(MARIE G. ARMSTRONG)
Born 1922
Died August 17, 1952
Tragic starlet. Mimi Forsythe made only two films before retiring. She landed one of those by accident. The role of Tamara in Three Russian Girls (1944) was slated for Oona O’Neill, but she withdrew when she married Charlie Chaplin. Mimi was cast and was a moderate success. Later she appeared as Julia Westcott in Sensations Of 1945 (1944). She retired after marrying producer Benedict Bogeaus, but had a breakdown when he left her.
CAUSE: She died by her own hand during a fit of depression in Hollywood, aged 30.
Barry Foster
Born August 21, 1927
Died February 11, 2002
Everyman. Barry Foster was born in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the only child of toolsetter Charles Waterton Foster and Dora Dewey. After the family relocated to Hayes, Middlesex, during the depression, he was educated at Southall County Grammar School. In 1945, he joined the Fleet Air Arm as an air mechanic. From 1946 to 1947 he served on an FAA station on the Cromarty Firth, keeping grounded Barracudas ticking over. Before he was demobbed he took a course in photography and then having worked in a research laboratory for EMI, he considered becoming an industrial chemist. Deciding he would like a career on the stage, he then studied on a scholarship at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He made his first appearance on stage in August 1952 playing Lorenzo in The Merchant Of Venice in Cork in the Republic of Ireland. His first London part came nearly three years later in January 1955 as the electrician in Joseph Losey’s production of Michael Burn’s play, The Night Of The Ball at the New Theatre. He made his film début in High Flight (1956) as Wilcox and also appeared in The Battle Of The River Plate (1956) as Captain Bell’s messenger, Yangtse Incident (1957) as PO McCarthy RN, Sea Of Sand (1958) as Corporal Matheson, Sea Fury (1958) as Vincent, Dunkirk (1958) as Don R, Yesterday’s Enemy (1959), Surprise Package (1960) as US Marshal, Playback (1963) as Dave Hollis, King And Country (1964) as Lieutenant Webb, The Family Way as Joe Thompson, Robbery as Frank, Twisted Nerve (1968) as Gerry Henderson, Inspector Clouseau as Addison Steele, The Guru as Chris, Battle Of Britain (1969) as Squadron Leader Edwards, Ryan’s Daughter (1970) as the republican commandant Tim O’Leary, Frenzy (1972) as the murderous grocer Robert Rusk, Der Letzte Schrei (1974) as Edward, A Quiet Day In Belfast (1974) as John Slattery, The Wild Geese (1978) as Thomas Balfour, Danger On Dartmoor (1980) as Green, Heat And Dust (1982) as Major Minnies, The Whistle Blower (1986) as Charles Greig, Three Kinds Of Heat (1987) as Norris, Beyond The Next Mountain (1987), Maurice (1987) as Dean Cornwallis, The Killing Game (1988) as Jack, King Of The Wind (1989) as Mr Williams, The Free Frenchman (1989) as Major Trent and a doctor in Rancid Aluminium (2000). His first television big break came in 1965 when he played a young oil executive in Mogul, but he disliked the “factory-like atmosphere involved in doing a long series” and it would be five years before he returned to the small screen. It was as the Commisaris Piet Van Der Valk in the television series Van Der Valk (September 13–October 10, 1973, September 5–November 21, 1977, January 16, 1991–March 1992) that he became famous. Created by Nicolas Freeling, the show only ran for 13 episodes but acquired a hardcore following and when fans addressed letters to “Van Der Valk, London” or “Herr Foster, England,” they usually reached their destination. The theme tune ‘Eye Level’, written by the Dutch composer Jan Stoeckhart under the nom de plume of Jack Trombey and performed by the Simon Park Orchestra, even reached number one in the charts for four weeks. Some claimed that Van Der Valk did not fare well because it clashed in the schedules with Till Death Us Do Part. An attempt to revive the show in 1976 failed because of union intervention so it took another year before the commisaris was back pounding the water-filled streets of Amsterdam. The show was back again in 1991 at a cost of £6 million and 13 million people tuned in. Foster said that he was “the wrong shape, the wrong size, the wrong colour to be a British police hero”. He once opined of Van Der Valk, “He can be just like the kids. It is the style of the place. The police over here cannot be astonished, and this is one thing about the character Van Der Valk. He is understanding and does not disapprove. That isn’t his job, anyway. He’s a lovely guy to play, a thoughtful, unorthodox cop with a touch of the private eye.” Some critics compared Foster’s character to Inspector Morse which was ironic because Foster was forever being recognised in the streets as John Thaw. In 1955 Barry Foster married Judith Shergold, a former singer in West End musicals. They had two daughters, Joanna and Miranda, who are actresses, and a son, Jason. Barry Foster attributed his versatility partly to a lack of distinguishing features, once remarking: “I’m neither very tall nor very short. You can’t look at my face and say, “He’s the killer’, or ‘the guy next door’, or ‘the mad scientist’. All I’ve got is my curly hair – which everyone thinks is a wig anyway.”
CAUSE: Barry Foster died aged 74 of a heart attack in Guildford, Surrey.
John Frankenheimer
Born February 19, 1930
Died July 6, 2002
Televisual graduate. John Michael Frankenheimer was born in an affluent section of Queens in New York, the son of a stockbroker and an Irish Catholic mother. He attended the Roman Catholic LaSalle Military Academy in Long Island, but by the time he graduated in 1947 he had lost his faith. Then he matriculated at Williams College in Massachusetts where he studied English. He also showed promise as a tennis player and for a time considered that as a profession. He also contemplated becoming an actor but was too shy to tread the boards. He joined the US air force and worked in the post room of the Pentagon. He was then transferred to the new movie squadron based at Burbank in California. Frankenheimer was allowed a certain latitude provided his men kept out of trouble. Determined to keep their noses clean, he sent them to lunch at 9.30am and performed every task – lighting, photography and editing – himself. Frankenheimer was demobbed in 1953 and moved to New York where he landed a job as an assistant director at CBS. In 1954 he directed The Plot Against King Solomon. During the course of the next five years Frankenheimer directed 152 live shows, which included versions of The Last Tycoon, For Whom The Bell Tolls and The Turn Of The Screw, and winning 14 Emmys. He made his feature film début with The Young Stranger (1956). However, the film was not critically well received and Frankenheimer returned to television. His next movie was The Young Savages (1961), a tale of gang warfare between Puerto Ricans and Italians. His next two films, Birdman Of Alcatraz (1962) about the murderer Robert Stroud (who despite the film never actually kept birds in Alcatraz) and All Fall Down (1962) about sibling rivalry, established his reputation. Frankenheimer only took over Birdman Of Alcatraz when Charles Crichton, the original director, dropped out. Two of his most popular films, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) (“a brilliant spy thriller” – Halliwell), about a politician based obviously on the deranged Senator Joe McCarthy, which gave Angela Lansbury an Oscar nomination and Seven Days In May (1964) about a coup d’état, borrowed from his TV days and saw the screen replete with television monitors. Frankenheimer was no slouch when it came to utilising others’ ideas. He borrowed Gregg Toland’s (director of photography on Citizen Kane) trick of using deep focus lenses so that foreground and background were in equally sharp relief. He also borrowed heavily from Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein and used his editing ideas in an early Frankenheimer flick The Young Savages (1961). For The Train (1964) Frankenheimer threw out the original script and had a new one written at great cost. As the years went by Frankenheimer fell from favour not just because it seemed the public wanted less intelligent films but also because Frankenheimer ran out of steam and ideas. The film that really wrecked his reputation was Seconds (1966), a sci-fi film that saw John Randolph, a Wall Street worker, transformed into Rock Hudson by plastic surgery. The cinematographer James Wong Howe argued against Frankenheimer’s desire to use a fish-eye lens but still went on to win an Academy Award nomination. However, the public did not warm to the film. The rest of Frankenheimer’s cano
n barely rose above the adequate. They included 99 And 44/100 Per Cent Dead (1974), French Connection II (1975), Black Sunday (1976), Prophecy (1979), The Challenge (1982), 52 Pick Up (1986), Year Of The Gun (1991), The Island OfDrMoreau (1996) and Ronin (1998). In the Seventies he developed a drink problem which he said came as a result of the assassination of his close friend Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy was staying at Frankenheimer’s house, and Frankenheimer drove him to the Ambassador Hotel the night he was killed in June 1968. 6́ 3˝ Frankenheimer was an ardent Francophile speaking fluent French and cooking French food. He was married three times. His first wife (in 1951) was Joanne Evans. It was a marriage of convenience. He was due to be called up and he forced the air force to pay for her to live with him. They had an agreement to divorce when he was demobbed and they did. In 1954 he married Carolyn Miller, and he had two daughters, Elise and Kristi, before their divorce. In 1964 he married Evan Evans.
CAUSE: He died aged 72 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, of a stroke due to complications following spinal surgery.
Mark Frechette
Born December 4, 1947
Died September 27, 1975
Jailbird. In 1970 Frechette was signed to star in Michelangelo Antonioni’s movie Zabriskie Point. The film was about a disaffected youth who fell into a life of crime and eventually died in a police cell.
CAUSE: Four years later, in April 1974, the by now disaffected Frechette, then aged 26, was jailed for 15 years in Boston, Massachusetts, for attempted bank robbery. While still in custody in Walpole State Prison, Norfolk, Massachusetts, he was found dead in the prison gym, a 150lb weightlifting bar having fallen on his throat.
Lynne Frederick
Born July 25, 1954
Died April 27, 1994
Impossible gold digger. Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, the daughter of a Thames TV casting director, Lynne Frederick was one of a gaggle of attractive brunettes in and around the film world in the Seventies. She was always there or thereabouts, never quite making the final cut. She appeared as Mary Custance in No Blade Of Grass (1970) and followed that with Nicholas And Alexandra (1971) as Grand Duchess Tatiana, Vampire Circus (1972) as Dora Mueller, The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972) as Lucy Alen, Henry VIII And His Six Wives (1973) as Catherine Howard, Giubbe Rosse (1974), Largo Retorno (1975), Voyage Of The Damned (1976) as Anna Rosen, Schizo (1977) as Samantha and The Prisoner Of Zenda (1979) as Princess Flavia. Like many actresses she posed for topless pictures, and appeared nude in Schizo. She had been romantically involved with (Sir) David Frost before hooking up with Peter Sellers. They married in Paris on February 18, 1977, and appeared together in The Prisoner Of Zenda but separated not long afterwards. In October 1979 they reconciled, but Sellers became increasingly jealous of his young wife. They separated again but before the divorce could be finalised, Sellers died of a heart attack. Frederick flew to London, where she played the part of the grieving widow to perfection and much to the annoyance of Sellers’ children. Following his death from a heart attack (he left her $9.6 million in his will), she resumed her affair with David Frost and they married on January 24, 1981. They were together for 18 months and one miscarriage before the divorce. Before she hit 30, Frederick married (in December 1982) her third wealthy husband, Californian heart specialist Barry Unger. They had a daughter, Cassie, before their 1991 divorce. Strangely, Frederick remained Mrs Peter Sellers on her credit cards even after two more failed marriages.
CAUSE: Following her third divorce she began drinking heavily (mostly vodka) and dabbling in drugs. She spent £2,500 a week on cocaine and was banned from several restaurants because of her drunken behaviour. Frederick rose late and drank by herself; she even stopped opening her post after a while. She binged on food, reaching 14st shortly before her death. She died aged 39 in Los Angeles, California, after choking on spaghetti and meatballs. Her funeral took place at the Little Chapel of the Dawn in Santa Monica.
Billy Fury
(RONALD WYCHERLEY)
Born April 17, 1940
Died January 28, 1983
Britain’s Elvis. Born at 126 Smithdown Road, Garston, Liverpool, the elder son of Albert Edward Wycherley, a cobbler, and Sarah Jane (known as Jean) Homer, the young Ron Wycherley went to school with Ringo Starr (St Silas’ Primary School) and then went to Wellington Road Secondary Modern but was a sickly child (he had rheumatic fever at the age of six which damaged his heart valves). Despite poor health Ron became a rivet thrower in an engineering factory and then landed a job as a deckhand on a tugboat in the Mersey estuary. A self-taught guitarist, he occasionally played as part of the Formby Skiffle Group under the name Stean Wade. In 1958 he sent a tape of six of his own songs to the impresario Larry Parnes, who invited him to perform backstage to Marty Wilde at the Birkenhead Essoldo. The impromptu audition was successful and he was given a spot in that night’s show. Billy was signed to a management contract by Parnes and given the name Billy Fury. On November 26, 1958, he signed with Decca Records, having been turned down by Philips. Unlike today’s instant pop stars who tour after one single, Billy Fury was sent on a tour of Britain to learn his trade and get his name known. His blond hair and skin-tight, lamé suits wowed teenagers wherever he went. On February 27, 1959, he had a hit with his own song, ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, reaching number 18 and staying in the hit parade for nine weeks. He followed that with the self-penned ‘Margo’ (number 28, June 1959), ‘Colette’ (number 9, March 1960) and ‘That’s Love’ (number 19, May 1960). In October 1959 his act was terminated at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, after it was deemed “offensive” by the management. He toned down his stage act and began appearing on the Jack Good television shows Oh Boy!, Boy Meets Girl, and Wham!. Before one tour, in Liverpool, Parnes and Fury auditioned (but turned down) the nascent Beatles as Fury’s potential backing group. Instead, Parnes assembled the Blue Flames, led by pianist Georgie Fame. After releasing The Sound Of Fury in June 1960, Fury was deserted by the Blue Flames. Disappointed by what he saw as their lack of loyalty Fury began to cover American hits such as ‘Halfway To Paradise’ (number 3, May 1961), ‘Jealousy’ (number 2, September 1961) and ‘I’d Never Find Another You’ (number 5, December 1961). ‘Halfway To Paradise’ and ‘Jealousy’ earned silver discs for sales of 250,000. Fury became very wealthy, owning homes in St John’s Wood, London and Dorking, Surrey, where his house was set in 12 acres. In 1959 he made his acting début as a Teddy boy in Strictly For Sparrows, a television play by Ted Willis. He made his film début in 1962 playing Billy Universe in Michael Winner’s Play It Co ol. The film was a popular success although Fury was, to all intents and purposes, playing himself. He was also in I’ve Gotta Horse (1965) as Billy and played Stormy Tempest in the David Essex vehicle That’ll Be The Day (1973). In 1965 he made his only appearance on American television and also appeared for the only time in panto with Aladdin at the New Theatre, Oxford. He signed a new recording contract with EMI’s Parlophone label and released 11 singles between 1966 and 1968 but they nearly all flopped. In 1971 he founded his own record company, Fury, to release his own work and that of other singers including Shane Fenton (later Alvin Stardust). In 1974 he took part in a rock’n’roll revival tour with Marty Wilde and four years later he re-recorded his early hits for the K-Tel company after being declared bankrupt, thanks to unscrupulous management. In the Seventies he bought a 100-acre farm near Llandovery in north Wales, where he bred sheep and horses and became a keen ornithologist. He began recording again in 1981 and his final album, The One And Only, was released posthumously in March 1983. Three singles released between September 1982 and June 1983 only dented the lower reaches of the charts. For eight years from 1959 he lived with the spiritualist Audrey Valentine (Lee) Middleton (b. Sheffield, February 14, 1935). She later married the homosexual DJ Kenny Everett (b. 14 Hereford Road, Seaforth, Liverpool, December 25, 1944 at 3am as Maurice Cole, d. Lexham Gardens, Kensington, London, April 4, 1995 at 10.43am aged 50 of AIDS). On May 31, 1969, Fury was married to the ex-model Judith Hall, a friend of Lee
Middleton, but they divorced with Fury commenting, “We were two people who never should have got married.” From 1971 until his death, he lived with Lisa Fiona Rosen (b. June 18, 1953), now Lisa Voice, who became a property magnate and, according to The Sunday Times (April 2005), is worth £30 million.
CAUSE: Billy Fury suffered from poor health for many years which blighted his career. In 1971 he developed a serious heart condition. He underwent an operation to repair two valves in his heart. He said, “Before the operation I couldn’t even walk around the block without getting weak … I really came to accept that I would go out under the anaesthetic and never wake up. When I saw the nursing sister looking down at me after the operation it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.” He hoped one day to open a bird sanctuary on his farm on the Surrey–Sussex border but it was not to be. Later in the decade Fury again underwent major heart surgery. In March 1982 he collapsed, suffering from paralysis and temporary blindness. He recovered but it was to be a temporary respite. Fury died aged 42 of heart disease in St Mary’s Hospital, Harrow Road, Westminster, London. He was buried on February 4, 1983 at Paddington New Cemetery, Mill Hill, London. A lectern was inscribed in his honour in Liverpool Cathedral. He was worth less than £40,000 at the time of his death.
G
Clark Gable, DFC
Born February 1, 1901
Died November 16, 1960
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 73