Tragic Hollywood, Beautiful, Glamorous And Dead

by Jackie Ganiy

  Freddie’s youth, coupled with his astonishingly quick success, concocted a perfect storm, and he began taking drugs fairly early. Initially, it was coke to get him going and keep him going throughout the night. Then prescription Quaaludes, originally to help him battle clinical depression, but to which he quickly became addicted. Ah, the '70s, and Quaaludes, or “’ludes” as they were known on the street. They were prescribed by the dozens for everything from a toothache to anxiety, but all too often ended up as a common party drug. They earned the nickname “disco biscuits” because of their popularity in clubs. It lowered inhibitions, increased sensitivity, and was highly addictive.

  Freddie had met Kathy Cochran, a Nevada cocktail waitress, and married her in the summer of 1976. Supposedly, she had been arrested twice for prostitution, but the charges were dropped both times. The marriage was spontaneous, and began to fizzle almost as soon as they said their vows. Freddie really didn’t need a bad marriage to add to his already fragile mental state, but that’s what he got. He also got a new baby, Freddie Prinze Jr., just a few months later. Eight months later, Kathy filed for divorce, and Freddie was forced to move out of their home and into a hotel. Kathy claimed she feared for the safety of herself and the child, saying Freddie—wasted on 'ludes—would sometimes fall asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand. He had also been arrested in November of 1976, for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. On his own, unrestrained by the home environment, Prinze’s drug habits filled these spaces in his life like weeds taking over an empty lot.

  He was missing his standup gigs in Vegas, and showing up late to the set of Chico And The Man. Tony Orlando, his best friend, said Freddie also began talking about suicide. They discussed it often at Orlando’s home in the Hollywood Hills. Other friends said that they had begun receiving late night calls from Freddie, saying he needed peace, and he needed to go home. His last public appearance was at the presidential inaugural ball in January, 1977. He and his secretary, Carol Novak, were at his hotel on January 28, when he was served with a restraining order by Kathy. He would not be allowed to see his son. Distraught, he talked suicide yet again, and Carol told him to grow up. He went into the bedroom, and the next thing she heard was a gunshot, and something hitting the floor. She ran in to find Prinze looking up at her, grinning. “I fooled you!” he said. She called his psychiatrist, Dr. Kroger, who took away his gun and pills. Carol stayed with him that night, as she had done nearly every night that week.

  The next day, Freddie showed up to the set whacked from the handful of Quaaludes he’d taken that morning. Guess he hadn’t handed over all the pills? This was unusual, even for him, as he was usually enough of a professional to abstain while at work. Before he left the set that day, he phoned Dr. Kroger, demanding his guns and pills back. The ever-obliging psychiatrist left them with his secretary, and Prinze picked them up. Seriously, do you think maybe Dr. Kroger given this a wee bit more thought?

  Back at the hotel, things went from bad to worse. Freddie was even more messed up on even more pills, waving the gun around, and threatening suicide again. The good doctor Kroger came over, at Carol’s request, to try and reclaim the weapon, but Freddie was having none of it. Kroger did manage to remove the clip, slipping it into his pocket, but Freddie noticed, threatening to break his neck if he didn’t give it back. Carol, exhausted, having spent days away from her own home and family while babysitting her unstable boss, left Freddie in the capable hands of Dr. Kroger, and went home. She called him as soon as she could, and when he answered, she asked if the doctor was still there. Freddie said, “No”. Great.

  Freddie made a series of farewell phone calls, including one to his business manager, Martin “Dusty” Snyder, at approximately 3 AM. Snyder rushed over, and found a completely irrational Prinze, sitting on the couch, and alternately placing the gun to his head, then taking it down to make more phone calls. Snyder tried to get him to give up the gun, but Freddie refused. He called his mother, then his ex- wife, telling them both, “I love you but I can’t go on. I need peace.” Snyder tried to reason with him, telling him he had so much to live for, and reminding him of his obligations to his mother, and his son, but it was like talking to wall. Freddie had made up his mind. He put the gun to his head one last time, and as Snyder lunged for the weapon, he fired a .32-caliber bullet into his brain. He was rushed to UCLA Medical Center, where he died thirty-three hours later. He was twenty-two years old.

  People reacted to Freddie’s death with the usual clichés: shock, disbelief, sadness. Everyone lamented the wasted life that once held such promise, blah blah blah. This guy had been crying out for help for months, yet only when it was too late did anyone pay attention. It’s like that line in the song, “If I Die Young”: “Funny when you’re dead, how people start listening.”

  Freddie Prinze never blamed Hollywood for his problems. He said that Hollywood creates an environment where people can mess themselves up. That’s an understatement. Freddie’s son, Freddie Prinze Jr., went on to become a well-respected actor, and today, there is a whole generation that barely knows Freddie Sr. ever existed. His famous son knows. Of his father’s legacy, Freddie Jr. said, “If people would only think of his gift instead of his death, I would love it. I have this album of his, Looking Good, and no matter how upset I was, anytime ever, the second I played it, he could make me laugh. I won’t let people forget.”

  Freddie would have loved that.

  Peg Entwistle

  * * *

  Hollywood Boulevard: "the boulevard of broken dreams". There came to it a golden-haired girl, whose only dream was to be a movie star. But she was just one of hundreds. She was not striking or talented enough to set herself apart from the throng of other hopefuls, who regularly invaded the studios and talent agencies in search of a place in the spotlight. Yet, people still talk about her today. Her name was Peg Entwistle, and she did not live to enjoy her fame, as her only claim to it was in the method of her death.

  She was born in Port Talbot, Wales, in 1908. Her parents divorced soon after, and her father was granted custody of Peg and her two younger brothers. The family decided to move to New York in 1913, so that her father, Robert, could pursue a stage career. She became enchanted with show business as she accompanied her father to his plays and watched his performances from the wings. Tragedy struck Peg early. In 1922, her father was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Manhattan. Sent to live with her uncle in Boston, she eventually joined a prestigious repertory company called the Henry Jewett Players. She got the attention of a little girl in the audience while she was performing in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, impressive enough in the role of Hedvig to inspire young Bette Davis, who cited Entwistle’s performance years later as what inspired her to become an actress.

  She joined the New York Theater Guild in 1926, and made her debut on Broadway that same year. She married an older man, Robert Keith, but it lasted only two years. Seems Keith had failed to mention his previous marriage to a crazy woman, and the ongoing custody dispute he was having over his six-year-old son, Brian (as in Brian Keith of Family Affair fame, who would go on to have a daughter who committed suicide, and who would commit suicide himself weeks after her). She would go on to appear in ten Broadway productions in six years. Her future as a respected Broadway actress was assured, and stardom a real possibility, but Peg had another kind of stardom in mind.

  While on tour in the play, The Mad Hopes, in Los Angeles, she stayed with her uncle at his Beachwood Drive home in the Hollywood Hills. She was enchanted with the fairytale atmosphere of California, and its fledging entertainment industry. Three days after the play closed, she got a call from RKO Pictures, inviting her to screen test for a supporting role in the film, Thirteen Women, starring Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne. Peg was thrilled.

  She got the part, and by all accounts, she did fine. However, after an initial screening, fourteen minutes of the film was cut due to poor audience reception, and most of Peg’s part ended up on the cutting-room floor. It wo
uld be her only film role. RKO chose not to offer her a long-term contract. She spent the next six months auditioning, and being rejected, for every part she came across. Her finances dwindled until she could no longer afford to move back to New York, to rejoin the theater life she had so carelessly left behind. It was 1932, the edge of the depression, and the future looked grim.

  Beachwood Drive is a narrow road that winds uphill towards the towering Mount Lee. In 1923, William S. Chandler, owner of the Los Angeles Times, was building houses in Beachwood Canyon, and decided to erected a massive set of letters at the top of Mount Lee spelling out the development’s name: “Hollywoodland”. Each letter was constructed of metal and scaffolding, and stood forty-three feet high. Four thousand light bulbs were used to spectacular effect, illuminating one group of letters at a time, “HOLLY”, then “WOOD”, then “LAND”, before lighting the whole sign. It was very impressive. In the 1920s, the sign was not the iconic symbol of the film industry that it is today. It was just the remains of an old advertising campaign. As the popularity and influence of films and influence spread across the country, the term “Hollywood” took on new meaning, and the sign, new significance.

  Peg lived in the shadow of that great sign at her uncle’s home. Every time she left the house, its towering presence shone down on her. Its four thousand lights blazed, night after night, visible for miles in any direction. She must have felt almost mocked by the symbolism of the letters. Her clinical depression and seemingly failed career didn’t help either. On the evening of Friday, September 16, Peg put on her hat, her high heels, her blazer and grabbed her purse, leaving her uncles house to visit friends, or so she said. Instead, she walked straight up Beachwood drive, to the sign.

  The road runs about four miles up, and the rest of the trip crosses a steep incline of scrub brush and rocky terrain. This is not an easy climb in walking shoes during the day. Peg had on high heels, a skirt, and it was night. She must have been extremely motivated. The lights must have been blinding as she approached her destination, turning the night into day, at blinking intervals. A utility ladder still clung to the back of the letter H. She carefully removed her jacket, laying it on the ground beside her purse. Then she climbed up the utility ladder until she was standing at the very top of the sign, the lights burning into her eyes. The town that had coldly rejected her twinkled below as she threw herself off, slamming into the rocky ground five stories beneath the letter H. She was twenty-four.

  Two days later, a woman was out walking her dog, and discovered the purse, jacket, and one shoe. She peered into the ravine, and saw Peg’s broken body lying below. Inside the purse was a note that read, “I’m afraid I am a coward. I’m sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. PE”.

  Peg Entwistle has received so much fame from her rash, desperate last act that it’s a wonder no one else has followed in her tragic footsteps. She has become the embodiment of innocence crushed, dreams dashed, and lives cut short by the cruel reality of being one of hundreds, desperate for recognition in a business that gives no quarter, and no damn, for it’s aspirants.

  A persistent rumor has flittered down through the years, that an offer from the Beverly Hills Playhouse, for the lead role in a play about a woman driven to suicide, arrived in the mail for Peg the day after her body was discovered. That ending would be just too “Hollywood” to be true, wouldn’t it?

  The Hollywood sign, 1910.

  Marie McDonald

  * * *

  The truck driver could hardly believe his eyes. Was that...could it be...a woman wandering down the highway...in her bathrobe...in the middle of the night?! He pulled his mighty big rig over and climbed down. Approaching the middle-aged woman, silhouetted in his headlights, she seemed disoriented and a little banged up, so he offered her a ride into town. The next day, the papers exploded with the headlines “Wandering In Desert! Star Found Bruised, Beaten!” Thus began another bizarre chapter in the strange life of “The Body”: Marie McDonald.

  Marie was born in 1923, to a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer, and a prison warden, in Burgin, Kentucky. Yeah, don’t ask. Her parents separated when she was seven, and her mother eagerly pushed Marie towards a future in entertainment as she developed into a beautiful teenager. She entered every small town beauty contest there was, including Miss Yonkers, Miss Loews Paradise, and Miss Coney Island. She won the Miss New York title for the Miss America competition, which brought her to the attention of George White, who cast her in his review, George White’s Scandals.

  She toured with the show, ending up in Hollywood after Scandals played the Biltmore Theater there. She posed for famous illustrator, Alex Raymond, who used her as the model for both Dale Arden and Princess Aura in the Flash Gordon series. She hastily married Richard Allord—a frat boy pal of Errol Flynn’s—but had the marriage annulled three weeks later when she found out the diamond ring he gave her was fake.

  While playing a chorus girl in the Busby Berkeley film, Ziegfeld Girl, she met Sir Charles Frederick Bernard, who helped her get into films. He got her set up with a standard contract for Universal Pictures in 1941, and she then got small roles in such films as Melody Lane, It Started with Eve, and Pardon My Sarong. A long career with Universal was not to be, however, and the studio dropped her contract after only one year. Signing with Paramount, she shined as a voluptuous secretary in the film, Lucky Jordan. She fell for high-powered Hollywood agent, Vic Orsatti, and married him in January of 1943. Her career was going nowhere though, with a string of small parts in less-than-A-class pictures that year. When her contract ran out, she let it go.

  Signing with independent producer, Hunt Stromburg, she scored a few good roles, most notably in the drama, Guest in the House, which garnered her some of her best reviews ever. On the other hand, she was also tagged around then with the nickname, “The Body”, by a genius publicity agent at United Artists; a title which followed her throughout her career. She became one of the most popular WWII pinup girls, appearing on the cover of Yank (at least they’re honest), the Army weekly, twice in one month. After working in several other mediocre films, she broke her contract with Stromburg, suing him in court for failing to promote her career to the extent he had promised. She received nineteen dollars and sixty-seven cents compensation, for bus fair from San Francisco to LA. Where’s the dream team at a time like that?

  She starred in the Heaven’s Gate of its day; an expensive, MGM-backed, musical flop titled Living In A Big Way, costarring Gene Kelley. Let’s see, 1947, MGM, musical, Gene Kelley...how was this not a huge hit? Marie blamed it on the hatchet job that went down in the editing room: “No one saw that picture except my husband and my mother. It was a great script we had. Then it was torn in half and thrown out a window by a genius at Metro.” Marie decided to wash this down with a trip to Reno, expressly to divorce Vic. While in Reno, Marie had a brief but tumultuous affair with mobster, Ben “Bugsy” Siegel. Bugsy also hired her to ride atop his float as “Queen Of The Flamingo” in the Heldorado Days parade.

  Marie returned home, marrying millionaire shoe tycoon, Harry Karl, while swearing that “This is forever.” She then toured across the country as a nightclub act. When she got back, she was cast in Tell It To The Judge, followed by Hit Parade in 1950. Neither film helped her floundering career, but she did score the juicy role of Billie Dove, in the stage production of Born Yesterday, at The El Capitan Theatre. She shone in that part, winning praise from critics and peers alike. It’s too bad she hadn’t done the play before George Kaufman cast the film role, or things might have turned out differently for Marie.

  Meanwhile, her marriage to Karl had not gone very well. She was often ill, and her new millionaire husband dropped a quarter-million dollars on medical bills in an effort to determine why. She had many miscarriages (possibly due to her serious Percodan habit), and was arrested for a hit-and-run accident, and for driving under the influence of drugs. Karl, for his part, was charged with assault with a deadl
y weapon, and for trying to run down two reporters outside the courthouse. He felt throwing money at his marriage might fix it, so he gifted Marie a custom Cadillac Le Mans roadster. The car was equipped with a television set (in 1954!), a radio telephone, and a chrome and gold cocktail bar (not sure how they managed to fit all of that into a roadster). The paint job alone cost a fortune, as it was platinum dust-based paint. He was wrong. Even though Karl made Marie probably the first woman in the world to chat while driving, she divorced him right after that, saying the reason she was sick all the time was because she was, in fact, allergic to him.

  Feeling that she may have been a bit too hasty, Marie set sail with Karl to Europe, attempting to re-marry him in four distinct countries, before finally returning to the 'States to have the happy nuptials in Yuma, Arizona. The marriage lasted all of a few months before they separated again. A third reconciliation also proved short-lived…and that’s about when Marie was found wandering in the desert near Indio, California, cloaked in her bathrobe and visibly worse for wear, in the middle of the night.

  Marie spins her kidnapping tale to the press.

  Marie claimed that two men broke into her home, robbed and beat her, then forced her into their car, to release her in the desert several hours later. She was bruised, sporting a black eye, and two missing teeth. Police were suspicious, however, when they found a ransom note in her fireplace that had been pieced together with letters from a newspaper found in Marie’s house. They also found the novel, The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, about a movie star who is kidnapped from her home and held for ransom. Hmm. To distract from these discoveries, Marie loudly opined that ex-husband, Harry Karl, must have been behind the kidnapping. She so obliging to the nice policemen, and put on her best house robe, as her living room and front yard filled with reporters eager to watch her reenact the crime. For once, she was the star of the show, and she basked in the attention. Eventually, Marie confessed that it was all a hoax; a desperate attempt to save her sagging career.