CAUSE: She died aged 33 after an asthma attack in Holloway, north London.
Ronald Colman
Born February 9, 1891
Died May 19, 1958
The personification of the English gentleman. Ronald Charles Colman was born in Richmond, Surrey, the second son of a silk importer. A bright child, his parents intended him to go to Oxford University, although at school he took part in amateur theatre. His world collapsed in 1907 with the death of his father from pneumonia. Shortly thereafter he became an office boy in a shipping company. In his spare time he appeared in amateur dramatics with the Bancroft Amateur Dramatic Society. In 1909 he joined the territorial army and served in the London Scottish Regional Guards. At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 his regiment was sent to the front and Colman took part in action in Ypres and was wounded in Messines. His bravery was rewarded with a medal but he was sufficiently sick to be sent home in May 1915. His service left him with a limp and he spent much time and considerable effort hiding his infirmity from everyone. At home he discussed his future with various relatives and considered a career in the diplomatic corps but while he was making his mind up he was given a part in a play. For a role in Sir Rabindranath Tagore’s 1916 work The Maharani Of Arakam he had no lines and was blacked up. Still, it was a start. On March 17, 1917, he opened in Damaged Goods at the St James’s Theatre. He played a husband infected with syphilis. Despite its daring subject matter, the play was a hit and only closed when the Germans repeatedly bombed the area. In 1919 he made his first film, The Toilers (1919) playing Bob. However, it wasn’t a success (a casting card said he did not screen well) nor were his subsequent films: Snow In The Desert (1919) as Rupert Sylvester, Sheba (1919), A Daughter Of Eve (1919), A Son Of David (1920) as Maurice Phillips, Anna The Adventuress (1920) as Brendan and Handcuffs Or Kisses (1921) as Lodyard. Meanwhile, on September 18, 1920, in London’s Hanover Square Registry Office, he married his live-in actress girlfriend Thelma Victoria Raye. Deciding to give America a try, he sailed for Broadway and arrived with “$37, three clean collars and two letters of introduction” but found work hard to come by, living on “dish-washing jobs and a diet of soup and rice pudding”. His big break came not on stage but in the cinema when he was offered the role of Captain Giovanni Severini, Lillian Gish’s lover, in The White Sister (1923). The movie, shot on location in Italy, was not a happy experience for Thelma Colman. She had difficulty in coping with a husband who was public property and they separated. (They were divorced in 1935.) The White Sister was a massive hit and its success prompted Samuel Goldwyn to offer 5́ 11˝ Colman a contract. His first starring feature was The Dark Angel (1925) as a blinded soldier, Captain Alan Trent, opposite Vilma Bánky and he also appeared in Stella Dallas (1925) as Stephen Dallas, a silent (!) version of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan as Lord Darlington and the Foreign Legion adventure Beau Geste as Michael ‘Beau’ Geste. Colman made the transition to sound movies easily. His first was Bulldog Drummond (1929) as Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, which won him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. His other films included: Condemned (1929) as Michel (another Oscar nod), The Devil To Pay! (1930) as Willie Leyland, Raffles (1930) as A.J. Raffles, Arrowsmith (1931) as Doctor Martin Arrowsmith, Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934) as Captain Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo (1935) as Paul Gaillard, Clive Of India (1935) as Robert Clive, A Tale Of Two Cities (1935) as Sydney Carton, Lost Horizon (1937) as Robert Conway, The Prisoner Of Zenda (1937) as Rudolph Rassendyll/King Rudolf V, If I Were King (1938) as François Villon, Random Harvest (1942) as Charles Rainer/John ‘Smithy’ Smith (and his third Best Actor Oscar nomination), Kismet (1944) as Hafiz and a cameo role in Around The World In 80 Days (1956). He won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Anthony John in A Double Life (1947). Nine years earlier, on September 30, 1938, at his San Ysidro Ranch home, he had married Benita Hume. They had one daughter, Juliet Benita (b. July 1944), who wrote her father’s biography.
CAUSE: He died in Santa Barbara, California, aged 67 from a lung infection. He left £10,436 1s 7d.
Kenneth Connor, MBE
Born June 6, 1916
Died November 28, 1993
Carry On stalwart. Born in London. Connor made his stage début aged two in a charity show put on by his sailor father. He took drama lessons and in 1933 was accepted at the Central School Of Speech & Drama. His film début came in 1939 but it is for the 17 Carry On s he made between 1958 and 1978 that he is best remembered by cinema audiences. He began as national serviceman Horace Strong in Carry On Sergeant (1958) and continued through PC Constable in Carry On Constable (1960), Sam Twist in Carry On Regardless (1960), the cowardly Hengist Pod in Carry On Cleo (1964), Lord Hampton of Wick in Carry On Henry (1971), Mayor Frederick Bumble in Carry On Girls (1973), Major Leep in Carry On Behind (1975), the officious Captain S. Melly in Carry On England (1976) and the final Carry On Emmannuelle (1978) in which he played the chauffeur Leyland. In his later years he appeared as Monsieur Alphonse, the undertaker with ‘the dicky ticker’, in the BBC sitcom Allo Allo.
CAUSE: He died aged 77 of cancer at his home in Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex.
Mabel Constanduros
(MABEL TILLING)
Born March 29, 1880
Died February 8, 1957
Cockney comedienne. Mabel Constanduros was born in Devonshire House, Peckham Road, Camberwell, south London, one of seven children of Richard Stephen Tilling, managing director of Thomas Tilling & Son, a bus company, and Sophie Thorn. After school Mabel became her father’s private secretary. In 1910 she became involved in the local amdram society and then studied at the Central School of Speech Training. On March 23, 1925 she made her first broadcast on BBC wireless. On September 1, 1925 the Buggins family, which she created, made their initial appearance on the radio in The Buggins Family Out For A Day. She appeared in more than 250 Buggins shows in which she played all six speaking parts: Grandma Buggins, Mrs Buggins, her three children (Emma, Alfie, and Baby Buggins), and Aunt Maria. The show was so popular that the Ministry of Food even used Mrs Buggins to broadcast recipes during the Second World War. The last episode aired in 1948. Despite the show’s undoubted success she always believed that she was underpaid. She made her film début in Ag And Bert (1929) playing Aggie Buggins and went on to appear in Radio Parade (1933), Hope Of His Side (1935) as Mrs Scodger, Salute John Citizen (1942) as Mrs Bunting, Rose Of Tralee (1942) as Mrs Thompson, Medal For The General as Mrs Bates, My Ain Folk as Mrs Mackenzie and Easy Money (1948) as Grandma Stafford. She also wrote more than 100 plays on her own and many more in collaboration with others. In the early years of the twentieth century she married Athanasius Constanduros (d. 1937), an insurance broker. They had three children, of whom only a son, Michael, survived into adulthood. It was not a happy marriage and in her autobiography, Shreds And Patches, she rarely mentions her husband and never favourably.
CAUSE: Mabel Constanduros died of a heart attack in the Royal West Sussex Hospital, Chichester. She was 76. She left £12,168.
Richard Conte
Born March 24, 1910
Died April 15, 1975
The cynical type. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of a barber, Richard Nicholas Peter Conte did the usual rounds of tedious jobs before heading for show business, landing a job as a performing waiter. He was spotted by Elia Kazan who sent him to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Conte never looked back and appeared in Heaven With A Barbed Wire Fence (1939) as Tony, Guadalcanal Diary (1943) as Captain Davis, Captain Eddie (1945) as Private Bartek, 13 Rue Madeleine (1946) as Bill H. O’Connell, Call Northside 777 (1948) as convicted murderer Frank Wiecek, Cry Of The City (1948) as wounded hoodlum Martin Rome, House Of Strangers (1949) as Max Monetti, Under The Gun (1950) as Bert Galvin, Hollywood Story (1951) as Larry O’Brien, New York Confidential (1955) as Nick Magellan, Little Red Monkey as Bill Locklin, Full Of Life as Nick Rocco, Ocean’s Eleven (1960) as Anthony Bergdorf, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) as Barabbas, O
peration Cross Eagles (1969) as Lieutenant Bradford, The Godfather (1972) as Emilio Barzini, Anastasia Mio Fratello (1973) as the head of Murder, Inc. Alberto Anastasia, Eroticofollia (1974) and Roma Violenta (1975).
CAUSE: He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, aged 65. He was buried in Westwood Memorial Cemetery under a stone bearing his name, dates and the legend “Actor–Writer–Painter–Composer–Poet”.
Jackie Coogan
Born October 26, 1914
Died March 1, 1984
‘The Kid’. John Leslie Coogan was born in Los Angeles, California. Both parents worked in vaudeville and it seemed only logical that Jackie should step into their shoes. They could not have realised what a massive impact he would make in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Kid (1921) in which Jackie played the title role. He became an immense world-wide celebrity and had his every cough and spit reported in the press. However, his parents kept a tight grip on the young star’s money, placing it in trust for him. He was offered $1 million plus a percentage of profits for two years and given a $500,000 signing-on fee when he joined Metro from First National. By contrast, his parents allowed him $6.25 pocket money each week. Coogan appeared in Trouble (1922) as Danny, the lead in Oliver Twist (1922), Circus Days (1923) as Toby Tyler, Long Live The King (1923) as Crown Prince Otto, Little Robinson Crusoe (1924) as Mickey Hogan, Johnny Get Your Hair Cut (1927) as Johnny O’Day (unbelievably, a film that featured his hair before and after his famous bob was cut) and his last film as a child star Buttons (1927) as Buttons. As many child actors have found to their cost, when age and puberty kick in the audience loses interest, and such was the case with Coogan. He attempted a comeback playing Mark Twain’s ragamuffin hero Tom Sawyer in two films, Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931), but his ship had, it seemed, sailed. However, Coogan still had his inheritance to look forward to, which was due in 1935. That year his father and another child star, Junior Durkin, were killed in a car crash. Coogan’s mother and her new husband seemed reluctant to hand over the money and so, on April 11, 1938, Coogan sued them. He had married Betty Grable at St Brendan’s Catholic Church, Los Angeles, on November 20, 1937 and was unable to provide for the new Mrs C. However, by the time the case was eventually settled, out of the $4 million that he was expecting only $252,000 remained, of which Coogan received approximately half. One good thing to come out of the fiasco was the passing of the Coogan Act to prevent parents or anyone else ripping off prodigious children. The case had put a strain on Coogan’s marriage to Grable and on October 11, 1939, they were divorced. Money was one of the major factors in the split. During World War II Coogan served in the air force and was the first glider pilot to fly behind enemy lines and land allowing soldiers to fight. After the war he began making films once more but was confined to playing unpleasant characters. His work, some of it dross, includes: Kilroy Was Here (1947) as Pappy Collins, French Leave (1948) as Pappy, Skipalong Rosenbloom (1951) as Buck James, Outlaw Women (1952) as Piute Bill, The Joker Is Wild (1957) as Swifty Morgan, The Buster Keaton Story (1957) as Elmer Case, High School Confidential! (1958) as Mr A, Night Of The Quarter Moon (1959), Lonelyhearts (1959) as Ned Gates, Sex Kittens Go To College (1960) as Wildcat MacPherson, When The Girls Take Over (1962) as Captain Toussaint, Girl Happy (1965) as Sergeant Benson, Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery (1973) as Detective Anderson and Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976). In 1964 he landed the role of Uncle Fester on the TV show The Addams Family and later said that it was his favourite part. Following his divorce from Betty Grable, he married three more times. He wedded actress Flower Parry in Gardnerville, Nevada, on August 10, 1941 (divorced June 29, 1943), and had one son, Anthony (b. Los Angeles, March 4, 1942). Actress Ann McCormick became his third wife in Los Angeles on December 26, 1946 (divorced September 20, 1951) and the couple had one daughter, Joan (b. Los Angeles, April 2, 1948). His final marriage was to dancer Dorothea Lamphere in April 1952. The Coogans kept the marriage secret until July 1953. They had a daughter, Leslie (b. 1953), and a son, Christopher (b. July 9, 1967).
CAUSE: In February 1984 Coogan travelled to Malibu to stay with his daughter, Leslie. At the beginning of March he suffered a heart attack around 10am and was rushed to Santa Monica Medical Center, 1225 15th Street, Santa Monica, where he succumbed at 1.37pm. He was 69 and had been suffering from arteriosclerotic heart disease for 20 years and hypertensive cardiovascular disease for 25 years. He was buried in Grave 47, Tier 56 of Section F of Holy Cross Cemetery & Mausoleum, 5835 West Slauson Avenue, Culver City, California 90230.
Pat Coombs
Born August 27, 1926
Died May 25, 2002
Bird-like spinster. Patricia Doreen ‘Pattie’ Coombs was born in Camberwell, London (“I’m a real Cockney,” she said, “born within the sound of Bow Bells”); her father worked for Employers’ Liability, the forerunner of Commercial Union and Pattie was educated at the County School for Girls in Beckenham, Kent, from where she became a kindergarten teacher for three years, lacking the confidence to do anything positive about her acting ambitions. Encouraged by Harold Pinter’s first wife, the actress Vivien Merchant, Coombs eventually went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. She was best known as a foil to innumerable comedians such as Dick Emery, Bob Monkhouse, Eric Barker, Eric Sykes, Tony Hancock, Terry Scott, Marty Feldman, Roy Hudd, Irene Handl, Reg Varney, Stephen Lewis, Charlie Chester, Arthur Askey and many more. Beginning her career on radio Coombs first came to public notice as Nola Pervis, the dim-witted daughter of Irene Handl in Arthur Askey’s Hello, Playmates (1954–55). Her first film role was as a simpering girl with Norman Wisdom, Hattie Jacques and John Le Mesurier in Follow A Star (1959). She also played Henrietta Salt in the film version of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971). Pat Coombs also appeared in Carry On Doctor (1968), Carry On Again, Doctor (1969), On The Buses (1971), and Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall (1972) playing his mother. She appeared with Dick Emery in the 1972 film Ooh! … You Are Awful and with her old friend Peggy Mount in the television show Lollipop Loves Mr Mole (October 25–November 29, 1971), later known as Lollipop and created by Jimmy Perry. The two of them also appeared together in the sitcom You’re Only Young Twice (September 6, 1977–August 11, 1981) which was set in an old people’s home, Paradise Lodge. “I never wanted to play St Joan or any of those serious parts,” she once said. “I was never a leading lady; the only talent I had was for mimicry and doing funny voices.” Pat Coombs never married, living with her parents until her late forties. “I’ve never been wildly ambitious; I think if I’d been married, my career would have gone out of the window. I’ve had affairs,” she once confessed, “but not with actors – with sailors.”
CAUSE: A heavy smoker throughout her life, Coombs had osteoporosis diagnosed in 1995. Pat Coombs died after complications from emphysema in Denville Hall in Northwood, west London, aged 75.
Gary Cooper
(FRANK JAMES COOPER)
Born May 7, 1901
Died May 14, 1961
Coop the All-American Man. Slow-talking, shy, awkward and seemingly gauche. Despite these setbacks Gary Cooper became one of Hollywood’s best-loved actors and most successful ladies’ men. Cooper was born in Helena, Montana. His parents were English. His father Charles H. (b. Bedfordshire, 1866, d. 1946) was a lawyer who went on to become a Montana State Supreme Court judge; Cooper’s mother was Alice Brazier (b. Gillingham 1873, d. California Convalescent Hospital, 1966). The Coopers sent their son to Dunstable, an English public school, where he was teased. Many believe this is where his shyness originated. In 1920 he went up to Wesleyan College, Bozeman, Montana and, following a car crash that resulted in a broken hip and his famous walk, he transferred to Grinnell College in Iowa where he studied agriculture. Among his early jobs were photographing babies, serving as a guide in Yellowstone Park and selling adverts on theatre curtains. Cooper showed a flair for art but when he found himself unable to make a living from it, he began working
as an extra in films. When he learned the rates of pay for the lead stars he decided to become an actor, eventually appearing in over 100 films. He changed his name to Gary at the suggestion of his agent, Nan Collins. It came from the Indiana town that was her home town, and later home to the Jackson Five. Cooper’s first major part came as Abe Lee in The Winning Of Barbara Worth (1926). The film was poorly received but Cooper impressed enough for Paramount Pictures to offer him a contract. He appeared in It which starred his lover Clara Bow, but it was his brief appearance (127 seconds) in Wings (1927) as Cadet White, a pilot who realised he was going to die, that made him a star. He began playing bigger and bigger roles in films such as Beau Sabreur as Major Henri De Beaujolais (a sequel to Beau Geste. In 1939 he starred as Beau Geste, making him perhaps the only actor to have starred in a sequel and then a remake), The First Kiss (1928) as Mulligan Talbot, Lilac Time (1928) as Captain Philip Blythe and The Virginian (1929), which consolidated the image of Cooper as a cowboy even though less than one-quarter of his films were Westerns. Cooper’s performance as Lieutenant Frederick Henry in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms (1932) impressed so much that the author personally insisted on Cooper for the part of Robert Jordan in his For Whom The Bell Tolls (1943). On December 15, 1933, Cooper married Veronica Balfe, known to all as ‘Rocky’, at her mother’s home in Park Avenue, New York. They had one daughter, Maria (b. Los Angeles, September 15, 1937). In the mid – to late Thirties Cooper began showing he could play subtle comedy and light roles as well as the rough and tumble cowboy stuff. He impressed in Mr Deeds Goes To Town (1936) as Longfellow Deeds and Meet John Doe (1941) in the title part. However, he didn’t always show sound judgment. “Gone With The Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his face and not me,” he once commented. However, he could still cut the mustard with adventure films such as Beau Geste (1939) as Michael ‘Beau’ Geste, North West Mounted Police (1940) as Dusty Rivers, Sergeant York (1941) as Alvin C. York (which won him an Oscar as Best Actor), The Pride Of The Yankees (1942) as tragic baseball legend Lou Gehrig, Saratoga Trunk (1945) as Colonel Clint Maroon and Distant Drums (1951) as Captain Quincy Wyatt. In the Forties 6́ 2˝ Cooper was used as a political tool to oppose anything and everything left-wing. He was politically naïve. In 1944 he was persuaded by Cecil B. DeMille and Hedda Hopper to oppose the re-election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945). Cooper commented publically that he didn’t “like the company he’s keeping,” presumably a reference to FDR’s Jewish advisers. At a congressional hearing on October 23, 1947 (shortly after being named Least Co-operative Star by the Hollywood Women’s Press Association), he showed his ignorance of Karl Marx by stating: “From what I hear about communism, I er, don’t like it because, er, it isn’t, er, on the level.” Of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman he said, “Sure there are fellows like that, but you don’t have to write plays about them.” Cooper was once described by Carl Sandburg as “one of the most beloved illiterates America has ever known”. In the Fifties he was troubled with back pain, excessive weight and his wife left him during 1951 and 1952. He also had a facelift in 1958 after critics savaged him for playing an 18-year-old’s lover and wore a wig to hide his baldness. (Following his death, his widow married the plastic surgeon.) It was ironic in the extreme that Cooper’s career was rescued by a writer with Communist sympathies. Carl Foreman had written a script about Will Kane, a Western marshal in a town called Hadleyville. Kane has to defend himself on his wedding day from an old enemy who has sworn to kill him. Everyone, including his bride, deserts him. Gregory Peck turned down the chance to star in High Noon (1952) because he thought he could not do the part justice. Cooper had no such qualms and went on to pick up a Best Actor Academy Award. He agreed to star in the film for $60,000, one-fifth of his usual take-home pay, plus a share of the profits. Coop was in agony for much of the filming (September through October 1951) as he had recently undergone an operation for a hernia and then found out he had a bleeding duodenal ulcer. (John Wayne hated the film so much he made Rio Bravo [1959] to counter it.) However, the rest of Cooper’s career was awash with mediocre films. Said Fred Zinneman, “He had magic. The only time he was in trouble was when he tried to act.” Cooper was equally well-known for his riotous love life. Despite being married, he had affairs with beautiful and famous stars such as Clara Bow (“He’s hung like a horse and can go all night,” she once generously confided), Ingrid Bergman (“Ingrid loved me more than any woman in my life loved me. The day after the picture [Saratoga Trunk] ended, I couldn’t get her on the phone.”), Lupe Velez (they often indulged in phone sex but it was a stormy relationship and at one time she tried to shoot him), Marlene Dietrich, Patricia Neal (they had a fling in 1950 but Cooper’s Catholic wife wouldn’t give him a divorce), Tallulah Bankhead (when asked why she was going to Hollywood she said “for the money and to fuck that divine Gary Cooper”) and Cecil Beaton (or so Beaton claimed). He became a Roman Catholic on April 9, 1959, two years before his death.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 53