for the case to be filed with the court system. John Carpenter was the defendant, but because he was being held in California on allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor, it took until September 1994 for the case to go to trial. On October 30, 1994, at the end of the highly publicized proceedings (which were long on sex but short on evidence), Carpenter was acquitted of the charges.

  The grisly details of Crane’s murder continue to be trotted out whenever someone decides to do a survey of bizarre Hollywood murder cases, focusing the public’s attention once again on the lurid Jekyll-and-Hyde existence of the actor’s later years. On September 4, 1998, John Carpenter died, maintaining his innocence to the end. The full truth of the unsolved murder will probably never be known.

  Albert Dekker with Peggy Wynne in The Pretender (1947).

  Courtesy of JC Archives

  Albert Dekker

  [Albert Van Dekker]

  December 20, 1904–May 5, 1968

  Within the annals of Hollywood, there have been many grotesque deaths and murders. Few, however, have been as weird as the mysterious death of Albert Dekker, the distinguished, mustachioed actor who specialized in portraying polished, shifty-eyed scoundrels.

  Born in Brooklyn, New York, Albert graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine. He originally intended to pursue a career in psychology, but instead he became interested in acting, making his professional debut in 1927 with a stock company in Cincinnati, Ohio. That same year he came to Broadway in Marco’s Millions and quickly nabbed several other stage parts, including roles in Grand Hotel (1930) and Parnell (1935). He married actress Esther Guernini in 1929. They had three children: Jan, John, and Benjamin. Albert made his movie debut in The Great Garrick (1937). The six-foot, three-inch, 240-pound Dekker became a highly respected character lead, usually showcased as a menacing crook or a manic scientist (1940’s Dr. Cyclops was one of his most famous celluloid roles).

  Albert won a Democratic seat in the California State Assembly in 1944 and worked as a public servant for two years. When his term was up he decided to return to films, but found himself a victim of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunt. He retreated to Broadway in 1950 to take over the lead in Death of a Salesman and managed to get some other stage and TV roles. Tragically, on April 18, 1957, Dekker’s teenage son John died of a self-inflicted gun wound at the family home at Hastings-on-Hudson. His death was ruled accidental.

  By 1959, Dekker was again making major films such as Suddenly, Last Summer and Middle of the Night. He appeared again on Broadway in The Andersonville Trial (1960) and The Devils (1965). His final screen role was in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, released after Dekker’s death in 1969.

  At the time of his passing, Dekker had long been divorced from Esther Guernini and had been dating Geraldine Saunders for quite some time. With his $30,000 salary from The Wild Bunch and an additional $40,000 from his TV work, he and his fiancée planned to buy a house in the Encino Hills area of the San Fernando Valley.

  On Saturday, May 4, 1968, Saunders could not reach Dekker by phone. They had last seen each other two days earlier. On Sunday morning, she went over to his apartment at 1731 North Normandie Street in Hollywood, where she found several notes on the door from friends who had been trying to reach the veteran actor. Saunders slipped her own message under the locked door. When she still hadn’t heard from him by that evening, she returned. Saunders found the building manager, and they entered the locked, but unbolted, front door of Dekker’s apartment. When the manager forced open the bathroom door, the sight was so horrifying that Saunders fainted.

  The distinguished actor was found kneeling naked in the bathtub. A dirty hypodermic needle was stuck in each arm. A hangman’s noose was tied around his neck; the other end was looped around the shower curtain rod. There was a scarf wrapped around his eyes and a rubber-ball bit in his mouth, its metal chains tied firmly behind his head. His body was trussed in several leather belts that were fastened around his body halter-fashion, with the end of one of them clutched in his hand. His wrists were each handcuffed separately. He was reportedly wearing delicate ladies’ silk lingerie. Obscene symbols written with a vivid red lipstick covered his corpse. On his chest was written “c——ksucker” and “slave,” and on his throat was the phrase “make me suck.”

  The police investigation revealed no signs of forced entry or of any struggle, although camera equipment and several thousand dollars in cash were missing. While they admitted this was “quite an unusual case,” the official verdict was accidental death (not a suicide or homicide). Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas T. Noguchi agreed with this opinion. He theorized that the sophisticated Dekker had died through the not-uncommon practice of autoerotic asphyxia, in which heightened orgasm is achieved by cutting off the brain’s oxygen supply through partial strangulation. Friends insisted that they had never known Dekker to be kinky. (Nor did they think him a closeted gay man. For a brief period, the police speculated that Dekker had been killed by a male hustler during a ritual gone bad; the hustler had left the apartment hurriedly, taking the missing cash with him.)

  Although the bizarre case has long been officially closed, it still remains a confusing Hollywood mystery.

  Mario Lanza

  [Alfred Arnold Cocozza]

  January 31, 1921–October 7, 1959

  Everything about Mario Lanza was enormous: his talent, hi
s ego, his lifestyle, and often his weight. Lanza made only eight feature films during his relatively short career. But the legacy of his powerful, golden tenor voice is guaranteed by his many recordings, which to date have sold more than 50 million copies. Lanza’s untimely death was brought on by his reckless lifestyle and irresolute efforts to control his ever-ballooning figure.

  Lanza was born Alfred Cocozza in South Philadelphia in 1921, the same year the great Italian singer Enrico Caruso died. Alfred’s father, a first-generation Italian-American, had been disabled in World War I, and the family survived on the meager earnings of Mrs. Cocozza, a seamstress. Mr. Cocozza was an avid opera fan who instilled a love of music in his son. Alfred—known as Freddie—listened to Enrico Caruso’s recordings constantly on a neighbor’s phonograph; he grew up idolizing the singer. Although Freddie had scant interest in academics, he enjoyed sports, chasing girls, and taking vocal lessons. His mother had to scrape together the money for the weekly lessons by working two jobs.

  A few months before graduation, Freddie was expelled from high school. For the next three years, he worked at his grandfather’s grocery shop. Finally, his voice coach Irene Williams arranged an audition at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. This audition went so well that the young singer won a scholarship to the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood), based in Lenox, Massachusetts. By now, he had adopted his mother’s maiden name, Lanza, and began to use her first name too, changing it from Maria to Mario.